The Star King Page 20

  “Ah, she awakens,” said a man’s raspy voice. Cool, dry fingertips brushed over her cheek. Jas recoiled at the unnerving sensation, then opened her eyes.

  An older man crouched in front of her. A shimmering bronze tunic stretched across his broad shoulders, matching the flecks in his yellow-gold eyes. He was amber-skinned and blond, and handsome to the point of being artificial. Coupled with his soft, magnetic smile and hypnotizing eyes, it made him the most charismatic man she’d ever seen. It was just the two of them in a room that was, at most, twenty by twenty feet. Besides the cushion she sat on and the silken rug beneath her bare feet, there were no furnishings, no windows.

  And no door.

  Terror gripped her. “Where am I?”

  “Brevdah Three.” An odd rumble marred his rich voice. “Don’t be alarmed. You’re safe here, my treasure,” he said, contemplating her with an insolent air of possession. “My lovely black-haired gift.”

  For the thousandth time since leaving Earth, she wished she’d bleached her hair blond. “Listen, I don’t know what kind of arrangement you made with Beela, but it’s not going to work.” Just her luck the woman was a slave broker, and now this creep thought he owned her. “I’m from Earth.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “Keeping me here is in violation of the Treatise of Trade.”

  His smile dimmed. “The Treatise of Trade: ramblings of power-hungry soldier-merchants. Worth little more than the paper it is written on.”

  She lowered her voice. “Just let me go, and I’ll keep things quiet. We’ll call it a misunderstanding, all right?” Tugging her embarrassingly short tunic lower on her thighs, she stood. “I’d like my things, please. And my comm call, too. I’ll make my own shuttle arrangements back to the Depot, thank you.”

  “Sit!” He grabbed her wrists, forcing her down.

  Terror exploded in white light behind her eyes.

  “I do not mean to frighten you,” he said.

  She nodded, her heart slamming against her ribs.

  “It is dangerous for you to be traveling on your own. For your own safety you must obey me.”

  She took a shuddering breath. His tone, his expression, implored her to trust him. She wanted to—Lord, how she wanted to. But something was missing in his gaze, a quality she was used to seeing in others but could not define. Its absence left her cold. Eyes like this man’s would make the devil whimper. “Who are you?”

  He appeared genuinely taken aback. “You honestly don’t know, do you?”

  She regarded him sullenly.

  He sighed. “It does not surprise me. You hail from a remote, barbaric frontier world. You would not have been introduced to my teachings. Trillions look to me for guidance.” He began to rock slowly back and forth. He was an odd sight, kneeling before her, his beautiful tunic casting bronze sparks on the marble-smooth white walls. “I am the savior,” he intoned. “The savior. I am Sharron.”

  Startled, she blinked. “Sharron’s dead.”

  The man lifted his chin, revealing a crooked, puckered scar on his throat. His raspy chuckle was low and rich, and it went on a few uncomfortable seconds longer than what seemed normal. “I am very much alive, wouldn’t you agree? It is my would-be assassin who is as good as dead.”

  He meant Rom. How dared he assume he was a broken man?

  “I know who you are,” she said in a sneer, her voice quavering with repressed rage. “I know about the war you started. And the people you killed.” How she knew, she kept to herself. If she revealed her relationship with Rom, it might place him in danger, and she’d be damned if she’d allow this monster to attack him again. “The Vash put women on pedestals. But you see them as breeding machines. You choose which women bear children, and with whom.”

  “Analytical procreation,” he replied. “To give society strength and purpose. It is not all that different from any other culture.”

  Her voice was flat, cold. “I’ll never submit to you.”

  Sharron snatched the heavy medallion she hadn’t realized was draped around her neck. It was identical to Beela’s gift. Holding the necklace in one hand, he settled back on his haunches and stroked the disk with his fingertips. Inexplicably, desire flooded her. Unable to block the baffling sensations, she went rigid.

  “You feel it,” he said in a rich, husky whisper.

  Jas made a small sound of dismay.

  “You feel me,” he murmured. “Do not deny it. We are intertwined, you and I. Our souls have known each other—have desired each other, have sought each other—since the birth of time.”

  She shook her head. He raised one pale brow. “Tell me, then, why did you leave your frontier world, Earth?”

  She gritted her teeth against the heat pooling low in her belly. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, but I think you do.” He smiled his enigmatic smile. “You came here in search of something, didn’t you? A quest to find, and define, what was missing in your life.”

  She froze.

  “You were empty, all used up, dissatisfied, but not understanding why. All you knew was that you were missing something, your other half…me.”

  Jas tried to rail against his suggestions, but her words drained away before they streamed from her mind to her mouth.

  “And so you journeyed to the stars because I called to you,” he continued softly. “Because I needed you.”

  Nausea and disbelief clogged her throat. She swallowed hard to fight the tears stinging her eyes. He couldn’t be why she’d left home.

  Or was he?

  No. It was a trick even the most amateur palm reader knew: making guesses about her past and then using her reactions to fine-tune them. But somehow the medallion was aiding him, and that frightened her. Frantically she tried to conjure Rom’s face, but all she saw was her handsome captor.

  Sharron.

  Doubt swamped her.

  “With me, my treasure, you are complete.” He leaned toward her. Her lips parted of their own accord. She moaned softly, stiffening when he brushed his mouth over hers. “You resist me,” he rasped, his breath warm against her. “Your will is strong.” Abruptly he let the necklace fall between her breasts. The fuzziness lifted from her mind, along with her disturbing, contradictory feelings.

  “I must dissolve that will so that it does not keep us apart,” he muttered as if to himself. “Yes, the purification shall commence. By the second moon’s rise, you will be ready. Then you will welcome my seed and we shall bring the galaxy to a new day. A new beginning.”

  Her face heated with anger. “Is that what you call murdering women in your cult after they give birth?”

  In the space of a heartbeat, he grabbed the medallion she wore and yanked her face close to his. His feline eyes narrowed into ocher slits. “I don’t murder them. I give them life. Eternal life.”

  To her horror, his indignation flowed into her. Her muscles refused to heed her urgency to push him away, while his thoughts mingled with hers, like tendrils of toxic smoke. She wanted to gag. His mind was fragile, diseased, yet keenly intelligent, humming with a predator’s single-minded purpose. She recoiled from its coldness, its utter absence of compassion.

  “It is what I shall give you, my treasure,” he whispered against her lips, caressing the medallion, his knuckles grazing her breast. “Eternal life. You will be delivered to the galaxy’s beating heart, secured to an extraordinary and unjustly maligned little innovation called an antimatter bomb, and once there you will bring us all to the new day.”

  Almost reverently, he brushed the back of his hand over her cheek. “Let the purification begin!” he called to the far wall. The marblelike surface wavered like a sheet drying in the wind; then it split, revealing a darkened hallway outside.

  Sharron’s cloak swirled around him as he strode to the rippling opening and stepped through. The wall snapped shut behind him, as featureless as it was before.

  Jas bolted off the cushion, yanking on the hem of her microtunic that might make a hospital
gown feel like full-body armor. She smoothed her hands over the wall’s slick surface. What was the trick? Hand recognition? A voice command? “Let the purification begin!” she repeated. Nothing. Her hunt for seams in the wall became feverish. “Hey! Let me out!” She pounded her fists on the cold, unyielding surface. Something thumped between her breasts. The necklace! Disgust tightened her insides. She grabbed the weighty ornament, felt a tingling worm its way up her arm. As she lifted the medallion over her head, an overwhelming sensation stopped her.

  No, you must not…

  She stared at the disk, confused. Then she tried again.

  Must not…

  Quivering, she tried to yank it over her head. This time her arms shot out to the sides. Bewildered and disoriented, she struggled to get rid of the medallion, but every time she did, her body rebelled. She felt like a marionette, except that the contradicting commands were coming from inside her. “What’s happening to me?” she demanded. A piercing alarm began to blare. It shrieked on and on, a knife slashing her sensitive eardrums, bringing pain beyond her imagination. She slapped her hands over her ears and screamed.

  The volume rose with her hysteria, like dirt sucked into a tornado. She sagged to the floor, writhing and crying out until her voice had faded to a ragged whisper.

  Three abreast, Rom, Muffin, and Gann walked briskly into the glassy-walled cave. The sound of their footfalls echoed off the obsidian walls.

  “Hell and back.” Scouring Jas’s hotel room, they had found a medallion just like the one Drandon’s seedpicker had flaunted, that and a locater card that Rom hadn’t recognized. They had followed the directions on the card—of a person named Beela—directly to this compound. Rom had kept alive the hope that he’d finally find Jas here—or at least an individual who could be forced to reveal her whereabouts. Now his confidence faltered. The cavernous hall was littered with the signs of habitation—scraps of paper, books, a cloak. But it was eerily empty of people.

  “They left in a hurry,” Gann said, righting a tock cup.

  Rom crushed his hands into fists. “To where? The card listed a dozen other possible locations. By all that is holy, if she’s not here, how will I find her?”

  His men judiciously maintained their silence. Muffin—brought low by guilt—strolled away, peering at the floor, searching for signs of a struggle, while Gann knocked the repulsive paintings from the wall, one by one, looking behind each for hidden panels or compartments.

  They looked like a couple of rookie Trade Police, Rom thought. Frustration vibrated inside him. This was not the way to proceed. The compound was deserted; any fool could see that. By now the Family of the New Day had taken Jas off-planet, to any one of countless worlds. Were they as unspeakably evil as when Sharron had led them? Or were they merely fanatical artists? Regardless, they’d taken her against her will.

  But to where?

  Rom turned in a slow circle. Reaching deep, he silently evoked Romjha, the ancient warrior whose blood he shared.

  Guide me.

  Rom shuddered and closed his eyes. Using the lessons drilled into him from birth, he embraced the eons-old legacy he’d fled, the ancestry that filled him with both pride and pain. “Guide me,” he whispered.

  Only this once.

  Only to keep the woman he loved alive. “I will find you, Jasmine,” he chanted under his breath. “I will find you.”

  His senses gathered…coalesced…until every pore in his body thrummed. He moved beyond the physical, transcending time. He became thoughts and feelings and dreams, while memories swept over him like a restless sea.

  He lost track of how long he stood there, motionless in the middle of the vast, barren chamber, but when he opened his eyes, it was with the supreme confidence of a hunter.

  He would find her.

  “Muffin! Gann!” The men met him at the perimeter of the room. “To the ship. She is not here.” Pistol drawn, he led them into the shadowy corridor.

  The siren soared to an agonizing pitch, wailing on and on. Fearing she’d lose consciousness and render herself helpless, Jas fought to sweep the choking terror from her mind, succeeding in calming herself only fractionally. The alarm diminished in kind, but she hadn’t changed the pressure of her hands over her ears. Was it coming from within her head? Writhing on the cold floor, gasping in pain and panic, she uncovered her ears just slightly. The horrific screech remained unchanged. It was coming from within her! Her fear skyrocketed. So did the brutal siren.

  It’s feeding off your panic. The thought—her own—cut through the chaos. If you don’t control yourself, it’ll get worse.

  Panting, shaking uncontrollably, she wrapped her arms around her stomach and bent forward, gritting her teeth, her damp forehead pressed against the rug. It’s okay; it’s okay, she told herself. Terror nearly overwhelmed her fight to save her sanity. Every time her anxiety spiked, so did the high-pitched howl. How much time passed, she hadn’t a clue, but when she finally calmed herself, the wailing ceased.

  She pushed herself up on quaking knees. After a few moments she stood, using the wall for support. Sharron must have known this would happen, that the medallion would feed off her emotions and magnify them, a feedback loop of some sort, designed to shatter her mind. This room must have equipment rigged to facilitate that. The knowledge nauseated her. Had she not figured out how to fight back, she’d likely be a compliant zombie by now, “purified” like the rest of his subjects—save Beela.

  She had to ditch the medallion. Could she do it now? And if she did, how would she hide the fact from Sharron? If he discovered it missing, he’d likely immobilize her to keep her from trying again. Then she’d be at his mercy—something she was now certain didn’t exist.

  She studied the necklace. The charm was connected to the chain by a link—one easily wrenched open. Hope flared inside her, chased by a mental buzzing. She immediately tamped down on her response and the buzzing stopped. It reacted to feelings, which meant she’d have to blunt all emotion, good and bad, to keep her mind unfettered.

  She glanced nervously around for hidden cameras, forcing a vacant expression onto her face in case her activity might alarm her keepers. In one swift motion, she tore at the link. It opened, the disk plopping into her trembling hand. She sat on the couch, pretending to clutch her stomach, and furtively slipped the medallion under the cushion. Feeling a wave of triumph rush through her, she tucked the bottom of the chain into her bodice. Now all she had to do was pray no one checked.

  As discreetly as she could, in case anyone watched, she faked a limp, searching the small room for anything that could be used as a weapon. Nothing. Too nervous to sit, she paced. Sharron would summon her when the second moon rose, however long that was. What was he going to do to her? Rape her repeatedly until he got her pregnant? And what was that he’d said about a bomb?

  She stepped faster to quell the fear chilling her insides. She’d never felt so afraid—or so alone. If only Rom knew she was here.

  But he didn’t.

  Jas gave her head a curt shake. A plan, she told herself; she needed a plan. She had been a soldier once, trained for such situations. Sharron must assume the medallion had turned her mind to Jell-O by now. Naturally she’d show him what he expected to see, pretending to be obedient, and then give him the surprise of his life.

  A popping noise brought her to a halt. Three of the four walls morphed into blisters that swelled, then ruptured. The gaps revealed a virtual army of Sharron’s gray-cloaked minions. Jas’s heart sank. It was time. The second moon had risen.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jas followed her captors into a darkened corridor. Fresh air washed over her bare arms and legs, cooling the perspiration prickling her skin. Somewhere a door or window must be open to the outside, to freedom. Longing tightened her chest, but she kept her head bowed in the manner of a meek convert. Patience was the key, she reminded herself. That was how she’d escape.

  Using her peripheral vision, she took in as many details as she
could. The glassy black walls and floor shimmered in the light of laser torches. There were plenty of doors similar to those on the Quillie, but they were all sealed.

  Again she turned her attention to the floor, unable to shake the bleak sensation that these dozens of somber, drably clothed zealots were leading her to her execution. What a strange and awful turn her life had taken. A month ago she had been a divorced mother of two whose biggest fear was going on a date. Now look.

  But she didn’t regret the past few weeks for a minute. She’d never lived so fully, so completely. Anger blazed, and she clenched her jaw until it ached. It wasn’t her time to die—she knew it in her soul—and she sure as heck wasn’t going to make it easy for Sharron to kill her. Hell no. She’d fight until her last breath. That was what Rom would do if he were in this situation.

  Rom…She bit her lip to keep it from quivering. Even out of sight the man made her emotions gush to the surface. A shame they had never had more time together—more than that one beautiful night.

  The slightly built man she guessed was in charge gestured into a cavernous, empty room. “You go,” he whispered. A viewscreen dominated the wall opposite the door. The screen was blank, but not in the silvery standby mode she was used to seeing. She was being covertly observed. The knowledge brought her to a halt.

  Her escort peered questioningly at her from beneath his hood. “You go,” he repeated under his breath.

  Mute, she stepped inside. A plush mattress was mounted in the exact center of the room, like the prized showpiece in some nightmarish gallery. It was draped in shimmering white sheets as deceptively lovely as a moonlit arctic night.

  Her escort poked a gloved hand at the bed. “Gown.”

  She followed his finger to a dress arranged on the coverlet, made from the same glittering material.

  “Put on,” the little troll insisted.

  Jas ground her teeth.