James Axler - Dark Goddess

The thought of Brigid motivated him to open his eyes. He saw nothing but patterns of dark gray and pitch black. He tried to sit up but the effort sprayed his brain with needles and he bit back a groan. He lay back down.

“Kane?”

“Baptiste?” His whisper was a hoarse rasp.

“Right here.” He felt the cool, damp touch of cloth against his forehead.

Squinting, Kane could barely make her out, kneeling over him, dabbing at his face with a wet cloth. Gingerly, he touched the crown of his head and felt the moisture, as well as a very tender lump. His scalp wasn’t split, so he assumed the liquid was water. He tried to focus on Brigid again, but his blurred vision prevented him from fixing on single reference points in the darkness.

He got his hands under him and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, silently enduring a spasm of vertigo and nausea.

“Are you all right?” Brigid asked, voice pitched very low. “That little bitch Orchid really laid one on you.”

Kane started to nod, thought better of it and said, “I really hate being whacked unconscious and then waking up somewhere else.”

Brigid forced a chuckle. “It’s a pretty clichéd transitional device, isn’t it?”

Assuming her question was rhetorical, Kane felt around him. His fingers touched damp sand. “Where are we?”

“Some sort of storage shed, about a hundred yards away from the pool.”

“How long was I out?”

“About half an hour, I think.”

“They didn’t hurt you?”

“Not seriously. Billy-boy made some over-the-top threats about forcing me to be the bottom bitch in an offshore whorehouse. I guess he figured that would scare me into obedience.”

Kane grinned, even though the motion hurt his cheeks. “Billy-boy is one enterprising bastard, isn’t he?”

“He makes me want to puke for a week,” Brigid shot back coldly. “Can you stand up?”

“Let’s find out.” Carefully, Kane heaved himself to his feet. He stumbled and Brigid put out supporting hands. He probed various aches and pains around his body, particularly his ribs. Nothing felt broken.

“What’s the plan?” Brigid asked.

“In about half an hour, maybe less, Grant, Domi and CAT Alpha will come storming in here by land and by sea. I’d prefer to be out of here by then.”

He walked slowly toward an area of gray, noting how threads of yellow light peeped along the lines of a door. As he touched it and rapped on the wood gently, Brigid stated, “It’s locked, of course.”

“Of course.” Kane felt around the doorframe with his hands, touching the metal hinges and the lock.

He stepped to the left, moving slowly around the walls, his body responding sluggishly from the bruises of the beating. He ignored the pain and probed the cinder-block walls with his fingertips, scraping his nails at the mortar. Lifting his right arm, he laid the palm of his hand flat against the ceiling.

“I’d judge the size of our accommodations to be about ten by ten,” he commented.

“More like twelve by twelve,” Brigid corrected.

He continued moving sideways, not finding any furniture or anything of use in the storage shed. As he circled back to the door, he bumped into Brigid. His vision had cleared, adjusting to the gloom, and he could make out her face and figure, seeing a bruise on the left side of her face where someone had struck her. She was also naked to the waist.

“You don’t have a top on,” he said awkwardly.

Crossing her arms over her breasts, she said angrily, “Thanks for the revelation, Kane. You try fighting half a dozen scumbags wearing only a bikini sometime.”

“The parts tend to fall off?”

She nodded grimly. “They do.”

Quickly, Kane stripped out of his T-shirt. “There’s no way you could’ve won. You shouldn’t have mixed it up with them.”

Brigid uttered a deprecating chuckle. “If I hadn’t, Blister and Billy-boy would have stomped you to death, poolside.”

Handing her his shirt, Kane said quietly, “Thanks.”

“My pleasure, but we’ve got to worry about getting out of here…or signaling Grant and Domi to either hold off on the attack or launch it as scheduled.”

Reaching up behind his ear, Kane fingered his Commtact. “It’s not functioning. Got too stomped on, I guess.”

Brigid sighed. “Figures.”

Kane forced a laugh. “Doesn’t it just. Well, we’ve relied on nothing but our fists and wits plenty of times before.”

“Maybe one too many times.”

Disturbed by the uncharacteristic note of resignation in Brigid’s voice, he said, “I think we’ve still got a reservoir of luck to draw on.”

She struggled to pull the shirt over her head. “Over five years of this, Kane. Five years of playing the odds, and when all else fails, placing our faith in luck. There’s got to be a limit to both.”

“It’s not just luck that’s kept us alive,” he said defensively. “Not always, anyway.”

“No, not always,” she agreed with a wry weariness. “Just most of the time. Face it, Kane—we’re fugitives from the law of averages.”

Kane knew Brigid spoke the truth, but he didn’t let her know that. Lakesh had once suggested that the trinity he, Brigid and Grant formed seemed to exert an almost supernatural influence on the scales of chance, usually tipping them in their favor.

The notion had amused Kane, since he was too pragmatic to accept such an esoteric concept, but he couldn’t deny that he and his two friends seemed to lead exceptionally charmed lives, particularly him and Brigid.

Kane shied away from examining the bond he shared with Brigid. On the surface, there was no bond, but they seemed linked to each other and the same destiny. He recalled another name he had for Brigid Baptiste: anam-chara. In the ancient Gaelic tongue it meant “soul friend.”

From the very first time he met her he was affected by the energy Brigid radiated, a force intangible, yet one that triggered a melancholy longing in his soul. That strange, sad longing only deepened after a bout of jump sickness both of them suffered during the mat-trans jump to Russia, several years earlier. The main symptoms of jump sickness were vivid, almost-real hallucinations.

He and Brigid had shared the same hallucination, but both knew on a visceral, primal level it hadn’t been gateway-transit-triggered delirium, but a revelation that they were joined by chains of fate, their destinies linked. The idea that he and Brigid had existed at other times in other lives had seemed preposterous at first. Perhaps it still would have if he hadn’t experienced the same jump dreams as her, which symbolized the chain of fate connecting her soul to his.

It had required nearly a year before the two very different people achieved a synthesis of attitudes and styles where they could function smoothly as colleagues and parts of a team, sharing professional courtesies and respect.

Although they never spoke of it, Kane often wondered if that spiritual bond was the primary reason he had sacrificed everything he had attained as a Magistrate to save her from execution. The possibility confused him, made him feel defensive and insecure. That insecurity was one reason he always addressed her as “Baptiste,” almost never by her first name, so as to maintain a certain formal distance between them. But that distance continued to shrink every day.

“I’m open for suggestions about how to get out of here,” Kane said sarcastically, “even if they do rely primarily on luck.”

Brigid opened her mouth, but whatever she was about to say was interrupted by the sound of footsteps and murmured voices on the other side of the door. A key rattled in the lock.

“How’s that for luck?” he muttered.