[Wildcards 10] - Double Solitaire Read Free

insensitive to women?"
    "Yes. People always got sidetracked by your flamboyant dress and the ease with which you displayed emotion. They assumed you were a wimp or a puss boy... The truth is that you were the ultimate boy's boy, and a real goddamn prick sometimes. Women have always been objects for you. Sex objects, ideals of romantic love, mother comforters, potential wives, potential brood mares. What we've never been are people."
    Tach swallowed past the lump that had hardened in her throat.
    "People, I'm scared. I can't live like this."
    Finn's arms closed about her. "I know, baby, I know."
    Since the rapes she hadn't been able to tolerate physical contact with a man. Gently, trying to avoid panic, Tach disentangled those confining arms. Stood and looked at Cody. Suddenly Cody's hand shot out, and she steadied Tachyon. The sedative and the tumultuous events of the day were catching up with her, and she was literally swaying on her feet.
    "Go to bed," said Cody softly, and pushed her gently to Finn.
    Finn led her to the guest room. "Do you want me to stay? I can get somebody else to do late rounds for me.
    "No, take care of my clinic. And I... I want to be alone."
    The snick of the door closing behind him was loud in the shadows. Tach eyed the bed. Remembered many nights of fervent swordplay with a variety of lovers. Their names were forgotten, but their bodies... Rage and loss filled her.
     
    Bad dreams brought her awake. Blaise was still walking through her mind, the memory of his mental and physical rapes like an oozing wound. Terror had set her heart to hammering, each wild beat bringing a surge of nausea. By the time Tachyon was fully awake, she was out of the bedroom and was standing shivering in the living room.
    So she could now add sleepwalking to her list of night terrors.
    She went searching for relief. Finn's liquor cabinet revealed him to be something of a wine snob, but there were also bottles of brandy, fine whiskey, and vodka.
    The residue of the sedative was still in her system, making her head like cotton wadding and dragging at her limbs, and she knew as she uncapped the brandy that she shouldn't be doing this. But it had been a haven for too many years, and she wanted to turn off her head.
    Tach had made a substantial dent in the level of brandy in the bottle before an over-full bladder sent her staggering into the bathroom. It had a traditional toilet, but there were also an oubliette in the French fashion. A rather large hole in the floor.
    How did Finn manage at the clinic? Back into a stall, lift his tail, and hope his aim was good? Tach wondered.
    The bath had also been altered. It was an enormous sunken affair with heavy frosted sliding doors.
    She realized she had never before considered the difficulties Bradley had to face. The realization shamed her, adding to the already deep depression that seemed to have a palpable presence.
    After relieving herself she stood and stared at her thickening body. I've become a joker. A stranger in a deformed body. Lifting the hem of the long T-shirt, Tach ran an experimental hand across her swollen belly. She was a trained physician. It wasn't hard to locate Illyana's head.
    What a burden to grow up knowing you were conceived during a violent rape. That in your veins runs the blood of a madman, a killer. How can I ever explain it to you? What will I tell you when you ask about your father? A pleasant little story maybe? He was called the Outcast, and he was a lonely prince who went away long, long ago.
    Her laugh was a bitter yelp, a cry of pain. You're an accident. Blaise became my child in a spray of blood. You were conceived in blood. You'll be born in blood. What's to keep you from being a monster too? To keep you from feeding on me the way he did? The way you already have.
    The physician-trained part of Tachyon's mind was screaming like a siren trying to penetrate the drug-, alcohol-, and exhaustion-induced depression. Over the long, pain-filled years Tach