Dark Stranger

by Susan Sizemore

  Why had the camp commandant sent for him? Were all the prisoners in danger? Was it because of her?

  The sense of impending doom strung her nerves to the breaking point. She began to walk up the main ramp, not knowing where she was going. She just needed to move.

  She hated the dimness of the corridors, the hot, faintly damp texture of the dull gray walls, the scent of human sweat and alien secretions mingling in the endlessly recycled air. The shadows and the outlines of bodies moving through them were all still creepy to her. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, but her mind hadn’t. She still frequently got lost away from the main level of the prison.

  She’d reached the second tier above the plaza when Doc’s bellowed shout bounced off the walls from high above.

  “Dark coming! Five-minute blackout!”

  She stared upward, straining to see him. What did he mean?

  At the same instant his warning thought burst into her mind with such force it drove Zoe to her knees. For a moment she teetered precariously on the edge of the open walkway. She saw the plaza floor below where she swayed as she tried to pull back.

  Then the universe went darker than dark—

  The scream that burst from her throat joined hundreds of others in the sudden night. She’d had the warning but that didn’t stop the panic.

  But the warning helped the terror subside quickly. Even all the screaming had a calming effect—it helped her know she wasn’t alone. She managed to fall sideways onto the wide walkway. She lay there shaking for a time, then scooted back until her shoulders touched the wall. Her hands bunched into tight fists. The sound of her own quick breathing was harsh in her ears.

  The darkness weighed tons.

  The walls were closing in.

  There was nothing but black, nothing but black, nothing—

  It won’t last. Everything’s fine. Five minutes. It won’t last.

  Zoe curled into a ball as she repeated Doc’s warning over and over in her head. His thoughts kept her sane. The thought of him kept her sane.

  Where was he? She needed him.

  She began to crawl. She knew it was futile and stupid but she did it anyway.

  She had no idea how long it was or how far she went before the heavy body that landed on top of her brought her back to her senses.

  “Ouch!” she yelled as a sharp elbow jabbed her in the stomach.

  “Sorry!” a male voice shouted in her ear.

  The next thing she knew she and the stranger were holding on to each other in a tight, hard embrace, clinging to life in the blackness. Hers was not the only heartbeat, the only breath; warmth radiated from skin other than her own. She breathed in masculine scent, felt hard muscle beneath her hands, pressed against her body. Her body pressed against his. Their mouths found each other and clung desperately.

  The kiss did not sear her, it did not arouse her, but it still meant everything—sharing and comfort passing from human to human.

  She still wanted Doc. Needed Doc.

  But this was—nice….

  When she broke the kiss the stranger did not protest. They still held each other tight.

  “I’m Zoe,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “Joaquin,” he answered. He ran a hand up and down her back. “Thanks, Zoe.”

  “You, too.”

  She kissed his cheek, no more than a chaste, friendly gesture as she put a little distance between them. His answering sigh told her he understood.

  They had nothing else to say, but they stayed together, holding hands, until the lights came back on. Then they looked at each other while their eyes adjusted. The dimness was bright as daylight after only a few minutes of complete darkness.

  “Just how old are you?” Zoe asked the blushing marine.

  This got a grin from him. “Old enough, ma’am.”

  She remembered the heat of his mouth on hers and it was her turn to blush. This boy was more experienced than she was. “Yes, well …”

  Now that everything was back to normal he helped her to her feet and they went their separate ways.

  The only problem was, when Zoe was alone she didn’t know where she was.

  17

  Zoe shook her head as she pressed her back against the cool stone wall. How stupid of her not to have learned every inch of the prison! Never mind that the texture and color of the walls was the same everywhere, that the low lighting hardly varied, that the corridors and ramps were the same width, the ceilings the same height except over the plaza. Never mind that the endless, dull sameness weighed on the spirit and encouraged lethargy. She should never allow others to dictate her actions, even on a subconscious level.

  Hadn’t she been drilled in the philosophy that knowledge was power? You never knew when some seemingly irrelevant tidbit could turn into the most important information in the universe. She’d been lazy, only learning her way around the plaza level, plus knowing how to get to her quarters and the Asi corridors.

  All she could do now was wander until she found herself in familiar territory. Instead of seeing it as a waste of time, she used the exercise to memorize more of her surroundings.

  Besides, how could she waste time when time was something she had far too much of?

  For the first minute or so she moved on wobbly legs, still half afraid that total darkness would unexpectedly return.

  “Don’t be a coward,” she grumbled when she found herself pressed against the wall once more with her eyes closed and an image of Doc Raven dominating her thoughts. I will not put my weakness on him, even in my own mind. He deserves any aid I can give him, not the other way around.

  She took a deep breath and walked up three levels of the ramp that curved around the edges of the main shaft. Zoe greeted the people she encountered but didn’t ask for directions as this was an exercise in self-reliance. She didn’t ask where Doc was, although she was asked the question twice. The overall mood of the prisoners in the hallways was on edge, shaken. She wasn’t the only one with the marks of tears staining her face. Nor was she the only one who’d found solace in the joining of flesh to flesh.

  Many people were acting on the same instincts that had driven her and Joaquin together. The groans and pounding rhythms and sharp scent of arousal issued out of many of the dark sleeping hollows she passed. Bodies writhed in shadowed depths of the halls as well.

  Today Zoe was not amazed at how much sex went on within the confines of the POW camp. Sex was evidence they were still alive, a panacea for uncertainty and loneliness; it was simple human nature. She understood the temptation now far better than she had when Doc told her she’d probably hook up with someone.

  People making love in the semiprivate shadows of the hallways were always tacitly ignored by passersby, but she was an empath, and today her emotional senses were almost overwhelmed. She could almost tactilely feel every touch and response. She ached inside; her breasts grew heavy and hot need coiled deep in her body.

  Zoe began to run down another unfamiliar corridor.

  Lust followed her. Lust beckoned her. She became more and more a part of the grunts and sighs coming out of the dark; the slap of skin against skin and the musky aroma of sex battered down every mental barrier.

  There was a faint tang of hot copper in the air as well. It filled her mind and burned her throat. A fierce ache in her mouth made her swipe her tongue across her teeth and brought a shock of surprise when she didn’t feel the fangs that—

  Zoe sank to her knees and pressed her fists to her temples. Who the hell am I? What am I doing?

  Where is he?

  Urgency drew her to her feet, but it was Zoe who moved forward—not whatever it was that tried to claim her.

  She still wanted blood.

  The blood scent drew her on when she knew she should turn and run.

  She knew what she would find at the end of the blood trail.

  Who.

  What.

  Knowledge didn’t stop the devastating shock when she came acros
s the couple pressed against the wall at the very end of the corridor.

  Even in the near darkness she could not mistake Doc’s hard, heavily muscled body. His head was cradled against the woman’s shoulder, the woman’s hands were pressed hard against his bare back, clinching him tightly to her while she moaned in ecstasy.

  Damn you, Zoe thought, though she had no right to.

  Rightly or not, the twin agonies of loneliness and jealousy shot through her.

  Damn you!

  She almost struck the broad back before her, but she didn’t lose the control she’d fought so hard for.

  It was not for her to cry and rage. She had no right to take anything personally. But she came close.

  She managed to keep her balled fists at her sides. She managed not to shout or scream or make a complete and utter fool of herself even though humiliated anger burned through her.

  Shaking, she began to back away. She must’ve made some sort of noise, or even spoken aloud, because she’d gone no more than a couple of steps when Doc lifted his head and turned to look directly at her.

  She had the briefest impression of animal eyes flashing out of the dark before she turned and ran.

  Doc knew there was a physical world at his back but his universe focused on the female his hard body pressed against the wall. He was in the hot, red, carnal place, caught in the takegivedevoursustain loop where Barb’s orgasms registered as explosions of fire inside his mind, under his skin, on his tongue. Her lust-spiced blood burned his throat. Her passionate response was as sustaining as the blood that fed his body.

  When the pain lanced through him it almost drove him to his knees. His head came up in a howl of pain before he turned to find—

  The hot blood on his tongue froze.

  The sharp agony thrusting into his being was a braided spear of pure emotions—jealousy, betrayal, wanting, loneliness—all aimed at him. Her emotions.

  All for him.

  “Zoe!” The word came out a rough whisper.

  Barb dug sharp nails into his bare shoulders when he started toward Zoe. He barely felt them. She put herself between them.

  “What do you mean, Zoe?” she shouted in his face. She tried to hold him. “Where are you going?”

  “Zoe.”

  He knew that as night gave him life he had to get to his Zoe.

  “What’s so important about Zoe?” Barb shouted after him.

  “Everything.”

  “You bastard!” Barb screamed the words at his back. They echoed off the walls around them.

  He heard the heartbreak he caused in the mortal woman’s voice. He hated hurting her, but another woman’s heart was more important to him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He wasn’t sure which woman he was talking to, which one he had betrayed. His words were a confused whisper, though they set off an emotional landslide inside of him.

  18

  “You’re not one of those fools who thinks we’re safe from the mutants!—

  —demons from hell—”

  She’d seen a demon in the dark, and the sight frightened her primitive soul.

  But it wasn’t the first time she’d heard the Exclusion-ists’ rants. The arguments. The accusations.

  The truths?

  She knew all about them, didn’t she? The suprahu-mans. The mutants. Demons.

  They called themselves the elves. The werefolk. The—

  Vampires.

  I am a fool, she thought, and stumbled on, blinded by tears.

  “You can’t think of them as humans!” she remembered the Exclusionist leader shouting at the board of justices at the last civil liberties hearing she’d attended. “They are nothing but parasites that crawl out of the dark to live off real humans. They have no more right to citizenship than the Hajim or the Kril no matter how much they look like us. Use the War Powers Charter to strip them of their influence, their wealth, everything they have. Lock them up. Better yet, destroy the bloodsuckers!”

  Parasite. Bloodsucker.

  She’d seen what Raven was doing. She saw how he made Barb enjoy it.

  She’d felt it.

  Wanted it.

  Until that moment she’d thought the Exclusionists’ ravings were just ancient prejudice, a horrible sick habit of fearing and hating all that was different that bubbled up out of the most primitive part of the human mind.

  But what if they were right?

  When a monster could make you want what they did to you—

  Stop it! she told herself. How dare you of all people judge—but if not me, then who … ?

  What’s really getting to you?

  This time the voice in her head asking the question was Raven’s.

  She refused to listen to his voice though she couldn’t get away from her own as she felt her way along the damp walls toward the hole where she could hide.

  Wait for me, Zoe!

  Leave me alone, Raven! Please, she prayed. Just let me hide.

  Zoe’s head ached so much she could barely see by the time she stumbled the last few meters to her own little cave. The echo of the strong voice her shielding tried to keep at bay hammered against her temples.

  Stupidly, unreasonably, she was still crying.

  The last time she’d cried had been at the death of her older sister. That had been important. That had been worth crying over. Three hundred people dead in an accidental shipyard explosion, her sister among them, had been a tragedy. Catching a man getting a little nookie was hardly just cause for such emotional upset. Never mind what the man was or how he got off.

  It’s the darkness, that’s all. Just the darkness wearing me down and changing me somehow. I’ve always hated the dark. I thought I’d gotten used to it, but the five-minute blackout messed with my mind—and my hormones. It has nothing to do with Raven.

  Do you hear that, Raven? This has nothing to do with you!

  She knew it was a lie, and hoped the thought was trapped by her guard shields, because it would be far too easy for Matthias Raven to refute if he chose to call her on it.

  As Zoe reached the entrance to her hole she realized why her head was hurting—it wasn’t just her using the mental shields. General Raven, the telepathic vampire, was trying to get past her shielding for a deliberate bit of sabotage. He was trying to make her forget what she’d seen.

  “No chance of that,” she growled.

  He couldn’t influence her like he did the others. She wasn’t a normal person. Neither was he. This knowledge left her with a knot in the pit of her stomach, and ache in her heart, and—

  She had to think clearly about this. She had to figure out what to do.

  She dashed tears from her eyes before ducking into her quarters. Only to hesitate when she thought she heard movement inside.

  The jolt of fear added to her already stressed emotions.

  What would she find in there? An Asi? A Denthera? A horny male looking for sex?

  More than likely it was someone who’d been as scared and lost in the dark as she’d been and had crawled inside by mistake. She couldn’t just stand out here waiting to see what would come out.

  She hesitated for another moment, then called, “Who’s there?”

  There was no answer, but a familiar figure appeared in the doorway and beckoned her inside.

  Zoe almost laughed with relief, but knew the laughter would’ve turned into hysteria if she’d let it out.

  “Jazoan,” she said as he faded back into the shadows.

  She was smiling when she followed her security officer inside. A burden lifted from her at the sight of him. She’d missed this grim shadow that was always at her back.

  “I’m sorry it took me so long to find you,” Jazoan whispered when they were out of sight.

  He was thinner, but then they both were. She was used to his having a carefully guarded expression, but the gaze he turned on her now was haunted.

  “It’s all right,” she told him. She curbed the impulse to reassuringly touch the reti
cent security officer.

  “I was sent to a different camp, initially,” he told her.

  “On this world?” she asked eagerly, hungry for any information. “There’s more than one camp here?”

  General Raven had told her of other prison camps. But there were other vital details he hadn’t bothered mentioning.

  Lots of other vital details.

  Damn it! Stop thinking about the man—thing—person—and concentrate on business!

  “You look horrible,” she said to Jazoan. “Are you feeling all right?”

  As usual he ignored any personal comments. “There are no other camps on this world,” Jazoan answered. “I was on the transport ship that arrived three cycles ago.”

  She nodded, aware of the uproar the latest shipment of human prisoners had caused. “I spent the better part of the cycle when your lot arrived trying to calm down the Asi leader. He acted like it was our fault more humans had been dumped in here.”

  Jazoan frowned. “Lady, have you been disobeying the protocol for this situation?”

  How like Jazoan to think only of the rules of the mission. “Circumstances change.”

  “Protocols do not.”

  “I’ve been doing what I can to help our people in this prison camp.”

  “Your safety is more important than the welfare of a few people. If you have revealed—”

  “Lieutenant Zoe Pappas has been using her diplomatic training in the service of the Empire,” she cut him off. “That’s hardly breaking cover.”

  He was not in the least mollified, or intimidated by her haughty tone. “The Hajim are looking for you. It’s perilous to draw attention to yourself in any way.”

  “I know that.”

  “A few people are as important as billions,” she told Jazoan. Whether those people had claws or tails or flesh or—all right, fangs. All people deserved the best you could do for them or you had no right to put yourself in authority over them.

  Studying Jazoan’s stern expression, she suddenly had a horrible suspicion. “You managed to find your way here, but why did you get separated from me on the ship? You followed that young man, Lieutenant Ryan, didn’t you? The one who recognized me.”