Holly Lisle Hunting the Corrigan's Blood

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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
That was too much. My stomach lost everything in it. I leaned against the
nearest aisle, retching. I saw blood in my vomit, and didn't want to think
about where it came from. I was hurt, I was in trouble, and I
had killed a man.
And Badger said, "Oh, shit," and I turned and saw the sallow-faced man, his
grin broader, blink and start to get to his feet.
Impossible. Impossible. He was dead, had to be dead, I'd caved in the whole
back of his head.
He wasn't dead. He said, "Good try. Not good enough."
Badger staggered to his feet and I reached for another stone statue, thinking
as I did that it wouldn't do any good, that I had gotten lucky to get that one
blow in and that I would never get a chance for another one like it; and the
door to the parking lot opened and cold, wet air blasted into the store, and
all three of us turned.
Fedara Contei stalked toward us. She looked at me and said, "You idiot. You've
gotten into something you'll never get out of," and then she was past Badger
and me and charging our attacker, and she had drawn a knife as long as her
forearm.
"They're mine," the man said.
"I'm afraid not," she said, and stuck the knife into his throat.
Badger and I stood there, staring stupidly, unable to make sense of what we
were seeing. She started hacking the man's head off with her knife, and he
screamed and fought her while she did it. She snarled, "Take my buggy. Get
back to your rooms and figure out some plausible lie for how you got hurt,
damn you," without looking at us. The man's screams had become gurgles, wet
and bubbling. Blood sprayed everywhere.
We hobbled out the front door and took the buggy. Neither of us knew anything
about animals, but
Badger was the less injured of us, so he sat up on the driver's seat and tried
everything he could think of until the animal started forward. After some
experimentation, he figured out how to make it stop. And we spent the next
couple of hours finding our way back to our rooms.
Chapter Fourteen
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Lisle, Holly - Hunting the Corrigan's Blood
I was awake again. I lay on the bed, pain-wracked, heart racing, panting and
not getting enough air in, hoping I would be able to get back to the
medichamber on the
Hope's Reward before whatever the man in black had done to me killed me. I
tried to tell myself that I'd lived through the night, that I was going to be
fine. But my urine was blood-red and blood-thick and my tongue and nailbeds
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and the insides of my eyelids were dead-man pale. I was in trouble and I knew
it.
Badger sat at the foot of the bed, watching me. Now that the muddy light of
dawn trickled through the dirty windows, I could see the fear in his eyes.
He'd managed to keep it out of his voice when he'd checked on me during the
night. Had kept it out of his touch. But his eyes said I wasn't doing too
well, and he was afraid.
When he spoke, though, it wasn't about how I was doing. "She followed us," he
said. "And we didn't know."
I'd been thinking about that, too. Dreaming about it some when I wasn't
dreaming about the bastard who wouldn't die. "She's used corollary origami
points, come into each system from the other side or from a lot farther out.
We've been using the closest and most convenient points."
"Maybe. Maybe there are other ways she could have done it. But we didn't even
suspect." He looked worried. "I've been watching our backs. I wide-wormed the
information from the in-system Spybees when we arrived and right before we
left, every time we jumped& after the incident with Contei, anyway. I should
have seen the repetition of the ship registration one of those times. It was
exactly what
I was looking for. So why didn't I see it?"
I'd spent some of my time on deck looking behind us, too. I didn't want to
believe we'd been careless.
And I didn't want to believe someone could be so much better than we were that
she could slip in right behind us, follow us down to planetary surfaces and
around cities, and never give any indication that she was there. "Maybe she
just now caught up with us. Maybe we didn't miss anything because there was
nothing to miss."
"Maybe." Badger looked as doubtful as I felt. We were dealing with more than
we'd been prepared to handle, and he knew it, and I knew it.
Footsteps sounded down the hall, and something hit our door with a crash. We
heard other crashes along the hall. Both of us jumped and froze; then Badger
picked up the board he'd pried loose from the floor to use as a weapon, and
with it clutched in both hands, advanced on the door. The sound of footsteps
receded.
Badger braced himself and opened the door. "No one there," he told me. "Just
this roll of paper." He crouched, still watching the hall for signs of an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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