P N Elrod Omnibus

by P. N. Elrod

“There’s also the System to consider. I smashed the long-range comm-unit. Eily couldn’t make routine reports for the last couple of days. They’ll wonder why and send someone to investigate. They could be on their way right now. We have to get out of here.”

  We have to get out of here.

  She jerked, shaking her head at the echo of agreement that had come from nowhere. His voice had fallen into a soothing monotone. It was a common interrogation technique, meant to be non-threatening, to lull the subject into a trusting state. Some responded better to that than to shouts. People were hard-wired to want an authority figure’s approval.

  I’m the one with the weapon. Therefore she was the authority here, but her wound and the reconditioning were swiftly eroding her control.

  Another stim patch would have her bouncing off the bulkheads, but she was tempted. If her nerves were bad enough she could shoot Alard by accident.

  “Whether you trust me or not doesn’t matter,” he pressed. “We can strike a deal. I’ll hold up my side. You have my word on it.”

  Which, in Kella’s line of work, was worthless.

  Liability, logic insisted.

  And just as insistently, her emotion-based instincts whispered asset.

  “You said you were getting this ship?” she asked.

  “It’s my payment. I’m a damn good pilot-navigator.”

  That was one for the asset column. Until she got the neurons in her head unscrambled for good, she’d need someone in better shape than Farron to handle tech problems. She could run the rest herself, providing her instincts were still functioning and not jumbled up by the stim and wishful thinking.

  No. They’d knocked things around a bit inside, but she wasn’t that far gone. She would beat it. She’d beat them.

  Had beaten them. So far.

  How about just a little farther?

  Her stomach fluttered. Damned drugs.

  The monitor distracted her. Farron was no longer in view. The numbers at the bottom were zeros. So he was dead or out of range.

  “Tell you what,” said Alard, “there are restraints in the ship’s med-unit. Lock me down with those for the time being. Then you can look after your partner and talk things over. We have anti-virals; he can be fine again in just a day or two.”

  Very well. Decision time. But when it came down to it, she really had none to make. Without help, she’d sooner or later collapse just like Farron, then Alard, the System, or some goon from Riganth Prison would finish her off. It was just a question of who got to her first. With Alard there was the slim chance he might be telling the truth. A chance for her to return to her unit, a chance to get crucial deprogramming, a chance to feel in control again, to turn the illusion she projected into reality.

  There was a subtle shift in her. Alard went a fraction more alert, but she did nothing more than nod at the floor where she’d left the respirator. “Get that out to Farron. I’m sure he’ll find it useful, too.” She moved her gun muzzle away from him.

  Alard picked it up. He turned the mask over, watching her. “Why did you need it?”

  She gestured at Eily. “She was clever, but never really wanted to kill, not if she had to think about it first. She flooded the bridge with Somose gas to take me alive. If she’d had any sense, she’d have used tri-crynide instead. It’s faster and more final.”

  Alard shook his head. “Not Eily. I knew her. She wasn’t enough of a bitch to do it.”

  Kella looked him up and down in turn. Now was as good a time as any to make sure he fully understood her. She was almost smiling. “So very few of us are.”

  Alard smiled, nodding agreement. “I can see that.”

  Then he hurled the mask straight at her face. She swung the useless blaster back, but he was inside her guard, pushing, tackling, and they both hit the floor. The impact drove the breath from her, and he used his weight to pin her in place.

  She still could not trigger to fire, and it didn’t matter, he kept the muzzle shoved away and had a hand around her neck. He squeezed hard to cut the blood to her brain. Kella let go the blaster and clawed wildly at his eyes. He drew back and cracked his forehead against hers.

  Lightning flashed behind her eyelids, and she seemed to spin out of her body. Her vision blurred and went dark. Alard’s grip tightened. Desperate for air, she tried to break his hold, but her fingers had no strength. She slithered down into blackness. . .

  Where Alard gave a strange grunting scream and began convulsing on top of her as if in some disgusting parody of an orgasm. The pressure on her neck ceased. His weight suddenly lifted.

  She gasped and gagged and forced herself to take air, however much it hurt. Her blood-starved brain seemed to lurch inside her skull.

  Hearing returned first. She’d not realized it had gone until the pounding in her ears subsided.

  In its place was Farron’s hoarse and tired voice.

  “Answer me, woman,” he snarled. “Are you all right?”

  She blinked, trying to reclaim her vision. Some of the darkness ceded to blurs, and she recognized the shape of Farron’s head and shoulders in the swimming chaos. She groaned, and he could put whatever meaning he liked to that.

  Farron sat heavily down next to her. “Bloody hell, that’s done it,” he wheezed.

  She coughed and retched, her throat an agony. “Is he dead?”

  “For his sake he better be.”

  “Is he—”

  “Yes! He’s gone. You need a keeper, you know that? Didn’t your mum warn you to never trust pretty strangers?”

  “As opposed to homely friends?” she rasped. Where had that come from?

  “Wound me, why don’t you? I just saved your life, you silly bitch.”

  Right on all counts. What madness had taken her that she’d let her guard down so far? The stims, conditioning, wound, sheer fatigue or all four had turned her into an idiot.

  “Oh, I feel sick,” he moaned. “That was horrible. Don’t ask me to do that again. I’m not built for it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Killed him of course. I’ll need a dose of forget-me to get that out of my head. I don’t want to live with that.”

  “How?”

  “Eh?”

  “How did you kill him?” She’d not heard a blaster shot.

  He held up the auto-healer. “These things are nasty on full power. Touched it to his head. Every nano in his carcass shot there looking for something to fix. Must have hurt like blazes when they clotted.”

  She gaped at Farron, fighting several levels of surprise. Of all things for him to turn into a weapon. She’d never have thought of it herself. Out of nowhere came a laugh. It sounded rusty and hurt her throat, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “You going strange on me? What’s so damn funny? There’s a man dead.”

  “Good riddance to rubbish,” she muttered.

  “You’ll join him if you don’t let me patch that arm while I’m still able.”

  But Kella wasn’t up to moving yet except for involuntary twitching from the stims and unspent adrenalin. The air was thick, tainted with death. She used to not mind that stench; it meant she’d kept herself alive for another day. Now she wanted to vomit.

  Must be the drugs.

  “What you say?” Farron asked.

  Was she speaking aloud again? “I’m. . .tired.”

  “There’s a shock.”

  Tired of running, fighting, killing. Even if we get away is there any safe haven to hide?

  “Never you mind that,” he urged. “Patch up and rest for now. Work on the big decisions later.”

  She clamped her jaw shut and shifted around so he could look at her arm. The sooner she was back on her feet the better.

  He left the pressure bandage in place and waved the auto-healer over the area. “Feel anything?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Well,” he adjusted the device and smiled, “we’ll just take it slow, then, shall we?”

  * * * * * * *


  __________

  THE WIND BREATHES COLD

  Author’s Note: This was my first professional short story sale, which went into Martin H. Greenberg’s collection, DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS. It was always intended to be the first chapter for QUINCEY MORRIS: VAMPIRE, but I didn’t get to write that book until some years later. It sold to Baen Books and is available as an e-download from baen-dot-com.

  And yes, I am writing a new Quincey novel: QUINCEY MORRIS AND THE WEST END RIPPER.

  Transylvania, November 1893

  No single sense returned first. They mobbed me.

  The numbing cold, the soft whine of dogs, the rough jostling, all tumbled together in my dulled brain like seeds in a rattle. I slipped to and fro between awareness and nothing until a sharp lurch and bump caught my attention, holding me awake for longer than a few seconds. It was enough that I dimly comprehended something was very wrong. The next moment of consciousness I managed to keep hold of; the moments to follow had me wishing I’d done otherwise.

  Things were strongly tugging at my feet and legs, which seemed to be bound up. So was the rest of my body. I was wrapped snug and tight in a blanket from head to toe, unable to move or see. It was right over my face, which I never could abide. I groaned, trying to get free of the annoyance.

  At this feeble sound and movement the tugging abruptly stopped, and the things—which I dazedly grasped to be several dogs—snuffled at me. I couldn’t tell how many, but to judge by their sounds several at the least seemed to hold me as the focus of their attention. It made no sense until with a raw shock tearing through my nerves I realized they weren’t dogs, but wolves.

  In that instant full alertness returned, mind and body hurtling awake. I froze utterly, in the full expectation that the wolves would start ripping into me as I lay helpless before them. After a few truly terrible moments when nothing happened I tried to swallow my heart back into place, but there wasn’t spit enough in my mouth for the job.

  With whines and growls, their strong jaws clamped firmly on my wrappings again, and they resumed dragging me along. I could only think that made bold by hunger they’d entered our camp and picked me to pull away to a safe distance where they could feed.

  Panic would kill me. I dared not shout an alarm to my friends. The noise might spark the wolves to attack their prize. They’d held off—for the time being—so I gritted my teeth and waited and listened in the frail hope I might somehow find a way out of this alive.

  There must have been dozens of them. I could hear their eager panting and the click of their claws against bare stone or crunching into the thick snow. Wolves usually shy away from men—such had been my experience when Art and I had been trailed by that pack in Siberia. Had they been more desperate they’d have made a real feast for themselves on us. Being normal wolves, they’d held off and we’d escaped. But this pack seemed anything but normal. We were in the wild deeps of Transylvania, a far different place, and I’d already seen grim proof that a tall tale in one part of the world was God’s own awful truth in another.

  The wolves pulled me along another few yards. My weight, and I was aware of every solid pound of it going over those rocks, was nothing to them. Once they felt secure, they’d go through my all too thin blanket and clothes like taking the hide off a deer. I’d seen that happen once. The deer had been alive when they’d started in, and though quick enough, it hadn’t been an easy death.

  But all men have a limit to their self-control and that dark thought was enough to finally break mine; fear surged in my throat like vomit. It choked off any cry for help I might have made. I thrashed around like one of the madmen in Seward’s asylum, fighting against my bindings. The wolves at my feet let go. One of them snarled, stirring up the others. They moved all around me, excited, nipping at the blanket as though in play, their efforts ironically helping my struggles as they shredded the cloth. Fresh air suddenly slapped my face as the damned thing finally came loose.

  Bright-eyes catching the moonlight in green flashes, with lolling tongues and rows of white teeth, they scampered about like puppies. Some darted close to snap at me, wagging their tails at the sport of it. I wrested my hands free, but had no weapon to use. Some blurred memory told me I carried no knife or gun. I scrabbled in the inches-deep snow and found a piece of fist-sized rock. Better than nothing.

  Then a big black fellow, one that was obviously the pack leader, lifted his head to the wild gray sky and howled. Ever an eerie sound, but to be so alone in the forest, to hear it so close and loud, to watch the very breath of it streaming from the animal’s muzzle—had the hair on my neck not already been raised to its limit, it would have gone that much higher. The other wolves instantly abandoned their game and crowded around him, tails tucked like fawning supplicants seeking a favor. One after another joined him, blending and weaving their many voices into a triumphant song only they could fully understand.

  The leader broke off and focused his huge green eyes upon me as the others continued their hell’s chorus. It’s a mistake to ascribe human attributes to an animal, but I couldn’t help myself. The thing looked not just interested in what he saw, but curious, in the way that a human is curious.

  He snarled and snapped at those nearest him. The pack stopped howling and obediently scattered. After a sharp, low bark from him they formed themselves into a wide circle like trained circus dogs. I was at its exact center. Some stood, others sat, but all watched me attentively. Though I’d had more contact with wolves than most men, I’d never seen or heard anything like this before.

  A few of them growled, no doubt scenting my fear.

  Clutching the nearly useless rock with one hand, I frantically tore at the bindings around my ankles with the other. It was desperate work, made slow by my reluctance to take my eyes from the pack. Despite the distraction of their presence, I saw that for some reason I’d been wrapped like a bundle for the mail, first in the blanket, then by ropes to hold it in place. Why? Who had tied me up so? I cursed whoever had done me such an ill turn, the burst of anger giving me the strength to get free.

  I got clear of the blanket and staggered upright, half-expecting the wolves to close in. But they remained in their great circle, watching. There were no trees within it to climb to safety, and if I tried to break through the line at any point they’d be on me, so I kept still and stared back. One of the wolves sneezed; another shook himself. They knew they had me.

  A gust of winter wind sent the dry ground snow flying. Flakes skittered and drifted over the discarded blanket. I slowly picked it up and looped it around my left arm. The leader stepped forward, growling. I angled to face him, my powerless fear turning to fury that I should be brought to such a base fate.

  “Come on, you big bastard. I’ll take you first,” I whispered, growling right back. I would sell myself dearly to them.

  The wolf lowered his head and rocked back on his haunches, like a dog about to do a begging trick. A roiling darkness that seemed to come from within the thing’s body blurred the details as bones and joints soundlessly shifted, muzzle and fur retreated, skin swelled. It rose on its hind legs and kept rising until it was a match for me in height. The crooked legs straightened, thickened, and became the legs of a man, a tall, lean man clothed all in black. Only his bright green eyes remained the same, and when his red lips thinned into a smile I clearly saw the hungry wolf lurking beneath the surface.

  I knew his face. One can never forget such stern features. They were the stuff of nightmares, all the more so for my knowing, of my being absolutely certain, that he was dead—for I’d killed him myself.

  Yet there he stood before me, stubbornly oblivious to the fact.

  I was as afraid as I’d ever been in my life and could have expressed it, loudly, but there didn’t seem much point. In a few minutes I’d either be dead or worse than dead, and making a lot of noise about it wouldn’t help me one way or another.

  “I can respect a brave man, Mr. Morris,” said Vlad Dracula, pitching his deep voice
to be heard above the wind. In it was the harsh tone I’d heard when he’d taunted us from the stable yard of his Piccadilly house. Now he clasped his hands behind him and continued to regard me with the same mixture of interest and curiosity that had manifested itself in his wolf form.

  The wind buffeted against his body with little effect other than to whip at his dark clothes and gray-streaked hair. Black on white was the mark Harker had left on the pallid flesh of Dracula’s brow; he bore the scar with little sign of healing, yet nearly a month had passed from the last time I’d seen that face. But since then, I’d . . . I’d . . .

  Something very like the wind whirled sickeningly inside my skull. The creature before me, the circle of wolves, the snow, the cold, all faded for an instant of nothingness before asserting themselves again. It was like the focus of a poorly made telescope shifting in and out.

  “I killed you,” I said faintly. I recalled the impact of the strike going right up my arm when my Bowie knife slammed firmly into his chest.

  “So you did,” he admitted. “With some help from Jonathan Harker do not forget.”

  “Yes. . . .”

  Harker had buried his Kukri knife in the monster’s throat. We’d fought our way through the Szgany to get to the leiter-wagon and the great box on top of it. The Szgany had drawn their knives to defend it, and one of them had . . .

  I looked down, my hand going to my side. The clothes there were thick and stiff with dried and frozen blood. I could smell it, sharp and compelling.

  My blood. It had fairly poured from me as our enemies fled into the growing dusk. Harker caught me as I fell and sank back in his arms, my strength abruptly spent. Jack Seward and Van Helsing had tried their best to stop the flow, but the wound was too deep, the damage beyond any skill to heal. Thank God it hadn’t been very painful. The last memory I had was of poor Mina Harker, her face twisted by bitter grief, but I’d been so happy, so at peace. The awful red mark on her own brow had vanished, and from that I knew I’d spared her soul from damnation. With such joy in my fast-beating heart did I slip contentedly away into what seemed like sleep.