Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

leave. We'll go offworld. Join the Quest. Search for Owen, and for information we can use to stop the Terror."
    "Can't do that, Lewis," said Emma. "You wouldn't either, in my position. We both understand what duty is all about. Drop your weapons and surrender. If what you say is true, I'll help you prove it."
    "We wouldn't live that long," said Lewis. "Those guards had orders to kill us. Silence us. You side with us, and they'll kill you too."
    "Do you even know how paranoid that sounds? This isn't Lionstone's Empire! Surrender, or fight your way past me, if you can. Because the only way you're getting out of here is over my dead body."
    "Your heart isn't in this," said Lewis, not moving.
    "Perhaps it isn't. But I know my duty. What it is to be a Paragon."
    "Paragons," said Chevron. "One of my better ideas. Though Robert took some convincing, as I recall.
    People like you give me faith, Emma. No one else needs to die today."
    He darted forward impossibly quickly, his movements a blur. He slapped Emma's sword aside with his bare hand, knocked her unconscious with a single blow, and caught her slumped body in his arms while her legs were still giving way. He lowered her gently and respectfully to the floor, and then straightened up again to find Lewis and Jesamine staring at him incredulously.
    "What the hell are you?" said Lewis.
    "I often wonder that myself," said the man who wasn't Samuel Chevron.
    Brett Random was still looking for Rose Constantine, on Finn's orders. He'd been looking for some time now, and was getting seriously worried. Partly because of what Finn would do to him if he didn't find Rose soon, but mostly because Brett always got severely nervous when Rose was out of his sight for too long. She had appallingly violent impulses, and a complete lack of inhibitions when it came to following them. Rose was not a civilized creature, and without the Arena to satisfy her murderous needs, God alone knew what she'd been up to all this time. Brett had thought she'd been warming to him, and his company (scary though that thought was), but clearly something had tempted her away. He didn't have a clue what. Rose had no hobbies, or outside interests. She just got off on killing people. (Fighting is sex, and murder is orgasm, she'd said. If she said it one more time, Brett thought he'd scream.) He'd tried the Arena again, but she still hadn't showed up there. The people he'd talked to had actually sounded quite relieved when they said it. The Wild Rose upset even hardened gladiators. Brett kept checking in on the official peacekeeper comm channels, but no new serial killings had been reported, no unusual signs of bloody carnage, unexpected atrocities, or big arson cases; so whatever Rose was doing, it hadn't surfaced yet. Unless she was in the Rookery, where such things tended not to be reported to outsiders ...
    He was reluctantly making a list of places in the Rookery to work through when Rose contacted him.
    Only a very few people had the access codes to his comm implant, and he sat up sharply as Rose's voice sounded in his head. She sounded as calm as ever, but it was immediately clear she wasn't interested in conversation. She just gave him the name and location of a bar in the Rookery, and told him to get there
    fast. Brett knew the place, by reputation at least. Upmarket, currently fashionable, heavy on the style and extremely expensive. Certainly not the first place he would have looked for Rose.
    "What's the matter?" he said tentatively. "Forget your credit card again?"
    "I need you here, Brett. There's something here you just have to see." "Not really your sort of place, I would have thought . . ." "It is now. Shut up and come to me, Brett. You need to see this." And then she broke contact. Brett bit his lip, frowning. He didn't know whether to feel relieved that she'd finally turned up or not. You need to see this had distinctly ominous overtones. Brett wasn't sure he wanted to see the kind of things Rose might find interesting. But in the end, he didn't have a choice. Finn wanted her back.
    So he went into the Rookery to fetch her, his stomach aching miserably every step of the way.
    When he got there, he stopped outside the bar and looked cautiously around him. The street seemed quiet and peaceful. None of the usual signs of Rose enjoying herself, like people running back and forth screaming. The bar's exterior consisted of a closed door and two opaqued windows. The Wild Wood was big on privacy; a