The Domino Pattern

and I matched him step for step, walking us around in a slow circle that was taking me back toward the rear of the car. I was still breathing heavily; with luck, he would assume I was just trying to buy time. “What did I ever do to you? Tell me, damn it. What did I ever do to you?”

Muzzfor didn’t answer, but just kept coming. I continued to back away, not daring to look behind me and see if I was about to back into a chair or some other obstacle. The Filly was getting closer, and I imagined I could see a fresh surge of bloodlust in those empty, empty eyes.

He was still coming when two of Sarge’s legs stabbed like twin spears into his back.

For a moment Muzzfor just stood there, his gaze on the bloodied metal legs poking out of his chest, a disbelieving expression on his face. Very much the way Kennrick had reacted to his own unexpected defeat and death, a small, detached part of my mind noted. Then, without a sound, the Filly’s eyes closed, and he sagged against the Spider legs still holding him mostly upright.

“He is dead?” Sarge asked into the silence.

“He’d damned well better be,” I said. Angling in cautiously from the side, just in case, I went up to Muzzfor to check.

The examination didn’t take long. Filly genetic engineers could do a lot of strange and interesting things to their clients, as Muzzfor himself had more than proved. But there were only so many places you could put the heart and lungs. “Yes, he’s dead,” I confirmed, stepping thankfully away from the dangling corpse. “Almost no thanks to you, I might add. What were you doing, waiting for scorecards to be passed out?”

“No,” Sarge said, an odd tone to his voice. “I could not …it is difficult to explain. I could not think, nor could I properly react to the threat facing me.”

“Compton,” a voice whispered.

I swore as I stepped past Sarge and Muzzfor and hurried toward the three bodies lying crumpled on the floor. In those last tense minutes, I’d completely forgotten about the Modhri.

Prapp and Vevri weren’t moving, but Qiddicoj was still breathing weakly. “Defender, get the doctors up here,” I snapped as I dropped to my knees beside the wounded Filly. “Now. And get me that LifeGuard,” I added, pointing to the orange case on the wall.

“No use,” Qiddicoj murmured. Or rather, the Modhri within him murmured. “I’m sorry, Compton. Please believe this was not my doing.”

“I know it wasn’t,” I assured him. “Lie still, now—the doctors are on their way.”

The Modhri shook his head. “No use,” he said again. “The other Eyes are already dead, and this one will soon join them. When that happens, I too will die.”

He looked down at his blood-soaked midsection, then up at me again. “It was a call in my mind and my ears,” he said. “The same as I heard two nights ago. Only this time, I was not ordered to lie, but to kill.” He coughed, bringing specks of blood to his lips. The blaze on his long face, I noted, had gone deathly pale. “Even knowing it ordered me to evil, I had no power to resist.”

Abruptly, a piece fell into place. “Was the compulsion tied to that high-pitched sound I kept hearing?” I asked.

“Yes,” Qiddicoj confirmed. “When it ceased …the orders were still there, but I no longer had to obey.”

And the sound had ceased right after I’d punched Muzzfor in his genetically modified throat. The damn thing hadn’t been created so that he could sing high opera. It had been created as a weapon.

But a weapon against whom? The Spiders? The Modhri?

A metal leg appeared in my peripheral vision, and I looked up as Sarge handed me the LifeGuard. I set it down beside Osantra Qiddicoj, keying the selector for Filiaelian, and started connecting the arm cuff.

“Compton.”

“Lie still,” I said. I finished the cuff and leaned over him with the breather mask.

His hand lifted, brushing weakly against the mask. “No use,” he said. “Compton. Remember our bargain.”

“I will,” I said, moving the mask around his flailing arm and pressing it over his nostrils.

“A shame it must end now,” the Modhri said as I keyed the LifeGuard. His voice was so weak I could barely hear it. “We worked …well …together.”

“Yes, we did,” I agreed, an odd feeling trickling through me. The Modhri was my enemy …and yet, this particular mind segment and I had somehow been able to unite against a common threat.

There was a lesson in there somewhere, but at the moment I couldn’t be bothered. The Modhri could have run away when I’d wrecked Muzzfor’s Pied Piper whistle, but instead he’d sacrificed his life to protect mine. I was not going to just sit back and let him die.

I was still talking soothingly to him when the LifeGuard’s lights went red. I punched the start button again, but it was pure, useless reflex. Qiddicoj was dead.

And then his eyelids fluttered. “Compton,” he whispered.

“I’m here, Modhri,” I said.

“A new bargain,” he whispered. “In return for saving your life. Learn the truth of what happened here.”

I nodded. “Bet on it,” I said grimly.

The eyelids fluttered again and went still.

For a minute I continued to kneel over the body, until the LifeGuard’s lights again went red. Taking a deep breath, wincing at the ache in my throat, I got tiredly to my feet. “You have made yet another bargain with the Modhri,” Sarge said.

“Doesn’t count as a bargain,” I said, crossing to where Bayta was still lying unconscious. “I’d already promised that to myself.”

I lowered myself to the floor beside Bayta, carefully touching the side of her neck. Her pulse was slow but strong, and her chest was moving up and down with steady breathing. There was an ugly handprint on the side of her face where Prapp had slapped her, but it didn’t look like anything was broken.

“Shall I move her to one of the seats?” Sarge asked.

“I’ll do it,” I told him. Getting an arm under her neck, I carefully lifted her head and shoulders up off the floor.

For a long moment I gazed into her face, my eyes tracing all those familiar features. My partner, my ally, my friend …and I’d nearly lost her.

Thought virus, the warning whispered through my mind. Too close, and we would both be dangerously vulnerable if one of us was ever infected with a Modhran colony.

I felt my lip twist. The hell with thought viruses.

Leaning close, I kissed her.

Her lips were softer than I’d imagined they would be, probably because I’d so often seen them pursed or stiff with disapproval over something I’d said or done. Her scent was subtle and exotic, with an equally subtle taste to her lips. I got my arm around behind her and held her close, savoring the kiss even as I shivered with what had almost happened to take her away from me.

And then, suddenly, I felt a slight change in the feel of her muscles. I opened my eyes.

To find her eyes were also open. Looking straight back into mine.

I jerked back, a sudden flush of embarrassment and guilt heating my face and neck. “Uh …” I floundered.

“Yes,” she said, and I could sense some of the same embarrassment in her own voice. “Uh …I think I’m all right.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, trying to shift my hands to a more professional grip on her arms. This sort of thing wasn’t supposed to happen. Especially since neither of us wanted it to.

“I think so,” she said. For another moment, her eyes held mine. Then, she tore her gaze away.

And I felt her stiffen. “Frank,” she gasped.

“Yeah,” I said grimly, following her stricken eyes to the four bloodied bodies scattered around the car. “Not a pretty sight, is it?”

“What hap—?” She broke off, and I had the impression Sarge was feeding her the entire blow-by-blow.

I looked at the bodies again, perversely glad for the distraction they provided, and wondered if Bayta would want to talk later about that impulsive kiss. Part of me hoped she would. Most of me hoped she wouldn’t.

“But it doesn’t make sense,” she said into my thoughts. “Why did Asantra Muzzfor do that? How did he do that?”