• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Zekk shuddered from an inner chill. He backed up a step and spread his arms across the temple entrance. "No. There'll be a lot more injuries if you don't stop where you are.

Jaina balked at the threat. She would need to try a different tack.

Zekk's eyes darted from side to side, as if he were assessing the strength of the Jedi trainees, with their various wounds, wondering how many he could kill before they took him down.

"Let me be your friend again, Zekk," Jaina said. "I miss being your friend. " He flinched as if he had been struck. 'Let go of the dark side and come back to the light. Remember the fun we always had together, you and Jacen and I? Remember the time you salvaged that old slicer module and we tapped into the computers at the holographic zoo?"

Zekk nodded warily.

"We reprogrammed all of the animals to sing Corellian tavern songs," she went on. A wistful smile tugged at the corner of her mouth at the memory.

"We got caught," Zekk pointed out quietly.

"And the zoo restored the original programming."

"Yes, but so many returning tourists requested it that a few months later the zoo added our singing animals as a separate exhibit." Jaina thought she saw some flicker of acknowledgment in his emerald eyes, but then they became hard as chips of green marble.

"We're not those children anymore, Jaina," he said. "We can't go back to the way it was before. You don't understand that, do you?"

His gaze darted around the courtyard and he rubbed one hand across his forehead and eyes, smearing the mud there.

Jaina said, "All right, I don't understand. Explain it to me."

Zekk took a deep breath and began to pace in front of the dark doorway, like some wild creature trapped in an invisible cage.

"There's no place where I belong anymore, Jaina. The Shadow Academy became my home. It's gone now-completely destroyed.

Where can I go? The dark side is a part of me."

"No, Zekk," Jaina said. 'You can give it up. Come back to the light."

Zekk laughed, a sound filled with anger and a touch of madness. He clawed at his cheek with one hand and held out his fingers so that she could see the mud there. A wound on his cheek seeped blood, but he seemed not to notice. "The dark side isn't like this mud," he said. "You can't just wear it for a while and then scrape it awaywash it off like some child who has finished playing in the dirt."

Zekk wiped his hand on his tattered cape.

"I'm a different person now than the uneducated street kid you knew on Coruscant. I don't belong there anymore. Vere could I belong? I've been trained as a Dark Jedi."

His expression turned bleak. "And now my teacher is dead, too. He taught me and believed in me, gave me skills and a purpose."

"Peckhum always believed in you, too," Jaina said in a gentle voice.

Zekk put a muddy hand to his matted hair, and a wild look came over him.

"But he's dead, too-he must be. I saw the Lightning Rod go down."

Jaina felt as if she had been rammed in the stomach by a mad herdbeast.

The Lightning Rod had crashed? Then Jacen could be badly injured.

"I failed my teacher, Brakiss, and he's dead," Zekk said. He gestured as he spoke.

????? led the Shadow Academy into battle, and all of my comrades were killed or captured.

"And if Peckhum's dead, then that's my fault too." Zekk's eyes looked glassy and feverish; his breathing was fast and shallow.

Jaina set her jaw in stubborn determination. 'Well, Zekk, I don't want to see any more people die because of you. Just let me into the temple so we can take care of our wounded."

Zekk stopped pacing and whirled to look at her. "No! Stay back."

Jaina took a step forward. "Zekk, there's nothing left to fight about.

What can you possibly hope to gain?"

Zekk shook his head. "You never did listen to my advice. You always thought you knew better." Despite his obvious agitation, Zekk's movements were eerily smooth as he drew his hghtsaber from his belt and ignited the glowing red blade with a snap-hiss.

Then,