Challenge Met, page 9
He shrugged. His robes rustled upon his lanky frame with the movement. “It’s all I can offer. I can compel you whether you wish it or not.”
“Not to kill Jack!”
He had a drink in one hand. He raised it now to sip at. “My dear girl,” he said, but his voice took an ugly tone and Amber knew he may have voiced girl, but he thought whore. “You’ll do whatever I trigger you to.”
“Over my dead body.” She threw herself at him, one hand to claw at him and the other grasping at the detonator hidden in the necklace she wore.
He caught her. Glass crashed to the apartment floor and shattered, then ground to deadly shards beneath their shoes as he bent back her aims. He showed his teeth.
Amber brought her knee up. He gasped and let her go, then quickly recaptured her left wrist as she twisted and tried to grasp the pendant again. Breathing quickly, harshly, he said, “What do you have planned, milady, eh?”
He forced her back, tripping over the edge of her dress which gave way with a loud rip. The wall caught her up sharply. Amber flinched as the wiring ground into her skin.
Vandover pressed into her, grinding her into the wall. She felt him quickening into hardness as their bodies clashed. His breath thickened. He pinioned her wrists above her head with one hand. She twisted and strove to free herself, but he was far stronger than she could ever have guessed. He stroked a wing of hair that had fallen loose upon her cheek.
“What trap have you set for me? Will you tell me?”
Despite the hardness that thrust at her, she leaned into him. Let their chests meet severely enough and the blow would set off the detonator.
He drew back a little warily, his face flushed. He caught her under the chin and held her face cupped in his hand, his hand which was as steely strong as the one bruising her wrists.
“Talk to me!”
Her teeth ground together. She parted her lips in contempt. “I will… never… murder for you!”
The heel of his hand stopped her words and she felt blood in her mouth, tasted its sudden leap. He thrust his pelvis into her and her stomach turned at the touch of his manhood, the silken fineness of her dress scant shield against him. The traitorous wall held her pressed to him.
“Remember,” he said harshly. “You came to me.”
Her mind erupted of its own accord, forgetting her suicide, the detonator, the explosives, the fine circuitry she wore like a web of undergarments. He would never have her. Psychic fire lashed out. She struck and struck deep, unheeding that he might yet have time to say the words she feared most. Her thoughts speared him. She poured herself into her attack until her very soul threatened to leave her body.
Lights exploded. Articles began to rise in the air and smash across the room. Pictures toppled from their moorings. Furniture danced in its place, stampeding upon the floor. Books took wing from the massive bookcases. The air filled with sound and fury and then the flying objects began to spiral inward until an immense maelstrom of destruction filled the center of the chamber.
When she realized what she had done, she held her breath, waiting.
Vandover staggered back a half step. The lust burning in his eyes went blank. His cruel mouth slackened. Their pelvises separated. His iron bar of a leg kept her own pinned or she would have kicked free.
Amber inhaled with a quavering sound. His hand should weaken on her wrists. She twisted, expecting the convulsion of death to break her free altogether.
His mouth fell open. He gasped for air. Then light flickered back into Vandover’s eyes. The eddy whirling overhead began to settle, drifting gently to earth, tamed. The din quieted until all that could be heard was the sound of the books fluttering and then slapping to the ground.
He rocked back on his heels and roared with laughter. When he had done, he jerked her into his rough embrace. “Like fire you are,” he told her. “But I am water. Deep and still. Muddied and polluted, perhaps. My power has always been feeble, but it feeds on yours. Feed me, Amber. Feel me grow stronger.”
Fear lanced through her. Her breasts crushed against his chest. “Let me go!” Amber spat. She jerked and kicked, desperate to reach the pendant that would destroy him and set her free.
Their struggle rent open the neckline of her gown. His callused fingers grabbed for her breast and pinched her nipple. It tightened under his touch. Amber snapped at his face, but even as Vandover flinched away, he saw the spidery network of wires her gown had been concealing.
He tore the necklace from her throat. It took flesh with it. She let out a sound of pain as he threw her back against the wall and pinned her there, one massive hand clawlike upon her throat, so tight she could scarcely breathe. Black spots swam before her eyes.
Amber caught the sob before it could sound.
The pendant cupped in the palm of his hand, he clawed at her dress and ripped it away savagely, shred by shred. Ruby threads and patches drifted to the floor like pieces of flesh. Her skin grew cold and her pulse roared in her ears. Choked into submission, she leaned against the wall, helpless as he bared her body. His fingers probed and pinched at her until her nipples stood out in purple anger and her body throbbed in violation.
He tore the last fragment of her silkspun panties from her. With it, the last adhesive patch of explosive from her skin. He tossed it and the necklace pendant aside. He let her drop to her knees.
He knelt beside her on one knee. His left hand squeezed her throat tighter yet, and he stroked the inside of her thighs with the back of his right hand. “You would have killed us both,” he said. His voice thickened. Amber thrashed feebly, her vision blinded, her limbs grown weak. “You won’t defy me again.”
He let go of her and she sagged into his arms. With a low, guttural sound, he let her drop to the floor. As she cried for breath, he stripped himself. She felt the heat from him scald her own chilled body. Then the power of his mind took her up and bound her as tightly as if he had used chains. Every attack she sent against him, he absorbed and turned back against her until she could do nothing but lie helplessly still, a prisoner of her own mind.
He raped her then. But not quickly, so that it might be over and done. He lingered over her, using and knowing every part of her, so that nothing of her might be untouched by him. So that nothing of herself might remain hers. So that nothing that might ever be touched by anyone else would ever forget the memory of his touch, his pain, his faint pleasure.
So that she might hate herself forever.
His kisses branded her. He whispered dull obscenities as he worked on her. He brought her flesh to life so that she moaned in spite of herself, knowing the edge of desire which he turned to pain, and then he started over again. He licked the salt sweat and sweet blood from her skin as if it was honey. When he was done with her mouth, her lips were swollen and throbbing, but she could not force a cry from them.
And when finally he was sated, he lay beside her and took her in his arms and felt her body shudder uncontrollably in shock and then he put his moist lips to her ear and whispered the name of the first person she must murder. Then he loosened his bondage so that she might cry and struggle weakly against him.
When she had done with sobbing, he took her again. Then he told her that she would do whatever he wanted willingly, or the next name he spoke would be Jack’s.
Chapter 16
Nightime. Sensors adjusted to delicate shadows could not find the silent figure moving with a strange, broken grace just outside their range. Alarms that were keyed to weaponry passed over the figure without sounding any warning. With caution, the stalker ranged throughout the complex, lighted and dark, until it found its destination and paused, to watch unseen.
A woman sat and eyed her face in her mirror. It was an elegant, well-chiseled face showing little ravages of the passage of time and history with the exception of a singular frown line cutting deeply between her brows. It was an imperious mark. It reminded her that she wanted things and she was used to getting what she wanted. It did not tell her that she was one of a ruling triumvirate, a person whose will and orders affected whole planets.
With a sigh, the woman broke off her self-examination and quickly began to apply makeup. With fast strokes that betrayed how many times she had done this same routine without change, she finished her cosmetics. A few more strokes and pinnings and her dark, luxurious hair was upswept and captured. She pouted her lips and made a last, desultory examination before turning off the mirror lights and standing. She ran her hands down her flanks, settling her dress into position.
She was as ready to start a revolution as she would ever be.
“You’re canny, Pepys,” she said to the darkened mirror. “But you’ve made your moves too late. You should have unleashed Storm sooner.”
The stalker in the hallway had been coming to its feet in a fluid move. It stuttered to a halt at the dialogue, then regathered itself and launched.
The in-house cameras recorded only a blur of light, energy too potent for the film to capture well, a levin-bolt of death. When the assassin finished, the body of the woman known familiarly as the Countess collapsed in a heap without ever having been touched. Blood ran from her delicate nostrils and diamond adorned ears and even in death, the imperious frown mark did not relax.
Vandover slid into the privacy booth, well aware of the unhappiness and hostility in the expression of the man waiting for him. He’d left his robes of office at the palace but still wore black as was his habit. The other shifted his bulky weight as Baadluster did so, as if to keep the table squarely between them. Vandover smiled to himself as he noted the unconscious movement.
The other was just past his prime, his black hair amply flecked with yellowish gray, his haircut out of style and becoming unruly. He looked altogether nondescript and Vandover knew the man’s look was as affected as his own. “Naylor,” he greeted.
Naylor gave a half-grunt in reply and ignored Baadluster’s hand. He examined his own pinkish palm, which contrasted with the richness of his skin, instead. “You heard fast,” he finally said, and there was a tone of defeat in his voice.
Baadluster spread his hands. “What point is there in having the WP and the sweepers, if not to know these things quickly? Still, the house had already been cleaned. Security tapes gone. Recordings gone.”
“And you want to know what killed her?” Naylor met his glance with a hard, brown one of his own. “We don’t know.”
But Vandover was already shaking his head. “That’s immaterial at this point. The Countess is gone. Without her, you’re adrift.”
“I came to meet you because you said you had something interesting to say. I won’t sit and listen to you gloat.”
“I’m not gloating, my friend. I am commiserating with you. Much good work has been done, but there’s a great deal more to do.”
Suddenly Vandover had Naylor’s full attention. “What do you want with me?” the dusky man asked.
The Minister of War said nothing, but his long tapered fingers etched out the secret greeting of the Green Shirts on the tabletop.
Naylor sat very still on his side of the table, long after Baadluster’s hand had ceased to move. Then he nervously wet his lips. “How can I trust you?”
“You can’t know. Nor do I know if I can trust you. But I would think, in my position, that I have far more to lose, revealing myself to you.” Vandover sat back in the booth. Crystal lights from the shabby bar played over them and the booth’s noise curtain muffled what passed for music in the background. He watched and waited as the other came to a decision.
Finally, reluctantly, “What do you want from me?”
“What killed her?”
Naylor shrugged. “We think it was sonics, but we’re not sure. The tapes don’t reveal anything except some sort of energy surge across the film. It’s not a beam of any type we’re familiar with. Official cause of death is massive brain hemorrhaging. It could even be natural.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“Not as far as we’re concerned.”
“How will you carry on without her?”
Naylor hesitated again. He took a drink, saying nothing.
Vandover leaned across the table. “What if I were to offer you cohesion instead of chaos?”
Queen Tricatada rattled her chitin with pleasure as General Guthul approached and did obeisance to her. Opening her back casings, she displayed her wings as only a queen might, their luminescent blue splendor casting a glamour over the Thraks bowed before her. Her body thrummed with the need to be mated, and she favored this warrior Thraks above any who might approach her, but this was not the time or place. She folded her ornamental wings back under her carapaces and settled, signaling Guthul that he might rise. She admired his mask as he levered himself upward.
In the clacks, hums, and trills of their voices, she said to him, “It is good to have you back under my wing, Guthul. Neither the leavings nor the matings have been so sweet.”
He inclined his head. “Only duty could drive me from your side.”
“How goes our interweaving?”
“The ancient enemy is strong and is as unreadable as ever.” The warrior Thraks, in spite of his audience with his queen, could not hold his pose. He began to pace from side to side. “Only your vast superiority in egg-laying keeps them at bay.”
The queen projected pride and sorrow in her mask, an artistic rendering of two opposite emotions done with such skill that Guthul stopped in his tracks to admire it. The queen’s eyes shone. She had not missed that involuntary adulation. She lowered herself to all fours. “My time is short,” she said.
As well the warrior Thraks knew. The burden of laying enough eggs to replenish their society was one no female could bear for long—and yet, the shame of their race was that no other fertile female had yet been hatched. When the queen could no longer bear, their race was doomed. And yet their hope lay in the knowledge that surely the more eggs she bore, the greater the chance of finding another fertile layer must be. Thus her sorrow… for the more she bore, the shorter her span as her body slowly, inexorably, gave out. Guthul knew that in his lifetime the ancient battle might well be lost, and his race gone.
Tricatada looked up. “How skillfully have you woven our plans?”
“So skillfully that, I believe, our past foe and current ally has no inkling of our true intent. We are a true mating, you and I,” Guthul told her.
“The humans believe our forces intertwined, and yet we dominate with less than a third of our corps engaged.”
“Only a third?”
Guthul thrilled to hear his queen suck her breath in with pleasure. It stirred him, made him think of things other than war to quicken his pulse. “As you ordered, it has been done.”
“And the council backs me in full agreement.” Tricatada rattled her carapaces. “They dare not cross me otherwise. I am the only hope.”
Unspoken was the threat that she might withhold laying if the council crossed her. It was a ploy she had told Guthul she might use. The Thrakian League was united behind her because it had no choice. No other faction had a fertile queen it might bring forth to unseat her, and it would take nothing less to break her rule now.
The queen stood up again and looked down on him. “But you have not been entirely successful, General.”
He brought his mask into humble statement. “No, my queen, I have not. The commander called Storm survived our clumsy attack. But I do not think it likely that he alone can sway the Triad Throne or the Dominion even if he should guess the truth. They are not like us. No one being can encompass the power and authority we do.”
Tricatada paused in the process of stroking her flank. “Think you not? I think, my warrior, you had best turn your talents to finding that one known as Colin of the Blue Wheel. Our sources tell us that Pepys is mounting a search and rescue for that one. It will involve Storm. I do not like the implications. The Walkers have impeded our norcite mining long enough. He is bound to, if he has not already, discover that which we do not want known. If Colin is to be found, I want it to be by us.”
Guthul bowed. “Yes, my queen.” He knew an order when he heard one. Whatever misgivings he had about the assignment, he put them aside.
Tricatada paused. “Try to put K’rok into the detail. The Milot is a capable being and we have found him useful in the past.”
“As you command.” Guthul stopped. Without seeming to, he changed the projection of his mask slightly, dominating and courageous. He could no longer ignore the scent she had begun to secrete. He had been taken from her side for too long and though no Thraks claimed monogamy, he was her prime mate and thought to remind her of it. “The defense lines have been drawn, my queen. When the Ash-Farel fall upon us this time, it will be the foreign bodies who protect us. The human realm from the Outward Bounds to the Dominion to the Triad Throne itself will be sacrificed to ensure your survival. And while they fight and die, the swarm will carry us far beyond their reach. I, Guthul, pledge this to you. We shall triumph.”
Tricatada’s throaty reply was nearly inaudible, sensually drowned by her call to mating. With a cry of his own, Guthul mounted her, and she spread her wings over the two of them as they answered a more primitive call to the survival of the species.
When Guthul left her, she lay upon her nesting, deep in sleep, exhausted, the musky scent of their mating pervading her chambers. She did not rouse when the chamberlain slipped in to leave the evening meal. It would not have mattered to her even had she been aware, for the chamberlain was a male drone, and drones by their very nature were inferior and inconsequential. The drone did his duties quietly, so as not to awaken the queen. As Thraks go, he was far more graceful than the warriors, unhampered by the almost metallic shielding of their carapaces and chiton.
When he should have left, he paused by the nest of the queen. Her mating scent thrilled him as well. He was insignificant, a nothing, his matings confined to the inconsequential drones of his caste, but he found himself irrevocably aroused by his queen. In an act which would mean nothing less than the annihilation of his familial nest if it were ever discovered, the drone mounted the queen and sated himself on her unconscious body. Tricatada moaned and thrashed in dreamy awareness, for the drone’s member was also unhampered by the body armor of a warrior Thraks and pierced her with far more strength. As she responded to his mating, the drone spent himself hastily and withdrew, knowing that he had committed the most heinous sin one of his caste could. In haste he fled the chambers, his mask concealing his shame.
