Shadow Hunters

by Christie Golden

  “Shit,” she said, and drowned out the rising fear with irritation at herself for getting into this predicament.

  She was lying on the cold stone floor. Her wrists were bound behind her back with some kind of cord. Cautious, exploratory movement revealed that her legs, bent behind her, were also bound, and something attached ankles to wrists, so she was effectively well trussed up. That she’d been in this position for some time was evidenced by the screaming pain of her muscles. She was no longer where she had been attacked; they’d taken her somewhere else, some dimly lit niche somewhere in this vast underground city. Rosemary lifted her head to look around. Were her captors here or had she been left alone?

  “So, you are awake,” came a voice in her mind. “Good. I was worried that Alzadar here might have permanently damaged you.”

  One question answered, then: Her captors, the templar-turned-Forged Alzadar among them, were most definitely present.

  “Well, wouldn’t want that, would we?” she shot back cheerfully. There was no point in plotting an escape when you were surrounded by people who could read your mind. The block Zamara had erected had prevented the Tal’darim from detecting her; it would be of no protection if she was stupid enough to literally stumble across them. And besides, it had worn off by this point, as Zamara had said it would, which meant they probably knew everything she knew now. She tried not to think about it and couldn’t, just, she realized, like the old, tired saw that if someone said “Don’t think about a purple elephant,” all you saw in your mind’s eye was a lavender pachyderm. Instantly, of course, she did think about a purple elephant, and she got a brief and satisfying jolt of pleasure at the confusion the image presented to her captors.

  “Only temporarily damaged, I can deal with,” she continued. “You didn’t kill me outright, so that means you want something.”

  Long, cool hands closed on her body and she was positioned so she could see. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, from giving them the satisfaction of knowing how it hurt her, and then thought, That was stupid, because of course they could read her mind. God, she was really starting to get pissed off at this whole mind-reading business. She clung to the anger.

  She looked around at the protoss. Most of them hung back, but two stood gazing down at her. Overall they looked pretty much like the Shel’na Kryhas. There was certainly no immediate visible difference between the two factions. They were various colors, ranging from purple to gray to blue, and they had a variety of ridges and shapes to their faces. No doubt to each other they looked completely different, just as human faces looked individualistic to other humans. But to Rosemary Dahl, they all looked like … protoss.

  Apparently, that was the wrong thing to think. The eyes of the protoss who was most likely their leader—Felanis, she recalled—narrowed and darkened, and he hunched slightly. The other, whom Rosemary assumed was Alzadar, stayed almost frighteningly calm as he stared at her with unblinking eyes.

  “We are completely different from the Shel’na Kryhas!” Felanis cried. “They are unenlightened fools, clinging stubbornly to the flawed past, the very past that led us to disaster. We were deserted once before, long, long ago, by the beings we loved and trusted. But this desertion is far worse. This was abandonment by our own people!”

  More thoughts bombarded Rosemary. But she did not feel their emotions; perhaps they kept them rigidly in check. She was glad of it. Their thoughts alone were hard enough for her mind to handle.

  Felanis began to pace. Alzadar continued to regard her with almost unnatural calm. Rosemary glared back, defiantly.

  “Our only comfort is that those who fled Aiur and left us behind are likely dead now,” said Felanis. “The dark templar cannot be trusted. Only we survive—the Tal’darim, the Forged. Only we were deemed worthy to be called here, to the ancient places of our people. Our Benefactor looks after us. He keeps us safe and whole and teaches us how to defend ourselves against the zerg.”

  There were mental murmurs of agreement. Rosemary looked around, remembering now that the Forged numbers grew while the Shel’na Kryhas numbers dwindled, not just because of zerg attacks, but by desertion.

  “Speaking of turning your backs and abandoning things, which of you are the deserters?” she said.

  Several of them turned their heads sharply to look at her. “You judge what you do not understand, human,” one of them said. Rosemary still had trouble distinguishing between individual protoss, but she was pretty sure she recognized one of the Shel’na Kryhas who had rescued her and then left soon after.

  “So do you,” she shot back.

  Felanis waved a dismissive hand. “We understand you well enough,” he said. “As you have surmised, we have read your thoughts.”

  “Then why do you need to keep me alive if you know everything I know?” She tried to move her hands and feet slightly, to bring circulation back to them, but the pain was too intense, and she gasped.

  “Felanis, this is ridiculous,” said one of the protoss. “Alzadar’s idea will not work. She is too different from us. We should offer her to the Benefactor. Perhaps he can find an appropriate use for her. Or kill her ourselves and send the body back for her traitorous allies to stumble upon.”

  “Silence,” ordered Felanis. “If the plan does not work, there will be time enough to offer her to the Xava’tor.” He turned lambent blue eyes back to Rosemary. “We have kept you alive because they trust you. Particularly the other terran.”

  She actually laughed at that one. “You want me to spy for you?”

  “It is in your interest, human.”

  “How the hell do you figure that? Other than the obvious.” She thought about being able to move her limbs.

  Felanis half closed his eyes and tilted his head. Laughter, dry as scudding leaves across dead earth, filled her mind. “Is not the obvious sufficient?”

  He had her there. Only once before had Rosemary professed loyalty to anyone and really meant it. That was to Ethan Stewart, whom she was now starting to realize she had loved. She frowned to herself. She was getting soft. That mind whammy Jake had done to her had really messed her up. Or maybe it was just that the pain was starting to wear her down. She wasn’t sure. It was obvious what would happen if she didn’t cooperate. She’d be served up to this Benefactor, whoever he was, or have her throat slit and be tossed out like yesterday’s garbage. Still …

  “Zamara’s a preserver. I thought even the Forged respected such things.”

  “Once, we did. But our heritage means nothing to us now. Only our future, only what the Xava’tor can give us. What you attempted to do—what Zamara and Jake and Ladranix want to do—is against his wishes. You may not enter the chambers. We will not permit this to happen. And—the Xava’tor desires the preserver.”

  “And you’re gonna use me to lure Zamara to him? Listen, buddy, if you’ve read my mind as well as you think you have, you know one thing for damn sure: I want to get off this rock. Zamara says she can do that. There’s no way I’m turning against her.” With humans, she would have tried to bluff. There was no point in attempting it with the protoss. She wasn’t schooled enough in mental disciplines to bluff a mind reader.

  “Perhaps Zamara is lying.”

  “Zamara hasn’t trussed me up like an animal and mentally tortured me. Guess who I’m gonna trust first.”

  Felanis and Alzadar looked at one another. “You will have no choice in the matter,” Felanis said. Alzadar moved to the side and returned with a large jar. A mental murmur went up among the protoss and they all leaned forward eagerly. Despite her pain, Rosemary felt a flicker of curiosity. What the hell was in that jar?

  “You will become one of us. Our cause will become yours. Our goals will become yours. It is an honor, Rosemary Dahl.”

  For one moment, the desire to struggle blindly like a mindless beast struck Rosemary very hard. She ignored it with the will she’d developed through years of discipline. But she couldn’t control the sudden racing of her heart.


  Alzadar shook his head and spoke for the first time. His mental voice was rich and in control, the voice of one who was well disciplined and had no need to rage and shout as Felanis did; no need to even speak unless he decided it was necessary.

  “No, my brothers and sisters, it is not time for us yet. This is for our guest’s benefit.” He stepped forward, tattered robes flowing, and lifted the lid off the jar.

  A sweet, cloying scent tickled Rosemary’s nose, and she coughed violently. The movement sent pain shooting along her imprisoned limbs and the cough twisted into a sharp cry. Sweat suddenly dewed her body, and she looked to see what was in the jar. It was an ointment of some kind, dark gold in color, and as she watched, Alzadar scooped some of it out on his long-fingered hands and stepped toward her.

  Rosemary couldn’t read minds. But she didn’t have to to know somewhere deep in her soul that if this pretty-looking stuff touched her, she’d be in real trouble. So even though she almost blacked out from the white-hot agony that shot through her at her sudden movement, she tried to scoot back. It was foolish, and futile, but she could no more stop the instinct than she could stop her heart from beating.

  “Hold her,” Alzadar said almost dispassionately. Cool fingers closed like manacles on her legs, shoulders, waist, and arms.

  “No!” Rosemary shrieked, fury and a nameless dread lending her energy. But the delicacy of the hands that held her was misleading, and her writhing was useless. Effortlessly they flipped her on her stomach. A wave of pain so intense she almost blacked out shot through her. Alzadar bore down on her, smearing the ointment first onto the inside of her wrists and then clutching her hair, yanking her head back, and rubbing the unguent onto her throat area.

  Rosemary had the incongruous thought that these were the same places she’d apply perfume—on her throat and wrists, on the pulse points of her body. Manic laughter welled up inside her and she forced it down. The ointment felt warm against her skin. Soothing. And pleasurable.

  “No!” she screamed again, and put all the power of her will behind it. It startled them, she could tell, but it was too late, had been too late the moment she had taken the first step down into this hellish pit. For a fraction of an instant, Rosemary understood what was happening, and with all that was in her rejected it. She did not want to become that person again, that slave, that needy, captive thing. She did not want the pleasure, the peace, the calm, because she knew it was all a lie and that soon enough, too soon, it would end and she’d need more. Have to have more. Would do unspeakable, degrading things for more.

  And then all resistance, all fear, all refusal was gone. Even the pain in her bound, twisted limbs was gone. Rosemary’s head lolled and she closed her eyes, almost purring with contentment.

  “You were right, Alzadar,” Felanis said. “The gift of the Xava’tor works on the terrans as well.”

  “This one is particularly susceptible, but yes, the way terran skin works has similarities to our own. Although it is much more primitive. The Sundrop has reached her. We can release her. She is ours now.”

  The hands came again, cradling her body as they cut the bonds that held her. More of the pleasure-giving salve was rubbed onto her neck and wrists, and this time Rosemary Dahl, eager for more of the bliss, assisted them, reaching her own hands along her skin and massaging the soothing, slippery stuff in with a soft, relaxed sigh.

  Sundrop. She liked the word.

  Rosemary screamed.

  For the last several languid, drifting, hazy hours—she had no idea how long it had been—she hadn’t cared. She had slipped in and out of consciousness, her dreams soft and sweet as her reality, as the topically applied Sundrop wound through her system. But it had started to fade an hour ago, the euphoria dwindling bit by bit until it had mutated into discomfort, then pain, and now the wrenching and horrifically familiar agony of withdrawal.

  The others had departed, off to do whatever it was they did when they were not capturing strangers and getting them addicted. Alzadar alone had stayed, talking in his cool, in-absolute-control mental voice about the Benefactor as she babbled through the ecstasy and staying almost gleefully silent as she started to come out of it. She knew he knew how badly she craved another dose.

  She huddled shivering in the corner, trying to find a dollop of the Sundrop that hadn’t been properly spread over her skin. She failed. It was all gone, absorbed long ago. Her skin erupted with gooseflesh and she fought back yet another wave of nausea. Even in the midst of her misery she wondered how she could keep being sick when there was nothing left in her body to vomit up.

  “Tell me you want more, and you shall have it, Rosemary Dahl,” Alzadar said, sounding infinitely reasonable. “Right now, that is all I need to hear. Your mind is screaming it. Simply choose to form the words and your agony will cease.”

  She shut her eyes. Tears poured from them. She huddled against the wall, pressing her hot face against the cool, curving stone. She didn’t want to give this bastard the satisfaction of begging for the drug. Besides, if they wanted her to be effective, they’d give her another dose sooner or later. They’d have to.

  “True,” Alzadar said. “But that will not be for some time. How much longer can you offer resistance? You can end your suffering with but a word. I must say, the Sundrop seems to affect humans more severely than protoss. I envy you your ecstasy, but not this. Are you quite certain you do not desire more?”

  Oh, God, she did. She wanted it more than anything she could ever remember wanting in her life. Rosemary closed her eyes, and for the next hour stayed silent by the sheer power of her will.

  Eventually, as she had known would be the case, Alzadar applied more, and she basked in the pleasure for a while. He fed her, he gave her water, and she ate and drank and dozed.

  The cycle began again. The pain came, deep and shattering and worse than before, a lower low from a higher high, and Rosemary sobbed openly this time.

  “Tell me you want more, and I shall give it to you.” Alzadar rose and padded over to her, crouching down, his mouthless face centimeters from hers. “I shall see that you are cleansed, and given a soft place to sleep, and more Sundrop is applied to your wanting skin. Only ask for it, and it shall be done.”

  She turned her face and stared at the former templar, into his pale blue eyes.

  Go to hell, was what she wanted to say. Was what she fully intended to say.

  What escaped dry, cracked lips was “Please … give me more. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Alzadar nodded, pleased, and his hands, full of succoring ointment, came up and stroked her outstretched wrists like one might stroke a beloved pet. And as the comfort came and the pain ceased, Rosemary despised herself, and knew herself to be utterly lost.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KERRIGAN FELT ALMOST … HUMAN IN HER excitement.

  The change was complete. The cocoon was glowing, pulsing, and the shape inside was moving more and more vigorously. She was not certain what sort of changes her creation would display. He was undergoing the same process by which she herself had been created, been made anew, and she knew that the reborn Ethan would not be identical to herself. But the details would be a fascinating surprise, just as such things were to any mother, and her wings folded and unfolded in eager anticipation as she watched and waited.

  The instinct was to hasten the birth along, but Kerrigan did not want to steal Ethan’s triumph from him. Let him fight his own way out of the cocoon, as she had. Let him be the instrument of his own birth. It would be his first act to claiming what was his—what she had bequeathed to him.

  In his cocoon, Ethan struggled. If he did not break free soon, rip and claw and tear his way into this new life, he would not be able to survive much longer in the fluids that encased him. He would die unborn, and her experiment would be a failure. Kerrigan was content with that knowledge, and the thought did not move her to action. The Queen of Blades wanted no one at her side who could not find his own way into this new incarnation. />
  Her eyes were bright as she watched. Lumps formed and receded in the elastic surface of the cocoon as Ethan’s fist punched here, his knee thrust there. Another two limbs entirely distended the membranous cocoon. Her heart fluttered to see it. So he, like she, would be augmented. It was good.

  A sharp spike pierced the cocoon and glinted in the dim lighting. It looked like a blade, but not like hers—her talons and claws and spikes were stilettos. This was a scythe, a hook, a masculine counterpart to her more feminine knife. A smile curved her too-wide mouth.

  The wickedly sharp spike slashed downward, almost the length of the cocoon. Hands, dark green and powerful but devoid of the claws that graced her own, seized the edges and ripped with inhuman strength. Two other limbs, not quite arms, similar to the scythelike pincers of the hydralisks, extended almost as if in prayer. No wings for him, then, but these extra limbs, sharp and lethal and ready to kill for her. A head, sleek and smooth as a dolphin’s, thrust upward. Ethan tilted his head back and opened his mouth. For a moment she thought he was shouting his birth to the universe, but instead a sludgy, luminous green fluid poured from his mouth as he coughed.

  Now he did fill his lungs and cry out. Kerrigan smiled. Everything about him pleased her, from the color of his skin, a browner green than her gray-green; to the shape of his body, fit and toned; to the limbs that did not challenge her own graceful bone-wings but complemented them. Beautiful … he was beautiful. She had chosen well, and had manipulated his genetic redesign masterfully. He opened his eyes, a glowing green hue, and looked down at his new form. She watched, her smile widening, as her child-consort beheld himself. He ran his fingers along his sleek, hard skin, turned his head to examine the new blades protruding from his sides, and stepped free of the cocoon. Moisture, once so vital and now superfluous, flowed along the floor. He lifted his head to her, taller now than he had been, a little taller than she. But only a little. He seemed startled to see her, and frowned.