Sword and Shadow (17 page)

They’d probably embark at dusk. Once they did, Raven could sneak in behind them and disable the ’gate, then follow them to where they were heading to take out the next in line.

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She really hoped he went along with her plan. If he didn’t, there’d be a lot of dead hybrids over the next couple of days. She was hoping he was still human enough to want to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. He seemed like he would, but she wasn’t about to bet on anything where a vampire was concerned.

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Sword and Shadow

Chapter Twenty-one

Shit!
Raven launched himself from the dusty trail into the higher branches of the nearest tree, wrapping his hands around a convenient limb and waiting with perfect stillness as the cavalcade passed below his position.

So far the night’s work had gone well. The hybrids had yet to figure out anything was wrong, though he’d managed to disable all the worldgates on this particular island. They were too busy with their mock war to realize someone had been sabotaging their equipment while they were on the prowl.

This changed things, however, and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. He’d thought he’d caught a whiff of something earlier, when he’d snuck into one of the camps, but he’d passed it off to nerves. So far he hadn’t seen anything that had pointed to the presence of anything but hybrids, so he’d figured his imagination was just screwing with him.

He should’ve known better. He’d never been
that
gifted, imagination-wise.

The valkyrie strode in the midst of a company of humanoid panthers, its pale blond hair shimmering in the fractured moonlight shining through the canopy of trees as it moved from one dappled spot to another.

He had to remain as still as possible, since the valkyrie had an immortal’s senses, nearly as refined as his own. Even the slightest movement could alert the creature to his presence, and that was the last thing he wanted. He’d fought a valkyrie once, and more or less won, but it had been a close thing. Going up against one in addition to a squad of hybrid panthers would probably result in him getting his ass kicked.

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He could always shoot the damned thing, but, even if that took it down, the whole area would be crawling with hybrids within minutes.

There was no way they’d be able to ignore a gunshot echoing through the forest.

He figured there were at least a hundred or more within hearing range and he was pretty certain even
he
would have his hands full with that many of the bastards. Not to mention that Morrigan had told him she wanted them all alive.

He hadn’t asked why, though he had his suspicions. She hadn’t come clean about why she was even here, but he’d pieced together a few thoughts that made sense. She’d been smuggling weapons to the would-be revolution, and hinted at an alliance with other immortals, so he had a feeling she was involved in setting up another agency of some kind.

That was, after all, what most of the immortals he knew were doing these days—trying to figure out how to justify their innate need to meddle, and impressing mere mortals into their service to do their dirty work.

Didn’t explain why Morrigan was here, precisely, since she was doing her own dirty work, but he was sure there’d be a good explanation for that somewhere down the road. Maybe she wasn’t the one in charge, though he had to admit he found it difficult to imagine her taking orders from anyone else.

Maybe she was working for herself
and
this mysterious other. He figured she wanted to try and recruit these hybrids, which actually wasn’t a bad idea. TAU and Sash already had a few hybrid agents and, from what he knew, they were working out rather well, even though they couldn’t work on worlds like this one. They were mostly assigned to worlds that had been liberated from the Cen, or as spies on worlds that were still under Cen rule.

When the troupe had disappeared around a bend in the trail some distance away, he dropped to the ground and made his way back to their camp. Val took one look at his face when he arrived and went ashen.

“What’s wrong?”

“Valkyrie,” he told her, glancing around. “Where’s Morrigan?”

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Quite unbidden, the sound of her heartbeat skipping to a faster rhythm reached his ears and he paused for a moment to catch her gaze.

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll deal with it.”

She nodded quickly, as if trying to convince herself, and moved closer. “I don’t know where she is. She’s taken to prowling the darkness, too,” she told him. “What if she runs into—”

“They’re not coming this way,” he said, cutting her off. “And Morrigan can take care of herself at least as well as either of us can.” He turned as Cerberus trotted up and exchanged a quick empathic dialogue with the dog.

The creature gave a low rumble of assent and dashed off, vanishing into the forest like a four-footed ghost. “He’ll find her.”

Val nodded, a little taken aback. He had a telepathic link with the dog—it was the only possible explanation. How, she didn’t know.

Especially considering he was completely closed off to her, and, presumably, any other psychic. She seemed to remember reading that not even the first vampire, Renee Fontaine, had been able to read Raven.

This was a remarkable talent, and, in its way, similar to Morrigan’s communication with the crows—which she also could not overhear. She wondered if it had to do with it being broadcast on a different wavelength, and that telepathy wasn’t her best talent anyway.

She would’ve liked to listen in on these conversations, to be honest.

Just out of curiosity, of course.
To be able to communicate with animals directly―even if only enhanced ones―would be an amazing achievement.

And she had no doubt the two crows were somehow enhanced. The dog was, obviously.

She found herself wishing she had a companion like that. Someone she could rely on absolutely. Not that she didn’t trust Raven, but she knew that when this whole operation was over, she’d most likely be assigned somewhere else and might possibly not see him again for years, if ever.

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That thought depressed her and she tried to shove it in a dark corner of her mind. She had more important things to worry about at the moment.

Morrigan froze as a spasm went through her body.
What the hell was
that?
she wondered. She rubbed at her arms vigorously as a chill stole over her. She ducked into a hollow between two trees and a sprawling mass of thorny bushes she could only assume in the dark to be blackberries.
Are there blackberries in Japan?
she found herself wondering. She stilled her mind and waited, then heard the nearly silent tread of footsteps on the path some distance to her left.

She slid closer to the trunk of the tree on that side and held her breath, not wanting anything to betray her presence. She knew instantly that it wasn’t any of her allies—there were too many feet stirring the earth. Maybe as many as twenty, she realized, and, with them, a much larger creature most accustomed to moving silently.

She lowered herself slowly, squatting on her heels, and watching in perfect silence as they passed her hiding spot. She kept her head turned slightly toward the tree to prevent any chance of her eyes reflecting anything out at them. She watched them using her peripheral vision.

They weren’t carrying any light sources she could see, but the huge figure in the center of the column seemed to glow with its own unearthly light.

She wanted to spit. A valkyrie. It figured. She chewed her lower lip, considering her options. Even if she
could
take on the valkyrie—which was debatable—she’d never be able to handle the dozen or so hybrids accompanying it at the same time.

She clenched her jaw and waited.

As the creature drew opposite her, it slowed a bit, dragging its huge bare feet. It was naked except for a loincloth, a capitulation to modesty which she actually found amusing, since the damned things weren’t in any respect anatomically correct. They simply had no primary or secondary sexual characteristics. From what she understood, they didn’t 154

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produce any kind of waste so didn’t need any method of expelling it, liquid or solid.

The damn things were asexual, and no more human than the average machine.

It sensed her presence, but wasn’t sure what it was sensing. It stopped for a long moment and she felt her legs tremble just slightly, threatening to pitch her forward right onto the trail at its feet. Then, as if shaking itself out of reverie, it continued on, a few smaller rat hybrids bringing up the rear.

Once they’d vanished from sight, she slowly stood and stretched.

She’d better get back to camp and let the others know about the valkyrie.

It wouldn’t do to have one of them stumble upon the creature unexpectedly.
That,
she decided,
would be bad.

Raven climbed out of his makeshift grave the next evening to find the ground covered in a feathery layer of snow, with more of the stuff swirling through the air. He looked around and sighed irritably. This wasn’t good. The snow would make it easier to track their enemies, but it would make their own tracks that much more obvious.

So far they’d lucked out in the fact that there weren’t any canine hybrids among them. Probably figured it would make the war games a little too easy, he thought. But it meant they weren’t given any major advantages in the tracking department.

The way he figured it, there were only a handful of operational worldgates left, and, if he got busy, he could eliminate them by dawn.

But first he had to check on the women.

He turned at the sound of something moving through the brush and saw Cerberus approaching, treading through the snow with a disgusted look on his doggy face. Raven grinned at him and ruffled the fur around his neck.

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those of a much smaller animal, while the vampire left no discernable tracks at all.

They seemed to glide through the falling snow, emerging from the woods into the clearing where the women had set up camp. To his surprise, Raven found the clearing empty except for a small white tent erected between the posts of the worldgate, and the distinct hum of a thermal heater from inside.

Cerberus poked his nose through the door flap, made a chuffing noise, and turned back to gaze at Raven.

The vampire frowned, looking around at the ground. It seemed unlikely that both Val and Morrigan would be off attending to the call of nature at the same time. Neither were ignorant of security threats, and leaving the encampment unattended was most definitely a bad move.

He didn’t see any tracks that appeared to belong to either of them, though he
did
see an assortment of what might have been animal tracks, but were more than likely hybrid. They looked recent, but the fact that he saw no signs of a struggle gave him a reason to hope, though he didn’t like the fact that he saw no obvious signs of the women.

It wasn’t as though either of them would go down easily. There’d be torn up earth and, presumably, more than a few hybrid corpses. Even the presence of a valkyrie wouldn’t have changed that.

“Track,” he told Cerberus. The dog whoofed an assent and began snooping around the site, black nose twitching as he trudged in every expanding circles. Then, reaching the very edge of the encampment, a nearly invisible game trail, he paused, glancing back at Raven. As soon as he saw the vampire had noticed where he was, he ducked into the underbrush.

Sighing, Raven followed. Now that he no longer had his coat, the bushes had the irritating tendency to shred his clothing. He’d already gone through the five changes he’d brought from the ship, and only had a few more available on board.

This whole expedition was turning into one big headache. Not to mention destroying his wardrobe. Over the course of his existence, he’d grown to dislike the wilderness, but never more than he did right now.

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“Where are we going?” Val asked Morrigan, irritated and tired. Her feet hurt and she felt as though she’d been walking for miles.

“Shhh,” said the other woman in very low tones. “They’re just on the other side of that ridge right there.”

Val gave her a disgusted look and stopped in her tracks. “We are
not
following the hybrids and that damned valkyrie, are we?” The immortal had more or less dragged her into the woods just before their camp had been invaded by the creatures, and then taken her on this cross-country trek without explanation. Now she knew why and wasn’t exactly happy about it.

To make things worse, she was cold, probably in a way that the immortal woman couldn’t feel. She was dressed warmly enough, she supposed, but the gathering snow had started to seep through her boots and her toes had gone numb.

This was insane. What did the woman actually hope to accomplish?

She opened her mouth to say something else but a razor gaze from Morrigan silenced her before she could utter a sound.

She leaned close and whispered to Val, “The valkyrie is starting to realize something is wrong. Apparently they’re figuring out that the ’gates weren’t shut down from the other side.”

Val nodded. That wasn’t unexpected. Keeping worldgates open for a long time could be a massive energy drain and it wasn’t unusual for them to be cut off for long periods of time for recharge and as an energy-saving measure. They’d hoped the hybrids would assume this to be the case, but hadn’t really counted on the valkyrie’s presence and greater knowledge of operations.

“Run!” Morrigan yelled suddenly, giving Val an abrupt shove that shot her out from the trees and across the narrow path, her feet skidding out from beneath her. The explosive sound of a pair of wings catching air caused her to spin, stones beneath the snow digging into her knees.

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burning gaze her direction, then seemed to dismiss her as it turned towards the copse of trees behind it.