Hitting the Target

by Evangeline Anderson

  The smell was damp and coppery—the scent of misery and blood. There was a miasma of urine and feces and unwashed bodies too—the odor of people who had been held like animals in a small, cramped space. Normally the smell would have made Mia sick to her stomach but now she barely noticed—it was like her nose was only working on half capacity.

  At last she’d found everyone she could. She led them back to the center of the room where Trey had found a care kit and was working on everyone he could reach. He looked up when Mia came over, his eyes blazing.

  “There are too many of them to treat down here and there are some injuries that need serious medical care.”

  “Do you want…want to bring them all back to your…your Care Center in Bountiful?” she asked uncertainly. She was having some difficulty getting the words out. In addition to her feet, her hands and tongue were beginning to feel numb. She knew it was probably the effects of the poison, but she couldn’t stop now—the healer’s aide in her felt responsible for these people they had rescued.

  Trey frowned. “They won’t all fit in the ship I brought—it’s just a small one. And besides, they need more help than we can give them in the Care Center. They still haven’t integrated all the new tech we’ve given them yet.”

  “Then where…” Mia began, but she suddenly felt dizzy and couldn’t go on.

  “Mia? Are you all right?” Trey demanded. “Did you find your grandmother?”

  “No. No, Neemah’s not…not here.” She forced herself to speak clearly and took a deep breath to ease the dizziness. “Where…where will you take them?” she asked, pointing to the sick and injured prisoners who were sitting and standing and is some cases laying on the floor because they couldn’t move.

  “I have a friend—another Kindred—who I think will be willing to help. But I need to go up to my ship and call him, which means taking a risk.” He fixed Mia with an intense look. “I need you to stay here with these people and watch over them while I go. Can you do that?”

  “I…I guess so.” Mia wasn’t honestly sure if she’d be able to keep standing upright in the next few minutes but what else could she say?

  “Good.” He pressed the deadly silver Kindred weapon into her hand. “Here’s my blaster. Don’t use it unless you have to.”

  “I…I won’t,” Mia promised, making her mouth form the words though her tongue felt stubbornly numb. “But what about you? Without protection…”

  “I don’t need the blaster for protection,” he said grimly. “I have other weapons at my disposal. Just stay here and watch while I call for help. Okay?”

  Mia nodded. She wished she could hug or kiss him goodbye but there seemed to be a wall between them now—one as hard to get over as the Great Barrier had been. So instead she watched him go, swaying dizzily on her feet as she clutched the blaster to her chest.

  “So you have how many patients you need help with?” Sylvan asked, frowning into the viewscreen.

  “At least fifty,” Trey said grimly. “And some of them are in bad shape, Brother. They’ve been beaten…cut…burned.” He shook his head. “Just about everything and anything you can think of, these poor people have been through it.”

  “Tortured.” Sylvan’s mouth went down at the corners as though the word tasted bad.

  “Yes,” Trey said heavily. “Those bastards from The EYE tortured them. We need to get them medical attention soon. And a lot of them will need psychological counseling as well.”

  “Send me your coordinates,” Sylvan said. “I’ll fold space and send several of our large capacity shuttles to bring them all back to the Mother Ship for treatment.”

  “Thank you.” Trey was beyond relieved and grateful. “I don’t like to impose on you but there really are more than we can treat with the limited resources I have here on Ormyu Five—even if I could get them back to my Care Center in time, which I can’t.”

  “Of course, Brother. We’ll be there very shortly. Should we expect any resistance?” Sylvan asked, frowning.

  “None in the building itself,” Trey promised him. “I let my beast out and he took care of almost all of the guards. I shot the rest.” Speaking of his beast, he could feel that his other half was restless and unhappy for some reason, but he didn’t know why. They had rescued Mia—what else did his other half want?

  “We’ll be there soon,” Sylvan promised and then the viewscreen went black and there was nothing to do but send out the coordinates the other Kindred Commander had asked for as quickly as he could.

  “Trey,” his beast said as he finished the operation. “Trey, something is wrong with Mia—I can feel it.”

  “She’s probably just upset by the state of the prisoners we found,” Trey told his other half distractedly. But the beast’s reply was definite and strong.

  “No! No, that’s not it. Remember I told you she smelled wrong? Well the wrong smell was even stronger right before we left her. I’m worried, Trey—we need to go back to her.”

  “All right, we’ll go,” Trey muttered aloud. He still felt like there was a distance between himself and the little female now. He wasn’t sure of her anymore—wasn’t sure of her motives or feelings for him. Was she a cold-hearted spy who had been trained as a secret operative? Or had she been forced into this life by the Commandant? And why had she killed that patient?

  “I’m sure she had a reason,” his beast said. “She just hasn’t had a chance to tell you—she hasn’t had a chance to do anything. And you have things you haven’t told her about us too, you know. You still haven’t told her about me.”

  His other half’s mental voice was both wounded and accusing. Trey sighed. He knew he would have to admit to Mia that he and the massive targen-like creature she had seen ripping out the EYE agent’s throat were one and the same eventually. But he wanted to wait until he understood her own motives and feelings before he revealed himself. He—

  “Treygar, something is really wrong. I can feel it from here!” his beast sent urgently. “We need to go find Mia—now!”

  “All right, I’m going. Do you think another guard popped up and attacked her? Maybe one we missed?” Trey asked, hurrying from the ship to the entrance of the ominous grey building.

  “I don’t think so—it’s something else. I feel it through the quasi-bond,” the beast told him.

  Trey rushed past the carnage his beast had caused when he’d let it out earlier and down the stairs—not wanting to wait for the lift. When he got to the basement, he saw the prisoners still milling around. Mia was in the middle of them, working with the care kit to try and help as many as she could.

  Trey felt a part of himself soften. Whether she was a spy by choice or not, she certainly did have the healing instinct. Just watching her work—

  His thoughts cut off abruptly when he saw Mia’s eyes roll up in her head. She swayed and, before he could catch her, collapsed on the floor.

  “I told you—I told you there was something wrong!” his beast roared. “Go to her, Trey—help her!”

  Trey hurried to push through the prisoners.

  “Help is coming, be calm, help is coming,” he heard himself telling them mechanically as he shoved a path through them to Mia. He scooped her up off the floor and noticed how pale her face was. “Mia?” he called her name softly. “Mia, little one—what’s wrong?”

  “She smells wrong…wrong!” his beast snarled. “What’s wrong with her, Trey?”

  “I don’t know. Be quiet and let me examine her!”

  He looked her over carefully but couldn’t find any sign of a wound or injury. What was wrong with her? Why had she fainted?

  “Mia?” he called again, cradling her in one arm and patting her cheek with his other hand.

  Her eyelids fluttered open, showing just the bottom rims of her pearly blue eyes.

  “S-sorry,” she muttered hoarsely, slurring her words strangely. “T-tried to stay…tried to pro…protect…”

  “Don’t worry about the prisoners,” Trey said urgently. �
��Help is coming for them. Right now I’m concerned about you. What happened? Do you feel sick?”

  “Didn’t…want to…use it on you,” she said thickly. “Couldn’t…do what…Commandant said. But I knew…knew if he didn’t get…get the signal from the micro-transmitters…” She fell silent, her breathing rapid and shallow.

  “What? What are you talking about?” Trey asked, frowning. “The Commandant is dead—gone, Mia. You saw me kill him yourself.”

  Then her words began to sink in. “I didn’t want to use it on you,” she’d said. But use what?

  Trey began to get a bad feeling—a very bad feeling. Suddenly the Commandant’s earlier confusion about the supposedly implanted poison came back to him.

  “But we received the signal! The biometric sensors are never wrong—the poison was implanted,” he had said. And then he had asked Mia…

  He asked who she’d poisoned if it wasn’t me, Trey thought. Oh God, and who had she poisoned?

  It was his beast who answered, his voice a low growl of pain and fear.

  “Herself…Mia poisoned herself to save us!”

  “Gods,” Trey muttered hoarsely. “She tried to tell me in the lift, but I put her off—dismissed her. What an ass I am!”

  His beast was growing more and more upset.

  “We have to help her NOW!” he roared, making Trey wince.

  But they had killed the Commandant and all the guards in the building. There was no one left to tell Trey where the antidote—if there even was any antidote—was stored. And Mia had taken the poison hours before.

  He remembered her sitting on the edge of the bed the night before—her sniffing had woken him up and he’d thought she was crying. But she must have been inhaling the poison—taking the dose that was meant for him.

  She sacrificed herself for me and all this time I’ve been feeling uncertain about her—not sure how she really felt about me. Well, I guess this answers the question.

  He felt sick—paralyzed with fear. What could he do? Where could he go to find help for the female in his arms?

  Just at that moment a hand touched his shoulder and a familiar voice said,

  “Hello Treygar—we came as soon as we could.”

  Turning in relief, he saw Sylvan standing there.

  “Thank the Goddess,” he said hoarsely. “This is the female I was telling you about—the one I was Dream Sharing with.”

  Sylvan’s face was grave as he examined Mia, who was completely out now, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

  “What happened? Was she tortured?”

  “No.” Trey could barely get the words out but somehow he managed. “She was poisoned—for my sake, Sylvan. She took poison for me and now I’m afraid she’s going to die!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Well, we’ve analyzed the poison,” Sylvan said, coming into the treatment room. They were aboard the Mother Ship and Mia was lying cold and unresponsive on the bed. Trey was sitting beside her, holding her hand and peering anxiously into her face while his beast roared miserably inside him, giving voice to the pain and fear they both felt.

  “Yes? And?” he said eagerly, turning toward Sylvan, though he was careful not to drop Mia’s hand. She had stirred only once and tried to talk to him, but her words had been slurred and he couldn’t understand her. Then she had lapsed back into unconsciousness.

  Sylvan sighed. “It’s a new kind of poison—one I’ve never seen before. It appears to attack the nervous system, making the victim lose sensation in their skin and extremities and senses first and then it works its way inward to the vital organs.”

  “Gods.” Trey squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “So? Can you develop an antidote? Or did the warriors searching The EYE building find any notes on it?”

  “Yes, they did find something about it.” Sylvan had a look on his face that Trey knew well—he knew it because he had worn that look before. It was the look a healer got when he had to give a patient’s loved ones bad news.

  “Sylvan…” he said hoarsely. “Brother, please…please don’t say it.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sylvan shook his head. “So damn sorry, Treygar. But the notes they found seem to indicate there is no treatment for this poison.” He put a hand on Trey’s shoulder. “The good thing is, it’s not painful. I can give Mia a stimulant to help her wake up and be with you until the end, but I can’t cure her.”

  “So my only options are watching her slip away or waking her up to say goodbye? That’s the best you can do for her?”

  Trey heard the anger in his voice and knew it wasn’t just—Sylvan was one of his oldest friends and was just trying to help him. But the fact that he was about to lose the woman he loved was more than he could bear. He wanted to shout and rave and weep—wanted to punch the wall. But none of it would help—none of it would bring Mia back to him.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sylvan said again, helplessly. “If you like I can send to the Sacred Grove and ask a priestess to come pray with you, Brother. That’s all I can think to do now.”

  Trey opened his mouth to say no. Why should he call on the Goddess now? How could she do this to him? How could she give him a female to love and then take her away not once but twice? He had lost his first love to the plague that had swept his home planet. And now he was going to lose Mia to the poison that she had taken for his sake. It wasn’t fair—wasn’t right!

  But his beast spoke up from inside.

  “Yes, ask for a priestess to help us reach the Goddess,” he said. “The Goddess loves us and she loves Mia. She will help.”

  Trey remembered that brief shining moment of the Goddess’s voice in his ear and the feeling of her presence filling the cabin of his small ship. He also thought of the image he’d had—of a glowing hand caressing his beast’s shaggy mane. Maybe his other half was right. At any rate, it certainly couldn’t hurt to ask for help, even if he believed that none was forthcoming. At the very least he could tell the Goddess what he thought of her methods.

  “All right,” he muttered. “Send for a priestess.”

  “I will do it at once.” Sylvan bowed his head and left the room rapidly.

  Trey scarcely had time to brood before a woman wearing a priestess’s robes came gliding into the room on bare feet. She was of middle years and had the green-on-green eyes and green streaks in her hair that all priestesses had. There was a look of quiet wisdom on her face that somehow only made Trey angrier.

  “Well, warrior—I understand you wish to speak to the Goddess,” she murmured, coming to stand on the opposite side of Mia’s bed from where he was sitting.

  “You’re damn right, I’d like to speak to her.” His words were a cry of pain and anger from the bottom of his heart. “She sent me this female to love and now she’s taking her away before we can even be bonded!”

  “And have you loved her as you were meant to?” the priestess asked quietly, unperturbed by his angry words. “Have you believed in her, even when another male would have given up?”

  “Of course I loved her!” Trey exclaimed. “And of course I believed in her! I…” His words trailed off abruptly when he thought of what the Commandant had showed him. “Well, I mean, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt,” he said, frowning. “I was going to let her explain herself.”

  “Mia was put into a very difficult position—many of lesser strength would have cracked under the pressure,” the priestess informed him. “She had been Dream Sharing with you for months when the male who dictated her life and decisions ordered her to go and spy on you. Later when he ordered her to kill you, she rebelled and could not. She is paying the price for that now.”

  “Yes, I know,” Trey said impatiently. “Though I don’t know how you know all that—the Goddess told you, I suppose. But it wasn’t the spying that bothered me—not after I realized she hadn’t poisoned me after all. What bothered me was what the Commandant showed me before I killed him!”

  “Ah yes, as a healer, it must have been quite
shocking for you to see her behave in such a fashion.” The priestess nodded serenely—clearly she knew all about it though Trey had not told her. “But the fact is, Mia has been an instrument of the Goddess all along, though she didn’t know it. Though she was used by The EYE to do their will, she was also doing the will of the Mother of All Life.”

  “I don’t understand,” Trey said blankly. “You can’t mean to tell me that the Goddess sent Mia to kill that patient? And that it was her will for Mia to spy on me?”

  “How else would she have been allowed to meet you?” the priestess asked reasonably. “If she had not been chosen as a spy and allowed to pass the Barrier in the first place. You prayed for the Goddess to bring your bride to you and she did.”

  “Yes, and now she’s taking her away!” Trey gestured angrily to Mia’s still form in the vast, Kindred-sized medical bed which was far too large for her small frame. “She’s taking her the way she took the first female I Dream Shared with! I’ve tried to stay strong and keep my faith through everything, but this is too damn much! If she takes Mia from me, I…I don’t know what I’ll do!”

  He felt close to punching something again—anything to stave off the hot, angry tears that were rising in his eyes. He couldn’t lose Mia—he couldn’t. And yet, her death looked inevitable.

  “Warrior…” the priestess said softly but Trey wasn’t finished yet.

  “I should have…should have listened to her earlier,” he said, the words coming out broken and hoarse. “When she tried to tell me about the poison. Maybe I could have done something if we had caught it earlier. If only I had realized that she’d taken it herself in order to spare me! Gods…” He shook his head and felt the tears fall despite his efforts to hold them back. Inside, his beast was roaring miserably.

  Trey felt used…spent. He had no reserves left and he couldn’t be strong anymore. He loved Mia and she was slipping away…slipping away before he’d even gotten to know the real her—the female she was beneath the façade the Commandant had forced her to wear. He was losing her and there was no getting her back…