Eclipsed (Heartstone Book 3)

by Frances Pauli

  Her whole life had been a lie.

  Even Mofitan had kept the prying out. With no discernible psychic skill at all, his shields had held. But in Corah’s head, rough feet trod. They stampeded through her mind like a swarm of insects and left nothing unexamined or un-chewed. Her struggling only spurned them on, suggested she had more information to protect. She knew this, because she’d been them. She knew it, because she deserved what she endured.

  She’d practically invented it.

  Like so many of her own victims, Corah had no choice but to let them in. They invaded, and in the end, they took the only thing she had left of Mofitan. They took every moment, and that meant all the information he’d given her on his friends in Wraith. She failed him even in that.

  When they’d wrung out everything she had to give, the pressure lifted. One by one, Gervis’s psychics slipped from her mind until only Niels remained. He squatted there, in the space he didn’t belong, and waited for her to act. She knew the stance, mental or physical, from the months she’d spent training with him. He’d presented a test, a dare of sorts, though he’d have to know she would fail before they began.

  He’d already taken her strength, her self-respect, and her reason for going on.

  What more do you want? She made the question a dagger and stabbed at him.

  We could take Gervis together.

  If he meant to play her, to set a trap, he should have taken a different angle. He should have known this one wouldn’t appeal to her. Then again, who was she to point out another’s blindness?

  Not for, the cause, right?

  There is no cause. The fury in his thought made her think, once, he might have hoped there was. The people here are too weak to fight back. They need someone to rule them. Someone.

  Don’t.

  Come on, Corah. We always made a great team.

  Except you were on Gervis’s team. The whole time.

  We could take him.

  Kiss my ass.

  Pain knifed through her temples. The presence in her thoughts sharpened, dragged against her until her body arched against it. Rage. Furious rage, so dark and twisting that Corah couldn’t be certain if it was his or her own. She’d sprung his trap, but had it been set to lure her into a bargain, or goad her into a fight? She’d meant to destroy them, to take him down with her. In the end, she hadn’t the skill.

  He cut at her with his emotions, and then pulled away, leaving her shaking, soaked, and alone in her own mind.

  “I’m through with you.” He spoke with no trace of the fury she knew he harbored. No stress on a single syllable, robotic. “Fortunately for you, Gervis is not. Or perhaps that isn’t so fortunate at all.”

  That opened her eyes. She might have drifted away there for a while, let the future bring what it would, but the fear of Gervis Dern still boiled deep in her heart. Fear. Not vengeance in the end, not a lust for the man’s blood but a desperate need to end him before he could hurt her further.

  She lay in the mining office on a cot fashioned of crates and borrowed blankets. When had they brought her here? The last thing she remembered before the psychics had at her was her mining shack, Gervis kicking at her bags. Niels had betrayed her, Gervis knew everything, and Mofitan was dead under the planet somewhere. Moving here belonged to a dark gap in her memory, either plundered or lost to their sedatives and mental rape.

  Niels moved to the desk, still piled high with papers. The others had left them alone, and he’d adopted a new edge, a keener look, a sharper way of moving. His hands roamed down the length of the desk, and she didn’t have to pry to know what he was thinking. The knife.

  “He has plans for you, I’m sure, but I have plans as well. For both of you.” When he turned around again, a blade flashed in his hands. “I don’t intend to share Spectre with Dern, Corah. Believe me or not. I mean to replace him.”

  “Then why keep me from killing him? All these years?”

  “I needed you to tell me what I needed to know. All these years, Corah? Really? You’ve been feeding Gervis information and I’ve been benefiting from it. I know who will join me against him, who will resist, who is vital to operations, everything. I know how to run his whole world, Corah, through you.”

  “Not just me.” She saw the patterns now, the questions lined up, the interrogations made a pretty picture with Niels at the center along with, “Captain Curel.”

  “Well, it seems you’ve finally woken up. Too late, of course. So like you. Of course, Curel. He’s in Spectre now, waiting for my signal to begin.” Niels smiled once, softly enough to feel a flash of the old allegiance. He had plans within plans. Then he lunged at her, raised the knife Curel had planted in their midst, and froze in place.

  His body convulsed, arched for the kill, and the room howled with the reverberating crackle of lightning.

  She could see it at the edges of her rebel leader, a halo of blue fire. When Niels fell forward, the aura remained, a blue outline of him, though he lay on the floor smoking. A shadow replaced him, a bigger man, an impossible savior.

  It spoke with a dead man’s voice, and she saw the flash of perfect, white teeth.

  “Deadly at point-blank range. I have got to get some of these.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “You’re alive.”

  He double-checked the body and tried to give Corah a moment to adjust to the idea of his status as still breathing. He grunted, poked Niels with his boot, and retracted the last of the shock wires from the man’s spine. Very deadly at that range. A little disappointing. He’d have liked to kill Niels a few more times.

  Because from the look of his heartmate, the man deserved that. She had shadows in her face that didn’t belong there. Her bones stood out, and her hair had been shaken free of its knot. That hung at her shoulders, like a tangled heart trapped in some sad spider’s web. He breathed, and cracked before she did.

  “Did they hurt you? Are you…?” Mofitan couldn’t bring himself to say okay. The answer to that had been painted all over her. Not okay. Hurting and shaking and, Shroud on fire, crying.

  “You were buried. The whole mine fell in.” She sniffled and shifted her weight. When Niels fell, she’d sat up, and now the crates beneath her wobbled, shaking more tears from her.

  “Thanks to your buddy here.”

  “He’s working with Curel.”

  “What about Dern?”

  “They meant to betray him too.”

  “You know.” Mofitan stood up and reached out a hand to her. “All this switching about is making my head hurt.”

  Corah laughed, one sharp note that held more pain than he’d have liked. “You should try mine on for a minute.”

  “I prefer things to be as they seem.”

  “Today I’ll agree with you.” She took his hand, looked him in the face for the first time. Shiny. Wide eyes that reflected up at him. “How did you survive?”

  “Remember our little friends underground?” Mofitan helped her stand and then tested her balance by pulling her a step closer.

  “The Chromians?”

  “You are not going to believe this.” He increased the pressure, soft but steady, and brought her another step so that he could see the blue lines just under the skin at her temples. He lowered his voice, squeezed his fingers around hers. “Corah, are you okay?”

  She nodded but he didn’t buy it.

  “Is Dern still the bad guy?”

  “Yes.” That came out with force, with a hiss of her old, tightly wound self.

  “Oh, good.” He laughed when her brow came up. Better. More of Corah to her now. “I was just checking. Because our Chromians are going to take him apart.”

  “What?”

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe it.” He leaned down, slipped his arms around her, and whispered. “They had an army down there.”

  On cue, the firing began outside. He heard the shouting first, a soft whump in the distance that would be one of the cannons, and chuckled. Cannons! The geniuse
s had stolen cannons.

  Corah blinked up at him, wide-eyed. Mofitan nodded, grinned again, and kissed her. Her arms moved up around his neck, pulled him down hard enough that he knew he’d held back long enough, given her enough time to process. No more waiting. She kissed him back, dragged him to her, and curled against his chest. The world outside filled with screaming, with gunfire and the ruckus of war, and Mofitan held his heartmate and felt their rhythms join. Two hearts beating in time. Except of course now it was time to go.

  He broke the kiss long enough to whisper against her cheek. “We should probably…”

  “Yes.” She found his lips again, spawned more fire in his body.

  “It’s just that,” he spoke the words against her mouth, “They might not aim exactly, and we’re right in the middle of things.”

  “Also.” Corah flicked her tongue against his lips once, pulled away just as he’d decided to forget the battle completely. “I have to kill Gervis.”

  “Right.” Mofitan nodded, watched her step over Niels and attack the papers on the desk. “Let’s do that then.”

  “If he gets back to Spectre, he’ll have a bigger army than ours.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  She turned and gave him a look. Disbelief and hope shone in her now, also, the knife she held in her hand. Corah followed his gaze and showed him just how crazy a grin could look. She jerked the blade toward Niels’s body. “There were two knives.”

  “I think I’m good with the zapper.” He didn’t mention the mag-pistol in a belly holster or the grenades in his hip bag, the dagger in one boot, or the second, smaller, zap gun in the other. He just watched her retrieve the other blade from beside Niels and nodded when she’d wiped it off and stood, one weapon in each dainty fist.

  Right.

  “He’ll run for a ship.” Corah’s eyes darkened. “Gervis always runs.”

  “We’ll get him.” Mofitan deciphered the noises outside, moved to the door, and calculated where the battle had manifested. “Just wait.”

  Their subterranean white allies had given him a head start, but they hadn’t held back for long. When Mofitan opened the office door, the Banshee mining complex burned. Most of the pipes were topped with flame now, and a few had been thrown down or bent so that jets of fire shot in places directly at or parallel to the ground. Smoke filled the open spaces, the line of shacks blazed, and Mofitan would have bet from the stench that the damps were on the black side today.

  “Are there any masks in here?” He turned around in time to see Corah rolling a knife into her waistband. She still held the second one and stopped long enough to look around. He didn’t want her out there without a breather. “Check the drawers maybe?”

  Chromians crawled over the rubble outside. He caught flashes of them only, white streaks as they bobbed in and out of their holes to fire their stolen weapons, or dragged something they found useful toward a pile or stash point. He’d seen the maps in the cavern, knew that a maze of access holes lined the underbelly of Banshee. The little bastards had been pilfering from the surface for years in preparation.

  The miners had all fled toward the shipyard. Dern wasn’t the only one who knew a losing fight when he saw it. Now a line of semi-organized men fired back on the ghosts in their midst while simultaneously retreating for any escape route. They’d give Banshee up easily, but if the fight made it to Spectre, the story would play much differently.

  “Here.” Corah appeared at his elbow. She thrust a filter at him. “There were three in the bottom drawer. These two are in the best shape.”

  Mofitan nodded and took the one she offered. He might trust his Shrouded tolerance on a different day, on a day when he had nothing to lose. He strapped the mask over his face and made certain Corah took the same precaution. Today, he had a reason to play it safe.

  That reason grinned at him behind her plastic face guard, waved a dagger point between them, and then ran out past his elbow and straight into the fray. She had blood on her mind, Dern’s blood, and that he could fully understand. Mofitan made the only answer he could. He growled, grinned, and chased his heartmate into war.

  She made it five steps before Mofitan’s hand landed on her shoulder. For a moment, Corah thought he might try to stop her. Instead, he waved an arm toward the edge of the mine.

  “Behind the pipes.” He had to shout over the sound of fire and rifles. “Around their lines.”

  Corah nodded and shifted her trajectory. She headed out at an angle, toward thicker smoke and a path that would hide their approach. His head was clearer than hers at the moment. It was better thinking, going around. Mofitan flanked her, came on a few steps back and to the side and kept his head turning, his rifle aimed at the smoke.

  She should have had more than a couple of knives. Too late to wish for a gun, now. Too late to think straight. Thank heavens her partner could still manage that. Alive. Corah shifted her eyes forward, did her best to match his strategy and keep her attention on their surroundings. That kiss. She’d have to think about him, about them, later. If they made it to later.

  The Chromians moved in the same direction they did, though the little men went straight for the enemy, pushing the miners and pseudo-rebels back and back right up to the edge of the shipyard. There the battle shifted to a one-sided barrage of mag-rifles firing. Dern’s forces fired out toward the Chromians, but the pale aliens only popped up and back, making a constantly moving target and a deadly game of “now you see me.”

  They caught flashes of the action between puffs of smoke and tangles of pipe. As they drew nearer, Corah could see at least three huge shadows on the landing pads. Transports or cargo vessels, either way, Dern’s path out of Banshee was clear and open.

  “Why don’t they break for the ships?” Corah hunkered behind the last twist of pipe, beside a flame spout that shot burning gasses outward to block their forward advance. “The way is open.”

  “Because it’s open.” He grunted and squatted beside her, looking out and narrowing his eyes. “The Chromians have driven them to the landing field. Out there, they could mow them straight down.”

  “Gervis will find a way to the ships.”

  “Right.” He watched, squinting through the smoke. “They’ve been herded. Right to the edge.”

  The battle had been one-sided from the look of things. Corah had to agree there. The Chromians had total surprise on their side as well as some massive mobile and distance weapons she had zero idea how they’d obtained. If Niels’s men held where they were out of self-preservation, it wouldn’t last. Eventually, the danger pushing at them would prove too much and they’d risk bolting across that expanse on the slim shot of making it to safety. Gervis wouldn’t wait, in fact. Gervis Dern would find a way to lead the retreat.

  She scanned the line. The fleeing men had dragged the debris into a shabby barricade, and most of the surviving rebels hid behind it, firing at random or at the places where the Chromians popped in and out. No way would Gervis be anywhere near that. Corah followed the shadows, the fringes of the landing platform away from the dangerous area. He’d be hiding, waiting for a clear moment to run.

  A pipe clanged beside her. Corah felt it vibrate, and heard someone cursing over the hiss of burning gas. They’d nearly sat on him. They had found the same safe corner where Gervis had gone to ground. She heard footfalls on the other side of the fire. He’d know she meant to kill him now. If he’d seen her, he’d make a run for it.

  Nothing but fire and metal between them.

  “It’s him!” Corah shouted for Mofitan’s benefit, but her eyes searched the pipes for a gap. There, a space to squeeze through. She dove on it, knelt, and scooted underneath the metal. The air cleared down there, and Corah crawled forward, found a low path through the debris to the other side. There, she saw only the back of her quarry. Gervis fled her, and she could smell his fear this time.

  Her fingers squeezed the knife’s hilt. She shrugged off Mofitan’s shout, “Wait!” No waiting today. N
othing left to do but chase the bastard down.

  She ran after Gervis with her heart hammering and her knife ready to strike. He looked back once, saw her coming, and did his best to speed his feet. No chance of that. Corah would have chased him to Wraith and back if she had to. As it was, she gained rapidly, caught up with him a step before he reached the landing platforms. Long before the open stretch and the waiting ships beyond.

  He knew she had him, and true to his nature, he flipped again, turned on a heel and dropped to his knees. “Wait. Please, Corah. Don’t do it.”

  She raised the knife and ignored the echo of his words behind her. Mofitan sang from her shadow, wait, wait, but he’d fallen too far back to interfere, too far away to stop her.

  “It was all Niels, Corah. He made me do it. Wait, wait! What do you want? What?”

  “I want you to die.”

  Corah brought the knife down, but Gervis fell away from her. For a second, she thought she’d missed. Then she felt it under her feet, the caving in of the world. Gervis toppled first, but Corah was next as all of Banshee tried to crumble away beneath them. Her knife flew free, and the ground dropped out from under them both.

  She heard them screaming at the lines. Everyone falling. Corah reached for Gervis, imagined choking him with her bare hands before they hit the bottom. Before she could latch onto him, something snatched at the back of her jacket. She was jerked to a halt and then tugged again from below.

  “Hang on!” Mofitan had her from above, but she swung and twisted in his grip. “Hang on, Corah.”

  Something heavy pinning her legs, stopping her from kicking. Gervis. She heard the bastard curse before she realized he clung to her ankles. The landing pad had caved in, no doubt rigged to fall by the Chromians once they’d herded their quarry into the trap she’d been too vengeance-blind to see. She’d chased Gervis to the brink of it, and now, Mofitan held her from the rim of a newly formed shaft while Gervis Dern hung from her feet, dragging on her, pulling her down to hell along with him.

  Dust rained on her head. Mofitan groaned and shifted position, trying to get enough purchase to haul her up. If he succeeded, he’d save Gervis as well. She moved an inch higher, endured another shower of dust, and looked down into a black hole filled only with the snarling face of her enemy.