One
They’d told him he wouldn’t feel it when the energy beam ripped him apart. They’d lied. Baran Arvid experienced every burning nanosecond as the hot force blazed from cell to cell, searing him away. For an instant he felt himself falling into a cold, familiar peace. He’d died so often, it no longer came as a surprise.
Then the temporal beam reassembled him again, tormented muscles jerking, optic nerves overloaded by blinding purple starbursts. The dazzle-induced blindness triggered his every combat instinct into roaring protest, but Baran refused to panic. Instead, he locked his knees and concentrated on remaining on his feet while the afterimages faded from his vision.
Gritting his teeth, he ignored the spasming muscles, the nervous system reverberating with residual agony, the stomach fighting to turn itself inside out. He had no intention of showing weakness in front of that bastard from Temporal Enforcement.
“Well, we’re still alive, so we didn’t trigger a paradox,” the bastard said. “Guess you two are supposed to be in the twenty-first century after all.”
“Kiss my furry black ass, Enforcer,” gasped the timber wolf, gagging violently. Apparently he was as sick as Baran. Freika, however, had the luxury of showing it.
“And you’re speaking colloquial English already. Nice processing speed. I’m impressed,” the Enforcer said. He’d refused to tell them his name. “How about you, Arvid? You look a little pale around the lips.”
Baran blinked his tearing eyes until he could see again. Searching his new vocabulary, he found an appropriate phrase. “Fuck you.”
“Very good. Suitably crude and American.” The Enforcer laughed, his teeth flashing white, eyes metallic gold against the inky black of his skin. His hair fell in a mop of curly fire around an ebony face so stylized and perfect, he didn’t look entirely human. Whoever had tinkered with his DNA had possessed a taste for the dramatic.
“Glad you approve.” Baran turned to scan their surroundings for possible threats in a search that was so ingrained he was scarcely aware of making it.
He, the Enforcer, and the timber wolf stood in the shadow of strange Earth trees, a full moon riding bright and cold overhead. The air smelled of vegetation he didn’t recognize, and unidentified life-forms buzzed and sang and scuttled all around them. Baran’s aching muscles coiled even tighter. Being on alien planets always made him twitch. Too many unknown threats, too many ways you could be taken off-guard. And Temporal Enforcement’s habitual mind games weren’t helping at all. “You might have warned me the damn Jump would leave me sick and half-blind.”
The dark scales of the Enforcer’s temporal suit rippled with an iridescent sheen as he shrugged. “You couldn’t have done anything about it anyway. Everybody gets Jumpsick their first time. Though I suppose it would be even worse without a T-suit.”
“You might say that.” Baran pulled up his sleeve to display the slabs of muscle still jerking in his forearm. He wore nothing more than the twenty-first-century garb they’d given him: shirt, pants, and a long rustling coat in some kind of hide. “I feel like somebody worked me over with the butt of a beamer rifle. Temporal armor would have been appreciated.”
The Enforcer’s smile was faintly taunting. “But then you’d have been able to Jump to whatever time you wanted. We can’t have you wandering loose around the time plane causing paradoxes.”
Freika lifted his head with a canine moan. “Like I’d want to go through that again anytime soon. I’ve had more fun being shot.”
Though Baran could understand him perfectly, the words sounded oddly guttural compared to the wolf’s normal liquid speech. Then again, it always took Baran a few hours to adjust to a new language after the comp had reprogrammed his brain to speak it. Even his thoughts felt off-kilter as he automatically used American slang instead of the Galactic Standard he normally spoke. “Your vocalizer working all right?”
Freika hesitated, pale blue eyes going blank as he listened to the mental voice of his computer implant. Then he shook his furry head. “Everything’s fine. Guess English is supposed to sound like two cats fighting in a very small sack.”
“You both speak as if you were born here,” the Enforcer told them impatiently. “We don’t give our operatives inferior language files. Or inferior anything else.”
“That’s reassuring,” Baran said, pitching his voice to a tone of silken menace. He was sick of the agent’s arrogance. “I’d hate to be…disappointed.” Artistically, he added his best lethal smile, as though imagining just what he’d do to anybody with that much bad judgment.
The Enforcer’s gaze flickered. Despite his weapons, despite his training, they all knew he was no match for Baran. He was, after all, only human.
Baran was a Warlord.
His genetically engineered body was a good five times stronger than any human’s, and his bones were so dense they were practically unbreakable. As if that weren’t enough, a neuroweb combat computer wove through his brain, giving him access to both a vast data bank and information from the sensor implants scattered throughout his body.
Thanks to his computer, anything Baran aimed at, he hit. And thanks to his strength, anything he hit went down hard. Add his well-deserved and very ugly reputation, and it wasn’t surprising the TE agent swallowed visibly. “Oh, you’ll be very pleased with our equipment.”
“I’d better be. I’d hate to have to show you what I can do with mine.”
The agent stiffened, finally realizing he was being played. “You do menace well, Warlord. I hope you can back it up with action, because the Jumpkiller is somewhere out here. And he definitely lives up to his reputation.”
“So do we,” Freika growled, sitting back on his haunches and wrapping his tail around his toes. “And we’ve pulled off enough combat missions to prove it.”
“But we could finish this up faster if you’d tell us exactly what we’re supposed to do.” Baran glanced restlessly past the Enforcer to the primitive two-story wooden residence that stood just beyond the tree line. He knew the woman lived there, but that was about it. He hated going on missions blind, particularly when it was so bluntly obvious his superiors knew more than they were telling. “The more information we have, the better our chances.”
The Enforcer gave him that dismissive glance again. “You know everything you need to know: your orders. Keep the Jumpkiller from gutting Jane Colby, preferably by killing him first.”
“Look,” Baran said impatiently, “you obviously have access to historical records from this time, or you wouldn’t have known I needed to be transported here. And that means you have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen over the next few days. I just want to know where, when, and how I’m supposed to kill the son of a bitch.”
The agent curled a flawless lip. “How do you usually do your killing?”
“In a wide variety of ways.” Which he was strongly tempted to demonstrate.
“Fine. Pick one.”
“I don’t go on missions blind, Enforcer.”
“You do this time.” Baran opened his mouth to protest, but the agent cut him off. “Warlord or no, Arvid, you’re not Temporal Enforcement. You’re not trained for time travel. The more information you have, the greater your likelihood of causing a paradox. So I’m not telling you a damn thing. Except this: get the Colby woman under control and wait for Druas to show up. When he does, finish it, and I’ll take you home to your war.”
Suppressing a violent impulse to plant his fist in the Enforcer’s face, Baran folded his arms. “I’d be delighted. But considering he’s got a T-suit and I don’t, it’s not going to be that easy. Even if I manage to corner him, all he’s got to do is Jump somewhere else.”
“And he will.” Freika flicked an ear lazily. “He’s not going to want to go against Baran if he can avoid it.”
“We’ve already taken care of that.” The agent bent and fished around in the pack that lay between his booted feet. He straightened, holding something small that he handed over to Baran. “Suit neutralizer,” he explained as the Warlord examined the intricately filigreed ring. It was set with a red gem cut into complex facets that shattered the cold, pale moonlight into sparks. “When you get close enough, press the stone against the Jumpkiller’s suit for several seconds. It’ll short out the T-field generators, and he’ll be trapped. Then you can take your time killing him.”
Baran looked up. “Several seconds? How do I keep him from Jumping before the stone finishes the process?”
The Enforcer gave him a malicious smile. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
Frowning, Baran slipped the ring on. The metal seemed to squirm as it automatically adjusted to the diameter of his finger. “Sounds like I’ll need to stun him somehow. Got any weapons?”
“Are you insane?” The agent snorted. “Take anything with a tachyon power pack on a Jump, and you’d end up at the bottom of a crater.”
“Believe it or not, I do have a knowledge of basic physics,” Baran growled. “But they’ve been making weapons without Tach Packs for the past million years.”
“Yes, they have. Which is why I suggest you look for one.” He picked up the bag and handed it over with a grunt of effort. Baran accepted it, barely noticing the weight. “This has everything else you’ll need: twenty-first-century clothing, currency, the usual equipment we pack for jobs like this. Colby should be leaving in the next few minutes, since the Jumpkiller has already claimed his first victim in this time. Move in, establish your base while she’s gone, and take her into custody when she returns. I’ll see you soon.”
“How soon?”
He smiled in a toothy display every bit as feral as Baran’s. “For me, in the next few minutes, since I’m Jumping there right now. For you…it’ll be a little longer. Good hunting, Warlord.”
Baran looked at him for a long moment. “Eventually,” he observed in a silken voice, “we won’t be on your turf anymore, Enforcer.”
The agent’s eyes widened at the implied threat. Then he recovered and snapped, “Step clear.”
Baran and the wolf retreated a safe distance and turned their heads away. Neither had any desire to get caught in the backwash of a Jump.
Even through closed lids, Baran could see the white-hot glow of the temporal field blooming from the agent’s T-suit. It intensified, growing brighter and brighter as residual energy danced in stinging waves over his skin. Thunder cracked, and a hot wind blew into his face, smelling of ozone.
When he opened his eyes, the Enforcer was gone.
“You know, you could probably have forced that little prick to tell us more,” Freika said as the echo died. “He found you pretty unnerving.” He grinned a canine grin. “But then, so many do.”
Baran shrugged. “True, but I don’t care to end up before a Temporal Court for assaulting an Enforcer. We’ll just have to—” He broke off as exterior lights flashed on around the woman’s home.
They turned warily. A wooden door opened, swinging outward rather than sliding into the wall as it should. Jane Colby walked out, moving in an intriguing, long-legged saunter that made Baran’s eyes narrow with interest. Even across the distance that separated them, he saw her look in their direction and frown. She must have heard the sonic boom of the Enforcer’s Jump. He tensed, wondering if she’d come investigate.
Then she shook her head and turned to get into a boxy, wheeled vehicle parked beside the house. It produced a startling roar and a cloud of petrochemicals that lingered even after it backed up, turned around, and rolled off on its thick tires.
“No wonder this planet’s a polluted pit, with millions of those things everywhere,” Freika commented, watching its running lights recede.
“They’ll invent gravlev eventually,” Baran said, hoisting his new pack. The long hide coat of his twenty-first-century garb swung around his calves as he started toward the house. “Come on, let’s get to it.”
When they reached the front door, he drew a slim metallic needle from the interior pocket of his coat. Crouching, he inserted it into the lock set in the door’s round handle. The forcepick vibrated slightly between his fingers as it sent out a precisely shaped force field that filled the space intended for a key. The field rotated, tripping the primitive tumblers until the lock clicked open.
Patiently Baran used the same procedure on the second lock, the one the computer called a deadbolt. Once it, too, clicked, he turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Moving as one, he and the wolf vanished inside.
Damn, she hated murders.
Jane Colby got out of her SUV and slammed the door, aiming a brooding stare at the swaying strip of yellow plastic strung across the yard. She sometimes felt she’d spent her entire life staring at crime scene tape, waiting to find out how someone had died.
Hunching deeper into her windbreaker against the April chill, she walked to the tape and studied the small home that stood some distance beyond it. Strobing blue light from the patrol cars parked along the street rolled across the house’s neat brick face, casting unnatural shadows between the azalea bushes. Beyond backlit lace curtains, the silhouettes of sheriff’s deputies milled around like guests at a morbid party.
In the distance a dog barked in a frenzy at the K-9 team that searched for the killer. Jane could hear the cops’ radio chatter through the portable police scanner in the depths of her purse. Their voices sounded grimly subdued. She listened absently, hoping for that rising note of tension and adrenalin that would mean they’d found something.
The hissing rumble of an approaching car drew her around. Stepping back out of the roadway, Jane threw up a hand to shield her eyes against the blaze of its oncoming headlights.
God, she hoped it wasn’t family. She’d lost count of the times she’d watched people race toward a scene, eyes wild and tears streaming as police ran to stop them before they saw something they shouldn’t. Jane never failed to feel a twist of pity as she listened to the desperate, heartbreaking argument she’d heard over and over, “But it’s my…” Wife, husband, father, mother, brother, sister, daughter, son. The relationship changed, but the horror and suffering was always the same, whether it was a car accident, a fire, a fatal fall. Or a murder.
But murders were the worst.
Jane pitied the victims for the terror and agony of their last moments, but she also knew their suffering was over. It was the survivors who really bothered her, because their pain was only beginning. She’d interviewed enough of them to know it never really ended, even years afterward.
But when the primer-flecked Trans Am simply slowed to a stop, she relaxed. Family always slammed on the brakes and jumped out running. The blond driver leaned across to roll down her passenger window and eye the patrol cars lining the street. “What’s going on?”
Jane shrugged. “Evidently somebody’s been killed.”
The woman’s interest took on an avid edge. “Yeah? What happened?”
“They haven’t told me yet.”
“You family?”
“No, I’m a reporter for the Trib.”
The blonde’s expression chilled, and Jane saw the silent judgment in her eyes. Vulture. “Guess I’ll read about it in the paper, then.”
“Guess you will.”
The Trans Am pulled off in a gust of exhaust, its taillights receding into the darkness.
At least it hadn’t been family. Jane knew she’d have to talk to them eventually, but she liked to give survivors at least a few hours to adjust to the shock. Back in Atlanta she’d often been forced to interview them before the bodies had even cooled. Sometimes you got more that way because their defenses were down, but she’d always felt it was dirty journalism. People deserved a chance to process the massive shock of a murder without someone working them over for a quote.
She’d even considered stopping the survivor interviews altogether now that she’d become the publisher of The Tayanita Tribune in the wake of her father’s fatal stroke. The Trib only came out three times a week, so any big crime was often old news by the time it made the paper anyway.
The trouble was, without the emotional content from survivors, people read crime stories as a kind of horrific entertainment. Interviews gave families a chance to describe the person they’d loved, to transform him from another faceless victim to a person in the public mind. For Jane, that meant an opportunity to bring the tragedy of murder home to readers who had become numb to it.
Which was why she was standing alone on a country road at midnight when she didn’t go to press for two more days.
As for the nagging awareness that a killer might be somewhere out here, too…
She wasn’t going to think about that.
Baran and Freika searched Jane’s house with speed, silence, and a ruthless efficiency that left nothing untouched—or visibly disturbed. Unfortunately, there was nothing to find. There was no trace of the Jumpkiller’s presence, not even his scent. Kalig Druas had not been here.
Yet.
The search did, however, tell Baran it wouldn’t be easy keeping him out once he did make his appearance. Every room had fragile glass windows that would take very little effort to break, assuming that the Xeran didn’t simply Jump inside. If they left Jane alone for even a moment, Druas could easily slaughter her before they even knew he was there. Which meant Baran and Freika would have to stay with her at all times, whether she liked it or not. And she wouldn’t.
Unfortunately, she had no more choice than they did. Baran himself had another monster to kill back in his own time, but Temporal Enforcement had made it clear this one had priority. Never mind that General Jutka’s death would leave the Xeran forces in disarray and save the lives of thousands of Vardonese soldiers. TE wanted its mission taken care of first.
He’d argued he could make the Jump after he’d assassinated Jutka, but the Enforcer hadn’t bought it. Once he saved Jane, the agent told him, TE would return Baran to the very moment he’d left his own time so he could kill whomever he chose. Since nobody ever argued successfully with Temporal Enforcement, that plan had trumped his.
The whole thing was irritating. Baran was a Warlord, not a time traveler. He didn’t even work for Temporal Enforcement. But TE had found a three-hundred-year-old video recording of him during Druas’s rampage in this time. They’d decided if a Warlord had been in the twenty-first century, it was because TE itself had put him there, presumably to stop the Jumpkiller. So they’d drafted Baran to make sure he got back here to do whatever he was supposed to do. Otherwise, they all risked creating a catastrophic paradox, and nobody wanted that.
He only wished he had a few more details about what was actually going to happen. Unfortunately, TE seemed to operate under the theory that once you got where you were supposed to be, you automatically did whatever you were supposed to do.
With a grunt of impatience, Baran continued his inspection of Jane’s primitive kitchen. When he turned a round knob on her cooking unit, one of the flat metal spirals on top of it slowly began to heat. His computer implant sent him an image of a metal container sitting on the spiral, bubbling. Might be interesting to experiment. Once when the rations had run low, he’d cooked a treehopper over a captured Xer Tach Pack.
You could do all sorts of things with a Xeran power pack, if you were creative enough.
“Baran, it’s under the bed,” the wolf called from upstairs. “I see its eyes glowing.”
“Leave it alone, Freika.” He turned the coil off with a snap of his wrist.
“But I’m hungry!” A snarling feline yowl rose. “And do you hear the way it’s talking to me?”
“Eating the target’s cat would not create the first impression we want.”
“Just one bite?”
“No. This is going to be difficult enough as it is without you snacking on her furry friends.”
“How could anybody be friends with a cat?”
“Well, for one thing,” Baran said, walking into the living area, “it’s soft, it purrs, and unlike some I could name, it doesn’t mouth off.”
Despite the genetic engineering that gave Freika sentience—and the computer implant that made him a four-legged library—Baran’s partner still had a timber wolf’s personality and instincts. Though useful in combat, those characteristics could be maddening the rest of the time.
“A nibble?”
“No.” Deciding not to trust Freika’s questionable self-control, Baran bounded up the stairs.
It seemed to be his week for saving Earth residents from predatory time travelers.
Beyond the crime scene tape, a storm door creaked open and closed with a metallic bang. Jane turned as the detective in charge of the case stumbled down the steps. Good, she could get the details of this thing and go home.
Before she could open her mouth, Tom Reynolds leaned over and heaved the contents of his stomach into the budding azalea bushes.
Jane winced. “That’s so not a good sign,” she called. “What’s bad enough to make you toss your crullers, Tom?”
Reynolds jerked upright, a flustered expression on his round face as he hurriedly wiped his mouth. “Tell me you didn’t take a picture of that, Colby.”
She grinned and toyed suggestively with the digital camera that hung by a strap around her neck. “Would I do that to you?”
“Not if you ever want another exclusive.” Reynolds started toward her, shooting a hunted look around the taped-off perimeter of the yard. “How about TV? Are those vultures from WDRT here?”
“Nope,” Jane said. “I’m the only one circling at the moment. I figure it’ll take DRT another twenty minutes to get here from Deanville.”
“That’s something, anyway.” Tom pulled a wadded napkin out of a pocket and wiped his mouth, aware of Jane’s sympathetic gaze. If he had to catch a reporter on this nightmare so soon, he could have done worse. She’d never misquoted him, and if he asked her to withhold something to avoid blowing a case, she did it.
And God knew she was easy on the eyes. Jane’s long-legged walk was a pleasure to watch even at a crime scene, and he’d caught other cops telling her intriguing cleavage more than they should. Her face always made him think of magazine covers: high cheekbones, big brown eyes, and the kind of wide, sensual mouth a happily married man had no business fantasizing about. With all the dark hair tumbling in curls around her shoulders, she could have done shampoo commercials. Yet he’d never seen her use her looks. She didn’t even seem aware of them.
The nasty taste in his mouth suddenly reminded Tom he must have the breath of a frat boy the morning after a kegger. He grimaced, shoving aside the memory of just why he’d lost control of his lunch. He really didn’t want to throw up again, especially not on Jane’s pretty boots.
Observant brown eyes softened as she looked at him. “I’ve got a bottle of water in the SUV. Want it?”
“Yeah.” He sighed and admitted, “Taste in my mouth ain’t helping my stomach any.”
She nodded and walked to her red Explorer. Tom trailed behind to watch appreciatively as she opened the door and bent over, fishing around in the cooler she kept in the backseat. Jane’s heart-shaped ass in those snug jeans would draw any man’s eyes, married or not.
She turned and handed him a bottle dripping with ice and condensation. “Thanks,” he said, twisting the cap off as he headed for the nearest ditch to take a swig and spit.
Jane watched him sympathetically. Reynolds wore the standard Southern detective uniform of chinos, blue sports coat, and blue oxford cloth shirt, slightly frayed at the collar because he had to watch every dime of his salary. His tie featured Wile E. Coyote and a ketchup stain. Short and balding, he had a face like a bulldog, with a little too much lip and weary blue eyes.
He was the best cop she’d ever known.
She shook her head. “Tom, I’ve seen you eat barbecue after working a house where a guy had been dead three weeks. In July. What’s bad enough to make you abuse the azaleas?”
The detective didn’t answer, his eyes shifting away from hers to scan the street. Since the nearest neighbors lived half a mile away, the only illumination came from the cars’ blue lights. Judging from the tension in his shoulders, he didn’t find the darkness reassuring. “Why are you here, Colby?” he asked finally. “You don’t go to press again until Monday. Call me tomorrow and I’ll fill you in.”
“Can’t work a murder over the phone, Tom. Besides, when have you known me to miss a crime scene?”
He sighed and hunched, his gaze now flicking warily across the trees that ringed the wooded lot. “This is not a good time to be conscientious, kiddo. I don’t like you out here all by yourself.”
Jane gaped at him. Despite their long friendship, it was an unprecedented comment for him to make on the job. Police normally treated reporters little better than the vultures he’d called the WDRT crew. The last time a policeman had expressed concern over Jane’s safety, she’d been standing in the middle of I-85 watching a guy with a sniper rifle hold off thirty cops. The officer’s actual words had been a snarled, “Get your ass back, lady.”
“Okay, what the hell is going on? I’ve never seen you this spooked.” She reached into her purse to dig out a notebook and pen.
Tom shrugged and spat another mouthful of water into the ditch. “We have an unidentified female victim.”
She looked up from her notebook. “Who lives at this address? That should narrow things down.”
“Maybe, but she doesn’t exactly look like herself at the moment. We know she’s a Caucasian blonde, but that’s about it.”
Jane grimaced. “That doesn’t sound good.”
The detective’s eyes went bleak and flat. “Believe me, it’s not.” Something in his tone sent a wave of icy prickles washing over her skin.
Whatever had happened in that house, it wasn’t a typical Tayanita County murder.