Impressed, I stop to watch as she tackles the man and unleashes her fury on his face, to the delight of a gathering crowd. But then that crowd closes in, blocking my view, and when I move forward, my modesty sheath doesn’t come with me. Someone’s standing on it. I try to tug it free, but that only makes the situation worse, exposing all of my right leg and—
Sudden pain seems to split my skull open, and my vision blurs. As I fall to the ground, the world goes dark…
6
VAUGHN
“HEY! What did you say your name was?”
I slam the safe closed, securing the last of our credit vouchers, and spin to see Meshach’s man—the one I turned away just minutes ago—standing on our boarding ramp. This time, two more pale, eerily platinum-headed men stand a few feet behind him, and they’re both armed.
“Pryor,” I tell him.
“I thought that was your captain’s name.”
“We are all Pryor. It’s a family name.”
He cocks his head, displaying his skepticism with narrowed hazel eyes. “I’m Amos. This is Ezra and Ira,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, and I can’t tell which of his friends is which. Not that I give a fuck. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot earlier, but I’m going to have to insist you give me a quick tour of your little ship.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Bad manners might jeopardize your contract with Meshach. Considering that we’re here on his orders.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m willing to take that chance.”
“You sure about that? I think you need that ship pretty badly.”
“About as badly as Meshach wants his missing cargo. And I think that if you could get it yourself, you already would have. In fact, I think you’ve tried. We’re not the first crew he’s hired for this job, are we?”
Amos’s jaw tightens, and that’s enough of an answer.
“I tell you what. I’m going to let you wait outside until the captain comes back. Then you can have your boss call him, and we’ll let the two of them sort this out. Again. But I have to tell you, they’ve already tried that, and their conclusion was that you and your men will not be boarding this ship. Now, run along and go harass someone with more patience. Before you lose the ability to move under your own power.”
Amos’s jaw tightens until I can hear his teeth groan. “Ezra.”
The man to his left raises his weapon, and I lunge into motion, stepping to the side so that Amos is between me and the gun. If Ezra wants to shoot me, he’s going to have to shoot through his own man. Then I spin and ram my right elbow into Ezra’s chest, before he can adjust his aim.
In the instant my elbow makes contact, my bone spike slides free from my arm. It pierces his clothing and skin, slipping beneath his sternum without even a hint of resistance. Then it shreds his lung on the way up into his heart.
In under a second, Ezra is dead, his heart destroyed. I retract my weapon as quickly as I deployed it, and when I spin away from the corpse, letting it fall to the ground, there’s no sign of my genetic abnormality. No hint of the weapon I used. Ezra simply falls at the base of the boarding ramp, blood pouring from a mysterious hole in his chest.
He didn’t even have time to cough any of it up, before he stopped breathing.
“What in God’s name…?” the third man—Ira, evidently—demands. “I didn’t even see the weapon.”
“You won’t see the one that kills you either, if you don’t get the hell off my ramp,” I tell him. But my focus is on Amos. “You have three seconds. Three. Two—”
Both men flee into the bazar at the heart of Miscellany’s open interior, leaving their dead companion in a widening pool of his own blood. On my ramp.
“Great,” I murmur as I tap open a panel just inside the boarding ramp. Recessed into the wall, a coil of hose connected to the ship’s water supply hangs from a hook. I haul poor dead Ezra off the ramp to the right and leave his body on the floor of the fuel station. No one on the metal boardwalk even blinks.
People die at Miscellany. Fools, mostly. A cleaning crew will come scoop the corpse up on its next patrol.
Hose in hand, I rinse blood from the boarding ramp, and as I watch the red-tinged water drip through the metal grate into the massive equipment room beneath the Miscellany bazar, I realize that for the first time since the day I woke up with weapons hiding beneath my skin, it required no effort for me to call one forth.
Always before, I’ve had to mentally command my bone spears and blades to appear. But today, I simply had to unleash one of them, and my elbow spike slid through the seam in my skin as if it had just been waiting for the opportunity.
For the very first time, my weapons feel like a natural part of me, rather than a mutation I’ve had to grow to accept, like a new wart or an odd mole. And with that acceptance, I can suddenly see the true potential in this new form. In these weapons I’ve been saddled with.
I punch the button to close the still-dripping ramp, then I coil the hose around its hook and close the storage panel on the wall. “Grace!” I call, now that we’re alone, except for Lilli. “Did you hear any of that? Everything’s fine. They’re gone.”
But no beautiful head of dark hair appears in the floor hatch. No gorgeous face peers out at me from the cargo hold.
“Grace?” I jog down the stairs and turn the lights to full brightness, but I can tell there’s no one here even before I search the shadowy space behind the storage crates, to make sure I’m not missing a subtle shimmer. The cargo hold feels brutally empty. “Fuck.”
I race back up the steps and throw open the lavatory door, though it’s ajar and I can see that its empty. Then I do the same with all four of the bunk panels. Including Lilli’s.
Grace isn’t here. She must have heard Amos and the idiot twins and gotten spooked. Damn it.
“Coleman?” Lilli sits up, startled. Blinking sleep from her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Grace is gone.” I race across the main deck and punch the button by the door, to unfold the boarding ramp. “Close this behind me and call Sotelo. Tell him I went to find her, and that you’re here alone. Oh, and tell him I had to kill one of Meshach’s men to keep them from boarding the Dinghy, but there are at least two others are out there. I have to get to Grace before they find her.”
“What?” Lilli climbs out of her bunk and pushes sleep-rumpled hair back from her face. “Why—”
“Sorry. I have to go. Close the ramp.” Then I take off across the metal walkway and into the bazar.
There are people everywhere; that much hasn’t changed since the last time I was at Miscellany, though only a few of the vendors look familiar. There’s a high turnover rate among dealers and shopkeepers in a place like this, because most people who set up shop this far off the beaten path are doing it to avoid something or someone. And eventually, that something or someone always catches up with them.
I pass stalls selling food, drinks, and clothing. Fortune tellers, second-hand tech vendors, and ship captains hiring crew members or looking to take on passengers. I squint into every shadow and examine every single glare of light reflecting off a shiny surface, but I don’t see the telltale shimmer of Grace’s nano-tech garb.
She couldn’t have just disappeared.
Well, actually, of course she could. That’s what the modesty sheath was designed for.
I really hope Grace hasn’t tried to stow away on another ship.
When I can’t find her in the bazar, I veer toward the metal boardwalk on my right and start peering into the more permanently established shops. Three down, I find Jamison cleaning up at a Pickets table. I wave to catch his attention, and with one look at me, he forfeits the hand and groans as he stands and pockets his winnings. Then he slings a heavy pack over his shoulder and pushes his way through the crowd toward me.
“What’s going on? I still have ten minutes, and I was about to goad that asshole into putting his fucking cigar in the pot. Do you have any idea how l
ong it’s been since I saw an honest-to-god cigar? The damn thing was still sealed. Worth a fucking fortune.”
“Grace is missing. Three of Meshach’s men tried to board the Dinghy, and by the time I got rid of them—and hosed blood off the ramp—she was gone.”
“Shit. You think they got her?”
“No, I think she just got scared and ran. But if she’s out here alone, they will find her.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get to her first.” Then, “Fuck,” Jamison whispers beneath his breath. “Are those the guys?”
I follow his subtle nod to see Amos and Ira making their way down the boardwalk on the opposite side of the bazar, looking into each storefront they pass. “Yeah. If they’re still looking, they haven’t found her yet. You go distract them, and I’ll find Grace.”
“On it.” Jamison tugs his pack higher onto his shoulder and heads off across the bazar, headed for the other side of the hexagonal structure. I take another look around, and just as I’m about to take the stairs to the second-floor walkway, I see something…strange.
A man I don’t recognize is walking with an odd gait, one arm arched over his shoulder, as if he’s carrying something. Only there’s nothing on his shoulder.
Then he turns, and I see a familiar set of gray slippers and slim, gray-clad calves draped across his chest, where Grace’s modesty sheath has ridden up, exposing the bottom eighteen inches of her apparently unconscious form.
Just beneath her dangling feet, the stranger wears a belt buckle I do recognize.
Motherfucker.
I shove my way through the crowd, throwing punches where necessary with my knuckle spikes armed, because they’re the least obvious of my alien augmentations. Objections in the form of profanity follow me, and when a hand lands on my shoulder, I spin around and throat-punch the aggressor. He falls flat on his back, clutching four bloody puncture wounds in his neck.
Then I disappear into the crowd before anyone can figure out exactly what happened to him and come after me with a pistol.
I race through the bazar, and when I catch up to the man carrying my Grace, I punch him in the head with my right fist while I slide her from his shoulder with my other arm. He falls to the ground, unmoving, and I neither know nor care whether or not he’s still breathing.
Grace is a slight and terrifyingly limp weight in my arms. I tug the sheath back into place to shield her from sight as I gently drape her over my own shoulder, and with my next breath, I realize I can smell her. Her personal scent—a deliciously sweet aroma—seems to curl through me, imbedding itself into my very cells. As if my body is learning this new bit of her.
Why can I smell her now, when I couldn’t before?
Intoxicated by this new discovery, I take off for the Dinghy. But before I’ve gone six steps in that direction, I see a cluster of tan-robed, white-headed men heading for our ship and its closed ramp.
At the center of the gathering is Meshach himself.
Fuck. He must have been on the way to Miscellany when we spoke to him.
I can’t let the Gebosan contingent see Grace; they’ll certainly recognize their own nano-tech. And with Meshach among them, we probably won’t be able to keep them off the Dinghy without losing our contract. Which means I have to keep Grace away long enough for Sotelo to smooth things over by letting Meshach and his men search our shuttle.
So I reverse my course and take a set of stairs to the second level, where I duck into a narrow alleyway between a brothel and a seedy establishment offering single-occupancy rooms for rent in twelve-hour blocks. Most of the rooms open onto the boardwalk, but two of them face the alley itself, which suits my needs perfectly.
I carefully set Grace down at the end of the alley, leaning her translucent form against the grimy metal wall.
“Owww…” she groans, tugging at the sheath while I’m still kneeling in front of her.
“Shhh… Grace,” I say, and she goes utterly still for a moment. Then she throws the garment from her head, leaving her dark hair sticking up adorably in random places.
“Coleman.” The relief in her voice and the recognition in her gaze stir something primal inside of me. Something protective and possessive that will not be denied.
“Yes, it’s me.” A soft oscillating sound echoes from my throat to punctuate my assurance. “Give me just a second, and I’ll have you someplace safe. Okay?”
“Where?”
“In there.” I point at the door to the nearest room for rent. If it’s occupied, it won’t be for long.
“What’s in there?” she whispers, then her wide-eyed gaze focuses on the tumult of the bazar beyond the end of the alley. “Where are we?”
“It’s a motel, of sorts. Just a second.”
I close my eyes as I press my right palm flat against the locked door, and for one long, frustrating moment, nothing happens. So I exhale, and instead of trying to force an ability I know my body is capable of, I simply stop holding back the ability my body already wants to demonstrate.
My hand sinks right through the damn door.
“What, in the name of all that is holy…?” Grace whispers.
“One second.” Then I step through the door, ready to rip the occupant of the room in half, should there be one.
Unfortunately, while I can change the density of my body to allow it to pass through other matter, my odd alien augmentation has no effect on my clothing. Which means that in stepping through the door, I’ve also stepped right out of my clothes.
It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the room, but even before they do, I know I’m alone. The room is a buffet of unpleasant scents, but they are all faint and old, and I hear no one breathing, other than myself. So I feel around for the panel on the wall next to the door, and when my palm brushes it, light floods the room.
I throw the door open.
Grace is standing at the end of the alley, clutching her modesty sheath to her chest, which has the odd effect of rendering everything south of her collarbone invisible, except for the tips of her gray slippers, peeking from beneath the cloth. I wave her forward, and when she hesitates, eyes wide, I remember that I’m nude.
The thought that I’m probably the first man she’s ever seen naked makes my cock swell. So I snatch up my abandoned clothes to hide my arousal from her, and she scuttles past me into the room.
I close and bolt the door, and for a moment, all I can do is stare at Grace, to reassure myself that she’s here. That she’s alive and mostly unharmed. That we’re alone, for the first moment since I found her in the cargo hold of the Dinghy.
“What…um… How did you…?” Her focus trails halfway down my chest and snags on the pile of clothing clutched in front of my hips. Then it snaps back up to my face. “You’re naked.”
“Yeah. Just a second.” I let everything but my pants fall to the floor, and she spins around, still clutching her sheath to her chest, to give me privacy while I pull them on.
“What happened?” Grace asks, and I can tell from the way she’s trembling that she isn’t asking about my density shift.
“What do you remember?”
“Amos,” she says, and when I tap her shoulder, she jumps, startled. Then she turns to find me wearing pants. “I saw Amos and two of Meshach’s other men headed for the Dinghy, and I knew they couldn’t catch me there. So I put my modesty sheath on and snuck off the ship. I was just going to look around a little, then sneak back on board when they were gone. But then something hit me…” She lifts one hand to the back of her head, and her fingers come away smeared with blood.
An angry sound rips free from my throat, and she looks up at me, startled again. “You’re hurt,” I growl.
You failed her, the voice in my head scolds.
An overwhelming sense of shame washes over me.
Prove yourself worthy of her, the beast demands, or you will lose her.
The voice is replaced with a series of mental images of what the beast expects me to do, should
Grace choose another man. Plunging a knife into my own throat. Throwing myself from a cliff, into a strange, grayish sea. Shoving my sharpened claws into my chest and pulling out my own heart.
But I don’t have claws, and I’ve never seen a grayish sea. These images belong to a culture and a species I can’t even name, yet now they also belong to me. They feel true. As inevitable as they are illogical. The beast believes I have shamed myself and disappointed my prospective mate, and if I cannot win her forgiveness and acceptance, then there is nothing left for me but to claim an honorable death.
And suddenly, faced with the terrifying possibility of losing her, I realize that nothing else matters. Not Universal Authority. Not our mission. Not our ship or my fellow crew members. Nothing matters but the woman in front of me and my undeniable need to earn her touch.
And I have no idea when that happened. When my priorities realigned to focus on her safety. Her acceptance. Her needs. Sometime during the past few hours, my existence underwent a transformative shift, and suddenly everything feels different.
You are not the same man you were an hour ago, and you never will be again. Sotelo’s warning haunts me, because it is undeniably true. The beast and I are no longer distinct beings. We are two halves of the same coin, and the thing uniting us—the only thing we agree on—is Grace.
Mine.
“Grace. I’m so sorry. May I see?” I gesture at her head, at the wound, and she gives me a hesitant nod. Then she sinks onto a single-size bed that seems to be freshly made up, even if the blankets are threadbare.
I step forward, and when she bows her head, giving me access, I gently part the hair at the back of her scalp and let the silky strands trail through my fingers. Her hair is so soft, and it smells…like Grace. As if her scalp carries the sweet scent that is at the heart of her identity.
Yet that isn’t true. There is another scent she might let me sample. If I earn the right.
Vendetta (Project Vetus Book 2) Page 9