Keir Read online

Keir shook his head. “I have faced Death. How can it be any worse than everything I have been through already?”

  “You’ve no idea what it will be like.”

  “Then I will learn. Or is it that you want to be rid of me? Do you regret doing it?”

  “No!” Quin shook her head, seemingly horrified. “But I’ve lived through it once and I don’t know if I’d have the strength to do it again. I had no right to condemn you to that.”

  Her whole body shook as she sobbed, her mind radiating terrible despair as she buried her face in her hands. He ached to hold her, to ease her pain as she had done for him. Instead he stood helpless.

  “Quin,” he said. “You have brought me back from death and offered me a new life. I would walk back through Adalucien for you. I would take any pain for you. If you need me to forgive you, I do. If you want me to leave in the hope of breaking this link, I will. Do not punish yourself for this. I am, and always will be, grateful to you.”

  He touched her hair, a fleeting gesture. Her tears unnerved him, and he found himself unable to comprehend the profound remorse and self-recrimination she was subjecting herself to over an act of compassion. It wound itself into his chest and pulled tight.

  “Quin, please do not cry.” When her tears continued unabated, he panicked. “Must I beg?”

  He made to kneel but, still shaky on his feet, he lost his balance and found himself sprawled on the grass, staring up at her.

  She burst out laughing then clutched her hand to her mouth as if to hold the laughter back. “Oh, Keir, I’m so sorry.”

  She held out her hands to help him up and he rose awkwardly to sit back on the bench. After a brief hesitation, she sat beside him, sniffling as she wiped her eyes and took a deep, steadying breath. For a moment, they sat in silence, lost in thought. Keir glanced at her sidelong, sensing her sorrow as clearly as if it were his own. The weight of it pressed on his thoughts. It left him uneasy to see her so downcast, full of regrets and unnecessary pain, and to be sharing it with her. Did she realize how much he could feel? Did she feel it too?

  His stomach cramped in hunger. “Quin?”

  She turned to look at him, eyebrows arched inquiringly. “What?”

  “I am sorry but…I am very hungry.”

  Quin chuckled. “Now that you mention it, so am I. Let’s eat”

  By the time they arrived at her quarters, Keir had his arm slung around Quin’s shoulders once more. His ordeal and two days of not eating had left him with little strength despite the restorative Taler had given him before he left the medical center.

  Quin’s lodgings were set deep within the complex. An unmarked doorway opened into a short corridor with subdued yellow lighting that led to a curved bank of soft, dark-gray seating. She directed him to sit and make himself comfortable, before fetching him a drink. This time it was chilled fruit juice, another new flavor for him and tarter than anything he had tasted before. He accepted it gratefully, though the coldness and acidity of it set his teeth on edge.

  As Quin busied herself cooking, Keir took the opportunity to look around her home. Ahead of him stood the main entrance, and to his left two further doors were set at right angles. To the right, kitchen units took up the adjacent wall, with a plain wooden table and chairs opposite. The long wall leading away had a landscape painted across it, similar to the view he had seen outside. He admired it for several moments before it registered that the clouds were moving across the brilliant blue sky and a white butterfly flitted among a patch of multicolored flowers. He blinked and leaned forward, certain his eyes had tricked him.

  The curved wall behind him was made of several narrow, vertical panels of a reflective black material that looked like metal but felt surprisingly warm to the touch when he dared investigate. The rest of the walls were a muted blue-gray and the floors were covered in a dark-gray fabric.

  “I haven’t bothered to do anything about decorating it,” she explained suddenly, as if she had read his mind. “It’s just a place to come back to, and to keep things safe.”

  “Can you hear all my thoughts?” he asked, his voice tight.

  She grinned at him, the same hint of mischief on her face he had seen just before she destroyed their prison cell. “If I wanted to,” she said. “But I wouldn’t do that. In any case, I’ll teach you how to shield your thoughts and project them, so I’ll only hear what you want me to.”

  Reassured somewhat, he watched her working as he finished his drink then set the empty beaker on the floor. Quin used a small knife to chop up something green and leafy that she added to the contents of the large, steaming pot beside her.

  “You cannot produce food by magic, then?”

  Quin laughed, stirring the metal pan. “No, not really. And we call it science, not magic.”

  “Science?” Keir tried the word, a touch embarrassed at his ignorance, and she gave him a sympathetic shrug, sensing his discomfort.

  “I could ‘magic’ something up,” she said, making it clear from the emphasis she had used the term in jest. “But I prefer to cook, if I have the time. It doesn’t taste the same out of a machine.”

  “You have machines that can make food?”

  “Yes. We have machines that can make pretty much anything.”

  He resumed studying the landscape, and wondered what magic or… science made it work and whether he would be able to learn it. “Does a machine make that painting move?”

  “Yes. It’s a CHI–a crystalline holographic imager. It uses light to create the image and makes it move like the real thing.”

  “It sounds very complex.”

  “Probably. I don’t really understand how it works myself. It just does.”

  The arrival of the promised food soon distracted him from his questions, the smell unfamiliar yet appetizing. Quin brought two large cups and offered him one with the warning, “It’s hot. Mind yourself.”

  “What is it?”

  “Vegetable soup. I don’t know if Adalucien has an equivalent. If you don’t like it, tell me and I’ll get you something else.”

  Keir held the cup with both hands, warming his fingers appreciatively on the beaker’s smooth surface. He sipped with caution, managing not to burn himself and enjoying the strong flavor. “It is good. I thank you.”

  “I wasn’t sure if it would be to your taste.”

  “You would not want to know some of the things I have eaten at need. This is good.”

  Quin stared at him over the edge of her cup as she drank and he looked away with a flicker of unease. He returned to his examination of her living mural, his gaze darting from one image to the next as he discovered other fragments of interest.

  “That’s an image from my home world,” she told him.

  “I thought it was of the landscape here. They seem very similar.” He followed another insect with shimmering wings across the wall. “Is your entire world like that?”

  “No, not much of it, actually. That was taken near my home. I used to walk there.”

  “Do you never go back?” he asked, hearing the edge of wistfulness in her voice.

  “I can’t. It doesn’t exist anymore.” Her tone revealed a hint of anger mixed with bitterness, and Keir sensed he was close to the source of some of her grief.

  “Taler said this was a place for strays.”

  “I’d call them refugees,” corrected Quin, sounding piqued by the choice of phrase. “‘Strays’ makes us sound like a litter of abandoned puppies. Otherwise, yes, that’s accurate. Most of us have lost our homes.”

  “What happened to yours?”

  “A woman called Rulk and a being known as a Sentiac destroyed my home and my family. I’ve been looking for them ever since.”

  “That is a terrible loss to bear,” Keir ventured. “Was it a war? A blood feud?”

  “I suppose you could call it a war, yes.” Quin kept her gaze averted, but her pain was clear in the lines etching her face. Sorrow threaded into his mind from hers. For a moment she stared into
her cup before speaking again, and her voice was muted. “Rulk was a talented, though ruthless, scientist. She took over the machines that controlled a lot of the systems on my world, things like power for light and heating, water, travel, things your people would have no concept of. Then she made herself an army.”

  Confusion filled his mind. “I do not understand. How could she make an army? Is this more science?”

  “Yes. A very advanced form of science called genetic engineering. It’s like…” Quin struggled to find the words. “Like picking the best horses to produce better offspring? Does that make sense to you?”

  “You make it sound as though this Rulk was breeding fine steeds or cattle. But you mean men for war?”

  When Quin nodded, unease prickled down his spine. Would he ever make sense of this world?

  “She took certain humans…” Quin’s voice broke and dropped to a whisper. “She took my sisters, both of them.”

  Horror clutched at his throat. “I am sorry for your loss, Quin,” he managed. “I cannot imagine the grief you hold.” But he could feel the sharp edge of it in his thoughts, sense the emptiness it had carved into her soul as surely as he could see the glimmer of tears in her eyes. With it came a cold rage–her anger and bitterness that those she loved had been taken from her for such a purpose. For another’s gain.

  “My family had a touch of psychic talent, so she used them and the Sentiac to create a race of hybrids with telepathic abilities,” Quin continued as if she needed to purge herself of the story by telling it. “Then she used her army to take over my world, turned the true humans into slaves and started shipping them off-world.”

  “She traded your people as slaves?”

  “No, just used them as labor to gather resources from other planets. But it would only have been a matter of time before they died out.”

  “But you escaped?”

  “Yeah.” She snorted. “Lucky me.”

  Her response resonated with him. All those times he had felt close to death and yet survived, wondering whether it was a curse or a blessing to live another day. “So now you have a blood feud to settle with this Rulk?”

  “You mean do I want to kill her?” She met his gaze then, her face hardening. “I’ve never killed anyone in cold blood before. I don’t know if I can.”

  “Then why seek her if not for revenge?”

  “Before she escaped, she opened a gateway, just as I can, and I lost a good friend through it. I don’t know where or when she sent him. I’m hoping I can...persuade her to tell me.”

  A strange pang filled him. Guilt? She felt his loss was her fault? Surely in such a battle, each warrior must fight with the possibility of death before them? Yet there was more to it than the whispers of thought coming from Quin. He found himself resenting the friend she sought.

  “This man must have been important to you,” he hazarded.

  Quin sighed. “Ryan was the one sure thing I had when the world went mad.” She sat, staring into her beaker. “He told me he loved me once, even though I never felt the same for him. And yet he still tried to save my life. So it’s my fault he’s lost.”

  Keir’s unease deepened, yet he could not quite comprehend why. He had no claim on Quin after all–how could he? Why did it bother him that she would put so much effort into finding this man? “Were you seeking this woman in Adalucien?”

  Again, she evaded his gaze. “Kind of.” She leaned back into the plush seating, and twisted a strand of her hair around one finger. “She’s not exactly the same anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rulk wasn’t alone. She had a…companion is probably not quite the word. I think it was as much as slave to her as my people.”

  An image flashed into his mind, a being that would have graced any tome on demonic creatures. Its skin was a shade of blue-black even darker than his own, its frail limbs tipped by black talons, and fine spines ran along the underside of its arms and down its back. The face was almost human, but without nose or mouth. As if an artist had begun to paint it but neglected to fill in those features. Beneath a domed skull covered in black hair, its eyes glowed with an eldritch blue light.

  Fear shivered through him, but not his own. The image he saw in Quin’s mind was a thing that had haunted her nightmares, and would likely now invade his.

  “Sentiac,” Quin whispered.

  “A monster?”

  “Of a kind, maybe. I’ve met a lot of different races on my travels and most of them are just people. Sentiacs are different.”

  “How so?”

  “They are, or perhaps were, a race that could open gateways by thought alone. They fed by absorbing the life-force of any being they encountered, and could take and manipulate the DNA from their victims to alter their shape. I don’t know if that was for camouflage or to help them adapt to other worlds, but it meant they could disguise themselves at will. Rulk brought one to Earth–my world–and used it to open gateways, to create her hybrids, and finally to enhance herself.” Quin drew up her knees and hugged them, a child hiding from a monster. “But in the end it turned on her and consumed her, just as it had so many humans.”

  “Then Rulk no longer exists? Your blood feud is over?”

  “Oh, I wish that were true! I think she’d merged so much of its DNA into herself that even when it absorbed her, her being dominated the Sentiac’s. What happened to her–to it–after that, I don’t know. But when I read the legend of the Blue Demon of Adalucien, I thought it might be her. I never realized it would be you.”

  “Did the legend make me out to be such a monster as this Sentiac?”

  “No,” Quin shook her head. “It was only a fragment of parchment that fell apart as I read it. All I had was the name, a place and approximate date, nothing else.”

  Keir stared at his hands and recalled the image he had shared with Quin, of a creature with dark blue skin and eyes that glowed. Something growled at the back of his mind, a terrible suspicion he tried to suppress.

  Blue-black skin.

  He swallowed hard, forced the words to come. “I have always wondered why I was like this. Am I a demon, Quin? Am I under a curse, in truth?” He held up his hand in contemplation. “Once, when I was a child, I scrubbed my hands until they bled because I was trying to wash off the blue.”

  Quin was silent for several moments. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  Did he really want her to say the words? The truth he believed he already knew? His heart beat a painful rhythm of rising fear. “Yes,” he said. “All my life, I have been called a monster. I want to know why.”

  Quin sighed and rose to kneel before him as if to ask his forgiveness. “Keir, I’m truly sorry. Five generations ago, the Sentiac was your ancestor.”

  Horrified, he leaped to his feet and backed away. “Then I am truly cursed,” he breathed. “If it was not human, then neither am I.”

  “You’re as human as I am, Keir.”

  “You are mistaken!”

  “You know I’m not.”

  Keir drew a shuddering breath while part of him screamed in horror. “You sit there so calmly and tell me that I carry the blood of a creature that should truly be called a demon.”

  “The Sentiacs aren’t demons, Keir. Just another race, with a different view of the universe and powers beyond our own. You have none of their abilities. Even unknowing, you would have used them by now to defend yourself.”

  “Perhaps I would,” he said. “Perhaps I would have these powers indeed if it were not for these.” He pulled at the neck of his top, further revealing the hated tattoos.

  “Keir…”

  “When I was six, I was taken from my parents’ home.” Keir gasped, trembling. “I was locked in a room while they did this to me.”

  “I know.” Quin rose and approached him carefully, removing his hands to smooth the crumpled material back into place. “I saw that memory while I was in your mind.” Her voice was soft. “It was a terrible cruelty enacted by ignorant peo
ple, Keir. It had nothing to do with you. You were just a child.”

  “They did not see a child! They thought these symbols would prevent me from casting dark magic. And maybe they were right.”

  “I’d know.” She traced the edge of one of the symbols and he shrank from her touch, raising his hands to ward her off as he backed against the wall. “If you had those powers, these would not prevent you from using them. Nothing could.”

  “And then I would be as this Sentiac? A devourer of worlds? Your enemy?”

  “No, Keir. No, you wouldn’t. You aren’t that. You could never be that.”

  “How do you know? You have not lived my life!”

  “No. But I’ve been in your mind and seen it. I’ve felt it. I can feel it still.” She moved toward him again, slowly, as if expecting him to bolt. “You’re not like them.”

  Keir took a deep breath, still shaking despite her reassurances. All those years he had endured the hatred and malice of his own people and yet a part of him had not believed their torment of him justified. Now it seemed meager punishment for his ancestor’s crimes, for wrongs beyond redemption. He carried the blood of a true monster in his veins. A destroyer of worlds. A creature Quin both hated and feared. He wished suddenly that she had not saved his life, that he had died and been free of this shame. Of the certainty that he was born to do great harm. The constant gnawing fear that he would become the demon he had been named.

  The only thing that had really changed was that he now knew it was not his destiny. It was his inheritance.

  Chapter 5

  Beneath a moonless night sky, the white walls of the Lyagnius base shone in ghostly splendor against the blue-gray rock of the eroded impact crater. Built in stepped tiers against the remaining wall, it nestled within the curves of the ancient depression, the bright, interior lights spilling out across formal gardens. Keir crouched in the shadow of the huge boulders that separated the well-tended grounds from the wilderness, outside the circle of artificial light. He watched, pulse racing, as a wraith-like figure dressed in gray dashed across the rooftop of the lowest level at unnatural speed. As it reached the edge it jumped, landing on the rough ground beyond the wall of jumbled rocks and dropping out of sight.