Shadowed(22)

“Mr. Witherspoon, this is the last time I’m warning you…”

“All right then.” The man flipped back over onto his stomach with poor grace. “Just finish up.”

From the look on Nina’s lovely face, she would rather have touched a cesspool full of slime. But she simply nodded and went back to work on the man.

“So how is your wife?” she said pointedly. “I met her that time I saw you in the grocery store, remember? She’s really pretty.”

“Not as pretty as you, darlin’.”

“Mr. Witherspoon…”

The man sighed. “You can’t blame me for trying, you know. You’re so gorgeous and sweet and talented. Ah, that’s the spot.” He sighed as she rubbed his lower back. “I always feel better after you work me over. You have the healing touch—you know that, right?”

The scene was beginning to fade, but as he heard the words, Reddix felt a shock that ran all the way through his invisible, incorporeal self.

The healing touch. Can it be? Is she the one? She must be, or I wouldn’t be dreaming of her.

As the dream broke apart and he rushed upward toward consciousness, he knew there was only one way to find out…



But getting off the Mother Ship and down to Earth wasn’t nearly as easy as Reddix had hoped it would be. The docking bay was on the other end of the ship from his guest suite. By the time he finally got there, having to go through a hellish stew of emotions in order to do so—it was nearly forty-five minutes since he’d awoken from his dream.

No dream, he told himself grimly as he strode down the long, echoing corridor of ships to the place where he had parked his own. It was a vision. It was real—the girl is real, and she’s the one who can help me. The only one—I have to get to her!

As if to prove his point, the dream hadn’t faded away like most dreams do, melting away to nothing ten or fifteen minutes after one wakes up. Instead, Nina was as fresh and as clear in his mind as if she was standing right in front of him. Reddix though he could close his eyes and recall her so vividly he’d be able to count the flecks of gold in her deep blue eyes.

He still couldn’t understand why he hadn’t remembered his previous dreams of her. For some reason, though, this one seemed to stick and the others were coming back too. He remembered watching her work in a place filled with brightly colored alien artifacts as well as talking to an ancient little old woman he thought she called “Mejoo” or “Meloo”—something like that. And the more he remembered, the more urgently he wanted to see her live, in the flesh.

But when he got to his ship and put his fingers on the handle, the hatch wouldn’t open.

“What in the Seven Hells?” Reddix muttered, trying again. The hatch was keyed to his prints and should have opened at his lightest touch. He yanked at the unyielding handle and a small beeping noise went off. Looking down, Reddix saw a small message written in glowing green light letters scrolling across the side of his ship beside the handle.

Access denied. You have not been cleared for flight by Commander Sylvan. Access denied.

Reddix cursed furiously and shook the door handle until it rattled, but it did no good. His own ship had been locked against him, and there was no way to override it without Sylvan’s permission—permission he would no doubt refuse to grant when he knew what Reddix wanted to do.

He could just see how his confrontation with the physician would go now—“So you want to go down to a strange planet filled with alien people spewing alien emotions when your RTS is already overloading your system almost to the point of death so you can kidnap an innocent girl and sacrifice her to a witch to cure your affliction? Why certainly, go right ahead.” Reddix snorted. I don’t think so.

But all this sarcasm wasn’t getting him anywhere. More and more he had a feeling of urgency—a tension in his gut that told him Nina was the one he was seeking—the girl with healing hands and a pure heart. He needed to get down to Earth—but how?

Well, if I can’t go in my ship, I’ll take another. Of course, stealing a ship and violating his doctor’s orders probably wasn’t the best way to ingratiate himself with his hosts, but at this point, Reddix didn’t care.

Looking around, he saw a row of patrol shuttles, usually used for transporting prisoners or enemy warriors to and from the Mother Ship. They were general use and so ought to respond to any Kindred warrior’s handprint. Of course, once his print was in the system, it would be clear he’d taken a ship. But only if someone was looking for him. And since Sylvan had ordered him to go to his suite and see no one for a good long time, Reddix estimated he might get a pretty good head start.