by C. G. Hatton
It was watching them approach. NG kept his mind as shielded as he could manage through the headache, nowhere near as confident as he should be that there weren’t other telepaths here. Maeve wasn’t, or at least if she was, she was very good.
The temperature decreased as they went down, an increasingly damp chill wafting in the air. It felt like he was descending right into the middle of one of his nightmares and it took everything he had to stay neutral and keep his heart from racing.
From her demeanour, Maeve could have been walking into a dinner party. Aside from the Man, she was the most unsettling person he’d ever encountered.
The staircase led out onto a dark balcony overlooking some kind of enclosure. As they walked out onto a mesh gantry, there was a clanking thud and lights winked on, flashing sporadically at first, illuminating a vast chamber. It wasn’t that different from the Fight Cage on the Alsatia where the field-ops let off steam. He couldn’t help flashing back to a moment in time when he’d stood there with Devon, watching Hil fight Sorenson. A long time ago.
The Bhenykhn was standing in the centre of it. Fighting stance. Muscles tensed. Staring at him.
It was tough to look at it and not be drawn back to the chaos and agony of that muddy battlefield.
‘Fear me,’ it snarled again, mind to mind.
Mocking.
Maeve rested a hand on the rail, gazing down at it. “My grandson wants to throw you in there with it. See how you fare.”
Angmar.
She turned to him and smiled. “But the boy is an arrogant upstart who has delusions of importance far beyond his capabilities.”
That was interesting. There was no fondness there at all. No trust or allegiance in the slightest.
“Don’t worry,” she added, “I’m not going to let him have you. You’re well and truly mine.” She dropped the smile. “You stole the elixir that we tasked the Earth Empire to develop for us.”
Us. The Order.
“You have caused us considerable inconvenience, NG. And you killed one of my oldest and dearest friends.”
A’Darbi.
“Now… you haven’t uttered a single word since you arrived here and I need you to talk. How do you think we could manage that?”
He was keeping his mouth shut because he didn’t trust her with anything he could say.
She turned back to look down on the Bhenykhn. “What do you know of these creatures?”
He almost blurted out, ‘We fought a whole army of them on Erica.’
The alien took a step forward as he thought that, lifting its chin and glowering at him.
It sent a chill through his stomach. Sebastian had been certain the Bhenykhn couldn’t read their minds, that the telepathy of the hive was contained within the hive.
“It is magnificent, isn’t it?” she said. “I’m assuming from your reaction that you’ve seen its kind before.” She stroked her hand delicately along the rail. “It has amazing regenerative abilities. Of course, that’s what has everyone so excited. But I’m sure you know that already.” She turned to look at him, head cocked to the side. “I’m disappointed that you won’t speak to me, NG. At least, tell me your real name.”
He turned his back on the alien, heard an echoing laugh inside his head that reminded him way too much of Sebastian, and looked at this elegant matriarch figure standing so serenely next to him. It was hard to be rude but he could see inside her head.
She looked down long eyelashes at him. “We could try a different tack,” she said, “but I really would rather not go there… not just yet.”
There was something dancing around her thoughts that made up his mind.
“It’s Nikolai,” he said.
She raised her immaculate eyebrows, eyes sparkling. “Well, Nikolai, are you going to talk to me now?”
He was trying to figure out which way she would go if he did. Like he’d said to Martinez, he couldn’t foresee the future.
“You stole our elixir…” she prompted.
NG shook his head slightly. “It was Zang who screwed you over, not us.”
She wasn’t impressed by his tone and she wasn’t about to admit that she knew it had been her grandson who had orchestrated all that nonsense. “But you have it?”
“We didn’t when you came after us.” He kept the emotion out of his reply. “We do now.” He turned back to face the cage and stared at the Bhenykhn. It was smaller than the warriors they’d fought on Erica. More like the pilot he’d seen crash land in front of them. Still huge by human standards. “You want to know what it does?”
“I want it back.”
“It’s not what you think it is.”
She frowned, wondering what he was referring to, the elixir or the alien?
“It’s not a magical elixir of life,” he said. “It’s a virus and it has a fifty-fifty chance of killing you outright. If you’re lucky and it doesn’t do that, there’s a chance it will fry your brain and leave you comatose.”
She was thinking that those were better odds than they’d managed in their experiments here so far. They’d killed hundreds. “And if it doesn’t do that…?”
He glanced sideways at her, listened in as she looked at him, fascinated by his accent, thinking that he didn’t have anything in his blood that looked like a virus, it had been a marker, a remnant DNA trace, that’s all. If that wasn’t the elixir, then what…?
“It’s not an elixir,” he said again. “It’s a curse. But it might be the only thing we have that will help us beat them.”
He said it, knowing it was listening and understanding every word. He looked down towards the Bhenykhn that was still standing there staring at them. It lifted one arm and beat a clenched fist against its chest, almost a stabbing motion towards its heart, as if it knew.
It knew.
The headache spiked.
It invaded his mind again, his temperature rising fast to fever point. It grabbed his attention and held him there. It was nothing like dealing with LC and Duncan, the only other human telepaths he knew. It was alien. Loud, intense, like a damaged Senson gone haywire, screaming static into his head at maximum volume over a howling gale. Worse than anything Sebastian had let through to him on Erica. Although there was only a single Bhenykhn, this close, it was overwhelming. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t block it. He couldn’t filter it out the way Sebastian always had. It was like nothing he’d ever dealt with before. He couldn’t concentrate on anything else. Even breathing was difficult.
‘You…’ he heard, in that guttural sneer, deep inside. ‘You. Die. First.’
It let go. He snapped his eyes open. Gasped a breath. He was standing on the walkway, doubled over, leaning on the rail and gripping it with his left hand, knuckles white, heart thumping.
Maeve was watching.
The Bhenykhn took a step backwards, still staring at him, planting its feet again in defiance.
NG turned to Maeve. He couldn’t get his breathing settled. His head was pounding and he couldn’t see clearly, nowhere near in control as much as he needed to be to think straight but he made a decision. He couldn’t do this alone.
“You don’t understand why the Thieves’ Guild has been fighting against you,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a question.
“No, I don’t. I never have.” She narrowed her eyes. “What just happened? That’s what happened before, isn’t it? What did it just do to you?”
They were monitoring his stats and she’d seen his temperature spike again.
Maeve was High Guard. Without doubt. The most powerful individual he had ever encountered.
“They’re called the Bhenykhn Lyudaed,” he said. “The Devourers.” He felt sick, as if he was betraying the Man and everything that had ever been drummed into him. “They target a feeding ground, they learn everything they can then they swarm. We’re next.”
“What did it just do to you?” she said again, stern, thinking fast and contacting someone as she spoke.
“We’ve been work
ing against The Order,” he said, “because war between Earth and Winter doesn’t benefit anyone but The Order. It weakens us and we need to be ready, more ready than we are, for when they attack.” It sounded lame.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“How could we? Every one of your Order that I tracked down was trying to kill me. And I didn’t know at the time that the aliens were even real.”
It was one hell of an admission.
Her voice was icy cold as she said again, “What did it just do to you?”
The alien laughed.
NG ignored it. He had a dire sinking feeling that he’d just made a really big mistake but he was also acutely aware that the presence of the Bhenykhn was casting a dark dread over him. It was powerful. He needed to throw it off, spin this on its head. He raised his eyes and said very carefully, “It’s telepathic.”
“And so are you?”
He might as well have hit a massive alarm button, sending the security status sky high.
She started sending orders to her people, silently through her Senson, but each thought crystal clear and calm. She was preparing to leave, taking him with her. She’d surmised, correctly, that it had been listening in to every facet of her organisation. She wanted to get NG away from it because, she’d decided, she had to keep him alive, that he was way, way more important than any of them had ever appreciated, that the elders of the Thieves’ Guild were damned fools for keeping this to themselves and that she needed to escalate this beyond her personal situation at UM, cosy as that had been of late.
“Wait, we need to take it with us,” he said.
She placed a hand on his arm and said with chilling assurance, “Don’t fight me.”
“No, you don’t understand. The virus we have only survives in a living host.”
“I want to get you away from it.”
He shook his head. “We need the source. Take it with us.”
She didn’t say out loud that she agreed but she sent the orders and nudged him towards the staircase. “Where have you encountered them before?”
“Erica.”
Of course, he overheard her think, cursing to herself inside her head. They had people investigating that, of course they did, but they had assumed it was Earth and Winter, Zang tearing off on his solo shenanigans again. Nothing had given them reason to suspect an alien influence in the loss of those two ships. Dammit. She looked at him, thinking if it had just been a space battle, then where did he get hurt?
He stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and stood aside to let her pass. “We fought them on the ground. There was an advance force, heavy infantry, light support weapons. They attacked the mining facility.”
She looked him straight in the eye, pausing as she went to brush past, the scent of her spiced perfume cutting through the stench of the alien. She was thinking quite clearly, ‘And the alien marker in your blood?’
“It’s a toxin,” he said. “They use poisoned weapons. I got stabbed.”
She stood, transfixed. “You really are reading my mind.”
He gave a slight nod.
“You came here looking for us? Or for the alien?”
“Your grandson. We know he set Zang up to blackmail us.”
She nodded then and started to walk up the stairs. “He’s a fool.”
She was thinking worse, and she was thinking through all the implications of having a telepath in their midst, very well aware that he would be listening in. She was keeping calm and neutral, concentrating on dealing with getting away, with him intact, and reaching somewhere safe to consider all this, with support. Not Drake, she was thinking, better it be Anton or Itomara. Both, probably.
He followed, limping up the steep steps, trying to keep the headache at bay and still not entirely sure he’d done the right thing in talking to her. On one hand it felt like he had accessed a powerful ally against the Bhenykhn but on the other he might have just betrayed the guild and everything he’d ever lived for. And either way, he was still her captive. Even if he could get away from her and make a break for it, he’d lose her as an ally and he’d never get out alive. He was trapped and at her mercy as much as the alien down there.
It didn’t sit well.
They reached the top. Maeve took two steps into her room and the door burst open. NG was just behind. He didn’t see it until it was happening. Until it was too late. There were shots. Maeve was falling before he could reach her, the blast he threw at them too late to stop the rounds that punched into her throat, her chest, her head, the black void hitting him hard. They were her own guards. That was why he hadn’t sensed anything awry. Her own damned guards.
The button in the back of his neck began screaming into his spine. It sent him to his knees before he could shut it out enough to react. An FTH round caught him in the shoulder as he went down. He shrugged off the flare from its charge, tore a gun from the hands of one of the guards, misjudged its trajectory and almost went tumbling backwards as it flew into his arms. He managed to hold onto it, spun it round, ducked to the side and started firing back at them, the right arm protesting but holding.
They backed off. Grenades bounced in. He deflected them instinctively but the room was too small to get clear. They detonated as he fell back into the stairwell, trying to keep on his feet, the edge of the stun blast setting his nerve endings on fire. He stumbled. Fell. Another shot skimmed the side of his head, FTH on maximum joining the pain already sparking in his skull.
He could feel the Bhenykhn watching as he rolled out onto the walkway. Heavy boots were thundering right after him and he caught a kick hard in the head, another in the ribs. He curled up. Someone planted a knee in his back. His arms were pulled back, restraints clamped around his wrists and hands gripped him by the shoulders to haul him upright. He couldn’t stop trembling, total overload. They stuck a gun under his chin and forced him to look up.
Angmar Rodan was walking down the last of the steps, a rifle in his arms and a smirk on his face. He walked up close.
“NG,” he said. “At fucking last. Where’s my fucking package?”
Chapter 14
It all came back to the package. Nikolai had seen that. His young field operatives had lived with the consequences.
The Man sat there, straight backed, looking round at this assembly. Too many of them were thinking that Nikolai had been dancing with the devil in consorting with the Order. They’d been persuaded that the Order was an enemy here. Why now such a change in perspective? Could they trust that Nikolai had not turned himself?
It was absurd. They were judging him, judging the guild, Nikolai, everything they’d done. They had no idea. And they had no right.
He almost stood then. Almost walked out. But she was looking at him with that intense empathy in her mind. She, of all of them, had always been there for him. She had great fondness for the guild and his people.
“He thought, in having a common enemy, he could make an ally of them,” she said softly, into the silence when the others were all judging and calculating how they would vote.
He nodded. “He was mistaken.”
•
He raised his eyes slowly, beyond weary, every muscle complaining, every joint hurting, the poison sapping the last of his strength. He was standing in front of massive looming iron gates, intricate, twisted metal in thick knots leading his eye to the heavy lock.
There was a flickering of lights in the darkness beyond.
A damp mist swirled, tendrils creeping to wrap around his wrists and ankles, teasing, caressing.
Dark walls were pressing in behind him.
He couldn’t go back, couldn’t move forward. Trapped and he was about done…
He knew before he opened his eyes that he was restrained. Flat on his back. Cold. Rodan had smiled then smashed him across the face with the rifle butt.
“I knew you wouldn’t be dead,” that same cocky, self-assured voice said. There was a slight echo about the room. “I even said it when we heard the new
s. I knew a cocky bastard like you wouldn’t die that easily.”
NG blinked, head stuffed with cotton wool, limbs like jelly. His eyelids were heavy and he almost let them slip closed again except he didn’t want to get dragged back to that damp, chill maze.
Someone slapped his cheek hard to get his attention.
He blinked again and managed to focus vaguely on the guy standing over him.
Where Maeve had oozed style and sophistication from another era, her grandson was pure slick corporate, totally at odds with this run down, rust-flaked domain he’d claimed as his own. He had his suit sleeves rolled up as if he was going to do his own dirty work except he smiled and stepped back, and it was a different guy, heavier, that moved in and rested a clenched fist up against his ribs, right where they’d been cracked. They’d done their homework.
There was no room to move. NG relaxed every muscle and kept his breathing slow and steady.
“Now, you can either get your guild to deliver up my package,” Rodan said, “or I can deliver you up to the Assassins. Your choice. Which is it to be?”
He was bluffing. He wanted the elixir.
The fist withdrew and punched hard, precise.
The rib snapped.
NG couldn’t stop the half cry that slipped out, eyes squeezing shut instinctively against the pain.
The dark closed in fast. He could see the gates looming high in front of him, the huge lock standing out from the twisted metal.
A cold sting hitting his neck snapped him back to reality, followed by another and another.
The drugs flooded into his bloodstream faster than he could neutralise them. He started to go under again, the darkness closing in, but this time he was still aware, he could still feel the pain. It was the first time he’d been in the nightmare and the real world at the same time.
The Bhenykhn was there. That was a first. It was watching him from the shadows, tense, gearing up to attack.
“Break his fingers.”
One snap after another, trigger fingers on both hands. He choked back another cry.