The Darkness of God: Book Three of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy by Chris Bunch Page B

her, holding her knees crooked in his elbows, forearms pulling her against him.
    She came back to herself, was aware of hot water needling her face, her breasts. Wolfe set her down. She managed a smile. “I was somewhere else,” she said.
    “So was I,” Joshua said. He kissed her, eased her feet to the deck.
    “What are you going to do about me?” she asked.
    “Not sure,” Wolfe said, picking up the soap from the deck. “I guess I’ll turn you around and scrub your back. Like this.”
    “Mmmh. No. Stop for a minute. I meant — you aren’t going to let me come with you.”
    Wolfe’s hand stopped for a time, then continued, rubbing in a small circle. “Lady,” he said slowly, “I don’t think you want to come with me.”
    “Why not? I’m not going back to the Chitet.”
    “My turn to ask why not,” Wolfe said.
    “I’m not sure yet,” Kristin said. “But — something died. Changed, anyway, when Master Speaker Athelstan got killed.” She was silent for some time. “No,” she said softly. “I’m lying. Things changed some time before that. After — after we started making love.”
    “Sex shouldn’t change what you believe,” Joshua said. “Or the way you live.”
    “No,” she said softly. “No, it shouldn’t.”
    Again there was a long silence. Joshua leaned close, whispered in her ear.
    She giggled, bent forward a little, hands on her upper thighs. “Like this?”
    She gasped.
    “Like that,” Joshua managed.
    • • •
    They came out of N-space on the fringes of the Ak-Mechat system. Wolfe went back to the drive chamber, ran a diagnostic program, and returned to the bridge. “That drive is about as defunct as it’s possible to get without going bang or maybe even thud,” he announced. “I can’t chance an in-system jump. So it’s a long, hard drive for planetfall. Get out a good book.”
    • • •
    Kristin slept, her breathing a gentle bubbling.
    Joshua lay beside her,
feeling
out. He
felt
the red, the burn, the soundless buzzing insect roar of the life-form that had destroyed the Al’ar’s universe and was reaching into his own. He pulled back from the searing pain as it built.
    He
felt
the red presence, the “virus” far closer now than before.
    • • •
    Joshua read in a calm, even voice:
    Now you shall see the Temple completed:
    After much striving, after many obstacles;
    For the work of creation is never without travail;
    The formed stone, the visible crucifix,
    The dressed altar, the lifting light,
    Light
    Light
    The visible reminder of Invisible Light.
    He paused.
    “I’m not sure I follow,” Kristin said slowly. “I assume this Eliot of yours wasn’t writing about the Lumina.”
    “Not by some more than a thousand years.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “Stanza Ten,” Joshua continued.
    You have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned …
    Wolfe took the ship in slowly, making two transpolar orbits of Ak-Mechat VII as he killed speed and altitude. “They weren’t being funny about the field being unmanned,” he said. “All I’m getting from down there is a navbeeper. Guess if anybody’s got any incoming cargo they make private arrangements. We’ll land next time around.”
    But the
Eryx
didn’t make it. Minutes short of the field, holding at about three hundred miles per hour, fire spurted out the drive tubes and the secondary drive went silent. Wolfe looked at Kristin, who was double-strapped into a control chair. “This one might be tough. I’m gonna try to porpoise it in.”
    He brought the ship down, down, until it hurtled barely twenty-five feet above rocky outcroppings. “Last time around I thought I saw moors around about here,” he muttered. “Come on, Heathcliff.”
    He felt the controls getting sloppy, vague in his hands. They were fifteen feet above gray rocky death.
    “Gimp one for the winner,” he prayed, flaring external foils, and the
Eryx
climbed briefly, shuddered, near stalling. He pushed the nose down, and the rocks were