Deathstalker 08 - Deathstalker Coda

things I did. You don’t know . . .”
    “Anne, I—”
    “You don’t know! I killed Emma Steel! The best person I ever knew. She was worth ten of me, and I struck her down from behind.”
    “Then come with me, and fight for the rebellion. Find atonement on the battlefield.”
    “You’d still take me in? After everything I’ve done? To you, and Jesamine, and Lewis?”
    “That’s what friends are for,” said Douglas.
    “You always were too soft, Douglas.”
    “Well, this is all very touching,” Finn said suddenly, speaking through the tech in Anne’s throat. Like an ELF speaking through his thrall. “But I did foresee this outbreak of maudlin sentimentality, and so I took a few precautions. Not very nice precautions, but then, that’s life for you. So sorry I can’t be here in person, Douglas, but be assured that thanks to the programming I had placed in Anne’s computer implants, when she kills you it will be her hand on the sword, but my instructions in her hand. So really I’ll be there in spirit, anyway.”
    He spoke a command word, and Anne’s face went blank as her body shifted abruptly into a killing stance. Douglas glanced at his weapons lying on the floor, but there was no way he could reach them in time. And so he stood, tall and proud and unflinching. When there’s nothing left but to die, die well.
    And then Anne screamed. An ugly, tortured sound. She dropped both her swords. Douglas started forward, only to freeze again as Anne covered him with the disrupter built into her wrist. She smiled briefly at Douglas.
    “Good-bye, old friend. I betrayed you so many times, but this would have been one betrayal too far. I guess they built me better than they knew. So—one last blast of the gun. One last chance for redemption.”
    She lifted her hand, fighting her computers all the way, and shot herself in the head. At such close range, the energy beam blew her head apart, in a flurry of blood and brains. The headless body rocked back and forth on its feet for a moment, and then stood still.
    Finn sent his people running in from all directions, but by the time they got to the laboratory Douglas was already gone. He left a trail of dead bodies behind him as he made his way back through the palace, and finally disappeared down into the subsystems again. And all the way he was planning the first steps of the rebellion. The time to rise up had come. Because if Finn could do such terrible things to the only woman who’d ever cared a damn for him, then he was capable of anything. Anything at all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    WORKING WITH THE ILLUMINATI
    T he stars and the planets whirled by so fast they made a continuous shimmering rainbow path as Owen Deathstalker strode steadily back into the past, the galaxy turning under his feet like a giant cog wheel. He was too tired now for dancing, his spirit too weary, and yet he felt more powerful than ever, and his speed continued to increase. He was still following Hazel d’Ark’s trail, forever closing in but somehow never quite catching up. He felt like he’d always been pursuing Hazel, and always would, trapped in the rainbow run like a hamster in its wheel, only thinking it was getting somewhere.
    Home seemed very far away now, and so did his humanity. He’d done so much, both before and since his death, and he felt like he could do so much more. He’d come a long way, in more ways than one. He wondered if the old Owen, the young scholar in his comfortable ivory tower, would even recognize the man he’d become. He liked to think he’d done good things, honorable things, in his short but remarkable life . . . but he had to wonder if it would ever be possible, or even advisable, for something as powerful as he now was to ever return to human society. Power tended to corrupt, he knew that from his studies of history, and he had made himself so very powerful. Would he ever see his home again, with or without Hazel?
    That thought led naturally but uneasily to another.
    What was he going to do, what could he hope to do, when he finally did catch up with Hazel? Was she destined to become the Terror, somewhere back in the unimaginable past, or could he somehow prevent it? And if the iron laws of cause and effect meant she had to become the Terror, and do all the awful things she did, could he win her back to sanity and humanity? Could she ever be just Hazel d’Ark again? Could he ever be just Owen Deathstalker again? Or had they both drunk too deeply from the