Shadow Hunters

by Christie Golden

  He extended the jar to her. As she reached eagerly for it he drew back, laughing, teasing, cruel.

  “Tell me again what you will do.”

  She hated him in that moment. Hated herself worse.

  “I’ll bring him, I promise.” The note of pleading in her voice disgusted her.

  “Tell me how.”

  She’d been fixated on the little pot of salve, but now her blue eyes flashed to his. The violence and loathing in her thoughts was powerful, but Alzadar seemed completely unperturbed. Her anger sputtered and subsided beneath that icy gaze.

  “It will be easy enough to get him alone. I will bring him out here. You can take him then, and do whatever the hell it is your Xava’tor wants done to him and Zamara, I don’t care. Just take me back with you and give me access to the Sundrop.”

  He nodded, satisfied. This time when he extended his hand, he didn’t take it back. Rosemary snatched the little jar, scooped out a fingerful of the stuff, smeared it on her throat, and exhaled in relief.

  They were waiting for her when she came back. She forced herself to appear calm.

  “I miss a meeting?” she asked lightly, reaching for a waterskin and drinking thirstily. She wondered if they could detect the sweet smell of the Sundrop. Alzadar assured her that the scent dissipated beyond protoss sensing after only a moment on the skin, but she wasn’t sure. If even one of them made the slightest effort to read her thoughts, they’d know it all.

  “No,” Jake said. “Not really. We were going to go do some scouting and some foraging, and you weren’t around. I … got worried.”

  She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, I know better than to go too far. Just sometimes—you want a little privacy. To think about things.”

  Rosemary felt Ladranix’s searching gaze upon her. “What things?”

  Rosemary shrugged. “You spend three days hiding from your enemies, you start thinking about things. Humans do, anyway. I don’t know about protoss.”

  Ladranix nodded. “Yes … we do as well. We have thought much.”

  Rosemary let her gaze flit back to Jake long enough to meet his gaze, allowed it to linger, then looked away quickly. His eyes widened slightly and even in the dim light she could see that his cheeks darkened. It was almost too easy.

  “Zamara had been reconsidering,” Jake said. “She originally thought we’d get what we needed from the chambers and then see what she could do to open the warp gate. She’s considering reversing the order.”

  What? They’d been that close to escaping? “I thought Zamara needed whatever was in the chambers in order to open the gate!”

  Jake looked uncomfortable. “She wasn’t very clear on any of that, not even with me. But we’ve got to defeat the Forged first, regardless, to get either goal achieved.” He smiled at her. “But thanks to you, we know what we’re getting into now.”

  She forced a smile, forced herself to look relieved. “Yeah. Glad I and my unique talents could be of some help.”

  “The Tal’darim would have been shielding themselves from detection,” Ladranix said. “If, as I fear, they are prepared to be hostile toward us—we would have been slaughtered. Now, we will not be caught off guard.”

  She went on the scouting mission with them. She helped refill the water bottles and find food to supplement her and Jake’s rations. She looked serious when she was supposed to, smiled when it was expected of her, and all the while moved forward on her new plan.

  When day came, she slept closer to Jake than usual. And when night came, before it had a chance to be filled with planning and recons and other things that would eventually come to nothing, Rosemary stood next to Jake and said, quietly, “Walk with me?”

  “Um … yeah, sure. Everything okay?” he asked as he fell into step with her.

  Rosemary hesitated. “Mostly,” she said. “I … need to talk to you. Far enough away so the others can’t hear.” She wished she could blush at will, but contented herself with quickly averting her gaze.

  “They won’t read your thoughts,” he said, still not quite understanding what was going on.

  “They’ll read yours,” she said, and gave him a quick grin. It faded almost as quickly and she repeated, “Please. I know there’s a ton of stuff we’re supposed to be doing, but …”

  She let her voice trail off. She wasn’t looking at him but she was pretty sure he’d swallowed. Certainly he cleared his throat. “Let me tell Ladranix,” he said.

  “Okay,” she agreed. No harm in that. By the time Ladranix and the others realized what was going on it would be too late for them to do anything about it. Jake would be captive or dead and she’d be luxuriating in the most exquisite high she’d ever known, one that would enable her to forget what she’d done. Jake hurried away, then returned, smiling.

  “Lead on,” he said. They both were familiar with the surrounding area at this point, even out of the remains of the city, and once they’d double-checked for zerg he followed her willingly, completely clueless. He didn’t press her for conversation, and she imagined he was glad for the chance to be quiet as well. At last, they were almost there. She slowed. The meeting place was not much farther, only half a kilometer or so away. She wanted Jake completely unaware, so she came to a stop.

  They stood there for a moment, the moon dim upon them. Now, she thought. Say the words, do what you need to do, and lure him in with a promise.

  “Jake?” She turned her face up to his and stepped closer to him. Now and then she wished she were taller, given her line of work, but her diminutive height always, always worked to her advantage when she had to play helpless.

  Jake stepped back, every line of his body relaying his uncertainty. “Rosemary—what’s going on? What’s wrong? Why did you need to take me so far from the camp to talk to me?”

  She laughed, and this time she didn’t have to feign its shakiness. The mild discomfort was starting to turn into pain. “I—well, what I have to tell you—protoss may like to share everything in the Khala, but this is just for you and me.”

  “Of course,” he said. He reached as if to put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, then stopped himself. Rosemary followed his hand with her gaze, then took it in hers. She curled her fingers around his, entwined them. He didn’t protest, but he was obviously utterly confused.

  “Rosemary?”

  “I hated that name,” she said, and that was the truth. “That’s why I went by R. M.”

  He grinned, relaxing slightly. “When I first read your mind and learned it, the only thing I could think of was how incongruous a name it was for—well, a traitor and an assassin.”

  That was not the line of thought she wanted from him now, and she squeezed his hand. “Yeah. But Jake—you know I’m not that person anymore. Well, not entirely; you can’t change who you are overnight. But … so much has happened. It seems like a lifetime ago that I was that woman.”

  Again, the truth. The woman who’d gone by the moniker R. M. was someone who was in control. She’d kicked her addiction and knew her role and her place in the universe. The woman standing in front of Jake Ramsey, her hand in his, her gut clenching and her body shivering with addictive need, was not that creature.

  “I know what you mean. So much has happened, hasn’t it? But it’s all right. I … I got to know you. When we were in the Khala—I touched you.” His voice was soft.

  Perfect. “You’re touching me now.”

  He nodded, looking very boyish and uncertain in the moonlight. A few more lines and he’d be hers. He’d—

  —be killed. Or tortured. They wanted Zamara, and they would have to go through Jake to get her. Unbidden, unwanted, Rosemary too thought of the moment when she had been so intimately joined with so many, when all that had been her had been seen and touched and known.

  He lifted his other hand and brushed the bangs from her forehead. “I won’t say that I misjudged you, because we both know I didn’t. But—I sure as hell didn’t know everything.”

  Something snapped i
nside her.

  “I can’t do this.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “I can’t do it. I can’t. Not to you, not now. Damn it, let’s go, just—”

  She dropped his hand, whirled, and fled back the way they had come. A second later, he was following, grabbing her arm. “Rosemary, what is it, what—”

  “Let go of me! We have to get back!”

  With practiced ease she shook him off and kept running, as if some part of her truly believed that she could run away from her choices, her need, the siren song of the Sundrop as the pain intensified.

  He grabbed at her again, confused and worried and angry because of it. “Damn it, what’s going on?”

  She whirled and struck out at him. It was testimony to how badly the withdrawal was crippling her that the blow went wild.

  “Don’t you understand? I was going to give you to them!”

  “You—”

  She’d seen that look on the face of those she’d betrayed dozens of times, and never before had it rattled her. Seeing it on Jake’s face—again—suddenly devastated her.

  “They caught me,” she said, and to her shame her voice was raw with pain. “They got me addicted to this stuff they smeared on my body—” Her hands went to her arms and clasped them hard, fighting to control the shivering. “They want Zamara. They said they’d give me more stuff if I—but I couldn’t do it to you. I couldn’t. I—”

  Jake’s arms went around her, and his embrace shocked her, made her go stiff. In some part of her mind that wasn’t screaming in agony, she noted that his arms were surprisingly strong and sure. “Let me in, please,” he whispered in her ear.

  She nodded, dumbly.

  Help me, Jake—I don’t want to be this anymore.

  I’ll help you, Rosemary. I promise. You don’t have to do this alone.

  She felt him—them—racing through her thoughts, laying bare all her plotting, her pain, her shame, every unkind thought, every selfish whim, every moment when she lay vulnerable and exposed before the Tal’darim and their damned Sundrop and the awed mental whispers about their Benefactor. Her knees buckled as a fresh wave of pain hit her.

  Her eyes rolled back in her head. He caught her as she fell. Dimly she felt herself being swept up in his arms, her head being cradled against his shoulder, and then merciful blackness descended.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IN HIS PRIVATE QUARTERS—A LUXURY ON THE battlecruiser—Devon Starke closed his eyes and cleared his mind. It was both easier and harder now than it had been during his days as a ghost, but he would have it no other way. Valerian Mengsk had saved him, and if he had merely traded one form of servitude for another, Devon was fully aware that in this version, he served as himself.

  It had taken Valerian time—perhaps, the young emperor-to-be had feared, too much time—to assemble even this skeleton fleet that now traveled as fast as possible toward Aiur and archeologist Jacob Ramsey. The “fleet” consisted of a single battlecruiser, six Valkyries, and eight Wraiths. Their cargo was made up of marines, siege tanks, and dropships. All this effort to capture one human male. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Starke was uncertain if Ramsey could be called “human” anymore.

  Starke opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Again and again, his thoughts drifted back to that remarkable moment in time where his mind—no, more than his mind; his essence, his … soul?—had connected so profoundly with so many others.

  What the hell had Ramsey done?

  It had been—beautiful. Glorious. And Devon Starke ached for it again. He hoped that somehow, some way, Valerian would be able to experience this. The younger Mengsk was both like and unlike his father. He was disciplined, he was smart, and he was ambitious. But the younger man still had ideals and hopes. He still found beauty in the arts and sciences. He still had compassion. Devon didn’t fool himself that Valerian had saved his life for anything other than his own purposes, but even so, he knew his employer genuinely liked and respected him.

  If Valerian could grasp this, this union—could understand it, as Devon felt he was starting, with all the power of an untrained child, to understand it—then this mission to find Jacob Ramsey could have consequences that might shake the foundations of human existence.

  Rosemary awoke sometime later. She had been bathed and was wrapped in a blanket from the system runner. For a second, her head was clear, and she wondered who had taken care of her. Then nausea struck and she rolled over and retched. Nothing came out; she’d apparently thrown up everything in her stomach.

  Gentle, nonhuman hands closed on her bare shoulders. “The Sundrop had permeated your clothing,” Ladranix said. “When you have fully cleansed your system, we will give you new clothes to wear.”

  She nodded her understanding. Jake knelt next to her. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  “Ladranix isn’t familiar with this topical drug they hooked you on, Rosemary,” Jake said. “He thinks it’s something completely artificial, manufactured by this Benefactor to keep the Forged under his sway.” He took her hand. She gripped it like a lifeline.

  “You can beat this,” Jake said quietly. “I know you can. You’ve beaten drugs before.”

  Tears filled her eyes, scalded them, slipped down her face. “Nothing like this. Believe me.”

  “Zamara and I can help you, but we can’t do it for you.”

  “Wouldn’t want you to,” she said, her teeth chattering.

  He grinned, suddenly and unexpectedly. “That’s the Rosemary I know.”

  Her skin prickled, as though a thousand ants were crawling on it. She spasmed, slapping at her skin. Gentle but insistent hands gripped her, preventing her from injuring herself.

  “I’m coming to join you,” Jake said. “We’ll get through this together. Like we’ve gotten through everything so far.”

  And then he was there, in her mind, sitting next to her mentally just as he was to her physically. Exhausted despite having just woken, Rosemary closed her eyes.

  She was on a hill back on Nemaka. The sky above them was blue from the light of the atmospheric field generators. Jake sat next to her, wearing his customary dig outfit. She was clad in her old familiar jumpsuit.

  “Not the most scenic of places, but one we both know,” he said, grinning at her.

  “Why conjure up a fake landscape anyway?” Rosemary asked.

  Jake sobered. “I thought it would be a good anchor for you. Because the protoss seem to think that your withdrawal will cause you hallucinations.”

  The earth shivered. Rosemary’s hands splayed out to steady herself. Jake’s arm went around her. At the foot of the little hill, the earth caved in, and then things began to crawl out in a thick blanket.

  “Like these,” Jake said with a sigh.

  Rosemary leaped to her feet, reaching for her weapon. The rifle was cool and familiar in her hands, until it turned into a zerg pincer. She dropped it. It snapped, writhing, then grew six legs and began crawling up her leg. Red-hot agony shot through her.

  “It’s not real,” Jake said in her ear. “Not the gun, not the zerg leg. Stand still.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she growled, but fought to obey. The pain increased. It felt as though white-hot needles lanced her, but she summoned her fierce will and didn’t move. The pain increased and she bit back a scream, and then it was gone.

  Until the next hallucination came.

  * * *

  Jake’s heart broke for Rosemary.

  It was easy enough to analyze it intellectually. This Sundrop, whatever the hell it was, produced euphoria in its users. That meant that the brain’s pleasure center, the nucleus accumbens, was being flooded with dopamine. Sundrop appeared to be particularly malicious, as a cursory reading of Rosemary’s thoughts had revealed that while the first high had been ecstatic, each subsequent one had been less so, and the withdrawal worse. Rosemary would not have lasted long, even if the Tal’darim had indeed welcomed her into their fold. Eventually, the withdrawal would have
killed her.

  He wasn’t at all sure it wasn’t killing her now.

  She is battling this, but she needs your strength, Jacob.

  Our strength, he corrected Zamara.

  No, she mused, it is my skills that will help. But you are more effective. She trusts you.

  Jake stared down at the shivering woman in the blanket, surprised.

  I don’t think … I could have endured what she has.

  Few could, Zamara agreed. She is strong, and has retained herself.

  It was no wonder Rosemary had become so cynical and self-serving. The wonder—and Jake stood in awe of it—was that there was a place in her that hadn’t let her bitterness destroy her.

  I can’t help her with this! Jake cried to Zamara. They had done what they could with the technology they had on hand, but they hadn’t dared use any medication.

  She will have to ride this out on her own, Zamara agreed. Her determination and will to survive will either carry her through or not.

  But at least she knows she is being watched over. She knows there’s something to come back to. I wish I could take on her pain for her. She’s so wrung out after fighting it for so long.

  Not even in the Khala can we take on another’s pain, Zamara said, gently. We can know of it, and feel it as our own, but we cannot eliminate it for another. The dark templar have said they fear losing themselves in the Khala, but it is not so, not in the way they think. We remain who we are. And we, in the end, every one of us, must face our torment alone.

  Jake bit his lower lip and sent a thought to Rosemary.

  Come back, Rosemary. Get through this, and come back.

  Her face, drawn with pain but still perfect in its porcelain beauty, showed no sign that she had heard.

  Rosemary blinked sleepily. The scents of smoke and cooking wafted to her nostrils, and she sniffed. She was suddenly ravenous. For a long moment, her mind was a blank. Something was missing….

  Oh, yes. Excruciating torment. That was what was missing.