Jak Koke - Stranger souls

Two more things. First, the dog. A quick twist broke its neck. Second, escape. That might be a little tougher.

Burnout glanced around. No disturbances, no trace of alarm. He jacked up the gain on his hearing, but came up with nothing more than the sound of a helicopter motor clicking as it cooled and the amplified hum of his own microhydraulics.

The guard thrashed a little when Burnout picked him up and slung the man's bulk over his shoulder. Made holding difficult. Burnout was not happy. This human must be controlled. Burnout quietly set the guard on the ground, then grabbed the man's foot with one hand. He used his other hand to place a hard sideways punch to the guard's knee, snapping the bone in several places.

The guard's scream was nicely muffled. Very effective tape. And he didn't squirm so much when Burnout slung him up to his shoulder the second time. Burnout jumped back over the fence with his human cargo. Then he raced off into the trees. No sound from the drones. He had made it out.

"You broke his leg?" Slaver asked when Burnout dumped the guard in the snow.

Burnout just nodded.

"Was that necessary?" But Slaver didn't let Burnout respond. He knelt down next to the guard, putting its hands on the man's face. The man's chest heaved as Slaver scanned his mind with magic. The screams of agony stuck in his throat.

After a few minutes, Slaver looked up. The guard had passed out. "Mercury is no longer here," he said. "He left with Nadja Daviar. They went to Washington FDC."

He rose and dusted himself off. "Now kill him and let's go," he said to Burnout.

Burnout bent down and grabbed the man's head with a iron-grip. He was already unconscious, so this wouldn't hurt. Besides, this was the most effective and humane way. A sudden brutal twist snapped the man's neck, severing his spinal cord. He was dead instantly.

The anger percolated inside Ryan, simmering just below the surface as he watched prismatic light wash over the wall above the bed. The colors coming through the window from the manastorm outside-fine wavy lines of red, orange, yellow, blue, and violet forming mesmerizing patterns on the antique white paint of the suite.

Dunkelzahn was dead, gone? It slotted him off. How could the dragon be so fragging vulnerable? How could he not see it coming? Stupid fragger!

Nadja sprawled next to him, sleeping soundly. Innocence showing in her slack expression. Serenity in her restful slumber.

Not so Ryan. He couldn't sleep. Too much going on in his head. Too fragging much to think about.

Nadja's peace wormed its way into his mind. Why was she blessed with the ability to forget her worries while he could not?

Ryan had never slept well. Neither of his past selves had restful, natural sleep. As Roxborough, he'd been able to rest only by taking drugs or drinking alcohol. As Ryan, his sleep had been induced by magic, a forced rest period that was often interrupted by a crisis of some sort.

Now, he had neither the desire nor the inclination to induce that state. It wouldn't be the child's sleep that Nadja enjoyed. It would just be maintenance.

Ryan was coming to realize that he was no longer the same as either of his past selves. He was not the subservient creature that Ryan Mercury used to be. If anything he was more like the old Thomas Roxborough inside. Tougher, more resilient mentally. He relied on no one but himself for emotional support.

Ryan decided he wanted to be like that. And he knew suddenly that it did no good to maintain his anger toward Dunkelzahn. It was counterproductive. Stupid even.

The plain and simple truth is that Dunkelzahn just doesn 't mean that much to me anymore, Ryan thought, trying to convince himself that it was true. It was a trick from his Roxborough past. Therapy through devaluation. And it worked wonderfully.

Ryan took a slow breath. The constriction in his chest had come first with the realization that Dunkelzahn was truly gone, the grief he had felt. The tightness had intensified when his grief had given way to anger. Now it was gone, and he could breath almost normally.

Dunkelzahn is no longer a part of my life. I must move on.

He felt much better already. / don't need the dragon, he thought. / can be an island. I need no one.

He looked down at Nadja, at the lovely hollow of her neck white against the blue satin sheets. Black hair around her head like a pool of dark ink.

An image came into his mind then. A memory?

The woman in the vision was different, but the position of her body was the same. Lying on her back, head tilted slightly left. The arch of her neck so alluring, the skin of it soft to his touch. Dark pool of hair around her head.

Then he imagined his fingers brushing over her throat, delicately so as not to wake her. Wouldn't want to disturb her peaceful repose. He imagined encircling her neck with his two hands, palms angled out, thumbs hovering over her trachea. The marks he made didn't show right away-the bruises that would form where he grabbed her suddenly and squeezed, pressing the ball of his thumbs into the soft spot of her throat, just below the jaw.

In the vision, the dark pool changed from hair to blood. The thick coppery fluid gushing from the split in her skull where he had been forced to slam her head against the bedpost. And in the silent moments after the small struggle, before the bruises faded into view, she lay there exactly as if she slept. Just as peaceful. Just as serene.

Mocking him from beyond the pale.

The vision passed, and Ryan shook his head. Nadja lay there, untouched and very much alive. It wasn't a memory,

he knew now. It was a fantasy from Roxborough's distant past. The woman's name was Eva Thorinson, someone he knew back in college. She had been his girlfriend for about three months. Three very intense months.

He had fallen in love with her, but she not with him. She had wanted him only for sex and money. She had used him! Ryan felt anger at the thought. She had used him and had left just when he'd proposed moving in together. Eva had stared into his eyes, her face set in stone, and she had told him that she felt trapped by him.

Ha, that he scared her. Of all the stupid fragging lies. He treated her like royalty, bought her anything and everything she wanted. That ungrateful slitch! He wanted to kill her, but he'd never had the confidence he could pull it off.

Nadja's neck glimmered in the prismatic light. Beckoning him to touch it. She would do the same as Eva. No doubt in his mind. This elf whore would use him for this worthless mission, and keep him for sex, but afterward, he would be forgotten for the next man. For someone who could stay at home.

Wait a minute, Ryan thought. What am I doing? He drew his hand back; it had been hovering just over her throat.

He could kill her easily; he knew many ways. Crushing her trachea would be painful, but suffocation was appropriate. Roxborough knew what that felt like. Now she would too.

He reached out with his hand, holding it just over her neck. The move would have to be quick. Decisive, and powerful. No hesitation. No second thoughts.

Ryan lowered his hand a fraction of a centimeter. Still not touching, but so very close. So close he could feel the warmth of her skin. He could detect the microvibrations of air as her breath passed in and out of her throat.

Ah, that delicate throat. So fine. So fragile. How could he bring himself to mar such beauty?

His wristphone beeped, and he jerked his hand back. Silence. No movement from Nadja.

It beeped again and he slid out of bed to answer it. "This is Quicksilver," he said, his voice low.

"Jane."

"Verify, Jane."

Her identification code came through and registered on his wristphone. "Good," he said. "It's late. What do you have?"