Shadow Hunters Read Online Free Page A

Rosemary who had spoken to him a minute ago, Rosemary who was piloting this stolen vessel. Jake got to his feet, gripping onto the back of a chair for support. His head hurt like mad, but he tried to ignore it, and he turned to face the woman who had once been betrayer and was now comrade.
    She had been strapped into her seat when they made the jump, and so, unlike Jake, had escaped injury. Strapped in and lost in a place of complete and total union with every mind in the vicinity. Jake had instigated the melding, shocking and upsetting the protoss inside him. As part of this process of integrating the memories she carried into his brain, Zamara had guided him to and through one of the most pivotal moments in protoss history—the creation and discovery, for it was both, of something called the Khala. It was a union not just of the minds but of the hearts and emotions of the protoss. Within this space,they did not simply understand one another, they almost became one another. It had been profound and beautiful, and it was only Jake’s desperate need to save himself, Zamara, and Rosemary that had enabled him to pull out of the link and hit the button that would allow them to elude their pursuers by leaping blindly around the sector.
    Jake, however, had
not
been safely strapped in, and he winced as he looked at the blood on the panel where he’d banged his head.
    Rosemary’s blue eyes flitted over to him, then down to the panel. “Panel’s fine,” she said. Doubtless it was meant as a reassurance. Even if it wasn’t, he decided he’d take it that way.
    “Well, that’s good.”
    Rosemary grimaced. “It’s about the only thing that is. That was a very rough entry. We’re going to have to land somewhere and repair shortly—where, I have no idea, as I don’t even know exactly where we are yet. I woke up to life support on the fritz and got that taken care of. Navigation’s iffy and one of the engines has been damaged.”
    She looked up at him. “You don’t look so good either. Go … do something about that.”
    “Your concern is appreciated,” he said.
    “Medkit’s in the back, on the top shelf in the locker,” Rosemary called. Jake made his way to the back of the vessel, opened the locker, and found the kit. He poured some sanitizing cleanser onto a pad and, peering into the small and barely adequate mirror fastened to thelocker door, dabbed at his face. A nanosecond later he fought the urge to leap to the ceiling and scream—the cleanser stung like hell. The cut was, of course, not nearly as bad as the mask of blood on his face indicated. Head wounds bled a lot. The lump was still tender but it, too, was not too bad. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he swabbed at the cut, soiling pad after pad.
    “How long have I been out?” he called up to Rosemary.
    “Not that long. Maybe five, ten minutes.”
    That was good. Minor concussion then, nothing too severe.
    How are you doing in there, Zamara?
    He caught a brush of amusement, but Zamara seemed a bit distracted.
Well enough, Jacob. Thank you for inquiring.
    Everything okay?
    I am simply considering what to do next.
    “So Jake,” Rosemary continued as he fished around for a bandage. “That … experience … before we jumped—what the hell did Zamara do to all of us? I’ve done a lot of drugs in my day and that was, by far, the strangest and best trip I’ve ever been on.”
    There was a time when both Jake and Zamara would have bridled at the thought of something as profound and sacred as union within the Khala being compared to a drug trip. But now that both of their minds had blended, even briefly, with Rosemary’s, now that both had had a hint of what it had been liketo
be
her, the condemnation was cursory and halfhearted. R. M. was using terms she knew to try to describe something far beyond what any human had ever experienced. No disrespect was intended.
    “I’ve told you about the Khala, the Path of Ascension,” he said. He found a bottle