Cursed

  “Yes…nicely,” he muttered through the left side of Two’s mouth, being careful not to wake his sleeping host. “And now I think it’s time to make a call…”

  * * * * *

  Deep in the darkness of the Mother Ship, just a few thousand miles from where Two/Ur resided in the Dark Kindred destroyer, Six woke in the inky blackness bathed in sweat with his heart pounding.

  “Gods!” his hoarse shout brought Mei-Li awake as well.

  “Six? What is it? What’s wrong?” she gasped, sitting bolt upright and feeling for him.

  “Mei-Li?” He reached for her, gathering her to him, holding her tightly for comfort. “Oh Gods…” His deep voice was nearly breaking and she could feel him trembling against her.

  “Honey, what is it? What’s wrong?” she whispered, running a hand over his forehead as if to search for fever. “You’re drenched in sweat—was it another nightmare?”

  “No, I…” Still shivering, Six drew a hand over his face, as thought trying to wipe away the horrible images that had pierced his mind. “I had a dream…I can’t remember it now but I know…”

  “You know what?” Mei-Li urged. As a trained therapist she firmly believed in getting things out in the open.

  “I know that the people they sent to J’lorgan’s Mind—the warrior Stavros and his female companion—what was her name?”

  “Charlotte but she goes by Charlie. You know what about them?”

  “They’re in danger.” Six drew in a deep, gasping breath. “Terrible danger. And there’s something else.”

  “What, honey? Tell me,” Mei-Li urged.

  Six clutched her tighter.

  “I remember the last part of the prophesy. The one my mother taught me when I was just a child so many cycles ago.”

  “Tell me,” Mei-Li ordered. “Quickly, before you lose it again. We need to tell Commander Sylvan.”

  In a low, shaking voice, Six began to recite. Mei-Li fumbled for a pen and paper on the bedside table and turned the lamp on low, ready to record the last part of the prophesy, the missing piece of the puzzle that would hopefully tell them how to defeat the Dark Kindred once and for all.

  “Cursed to find an early grave

  Will be the one the Light to Save

  The Pain of others he must feel

  The wounds of others he can heal

  To stop the evil he must find

  The Heart of Love in J’lorgon’s Mind

  To bring it to the void and cold

  And cast it in, he must be bold.

  For when the Dark is burned to ash

  Only then will danger pass

  But when it does, it steals his breath

  To seal Dark’s doom, the fate is…

  He paused for a moment and Mei-Li touched his arm.

  “Go on, sweetheart—the fate is what?”

  “Death.” Six’s deep voice was low and harsh. “Gods, Mei-Li—the fate is death.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Charlotte held her breath as she pressed her palm to the silver plate beside the red door. She knew she was cleared to enter the inner circle but she couldn’t help expecting a shock every time she had to touch one of these damn things.

  To her relief, her hand was outlined in welcoming green light at once. She presented her eye to the ocular scanner and a soft chime sounded. Then, without further ado, the crimson door slid to the side, allowing her entry.

  “Okay, here goes,” Charlie muttered to herself. She held her chin high and walked deliberately, not rushing, trying to look like she belonged there in the inner circle. Not that there was anyone to see her—the long metal hallway appeared to be completely deserted. That suited Charlie fine but she kept up her act anyway just in case the whole place was being monitored.

  To her dismay, the long corridor ended in another red door. But before she could get too upset, it slid silently to one side to allow her to pass. Charlie walked into a large, round room with a vast metal cylinder dominating its center. The rest of the room was bare and unremarkable but the cylinder drew her eyes. It was a bright, burnished gold, so clean and perfect she could easily see her own reflection in it.

  Like some kind of a golden mirror, she thought. Is that where the Heart is?

  It seemed likely. The room was suffused with a soft, pink light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Carefully, Charlie picked her way across the metal floor to study the vast, curving side of the cylinder. It was completely smooth, with no gaps or cracks at all.

  Well how am I supposed to get to the damned Heart thing? she wondered. She circled the entire cylinder, which took several minutes—the space contained inside it must be vast—without finding a way in. It made her wonder how big the Heart was. She had been thinking that it was one of the things mentioned in the Kindred High Council meeting—a plant or a crystal or something small she could hold in her hands. But what if it was actually something huge and immovable? What if she couldn’t even lift it, let alone run nimbly off with it into the sunset with it?

  And that’s supposing I can get to it in the first place. How the hell do you get into this thing?

  Tentatively, she pressed her palm to the burnished, curving surface of the golden cylinder. Despite walking all the way around it, this was the first time she had dared to touch it and she wasn’t sure what to expect. There was a soft humming sound and an electrical tingle ran up her arm but to her disappointment, nothing else happened.

  “Damn it!” Charlie snarled under her breath. “How the hell does it open?”

  “It doesn’t. Not for the likes of you.” The hateful, familiar voice behind her made her jump. Looking up, she saw another imagine reflected behind hers in the golden surface of the cylinder. One with two faces—one male and one female. Both were filled with outraged anger.

  “Joined One!” she gasped, turning quickly to face them…it…whatever you wanted to call the creature.

  “Charlotte.” The female face’s lips were thin with disapproval. “Whatever can you be doing here in a forbidden area in the middle of the night?”

  “I was…” Charlie swallowed hard and heard a dry clicking in the back of her own throat. “I was…was drawn by the Heart of Love,” she said, improvising. “It…it called to me in the middle of the night. It spoke of healing and…and forgiveness.” God, she really hoped the Joined One was buying this! “And it said I needed to come and be near it to achieve…uh, wholeness.”

  “Wholeness?” The male face had a skeptical look. “In what way are you broken?”

  “Well, I…I’m…” Charlie groped for an answer but before she could come up with anything the female face cut her off.

  “Never mind, Charlotte,” it said, smiling cruelly. “Why should you tell us when you can show us instead?”

  Charlie began to get a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “What do you mean? Are you going to ‘scan’ me again?”

  “No indeed. We think the time for such benign, noninvasive techniques is past,” the male face answered. It, too was wearing a small, cruel smile. “We think it is time that you entered the Temple of Regret.”

  “Where you will relive your worst and most painful memories,” the female face continued. “And we will be able to observe as well.”

  “But…but…I thought you didn’t like to talk about the past.” Charlie began backing away but in a flash her wrist was caught in Ye’ha’Na’ho’s vise-like grip.

  “We will not be talking about it but only observing it,” the male face pointed out.

  “And then we can determine if you are, as you claim, broken enough for the Heart of Love—an artifact which has not spoken to anyone in the last five hundred cycles—to call to you and beg you to come and be made whole.”

  “No…no, please!” Charlie pulled against it uselessly. She had police training in hand to hand combat but she knew to attack the Joined One was death. Her only option was to try to get away but the thing’s grip on her arms was as un
breakable as a steel handcuff. Slowly but surely it dragged her out of the vast circular room and down a long, winding hallway that was vaguely familiar.

  By the time Charlie recognized the high blue walls of the maze-like corridors and knew where they were going, they were already there. Before she knew it, she was shivering before the entrance to the tunnel-like hallway with its eerie lighting and its pervasive feeling of dread. A chilly blast of dank air blew towards her, lifting the hair from her forehead and cooling the sweat which had formed on her brow.

  Charlie shivered. “You…you don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, trying to sound calm and failing miserably. “I might have been mistaken about the Heart calling to me. In fact, now that I think about it, it was probably just a really vivid dream. I have them all the time. I—”

  “Silence!” the male face of the Joined One snarled. “You have been caught trespassing in the sacred Circle of Oneness and you will bear the punishment allotted to that crime.”

  “But…but I…” Charlie’s mouth was dry and her heart was pounding. “Please,” she whispered. “Please don’t make me go in there!”

  The cruel smiles on the faces of the Joined One broadened and the female face actually let out a laugh that sounded to Charlie like a witch’s cackle.

  “You will enter the Temple of Regrets now or you will be put to death. Make your choice,” the male face said harshly. “And do so at once.”

  The Joined One made a motion with its free hand and Charlie saw that it had some kind of a weapon. It looked like a tazer or a stun gun but it would probably do hell of a lot more than stun or shock her if the Joined One pulled the trigger. She thought about protesting that they couldn’t kill one of their paying customers but the light of madness was flickering behind the two sets of glowing eyes. Charlie had an idea this creature did just about anything it wanted to and if it wanted to kill her, it would.

  “All right,” she whispered, trying to straighten her spine. “All right. I…I’m going.”

  “Go then. And if you so much as turn your head before you enter the temple, your life is forfeit.” At last the thing let go of her wrist.

  Charlie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was shaking her entire body and the short hairs at the back of her neck were standing on end. The feeling of dread coming from the mouth of the tunnel-like hallway was awful—like the breath of the tomb blowing in her face. At the end of it was a black door—one she was horrible afraid to enter. Still, she had to go in—what other choice did she have?

  She had an impulse to fall on her knees before the Joined One and confess everything—to tell why she was here in the first place and beg for mercy. But what good would that do? It would only give it another reason to punish me, she thought, remembering the crazy look in both sets of eyes. And besides, I won’t betray my home world like that!

  “Go on!” the Joined One insisted and she felt something hard poke her in the back—the weapon. She couldn’t stall any longer—it was time to go.

  Charlie straightened her shoulders and stiffened her spine. I won’t beg and cry. I won’t let them see I’m afraid. I won’t! Lifting her chin and clenching her hands into fists, she stepped slowly toward the entrance of the dark tunnel to meet her past and face her doom.

  * * * * *

  She was just disappearing into the black doorway when Stavros finally got there. He had dreamed of her slipping out of bed and walking the hallways of the resort alone that night. Had seen her go through the invisible barrier that guarded the Circle of Oneness and watched as she walked around and around the vast golden cylinder at the center.

  When he watched Charlotte being confronted by the Joined Ones, he had the uneasy feeling one gets when a perfectly pleasant dream turns suddenly turns dark. And by the time they were marching her through the maze of blue corridors, he knew that this vision was more than just a dream or a nightmare—it was real and really happening. Charlotte was in danger and he had to get to her.

  Trying to wake up was like swimming upward through thick, viscous syrup. His sleeping self seemed paralyzed by the power of the dream and for the longest time he couldn’t move though he was trying with all his might.

  Charlotte needs me…must go to her. She needs me! I must not fail her again!

  It was this thought and the overwhelming urgency he felt to protect her that finally broke through the paralysis of deep sleep and allowed him to swim to the surface of consciousness.

  When his eyes finally popped open, Stav wasn’t a bit surprise to find Charlotte’s side of the bed empty. Nor did he expect to find her taking a bath or sleeping on the couch. He headed straight out of the door intent on finding her in the place the dream had promised she would be—the Temple of Regret.

  And that was why he saw just a hint of her white robe as she disappeared into the black doorway at the end of the dim hallway.

  “You bastards!” He rounded on the Joined One who still held the weapon in its hand. “How could you do that—force her to confront her past? You know how she fears it—you must know! Let her out of there now or I swear by the Goddess—”

  “You’ll what—kill us with your bare hands?” The female face smiled at him and for the first time, Stavros though that the smile and the look in those was not…quite…sane.

  “We think not,” the male voice said coolly. “But as you are so fearful for your mate’s safety, why do you not join her in the Temple?” The Joined One waved the weapon at him again. “Go on. Go. If you hurry you may catch her before too much damage has been done. Though we seriously doubt it.”

  Stavros had a silent struggle within himself—part of him wanted to wrap his hands around the Joined One’s freakish throat and throttle the unnatural thing and the other part was desperately afraid for Charlotte and anxious to go after her.

  His fear for Charlotte won.

  He pointed at the Joined One. “You will be sorry for this. When this is over, I swear the regrets you have will fill this whole damn temple to overflowing.”

  Then he turned and ran down the tunnel-corridor, trying to get to Charlotte in time. The Joined One’s mocking laughter—cackling and booming at the same time—followed him until he stepped through the sliding black door. Then stopped at once, as though it had been cut off by a knife.

  Stavros looked around—he was within the Temple of Regrets.

  But where was Charlotte?

  Chapter Thirty

  Charlie wandered through the darkness, trying not to jump at every little noise. So far she hadn’t seen anything at all that reminded her of her past—just a lot of blank, black corridors that seemed to lead nowhere.

  It reminded her of a haunted house with people waiting around the corners to jump out and scare her. Only she had the feeling that what she was about to see what a hell of a lot worse than any rubber monster mask or fake ghoul dripping with stage blood. A hell of a lot worse and a hell of a lot more personal…

  The feeling of dread still hung thick in the air like a low-level poisonous gas she was forced to inhale with every breath. It made her feel dizzy and sick to her stomach with fear though she tried her best to remain strong.

  “It’s all right,” she muttered to herself, clenching her fists at her side. “You can get through this, Charlie—everything is going to be all right if you just—”

  Her words were cut off by a gasp when she rounded a corner and a room suddenly opened up in front of her. It was a room she recognized—the kitchen from the old house on Baker Street. The pretty yellow butterfly curtains still hung in the windows and there was the fruit bowl with just one brown banana at the bottom. But though she hadn’t seen the room in years, what drew her eyes were her mother and father, standing between the counter and the kitchen table. They were fighting—fighting the same way they had when she was little.

  “I saw you with that filthy little whore down at the drugstore,” Momma accused shrilly. “Hanging all over you like the cheap lit
tle slut she is—I thought it was your job to arrest prostitutes, not sleep with them!”

  “And what if I did sleep with her?” Daddy taunted. He hooked his thumbs in the thick black belt that held up his uniform pants and gave Momma that lazy, insolent smile he knew made her crazy. His eyes flashed cruelly. “So what if I did, Lorain? She’s a hell of a lot younger and prettier than your sorry fat ass.”

  “You son of a bitch! I never should have married you—never! If I hadn’t let you knock me up and saddle me with your two snot-nosed brats I could have made something of myself,” Momma shouted, not caring of Charlie or Missy heard her. “I had a scholarship. I could have had a life.”

  “Sure,” Daddy sneered. “Some life, Maureen. You spread your legs so easy back then you would’ve wound up pregnant and dropped out of school in the first semester. Only difference would be that some other poor bastard would be putting up with your shit right now.”

  “You fucking asshole!” Momma screamed and threw a plate at his head. Daddy ducked and it busted into a million shards on the wall behind his head.

  “Missed me, you twat,” he jeered.

  Mamma screamed in inarticulate furry and ran at him, her hands outstretched like claws. Daddy caught her by the wrists and laughed in her face. He never hurt her—not physically anyway—but he seemed to find her rage amusing and enjoyed whipping her into a screaming frenzy.

  Just as she had when she was a child, Charlie felt the familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Momma hated her and Missy for coming along and ruining her life, she knew that well enough. After Daddy was through teasing her, she would come looking for them and take out her rage for the wasted years and her ruined life. Her weapon of choice was usually the old wooden hairbrush but sometimes she cut a switch from the lilac bush outside instead and whipped them until there were bleeding stripes on the backs of their legs. If no switches suited her, a wire coat hanger would do just as well.