Red (4 page)

“There was once a way to bring a cliff like this down. It was a long time ago, written about in the Books of Histories. Very few remember, but I do.”

“And?”

Exactly. And what?

“I think it was called an explosion. A large ball of fire with tremendous strength. What if we could figure out how to cause an explosion?”

She looked at him with a wrinkled brow.

“There was a time when I could get specific information about the histories. What if I could retrieve specific information on how to cause an explosion?”

“That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! We're in the middle of a battle here. You expect to go on some kind of expedition to find information on the histories? You have battle fatigue!”

“No, not an expedition. I'm not sure it would even work. I've taken the fruit so long.” The idea swelled in his mind and with it an excitement. “It would be the first time in fifteen years I haven't eaten the fruit. What if I can still dream?”

She stared at him as if he'd gone mad. Below them the battle still raged.

“I would need to sleep; that's the only problem.” He paced, eager for this idea now. “What if I can't sleep?”

“Sleep? You want to sleep? Now?”

“Dream!” he said, fist clenched. “I need to dream. I could dream as I used to and learn how to blow this cliff down!”

Mikil had been struck dumb.

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked forcefully.

“Not yet,” she managed.

What if he couldn't dream? What if the rhambutan required several days to wear off?

Thomas faced the canyon. He glanced at the far cliff, its fault line clear where the milky white rock turned red. In two hours all of his men would be dead.

But if he did have an explosive . . .

Thomas bounded for his horse and swung into the saddle.

“Thomas!”

“Follow me!”

She followed at a gallop up the path to the cliff 's lip. He swept past the first post and yelled at a full run.

“Delay them! Do whatever you must, but hold them until dark. I have a way.”

“Thomas! What way?” came the cry.

“Just hold them!” And then he was past.

Do you have a way, Thomas?

He ran all the way down the line of archers and catapult teams, passing encouragement to each battery. “Hold them! Hold them till dark! Slow the pace. We have a way. If you hold them until dark, we have a way!”

Mikil said nothing.

When they passed the last catapult, Thomas pulled up.

“I'm with you only because you've saved my life a dozen times and I've sworn my own to you,” Mikil said. “I hope you know that.”

“Follow me.”

He led her behind an outcropping of boulders and looked around. Good enough. He dismounted.

“What are we doing here?” she asked.

“We're dismounting.” He found a rock the size of his fist and weighed it in one hand. As much as he disliked the thought of being hit in the head, he saw no alternative. There was no way he could fall asleep on his own. Not with so much adrenaline coursing through his veins.

“Here you go. I want you to knock me on the head. I need to sleep, but that's not going to happen, so you have to knock me unconscious.”

She looked around uncomfortably. “Sir—”

“Knock me out! That's an order. And hit me hard enough to do the job on the first try. Once I'm out, wake me up in ten minutes. Do you understand?”

“Ten minutes is enough to retrieve what you need?”

He stared at her, struck by the sound of the questions.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You've turned me into a lunatic. The Horde's druids might practice their magic, but when have we ever? Never! This is like their magic.”

True enough. The Horde druids were rumored to practice a magic that healed and deceived at once. Thomas had never seen either. Some said that Justin practiced the way of the druids.

“Ten minutes. Say it.”

“Yes, of course. Ten minutes.”

“Then hit me.”

She stepped forward. “You really—”

“Hit me!”

Mikil swung the rock.

Thomas blocked the blow.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Sorry. It was reflex. I'll close my eyes this time.”

He closed his eyes.

His head exploded with light.

His world faded to black.

4

THOMAS HUNTER awoke in perfect stillness, and he knew three things before his heart had completed its first heavy beat.

One, he knew that he wasn't the same man who'd fallen asleep just nine hours ago. He'd lived fifteen years in another reality and had been transformed by new knowledge and skills.

Two, none of those skills, unfortunately, included surviving a bullet to the head, as was once the case.

Three, there was a bullet in the barrel of the gun that at this very moment pressed lightly against his head.

He kept his eyes shut and his body limp. His head throbbed from Mikil's blow. His mind raced. Panic.

No, not panic. How many times had he faced death over the last fifteen years? Even here, in this dream world, he'd been shot twice in the last week, and each time he'd been healed by Elyon's water.

But this time there was no healing water. It had disappeared with the colored forest fifteen years ago.

A soft, low whisper filled his ear. “Good-bye, Mr. Hunter.”

CARLOS MISSIRIAN let the last satisfying moment linger. A line from a movie he'd once seen drummed through his mind.

Dodge this.

Yes, Mr. Hunter, just try to dodge this.
He tightened his finger on the trigger.

Hunter's body jerked.

For a split second, Carlos thought he'd shot the gun and sent a bullet through the man's brain, which explained Hunter's sudden jerk.

But there had been no detonation.

And his gun was flying across the room.

And his wrist stung.

In one horrifying moment of enlightenment, Carlos saw that Thomas Hunter had slapped the gun from his hand and was now rolling away from him, far too quickly for any ordinary man.

Nothing of this kind had ever happened to Carlos. It confused him. There was something very wrong about this man who seemed to retrieve information and skills from his dreams at will. If Carlos were a mystic, as his mother was, he might be tempted to think Hunter was a demon.

The man came to his feet and faced Carlos on the opposite side of the bed. He had no weapon and wore only boxer shorts. He was bleeding from a fresh cut on his forearm that Carlos hadn't put there. Curious. Perhaps that explained the blood on the sheets.

Carlos withdrew his knife. Ordinarily his next course of action would be straightforward. He would either bear down on the unarmed man and slash his abdomen or neck, whichever presented itself, or he'd send the knife flying from where he stood. Despite the ease with which actors knocked aside hurling blades in the movies, deflecting a well-thrown stiletto in real combat wasn't an easy task.

But Hunter wasn't an ordinary man.

They faced off, both cautious.

It occurred to Carlos that Thomas had changed. Physically he was the same man with the same loose brown hair and green eyes, the same strong jaw and steady hands, the same muscled chest and abdomen. But he carried himself differently now, with a simple, unshakable confidence. He stood tall, hands loose at his sides. Hunter watched Carlos with unwavering eyes, the way a man might look at a challenging mathematics equation rather than a threatening foe.

Carlos knew that he should be diving for the gun on the floor to his left or throwing the knife he'd drawn. But his fascination with this man delayed his reactions. If Svensson knew the full extent of Hunter's capabilities, he might insist he be taken alive. Perhaps Carlos would take the matter up with Armand Fortier.

“What's your name?” Thomas asked. His eyes glanced sideways, to the gun and back.

Carlos eased to his left. “Carlos.”

“Well, Carlos, it seems that we meet again.”

They both went for the gun at the same time. Hunter reached it first. Kicked it under the bed. Sprang back.

“I never did like guns,” Thomas said. “You wouldn't by any chance be interested in a fair fight, would you? Swords?”

“Swords would be fine,” Carlos said. There was no way to get the gun now. “Unfortunately, we don't have time for games today.”

The woman would be coming. At any moment she'd knock on the door and wake her brother as promised. If either of them raised an alarm . . .

Carlos lunged for Thomas.

The man sidestepped his thrusting blade, but not quickly enough to avoid it. The edge sliced into his shoulder.

Thomas ignored the cut and leaped toward the door.

You're fast, but not that fast.
With two long steps to his right Carlos cut the man off.

“You've slipped through my fingers twice,” he said. “Not today.” He backed Thomas into the corner. Blood ran down his arm. How he'd once managed to survive a high-velocity slug to the head, Carlos had no clue, but the cut on his arm wasn't healing now. One well-directed slash, and Thomas Hunter's blood would turn the beige carpet red.

Hunter suddenly spread his mouth and yelled at the top of his lungs.

“Karaaa!”

KARA HAD just flushed the toilet when her brother's voice sounded through the walls. “Karaaa!”

He was in trouble?

“Karaaa!”

She flew through the bathroom door. The bedroom door. Across the suite's hall. Slammed into Thomas's door and wrenched the knob. Threw the door open.

Thomas stood in the corner, all boxers and muscles and blood. A man of Mediterranean origin by all appearances had put him there with his knife. Carlos?

They both turned to her at the same time. She saw the long scar on his cheek then. Yes, Carlos. The man about to shove his blade through Thomas was the same who'd shot him a few days earlier.

She looked at Thomas again. He wasn't the same man she'd kissed on the forehead last night before retiring.

She'd told him to dream for a long time and become the kind of man who could save the world. She didn't know who he'd become in his dreams, but his eyes had changed. The sheets on the bed were stained with blood, some of it fresh, some dried black. He was bleeding from his shoulder and his forearm.

“Meet Carlos,” Thomas said. “He hasn't heard about the antivirus that we have, so he thinks it's safe to kill me. I thought it would sound more convincing coming from you.”

Had Thomas learned something about the antivirus from his dreams? Carlos's eyes jerked between them.

“What neither of you know,” Thomas continued, “is that I have to take explosives of some kind back with me. The Horde is slicing my army to ribbons as we speak. I have fewer than five thousand men against a hundred thousand Scabs. I absolutely have to succeed. You understand? Both of you? I have to get this information and get back!”

He was babbling.

“The water doesn't work anymore, Kara. There's a gun under the bed. You don't have much time.”

Carlos lunged at Thomas. Her brother slapped away the first blow with his right hand. The man followed with his left fist, which Thomas also deflected. But blocking the successive blows had left him exposed, and Kara had seen enough street fights in Manila to know that this was precisely what his attacker intended.

Carlos drove on, straight into Thomas, using his head as a battering ram. It connected solidly with Thomas's chin. Her brother dropped like a rock.

Kara dove for the bed and hit the carpet with a grunt. She rolled under the bed, saw the gun, and clawed for it.

5

A HORRENDOUS din filled the air.

The din of battle. Of death.

Thomas's eyes snapped open. He sat up and winced at the pounding pain in his head.

“Did you get it?” Mikil asked, dropping to one knee beside him.

“Get what?”