The In Death Collection, Books 30-32

by J. D. Robb

  “Both.”

  “Don’t wish it,” he told her. “Just win.”

  He programmed Quest-1, level four, and requested the last run by Bart on the copy.

  “I’ll take the sword,” Eve said, and kept it by her side as the room shimmered into a forest glade where silver beams of sunlight streamed through tall trees in full leaf.

  Roarke wore a brown tunic, rough trousers, knee boots. His sword was sheathed at his side, and on his back was a quiver of silver-tipped arrows and a golden bow.

  She couldn’t have said why the costume suited him, but understood he looked both heroic and dangerous.

  Out of the shadows and into the gilded stream of light came a white buck.

  “What’s the play?” she asked him.

  “This world is under the enchantment of a wicked sorceress who’s imprisoned the king and his beautiful and tempestuous daughter.”

  As he spoke, he sidestepped into the cover of trees, but didn’t approach the buck.

  “I’m the apprentice of the wizard she killed to cast her evil spell. Before he died, he told me I must complete seven tasks of valor, collect seven treasures. Only then would I be ready to face the sorceress and free the king and his daughter.”

  He glanced back where she stood in the observation circle.

  “The white hind is classic quest symbolism, and in this case how my master, the wizard is able to guide me.”

  “Okay then.”

  The hind leaped, began to race through the trees. Roarke followed.

  She watched, and the sunlight died into dark and storm. The rain that pelted down was red as fire, and sizzled like flames on the ground.

  And watched as the yellow eyes that peered out of the torrent became skulking black forms, and as the forms became a pack of huge wolves that circled him.

  The sword hissed as he pulled it from its sheath, and whistled as he swung and struck. He battled fang and claw, spilled blood and shed it.

  And to her surprise, shot flames from his hand.

  “Fairly frosty,” she murmured, when the wolves lay smoking on the ground.

  “Every level you win awards you with a bit more magic,” he explained.

  An arrow whistled by his head. He said, “Bugger it,” and dove for cover.

  At the end of forty minutes, he’d completed the level and was well into the next where he was currently tasked with crossing a chasm to a cave guarded by a dragon.

  “Okay, that’s time.”

  “I’m just getting started.”

  “You can slay the dragon next time. You’re past Bart’s game time.”

  He gave the cave a glance of regret before ordering game end.

  “No sword fights,” she commented.

  “What do you call that bit with the wolves?”

  “Man against dog. The fireballs were interesting. Fire burns. He had burns, but ... I’ll take the second one. Usurper, right? What’s the story? ”

  “You’re the right-wise king—make that queen in your case—of Juno. When you were only a child your family was slaughtered by the machinations of your uncle, who desired the throne, and by the hand of his henchman, Lord Manx. Only you survived, and were secreted away by loyalists. You’ve been at war all your life, trained in that art. You fight to avenge your family, to regain your throne from the man who ordered their deaths and has for two decades raped the land, oppressed your people. At this level, you’ve taken back the castle, but the uncle, being a coward, of course, escaped. The castle is now under siege, and the man you love is defending it. To get to him, and bring your reinforcements, you must fight your way through, and at last meet Manx in battle.”

  “I bet we’re outnumbered.”

  “Naturally, you’d have already given your St. Crispin’s Day speech.”

  “My what?”

  “We’ll discuss Henry V later. You’d like it. Ready?”

  “You bet.”

  She wore light battle armor and sturdy boots. And God help her, she was on a horse.

  “Shouldn’t I know how to ride this thing before I ... ride this thing?”

  Roarke grinned at her from the observation circle. “It’ll come to you.”

  “Easy for you to say. Jesus, it’s big. Okay, avenging warrior queen.”

  There were hills and valleys, forests and streams. She tried to see them as Bart would have. He’d think in character, she imagined, and noted the men she led were battle scarred and weary. Some carried fresh wounds. But she was the hero, the leader.

  He liked playing the hero, liked being the leader. The good guy, always the good guy, fighting for a cause, searching for the answers.

  The going was rough and rocky. She heard the creak of the saddle under her, the ring of the horse’s hooves on the hard ground. She saw storm clouds gathering in the west.

  And heard the sounds of battle.

  The castle bore scars of its own, and people stood on its parapets shooting arrows that flashed and flamed. Others fought viciously with sword and axe on the burned and barren ground around it.

  He would probably think of home, and about his lover, Eve decided. About vengeance.

  She thought: Shit, shit, I hope I don’t fall off this thing. And charged.

  She drew the sword, instinctively squeezing her knees and thighs to keep her seat. Wind rushed through her hair, over her face, and the speed, the sheer power of motion lit a fire of excitement in her.

  Then she stopped thinking, and fought.

  Bloody and bitter, the battle raged. She felt her sword slice through flesh, hit bone. She smelled blood and smoke, felt the mild jolt from a glancing blow as the horse danced and pivoted under her.

  She saw him, his armor black and stained with blood, sitting on a huge black horse with the castle—her castle—at his back. The sounds of the battle receded as she rode forward to face him.

  “So, we meet at last. A pity for you, our acquaintance will be short.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she responded. “Let’s go.”

  “This day my sword will wear your blood, and the blood of your lover.”

  “Yawn.”

  “You rush death? Then come meet it.”

  The programmers, she noted and quickly, had made Manx very big and very strong. Blocking his blows sent shocking aches up her arm, into her shoulder.

  Wrenched shoulder.

  Sweat ran down her back, down her face, into her eyes to sting. She’d never beat him on these terms, she realized. She had neither the skill nor the strength.

  And when he slid past her guard, she felt the jolt as his sword drew blood.

  Arm wound.

  He lifted his sword, the dark light of death in his eyes; she ducked and plunged her sword into his horse.

  It screamed. She had a moment to think the sound was eerily human before it stumbled. As it fell, she swung out, caught her opponent in the side. Not a death blow, she decided. Time to finish it off.

  “Pause game. Save, and stop.”

  Breathing hard, she turned, looked at Roarke across the empty holo-room. “I don’t get to kill the bad guy?”

  “You’re past Bart’s time, by a minute or so. Interesting strategy, killing the horse.”

  “It worked. They built that bastard strong. He was going for the ...” She swiped her finger across her throat.

  “He certainly was. And if he’d landed the blow, game over. You’d have to repeat the level until you defeated him to move on to the next.”

  “This is the game he was playing when he died. It all fits. Bruises from fighting, the shoulder, the arm wound, and the loss with the decapitation. K2BK. King To Black Knight.”

  “Yes, I got that when he came into play.”

  “Obviously there weren’t real horses and a bunch of dead guys littering the ground, but the killer reconstructed the game, using a real weapon. If he got in, programmed himself as the Black Knight, and used a real weapon. The right steps, the right angle.”

  “I’d agree, but it doesn’
t explain how he got in, and how he managed to delete a two-man competition from the unit without leaving a single shadow or echo anywhere in the system.”

  Screw logic, she thought. Sometimes facts weren’t logical. “He figured it out because the Black Knight killed the king. Bart played that exact scenario before, that’s why it’s on this disc. But he didn’t stab the horse, and he lost. He’d have been more prepared this time, may have avoided the loss, or that exact loss, but—”

  “When his opponent’s sword actually cut him—the pain, the shock, the blood—all real, he was too stunned to react.”

  “And the game ended for real the same way it ended in play before. This works. I need to fast-talk my way into search warrants. By their own statements only the three partners knew all the details of the game, only the three partners ever participated in play. Those three knew this program, this level, and the results of previous play, so they’re the only ones who could have used it to kill him.”

  “While I hate knowing you’re right, I don’t see how it could be anything or anyone else. And shifting that to me, I’m considerably pissed off I could have made such an error in judgment. I’d never have believed any of them capable of this.”

  “Neither did he, and he knew them all a hell of a lot better than you. People can hide and hoard and stroke all kinds of nasty stuff no one else sees. You saved that play, right?”

  “I did.” He smiled now. “You were fairly magnificent. We’ll have to go riding in real life sometime.”

  “I don’t think so.” But she remembered that sensation of speed, of power. “Maybe. Anyway, I want to view it, then do an analysis. He’d have saved the play, too, so he could study it, see his mistakes.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “The one he used the day he died is toast.”

  “We’re getting some of it. A little some at this point.”

  She nodded as she called for the elevator. “And maybe that was his disc, where he’d saved his play, his levels. Or maybe, since it wasn’t logged out, the killer gave it to him. You know, Hey, Bart, I did some tweaking—or whatever words you geeks use. You need to try it out.”

  “If so, there’d be another copy, Bart’s copy. Which, if the killer has any sense, has been destroyed.”

  “Maybe. But people keep the damnedest things.”

  That night she dreamed of blood and battle, of castles and kings. She stood, observer now, her feet planted while the wind whipped the stench of death around her. Men, their wounds mortal, moaned and begged as they scattered the ground.

  Those who turned their faces toward her she knew. Victims, so many victims, so many dead who lived inside her head whose ends she’d studied, evaluated, reconstructed to find the one who’d ended them.

  Some who fought, who sliced with sword and axe, she knew as well. She’d helped lock the cage doors behind them. But here, in dreams, they’d found freedom. In dreams, in the games the mind played, they could and would kill again.

  Only in dreams, she reminded herself. And if she shuddered as she saw her father, her eyes met his manic ones coolly.

  Only in dreams.

  She watched with pity and resignation as Bart fought a war he’d never win. Swords and sorcery, games and dreams. Life and death.

  She watched his end. Studied and evaluated even as his head, eyes still wide in shock, rolled to her feet.

  And the Black Knight wheeled his horse and grinned at her, fiercely. When he charged, she reached for her weapon, but all she had was a small knife, one already stained with her father’s blood.

  Only in dreams, she told herself, but knew a terrible fear as he came for her.

  14

  SHE JERKED UP, SHOVING HERSELF FREE OF the dream. For an instant, just one beat of the heart, she swore she felt the keen edge slice at her throat.

  Shaken, she reached up, half expecting to feel the warm wet of her own blood.

  “Shh, now. It’s all right.”

  His arms were there, drawing her in, closing around her like a shield. As her heart continued to bound, she leaned into them, into him.

  “Just a dream. You’re home. I’m right here.”

  “I’m okay.” No blood. No death. “It wasn’t a nightmare. Or not exactly. I knew it was a dream, but it was so real.” She drew one breath, then another. Slow, she ordered herself. Slow and steady. “Like the games. You lose track of what is and what’s not.”

  He tipped her face up, and in the glow of moon and stars through the sky window met her eyes. “We’re real.” He touched his lips to hers as if to prove it. “What did you dream?”

  “The battlefield, the last game.” Bart’s last game, she thought, but not hers. “I wasn’t playing. I was just watching. Observing the details.” She sighed once, rubbed her hands over her face. “If you don’t watch, if you don’t see, you don’t know. But it weirded on me, the way dreams do.”

  “How?”

  “The dead, the dying, their faces. All those people I don’t know until they’re dead.”

  In those eyes, so blue in the starlight, came understanding. “Your victims.”

  “Yeah.” The pang in her heart was pity, weighted down by resignation. “I can’t help them, can’t save them. And their killers are out there, free, killing more. It’s a slaughter.” And the simmer beneath it was an anger that bubbled up in her voice. “We put them away, but it doesn’t stop it. We know that. We all know that. There’s always more. He was there. You have to figure he’d be there.”

  “Your father.”

  “But he’s just one of the many now.”

  Still she trembled, just a little, so he rubbed her arms to warm them.

  “I’m not engaged. I’m not playing. I’m not one of them. Not one of the dead or dying, not one of the killers. Just an observer.”

  “It’s how you stop them,” he said quietly. “It’s how you save those you can.

  And some of the weight eased. “I guess it is. I watched Bart fight. I know what’s going to happen, but I have to watch because I might have missed a detail. I might see something new. But it happens just the way I see it happen. Then the Black Knight, his killer, turned to me. Looks at me. It’s just a dream, but I go for my weapon because he’s coming for me. I can feel the ground shake and feel the wind. But all I have against that fucking sword is the little knife I used all those years ago, in that horrible room in Dallas.”

  She looked down at her hand, empty now. “That’s all I have, and it won’t be enough, not this time. The sword comes down, and I feel that, too. Just for a second before I wake up.”

  She let out a breath. “Sometimes they crowd me.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Killers and victims. They get in your head, and they never really leave.” She cupped his face now. “They’ll get in yours, because you can’t just step aside, just watch me do the job. You can’t just observe any more than I can. I’m in the game, always one of the players. Now, you are, too.”

  “Do you think I regret that?”

  “One day you might. I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “I knew you for a cop the minute I laid eyes on you. And I knew without understanding how or why, that you would change things. I’ll never regret that moment, or any that followed.” He gave her shoulders a little shake—as comforting as a kiss. “You have to understand you’re not alone on the battlefield. And since that moment, that first moment? Neither am I.”

  “I used to think I was better off alone, that I needed to be. And maybe I did. But not anymore.”

  She touched her lips to his cheek, then the other. “And never again.”

  Then laid her lips warm and soft on his.

  What they brought to each other closed all the rest outside. A touch, a taste, a promise renewed.

  He enclosed her, brought her in, brought her close. He knew, she thought, simply knew she needed to be held, to have his arms around her. His hands warming her skin were gentle, so gentle after the blood and brutality of the dream. Hi
s lips, those slow, tender kisses offered her peace and solace, and love.

  Passion would come, she knew. It was a low fire always kindled between them. But for now he gave her what she reached for, could always reach for with him. He gave her comfort.

  Did she know, could she know what it meant to him when she turned to him, when she opened herself to him like this? In absolute trust.

  Her strength, her valor remained a constant wonder to him, as did her unrelenting determination to defend those who could no longer defend themselves. These moments, when she allowed her vulnerabilities, her doubts, her fears to tremble to the surface compelled him to take care. In these moments he could show her it wasn’t just the warrior he loved, he treasured, but the woman, the whole of her. The dark and the light.

  Softly, softly, as if tending wounds, he stroked her skin, unknotted muscles tight from the day and the dream. And when she sighed, he laid his lips on her heart.

  It beat for him.

  In the blue wash of moonlight, she moved for him, rising up, another sigh, giving over. Giving.

  Her fingers slid through his hair, glided down his back and up again. An easy rhythm even when her breath quickened and her sigh deepened to moan.

  Lost in it, this quiet pleasure, she drew him closer, closer still. Body to body, mouth to mouth, thrilled with the weight of him, the shape of him. She drew in his scent like breath, and opened to take him in.

  Smooth and slow and sweet, they moved together. As sensations shimmered through her like light, she cupped his face in the dark.

  Not all magic was fantasy, she thought. There was magic here and she felt it glow in her body, in her mind and her heart.

  “I love you. Roarke. I love you.”

  Magic, she thought, watching his heart rise into his eyes.

  “A grah.” My love. And with the word he lifted her home.

  In the morning, Eve drank the first half of the first cup of coffee with the concentration of a woman focused on simple survival. Then she sighed with nearly the same easy pleasure as she had the night before under Roarke’s skilled hands.

  No question, she admitted, and set the coffee aside long enough to jump in the shower: She’d gotten spoiled.