Pursued Read online

  “Y’dex?” Nadiah whispered again, this time in horror. “Oh no…no!”

  At the sound of its name one cloudy light blue eye rolled toward her. It seemed to be damaged in some way but not nearly as much as the other which lay in a ruined mess on the thing’s cheek. It opened cracked and blackened lips. “Nadiah…” Her name was an almost unrecognizable croak but somehow Nadiah understood it. And she was sure now that this thing truly was Y’dex.

  “What happened to you?” she demanded. “We thought you’d fallen to your death from the High Mesa except we couldn’t find your body.”

  “Wish I had,” the thing croaked. “Would have been better…easier.”

  “But Y’dex—”

  “Caught by spies…Hoard spies. They wanted my ship…wanted to know how it worked.”

  Suddenly Nadiah remembered him bragging that the Kindred weren’t the only ones with interstellar travel ability anymore. She hadn’t had time to wonder what he meant—at the time she’d been too horrified to see him popping up unexpectedly on First World to claim her. But now…

  “How does it work?” she asked. “What did they want with it?”

  “You’ll see…soon enough.” The blackened thing on the cot gave a hoarse, cawing laugh. “Your fault, you know. If I hadn’t chased you, this…” It gestured at its broken body with one gruesomely twisted claw, “Never would have happened. Your fault. Yours.”

  “Y’dex, I’m sorry.” Nadiah shook her head helplessly.

  “He’s coming for you.” The thing laughed again and this time the hoarse, awful sound had the sharp edge of madness in it. “He’ll kill you…kill you all.”

  “That’s enough!” Rast snapped from behind her and Nadiah turned to see he was scowling. “Give him more pain medication,” he told the priestess healer on duty. “He’s crazy with pain.”

  “Not crazy…” The thing which had used to be her fiancée laughed some more, sending cold chills down Nadiah’s spine. “Not crazy at all. Kill you! Kill you a—” Its laughter suddenly ended and the charred, bald head slumped on its ruined chest.

  “My Challa,” said the healer respectfully after checking carefully for a pulse. “Forgive me, but I fear that the patient is dead.”

  “Dead?” Nadiah heard the waver in her own voice. Though she’d gotten used to the idea of her ex-fiancé being dead earlier, now the concept was truly brought home to her. Y’dex wasn’t lying peacefully somewhere on the desert floor, his body buried in the shifting rainbow sands—he was actually dead, right here in front of her. And horribly burned and mangled into the bargain. She turned on Rast. “Why didn’t you save him? You could have done it—you brought me back with your wings when I was almost dead.”

  Rast lifted both hands. “He didn’t want me to. I offered—believe me, sweetheart, I did. As much of a bastard as he was to both of us, nobody deserves to go out like this.” He gestured at the twisted corpse. “But he said no, that he wanted to die. He just wanted to see you first.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I never should have sent for you.”

  “No.” Nadiah put a hand to her eyes and took a deep breath. “No, I…I’m glad you did. I never…never would have known it was truly him if I hadn’t talked to him. It’s horrible, but…but I needed to see it to believe.”

  “I understand.” Rast folded her in his embrace and his vast, iridescent wings came out and wrapped around her as well, like a second pair of arms. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured, kissing her hair. “So damn sorry.”

  “So am I,” Nadiah whispered. “I just…just wish we knew what he was talking about.”

  “Well, it has to do with the Hoard. With Draven—their leader—I’m guessing.” Rast gestured at the corpse. “His eyes didn’t get that way in the crash. Somebody did it deliberately.”

  “Don’t!” Nadiah shuddered against him and he hugged her tight.

  “Sorry,” he murmured. “But I think we’d better take a look at the wreckage of his ship. If that was what Draven was interested in, we’d better be too.”

  “I guess.” Nadiah closed her eyes and tried to get the image of the charred and blackened face out of her mind, tried not to hear that hoarse, croaking voice. “I wish he’d died the way we thought he did,” she whispered. “A fall from the High Mesa would have been so much better than this.”

  “Almost anything would have,” Rast said grimly. “I didn’t like him much but nobody deserves this.” He sighed and began leading Nadiah away. “Come on, sweetheart, let’s get out of here and try to forget about this whole messy scene.”

  “Of course,” Nadiah agreed faintly. But privately she thought it would be a long, long time before she could close her eyes and not see Y’dex’s single cloudy blue eye rolling up to look at her, before she could stop hearing him say, “Your fault…he’ll kill you all.”

  Chapter Nine

  “So you’re not taking your own ship?”

  Merrick looked up from his contemplation of the innards of the small but surprisingly spacious Kindred interstellar cruiser he was borrowing and saw Sylvan standing there.

  “Nope.” He shut the lid to the engine compartment with a clang and wiped his greasy hands on a clean-all cloth. The bacteria that lived in the simple white fabric went to work at once, ingesting the grease and oil from his fingers and leaving them as clean as though he’d just scrubbed for surgery. “That ride down to Earth and back was too fucking rough. I don’t want to take her out as far as Rageron unless she’s in tip-top shape,” he said, avoiding his friend’s eyes.

  In truth, he hated being without his star-duster. The special modifications he’d put into the little ship would have meant a much shorter trip than going through the fold in space the Kindred Mother Ship would make for him. With his wormhole generator, he could have been there in moments. In the borrowed ship it would take several days to complete the first part of their journey because Rageron was in the far part of its orbit at the moment. But Merrick couldn’t see any way around it—he didn’t want to take his ship out so far when it was running rough.

  Should have spent more time fixing it and less time hanging on her every fucking word, he thought savagely, wiping his hands some more even though they were already clean. But it was too late for regret now—he was stuck with a borrowed ship and a battered heart. Not that he would admit to the latter.

  “Olivia told me what happened between you and Elise in the viewing room,” Sylvan said quietly, breaking his train of thought.

  “That blonde nurse of yours talks too damn much,” Merrick growled. “Besides, nothing happened. I just found out Elise is supposed to be joined to that fucking fiancé of hers in a month. No big deal.”

  “I think it is a big deal,” Sylvan said. “You care about this girl, Merrick. Even if the bond between you is false, I know you have some feelings for her. It had to hurt like the seven hells to hear she was about to be joined to another.”

  “Nah,” Merrick shrugged, trying to appear unconcerned. “We’re going to break the bond between us. Why should I give a fuck who she joins with or when she gets joined to the fucker?”

  “You do though,” Sylvan said. “And even if that caring is a byproduct of your artificial bond, it still hurts.”

  Merrick turned on his old friend, glaring. “Did you change professions since the last time I saw you? Last I heard you treated people’s bodies, not their minds. So stop fucking with my head.”

  “Sorry.” Sylvan held up both hands in a ‘don’t shoot’ gesture. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re all right before you and Elise go off on a very dangerous and complicated mission together.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Merrick said shortly. “And don’t worry that I’ll let my ‘hurt feelings’ get in the way of taking care of her. I may be a hybrid but I’m still Kindred—I’m sworn to protect Elise and I’ll do my duty.”

  “I know you will,” Sylvan said gently. “I never doubted it for a moment. I just wanted to make sure you were in the right frame of min