“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m just so flustered.” She patted a hand to her heart. “You can come right in, sit down. I was about to make some tea for Harry and me. A nice pot of tea while we watch our shows. Harry!” she called again, then sighed. “He’s got that screen on so loud he can’t hear me. I’m going to go get him. You just sit right down, and I’ll go get Harry.”
“Mrs. Stuben, do you know your neighbor across the hall? Levar Hoyt?”
“Var? Sure we do. Such a nice young man,” she said as she started up the stairs. “Smart as they come. We couldn’t ask for a better neighbor. Harry!”
“Tea and flowers,” Eve murmured, “everything’s just so homey.”
“Which, of course, automatically raises your suspicions. Still, some people . . .” He stopped in his turn around the room. “Eve,” he said, just as the locks on the door snapped shut, and the room shimmered away.
“It’s a goddamn holo.” Eve reached for her weapon, and drew a sword. “Oh, fuck me!”
“We’ll have to wait on that. To your left.”
She barely had time to pivot, to block before the blade sliced down. She looked into a scarred face mottled with tattoos. It grinned while twin red suns turned the sky to the color of blood.
She came up with her left elbow, rammed him in the throat. When he stumbled back she took a fraction of a second to glance toward Roarke. He fought a bare-chested mountain of a man armed with sword and dagger. Beyond him, in the blue observer’s circle, stood Var.
Frightened, she thought as she met the next thrust. Scared, desperate, but excited, too.
“They’ll come looking for us, Var!” she shouted. “Stop the game.”
“It’s got to play out.”
She felt the boggy ground under her feet, and part of her mind registered the heavy, wet heat, the scream of birds, the wildly improbable green of thick trees. Swords crashed, deadly cymbals, as she fought for any advantage.
To play the game, she thought, you had to know the rules. “What the hell are we fighting about?” she demanded. She leaped when her opponent swung the sword at her knees, then struck back at his sword arm. “We’ve got no beef with you.”
“You invade our world, enslave us. We will fight you to the last breath.”
“I don’t want your damn world.” She saved her breath, spun away from his sword, and reared up in a kick that caught him in the side. When she followed through to finish him, he feinted, fooled her, and ran a line of pain down her hip with the tip of his sword.
She leaped back. “I’m a New York City cop, you son of a bitch. And I’m going to kick your ass.”
Riding on fury, she came in hard, her sword flying right, left, slashing through his guard to rip his side. She pushed in, slamming her fist in his face. Blood erupted from his nose.
“That’s how we do it in New York!”
Rage burned in his eyes. He let out a war cry, charged in. She rammed her sword into his belly, to the hilt, yanking it free as he fell, then whirling toward Roarke.
Blood stained the black body armor he wore and smeared the gleaming chest of his opponent. Beside them a river raged in eerie, murky red while enormous tri-winged birds swooped.
As she ran toward him, she took the drumbeats she heard for her racing heart.
“I’ve got this,” he snapped out.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” She swung her sword up, but before she could land the blow, Roarke sliced his across his opponent’s throat.
“I said I had it.”
“Great. Points for you. Now—”
She turned with every intention of rushing Var and holding the point of the sword to his throat. Another warrior leaped into her path, then another, and more.
Men, women, tattooed
, armed. And as the drumbeat came from the bones more of them rapped rhythmically on the trees.
“We can’t take them all,” Eve murmured as she and Roarke moved instinctively to guard each other’s backs.