Deathstalker 05 - Deathstalker Destiny

of this Family. I've never liked competition. If I'd ever seen you or our dear sister as serious competition, I'd have had you both strangled in your beds long ago. Ah, the happy carefree days of youth! I almost miss them. Which is one of the reasons I'm here. To say goodbye to my youth, my past. I'm someone else now, bound on a journey to places you couldn't even imagine."
    "What the hell are you talking about, Valentine?"
    "You never did have any patience, Daniel. Let me put it so simply even you can't fail to understand me. I have joined with Shub. I will become as they are; powerful and immortal, riding an endless trip on unadulterated reality. The ultimate, never-ending high. And along the way, I shall help to bring about the destruction of all Humanity. Just because I can. And you'll help me do it, dear brother."
    "Never!" said Daniel. He pulled the disrupter out from under his pillow and shot Valentine in the gut. The point-blank energy blast punched right through Valentine's midriff and out his back, so suddenly his body barely rocked in its perch on the end of the bed. The smell of burned meat was heavy on the air.
    Valentine gasped once, and bent slowly forward over his wound, almost as though bowing to his brother. Daniel felt a rush of excitement and achievement. In that
    moment he felt as though he was destroying all that was dark and evil in Clan Wolfe, cutting it out like a cancer. And then, impossibly, Valentine straightened up again. A wide hole had been burned through his shirtfront by the energy beam, but there was no trace of a wound anywhere. He smiled his wide crimson smile, his eyes gleaming brightly against the surrounding black makeup.
    His pale face was ghostly, ghastly, demonic.
    "Nice try, Daniel. Didn't think you had it in you. Dear Daddy would be proud.
    But the likes of you can't kill me anymore. Not after what I've been given.
    Finlay Campbell tried the same thing in Tower Shreck. I told you I was immortal.
    Now; any last questions before I leave? I might even answer them; for old times'
    sake."
    Daniel realized he was still pointing his disrupter at Valentine, and slowly lowered his arm. If he could keep Valentine talking… Security had to have detected an energy gun discharging inside the Tower… "Did you kill our father, Valentine?"
    "Of course. He was in my way. Yours too, but I knew you and Stephanie would never find the guts to do what needed to be done. Jacob had got old. Worse; he'd got old-fashioned. He never saw the possibilities in a real alliance with Shub.
    And I never did care for him. He never cared for me."
    "You never gave him cause to."
    "I was his son," said Valentine. "His firstborn, and his heir. And because I chose to follow my own path, rather than the one he'd chosen for me, he disowned me. So I disowned him with a blade in the back, and soon I will disown all Humanity."
    Daniel laughed disbelievingly. He couldn't help himself. "That's it? Everything
    you've done, all the people you've killed and mean to kill; just because Daddy didn't love you enough? You pitiful long streak of piss."
    Valentine snarled at him, and lunged forward impossibly quickly. He crouched over Daniel, grabbed a handful of his pajama jacket, and pulled Daniel's face close to his. "I know why you've been having nightmares, little brother. I know where you went and what you saw. If you'd asked me nicely, I might even have told you. But now I'll just leave you to your night sweats and your desperate dreams, and I shall take great delight in seeing your face when your nightmare embraces all Humanity. Give my love to Steph. But no tongues. We are Family, after all."
    And then he was gone, air rushing in to fill the space where he'd been. Daniel tried to control his whirling thoughts. Everyone knew Shub had remote control teleportation. That's how they'd got past the Quarantine, and broken out of the Forbidden Sector undetected. So, for once, Valentine was probably telling the truth about his new allies. And maybe he did know what had happened on Daniel's quest to find his dead father. Daniel decided it was time to do what was necessary, and to hell with the consequences. He had to find a telepath. An esper powerful enough to dig into his mind, and find the truth. Before his nightmare became Humanity's.

    It was a cold and cloudy day when Jack Random and Ruby Journey came back to Golgotha, homeworld of the Empire. A crowd of reporters huddled together beside the main landing pad, as much to