The Haunted Way (Champions of the Crystal Book 5)

Chapter 2: Strange Journey

Sabrina unpacked quickly, annoyed as she realized all the things she'd left behind in her haste. Well, with luck, this wouldn't be a long trip. She half hoped it would turn out to be a false alarm. As much as she wanted Malvarak to be captured and treated for his illness, she didn't want Ford exposed to the various horrors the Pharon system held.

She could hardly bear to remember what the crystal contamination had done to her, the nightmares that had made her afraid to sleep, the waking horrors that she had begun to fear would conquer her sanity. How much worse it would have to be for Ford, whom she'd once heard referred to as the most crystal-sensitive being in the galaxy, after the Guardian. Well, and now the Inheritor, she supposed. She tried not to imagine Ford in Tirqwin's place, suffering what the doctors had called temporal dyslexia, unable to function in linear time or even to recognize the people closest to him.

I do not want to do this, she realized with a sigh. And yet she had no choice. All her arguments were still true, even if she didn't want them to be. She could not allow herself the luxury of cowardice if it endangered Ford.

"I hope you're not trying to remember how to use that," Ford said from the doorway.

Sabrina jumped a little, startled to find herself holding the blaster in her hand. "I don't think that's something you forget," she said ruefully. "Anyway, I doubt it will do much good. I'd've done better to grab a warmer jacket, or another pair of boots."

Ford's grin was perfunctory. "You're probably right. If you were capable of killing him with that, he would have been dead before I was born."

Sabrina had a terrifying moment's flashback, staring at Malvarak over the barrel of her weapon, grief-stricken and panicked and enraged, yet unable to pull the trigger. Scotty had had to shoot him, so that they could escape with Tirqwin's body. Was that moment one of her greatest failures? She had always tried not to think so.

"I don't expect you to understand," she said, suddenly feeling very alone.

"I am not accusing you of cowardice," he said into the silence that followed.

She looked at him for the first time since he'd come in. "Just sentimentality."

"It's not necessarily a bad thing."

"In a person. It's...inconvenient...for a soldier."

"You've always emphatically denied being one."

"At heart. Sometimes it's been necessary for me to be one, though. And I've tried. But...." Her voice trailed off. When she spoke again, it was in a distant, detached tone. "I had a good chance to shoot him. I really thought I could, for a moment. He had me cornered. Tirqwin's dead body was lying there inches away. He was taunting me about it. Scotty was yelling at me to shoot him. There was...there was something swirling around our feet, something evil, something Pharon. He was coming at me...and then Scotty shot him. In the back. And I've always wondered, was that a burden I should have taken up? Did I push it off on him?"

Ford was quiet for a long moment. "I don't think Scotty would see it that way."

"No," Sabrina said, looking at him again. "I'm very sure he wouldn't." She had a momentary impulse to throw herself into his arms, seeking comfort, but she knew if she showed any sign of weakness, of uncertainty, that he would find a way to leave her on Lthos. She could not risk that. "Well," she said, giving herself a mental shake and putting the blaster back in her duffel, "I've started my story the wrong way round, haven't I? You're probably much more interested in what the Pharon Way felt like, and how the crystal acted on Tirqwin afterward."

"I need to know those things, yes," Ford said. "But if there are issues you haven't faced about that last encounter, then I think I need to know that, too."