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“No.” He reached back, took her free hand in his, squeezed. “But we can give them a hell of a fight.”
“We can hold them off.” She circled with them as the first group moved in slowly. “Hold them off until the backup gets here. If you can get to the controls—if you can find the damn controls, can you end it?”
“Possibly. If you could get through to that little bastard over there.”
“Solid line between us and him. A goddamn sword’s not enough to . . . Wait a minute, wait a damn minute.”
It wasn’t real, she thought. Deadly, murderous, but still not real. But her weapon was. She couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it through the program, but it was there.
Muscle memory, habit, ingrained instinct. She shifted her sword to her left hand, drew a breath. She slapped her hand to her side, and her hand remembered. The shape, the feel, the weight.
She fired, and watched the warrior struck by the beam fall.
She fired again, again, scattering the field.
“Clutch piece. Right ankle. Can you get it?”
“No time.” Roarke whirled to strike at the man who came at her left. “Hit the controls. Blast the bloody controls.”
“Where the hell are they?”
She took out another before he landed his sword on Roarke’s unguarded side.
“Right side of the door!” he shouted, grabbing a second sword from a fallen warrior. “About five feet up.”
“Where’s the fucking door?” She sent out streams, shooting wild and blind. Those unearthly green trees fired and smoked, screams ripped the air while she struggled to orient herself.
They just kept coming, she realized as she fired again and again in a desperate attempt to keep the charging warriors off Roarke.
Var had rigged the game, programmed it for only one outcome.
“Well, fuck that!”
Across the damn river, she thought, and east. She concentrated her fire. Five feet up, she thought again, and plowed a stream in a wide swath at five feet.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, started to pivot, to lift her left arm and the sword as she continued to fire with her right.
Roarke struck in between her and the oncoming warrior, knocking the sword clear of her.
She watched in shock and horror as the dagger in the warrior’s other hand slid into Roarke’s side.
In the same instant tongues of flames spurted with a harsh electric crackle and snap. The images shimmered away. She grabbed Roarke, taking his weight when he swayed. “Hold on. Hold on.”
“You cheated.” Var stood, stunned outrage on his face, in a room filling with smoke. He made a run for the door.
Eve didn’t spare him a word, simply dropped him.
As Var’s body jolted and jittered, she eased Roarke to the floor.
“Let me see. Let me see.”
“Not that bad.” He took a labored breath, reached up. “You took a few hits yourself.”
“Be quiet.” She ripped open his already ruined shirt, shoved his jacket aside. “Why do you always wear so many clothes?”
She didn’t know she was weeping, he thought, his cop, his cool-headed warrior. When she shed her own jacket, ruthlessly ripped off the sleeve, he winced. “That was a nice one, once.”
She folded the sleeve, pressed the cushion of material to the wound in his side.
