by Elsa Jade
She dropped to her knees beside the gap in the doorway. Wedging the deflated mattress into the narrow opening, she triggered the device.
The mattress squealed as it jammed up against the stuck door and almost popped out of the opening. Gritting her teeth, she shoved herself against the inflating pad and the doorway, holding it in place and pushing so hard something crackled warningly in her shoulders. Whatever. She ignored the pain, groaning with effort. But her inadvertent noises were lost in a louder clang from the great hall.
Oh God, was she too late? Were the mercenaries breaking through? Was Tynan facing them alone?
Was she brazening her way out of here only to be caught for no reason?
A part of her—a big part, she was humiliated to discover—wanted to stop struggling, just pull that limp mattress over her head and stay hidden, as he’d commanded her. After all, hiding had kept her from being thrown into a black hole. But…
Fuuuuck that. She wasn’t going to hide again, and she didn’t even care if love didn’t always win the day. It mattered that she believed, just like all the anonymous yearning souls who had brought their offerings to the throne of a long-gone god.
More than believe, she’d fight for it.
This time, she threw everything she had at the stubborn barricade.
With the extra oomph of the rapidly expanding cushion, she shoved the door wider, not quite all the way, but enough to slither through.
The throne room was just beyond the wall, with Tynan and the invading mercenaries.
Terror sleeted through her, and for a moment, she sagged against the portal she’d just forced open. Was she really going to do this? What made her think she would be even as useful to Tynan as an inflatable mattress?
She turned and ran back into the room.
She grabbed the open bottle of ghost-mead and the closed one that weighed heavily in her hand. Maybe a quick nip off the open bottle…?
Whirling, she sprinted out the door as if it might slam shut. And she still wasn’t sure which side she should be on.
Except she knew, she had to be at Tynan’s side.
The thudding she’d heard was louder, and as she skidded into the great hall, she sneezed at the hail of debris falling from the ceiling. Apparently one hole in the roof wasn’t enough for the invaders—or maybe they suspected Tynan was gunning for them—and they were going to bash in the whole thing.
And the front doors too, for good measure. The huge double panels vibrated with blows from outside, the heavy geared bar bowing from the pressure.
When she appeared with her sneezy self, Tynan whirled, the blaster raised.
She held out her hands. “Don’t shoot me!” The booze bottles felt ridiculously heavy.
He scowled fiercely. “I knew I should’ve stunned you.”
She glowered back. “You better not.”
“Lishelle, you have to go.” Despair sharpened his tone. “There’s at least a dozen mercs from what I can guess, and they’ll hurt you to hurt me since I can’t pay them off with love baubles.”
“We’re getting out of here together,” she said. “This castle is huge. You must have a secret tunnel to escape or something.” When he hesitated, the blaster wavering, she hurried to his side. “We’re not going to make our last stand until it’s really the last. We fight to the end.”
For a seemingly timeless instance, he stared down into her eyes.
Then he grabbed her wrist and started running.
The abrupt reversal rocked her head back on her shoulders and left her stumbling, but she kept ahold of her bottles as she righted herself and kept pace.
“Where are we going?”
“The escape tunnel.”
She couldn’t hold back a choked laugh. “You actually have one?”
“Doesn’t every castle?” He led them past the dais and deeper into the hall where the passageway shrank to less imposing measurements. The pounding behind them dimmed.
Her brief amusement faded even quicker. He’d taken that suicidal stance when there was an escape? “If there’s a tunnel, why didn’t we—?”
“What you said,” he interrupted, “about deserving happiness.” He yanked her around a corner where a steep ramp angled sharply upward against the inner wall of an open courtyard. “If you think being afraid of a black hole means you weren’t deserving, then me sacrificing all those girls means I should be shot.”
“That wasn’t you,” she protested. “That was Blackworm.”
“I mean the maidens who offered me their love in these very ruins.” His breath caught, and she didn’t think it was because of the hard climb that was taking them higher through the castle. “The goddesses judged me and found me wanting. They left me wanting, forever.”
Behind them, a massive crash echoed through the castle corridors. Lishelle gasped—was that the taste of plasma-scorched stone on the back of her tongue? They came to a split in the ramp, each arm going higher yet, and Tynan paused.
He pulled her into his arms.
“Uh, is this the time?” Despite her waspish tone, she snuggled into him.
“I’m waiting for the mercs to catch up.” He gave a quick glance toward the courtyard below.
“Then why—?”
He laid one fingertip over her lips. “Lishelle,” he murmured. “The goddesses cursed me to bless the love of others and never feel its joys myself. But they never expected a beautiful alien to save me.”
She gazed up at him, forgetting the mercenaries probably swarming the great hall right this second. “An alien?”
“You,” he clarified.
“Me?”
His smile was radiant. “Brash, mouthy, delightful as any sin that would tempt a god to fall. I don’t deserve you, Lady Lishelle, but I want you anyway.”
He bent her back over his arm. Even with doom so close on their heels, his kiss became everything to her: hot and needy and sweetly chaste all at once. She caught her breath, not quite a sob, and tried to hold him, though her hands were full of ghost-mead. She’d always had trouble holding on because of old ghosts, but she was done with that now, she swore to herself.
When he finally lifted his head, he took one of the bottles from her and tossed it over the side of the ramp to the landing below. They were high enough that the chiming crash took a moment.
He aimed the blaster downward and with a single shot ignited the puddle.
She flinched. “They’re going to see that.”
“That’s the idea.”
“We have an idea?”
“It’s not a great one, but yes.”
Shouts echoed from the corridor they’d recently exited.
Tynan glanced back at her. “There are too many of them for me, warlord or no, to shoot down. But we can’t expect to just outrun them either. They’ll be able to track us from their cruiser, and we have no way off-planet with our shuttle destroyed.”
She swallowed hard, his detached assessment so at odds with his impassioned kiss. “We can’t give up.” That much she knew.
“Not this time,” he agreed. “But we need to scatter them, distract them, give the ones left on the cruiser something to do besides hunt us.”
She grimaced. “Seems a shame to set fire to that much ghost-mead on their ship.”
He cupped her cheek. “I like the way you think. But instead of fire, we’ll use what the storm last night gave us: water.”
Glancing nervously down at the courtyard where the alcohol-fueled flames were already dying out—why did she keep thinking about dying?—she fisted her hand in the front of his tunic. “You want to pray for rain?”
“It rained already. All that water is stored in the cisterns on the peak above us. I’m going to lure them into the ducts and you are going to flush.”
She blinked. “That is a shitty idea.”
He snickered, then sobered when he noticed she wasn’t laughing too. “What it lacks in elegance, it more than compensates for in irony, don’t you think?”
&nb
sp; “I think you’re crazy!” She didn’t bother not shouting since his whole stupid idea was the bad guys chasing him.
“You’re the one who believes I’m the God of Beloveds,” he reminded her. “What does that make you?”
While she was grinding her teeth, she almost took a stunner blast to the back.
“Blackworm!” The scream of fury from below was more personal than any unpaid mercenary.
“It’s Radek,” she gasped as the rest of the mercenaries boiled out of the corridor into the courtyard.
“Larf it,” Tynan snarled. “He’s not going to be bought off with trinkets or anything else that doesn’t include Blackworm’s head.”
He grabbed the second bottle of liquor from her and tossed it out over the courtyard. One shot from his blaster nailed it in mid-air, raining fire down on the mercenaries who ducked and scattered. Her universal translator struggled to decipher the dozen profanities aimed up at them.
Not to mention the barrage of yellow stun-setting energy also aimed up at them, brighter than suns. They raced onward, taking the left-hand ramp, dodging the plasma until Tynan yanked her through a narrow doorway in the wall, out of range.
For the moment.
The doorway took them to an outer ledge along the castle wall. She gasped and shrank back at the breath-stealing sight of the sheer, seemingly bottomless dive off the side of the cliff.
He’d called the castle his mountain stronghold, but having only seen the sheltering jungle arms at the front, she hadn’t realized the ruins were set right up against the edge of a gorge. Too steep to support any plantings except the most tenacious of vines, the chasm plunged into deep shadow. From somewhere far below, a low roar drifted up along with a cool breath of air. A river, she guessed, swollen from the storm.
They were standing in the archway of something like the ancient aqueducts on Earth. Though only a section was visible from where they stood, she could imagine smaller pipes feeding the castle proper. But the main duct was large enough to stand upright. She clutched at his arm. “This is too dangerous.”
His dark eyes bored into her. “You said you believed in me.”
“I do.” She couldn’t keep the despairing truth from her voice.
And they couldn’t go back. The rumble of booted feet slamming up the ramp was louder than her frantic heartbeat.
She kissed him, hard and fast. “Show me how to flush the bastards.”
He pointed. “The control center is that way, through that third arch. You’ll see the diagram that shows where you open and close the sluices to direct the flow. Send everything from the cistern through the main channel. That’s where I’ll be leading them.”
“I do think tanks, not septic tanks!”
His lips twitched. “You’ll do whatever you must. That’s one of the things I love about you.”
“How will you get out?” The sound of boots, of the water, of her pulse slushing in her ears made her quaver.
“This was my home, and I know the tunnels. I’ll let myself out through one of the side channels.” He slapped the blaster into her hand. “Now go.”
Without waiting for her reply, as if he had no doubt she could do this, he wheeled and raced back the way they’d come, to lead Radek and the mercs into the trap. Biting back a cry of anguish, she ran for the controls.
He said he loved her.
And she hadn’t told him she loved him.
Chapter 13
Tynan revealed himself between the archways just long enough to catch Radek’s scream of triumph.
Whatever sympathy he’d had for the brother of Blackworm’s unwilling consort had faded at the threat to Lishelle. As for leading invading mercs into the castle… The boy had lost any right to his moral high ground.
And now Tynan would be consigning them to the lowest pits of the ruins. With a bit of luck and a lot of water.
And Lishelle.
He didn’t know if the sluices would function. When they’d surveyed the bathing rooms, it’d been obvious the smaller gates within the castle proper had rusted and rotted over the centuries. The larger port might still be operational, especially with the full force of the cistern-stored flood behind it. Regardless, Lishelle was safely away from the mercs, and whatever happened to him, she could console herself that she had fought this time. His heart seized tighter than any flood gates at the memory of turning and seeing her behind him in the throne room, ready to do battle at his side.
He’d never forget it. And he hoped she too would remember her bravery in the midst of this chaos. No matter what happened.
A few spatters of yellow stun energy chased him through the archways, and he was glad the mercs at least wanted to take him alive for their payback. Larfing Blackworm.
When he figured he had the stream of a dozen mercs close behind him, he wrenched open an access door to the main channel and ducked inside. He had to leave it open so the larfers would know which way he went, and some of the flow would be lost.
But there’d be enough. There had to be.
The downside of the stone and steelcrete tunnel was that it was perfectly smooth, no place to hide unless he exited at another access, which would defeat the purpose of leading them here. But it was utterly dark, and since he knew it was smooth and straight, he could just keep running with only the faintest ray of his dat-pad to guide him, while his followers bumbled more slowly behind, untrusting of their path. Unfortunately, the echo of their chasing boots and complaints made it hard to listen for the oncoming rush of water.
He refused to think beyond—
A beam of yellow plasma ricocheted down the tunnel, and despite his best intentions, he yelped at the proximity. He needed to keep them close, but if they caught him and left the tunnels before the flood, they might try to go back for Lishelle.
If he’d kept the blaster, he could’ve kept them more respectful, but he’d needed to know she had some way to defend herself. What else…
His hand brushed the empty holster at his thigh and found only a few hard nuggets… The data cubes. He’d taken some of the recorded messages that had touched him most deeply, wanting to reflect on them when things were more peaceful. Well, things weren’t going to be peaceful.
He thumbed the trigger on one cube and tossed it toward one of the recessed access points. In the darkness, the ghostly glow of the holo-vid began to talk about his hopes for true love.
The mercs or Radek, whoever was firing, lobbed a few volleys at the holo-vid, which of course ignored the shots and kept wishing to be noticed by one particularly stunning farm boy in the next valley over.
Tynan kept running, hoping the lovers had found each other.
The mercs had obviously found the holo-vid. The glow cut out.
But Tynan left two more data cubes in doorways that they had to slow to check out, and he gained a little precious distance.
And enough silence to hear—no, feel the distant rumble in the pipe around him.
She’d done it!
Ah, by the many hells, she’d done it. He was larfed.
Scrambling back a few paces, he found the nearest small hatch. If he recalled correctly, this conduit led toward the herb garden that supplied the kitchens. After so long, it was probably all jungle now…
They’d chased him so far, they’d descended almost all the way from the high point where the mountain cisterns entered the castle. The water would be moving at an unstoppable rate. From here, the main pipe would hit the incinerated and composted septic reservoir before descending to the canyon far below.
A faint hint of cool air teased him, a warning that if he didn’t get clear, he’d be swept away with them.
In the blackness, he traced his fingers along the seam of the hatch until he found the release, small and set flush so as not to restrict the fast flow of water. He choked out a harsh breath of relief, twisted the release ring outward, and shoved.
The ring broke off in his hand.
The rumble in the pipe had become a cavernous roa
r, like the howl of defiance in his head. He stared down at the crimp of metal in disbelief. To come this far… Letting out a wordless yell, he aimed a vicious kick at the hatch.
From farther up the pipe, over the thunder of the water, came a scream, swiftly punctuated by more shrieks.
The flood had claimed its first victims.
Tynan kicked again and again and again. Another scream echoed in his ears, although the voice wasn’t his. But it might as well have been, that strange cry of dread and victory. He would not die again in the guts of this castle, not when somewhere on the heights she was waiting for him, his lady.
The hatch popped open.
He threw himself down the narrower channel, scraping his shoulders against the stone. No time or space to turn and close off the access behind him. He wriggled forward.
And the water swirled in, icy from the mountaintop and smelling of stone.
For a moment, his big body acted like a cork in the confines of the pipe. But the water was relentless. It seeped and swirled around him, and in another instant, he was submerged.
His lungs contracted, wanting to inhale at the shocking chill, but he resisted, twisting hard, clawing forward. Around him, the water gushed, blinding him with bubbles as it raced toward its escape. His jealousy was more bitter than the cold. He needed to escape too…
Then he saw it, a glint of light through the raging current.
Tearing his nails against the smooth pipe, he scraped forward.
And wrapped his frozen, pained fingers around the bars of a blocking grate.
He’d reached the garden, but the gush of water pressed him against the grate, and though the exquisite air was just a hand’s breadth away, he was still drowning in the surge.
No! He would not die on this verge of being born again—
A heavy weight slammed against his boots, jamming him up against the grate.
And the jolt knocked the barrier loose.
He poured through the opening and was dumped into the deep, open trough that arrowed between the garden beds. The force of the water tumbled him a few more times before the pressure subsided and he fetched up against the side of the trough, coughing and shaking his head which had slammed a time or two.