Teasing Danger [Darklands Book 1]

by Autumn Dawn

  Her eyes lit up, but in spite of her excitement, she didn't eat much of her cereal.

  Frowning at the half full bowl, he asked, “Shouldn't you be eating more than that?"

  "I'm a little queasy."

  Concerned, he looked away for a moment, not wanting her to recognize his sudden fear. “We'll stop by the clinic first. I want to make certain that you're ... that everything will be all right."

  She smiled at him in reassurance. “I wouldn't worry about it. After all, what could go wrong?"

  "I don't want her worried,” Keilor informed the medic outside the examining room door. “If the baby makes it here in good health, fine. But I can't see how tormenting her with dire predictions would do anything but harm."

  The medic didn't even blink. “As you wish. At the moment there is no sign of rejection—the symbiont is taking care of that. There are no guarantees that the child won't have problems after its birth, however. Once contact between its mother and her symbiont is severed—"

  Keilor nodded sharply. He understood too well.

  There had been a few rare children conceived between Haunt and human in the days when they still shared a world, but none had ever survived the forth month. The genetic differences were just too great, the mother's body too alien to support the mysterious changes that the infant underwent at that time. It was a fear he hadn't shared with Jasmine, believing that the other—very valid—reasons he'd given her would suffice. Her life was too precious to him to needlessly put in jeopardy.

  Now matters had been taken out of his hands. But he could spare his wife from grief that might only hasten the inevitable.

  With a forced smile, Keilor entered the examining room with the medic and put an arm around his wife while the medic told her that all was well. It was true.

  For now.

  "Great!” Jasmine hopped off the table. “Then let's go shopping!"

  Jasmine couldn't believe that she'd spent so much time at the citadel and was only now getting to see the most impressive marketplace she'd ever seen. Some of the shops were indoors, but many were set up in booths outside. The wide street where they were was busy, but not crowded, and the shoppers courteous.

  Delicious smells teased her nose, and splashes of red braided chilies caught her eye. Making her way across the flagstones to the first booth, she admired the long, beautiful braids of orange, yellow, green, black and scarlet dried peppers, garlic and onions, and savored the scent of wreaths and bundles of sage, lavender and bay leaf, as well as herbs she didn't recognize.

  Smiling with delight, she picked up a bottle of vinegar packed with artfully arranged slices of clove pierced lemons, and another of herbs, garlic and chilies, admiring the pretty tones of the liquid. Then a two foot high bottle of kumquat vinegar caught her eye, and she knew right then that she had to have it. “That would make the most beautiful living room decoration,” she told her husband with excitement. “Can we get it?"

  Keilor eyed the jar askance and shook his head, smiling at the hopeful merchant. “Whatever she wants,” he said.

  They left with half the booth on its way to their room.

  A wide smile on her face, Jasmine explored the vegetable and fruit stands, exclaiming over the many different kinds of produce for sale, and purchasing quite a few. The jewelers received a quick glance, but it was the display of sparkling crystals at the next stall that captured her attention. She chose a snowflake prism from that collection.

  By the time they'd watched a weaver working on a blue and gold tapestry, seen a glassblower create a rose and green swirled goblet, and witnessed a potter at her wheel, Keilor was looking rather peaked, even thought he never said a word. Taking pity on him, Jasmine suggested, “Why don't we take a break? I'm starving."

  Visibly relieved, Keilor took her hand and led her through the crowd and into a restaurant with wide windows and a pleasant odor of sweetness and steaming seafood. Mouth watering, she surveyed the buffet. Mounds of snowy shellfish meat, swimming with vegetables, orange crustaceans arranged on leaves of kale, and seafood salads in bright red and white radicchio bowls tempted her as breakfast hadn't. Avoiding the tentacled dish and what looked suspiciously like jellyfish, Jasmine loaded a plate with moist baked fish smothered in lemon sauce, enough stir fry and crustacean to sink a fishing boat and retired to a table to await Keilor.

  "Hungry, are you?” Keilor asked with amusement when Jasmine began wolfing down her second large plate of food.

  She stopped in mid-bite to glare at him. “Watch it, buster. I'm just making up for breakfast."

  In the interests of continued domestic bliss, he changed the subject. “Would you like to choose new rooms after this? We'll need somewhere to put all these acquisitions."

  Eyes wide with worry, she stopped eating. “Am I getting too much? I know we didn't really need that rug, but—"

  "I like the rug,” he assured her, “And I wouldn't mind if you bought a hundred of them, but...” He smiled ruefully, “I'm afraid I lack your stamina for shopping.” The smile crept into a grin. “I'm sure that Isfael and Raziel will love it, though."

  Jasmine snorted. “Somehow, I doubt it, but never mind. I can always come back with Rihlia.” She scowled just a little. “I presume we're on speaking terms again."

  "I wouldn't worry over it. After all, pregnant women do odd things,” Keilor answered, looking at her over his mug of steaming sage tea.

  Chagrined, Jasmine finished her meal in silence.

  They were almost to Jayems’ and Rihlia's suite when Keilor abruptly froze, dragging Jasmine to a halt with him. Before anything could come out of her open mouth, he hit a red button on the small black box all the guards carried and moved in front of her, drawing his gun and firing an arc of blue light all in one seamless motion. The Haunt at Jayems’ door crumpled before they knew what hit them. “Draw your gun, Jasmine,” he ordered her, and she did as he said, her heart thumping. “Stay behind me in the doorway if there's firing until the others get here, and do not get in my way.” He spared one grim glance at the fallen soldiers, and then he took on the Haunt.

  A icy finger of fear slid down her spine at Keilor's seamless transition from husband to warrior beast. Even witnessing Isfael, Raziel and Mathin transforming had not prepared her for this final proof of what he was and of the kind of child she carried.

  There was no time to dwell on it. Keilor positioned her a little to the side and burst through the heavy doors as if they were balsa wood, firing rapidly.

  Taken completely by surprise, the Haunt assassin dropped Rihlia before delivering the death strike he'd been poised to deliver, the remnants of his head splattering Rihlia's face with gore. His partner went down with a hole the size of a man's fist where his heart used to be.

  Rihlia herself was badly hurt. She lay where she had fallen, curled into a fetal ball as a bright red stain spread on her skirt.

  "No!” Jasmine moaned, running to her, trailing Haunt guardsmen in her wake. While Keilor and the others searched for more assassins, Jasmine dropped to her knees beside her friend, wiping gore from her eyes with a shaky hand. Her symbiont stirred, touched Rihlia's face, but didn't leave Jasmine.

  Wild hope sprung up in Jasmine even as the blood spread on Rihlia's skirt. “Heal her,” she told the symbiont. “Fix her like you did me.” Sluggish movement and a vague sense of apathy were the only responses. The symbiont was sated, and more than content right were it was. It had no interest in a Haunt, anyway.

  "Heal her!” Jasmine hissed, frightened by Rihlia's growing pallor and lack of response. The symbiont stirred again, responding to her desperation. Almost with repugnance, it extended, gingerly touched Rihlia and retreated with a symbiont shudder. “It's not going to kill you, just do it!” Jasmine snarled at it. Something like a put upon sigh brushed through her emotions, a primal communication of squeamishness and then the symbiont extended, leaving a loop of liquid metal securely wrapped around its host's wrist as it touched the dreaded Haunt.

  Through
the sudden echo of nausea in her gut, Jasmine felt the symbiont slowly and with great difficulty stop the hemorrhaging in Rihlia's womb, saving the tiny child clinging to life within. The entire process took only seconds.

  Satisfied that it had complied with the spirit of its host's directive, it withdrew, retracting slowly back around Jasmine's wrist. There it slumped, turning a sickly green color.

  Jasmine hadn't reckoned on the slow dump of noxious, almost indigestible Haunt material that oozed into her bloodstream from the nearly helpless symbiont. Vertigo assailed her, and her eyes glazed over as she slumped over Rihlia's legs, shivering as her temperature dropped nearly into hypothermia. Cold sweat broke out on her clammy skin, and the blood slowly drained out of her head.

  That was how Keilor and the medics found them. Jasmine breathing shallowly, and Rihlia an unmoving ball of quiet misery.

  At first Keilor didn't understand what had happened to his wife. He thought she'd fainted, or was suffering from some kind of shock. It was Mathin who figured it out.

  Mathin had come running along with the rest of the Haunt on duty when the alarm had sounded, and he hissed at his first glimpse of Jasmine, limp in her husband's arms. “Look at the symbiont,” he said, pointing to the sagging strands of greenish metal. “She tried to heal Rihlia, never knowing how difficult it is for symbionts to digest our wastes. She poisoned them both."

  "How do you know?” Keilor demanded, even though he believed Mathin. Thundering rains, all he had to do was look at the symbiont for proof, now that he knew.

  Mathin avoided his eyes. “I've spent a great deal of time in the swamps, picked up some useful information.” He focused on Jasmine's chalky face, looking worried. “What she needs is another symbiont to help bleed off the poison."

  "Do I look as if I have one?” Keilor snarled, taking his rage and distress out on Mathin as he cradled his wife to his chest and strode out of the room, heading for the medics. “The People Who Came Before won't even be here for nearly two weeks yet, and unless you can fly—” he shut up. Mathin did not deserve this. Unfortunately, he couldn't take his temper out on his shivering wife, either. Not only was it worse than useless to yell at a semi-conscious woman, she hadn't known the consequences of her reckless gamble. Not that it would have mattered, he acknowledged with a stab of dread.

  Keilor sat in the chair next to his wife's bed with his hands steepled against his chin, his eyes closed. After long minutes he opened them to the dimmed clinic room, watching the slow rise and fall of Jasmine's chest. There wasn't anything the Haunt medics could do. The symbiont flowed like water through the fingers and instruments that tried to remove it from Jasmine's arms, and Jasmine herself thrashed in delirious panic whenever it had been attempted. Finally Keilor had ordered them to stop trying.

  Rihlia was not much better. Although Jasmine had managed to save her baby, possibly at the risk of her own, she had been badly beaten, and even the natural resilience and speedy healing of her Haunt body could only do so much against loosened teeth, cracked bones and bleeding organs. Jayems stood grim vigil over her this night, no doubt wracked with a guilt and self-loathing that Keilor knew too well.

  Tonight he was not feeling guilty, though. Only sad, and a little proud of his Dragonfly's selflessness. He did not have to ask her to know that she wouldn't have counted the cost too high had she known what her attempt at healing would demand.

  Swallowing hard, he dropped his head onto his clasped hands and shut his eyes, trying not to think of what tomorrow might bring.

  The Symbiont delegation arrived in style.

  The morning after the assassination attempt, just after dawn, a silver ship with fifteen passengers glided into Haunt waters and docked. As soon as its passengers had disembarked, the ship broke apart, coalescing into fifteen silver hover cycles. Before the astonished eyes of the Haunt escort Mathin had arranged to meet them, the cycles sent silver tendrils around their rider's legs to the knee, anchoring them in place.

  Jayems, who had been alerted only a bare hour before of the change in plans, grabbed Keilor. He informed him what was up as they hurried to the field between the arms of the citadel. They were waiting there as the Symbiont riders arrived.

  There was only one woman in the group, and the men were without exception of warrior stock. All the males wore their hair cropped short, and even the woman's blond hair was only long enough to touch her shoulders. They wore black pants of heavy cloth, boots and jackets of suede suitable for traveling at high velocities. Each rider wore a sheathed knife and a black gun and watched the Haunt with a wary expectancy. The leader, a man of only slightly above average height but tremendous presence, inclined his head to Jayems and Keilor.

  "My name is Jackson.” He slid a glance at Mathin, who remained mounted on his snorting stag. “We were informed that you have a medical emergency we might be able to assist with?"

  Jayems glanced aside at Keilor, leaving the decision up to him. The center of attention, Keilor eyed the new arrivals, their leader in particular, his nostrils flared to take in their scent. He snorted silently in self-disgust. As if that would help him any. He could read nothing in Jackson but fearlessness.

  His eyes slid to Mathin, and with a glance and one sharp sign, Keilor let Mathin know he would answer for it if harm came to his wife. “She rests in the clinic,” he told Jackson with reluctance. “My wife tried to heal our cousin with the symbiont, but it poisoned her."

  Jackson dismounted in one easy motion. “We can help her, but we'll have to use one of the big symbionts. It might be easier if she were brought outside, if that's possible."

  "We will move to a courtyard closer to the citadel while Keilor goes to get her,” Jayems offered while his cousin strode away.

  Keilor did not like this, and he fiercely wished to wrap his hands around Mathin's throat for springing this on them. But what was he to do? Let Jasmine or the baby die because he couldn't bring himself to trust a stranger? So far it had been their allies who had betrayed them.

  "Jasmine,” he said, touching her cool forehead and smoothing back her hair. “I've found someone who can help you."

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Keilor ... help her."

  He grit his teeth and tamped down on his concern. She was still delusional. “Rihlia is ... fine, Dragonfly,” he said, skirting the fact that she was still in intensive care. She was alive, after all. “But we need to get you some help.” Careful not to jar her, he picked her up, blanket and all.

  This had better work.

  "The symbiont will not touch her as long as you do,” Jackson warned Keilor. He held out one hand. “Your choice."

  Keilor stared at Jackson's shoulder as he fought the instincts that clamored at him not to let this stranger, this one-time enemy, touch his helpless woman.

  Jasmine moaned and shivered as she burrowed against him in a vain search for warmth. Her symbiont hung loose on her wrists.

  The symbiont riders winced, and the woman murmured something sympathetic.

  Keilor's face softened at the sight of Jasmine's pain, and he placed her in Jackson's arms.

  She cried out, muttering something nearly incomprehensible about drugs and ‘only Keilor', but Jackson ignored her, holding her firmly as he stepped up to his silver cycle. For a moment nothing happened. Then the giant symbiont flowed and completely enveloped Jasmine.

  Keilor hissed and instinctively grabbed for his sword, stopped just shy of drawing it. Thin streaks of pale green and brown flowed out of Jasmine's body and were absorbed into the large creature. It worked on her for several seconds and then withdrew, coalescing back into a blurred image of the silver cycle. It settled on the ground with a soft thump.

  Jasmine opened her eyes, ascertained that the man holding her was a stranger, and twisted out of his arms. She shoved him away with surprising strength, considering her wobbly stance. “Who are you?” she demanded. A breeze teased her legs and she glanced down at herself with horror. Snatching up the blanket that had fallen away from t
he silver nightgown she wore, she whipped it around herself, demanding, “What's going on? Where's—Keilor!” she squealed, as her husband caught her up in a crushing hug. “Let me breathe!” She gasped, trying to create a little space between them for lung expansion.

  His arms loosened, even though he did not let go. “I thank you,” he said hoarsely, looking over her head to Jackson, who inclined his head in acknowledgment.

  "For what?” Jasmine demanded, turning around to see who he was talking to. Her frown turned to an expression of surprise when she caught sight of the cycles. “Hey! A motorcycle!” She took a step toward it. Keilor's arms tightened a moment and then released her. “Cool,” she said in awe. She reached out to touch it and then withdrew her hand to glance at Jackson for permission.

  Jackson did not hesitate, but his answering nod was noticeably curt. In light of that, Jasmine kept her hands to herself, but her circling inspection was no less thorough. “Nice,” she pronounced with approval and then, “How fast does it go?” with a gleam in her eye.

  "Don't even think it,” Keilor growled, taking her by the shoulders and steering her away from temptation. “This is Jackson,” he said, planting her firmly in front of the man she had pushed and ignored in favor of his symbiont. “His symbiont saved your life."

  Rattled at her lack of memory, Jasmine frowned and unthinkingly asked, “Why?” Keilor's fingers tightened on her shoulders in disbelief.

  Jackson's left eyebrow twitched. “Good manners?” he suggested.

  Jasmine put her fingers to her temple and rubbed, as if that might bring back the memory. “I don't remember,” she muttered. “Just guns and ... Rihlia!” she said, half turning as if to run to her friend. “She's hurt!"

  Keilor stopped her with an arm around her waist. “You already helped her, and she's sleeping right now.” He grunted as her elbow connected with his sternum. “Jasmine! Be still,” he ordered, squeezing off her air with his arm until she quieted, panting. He glanced sharply at Jackson, who spread his hands in ignorance.