He went down hard. As complete darkness settled over him, he realized the downtimers would simply leave him here, after what he'd done to Marcus, involving him in that gods-cursed scam of Farley's. Promising himself to hunt down Farley and kill him, Skeeter's face connected with a cold, rock-hard cement floor. The settling darkness became complete in that instant and he knew nothing more.

Skeeter woke slowly, with bits of his body making themselves known by varying degrees of screamin pain. The headache alone thundered through his skull like a Gobi lightning storm. He lay very still, trying to breathe around the pair, hoping it would lessen just a bit if he remained perfectly frozen in place.

It didn't work.

Gradually, Skeeter realized he was not lying face first on the Commons' concrete floor. Someone probably Benson's gang-had moved him. He thought bitterly, Probably didn't want the tourists to see a passed-out con. man apparently drunk out of his mind on the Commons floor. Bad for business.

For a moment, he wondered if Benson had put him in one of the private detention cells of La-La Land's little jail. Then, startling him beyond all measure, came the incongruity of a child's voice. Mike Benson does not lock up children. Not one that young. He moved his head slightly on the pillow to hear better and gasped at the pain in his neck and the sensation of a hairless skull sliding across the pillowcase. He dealt with those startling facts each in turn, finally recalling the reasons.

The child's voice spoke again. He couldn't understand the kid's words; but they flowed like music. A female voice answered in the same liquid language. Skeeter blinked. He knew that voice. Deep, throaty, as beautiful as its owner. What am I doing in Ianira Cassondra's apartment?

Not that he minded, so long as Marcus didn't

Where's Marcus?

He strained to hear, but didn't catch a single syllable of Marcus' voice. Then he strained to remember, but Mike Benson's interrogation blended into one, long stream of ruthless, sleepless, pain-filled questions. He vaguely remembered being told he could go, vaguely recalled collapsing outside Benson's office ... but he did not remember what had become of Marcus.

Somehow, that was intolerable. He tried to swing his legs over the edge of the bed, shove covers aside, and get up. He really tried. Instead, he got about halfway between horizontal and vertical, blacked out, and fell back with a faint cry of pain, which exploded through the whole of him like an electric shock prod wired to his insides and left set on full charge-one whose existence he'd completely forgotten. The next thing of which he was clearly aware was a soft touch on his brow, a hot towel that brought ecstasy when it soothed the throbbing behind his eyes, and a murmuring voice he'd last heard raised in desperation, begging help from him.

Skeeter?" Her voice came like rich, deep bell tones. "Don't worry, Skeeter, you're safe now. Marcus has gone to fetch Dr. Eisenstein for you."

Skeeter was really glad the wet towel on his brow leaked water down his face, because quite suddenly his eyes filled and spilled over, completely out of his control. No one but Yesukai had ever treated him so kindly. As though she had divined the source of his greatest pain-and maybe she had, at that; everyone called her the Enchantress-she touched his face in various places, featherlight, drying tears on his cheeks, pressing against places he'd never realized would feel so....o warm, so comforting.

"It is all right to weep out the pain, Skeeter. A man can go only so long alone, untouched, unloved. You miss your fierce Khan, I know that, but you cannot go back, Skeeter." Her words tore something inside him, something he'd realized but not acknowledged for a long, long time. "From here," she murmured, still touching his face gently, "the road unwinds in only one of two directions for you, Skeeter Jackson. Either you will remain on the road you have been traveling all your life and your loneliness will destroy you, or you may choose the other road, into the light. It is a choice neither I nor Marcus can make for you. Only you can decide such a profound question. But we will be travelling beside you, trying to help and support as best we can, whatever road you choose."

He fought a thickening in his throat.

"Oh, Skeeter, Cherished One, you risked everything, even life's blood in the test of the gods' arena, to save Marcus."

Then, when the deep emotions her words evoked wrenched him impossibly in too many directions, she massaged his temples and crooned a song, or perhaps an ancient incantation, while he turned his head as far away from her as he could and cried as he hadn't since the age of eight. The words she'd whispered kept reverberating through his whole being: Cherished One ....

Then Marcus' worried voice rang out and a moment later, Rachel Eisenstein bent over him, ignoring his tears or taking them as a reaction to pain. She turned him with clinical, gentle expertise, examining the damage front and back, the scars of the lash across ribs and spine, the muscles strained and knotted from shoulder to shank from that tremendous vault from his horse's back, the slash across his side.

He was eased back down and covered warmly. "Skeeter? Can you hear me? It's Rachel."

Rather than nodding, he managed to croak past the tightness in his throat. "Yeah." It was a sound of defeat and even he knew it. He hoped Ianira and Marcus understood. He was simply too exhausted, in too much pain to struggle any longer.

"Skeeter, I need to take you to the infirmary. Nothing that won't mend, but there's more of it than I like to see in one patient. Do you understand, Skeeter?"

Again, the thick-throated, "Yeah. "

He closed his eyes, praying Ianira would understand his need to escape for just a little while the intense, soul-cracking emotions she'd roused with so few words. That portion of himself needed healing, too. Maybe he'd go see Dr. Mundy, after all, tell him everything, get all the secrets and the pain and the memories of good times and terrifying ones out of his system.

Someone removed the cooling towel from his brow, then Ianira's voice came low and velvety: "Remember, we will always be here, ready to help."

Then the metallic clanging of a gurney came to his ears and he was lifted and slid with professional gentleness by two orderlies. He only bit his lip once during the entire process. Then the gurney was moving and he thought he heard the sound of a woman weeping, but he wasn't sure of much in this state.

They slid him neatly into the miniature ambulance used on station and moved away with lights flashing, evidently taking back ways down, since their speed didn't slow for the throng of holiday party-goers jamming the station just now. In the cramped quarters of the little ambulance, Rachel Eisenstein deftly lashed his gurney to tie-downs on the ambulance wall. Then, before he knew it, she'd threaded an IV into his arm. "Dehydration," she explained, "plus a mild painkiller. You need it."

That's for goddamned sure. But he had no voice left to say it.

Then, almost conversationally, she added, "Spoke to Mike Benson earlier today." Skeeter pricked up his attention. "Let him have it between the eyes, I did." She chuckled. "Should've seen the expression on his face. By the time I was done, I do believe he understood clearly that when injured people fall through a gate regardless of who they are-they are to be brought directly to me, not abused for nearly a whole day in a sham investigation."

She touched his brow. "You can mop up the floor with him as soon as you're back on your feet with all your muscles working properly again."

Skeeter tried to smile, grateful she understood. "Promise?" he croaked hoarsely.

"Promise."

He might spend time behind bars, but by all the gods, he had a score to settle with Mr. Michael Benson.