Deathstalker (61 page)

Finlay cut down the last man with cold efficiency, kicked the body over the side, and then sheathed his sword. The Wolfes on the other sleds were rushing forward, shouting their anger and outrage. Disrupter bolts shot past Finlay. He grabbed the slab of explosive from his belt, slapped it against the deck of the sled so it would stick, and activated the timer built into it for a twenty-second fuse. Then he turned the Wolfe sled around and sent it back toward the approaching craft. Fifteen. He timed his moment carefully, and then jumped off. Ten. He hit the floor hard and rolled behind a heavy desk. Five. The sled slammed into the midst of the Wolfes and blew apart in a gush of flames. The other sleds exploded as their drives ruptured, and for a long moment the office was full of jagged metal shrapnel raining down, interspersed with wet, soft parts of what had once been their crew. A fireball blazed briefly in the confined space, but quickly ran out of air and collapsed.

Finlay huddled in a ball beneath his sheltering desk, hands pressed tightly to his ears against the overpowering roar of the explosion. He slowly lowered his hands as he realized a silence had fallen, uncurled and cautiously raised his head to look about him. Fires had broken out all across the office, with desks burning fiercely here and there like so many
warning beacons. Dead and injured lay to every side, some of them burning quietly. Finlay didn’t spare them more than a glance. He didn’t know them. Adrienne was all that mattered now. He saw a red light flashing over a door and wondered why the alarms weren’t sounding. He slowly realized from the utter silence around him that they probably were, but he couldn’t hear them. The blast had temporarily deafened him. At least, he hoped it was only temporary. He didn’t need another problem.

He rose painfully to his feet and stumbled toward his own sled, still hovering where he’d left it. Burning fragments sputtered on the deck around Adrienne, but she seemed unhurt. Finlay brushed the fragments off the deck with a sweep of his arm and climbed aboard. It was growing uncomfortably hot in the office as the fires spread, and his bare skin was beginning to smart from the heat. The office should have invested in sprinklers. For a moment that struck Finlay as wildly funny, and he giggled helplessly before pulling himself together. He looked down at Adrienne. The deck was slippery with her blood where it hadn’t burnt, and her hands were wet and crimson where they tried to hold her guts together. Her face was worryingly colorless, but she was still breathing shallowly. Finlay eased the sled forward and out through the break in the window, and headed for Tower Shreck.

Evangeline was getting ready for bed, even though it wasn’t late. Daddy was coming over for one of his little visits. He’d contacted her just a few minutes before. He never gave her much warning, so she wouldn’t have time to think up excuses, but he liked her to wait a little before he arrived, so that she could think about what was coming. So she sat in her long white nightdress before her dressing table mirror, listlessly brushing her hair and thinking about killing herself. She knew she wouldn’t. She had so much to live for, apart from Daddy, and it would hurt Finlay so very much. The mood would pass, as it had so many times before, but for a moment it was comforting to think of ending it all and not having to worry anymore. She wouldn’t have to worry about being revealed as a clone, or a member of the underground, or seeing Finlay die in the Arena, or suffering through another of Daddy’s little visits ever again, and that would feel so good, so good. …

She sighed and put down her hairbrush and looked at it for a moment as though it was some foreign object, unknown to her. How could she be brushing her hair, such an ordinary, everyday thing, when her life was such a nightmare? Apart from Finlay, of course. His love was all that held her together now, when even the fires of her passion for the underground sometimes ran cold. He gave her the strength to go on, even in the face of Daddy and his clammy-handed love.

He didn’t come to her every night. Sometimes a whole week could go by without his honoring her with his presence. Gregor Shreck, smiling, sweating, lying beside her in her bed, talking smugly, calling her by her mother’s name. She had never told Finlay, never even hinted at it. He must never know. At best he would have challenged Gregor to a duel and killed him, and then Finlay’s secret identity and her secret status as a clone would both be revealed. At worst, he might not look at her in the same way again, once he knew who else shared her bed.

It was in Gregor Shreck’s best interests to keep everything secret. For cloning his dead daughter he’d get a fine and a reprimand, but incest was severely frowned on in high society. Genetic engineering had taken the biological dangers out of inbreeding, but it was still a taboo, if only because the aristocracy liked to have some rules that even they couldn’t break with impunity. After all, incest was such a tacky crime. If society found out about Gregor and her, no one would punish him, but no one would speak to him, either. They’d send him to Coventry, in and outside his Family, and that would be worse than death to an aristocrat.

Of course, if they found out he’d murdered his wife and his original daughter … Evangeline sighed tiredly. So many secrets in one Family. Her comm implant activated suddenly, and she sat up straight before her mirror. She’d shut down all the public channels, and only one man apart from her father knew her private code.

“Evangeline, this is Finlay. I’m in trouble. Can I come to you?”

“Of course.” It never even occurred to her to say no. “Where are you?”

“Right outside your window. Open up, will you? It’s cold out here.”

She jumped up and ran over to the window. The drapes
rolled back at her quick gesture, revealing a blood-spattered Finlay standing on a gravity sled hovering on the other side of the steelglass. Even with the surprise of his arrival and the shock of his condition, her first thought was still to wonder how he’d got past Tower Shreck’s security. He should have set off any number of alarms just by being there. Even with her beloved Finlay, she was still a Shreck. She deliberately pushed the thought aside and hit the emergency controls in the window surround. The great pane of steelglass swung open, and Finlay guided the sled forward into her room. The sled took up a hell of a lot of space, even hovering an inch or so above the floor, and Evangeline had to squeeze past it to shut the window again.

“Don’t worry about security,” said Finlay as he stepped down from the sled. “I’ve got a little device that takes care of things like that. It’s part of what helps protect my secrets. Security won’t know I was ever here.”

Evangeline seethed impatiently, a dozen questions on her lips, but they died stillborn as she saw the blood spilling off the sled and onto her thick carpets. At first she thought he’d been badly hurt after all, but then her eyes fell on the huddled form lying on the deck of the sled, and her heart nearly stopped when she recognized who it was: Adrienne Campbell. Possibly the woman she hated more than anyone, except her father. And Finlay had brought her here.

Finlay picked up his wife with a strained grunt, which more than anything showed how tried and drained he was, and carried her over to Evangeline’s bed. He lowered her carefully onto it, then sat down beside her. The last of his strength seemed to go out of him then, and his chin dropped onto his chest as his shoulders slumped. Somewhere in the back of Evangeline’s mind she was wondering how the hell she was going to get all that blood out of her carpets and bedclothes without hiring a dozen new maids, but she made herself concentrate on what was important. Finlay needed her help. She moved quickly over to the drinks cabinet, poured out a large brandy and brought it to him. She had to push the glass into his hand and encourage him to drink it, but the brandy quickly put some color back into his cheeks, and his eyes cleared. Evangeline knelt down before him, her knees squelching in the bloody carpet.

“What’s happened, Finlay? Did you kill her?”

“No! No, it was the Wolfes. She’s dying, Evie. I have to save her. Do you still have the regeneration machine?”

“Of course I do, but …”

“I know. But I can’t let her die. Please, Evie.”

“All right. Because you ask.”

She got to her feet, moved over to the dressing table and dragged it to one side. She activated the hidden controls by hand, carefully punching in the correct code, and part of the wall slid up as the regeneration machine rolled out. Gregor wasn’t the only Shreck with secrets. She opened up the long narrow device, thinking it looked even more like a coffin than usual, and pushed it over beside the bed. Finlay picked up Adrienne very gently, ignoring the blood that coursed down his front again, and lowered her into the regeneration device. It closed over her like a grave, and that was that. Her fate was in the hands of the machine now, and all he could do was wait and see. Finlay sat down on a nearby chair like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and Evangeline stood before him, her back straight, her mouth a cold flat line. She didn’t need to say anything.

Finlay took a deep breath. “Adrienne and I are the only survivors of the first rank of the Campbells. Everyone else is dead. The Wolfes wiped us out. They declared full vendetta and ambushed us in our own tower. They’re after me too, but I shook them off. I shouldn’t have come here, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

“Of course you should have come here,” said Evangeline. “No one can hurt you now you’re with me. I’m just glad you escaped. Oh, Finlay; your whole Family?”

“Yes. Only the minor branches and the distant cousins remain now, and the Wolfes are out in the streets, hunting them down. Clan Campbell is finished.”

“And Adrienne, what happened to her? Why did you bring her here?”

“Kid Death stuck her when she tried to save my brother. I’ll kill him for that someday. Her only hope was the regeneration machine I left here with you.”

“But why bring her here at all?” said Evangeline flatly. “Why not let her die? She’s always come between us, and you said you never loved her. This is our chance, Finlay. All we have to do is switch off the machine and wait. Don’t look at me like that. You don’t know how hard it’s been for me, alone, without you. You don’t know.”

“I can’t just let her die,” said Finlay. “She doesn’t deserve that. She fought so bravely. And as for you and me, there’s a price on my head now that Clan Campbell’s been all but destroyed. We can never be together in society, like we’d hoped, because I’m not a part of society anymore. The minute I show my face in public, I’m a dead man. Robert will be the Campbell now, and all he can do is try and salvage as much of the Family as he can. He can’t help me. He daren’t. He might be able to save Adrienne, if she survives. He’s on his way here with help. My only chance now is to become an outlaw, go underground. You always said you wanted to be with me, no matter what. Do you still feel that way? Are you willing to throw everything away, give up wealth and station to be an outlaw with me? Will you come down into the underground with me?”

She sat down beside him and held him as tightly as she could. “Of course I will, Finlay. You’re all I ever wanted.”

They sat together for a while in silence, holding each other, and then the regeneration machine made a series of imperative noises. Finlay and Evangeline got up reluctantly and went over to look at the readouts. Finlay nodded slowly, and Evangeline kept her face carefully blank.

“She’s in bad shape, but the device has stabilized her,” said Finlay. “It’s going to be some time before the machine’s finished with her, and we can’t wait that long.”

“You said Robert was coming here?”

“With a few friends from the military. They’ll look after her and keep her safe.”

“Tower security won’t let him in. Daddy’s been even more paranoid than usual just recently, after the … incident at the wedding. His guards have orders to shoot anyone who tries to get to me that isn’t a Shreck. You said you had a device …”

“It’s an implant. Nothing I can pass on to Robert. Someone has to stay with her, Evie. I can’t just abandon her. She deserves better than that.”

“All right! Let me think.” Evangeline wrapped her arms tightly around herself and paced up and down. “There’s … more going on here than you know, Finlay. There are things I never told you. Things about me.”

Finlay smiled. “I know all I need to know.”

“Shut up, Finlay. You don’t understand. I had to keep this secret, even from you. I’m a clone, and a member of the underground.”
She saw the look that came over his face, and wouldn’t let herself look away. “The original Evangeline died in an accident. Daddy couldn’t bear to live without her, so he had me cloned. Secretly. Don’t look at me like that, Finlay. Please. I’m still the same person I’ve always been.”

“Are you?” said Finlay. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything anymore. How long ago did all this happen? Is the woman I originally loved dead? Have I been loving a copy ever since?”

“No! It happened long before we ever fell in love. There’s only ever been you and me.”

“How can I be sure of that?”

“You can’t. You have to trust me.”

“How can I, after this? I told you everything about me, even about the Masked Gladiator. And you kept this from me.”

“I had to! I knew you’d react like this.”

“What else have you been keeping from me?”

“Nothing! There’s nothing else, Finlay. Nothing at all.”

They stood for a long moment, just staring at each other. When Evangeline finally spoke again, her voice was as calm and steady as she could make it.

“We can’t stay here. I can take you down into the underground. They’ll accept you if I vouch for you. The Wolfes can’t follow you there. You’ll be safe. Valentine Wolfe is a member of the underground, too.”

“So he could still come after me there. I’d be walking into a trap!”

“No. The underground wouldn’t permit it. We have very strict rules about inner conflicts. We have to, or we’d never get anything done. When you come to the underground, you leave your other life behind. We could start again, Finlay. Start afresh.”