Was he going to fail this woman, too?
Never mind that succeeding when he wasn’t supposed to could theoretically cause a universe-destroying apocalypse. If he failed, she died. And for Warlords, failure was simply not acceptable.
Even less acceptable was the idea of failing Jane.
He glanced at her as she drove. Her delicate profile was set and grim, her hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He remembered the pleading eyes of the woman who’d died in his arms. The fear of seeing Jane look at him with that same terrorized despair made his gut clench into a fist.
He had to kill the bastard.
“There’s the smoke,” Jane told him. There was fear in her eyes, but something told him it wasn’t for the woman they’d come to save, or even for herself.
It was for him.
That realization sent another sensation rolling through him—not fear or even anger, but warm pleasure that she cared.
And that, he knew, wasn’t good. A warrior could not afford to feel too much, care too much. That kind of emotion could cloud thought, make you prone to fatal mistakes. Shut it down, he thought.
Besides, it wasn’t as though they had a future. He thrust the thought aside.
The SUV rounded a corner. His eyes locked on a small wooden house off to the right, surrounded in a cloud of smoke pouring from under the eaves. The heat had not yet shattered the windows; he could see the leap of flames through the glass.
Baran unbuckled his seat belt and threw the door open before she’d even brought the truck to a halt. He didn’t allow himself to look back.
Is the Xeran inside? he demanded of his computer.
Yes. Along with a human. Sensors indicate she has been injured. Fire burning at multiple locations, indicating arson.
Guide me to them.
Fifteen
Baran was halfway across the yard before Jane got the truck parked, running with that inhuman speed she knew meant he was in riatt. As she watched, he jerked the screen door open and found the front door locked. Without hesitating, he kicked it in so hard she heard the wood crack from the curb. Smoke billowed out in gray, choking waves.
“Dammit, he needs an air pack and protective gear!” She’d worked fires long enough to know how deadly smoke and heat could be for an unprotected human, genetically enhanced or not.
“Well, he doesn’t have them,” Freika said as she flung open the driver’s door and leaped out. He loped after her as she ran across the yard. “And where the hell are you going? We’ve been through this. You can’t go in there. He doesn’t need the distraction.”
Maybe not, but she was damned if she’d let him go into a burning house after that psychopath by himself. With no gear, if Druas didn’t get him, smoke inhalation would. Jane put down her head and ran harder.
The next instant something massive hit her back, sending her flying. The world tilted as she plowed into the grass in an impact that drove the air from her lungs.
“Sorry,” Freika said grimly, settling his considerable weight on her back, “but you’re not going anywhere.”
All she could do was fight for enough air to curse the wolf.
Though it was daylight, the inside of the house was pitch black and flooded with choking clouds of smoke. Baran couldn’t see a damn thing, but his computer painted a sensor image behind his eyes, picking out the shapes of furniture and walls and the glowing heat signature of the flames Druas had set as a blazing obstacle course.
He looked around. Just beyond the next wall, his sensors showed a pair of glowing blue images: a male silhouette standing over a female shape curled on the floor. Druas and the hostage, both in the kitchen, surrounded by a ring of flame.
Baran knew he had less than a minute to get the woman out. The heat would sear his lungs as thoroughly as it would hers, killing them quicker than even the smoke inhalation could.
Took you long enough, Druas commed to him as he leaped a flaming coffee table. Evidently the killer had sensors of his own. I was getting bored. And she’s getting crispy.
As if to punctuate his taunt, a female scream ripped through the air, ringing over the roaring crackle of the blaze.
Baran swore silently. His sensors told him the bastard was wearing combat armor, a helmet and a breathing unit. With that kind of equipment, Druas could swim in molten lava without breaking a sweat. The Jumpkiller could easily trap Baran in the house until the heat finished him off.
That wasn’t a game Baran had any intention of playing. He had to snatch the woman up and get out, even if he had to punch his way through a wall. They didn’t have time for anything else, not even the seconds it would take to disable Druas’s suit with the ring.
What, no pithy reply? No chilling threats?
The kitchen doorway was blocked by flame. Baran dived through it, feeling the heat singe his skin. Without breaking step, he lunged for the woman on the floor. At least lying down there, the air was cooler. Maybe she would sur…
Druas caught him with a vicious kick to the jaw that slammed him into the wall behind him. The entire house shook with the impact.
Somehow he managed to hit the floor on his feet, despite the stars that flooded his vision. So much for taking the bastard off-guard.
Not that easy, Warlord, Druas mocked. You disappoint me. I’ve been looking forward to this fight.
You want a fight, come outside and face me, Baran commed back. Without the T-suit and the armor—and without a woman as a shield. He snapped into a spinning kick that could have taken the bastard’s head off even with his helmet, but Druas somehow jerked aside at the last minute.
But the move had done what Baran intended—created an opening. He swooped down and snatched the woman, then wheeled toward the back door.
You do know Liisa was my first kill? Druas stepped through the smoke to block him, shooting a fist toward his head.
Only training let him duck in time, the woman still cradled in his arms. He didn’t dignify the Jumpkiller’s ridiculous lie with an answer.
I loved the way she squealed for me. And she was so tiiight…. Despite the smoke, Baran could almost hear the sneering grin on his face. None of the others have been as good. But Jane…Jane has possibilities.
Kakshit! Baran commed, goaded into a reply. You weren’t there. You only heard the stories. Even in the deep, hot well of his rage, he felt the woman stir and moan. He had to get her out before the heat killed her. The back door…
Perhaps. Everybody knows why the Death Lord kills.
He ignored the mocking words and turned. The heat burned his lungs with every inhalation. He’d have to kill the bastard later.
But do they know what Gelar did to you just before you killed him and escaped?
Baran froze. Unable to help himself, he looked back at his enemy, at the cold, blue gleam that was all his sensors could show him in the choking smoke.
They’d paralyzed you with your comp. I was in the next room, finishing Liisa, when I heard him say he wanted your mouth next. Then I heard him scream. Did the fool free you for that one second? Did he…?
You’re lying. Even as he commed the words, he rammed his foot into the door so hard the flimsy wood seemed to explode. If you’d heard, you’d have stopped me. He leaped, carrying the woman out into the blessedly cool air.
I never liked Gelar.
You weren’t there. I’d have seen you. Gritting his teeth, he ran, forcing himself to carry his limp burden to a safe distance from the house. Glancing down at her in the sunlight, he winced at the burns. And I’d have killed you.
Oh, you’d have tried. The commed words slid into his brain like snakes. Which is why I had no desire to run into a Warlord in riatt after I’d just butchered his girlfriend. But I did take a trophy before I left…
As he bent to lay the woman on the cool grass, Baran looked up to see Druas standing in the doorway. Something gleamed dully through the billowing smoke; a thin gold chain wrapped around the killer’s gloved fist. A locket dangled from the chain.
Just as Baran realized he recognized that locket, Druas caught it between his thumb and forefinger.
From its center appeared a hologram image of Baran. Not as the man he was, but as the sixteen-year-old boy he’d been when he’d given Liisa the necklace.
With an incoherent roar of rage, Baran rose from the woman and started toward his enemy. If he could just pin the bastard long enough to disable his T-suit, he could take the Xeran apart.
BOOM! Wood splinters flew as the sonic boom from Druas’ T-jump blew out the doorframe.
Leaving Baran staring in helpless fury at the spot where his enemy had been. “Fuck,” he snarled, just as a man in a bulky gray and yellow suit ran around the corner, Jane and Freika at his heels.
“Fire trucks just got here,” she said breathlessly as the suited man dropped to his knees beside the woman.
The man looked up. “Anybody still in the house?”
Baran clenched his fists. “Nobody.”
The SUV was filled with the smell of smoke as Jane drove them all home after yet another interrogation. The silence from Baran’s side of the truck was so leaden with fury, even Freika seemed subdued.
The woman had been medevaced to a burn unit in Georgia that was the closest facility available to treat such severe injuries. Baran had miraculously escaped any serious burns, though his face and hands were bright red. He’d seemed grateful for the oxygen the fire fighters had pressed on him, though. He kept coughing, and the lining of his nose was black with soot.
They’d been lucky the first paramedic had been too busy with the woman to notice the hot coal blaze of his eyes. Jane had barely managed to slip him a spare pair of sunglasses before anybody else noticed.
She’d wanted to take him home, but Tom had other ideas. The detective had grilled them mercilessly yet again.
Before he’d let them leave, he’d told them he was ordering a tap on Jane’s phones, both at home and at the paper. She didn’t dare protest.
Baran had answered the cop’s questions in a low, deadly monotone that made Jane nervous. Judging by the way Tom eyed him, she suspected they were lucky they had an entire newspaper office full of people who could alibi the Warlord for the time the fire was set.
Baran hadn’t said a word since.
“You want to tell me what the hell’s wrong?” Jane said, unable to endure the icy silence any longer.
He shrugged his powerful shoulders. His face could have been chiseled from granite for all the emotion he showed. “I went in, I got the girl out, Druas played his games. There’s not much else to tell.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why I feel as if I’m sitting next to a nuclear bomb, waiting for the explosion. What happened?”
“Nothing I have any intention of discussing with you.” The snarl was so low and deadly, Jane felt her courage desert her.
Maybe, just this once, she should leave well enough the hell alone.
Baran had never known who’d murdered Liisa. It wasn’t for lack of trying; he’d interrogated every Xeran he’d hunted down for the torture and murder of his team. Even those who’d participated in her rape seemed to have no idea who’d butchered her. He suspected they’d have given the killer up if they had. The Xerans were a vicious lot, but even so, many of them had been disgusted at the sick brutality of her murder.
In retrospect, Baran should have realized Druas was the killer when he’d seen what the Xeran had done to Mary Kelly. Her body had been mutilated the same way as his lover’s had been.
The mystery had haunted him for more than two decades. Now it was solved, but he felt no sense of relief, no sense he was close to the revenge he’d thought would bring him peace and lay Liisa’s ghost to rest.
Oh, he knew he’d eventually either kill Druas or die in the attempt.
What terrified him was the very real possibility that the Jumpkiller would get to Jane first. And he knew the Xeran had every intention of doing so.
Baran also knew exactly how it felt to be at the mercy of a man like that. Gelar had told him in great detail exactly how he intended to kill him while he was paralyzed and helpless.
He’d never had any interest in having sex with another man. The idea wasn’t an anathema to him, but neither did it have any appeal. Yet being raped, having another man take from him what he had no desire to give…
Baran was a Warlord. He’d been raised to fight, trained to die rather than surrender, taught that failure was never an option. By capturing and torturing him—by raping him—the Xerans had rubbed his face in his failure. And by using his comp, the source of his complete control over his body, they’d stripped away his identity as a Warlord.
And in a way he’d never gotten it back, even though he’d successfully tricked Gelar into freeing him. The fact was, he still hadn’t been in time to save the rest of his team. Not even Liisa, who’d believed in him.
As the years passed, he’d hunted down each and every one of the Xeran murderers he could identify, and he’d killed them—most through challenge and combat, a few by simple execution. Yet no amount of Xeran blood could ever change the fact that he’d failed the team.
Failed the woman he loved.
He’d never allowed himself to be a permanent member of another team again. That was why he’d volunteered to become a military assassin, a job most Warlords considered dishonorable. He’d thought it would allow him to work alone. Instead, the High Command had assigned Freika as his partner. By rights, working with an animal should have been safe, but the wolf had refused to let him keep his distance. Slowly, relentlessly, Freika’s intelligence and humor had seduced him into caring again, had broken through his cold emotionless shield.
Yet bright as Freika was, Baran could tell himself the wolf was still only an animal, still as much artificial intelligence as living being.
He couldn’t fool himself about Jane.
To make matters worse, she was not only human, she was even more delicate and fragile than Liisa had been. At least Liisa had been a Warfem. Jane was just prey. If Druas got his hands on her, she was dead.
He turned his head to study her as she drove, and was struck again by the clean, delicate lines of her profile. Her full lips seemed to pout slightly, as though begging a kiss. Her breasts rose and fell under her silk blouse as she drove. Looking at them, he thought he could see the gentle contours of her nipples beneath the fabric.
The sudden rise of hunger took him by surprise. He knew it shouldn’t have. He’d been in riatt, after all; the downslope from the hyper state was at least part of the reason he was in such a foul mood.
The other part was his fear that he’d fail her. As he’d failed Liisa and his team and all the women Druas had murdered.
It would have been so much easier if she’d been what she was supposed to be: just another human female. Someone to protect and fuck, but without the ability to touch him on any level other than the physical.
Jane was so much more than that. She was as bright and fiery as she was beautiful. What was worse, she was also maddeningly unaware of her own vulnerability. She’d seen what Druas could do, yet she kept insisting on taking a role in the hunt, even if it meant putting herself in harm’s way.
And she’d made him care about her as he’d been careful not to care about anyone else in decades.
It was all going to end in pain. Even if he did succeed in protecting her, he was going to have to leave, and he’d never see her again. Never even have the possibility of seeing her again; she’d be centuries dead the minute he got back to his own time.
The thought sent a shaft of grief shooting through him. Damn her anyway. She was going to make him suffer for the rest of his life. How had she done this to him? He hadn’t even known her that long.
Eyes fixed on her face in a dark combination of hunger and angry despair, he watched her turn the wheel to send the SUV into the driveway of her house. His eyes drifted down to the rise of her breasts again. A hot, angry lust rose.
If he had to suffer,
he was damn well going to enjoy himself in the meantime.
Jane turned the key and sat slumped as the SUV’s engine growled into silence. She shot a look at Baran. He smelled of smoke, and his face was soot-streaked and red from the radiant heat burn. That ticking-bomb feeling she had about him had not gone away.
She knew why when he reached up and pulled off his sunglasses. His pupils blazed in that particular way she’d come to recognize as a combination of lust and rage. Perversely, she felt her body tighten.
Oh, that’s sick, she thought, and jerked the door handle of the SUV. The man wants to give me another dominance fuck, and instead of being pissed, I get turned on. Aloud she said, “Forget it,” and thrust the door open.
“Forget what?” Baran said in that low, hot voice he used whenever lust was simmering just under the surface.
She swung out of the truck and strode for the front door. He opened the passenger door and followed, Freika at his heels.
“You’re not pinning me against the wall and screwing me because you’re in a bad mood.” She dug the keys from her purse and reached to unlock the door.
Before she could swing it open, he stepped up behind her and lowered his head. His teeth closed over the lobe of her ear in a gentle erotic bite that made her knees weaken. “Why not?” he breathed, and cupped her breasts in big hands. Long fingers found and squeezed her nipples through the satin of her bra. “You like it when I pin you against the wall. When I pull down your pants. When I start working my cock into your tight little cunt an inch at a—”
“Now you’re being a bastard,” she managed, the keys rattling desperately as she struggled to get the door open before he seduced her on the front steps in front of half of Tayanita. Though that would probably put the whole gay rumor to rest, she thought wildly.
The key finally slid in and turned, and she shoved the door open. Freika slipped past her, blocking her path for an instant as he scooted inside.
That instant was all Baran needed. He bent smoothly, hooked an arm under her thighs, and scooped her neatly off her feet. “But, Jane,” he said, carrying her inside without missing a beat, “I thought you knew—I am a bastard.”
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