Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

disaffected with my old life. It's not enough to be just a killer. Just a monster. I need to be… bigger than that. It's hard trying to learn how to be human… especially when all I have to learn from is you, Brett Random."
    He looked sharply at her, and was surprised to see her dark rosebud mouth move in something very like a smile. "Was that a joke, Rose?"
    "Perhaps. Even monsters have feelings sometimes," said Rose Constantine.
    Brett smiled in spite of himself, shaking his head. "This is all just too weird. Everything's changing.
    There's nothing I can depend on anymore. Not even me. I'm confused. Take today, when we were fighting the monsters in the jungle. One moment I'm right there beside you, fighting like a warrior born, and the next I come to my senses and I'm running like a rabbit. What was I thinking of? I'm not a fighter, never have been. Maybe I'm having some sort of breakdown…"
    "No you're not," Rose said calmly. "It's not you, Brett; it's me. Our mental link works both ways. And just as you have been teaching me about emotions, and humor, and sex that doesn't involve killing people, so I have been teaching you swordsmanship and tactics and the joys of slaughter. Our minds are linked on every level there is; we can't help but learn from each other. All the time, we're growing closer together, becoming more like each other. So neither of us will ever have to be alone again."
    Brett stared at her in horror, his eyes wide, his mouth working silently. He started to scramble to his feet, to run as he always ran, but Rose put a firm, implacable hand on his arm, and held him where he was. He was too terrified to even think of struggling, even as his skin crawled at her touch. She smiled at him again, and he almost cried out.
    "Stop that, Brett. There's no reason for you to be scared. I won't let anyone hurt you—not even me. I will kill anyone or anything that tries to hurt you. I will stand between you and all harm. And I will not force you to become anything you don't want to be. I'm just trying… to help you. You're the first person that ever mattered to me, apart from myself. I feel… something, towards you. I'm not sure what, yet. But I promise I'll keep you alive until I figure out what it is. That's a joke, Brett."
    "Well," said Brett. "Very nearly."
    He actually did calm down a little as he realized Rose was, in her own very disturbing way, trying to reach out to him. Rose sensed he was no longer going to run, and took her hand off his arm. She went back to giving all her attention to her swordblade, as calm as though nothing important had just happened, and perhaps for her, nothing had. Brett was still trying to come to terms with the idea that he wasn't safe even inside his own head anymore. Her thoughts were influencing him all the time, whether consciously or subconsciously, trying to make him more like her. As if one Wild Rose wasn't more than enough. At least now he understood where all that ridiculous bravery and derring do had come from, in the jungle earlier. He'd known that wasn't like him. He should have known it was too good to be true. He glared about him sullenly, and sniffed loudly.
    "Look at the size of this hall. How big it is, and how small it makes us feel in comparison. Everywhere we've been since leaving Logres has been a journey through the ruins of an age of heroes. A greater age than ours. You only have to look at the places they lived in to see that. People like us don't belong in a place like this. How can we hope to do what Owen and his people did? They were larger than us, even before they went through the Madness Maze. They were heroes."
    "They were people, just like us," said Lewis. He got up, helped Jesamine to her feet, and then they went over to join Brett and Rose. Though he never would have admitted it, the great scale of the hall of his ancestors was making Lewis jumpy too, and he was glad of an excuse to join the others. He sat down and leaned back against the wall next to Brett. "I've seen Owen and Hazel d'Ark, the real people. Shub had records of them in action. And the Dust Plains of Memory, that used to be the Imperial Matrix.
    Owen and Hazel are legends now, but back then they were just people. A man and a woman, struggling to do the right thing. I'm sure they had doubts and indecisions, just like us. They were ordinary people, and they did extraordinary things anyway, because they had to. And so we go on, against impossible odds, for the same reasons