Renegade Page 10

  Books, he decided. The books harness a way of escape. But boots were already pounding on the steps just outside.

  He dove to the base of the counter and rolled behind it. Scrambling like a crab over Steves prone body, he snatched up the long gun with twin tubes that lay beside his slain prey.

  The door crashed open. “Steve!”

  Billos breathed steadily, measuring his time. The books sat on the shelf above him. He would rise, unload some suhupow into the man at the door, snatch the books, and make for the back door he could see just beyond the counter. Once outside, he would regroup and plot his attack on the rest of the village.

  “Get Claude!” the voice cried. “We have a shooting here! Jerry’s been shot! Call the station in Delta. Get the cops up here, for goodness’ sake, hurry!”

  Cops. The man had named Billos’s enemy. “Imposters,” Black had said. But he had yet to meet someone pretending to be someone else. His mission was far from over.

  The man spoke low, aiming his verbal taunting at Billos now. “Listen to me, you—”

  Billos rose while the man was full of his threat. He whipped the twin-tubed firing stick at the door and jerked both levers back.

  Ba-boom!

  Twin thunder crushed his ears. The device bucked like a stallion, slamming him backward into the wall behind him. Glasses and bottles rained to the floor, crashing around him. He’d misjudged the power of this new weapon.

  The assailant, however, had misjudged Billos and now lay in a heap beyond the doors as payment for his lack of respect. “Dead by Billos,” he said, then spun and reached high for the books.

  Rolling thunder filled the room; the wall splintered near him.

  He dropped to his knees. Reinforcements had reached the door and leveled a round of suhupow at him. He was lucky to be alive!

  Okay then. Bring it to Billos; Billos will bring it to you. The books would have to wait.

  “Steve!” They kept calling for Steve, which probably meant that Billos had taken out an important fellow. Maybe their commander.

  “Steves dead!” he yelled, snatching a second handgun off the shelf in favor over the larger stick. “As you and all your friends will be if you don’t surrender.” He dropped the big gun.

  Suhupow thudded against the counter in response. Their arrogance was unforgivable!

  He scooped up a jar and hurled it across the room. It crashed against the far wall, and the assailant instinctively shifted his fire in the same direction.

  Billos rolled into the open, firing from both guns, flinging deadly fire toward a man who stood in the door. Behind him crouched three others, but their way was blocked by the staggering body of their fallen comrade.

  Dead by Billos. The enemy had now seen him and knew what they were up against.

  Billos launched himself at the rear door, flung it open, and ran into an alleyway behind the establishment. He flattened his back against the wall, guns cocked by his ears, panting. Unable to hold back a smirk of intense satisfaction.

  Round one to Billos of Southern, baby. The sense of pride and power that swelled through him was unlike any he’d ever felt. It was almost as if he’d found his purpose, here in the histories. He’d been born for this.

  But the sentiment was cut short the next moment, severed by the sight of four warriors who tore around the corner of the next building, scowling, armed with suhupow guns. The wood wall behind Billos splintered when the largest of the four whipped his gun up and leveled belching fire at him. This time Billos had no surprise in his favor, and the warriors had dispensed with the trickery that had made those inside seem so unthreatening.

  What did it feel like to be struck with a guns power? The question kept Billos momentarily fixed to the ground. His vision clouded, and he blinked. The forest behind the village distorted. A new kind of suhupow?

  Billos’s throat suddenly felt dry. His head spun. He pressed both hands on the wall behind him for balance, dropping the guns in the process.

  Had he been killed? Was this what the guns power felt like?

  A voice whispered in his ears, low and mocking, “Is that all you have, Billos? Maybe you’re not as smart as you think. You puke.”

  Then Billos’s world turned white.

  ’m not saying that we aren’t responsible, sir, only that I truly believe that we may be the only ones who can fix the situation.”

  Johnis stood next to Silvie, facing a furious commander who paced next to his wife, Rachelle, seated to his right. A single fluffy white Roush hopped along one of the rafter beams over Rachelle’s head.

  They were three personalities, each as distinct as the colors of Pampie fruit: Thomas the warrior, furious at those in his charge. Rachelle the lover, always ready to extend grace, though not at the expense of her wisdom. Hunter the Roush, who was desperate to make up for the embarrassment of allowing himself to be taken captive.

  Thomas threw wide a dismissive hand. “Fix it? You caused it! Every time I turn around, I find you four necks-deep in some quagmire of your own making! I simply can’t believe you’ve lost not only Billos and Darsal but Karas of all people. What’s her part in this? The next thing I know you’ll have lost yourself.”

  “Well, sir, we think Karas might have been under the delusion that Darsal is her aunt,” Johnis explained.

  “Time’s wasting!” the Roush cried, hopping along the rafter.

  “Quiet!” Johnis snapped his frustration without thought, glancing up at the white bat.

  “Pardon?” Thomas demanded.

  Johnis realized his mistake immediately. Neither Thomas nor Rachelle could see the Roush, of course, and for the most part it was easy to hide the fact that he and Silvie could. However, it’s not as easy when you’re fighting and facing a hyperactive Roush who keeps insisting you have to leave. Even his superior, Michal, had agreed, he’d said.

  Johnis closed his eyes and ground his molars. “Sorry, sir, I was only scolding myself.” He walked to his right, scrambling for the right words. “You’re right, we should be quiet. None of this makes sense to you, but it does to us. If you want us to become the kind of leaders who will lead our people in victory one day, you have to allow us to make our mistakes. Don’t you think we’re learning?”

  “He’s right, Thomas,” Rachelle said quietly.

  But Thomas was having none of it. “Mistakes, you say? And how many lives do you suggest I put in the way of your mistakes?”

  “Point made,” Silvie said. They would never forgive Johnis’s indiscretion with the Third Fighting Group. As well they shouldn’t.

  Silvie faced Thomas. “Then let us leave alone, just the two of us. We’ll take no army.”

  “To where?” he shouted. “Do you have some intelligence that I’m not aware of, because as I understand the situation, you don’t know where they are.”

  “I know,” the Roush said. “Just keep that in mind. I know exactly—”

  “That’s our problem,” Johnis said to Thomas, this time keeping his eyes off the Roush.

  “And you’re my problem,” Thomas said. “You’re making me look like a fool. Don’t forget that it was me who chose you.”

  “No, Thomas.” Rachelle turned her head to her husband. “It wasn’t you who chose him.”

  She was speaking of the circular birthmark on the side of his neck that marked him as Elyon’s chosen one.

  Thomas grunted. “Well, I’m beginning to wonder if Elyon’s purpose in choosing this runt is to mortify me.”

  “He was a hero not two weeks ago,” Rachelle said. “You don’t remember the cheering?”

  “And the next week he plotted to take my life! Yet here I am, giving him a secret audience in our chambers so that no one will hear that we’re as foolish as he!”

  “You do so because you know it’s the right thing to do.”

  Thomas frowned, but he couldn’t deny his wife’s wisdom.

  “Then you agree?” the Roush who’d called himself Hunter asked Thomas, knowing the man couldn�
��t possibly hear him. “So be a leader and let them go before going makes no sense!”

  “Karas could be invaluable to us,” Thomas said, refusing to let the matter resolve easily.

  “We were the ones who lost her,” Johnis said. “You have to give us the opportunity to find her. I was the one who rescued her in the first place, for the love of Elyon! How can you deny me my right to go after her?”

  “But you are holding something back,” Rachelle said. “Aren’t you, chosen one?”

  How could he lie so directly to a woman who was his advocate? He couldn’t. “I’m within my rights to hold back everything Elyon has told me,” Johnis said, then added so as to sound more like a chosen one, “All in good time.”

  Thomas lowered himself into a chair next to Rachelle, crossed his legs, folded his hands over one knee, and looked at Johnis. For a few long moments he just stared at him.

  “Fine,” he finally said. “I’ll give you my permission—for my wife’s sake—to go after them, but on the condition that you tell me everything when this is over.”

  “Everything?”

  “You can’t do it,” the Roush said,

  Johnis glanced up at him, and this time Rachelle followed his eyes and saw nothing but an empty rafter.

  Her eyes lowered and met his. What do you see, chosen one? But he couldn’t know what she was thinking.

  ‘“What if Elyon forbids my telling you everything?”

  “Elyon has put you under my authority, and I say tell me. So then Elyon has spoken, through me. Do you think I’m not his servant as well?”

  The commander had a point. He’d have to sort it all out later.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you everything,” Johnis said.

  Then he swept his hand toward the door. “Don’t let me hold you back. Find them. Bring them back. Alive. And don’t forget your vow.”

  “What vow?”

  “You already forget?”

  “To tell you everything. It’s a vow?”

  “Your word to your commander is, by extension of your commission, all vow. Are you having second thoughts?”

  “No. No, just looking for clarity.”

  “Not good,” the Roush said.

  Thomas lowered his arm. “Elyon knows that you could use some clarity. Now move. The sun doesn’t stop, even for the chosen one.”

  Rachelle reached out and touched her husband’s knee, smiling. She winked. “Have I told you that my blood boils when I look at you?”

  “I make you angry?” he asked with a glint in his eyes.

  She just winked.

  “Go, go!” the Roush quipped, fluttering his wings. “Water and swords. Lots of water!”

  “I hope you’re right about this,” Thomas said to Rachelle as Johnis and Silvie slid from the room. “Have I ever been wrong?”

  But Johnis knew that there was always a first time for everything.

  he blackness that swallowed Darsal when she entered the book felt like her imaginations of death, swirling and turning toward a bottomless chasm lined with charred trees and black Shataiki.

  But then white light flooded her eyes, and she saw a bottom, rushing up. She crashed onto a hard surface with a loud grunt that echoed in her ears.

  It took a moment for her head to clear. She pushed herself to one knee, scanned the square room, and froze solid. She was in what appeared to be a white room, at the center of which sat a lone monster, the likes of which had never crossed her imagination, much less her sight.

  “What is it?”

  Darsal jerked her eyes from the beast and twisted to see Karas up on one arm, staring past her.

  And behind Karas … behind Karas the Scab, Papa, crouched, hand on his sword, staring at the beast. Two thoughts rushed through Darsal’s mind: The first was that both Karas and Papa had followed her to hell or wherever this was, perhaps because they had been in contact with her when she’d touched the book with her blood. The second was that she never could have imagined feeling so relieved to have an armed Scab by her side.

  She jumped to her feet and spun her eyes back over the beast. It was then that she saw Billos. Strapped onto one of the six legs, like a fly caught in a spider’s web. His head was enshrouded in a black cocoon. Hands inserted in gloves.

  Karas’s thin voice came again. “Is he dead?”

  Darsal stepped warily to her right, ready to jump back if the thing moved. Billos’s chest rose and fell rapidly, she now saw. But she had no doubt that the black cocoon around his head would suffocate him if she didn’t free him immediately.

  She pushed aside caution for her own safety and moved closer,

  “Stay back!” Papa rasped. “What foul beast is this?”

  Darsal reached her hand back. “Give me your knife!”

  His grasp on his sword didn’t budge. He would be ready to swing at any appendage that might swipe his way.

  “I’m not going to come after you, you oaf,” Darsal snapped. “We have bigger problems now. Give me a blade!”

  Papa slipped a long curved knife from his waist and tossed it toward her. She snatched it out of the air.

  “Be careful,” Karas said. “Please, Darsal, you’re going to get us killed.”

  “You’re assuming we aren’t already dead.”

  The thing hadn’t moved its legs. A flat, glassy panel against the wall showed several green and yellow lines moving across from left to right. Red eyes glared around a softly humming head with the word DELL written in block letters on one side. It was clearly alive, but nothing on its body had actually moved.

  Then again, spiders sat in perfect stillness, waiting for their prey to come in close before leaping forward to sting them with poison. She would have to be careful.

  “Can I have your sword?” she asked Papa without turning.

  “Don’t push it.”

  “I’m better with it than you are. Faster at least.”

  “As I recall, my blade was at your throat when you touched the book.”

  “There were four of you!” she said.

  “There was only one of me.”

  It was hopeless. “Then get up here beside me and cover my flank.”

  Papa wasn’t the type to show his fear. He stepped up, sword ready.

  “Darsal …” Karas hung back, “Please, Darsal …”

  “If it moves,” Darsal whispered, “hack at the leg holding Billos. Cut the veins.” She nodded at the black ropes that ran along the hardened structure.

  “Ready?”

  The Scab shifted. “Ready.”

  Darsal held the Horde knife in her right hand and inched forward. She dove at Billos when she was within three feet, taking full advantage of the same kind of speed that the Forest Guard relied on to defeat the Horde.

  With a flip of her wrist she sliced the gloves that gripped her man’s hands. Still no movement. She grabbed the cocoon over his head with both hands and pulled hard, thinking at the last moment that it looked more like a strange helmet than a cocoon. It came off with surprising ease.

  Billos lay still, his white face beaded with sweat, breathing hard. His eyes were wide and staring into the middle distance.

  Darsal’s first thought was that he had been paralyzed by this beast. But then he blinked and sat up, and she knew she’d freed him. Still concerned about a counterattack, she grabbed his arm and tugged hard, hauling him off the seatlike leg. Still dazed, Billos slid off and fell to the ground like a log. He grunted.

  “What? What?”

  “Hurry, Billos! Help me, Papa.” With the Scab’s help she dragged him away across the floor to where Karas stood watching.

  “Stop it!” Billos’s arms flailed, and he rolled to his feet. He stood and stared at them, clearly disoriented.

  “I’m not sure he liked that,” Karas said.

  “Darsal? What’s going on?”

  She glanced at the spider thing and saw that its eyes had darkened. Still no movement.

  “I don’t know, Billos. You tell me.”

>   “You … Where’s the village?” He patted his chest and felt his head. “I’m okay?”

  “No blood, if that’s what you mean.” But she couldn’t say that he was okay, because his mind may have been compromised. He certainly didn’t seem too eager to see her.

  “How did I get back in here?” he demanded angrily.

  “Settle down. It was you who caused this. I just followed with another book.”

  “I was here when you found me?”

  “Are you daft, boy?” Papa said. “She said you were.”

  Billos was too preoccupied to give the Scab a second look. He crossed to the leg she’d freed him from and lifted the helmet.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I told you, the spider—”

  “It’s a contraption, not an animal,” he snapped. “I couldn’t figure out how it worked so I …”

  He ran to the only door leading from the room and tugged on the handle. But it would not so much as budge.

  “I got out,” Billos said.

  “Well, you weren’t out just now,” Papa said. “Don’t tell me you don’t know where we are or how we escape.”

  Billos faced the Desert Dweller. “Who let this thug in?”

  “Your cursed book,” Papa said. “Where are we?”

  “Still in the white room, clearly.” He glanced around. “I left this place; walked out that door; met a ‘Marsuvees Black,’ who gave me a gun; went to battle in the village of Paradise, where I clearly had the upper hand when …” Billos looked at Darsal. “Are we dead?”

  It was a good question, but she was amazed that Billos didn’t seem to be giving her a second thought.

  “I risked my life to follow you,” she said. “Please don’t tell me all I’ve managed to do is follow you into death.”

  He looked at the spider contraption. “You’re suggesting that I never left this room. Or that I left it and was returned with the magical power. Like the gun.”

  “What’s this ‘gun’ business?” Papa demanded.

  “A magical weapon that destroys objects from afar. You said you came with a book?”

  “Yes,” Darsal said.

  “Then I know where it is. It’s in Paradise, the village Marsuvees Black sent me to.”