“Are you sure? If I concentrate my resources on Edmorad and we’ve guessed wrong the Combine could ship her offplanet and we’ll never find her,” Sam said.
“I’m positive. Especially if he has that bitch Trang with him. Send a team to do forensics at the hotel, sure, but we’re wasting time. He’ll know where Carialle is, if she isn’t with him. I’ve got to get to the island. I’ll go by myself if you won’t authorize it.”
Sam pointed at the officer who’d brought the news. “Assemble a tactical team, full gear. We’re going in to take Edmorad and his associates out of play and potentially rescue a highly important witness.”
“You got it, chief. Meet you on the roof in ten.” The man saluted and hurried into the hall, barking orders into his com.
Sam pulled Marcus in the other direction. “We need to gear up for an assault—body armor, the works. Edmorad’s been building an army of enforcers and thugs.”
Carialle felt as if she had gritty sand flowing through her veins rather than blood as she struggled to regain consciousness. Attempting to sit up, she realized she was strapped down. Adrenaline making her heart pound, she opened her eyes to discover with horror she was restrained in a padded chair and there was a medical infusion unit attached to her arm, humming as it delivered unknown medication to her system. The room she was in appeared to be an old style library, with wide windows open to the sea, where she heard the waves pounding on the shore. Terrified, she struggled, unable to scream or call for help because she’d been gagged.
“Awake now, are we?” Edmorad Zymmer strolled into the room, holding a glass full of ruby red feelgood, which he sipped appreciatively. “You’ve led me quite a chase.”
She tried to throw a wave of her power at him, but none answered her call.
“I’ll bet that expression on your face means you’re trying to influence me. Force me to to let you go baack to the boyfriend perhaps? Your special trick won’t work right now,” he said, wagging a finger. “The medicine we’re pumping into you dulls your nervous system quite effectively, until you adapt to it. But by the time you’re fully addicted your self-determination will be gone.” He snapped his fingers. “You’ll be mine, body and soul.”
Carialle recoiled in horror as a new person entered the room—Mrs. Trang. The clinic director crossed the floor rapidly and slapped Carialle across the face with angry force. “You’ve cost me everything, you stupid alien bitch. “ She raised her hand for a second blow but Edmorad caught her wrist smoothly, hauling her off balance to face him instead of Carialle.
“Now, now, I don’t need my asset damaged. I want her controlled. Obedient.”
“Oh she will be, the toranquidol will assure total control over her.” Trang jerked herself free of the boss’s hold and smoothed her dress, casting a baleful sideways glance at their prisoner. “The human test subjects at the lab on the west side of the island were compliant and coherent until we ended the experiment and terminated them. Most interesting to document the phases of fatal withdrawal. Another vital piece of research.”
“She’s trying to say we’ve been making improvements to the original formula, “Edmorad told Carialle, toying with a lock of her hair and yanking her head closer to him when she tried to lean away from his touch. “I’ve been assured now it’ll be possible to completely destroy the subject’s free will and maintain them in a steady state with regular doses of the improved toranquidol. You won’t descend into the vegetative mode like Mrs. Trang’s unfortunate patients did, and I won’t have to insist on your wearing a dangerous explosive necklace to keep myself safe. You’ll cheerfully do anything I tell you to do.”
Carialle shook her head in denial, even as she was terrified Edmorad’s threat was valid.
“I’ll check on your status in a while—I’m going to have work for you to do tonight as a matter of fact. When my associates are assembled.” He tapped his fingers on the medunit hooked to her arm. “This new formula works much more quickly than what Trang gave your boyfriend.”
Edmorad turned and beckoned to Trang, chewing one elegant fingernail while glowering at Carialle. “I’m not leaving you alone with my asset. The chem tech can monitor her while we join the others for dinner.”
As the two walked out of her field of vision, Carialle dropped her head against the cushioned chair holding her prisoner. A new person strolled into the room, gave her a cursory inspection, fiddling with the controls on the medunit and then moving to the desk. She tried to call her power to influence the chem tech to release her but the man paid no attention, sitting at the huge desk, watching music trideos. She couldn’t read his aura. Even if he’d been genetically immune to her power, she’d still be able to see the colors of his soul so the failure told her the medication pumping into her body was suppressing her abilities in terrifying fashion.
She had no doubt Marcus would do everything in his power to find her, but there was no way he’d be in time. Even his ring had been stripped from her finger while she was unconscious. Her thoughts were already fuzzy and disjointed. Without access to her power, she was helpless. Weeping, she closed her eyes and prayed to Thuun to strike her dead before she could be made into a mindless weapon, possibly even deployed against Marcus himself.
Priestess.
The voice in her head was like the rushing wind, deep and swirling with power.
With a jolt, she remembered she was indeed now a priestess, thanks to Marcus, and as such had access to a power denied to those of lesser standing with the god. She didn’t need her innate power to influence her enemies to assist her or harm themselves. By the grace of Thuun, she now had the power to cast death itself. It hadn’t worked on the completely alien Shemdylann when the enemy dropped from the Tulavarran skies and the priests and priestesses sang the death song. The Combine members in this house were as humanoid as she was, however. And there were no more Tulavarran hostages to be slaughtered in revenge if she disobeyed Combine orders. She wondered how many people were gathered in this location. To her knowledge the death song only worked on a few individuals at most before the spell caster was exhausted.
If the song goes on too long I’ll die as well. The dark realization was strangely comforting. She’d rather perish than become a helpless tool for Edmorad or his cronies. At least under the Combine rule before, she’d been able to find ways to rebel, to save a few of the targets, to twist the results she’d been commanded to achieve. There’d be no such wiggle room in the future—from what the Combine manager had said, she wouldn’t even care if innocents were hurt. Of course since the Combine had no idea how a gifted Tulavarran replenished his or her power from the energies of the plants and the planets, she might not last long in any case. No one would know to give her access to what she needed and she’d be unable to tell them. The captives had guarded their secret closely. But she’d drunk deeply from the old growth forest surrounding the cabin. Her reserves at the moment were substantial.
Overthinking. With a start she realized her mind was going in circles while the toranquidol dripped ruthlessly into her body. Wasting precious time.
But one had to sing to cast the death spell and she was gagged.
Carialle made strangling sounds against the gag, tossing her head and convulsing in the restraints, banging the medunit on her arm against the chair with a loud crash.
The chem tech left his chair and stepped to her side. “Now what?” he said. Checking the medunit, he muttered snatches of tech talk about absorption rates and blood oxygen levels while Carialle did her best to feign dying by strangulation. “Oh fuck it,” the man said eventually as he unfastened the gag and threw it on the floor, kicking it under the chair. “I’m not listening to this fuss you’re making for the next hour.”
She drew deep breaths.
“You’re not actually in danger of choking,” the tech said. “You’re getting plenty of air. But I don’t want to be annoyed by all the freaky behavior and racket. Can’t hear my own music vids. Now be a good girl, get over your anxiety
attack, sit and take your meds. You act up again and I’ll not only put the gag back, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t bothered me twice.” He walked to the desk and resumed watching the miniature trideos.
Quietly, under her breath, Carialle hummed the death song to herself, pulling the power into her core and preparing to cast it. The tech’s loud music covered up her own efforts and she was able to concentrate sufficiently to hold to her song, not be influenced by what he was listening to. Regret and sorrow at never seeing Marcus again twined through her preparations and firmly she pushed them away. Let my dying thought be of him, of our love. The fatal energy roiled in her being, hungry to strike at her enemies, who were also the enemies of Thuun. Opening her mouth, she sang at full power. The tech was the only person she could see. He startled from his chair as she sang the first notes, hands over his ears, staggering toward her, but collapsed within a few feet, writhing in agony.
Dimly, Carialle heard screams in the distance as she continued to sing, emptying herself of every bit of stored energy, determined to kill this nest of snakes even as she died.
CHAPTER NINE
“No activity on the island, sir,” reported the tech seated at the scanner board as the police flyer sped through the sky in formation with two others, all heavily armed. “No one’s scanning us, no signs of life.”
“You’re sure Edmorad was on his way here?” Marcus asked, gripping his pulse rifle. His gut told him there wasn’t any margin of error for finding Carialle. A wild comet chase to the wrong Combine location could mean he’d lose her forever, and he wasn’t prepared to accept that. Half formed plans for demanding help from the Mellureans were in the back of his mind, if Carialle wasn’t here.
“Our surveillance team tailed him here, then stood down, away from the island, holding station, as per orders,” the lieutenant in charge said. “We’re coming in on the complex from the island’s blindside.”
Marcus studied the landscape below, composed mostly of gigantic baytim trees, reaching for the sky, balancing on platforms of roots burrowing through the salty ocean waters and into the soil below. A few outbuildings came into view to the starboard.
“Seeing motionless targets on the ground now, sir, looks like bodies.”
Sam and Marcus crowded behind the tech to watch the scanners as the flyer formation swooped closer to the ocean. One man was floating face down in the water next to a boat, and two more lay onshore, weapons close at hand.
“Take us inland and land next to the building complex,” Sam said. “I think we’re too late for whatever happened.”
“A rival Combine faction doing a massive hit maybe?” Marcus asked. And Carialle a prisoner in the midst of the carnage.
“Could be. Word on the streets was Edmorad was going to force an alliance of all the surviving units on Felicia this weekend, and put them under blood oath to accept him as overlord. Maybe another Combine manager had other ideas about who was in charge.”
The flyer set down smoothly on a pad in the center of the island, close to a large, rambling house with many outbuldings. The other two police craft were landing as Marcus and the cops in his vehicle deployed behind Sam, weapons hot, ready to do battle with any Combine personnel who offered resistance.
But there was none. A few more men lay dead near the landing pad and at the entrance to the house. The medic knelt next to one, checking for a pulse. He shook his head. “Gone, sir. Whatever these people died of was painful, judging from the victim’s face and contorted body position.”
“Poison gas maybe?” asked a police lieutenant.
“No signs of any toxins,” the tech reported, watching the readouts on his scanner. “Could have dispersed in the open air by now.”
“Could your lady do this?” Sam asked.
“Maybe. She’s got amazing powers.” Marcus was wild with impatience to get into the house and search for Carialle. Corpses didn’t interest him.
With no further delay, Sam gave the order to move out. The door to the house stood wide open, a woman sprawled dead on the patio.
Marcus paused in his rapid advance, swearing as he caught a good look at her contorted face. “Trang, the bitch who held me prisoner.”
“Guess we won’t be prosecuting her, then,” Sam said. “Pity.”
Stepping past Trang’s corpse, fearful of what the woman might have done to Carialle, Marcus entered the house, cautiously checking to the right, where he found a dining room in a massive state of disarray, chairs toppled and bodies scattered everywhere. One of the dying had clutched the tablecloth as she fell and lay buried under a pile of dishes and congealing food. Red wine spread on the table linens and the floor like blood.
Sam and his team were right on his six, not waiting for the clear signal.
“Spread out, search for Edmorad,” Sam said. “We need to know if there’s any chance he escaped. Preserve any evidence.”
Marcus fidgeted. Carialle was clearly not in this room and not being a cop, he didn’t care about evidence or crime scenes. He was driven by the belief time was ticking away for the woman he loved. “I’m going to do a sweep of the rest of the house.”
“I’ve got your six,” Sam said, leaving the table where he’d been examining an open, active AI. “Lieutenant, take charge here. You two, come with us.”
Marcus prowled down the hall, checking the other rooms along the way with a rapid once over before signaling clear and moving on. At the end of the house was a massive library and there he found Carialle, strapped to a chair, another dead man on the floor. “Seven hells!” Stowing his weapon on his back, he ran forward, clawing at the humming medunit to turn it off and get it away from her. She lolled in the chair like a doll with no stuffing, head to the side, blood dripping from her ears. Huge violet shadows lay under her closed eyes and she looked as if she too had succumbed to whatever magic she’d unleashed. “Carialle, angel, wake up.” He slashed the restraints on her wrists and ankles with his knife and caught her as she fell forward. A soft breath stirred his hair as he checked her neck for a pulse. “Weak, intermittent. She’s alive but barely.” His own heart stuttered at finding her alive.
“Medic!” Sam’s shout was peremptory. He jerked a thumb at one of the men with them. “Go get him. This kidnap victim is our top priority.”
Tenderly Marcus lifted Carialle from the chair and took her to a couch along the wide wall, laying her on the plush cushions before kneeling at her side. Leaning close, he kissed her cheek, which was icy cold under his lips. “Stay with me, angel, help is here.” Her eyelids flickered but she didn’t open her eyes or respond in any other fashion. He rubbed her arms and laid his hand tenderly against her cheek where a huge green and purple bruise spread in an ugly circle. “What the hell did those bastards do to her?”
“Apparently she got her revenge on them, whatever they had in mind.” Sam bent over and picked a container off the desk near the couch “Toranquidol,” he read from the label.
“The drug Trang used on me at the clinic,” Marcus said, “But it didn’t work this fast.”
The medic arrived and shouldered Marcus aside to take Carialle’s vitals. “Not sure what we can do for her, sir,” he reported to Sam over his shoulder. “She doesn’t register on the instruments as anything we’ve seen in the Sectors before so the AI has nothing to recommend as treatment. Don’t have an antidote for that street drug either. Her heart’s barely beating. Other organs shutting down. I’m afraid we’re going to lose her before we can fly her to the mainland, sir.”
Marcus stood by her head, resting one hand on her shoulder so she’d have peripheral awareness he was there for her. The medic’s grim words hit him like so many heavy stones. This is impossible— I’m not going to let her die. But he was no doctor, had no magic like she did, what could he do?
The medic rummaged in his kit, debating with himself out loud between two courses of medication. “Not sure if she can tolerate either of these and the drug used on her is highly resistant to the effect of stimulatin
g agents.”
“Adrenaphix worked for me,” Marcus said.
A dubious expression on his face, the medic shook his head. “Not sure her system could take the jolt from an upper that strong right now.”
“Do your best,” Sam said. “Every minute we keep her with us is a chance we can get her real help, at a hospital or maybe from the Mellureans. I put out a call on the case before we left.”
Marcus shook his head. Sam’s words were so much static to him, with no real hope for Carialle. She needed an intervention now to save her life. He clenched his fists and bowed his head, furious he had nothing to offer her.
Warrior.
The voice in Marcus’s head was like a torrential downpour of rain or a huge wave crashing on the shore. He staggered, hand to his forehead, dizzied by the power flowing in the wake of the single word.
He shoved the medic out of the way and bent to lift Carialle into his arms. “I know what to do.”
The cops were uncertain, upset at the way he’d treated their comrade. They didn’t know him the way their boss did and moved as if to interfere with his leaving the room.
Juggling Carialle, he pulled his pulse rifle up to menace the men between him and the door.
Eyes narrowed, jaw set, Sam evaluated him for a moment, before making a ‘back off’ gesture to his men. “Let him pass. He’s got a plan and you heard the medic tell me there’s nothing we can do.”
Marcus ran out of the house, Carialle’s body featherlight in his arms. He thought she curled into his embrace but couldn’t be positive. He sprinted toward the shoreline, where there was a beach of white sand, bracketed by centuries’ old stands of the baytim trees. Selecting one towering fifty feet above the others, he headed toward it. Sam was running with him, stride for stride.
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