“Not here or now,” Fern muttered and swung the gun onto the back of the ancient sofa so the barrel tip peeked through the door opening. No glass, anywhere on these top stories, made it easy to guard against scavs wandering into their city. This was their city until monster season passed, or so Pilf, her grounder savior, had declared. They needed it to themselves for a few more weeks.
This place had suffered from war then a hundred years of neglect. Now, the grounders wanted it for this monster season, whatever that was. To collect waik crystals, he’d said. To sell them afterward. Fine. She’d found this tower home away from the grounders.
She protected the place, aiming not to kill if possible. The scavs were bad. Her fear that a scav would come back and get her was terrible, every single time she shot one. Three so far. But she did this job because it was hers, and the grounders were kind enough to not touch her.
Monster season? It’d be worth staying on afterward, all alone, all by herself, if she wasn’t scared of being alone. Oh the irony.
She flicked a piece of whatever it was they made windows out of from the sofa. Everyone needed to sit. They’d had chairs. Could’ve been a holiday apartment, really.
The collapse of the balcony outside meant the field of view was fantastic, all the way across the landscape of shattered buildings to the blue sea. Where had that scav gone? Tall, like really tall, with some sort of spidery-legged mech beside him. He stood out like a lighthouse…
Ah. There. He was sprinting, which might’ve put off most. She aimed at him, synched minds with Ruby the mechling, and Tedd, and Domino. She merged, blurring into the other eyes, then saw him, close-up, from three extra directions. Running.
Don’t kill. She deterred them, mostly. Except the obstinate ones.
She squeezed with her healthy left hand and forefinger and watched, eyes wedged open by anticipation, waiting for the hit.
Blue whizzing outward, zeroing down.
He ducked, rolled. What?
She shot again, and almost missed again as he dodged. A small cloud puffed off his sleeve, and she swore she saw his grimace. Milliseconds of clearance maybe. The two-shot magazine had always been enough. If it were a big warband, she’d not have risked firing anyway.
This wasn’t enough to scare him off. He kept coming.
As fast as she could, she reloaded. One bullet. Two. Her wonky right hand with the crooked fingers didn’t help.
Then she heard scrabbling, on the front of this building. Something was coming up the outside. The freaky mech. Shit!
Shit, shit, shit. Fern snatched up the weapon and ran for the stairwell, kicked shut the room door and wished it locked on the hall side. How could she have predicted this?
She jogged as quietly as possible down the stairs, maneuvering around a few pieces of debris. Hopping, skipping, swearing when she stubbed her toe. Wearing sandals today had been a bad choice.
The front doors at ground level leading to the outside were barred. When Pilf visited she unbarred it. That wasn’t going to be enough. Not with that thing coming in the window.
It followed her, slowly, staying a floor above. Metal clicked on the floors, warning her, making her hurry even more. With sweat trickling into her eyes, she ran down the last floor at full tilt and managed not to sprain anything as she scampered to the stairwell exit.
A creepy-ass spider mech. Why her? Why?
Once on the bottom floor, Fern slammed the door leading into the foyer, panting. Thanked the stars above she’d thought this part through in advance and could wedge the door shut with the chunk of timber. There’d always been a chance someone could get in via the first floor and come down to ground floor, and she slept here.
Panting she listened to the mech thing creep up to the door and tap.
“Hello? Are you Fern? My partner wishes to talk to you.”
“What the hell?” she whispered to herself. “What?” She backed off. “What are you?”
She knew mechs, inside out, having meshed with many of them since she figured out it helped her shoot straighter. But this one, she couldn’t feel it at all.
Chapter 3
“What are you?” Fern repeated, louder, so the thing on the other side could hear her. “I can’t feel you. You’re not a mechling. You’re lying!”
“I think I understand. Gio could mind talk to me but I am a little different to others you have met. I’m an older-model mech made partly from the middle of a sun.”
She blinked. How was that possible? Then again nothing here would’ve seemed possible on Earth.
“My name,” it ventured chirpily. “Is Aunt M. My partner is JI and he should be at your other door, soon. I advise you to open and let us in. He’s not quite the same since he became organic. I think you annoyed him.”
Annoyed? Why would she let in an annoyed, armed scav warrior?
She backed further and raised her gray long gun. This mech was an unknown. Shooting through the door might miss, though, and even if she used all her ammo, she might damage the door more than this Aunt M.
That sounded like a human-allocated name. Aunt was not in the mekker vocabulary she’d been force-taught on the landship.
Oh no. No. Her waist felt lighter than it should.
The ammo bag?
Had she lost it during the scramble? She tucked the gun under her arm and patted at her belt, couldn’t find the small bag, looked down, gaze sliding. Her mauve shirt, leather-like belt, tan cut-off shorts, bare legs, then her sandals, met her eyes.
No bag.
“I promise I won’t kill you.” Aunt M tapped the door again.
“Why? Do you normally kill everyone you meet?” Swallowing past her fear, she chastised herself. Why had she asked it that?
Where was the bag? Frantic, she scanned the floor about her, doing a half circle, then reversing and doing another, her pink ratty bangs swinging past her face. She finally spotted it and scooped it up. The cords had snapped or undone. Bullets clinking, with the gun threatening to slip and fall, she reattached the bag to her belt.
Pilf would come. He’d hear the shots, bring others. Cautiously, though. They never charged into danger, and who could blame the grounders for being meek?
Anxiety tightened onto her heart, and it hurt. She strangled the long gun, made her fingers relax. “Go away! Both of you! What did I ever do to you?”
Someone yelled from behind, and she whipped around, gasping.
“You shot me! That’s what.” The scav was out there. He struck the double doors with something, and the sound echoed and boomed. “I only came to talk about your brother. Why do people have to be so violent?” Then he struck the door again and she heard something crack.
He did not sound happy. Annoyed? If annoyed was a bull elephant planning to trample you then yes.
This foyer was wide enough to house one of her old painting classes – if only – the floor strewn with dirt and leaves and piled-up debris. The lower windows had been boarded up but the doors were wide open, when she first arrived. The back room was where she slept and where she kept her stuff – tools, food, the poor bird she was nursing, her bed. If she retreated there, would they follow?
Yes.
But there was another exit there too.
Sniffling, she wiped at her face, trying to see a solution. Shoot the mech after all and run upstairs? Even little mechlings were hard to open or get at the guts of, let alone dent. She’d tried endlessly and failed.
Shoot this JI?
As if summoned, he began to bang at the entry. A second later it burst open.
The bar that’d been fastened on her side flew off. The two doors lurched drunkenly awry. One side swiveled, snapped from its last intact hinge, and crashed to the floor.
Silhouetted against the sun-drenched sky stood the huge scav warrior, or most of him – part of his head being above the door frame. His pale hair riffled in a breeze. A red rifle hung from one hand. His other hand was raised as if he was considering knocking again.
&nb
sp; When he shifted, rays of light licked about his shoulders, sneaking past to blind her momentarily, as if in league with the intruder.
That door destruction hadn’t been from shouldering it open or a tool. Just his fist. His strength was extraordinary, and he had to duck to enter.
“Come in, Aunt M!”
The door hiding the mech fractured and crumpled inward under this new assault, and Aunt M clambered through.
So many legs, and this Aunt M reached head height. Fern grimaced, muscles stiff as she backed blindly toward her last room.
The mechlings were gathering around the building but they never hurt people. Her mind filled with their words. *What can we do?* *I will get Pilf!* *Stay calm, Fern!*
“Quiet,” she hissed at them, then realized she’d said it aloud. *Yes. Do get Pilf, and tell him to bring men and guns. Please be careful.*
They fell silent and some were scampering away. Help was coming. How long until it came depended on where the grounders were. Surely they’d be foraging this time of day? She pursed her lips.
Get to the room and pray, or try to fight? She’d lose a fight.
The scav stated his own mess of questions. “Where are you going? Who are you talking – Oh, the mechlings.”
He knew of them? They were so good at hiding she hadn’t considered he might see any.
Of course. The mech would’ve told him.
“I’m not –”
“My name is JI.” He drew closer, following as she retreated, until she found the door at her back. “If you don’t shoot, if you could be calm... We need to talk about Sawyer.”
He couldn’t know Sawyer. The floor crunched under his feet. His shadow reached for her. Jeez, he was huge. Panic shuddered in, warming her strangely, her nipples scrunching up hard until they poked at her shirt.
Delay him.
“I won’t shoot you…JI.” The door to her room was at her back. It was sturdier and reinforced with metal. He’d be on her before she could open it and lock it. The Aunt M…was where he’d first stepped into the foyer. It, or he, seemed quiescent, as if waiting for instructions.
“Truly? You won’t? Good.” JI smiled in a way that reminded her of snakes. Emotionless and empty. His smile wavered as if he saw her doubts. He raised a hand, then the other, the one with his red scav long gun. The barrel wandered closer to aiming at her. “Put down the weapon and –”
She angled up her gun and shot him.
He dodged yet again, but blood sprayed, and he fell sideways. Arms flailing, he landed on the floor, cursing.
“Liar!” Fern spat, as she flung open the door, slipped through, and locked it.
He couldn’t know her brother, could he? Sawyer was still on the landship. Or dead. The judge never let people who damaged him be left alone. He’d have sought revenge.
He’d have killed Sawyer by now. She knew this down deep. Just never wanted to think it through. Now she had. Her brother was gone from this world.
Mind stifled by sadness, she drifted back, staring at the door. Was he coming? Please no. She heard only thrashing sounds. Then nothing.
In a few strides she reached the table where the pack Pilf had given her lay. Fern began throwing in things. Food wasn’t necessary. The knife. The nearest clothes. Hat.
What the fuck was she doing? Nothing was needed.
Pack slung over shoulder, she sprinted for the far roller door. Beside it was a smaller one, luckily, for the metal one was rusted shut. Far above, light filtered in through curved, high windows that skirted the room’s dome rooftop like a row of teeth. The bird she’d caged fluttered wings and squawked for food as she went down the aisle, flitting past tables, past cages, past garden beds.
It was thick glass above. It’d not fractured in all these years.
This tower had been some private place. This room a garden and a zoo, or a laboratory. And now she must go.
She grimaced her goodbye then tugged open the small door, and found Aunt M directly outside, blocking her escape. The mech fastened gripping appendages onto Fern’s waist and sharp points dented her skin through the cloth. Her yelp was high-pitched, her scream ineffectual.
Despite her litany of protests, and her digging in her feet and grasping at anything they went past, by the time Aunt M had dragged her to the inner door, JI had bashed it open. Using his head, she hoped.
The mech held her higher until Fern’s feet left the ground. “Yours?”
“Mine.” His thigh dripped blood.
The cloth was torn but not badly, she assessed in a furtive glance.
“Let her go, Aunt M. Leave us. I can see you bother the girl. Go check the perimeter. Stay away, please.”
The mech gave a huff and metallic whine. “Very well. Humanoids!” She deposited Fern before JI, squeezed past the scav warrior, then ran off, spiderlike, using most of her legs.
It was almost a relief not to have the mech holding her. She shuddered, attempted to slip away.
The scav grabbed her left sleeve, sweat shining his large biceps. “Not this time,” he said wearily. Blood also stained his arm. “Will you listen? Now?”
“Sure. Sure.” But her head was muttering let go, let go, in a plaintive loop.
All the memories of when the judge had held her down, or had others do so, poured into her. Panic rose, spilled over, roared red through her logic.
The mech was gone. If ever she had a chance…it was now. She found the knife under her hand. Eyes only on him, she yanked it from the pack, swiping up at the man – nowhere particular, just she had to get rid of him.
Her sleeve tore free. He spun her, tripped her. The knife went back, she was cutting at him blindly as she scrambled, then it was knocked from her hand, painfully so. Pinned to the floor, she gasped and clawed, only to have him curse her and pull her across the floor by her neck and arm until he reached a table. He shoved her onto it facedown and held her.
She would never give in. Still kicking and screeching, she tried to connect with both feet, flopping like a fish.
Again he hauled her up and took her to a wall where he pinned her front to it.
She couldn’t reach him, no matter how she strained.
Something cold and metal wound about her neck, once, twice. Oh gods, he was strangling her. She stopped trying to hit him and grasped the circled chain with both hands. Then he hauled on it and pulled it over something high above. A chain end swung down and smacked into the side of her face. She recalled the sound of sliding metal as he’d left the table behind them.
JI turned her, roughly. His hands left her. On tiptoes, hands holding the chain so it wouldn’t press on her throat, she stared, snarled. He took a deliberate pace backward, fists clenched to either side.
“Why, human girl. Why? You lied to me, twice. I hate that.” Around his eyes twitched.
“I just… I didn’t…” She swallowed, and the chain bumped at her larynx. She was in the hands of a madman. Where were the mechlings? She touched minds with a few but it only fed the strange rising feeling that simmered in her middle.
Chest heaving as she tried to breathe enough air to satisfy her cravings, she stayed silent. In. Out. Stop panicking.
Stop.
Saying anything seemed dangerous. The chain, she realized, was not going to kill her. Just she couldn’t get it off. He’d knotted it behind, at her nape, somehow. The tension leading above meant she had to undo it from the anchor point to get free.
She kinked back her neck, rolled her eyes upward. The finger-wide chain was lodged on a light fitting far past her reach. Unless she jumped? That would be suicidal.
What did he want? To talk? Really?
She licked her lips and saw he wasn’t moving, then calmed enough to let herself study him.
Tall, heavily built, a rugged face with a scar disfiguring one ear. The struggling had popped several clips from his shirt revealing the solid musculature beneath. He topped her height by miles. Her weight, ditto.
No wonder he’d subdued her so easily
. With her breathing slowing as she caught up to what her body demanded, she slumped into the cool wall. He was injured. She had shot him, maybe cut his shoulder too. Or was that from her first bullet?
Then he closed in again. Too frickin’ close. His warmth communicated to her skin, through her clothes, traveling fast and smothering thoughts of escape.
His breathing was audible, matching her own deep respiration. Or was she matching his breathing? It was difficult not to.
Slow down, it might make him think her turned on. She clutched the chain, hurting and numbing her already bruised fingers. Her tongue licked across her lips as she nervously flattened the full length of her body onto the wall.
“You are…” Above her head, he leaned into the wall with both forearms, making the chain clink, tightening it a tad. “Exquisite.”
“Hey.” Fern scrunched her toes. Her sandals were gone, and she was barefoot. Her thigh brushed his, and a shiver sent goose bumps rising all the way up her leg. And higher. Much higher.
This man was hot in an indescribably stupid way, but this was wrong. She shouldn’t react like this to being merely close to a male. Mustn’t. She was giving the scav ideas. A trapped girl, at his mercy.
The mechlings would help her. She gathered wits. *Hurry* she sent.
The word reverberated, swimming through his eyes, his body, fragments that coalesced into a sweeping tide of need.
She bit her lip, and his eyes narrowed, wrinkles appearing around them and she knew he looked at her, at her mouth, her body.
Her fingers ached where they held the chain, and she squirmed, enough to have his gaze saunter to her hips and below.
His eyes burned. His desires reflected her own.
So wrong.
“I think…” A big hand arrived over her mouth, warm palm flattening her lips, and he pushed her head to the wall. “I should taste you.”
She clamped onto a whimper that wanted out, closed her eyes, felt his mouth then tongue on her ear as he kissed her there. Warmth dragging down her neck, kissing her again, and again.
Someone moaned, and it couldn’t be her. Mustn’t be. She struggled against whatever muddled her thoughts.
Exquisite Possession: A Dark Scifi Romance (The Machinery of Desire Book 4) Page 2