
DLSIJ Press www.dlsijpress.com
Copyright ©2004 Michelle O'Leary
First Published by DLSIJ Press, October 2004
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Was today the day? Regan wondered, studying Stone out of the corner of her eye. Was now the right time? They were alone in the training room, sitting casually on the floor as they disassembled and cleaned weapons, then put them back together. It was a lesson, but like all Stone's lessons, there was very little lecture involved. He liked to teach by example, by hands-on practice. Soon she would be able to recognize the smallest part of any weapon in their arsenal, know exactly what made them work, and assemble them in her sleep.
There was a companionable silence between them while they worked, broken only by his occasional rumble of approval when she would show him her results. It was hard to tell for certain, but she was pretty sure he was in a good mood, relaxed and mellow. At least, she hoped so. If there was ever a right time, it looked like this was it.
Still, she delayed a little longer, watching his big hands as he went about his business, his movements steady and sure. Hers were less steady, nervousness showing in the faint tremor of her thin fingers. He was bound to notice soon.
Taking a deep breath, she tried to keep her voice nonchalant as she announced, "So I started my cycle a few days ago."
His eyes didn't leave the parts in front of him and his hands didn't hesitate, as he asked in his usual deep rumble, "Cycle of what?"
"My female cycle, Dad. You know, when I bleed---"
His hands fumbled, the weapon dropping to the floor with a clatter. Turning his head, he stared at her. "Christ Jesus! Did I need to know that?"
"Well, Dad, I just---"
His voice was sharp as he interrupted, "Does your mother know about this? You okay?" His brows drawing together in a frown, he felt her forehead and mumbled, "Should get Ema to look at you..."
She wanted to laugh, but held onto it by a thread and pulled his hand away from her forehead. "Dad, get a grip! I'm not sick. Mom knows all about it; we talked about this a while back."
His frown didn't ease as he studied her. "You sure you're okay? You look a little off color."
She did giggle then; she couldn't help it. "Dad, I'm fine! If I thought you'd frazz out this bad, I
wouldn't have told you."
"Well, why the hell did you tell me?" he grumbled, shooting her a dark look before going back to his work.
The reminder killed any further humor in her. Annoying him had been the last thing she'd wanted, but she couldn't stop now---opportunities like this didn't come along every day.
She'd have to keep going and hope for the best.
In a careful voice, she murmured, "Because families share things with each other, even things that might be a little hard to talk about."
His eyes came back to hers, edged with alarm. "You don't wanna talk about it ... do you?"
"No, that's okay, Dad," she reassured him with a grin, giving him a pat on his arm. "I just wanted to let you know what was going on."
"Good," he muttered with a gust that could have been a sigh of relief, and returned his attention to the parts in front of him. "Wouldn't be much help anyway."
Taking another deep breath, she held it for a second before taking the plunge. "But since I shared something personal with you, maybe you could share with me."
He snorted. "Like hell. I
don't have cycles. End of story on those parts."
Regan snickered. "I don't mean that. I was thinking about something else."
"So spit it, kid," he rumbled without looking at her, his hands back to their smooth, sure routine.
She spit it. "Why'd you kill all those people?"
He went still for a moment, before he lowered the weapon with slow care and turned his head to meet her gaze, face expressionless.
Regan flinched at what she saw in his eyes, her stomach flipping over and her heart dropping a beat. She'd seen that look before, but not since the first time she'd met him. Those were killer's eyes, and their chill was fixed on her.
"I-I'm sorry..." she whispered, but he didn't seem to hear her. She fell silent, watching him watch her and feeling very much like a mouse under a cat's paw.
After a moment that felt hours long, he blinked and turned his face away. "Why do you wanna know?" he asked in a toneless voice.
"I just ... You were in prison---they put you away for murder. I just wanted to know..."
"If I'm guilty," he finished for her in the same tone.
Miserable, Regan said nothing. She wished her mother had just told her, instead of insisting that
Regan ask Stone herself. What'd she get for asking? From the looks of it, all she'd done was make him angry with her. The thought brought swift and stinging tears to her eyes. Dropping her chin to hide her face, she stared unseeing at the weapon in her hands and waited for his rebuff.
Guilty, Stone thought with the bitterness of an old wound.
Oh, yeah, he was guilty as sin. But he'd thought that was behind him, his slate wiped clean by a woman who believed in him when he couldn't believe in himself.
She'd taught him to accept the truth of her love and forgiveness, to live instead of just survive. She'd taught him to put his past behind him.
Yet here it was again, jumping up to bite him in the ass.
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Regan to forget it, but when he glanced over at her, the words melted away. She sat in a dejected huddle, chin down and shoulders hunched, reminding him so forcefully of what she'd been like when they'd first met that it felt like a blow to his chest.
Mea may have started him down the road to redemption, but she hadn't done it alone. This girl had been the first to creep into his heart, like a small creature seeking shelter, fearless in her trust and dependence. He hadn't been able to resist either of them for long, but while his wife knew and accepted him in spite of what he'd done, this girl he'd claimed as his daughter loved him in ignorance and innocence.
I'm afraid, he admitted to himself with a pang of surprised mortification. He couldn't stand to watch the clear devotion in her eyes turn into horror, disgust, wariness ... disappointment. But for giving him the life he had now, for bringing him out of darkness, he owed her the truth at the very least.
Reaching out, he gently cupped the back of her neck, thinking as he always did how fragile and breakable she felt. The now familiar protective surge brought a faint smile to his lips. "Hey," he rumbled.
She turned her head, looking up at him through lashes wet with unshed tears, the troubled haze in her wide, dark eyes giving him another pang of dismay.
"It ain't a pretty story,"
he cautioned, then thought with a sneer of disgust, coward.
She sat still under his hand, but her expression lightened just a bit, the corners of her mouth curving.
"I figured," she said in a faintly husky voice. "But I'm gonna be a hunter. We don't see much pretty stuff, do we?"
Lifting his hand away, he rubbed the back of his neck with a grimace. "Got a point there."
"Besides," she murmured, dropping her eyes to her lap and turning the half-assembled weapon over in her hands, "I killed, too."
Another punch to his chest.
He took a deep breath through his teeth, tossing a small power cell away from him with an aggressive flick of his wrist. Listening to it skitter across the floor, he clenched his jaw in grim resignation. He owed her the truth.
Not looking at her, eyes focused on a point in his past, he began.
"Hit me," the scrawny woman rasped, as he knelt on the stone beside her. Her eyes glittered up at him, dark as his own, but feverish with need. Her thin body twisted with restless anguish in the small hollow he'd found for her in the maze of tunnels.
"Can't," he said. "Don't got any." It was a familiar ritual---his mother's demand for the drugs her body craved and his refusal---so much so that he was barely aware of speaking. Her groan and angry swipe were also expected and avoided with distracted ease.
"Listen," he said as she clawed at him, hissing a string of tired obscenities at his head. Catching her thin, grimy wrists, he gave her a hard shake, his young body just as scrawny as hers, but not weakened by addiction. "Ma, listen."
She stilled, more because of what he'd called her than the shake. It wasn't something he said much anymore, since she'd told him when he was seven that he was on his own, that she was done protecting him. By that time, the needle ride she was on had made protecting him impossible anyway, but the words hurt all the same.
"I got a choice," he started, then faltered as he looked into eyes so like his own. Dropping her wrists, he shifted so he didn't have to look at her. "I got a choice to make."
She knew what choice; she wasn't stupid. "Dumb-ass kid," she snarled in a voice that cracked with lack of moisture. "Shoulda made it a long fuckin' time ago."
He clenched his hands into fists and forced himself to say it out loud. "I think I got a chance with Mag's pack. They been pushin' for new ground, and nobody knows these holes like I do.
Can't stay on the edge forever," he finished in a mumble, unable to voice the brutality behind his words. I can't take you with me.
But she knew. With a clawed grip that made him wince, she dragged him closer, eyes fierce as she hissed,
"Stupid shit! Don't know why you ain't dead yet. How many times I gotta say it?" Her breath smelled like death.
He hung his head, staring at the fists pressed to his thighs, and said nothing. There wasn't anything he could say.
She released his arm, and they stayed that way for a long moment, silent in the dimness. Then her hand settled on the back of his neck, cool and gentle. "Choose you, Seth," she whispered. "Always choose you."
Fighting for breath, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the hand on his neck, memorizing the feel of it. When it became unbearable, he lurched to his feet and walked away from her. He never saw her again.
Mag was a brutal looking man, his body hard as stone and bulging with muscle, his face a wasteland of scars and sharp angles. When he grinned, as he was doing now, it looked more like a snarl of rabid hunger than humor.
"You tellin' me there ain't no way to get at im?" he asked, his grin aimed like a threat at the man in front of him.
"Claw's got every hole covered, Mag. We can do a full on, but his pack's as strong as ours. Ain't no way we come out of a brawl like that and hold both territories."
Seth's heart beat harder in his chest. Hiding in the shadows, he listened to Mag and his pack leaders with rising hope. Joining the pack at his age was laughable. If they didn't beat him to death, they might decide he'd do for a message runner---when he wasn't somebody's bed sport. But what he was hearing gave him an idea for a chance at a much better rank in the pack.
"I need him dead, Nass," Mag growled, his grin fading into menace.
Nass sidled back a step, his head and voice lowering in submission. "I know, boss. But we ain't got the manpower."
"What about the weasels?"
Seth's heart skipped a beat.
"All dead. Ain't no cut man in the world can get by his pack."
That was his cue if he'd ever heard one. Stepping out of the shadows, Seth took a deep breath and said,
"I can."
They all spun towards his voice, towering over him and bristling with violence, weapons ready. He did his best not to let them see his legs shake.
The one closest to him snorted and said, "Just a fuckin' kid. Who let you in here?"
"Let myself in," he answered with cool bravado, shifting to one side so he could meet Mag's lethal gaze.
"Can let myself in Claw's hole, too."
There was a short silence, the air thick with tension, and Seth wondered if that was his own death he felt pressing on his skin. Then Mag laughed. It sounded like a dog choking on his own spit, but the others joined in. Seth waited them out, his face burning a little, but more with relief than humiliation. At least they hadn't killed him on the spot.
"You wanna be a weasel, kid?" Mag snorted through a gust of humor.
"Yeah," he answered with as much conviction as he could.
There was another round of laughter, but Mag didn't join this time, studying Seth with a grin. "Cut man's gotta know how to kill. How you s'posed to kill a man, boy?"
"Catch and kill rats all the time in the tunnels. Claw's just a big, fat rat, ain't he? Won't be a problem."
Mag damn near strangled himself with laughter, his face turning a deep red and his eyes sparkling with tears. Sitting in his iron chair, he rocked with gales of humor, big hands braced on his knees. The rest of the pack leaders were just as amused, one hard-bitten woman shrieking with it, her face transformed to something like beauty.
When Mag could speak again, he gestured Seth forward with an abrupt, "Come here, kid."
Seth walked forward with as much confidence as he could, keeping his eyes on Mag and trying not to twitch when the leaders moved around him.
When he stopped in front of the head of the pack, the man looked him over with that rabid grin and said,
"You're a cocky little shit; I'll give ya that. How'd you plan to get at Claw?"
"I know these caves inside n' out. I can go where you can't. Every hole has vents."
Mag's eyes widened, and he studied Seth with a sharper gleam. "That's how you got in here?"
Seth nodded, not daring to look away from that piercing gaze. He'd scrounged through every tunnel and vent in the cave systems, even the ones close to the deadly surface, looking for something edible or for simple safety. The air vents were a wild maze of crisscrossing tubes cut into the stone, but they led to every cave in the system. And he knew them by heart.
"You're skinny enough to snake through," Mag mused. "You might get at im. But you ain't got it in you to kill."
Seth shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. "So I go and die. What d'you care? But if I do im and come back, you train me to be your cut man."
Mag's guffaw echoed off the walls, as did the sound of his hand landing on his thigh with a meaty whack.
"You got balls, kid. Bargains now, no shit." He chuckled, shaking his head as he watched Seth. "You're a funny little bastard. Be a shame to see you bite it."
The big man leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. This brought his face uncomfortably close to
Seth's, that hungry grin making sweat pop out on his face despite his dehydration.
"Got a name, kid?"
"Seth."
"No last name?"
"No," Seth answered without emotion. He didn't know who his father was, nor did he care, and if his mother had a last name, she'd never spoken of it.
"You'll take mine, then,"
Mag ordered, reaching out a beefy hand to cuff Seth on the shoulder, staggering him. "Let's see if you can keep it."
That seemed to be another point of humor for the pack leaders, laughter bouncing off the walls as Mag relaxed back in his chair, eyes glittering. He said nothing until the room fell quiet, his gaze pinning Seth in place. The thick tension pressed in again, making it difficult to breathe.
Then the head of the pack said, "Seth Terrik, you got yourself a deal."
Seth lay on his stomach just inside the air vent to Claw's private chamber, waiting for his prey and trying to ignore the bite of the borrowed knife in his waistband. The hilt ground against his ribcage with each breath, and the keen edge burned against his skin like a reminder of death. He'd used blades before---the ones he'd managed to steal over the years had been great for catching and killing small game, not to mention protection from attackers. But this one ... ah, this one stung.
Just a big rat, he told himself as he heard the pack leader's approach in the tunnel, but his heart began to thunder in his chest, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat. At his first glimpse of Claw, his vision went a little gray around the edges and he bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. The man didn't look much like a rat---more like a mountain. Easily as big as Mag, he bulged with strength and menace, the rolling gut around his middle a testament to the success of his pack. Not many people got fat scratching out a living in the tunnels.
Claw stumped by the air vent, the angle making it impossible for Seth to see higher than the man's chest. He saw the girl the leader dragged behind him, though. He saw her in clear detail, every naked, terrified bit of her. She wasn't much older than he was, and covered in bruises.
Seth knew what was about to happen to her and felt a certain helpless empathy, but no shock. He'd seen too much to be surprised or horrified, and had even been in her place a couple of times. But never again, he swore to himself as he watched the big man drag her to his bed, throwing her down and landing on top of her like an avalanche.
With a grim clench of his jaw, he turned his face away as Claw raped his victim, listening with a slow roll of his stomach as the man grunted and groaned, and the girl cried softly.
Then he listened as Claw hit her until she stopped crying.
The knife didn't burn as much against his skin.
Seth waited as the man turned down the lights and settled into bed, waited and listened as sleep stole through the room. Claw began snoring and still Seth waited, listening for that moment when it was safe to move, when his instincts said the danger was lowest.
When that moment came, he reached out for the grate, pulling the springed latches inward and lowering the covering to the floor of the room with quiet efficiency. Sliding out of the vent with the barest whisper of sound, he crouched by the wall and drew the knife from his waistband. Pausing, he listened again, tilting his head towards the door and then back to the sleepers. All quiet, all good.
Straightening, he padded towards the bed on silent, bare feet, the knife held low and ready. But when he reached his prey, he paused, uncertain. The girl wouldn't be a threat---she was facing the wall, curled into a ball with her back to him. Claw lay sprawled on the bed, limbs relaxed, head turned away and exposing his throat as he snored.
As if he was asking to die.
Seth knew how he should kill him, had pictured it in his mind as he squirmed his way through the vents to this place, the darkness, the threat of discovery, the kill. In his mind, he'd seen Claw as an imminent danger, maybe feigning sleep or at least looking like he was ready to commit murder even with his eyes closed. He'd never imagine the man would look so peaceful, so defenseless.
But if he turned away now and went back, Mag would break his neck without a second thought. He'd run out of choices the minute he'd called Mag's attention to himself. Do or die. It was that simple.
Still, he hesitated, biting his lip and tasting blood. Then the girl whimpered in her sleep, kicking his heart into overdrive with fear, his body thrumming with it until he realized that she was still out. But she might wake up at any moment.
Just a fat rat, he thought, and fixed in his mind the image of the man falling on the girl like a rabid animal. Feeling cold anger steady his hand, he lifted the knife, stepped forward smoothly, and thrust.
He wasn't prepared for the blood. It spouted from the man like a fountain, spraying Seth in a hot, metallic mist. He also wasn't prepared for Claw's reaction. The man jerked and thrashed, his limbs flailing wildly as he gurgled on his last breaths. He never touched Seth, but the surprise of it, the shock of blood and violent movement, sent him over backwards onto his rump, the knife clattering out of his fist.
Stunned, he stared with his mouth open as the mountain of flesh convulsed above him, the sounds of the man choking on his own blood a gruesome counterpoint to the thundering of his heart.
Then the girl's face appeared, rising over the dying man like an apparition. Her face was too swollen and bruised to show much expression, but her mouth was open as she stared at the blood and shuddering flesh. Then she caught sight of Seth.
At first, she simply blinked at him, eyes blank. Then comprehension swept over her battered face, widening her eyes and stretching her skin taut. She took a deep breath and let out a shriek that bounced wildly off the walls.
Seth scrambled on hands and knees towards the vent as her screams echoed around him. Without grace or a thought for silence, he flopped himself down and wiggled backwards into the small passage, grabbing the grate and snapping it into place. Like a desperate animal, he squirmed and thrust himself backwards, listening to the girl screaming and to the huff and wheeze of his own panicked breathing.
The response to her cry of alarm was swift and brutal. Seth heard them burst into the room, terror flooding his mind and wiping out all thought. He continued to wriggle, the instinct to survive too strong to freeze his muscles, but his heart nearly exploded with the sure knowledge that he was caught, caught, caught. With a moan, he ducked his head away from the light that came into the vent, as if they wouldn't see him if he couldn't see them.
He expected the rough, raised voices, the sounds of violence and shouts for vengeance. What he didn't expect was the girl's shriek of agony and despair. His mind was still a blank of terror, but instinct made him slow, his motions taking on a careful stealth.
Then he remembered.
The knife.
They'd swarmed into the room, had seen their dead leader, the screaming girl, the knife---and no one else. They hadn't asked her or hadn't believed her when she'd told them what had happened. Her death cry was their judgment.
Seth had killed a man, and the girl had taken the blame for it.
Scrambling away from the light and sound, Seth made his way into safer passages, pausing only when he was sure there was no danger. Then he huddled in on himself, the blood of his kill sticky on his skin. The heavy stench of it rose around him, the taste sinking like bile to the back of his throat. He was still for a long moment.
Then he vomited, heaving until he passed out.
Mag trained him. He learned fast, and he learned well. By the time he'd grown too large to fit in the vents, he'd added nearly a dozen to Mag's list of dead enemies. And he didn't stop there.
The pack leaders had been amused by his first cut job and by that pack's mistaken identity of the killer.
They started calling him ghost, for how he seemed to walk through walls and escaped detection. At first, they used the nickname with a sneer of amused contempt, but as he grew in size and skill, the sneers disappeared and the name gained a ring of respect. By the time he reached adulthood and Mag had taken over two thirds of the tunnel territory, the respect was joined by a large dose of fear, and ghost was something they whispered behind his back in sullen awe. And that wasn't the only thing they whispered.
Seth knew what they said, knew why they watched him with such wary eyes. Part of it was his deliberate separation from them, the fact that he didn't join in on their laughter or conversations that weren't pack business. His position kept him apart, Mag's right hand man, the leader's assassin. He'd learned that his survival depended on getting the job done, and every one of his fellow pack members was a potential target---no sense becoming friendly with his prey. But a larger part of why they watched his every move was that they expected him to take over the
pack, to murder Mag and assume leadership.
But he wouldn't. He wanted something else from Mag. He wanted his freedom.
One frigid night, not long after Mag had begun his training, the leader had led him to the surface. There, bundled and shuddering with deadly, bitter cold, he saw his future. Mag had pushed him into a lee of stone and pointed across the wasteland, the rock and sand that was fire by day and ice by night. Blinking wind-tears from his eyes,
Seth looked---and stopped breathing. The stars had fallen, clustering in bright points of light in the cup of the mountains, like the palm of a hand. They lit the sky, some blinking off and on, some dancing, some changing colors in a festival of brilliance.
"Wh-what is it?" he asked in awe and gratitude. He'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
"Space port," Mag growled, and dragged him back inside before they died of the cold. Of course, he then had to explain what those words meant, since Seth had no notion of space or what a port might be. His world was the tunnels, and nothing else had existed for him---until then.
"I'm gonna take it someday,"
Mag had told him with such confidence that Seth had believed him utterly.
"Soon's I get a pack big enough."
The idea was staggering and compelling. He became as obsessed as Mag with it, especially after he was allowed to join Mag when the leader met with the port authorities. The exchange was always the same---Mag would take a small group to the surface, where they'd be allowed to enter a vessel of such shining cleanliness that it made Seth's eyes burn and his head ache. Mag and the official would trade insults, then threats, and then they'd get down to making a deal. Mag wanted weapons, supplies, information. The official wanted to keep the tunnelers as far away
from his port as possible, to keep them from defiling their pristine existence.
It didn't take long for
Seth's obsession to change, when he saw and heard what wonders could be had at the port and beyond. The most tantalizing of these was freedom. Freedom to find some place that he didn't have to watch his back even in his sleep, a place without tunnels or packs, a place where he could be anyone but Mag's assassin.
He began dreaming about escaping the tunnels, but the port citizens would know he was a tunneler on sight---and smell---and he didn't have the first clue how to survive such an alien society. He didn't know the rules or the technology.
Mag discovered his obsession and used it, promising Seth a ship and crew to take him anywhere in the galaxy, to teach him the rules, if he would help Mag conquer the tunnels and space port. So conquer they did.
Until Nass, backed by the other pack leaders, slaughtered Mag in a public display of such brutality that it cowed even the fiercest pack member. Seth stood by and watched. He could do nothing else.
Always choose you. Words to live by.
The end of his life in the tunnels came with surprising abruptness. Seth knew Nass wouldn't trust him, that he'd want him out of the picture. He just never expected Nass to offer him everything he could ever want.
After Mag's death, the pack leaders hadn't left him alone for a moment, nor had they dropped their guard for a second. Always escorted by at least five heavily armed leaders, Seth hadn't found his chance to escape yet, before he was brought before the new head of the pack.
"Figure you know why you're here," Nass barked as he looked Seth up and down from his position in Mag's iron chair.
There was a wariness in his eyes that gave Seth a moment of grim satisfaction, followed by a sense of hopelessness. Nass wouldn't lead for long---he wasn't fearless enough, and he knew it. He'd never be able to hold this large of a pack together. It would break into a dozen, maybe two dozen groups, and Mag's dream of leading a conquering force into the space port would die.
"Gonna kill me, I suppose,"
Seth mused, keeping his tone and expression free of all emotion.
Nass's eyes flickered, but he snorted and gestured as if waving the thought away. "And lose a first-rate cut man? Naw," he scoffed.
Seth knew it for a lie, even if Nass didn't mean to kill him today. He stared the man in the eye and didn't move, didn't blink. Nass shifted on the hard seat and glanced around at Seth's wardens with feigned casualness.
"Gotta job for you. But maybe you still feel loyal to Mag, since you got his name and all. Still Mag's man, Terrik?"
"I'm the pack leader's man.
Mag didn't ask if I wanted that name."
Nass grinned, its edges sharp, but it couldn't match the hunger of his old leader's rabid smile. Nope, he wouldn't last. "So you won't be lookin' for a little payback?"
It was Seth's turn to snort.
"For what? For not holdin' his own? Mag was gettin' old." He shrugged. "Bound to happen sooner or later."
He spoke only the truth---there hadn't been any real bond between him and Mag, except a mutual respect and determination to survive. But he couldn't tell if Nass believed him. Didn't matter. Nass expected him to try for head of pack no matter what he said.
"Won't mind doin' a little cut work for me then, wouldja," Nass stated rather than asked. "Got me a new deal with them port pissers. Seems they got somebody they wanna get rid of.
Lucky me, I gotta ghost to send em."
That gained him some chuckles from the pack leaders surrounding Seth, but they sounded strained.
Seth suddenly wondered if the tension in the room had anything to do with him at all. The port authority didn't usually work new deals.
But the bait was too much for him to resist. Nass offered him a way out, the means to escape, to fulfill his dreams of freedom. The alternative was a bloodbath in which he did his best to kill all the major players in the pack or die trying. He was good, but there were a hell of a lot of them.
"No problem," he said immediately. Just don't expect me to come back.
They gave him a map of the place, directions on where to go and who to target, weapons, and cold weather protection. They even led him to a dilapidated ground vehicle, which they showed him how to operate. They were very accommodating, one and all. It made him damned nervous. But this was the opportunity he'd been waiting for all his life. He couldn't turn away from it now, even if his hackles stood on end the entire trip across the waste to the port.
He should have listened to his instincts. Trying to curb his awe at the new, the different, the erotic, clean beauty of it all, he stuck to the shadows and made his way across the port settlement to his prey's location. Using the information given to him, he snuck into the living space and hunted for his target.
The man was already dead. So were the rest of the occupants, two women and two children. A second after seeing the blood and the bodies, Seth's instincts woke to screaming life across his nerves, beating run, run, run
with the hammer of his heart. He never got the chance.
They'd been waiting for him.
They stunned him, then threw him down on top of one of the dead women, his body twitching spasmodically and smearing blood into his skin, his clothes. Then they placed a cruel, curved weapon in his hands, before placing it in a sealed container. After which they propped him on his feet and dragged him around the place, from body to body. He learned later that they were planting his DNA and heat signature in the correct pattern for the killings.
He learned a lot of things later. He learned that the clean beauty of the port was an illusion, masking a brutality that Mag would have been proud of. He learned about court systems and the justice of the worlds beyond his own. He learned that there were places as bad as the tunnels.
But he still survived. It was all he knew how to do.
Prisons hadn't been able to keep him for long---he was a fast learner on any world and became an accomplished escape artist. Catching him again and finding a jail he couldn't break out of was a serious challenge. So they eventually dumped him at Malthat, a place so reminiscent of the tunnels that he nearly laughed when they threw him into the endless darkness. When he killed his fellow inmates, it'd felt damned near nostalgic.
Home sweet home.
Stone stopped speaking abruptly, frowning at the faint echoes of his voice in the room. Or maybe it was the echoes of his memories, rustling around him like hungry shadows, trying to draw him back there. Suppressing a shudder, he dared a quick glance at Regan and felt his stomach clench to see her chin down and brows pulled together, thin arms hugging knees to chest in a tight grip.
With carefully suppressed dismay, he went back to assembling weapons and waited for her reaction. It wasn't long in coming, but it was unexpected all the same.
"Let me get this straight,"
she said in a clipped voice, her tone so similar to his wife at her most ferocious that he blinked and went still. "Those people put you away for five murders that you didn't even commit?"
He turned his head, taking in her black scowl, flushed face, and tense form. "Well, yeah," he said softly, trying to counter the rising fury in his daughter's dark eyes. "It's not like I
wasn't gonna."
"But you didn't!" she snarled and scrambled to her feet, hands fisted at her sides.
"Uh, I think you're missin'
the point here," he tried, a little unnerved. He'd never seen Regan so fired up. "I don't even remember how many I've killed---"
She cut off his words with a sharp gesture---again, so much like Mea---and snapped, "Screw that! If you didn't, you'd be dead! Like when I had to kill those slavers, to stay alive. But they framed you! That's not f-fair, when you had t-to do all those things, and your m-mom..."
She pressed her lips together, and Stone panicked a little as her dark eyes began to gleam with tears. Then he panicked a lot when she sagged to her knees, covering her face with trembling fingers. He was not good with tears.
He reached out and settled his hand on the back of her neck, feeling a strange pang of sorrow and fleeting sense of familiarity at the action. "Hey, cut that out, kid. It's old news."
With a muffled sob, she threw herself at his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck in a strangle hold. He folded his arms around her, cradling her gently as she sniffled and buried her face against his shoulder.
"It's just not fair, Dad,"
she whispered.
"Life's not fair, kid," he whispered back, feeling again that surge of protective warmth, magnified this time by an enormous relief. She didn't hate him, wasn't afraid of him.
"Screw that, too," she growled.
This time, he heard himself in her voice. The shock jerked a chuckle out of him, which drew a giggle from
Regan. Her humor pulled irresistibly at his, and his fed hers, until their laughter rang like music through the room, banishing shadows.
Michelle O'Leary is the author of The Huntress, Angels and Ministers of Grace,
and a growing collection of short stories. She is also a contributor to Clerestory, a windowed wall and The Insomniac Tales by Chaucer's Women.
Visit www.dlsijpress.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

