“Great,” Trista muttered as soon as they were gone. “There must be a Cygnian cruiser re-fueling here. Stay close,” she said, and glanced down at Buddy. But he was gone. “Buddy?”
A heavy weight landed on her shoulder, and she winced as sharp claws bit through her jumpsuit.
“Right here, Captain,” Buddy whispered.
Under other circumstances Trista would have complained about carrying a twenty-pound ball of fat on her back, but it would be safer for both of them this way.
She joined the corridor, still following signs to the food court, but making sure to keep a good distance from the Ghouls up ahead. A large communal dining area opened up to their right, and the Ghouls peeled out of the corridor, heading for a restaurant with whole animal carcasses dangling above the counter. Trista scowled. Just her luck. The Cygnians were hungry, too. She picked the restaurant farthest from them, a burger place that looked like it would be fast and cheap.
Buddy groaned as she walked up to the counter. “If you’re not going to get me fish, you could at least get something that doesn’t taste like it was kakked out of a Slog.”
The proprietor of the burger place, a Slog himself, overheard that comment and chased them off, shaking his fist and cursing.
“Nice work,” Trista said. “Keep it up, and I’ll ask those Cygnians if they wouldn’t prefer fresh meat.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Buddy said.
“Try me.”
Trista went to another restaurant and ordered a pizza for them to share. She asked for anchovies on Buddy’s half to make him happy. It turned out to be a bad idea. He went from a sulking ingrate to a bubbly maniac. By the time he reached his third slice, he was standing on the table and singing an ode to the pizza.
“Shut up and sit down,” Trista snapped, noticing looks they were drawing from people dining at adjacent tables. Fortunately the Ghouls didn’t seem to care. They were hunched over a table in the far corner of the dining hall, tearing bloody chunks off an entire ciervak carcass.
Trista looked on in disgust. As she watched, she spotted a flicker of movement in the shadows behind their table. The Ghouls were too focused on their meal to notice.
It was a human woman, sneaking up behind them with what looked like a pair of butcher’s knives. Trista’s whole body tensed in anticipation. She’s going to attack them. Her mind raced, wondering how to save the woman from herself, but there was no time and she was too far away.
The woman lunged out of the shadows and stuck both knives deep into the neck of the nearest Ghoul. She yanked them out, screaming and stabbed again. Black blood spurted in her face. The Ghoul rounded on her with an outraged roar. He caught her next attack on two of his four arms, while his other two swiped at her head with razor-sharp claws. Her throat and face disappeared in a crimson tide, and she slumped to the deck.
The wounded Ghoul tore the knives out of his arms, threw back his head, and let out a deafening roar; then all three of them fell upon the dead woman, claws and teeth flashing.
Trista looked away with a sickened grimace. She caught a glimpse of the red sauce on her pizza, and nearly retched the contents of her stomach all over Buddy.
He was still standing on the table, his jaw slack and brown eyes huge as he watched the Ghouls feed. “Why would she do that?” he asked. “She didn’t even kill him.”
“There’s no shortage of reasons to hate the Cygnians,” Trista whispered, and glanced back at the scene. There was a man wearing a bloody butcher’s apron standing off to one side, looking on in horror. He took a step toward the Ghouls, and then another, as if unable to help himself.
“Kak,” Trista muttered. “That goff is going to get himself killed! Stay here.” She jumped to her feet and ran.
“What are you doing?” Buddy shrilled.
Trista reached the butcher just as he called for the Ghouls’ attention. “Get away from her, you vagons!” he yelled in a cracking voice.
All three of the aliens looked up, their faces and jagged gray teeth smeared with blood. One of them rose to his full height and turned, his armored tail skittering as it swished across the deck. “Is that a challenge?” The Ghoul growled in Cygnian.
Trista flashed an apologetic smile and tried to pull the butcher back, but he resisted. “Are you crazy?” she hissed in his ear.
He turned to her with tears in his eyes. “That was my wife.”
“She was your mate?” the Ghoul thundered, all four of his black eyes pinching with sudden interest.
“No,” Trista said and bowed her head in a gesture of submission. “He said that was a waste of a life.” She pulled the man back a few more steps, and this time she managed to turn him away and point him in the direction of his restaurant.
The Ghoul snarled and went back to feeding.
“Don’t look,” Trista whispered as she led the butcher behind his counter and from there through a metal door into one of the back rooms. It turned out to be a freezer with more carcasses hanging inside. She shut the door behind them, and the man sank to the floor, sobbing. Trista looked on with a frown, wondering if she should stay or leave.
The butcher’s sobs grew quiet, leaving him spent and staring at the wall in a catatonic daze.
“Why did your wife do that?” Trista asked.
“Now I have no one,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard the question.
“Well, at least you’re alive. You won’t be if you go and do something stupid like she did.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “They took her from us.”
“Took who?” Trista shivered and rubbed her arms. The cold air in the freezer was starting to get to her.
“Our daughter, Cora. She came back from the Crucible with the seal of death. We didn’t even get to say goodbye before they shipped her off to Deggros as designated prey.”
“Fek. I’m sorry,” Trista said. She felt a flash of hatred for the Cygnians and their arbitrary system of choosing prey, but she clamped down on the feeling with a scowl. She wasn’t going to change anything by raging against the system.
It’s their own grakking fault, she thought. They knew the score and they decided to have a kid anyway. Maybe they thought they’d be the lucky ones, or maybe that was why they’d only had one. This was why Trista had never settled down.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked, shivering and rubbing her hands together to stay warm.
The butcher gave no reply. He had to be just as cold as she was, but his grief took precedence over mundane physical concerns.
“Take care of yourself, okay? And don’t do anything stupid.” Trista left the freezer at a brisk pace and rounded the counter, doing her best not to look at the Ghouls. They were still gorging themselves on the butcher’s wife.
When Trista reached her table, she found Buddy lying on an empty pizza pan with his belly in the air and a few crumbs scattered around him.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Buddy glanced at her with half-lidded eyes. “You’ll have to carry me.”
Trista glared back. “Did you even wait to see if I was okay before you ate my half?”
“That sounds like a trick question.”
Trista snorted and shook her head. “I should leave you here.” But even as she said it, she picked him up and carried him off, cradling him in her arms like a baby.
“You’d miss me too much,” he said, gazing up at her with big brown eyes and a faint smile.
Chapter 17
Darius sat on a twenty-year-old mattress in his and Cassandra’s assigned quarters, watching through the jagged remains of a broken window as the sinking sun splashed fire on the clouds. Cassandra and Dyara sat beside him, eating a few of their rations.
“I wonder why all of the windows are broken?” Cassandra asked.
Darius shrugged. “Storms?”
“Or birds pecking at them, trying to get in for shelter,” Dyara suggested.
“Seekers?” Cassandra asked.
They sat in silence, watching the night fall. The room turned hazy with darkness, and the air grew cold. Darius shivered.
“How much longer do we need to wait?” Cassandra whispered.
“A while yet,” Darius said, shaking his head. In theory everyone had already gone to bed, but he doubted that included Tanik or Samara, and especially not the Marines who were probably still boarding up entrances and stringing lights through the common areas.
Cassandra covered a yawn and shook her head.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” he suggested, and nodded to the dusty mattress. An ancient-looking brown blanket and a pillow sat on the foot of the bed. He passed the pillow to Cassandra and waited for her to lie down before spreading the blanket over her. She rolled over to face the wall, and he looked on with a smile. “Good night, sweetheart. I love you.”
“Night, Dad. Love you, too.”
He glanced at the door; it was barred and locked. The castle had plenty of rooms with missing or broken doors, but there were enough that still had them for the Acolytes to have a measure of privacy and security. Dyara’s room was across the hall from Darius and Cassandra’s, but since they were planning to go sneaking around the castle together it didn’t make sense for her to wait there by herself. That, and she didn’t want to be alone.
Darius sat in silence with Dyara. Stars came out, winking at them—the cold eyes of the night.
“What’s it like?” Dyara whispered.
Darius arched an eyebrow at her. “What’s what like?”
She jerked her chin to Cassandra. “Having kids.”
“Oh, it’s amazing. And terrifying. And exhausting. Frustrating...”
“All that?”
“I could go on,” Darius said. “It’s a bit of everything, but mostly it’s great. I would have had more kids if I’d found the right person, and if it hadn’t been for Cassandra’s cancer.”
Dyara nodded slowly. “I wish I could have kids.”
“You can’t?” he asked.
“No, I can. I just don’t want to.”
“But you said...”
“I wish there were some way to have them and keep them safe. My parents sacrificed everything to get me this.” She turned over her wrist, revealing the seal of life, a glowing triangle with an eye inside of it. “They sold their home, cashed in their savings, and moved to a remote planet, all so they could get me this forgery and keep me from going to the Crucible.” She shook her head. “And look at where it got me. I ended up getting sent to a designated hunting ground with Tanik. Then I went to the Crucible anyway, and now I’m training to become a Revenant, the same as my brother and sister did. My parents did everything to keep me safe and it still wasn’t enough.... I wonder if they’re even still alive.”
“Your parents?”
“No, my brother and sister.”
“Maybe. How long ago did they go to the Crucible?”
“I was ten when Jade left. Jace left the following year. I’m twenty-nine now.”
“So they left... nineteen and eighteen years ago,” Darius said. “Have you ever asked Tanik about them? He said he fought the Keth for thirty years before he made his escape.”
Dyara nodded. “And after he escaped he led the Coalition fleet for twelve years, and he spent the last eight on Hades with me and the other exiles. If you do the math, that means he just missed them.”
Darius frowned. “Well, there must be some other way to find them. Maybe when we go hunting for the Augur we’ll have a chance to look for them.”
“I’m not sure there’s going to be a we. Tanik seems to think you’re the only one who can defeat the Augur.”
Darius snorted. “Yeah, and after two years of training, I’m supposed to go up against a Revenant who’s so old that he was actually born before me. Except he didn’t spend all that time in cryo like I did. What do you suppose two years of training will do against more than a thousand years of practice and experience?”
“I’m sure Tanik has a plan. Maybe there will be some way that we can help you.”
“Maybe.” Darius covered a yawn and nodded to the empty bed on the other side of the room. “You can get some sleep if you like. I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”
Dyara grabbed his hand, and Darius felt a thrill go through him as her cold fingers laced through his. “You should sleep, too. We can set an alarm with our ESCs.”
“Right,” Darius replied. “I forgot about that. But there’s only one bed.”
“We can share,” Dyara said. She stood up and pulled him over to the other bed, not giving him a chance to object. Darius looked on with a frown as she laid out the blanket and fluffed the pillow. She climbed in with her mag boots and flight suit still on and then held the blanket open for him to climb in beside her. Darius thought about removing his boots, but decided against it. They needed to be ready to run or fight at a moment’s notice. With the thought that Samara could be a Revenant impostor stuck in his head, Ouroboros didn’t feel safe anymore—not that it ever had to begin with.
He glanced at the weapons rack at the foot of the bed, making sure he knew where to find his sword and pistol if he needed them.
“Well?” Dyara prompted.
Darius climbed into bed beside her. She curled up against him and laid her head on his chest. He supposed that meant she’d forgiven him for siding with Tanik during their brief coup on the Deliverance, but still, an apology probably wouldn’t hurt.
“Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry for what happened. I should have found some way to make Tanik release you, or at least visited you while you were in the brig. And I’m sorry for siding with him. He made me a deal I couldn’t refuse.”
“It’s okay. I get it. Tanik promised to save your daughter, and he did, so...” she shrugged. “I get it.”
“Thanks.” Darius wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Somehow it didn’t feel like she was a stranger, even though he’d barely known her a week. She’d made her intentions known early on, and he’d made it clear that he just wanted to be friends, but now, lying beside her with the smell of her hair and the feel of her body tucked against his, it was hard to remember why he hadn’t reciprocated her interest.
Whatever the case, now definitely wasn’t a good time to start anything, and taking it slow seemed like the only way forward when he had an adolescent daughter to think about. But, if nothing else, he had to admit it was nice not sleeping alone for a change.
“What time should we set our alarms for?” Darius asked as he mentally checked the time via his extra-sensory chip. It was only 1823, but his ESC was still set to interstellar standard time. He suspected it was quite a lot later in the local time zone.
“How about twenty-one hundred hours IST?” Dyara suggested. “By then only the night watch should still be awake.”
“Hopefully,” Darius replied. He set his alarm for 2100 and checked the door one last time, making sure that it was locked and barred. It was, but that would likely do nothing to keep a Revenant out. He frowned, wondering what he could do about that. An idea occurred to him and he got out of bed.
“What’s wrong?” Dyara asked.
He removed his sword from its rack and sheath and walked over to lean the blade against the door handle. Satisfied, Darius went back to bed.
“What’s that for?” Dyara inquired.
“If someone manages to open the door while we’re asleep, we’ll hear my sword fall on the floor.”
“Smart,” Dyara said as she snuggled against him once more.
Darius let out his anxiety with a sigh and allowed his eyes to drift shut. It wasn’t long before exhaustion overcame him and he fell asleep.
In the next instant he was standing next to Tanik on the bank of the river running through camp, and gazing into Cassandra’s casket. Her expression was serene, with no sign of whatever had killed her. Dar
ius felt cold all over.
“They killed her. She tried to negotiate with them, and they killed her,” Tanik said.
No, Darius shook his head. This is a dream. He knew it was a dream, but somehow that didn’t make it any less real.
Cassandra’s eyes sprang open and she smiled. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’m just sleeping.”
“Cass?” he asked, his voice echoing strangely in his head. He tried reaching for her, but just as he did so, her smile vanished and her eyes slammed shut. “Cass!”
He awoke with a shout.
Dyara flinched and sat up quickly. Her eyes were wide and blinking as they searched the room. But there was nothing in the room with them. She turned to him with a puzzled frown. “What’s wrong?”
“I had a nightmare,” he whispered. “Sorry I woke you. You can go back to sleep.”
“Another vision?” Dyara asked.
Darius glanced at Cassandra. She was too still. His heart pounding, he left the warmth of the covers to stumble over to her bed. He placed a hand on her back and waited to feel the subtle rise and fall of her breathing.
Once she did, Darius let out a shaky sigh. It was an old routine. Having fought cancer with Cassandra for so many years, he was no stranger to nightmares of her dying that chased him into the waking world. Maybe these weren’t visions, after all. Maybe these were just fears messing with his head.
But he knew better than to believe that. He couldn’t have known there was a river like the one in his dream on Ouroboros before they’d landed there.
Darius shook his head, confused. He’d already warned Cassandra about his vision. Why would she try to negotiate with the Cygnians if she knew that it could lead to her death?
Darius caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye and felt a warm hand slide into his. He turned to see Dyara standing beside him.
“It was about Cassandra again?”
Darius nodded. “The same vision as last time. I have to get her out of here, Dya. It’s the only way to keep her safe.”
“Depending what we find in that well, we all might have to leave. We should wake her. It’s time to go.”
Broken Worlds- The Complete Series Page 45