Deathstalker Legacy (43 page)

He sat slumped down in his chair, his knees almost on a level with his chest, and looked morosely around Finn’s place in search of something to occupy his attention. Something small and precious he could smash, perhaps, and claim it was an accident. He’d already drunk everything worth drinking and raided the kitchen twice. Sometimes eating something made his stomach feel better, and sometimes it didn’t, but Brett had always been a great comfort eater. Trouble was, Finn’s culinary tastes tended towards the bland, not to mention the downright boring, and Brett had his standards.

He looked cautiously across at Rose, sitting in her chair pulled uncomfortably close beside his. Her head slowly turned, and she looked at him with her dark, unblinking eyes. She’d been looking at him a lot lately, ever since their minds had touched through the esper drug, when he’d discovered, very much to his surprise, that there was more to her than just a killer after all. God alone knew what she’d discovered about him. He was damned if he could read her expression. She was wearing the same tight-fitting red leathers she always wore, the color of drying blood all the way from her toes to her chin, all seven feet of her. She made the chair look like it had been built for a child, and even though she was sitting perfectly, almost inhumanly still, she dominated the room with her sheer presence.

Brett studied her openly, and she let him. With her bobbed black hair, dark as the night, her deathly pale skin and savage crimson mouth, she looked like some ancient death goddess, resting from making her rounds of the battlefield, where she tore the eyes from staring faces, like some great and awful gorecrow. Brett was hard-pressed to decide whether she was good-looking. She was just too intense, too fierce, too untamed for such conventional verdicts to apply. Striking, certainly. Attractive, like a well-fashioned weapon. Even sexy, in a disturbing and frankly rather sick way. She scared Brett shit-less, but then most things did, these days. He bit his lip, frowning, as he tried to put into words how he felt about her. She should horrify him, but . . .

He realized he’d been staring at her for a long while, and she hadn’t objected. She was still looking at him, calm and curious, as quietly menacing as a coiled snake. Brett swallowed uncomfortably, and sat up a little straighter in his chair.

“So, Rose; I see you got your leathers repaired. After you took that hit in the ribs. During the riot.”

“This is another outfit,” said Rose. “I have seven sets, all exactly the same. It saves me from having to waste time deciding what I’m going to wear when I get up in the morning. I have no patience for distractions like that. The Arena Board had a famous designer produce the original set for me. Image is everything, apparently. I didn’t object. I like leather. It’s practical. And it scares people. That’s useful, in the Arena. Fights can be won and lost over how an opponent sees you.”

Brett was taken aback. She’d never spoken so much at one time to him before. In fact, he’d never heard her say that much to anyone before; not even Finn. If it had been anyone else, he’d have said she was confiding in him. Maybe even trying to reach out to him. He cast his mind about for something else to say.

“They’re very nice leathers. The color is so you. But don’t you ever get uncomfortable in them? I mean, I used to know this girl who made . . . educational features. For a mature, discerning audience. She wore a lot of leather outfits, and she always said they made her sweat like a pig.”

“I don’t sweat,” said Rose. “It’s bad for the image.” She paused. “That was a joke.”

Well, very nearly,
thought Brett.
Jesus, she’ll be trying to smile next. I don’t know if I could cope with that.

“I’m glad you’re here, Brett,” Rose said slowly. “I wanted to talk to you. In private. This . . . is difficult for me, Brett. I don’t talk much to people. They don’t talk much to me. I don’t have much in common with people. You probably noticed. I live for the fight. For the kill. For the spurting blood, and the look in their eyes as the life goes out of them. And for years, that was all I needed, all I wanted from people. But you, Brett . . . you’re different. I feel differently about you. I want . . . to know you. Better. And I don’t know why.”

She’s trying to come on to me,
Brett thought incredulously.
I’m not sure if she even knows what that means, but that’s what she’s trying to do.
Brett seriously considered jumping up out of his chair and running for his life, but somehow he didn’t. Partly because she’d probably kill him before he reached the door, if she decided she’d been insulted, and partly because . . . there was something almost touching in her awkward attempts to reach out to someone else. Maybe for the first time in her life. It didn’t make her one bit less scary, but . . .

“You can talk to me, Rose, if you want,” Brett said carefully. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I don’t know. This is all new to me. New territory. Is this what friends do?”

“Sometimes. Don’t you have any friends, Rose? No, of course not, silly question.”

“I never wanted friends. People complicate things. They want things from me, things I never understood. Friendship, love, sex; those things have always been a mystery to me. But now . . . I want to know about you, Brett. Who you are, what you are. Who and what you were, before we met. Is that the kind of things friends want to know?”

“Yes, Rose. You got it.”

Brett got ready to launch into his usual patter, the carefully rehearsed and polished parcel of lies he always trotted out when he wanted to impress a new woman in his life, but somehow . . . he couldn’t do that to Rose. She wouldn’t have appreciated them anyway. So for once, and much to his surprise, Brett told the truth.

Brett Random had grown up in the Rookery, with a mother who earned the rent on her back, and a whole succession of stepfathers who came and went as the mood took them. Sometimes they gave him money, and sometimes they hit him, but Brett never gave a damn either way. He took to the streets at an early age, looking out for himself because he was the only one he could trust, getting himself into every kind of trouble there was going, teaching himself the art of the con and the dodge, because that was what he was best at. And because he enjoyed it. He made himself a name to be reckoned with before he was out of his teens, while outside the Rookery he carefully constructed a dozen new names, faces, and identities, all of them ready for use at a moment’s notice. He made and lost a dozen fortunes before he was twenty, and never missed any of them. He wasn’t in it for the money. It was the chase and the challenge, and the thrill of the game that consumed him. That made him feel alive.

But he never forgot his one distinct claim to true greatness; that he was descended from not one but two of the Empire’s greatest heroes. He was a Random’s Bastard, through his long-lost father; some wandering soul who’d impressed his mother so much she gave her only child his father’s surname. It could all have been a lie, of course, just a line to impress his mother, but Brett didn’t think so. He’d always known he was destined for greatness. He could feel it, in his bones and in his soul. One day he would be great himself. Whatever it took.

You need dreams like that, in the Rookery.

“So there you have it, Rose. The story of my life, such as it is. I am what I have made of myself. The prince of the con and the double bluff. How about you now? What awful and traumatic events divorced you from the rest of Humanity, and made you into the Wild Rose, the terrible and legendary killer you are today?”

“I made myself what I am,” said Rose. “No one helped me. I had a perfectly normal family, and a perfectly normal upbringing. Never actually rich, but always comfortable. I had parents who cared for me and were always there when I needed them. There’s nothing in my dull, ordinary past to explain me. I’m just a cuckoo, a monster, a freak of nature. Blood and suffering and slaughter are meat and drink to me; it’s music and laughter and sex. And all I ever needed . . . until now. When our minds touched, through the drug, I saw there was more to life than I thought. I saw things . . . that I’ve always wanted without knowing it. I saw love and sex in your mind, and for the first time it seemed to me that perhaps there was more to them than the bumping of bodies. There’s comfort and sharing and peace of mind, and more. I want those things, Brett. I want to know them. Teach me about friendship. Teach me about sex. Show me.”

Oh hell,
thought Brett.
Why me, Lord?

But you don’t say no to a psychopath. So Brett reached out and took her hand in his. He pulled off the crimson leather glove and dropped it in her lap. She looked at him, curiously, dispassionately. Brett brought her bare hand to his face, and slowly trailed the tips of her long slender fingers across his cheek. And slowly, very slowly, guiding her hand with his, he moved her hand from his cheek to his chin to his mouth. Rose frowned, concentrating on the moment, on the sensations. Brett kissed her fingertips, one at a time. Rose pulled her hand away, held it up before her face, and looked at it. Brett sat very still. And then Rose reached out, took his hand in her deadly killer’s hand, and moved his fingertips slowly across her face. He smiled encouragingly. There was something new in the room with them. Brett leaned over in his chair and pressed his other hand on the red leathers over her chest. The material creaked loudly, as her breasts rose and fell.

“Brett,” said Rose. “I think . . .”

“Don’t think,” said Brett. “Just feel.”

“This is new. It isn’t like killing.”

“Not everything has to be about killing.”

He took her firmly by the chin, and pulled her face close to his. She studied him, wide-eyed. When he kissed her, it was clear this was new to her too. He showed her what to do, not hurrying, careful not to be aggressive or forceful. This was Rose, after all. He was still scared of her, but . . . he could feel something beginning between them. A new connection that might be friendship or lust or something else entirely. And, he had to admit, it was exciting. There was a real charge to making out with someone who might just kill you if you upset her.

Rose pulled back, their lips separating almost reluctantly. She looked at Brett, frowning again as she tried to work out how she felt. She looked down at his hand on her breast and put her hand over his, increasing the pressure. Brett slowly undid the buttons of his shirt, and pulled it open to reveal his bare chest. He took her bare hand, and brought it to his chest. Rose’s dark mouth moved in the beginnings of a smile. If it had been anyone else, Brett would have sworn it was a shy smile. He smiled back. Rose’s fingertips moved curiously across his chest, not needing his hand to guide her.

And then they heard footsteps approaching from outside. Finn was back. Brett didn’t know whether he felt relieved or not. Rose leaned back in her chair again, pulling on her leather glove, her face calm and impassive. Brett did up his shirt. When Finn came in, they were both sitting quietly in their separate chairs, looking in different directions. And if they were both breathing just a little heavily, what of that? Certainly Finn didn’t seem to notice anything amiss as he came bustling in, saying something hearty about a new mission. Brett missed the first few words. He’d just noticed that his stomach had stopped hurting.

“Brett! You’re not listening to me!” Finn said sharply, dangerously.

“Hanging on your every word, sir Durandal,” Brett said immediately. “A new mission. Always happy to serve. Wait a minute; hold everything, go back, go previous. Did you just say you wanted me to go out into the city again? You do know I can’t show this face in public? Not after gutshooting the Deathstalker, right in front of the camera. Paragons may not be the flavor of the month right now, but the Champion still has his fans. Particularly among the peacekeepers. They spot this face, and I’m a dead man!”

“Then show them another face,” said Finn. “You have several to choose from, after all. It’s your own fault; I have no sympathy. You should have spotted that camera. Very unprofessional behavior.”

“I was distracted, all right? Conversations like this are why I always prefer to work alone.”

“You have other identities,” said Finn. “Pick one of them. I need you out in the city within the hour.”

“Within the hour? Jesus, Finn, whatever happened to forward planning? It takes time to become someone else. And visits to a body shop I can trust. The whole point of a backup identity is to produce a whole different image, right down to the body language. You don’t just slap on a wig and walk funny . . .”

“All you need for now is an appearance sufficiently different that you won’t be arrested in the street,” Finn said firmly. “Don’t worry; the odds are, no one would recognize you anyway, where you’re going.”

There was something in the way he said that which made Brett’s heart sink. “All right; I’ll bite. Where am I going this time?”

“I’m sending you to speak with the ELFs,” said Finn. “To make a deal with them, on my behalf.”

Brett was out of his chair and up on his feet in a moment, too outraged even to be scared. “
Are you out of your mind?
No one goes looking for ELFs! I like having my brain where it is, not leaking out my ears! I wouldn’t go near an ELF if you gave me a dozen esp-blockers, a full-body force shield, and my own portable disrupter cannon!
They’re crazy!
”

Finn waited patiently for him to run down. “The ELFs will agree to a deal, because I am going to offer them something they want even more than me. And you will go and talk to them on my behalf, Brett, because I require it of you, and I just won’t take no for an answer. I have every confidence in your abilities. You’ve always been very persuasive. After all, you were able to talk the Deathstalker into leaving his post during a riot. You must have been very persuasive to manage that . . .”

Brett hesitated, suddenly uncertain. Was Finn saying he knew about Brett’s new esper power of compulsion? Or did he just suspect?