"Marcus is gonna need help, too." Skeeter jerked a thumb at his friend then dropped his arm abruptly, shaking all over. "I could cheerfully murder you, Benson, over what you did to him. He sure as hell didn't deserve needles and drugs and hours of questioning."
Benson was staring at him oddly, as though he wasn't quite sure what he was seeing, then he finally nodded. "All right, Jackson. Some of my men will drive you. If," he added dully, "we can get a hummer in through that bunch of protesters out there."
Skeeter drew a blank. "Protesters?"
Benson said slowly, "Downtimers, all of 'em, organized in a sit-in protest. They're blocking the goddamned door twelve deep."
Skeeter didn't know what to think until Benson added, "His, uh, wife and kids are out there, center stage. If looks could kill, I'd be a stone statue right now.,,
A hollow emptiness in Skeeter's belly froze his breath into ice. A welcome home for Marcus. But not for me.
Never for the stinkin' rat of a thief. He tried to shrug it off, knowing what they must think of him after betraying their faith, as it were, by causing Marcus to step through that portal with Chuck Farley Skeeter wondered absently, thoughts drifting, what had become of that rat. Prob'ly never know.
Mike Benson prodded the still-unconscious Marcus' shoulder with astonishing gentleness, considering what he'd just put the young bartender through. Slowly, Marcus swam toward the surface, moving small bits of himself one at a time. He finally opened his eyes. The sight of Benson stooping over him brought a terrible flinch, both in body and eyes.
"It's all right, Marcus," Benson said quietly-and in pretty damned good Latin. "I believe your story. Both your stories. You can go home, now. I have a hummer and driver on the way to take you there. But I'd better warn you, just so the shock won't kill you, there's a bunch of downtimers outside, blocking the door, waiting for news, I guess, and what else, I can't guess. Your family's in the crowd, right near the door.
Marcus sat up straighter. "Ianira?" he choked out. "My daughters?"
Benson nodded. Marcus surged to his feet, swayed badly, shrugged off Benson's hand, which the Chief Security Officer had held out in an offering to help, then finally steadied. "I will go to my family, now. Thank you for my freedom," he said, irony heavy in his voice. Skeeter and Benson both knew who was genuinely responsible for that.
He made it to the door, then vanished into the corridor, back stiff, knees a bit unsteady.
Well, hell. If he can, l can. A straight back was agony to maintain, a fact he hid from Benson with a light, "Thanks for my freedom, too." Benson lobed uncomfortable. Then it was over and he finally managed to stand completely straight. The pain in his body was bearable. Maybe. Benson said nothing as Skeeter limped his way out, teary-eyed from a stab of knife-hot, pinched nerves down his sciatic channel.
The pain stabbed all the way to his left foot. But he made it to the door, too, moving woodenly. By the time he gained the outer door, he was gasping, gulping for breath. His vision kept going dark, fading in again to show him the way out, then straying dizzily back into darkness.
When he opened the door, he glimpsed Ianira and Marcus clutched together, their daughters holding tight to Marcus' unsteady legs. Neither of them even noticed him. Skeeter felt abruptly empty, defeated. All he had left were a few of the coins he'd scraped from the arena sands. Benson hadn't searched either of them, it being clear through the semitransparent Egyptian linen that neither of them carried anything. So it wasn't really Benson's fault, because he didn't know about Skeeter's injuries, but when he stumbled in a drugged haze against one of the downtimers fading back into whatever they called home or job, the jostle was too much. Overbalanced, Skeeter tried to compensate, but exhausted, bruised, fire stinging along his ribcage, and a pain like torn muscles down his side from that pole vault, rendered him abruptly helpless. Not a single, abused muscle in his back and legs obeyed is commands.
He went down hard. As complete darkness settled over him, he realized the downtimers would simply leave him here, after what he'd done to Marcus, involving him in that gods-cursed scam of Farley's. Promising himself to hunt down Farley and kill him, Skeeter's face connected with a cold, rock-hard cement floor. The settling darkness became complete in that instant and he knew nothing more.
Skeeter woke slowly, with bits of his body making themselves known by varying degrees of screamin pain. The headache alone thundered through his skull like a Gobi lightning storm. He lay very still, trying to breathe around the pair, hoping it would lessen just a bit if he remained perfectly frozen in place.
It didn't work.
Gradually, Skeeter realized he was not lying face first on the Commons' concrete floor. Someone probably Benson's gang-had moved him. He thought bitterly, Probably didn't want the tourists to see a passed-out con. man apparently drunk out of his mind on the Commons floor. Bad for business.
For a moment, he wondered if Benson had put him in one of the private detention cells of La-La Land's little jail. Then, startling him beyond all measure, came the incongruity of a child's voice. Mike Benson does not lock up children. Not one that young. He moved his head slightly on the pillow to hear better and gasped at the pain in his neck and the sensation of a hairless skull sliding across the pillowcase. He dealt with those startling facts each in turn, finally recalling the reasons.
The child's voice spoke again. He couldn't understand the kid's words; but they flowed like music. A female voice answered in the same liquid language. Skeeter blinked. He knew that voice. Deep, throaty, as beautiful as its owner. What am I doing in Ianira Cassondra's apartment?
Not that he minded, so long as Marcus didn't
Where's Marcus?
He strained to hear, but didn't catch a single syllable of Marcus' voice. Then he strained to remember, but Mike Benson's interrogation blended into one, long stream of ruthless, sleepless, pain-filled questions. He vaguely remembered being told he could go, vaguely recalled collapsing outside Benson's office ... but he did not remember what had become of Marcus.
Somehow, that was intolerable. He tried to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, shove covers aside, and get up. He really tried. Instead, he got about halfway between horizontal and vertical, blacked out, and fell back with a faint cry of pain, which exploded through the whole of him like an electric shock prod wired to his insides and left set on full charge-one whose existence he'd completely forgotten. The next thing of which he was clearly aware was a soft touch on his brow, a hot towel that brought ecstasy when it soothed the throbbing behind his eyes, and a murmuring voice he'd last heard raised in desperation, begging help from him.
Skeeter?" Her voice came like rich, deep bell tones. "Don't worry, Skeeter, you're safe now. Marcus has gone to fetch Dr. Eisenstein for you."
Skeeter was really glad the wet towel on his brow leaked water down his face, because quite suddenly his eyes filled and spilled over, completely out of his control. No one but Yesukai had ever treated him so kindly. As though she had divined the source of his greatest pain-and maybe she had, at that; everyone called her the Enchantress-she touched his face in various places, featherlight, drying tears on his cheeks, pressing against places he'd never realized would feel so....o warm, so comforting.
"It is all right to weep out the pain, Skeeter. A man can go only so long alone, untouched, unloved. You miss your fierce Khan, I know that, but you cannot go back, Skeeter." Her words tore something inside him, something he'd realized but not acknowledged for a long, long time. "From here," she murmured, still touching his face gently, "the road unwinds in only one of two directions for you, Skeeter Jackson. Either you will remain on the road you have been traveling all your life and your loneliness will destroy you, or you may choose the other road, into the light. It is a choice neither I nor Marcus can make for you. Only you can decide such a profound question. But we will be travelling beside you, trying to help and support as best we can, whatever road you choose."