Shadow Hunters Read Online Free

about the encounter over a beer somewhere someday.
    Howard hoped that too. But she knew in her gut she was wrong.
    The zergling in the lead was staring at her intently, and Howard knew without knowing how she knew that someone other than the creature was looking through its eyes. Those black eyes, flat and emotionless, went from her face to her hands to the prone form of Ethan Stewart on the bed.
    The cobralike thing—hydralisk, that was the name; somehow it was important to Howard to use the proper term for things, even now when the properly named hydralisk was about to kill her and the thought made hysteria bubble up inside her—reared back and spat something on Ethan. It was a strange gooey substance, and as she watched, it spread, rapidly encasing him in some kind of webbing or cocoon.
    Attacking her patient.
    “No!” Howard cried, the paralysis broken. A saverof lives to the last, she sprang forward. The zergling whirled on her, chittering with excitement, happy to be freed from its command to sit, to stay; by God it really was like a dog, wasn’t it—
    She heard the screams around her as she hit the ground, and after that, heard nothing more.

CHAPTER TWO
    IN THE DARKNESS, THERE WAS PAIN.
    Jake Ramsey swam unwillingly back to consciousness and the dull throbbing ache that had awakened him. Eyes still closed, he lifted a hand to his forehead and probed gingerly at the crusted blood that covered a good-sized lump, then hissed as the pain went from dull and throbbing to knife-sharp.
    “You hit your head when we jumped,” came a cool female voice.
    For a long, confusing moment, Jake didn’t remember any of it. Then it all came tumbling down on him.
    He was on a stolen ship, fleeing from Valerian Mengsk, son of the emperor. Valerian wanted him … wanted him because …
    Because you have the memories of a protoss preserver in your mind,
came Zamara’s cool voice inside his head.
    Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me,
Jake thought sarcastically.
    He sat up slowly. His head spun and he made no further movement for a few minutes, fighting back nausea. It was all coming back to him now. The offer that Valerian had made, hiring a “crackpot” archeologist like Jake to explore a dark temple of unknown alien origin. Full funding, full support, state-of-theart equipment—it had seemed too good to be true. And of course, like most things that seem too good to be true, it had been. There’d been this one little catch.
    Jake had been ordered to get inside the “temple,” as Valerian was fond of calling the construct. Jake had done so, deciphering the riddle that had blocked entrance to the innermost chamber of a labyrinthine creation. And inside that chamber … inside, Zamara had been waiting. Waiting for someone to figure out the secret, waiting for someone to whom she could deliver the precious burden of an entire race’s memories.
    He’d almost gone mad. She’d had to rewire his brain. It had been too much for him to handle, an onslaught of memories of a time known now as the Aeon of Strife, when the protoss had been violent and ruthless and seemingly lived to slaughter one another. Even now, those first few flashes of memories, exploding into his brain without context or explanation, made him break out into a cold sweat.
    It was necessary. And you are … undamaged.
    Tell that to the lump on my head,
he thought back.
    Suddenly Jake had gone from an expendable crackpot to someone—hell, call it for what it was, some “thing”—of great value to Valerian and the Dominion. Rosemary “R. M.” Dahl, the woman who had supposedly been appointed to keep him safe, had turned on him and his entire team. The marines who had delivered the archeologists to the planet with friendly well wishes and affable smiles now came back for them, but this time the team were prisoners, not guests. It had been the coldest of comforts when, unexpectedly, the marines had included Rosemary and her team as their prisoners as well.
    It was