Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy

have her, no one could . .
    . She really did need a bodyguard who knew what he was doing. Lewis had only acted up because he didn't want Douglas to think he was getting soft.
    Lewis Deathstalker had stewarded Pure Humanity demonstrations, and stood firm against frenzied Arena fans determined to storm the box office for the last few Season tickets, and faced down all kinds of angry crowds in his time; but he'd never seen anything like the madness that engulfed Jesamine Flowers wherever she went. Her local fans had turned out in force, lying in wait outside her hotel, and every shop Jesamine visited was immediately surrounded by a clumsy, screaming mob, howling their idol's name and shrieking hysterically till they hyperventilated or passed out. They demanded her smile, her wave, her autograph, her attention; as though they were only real if she deigned to recognize their existence. For Jesamine Flowers this was business as usual, and she took it all in her stride. She was surrounded at all times by a small crowd of her own people, experienced in keeping the fans at bay without pissing them off. They formed a living wall and barrier around her, from the moment she and Lewis left the recording company's limousine until she was safely inside the store, but even so Lewis stuck close to her at all times and never let his hand move far from his gun.
    The almost animal nature of the crowds fascinated him. He was used to being admired, even adored; all Paragons were. It came with the job. But Paragon fans were usually satisfied to worship their heroes from afar. They knew better than to crowd people who tended to react to surprises with drawn weapons. (There were groupies, of course, but Lewis had never encouraged them. He didn't trust their motives, and besides, they embarrassed him.) Jesamine's fans were a whole different breed. There seemed no end to their numbers, and Lewis found their endless din frankly unnerving. The roar rose and fell, seeming to feed on itself, a disturbing mixture of hysteria, possessiveness, and sheer animal lust. Just the sight of Jesamine in person was apparently enough to drive them right out of their minds. The mob kept surging forward against the tanglefields the big stores had set up, once they heard Jesamine planned to grace them with her presence, and more than once Lewis saw men and women fainting from the excitement, and the sheer crush of bodies. Medics moved slowly through the crowd to retrieve the fallen, sometimes having to actually fight their way past fans reluctant to give up their places.
    Jesamine would wave and smile to the fans on her way from the limousine to the store, and then ignored them completely, concentrating on her shopping with a single-minded thoroughness Lewis could only admire. She actually didn't seem to hear the howling of the mob outside. Lewis supposed you could get used to anything, in time. Paparazzi used their personal force shields to bludgeon their way to the very front of the crowds, and then sent their cameras zooming through the air outside the store's windows, trying to get a peep of what Jesamine was buying this week. Cheap gossip shows lived for that kind of trivia. Lewis ignored them, concentrating on the fans, and didn't let himself relax for a moment. He didn't trust the crowd, with their strangely blank eyes and desperate body language. There were undercurrents of anger, even rage, in some of the voices, expressed here and there on hastily lettered placards raised above the heads of the crowd and shaken with some passion. Come back to us, they said. Don't have us. We made you what you are! By turning her back on her career she was turning her back on them; saying she didn't need them anymore. That they didn't matter. And that, of course, was unacceptable.
    What Jesamine might want or need didn't seem to be important to them. Stars existed for their fans, not
    the other way around. Everyone knew that.
    The really big stores had their own private force shield generators, polarized windows, and armed security staff, and customers had to pass through all kinds of sensor equipment just to get in. Lewis set off practically every alarm they had, but everyone made allowances. Not because he was the new Imperial Champion, but because he was with Jesamine Flowers. Lewis found their level of paranoia encouraging, and had actually started to relax a little when a shop assistant suddenly ran forward out of nowhere with an autograph pad in his hand that for