Spaceport: Paralyzer
Marteeka Karland
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Copyright ©2008 Marteeka Karland
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ISBN: 978-1-59596-999-6
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Editor: Katriena Knights
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Spaceport: Paralyzer
Marteeka Karland
Starla, a Paralyzer mage of the Vastus, has been assigned to be bodyguard to, of all people, a rock star. After an attempt on Tygor Gold’s life, she finds herself on Spaceport Adana as, in her mind, a glorified babysitter. What she doesn’t realize is she is but a pawn in the greater scheme of things.
Tygor has his own magic and reasons for not joining the Vastus as a mage. When his magic and Starla’s collide, the results are more than even the Vastus could have predicted. Driven by something more than magic, more than chemistry, the two must find a way to exist together…
And to survive.
Chapter One
Fucking loud-assed music.
Starla McIntyre couldn’t hear herself think, let alone concentrate on the subtle changes that might signal an attack on her charge. Tygor Gold didn’t sing so much as scream his lyrics. And everything about him and the band, Darkest Knight, was just fucking loud.
He wore bright red leather pants and nothing else. His feet bare. His chest bare. Shoulder-length, shaggy hair hung around his face in wild, untamed, raven-colored curls, giving him an animalistic appearance. The other -- all male -- members of the band were equally flamboyant in appearance. Not one of them was anything less than perfectly sculpted muscle.
Tygor, though…
He was large, with the musculature of a man who had worked very hard for a very long time. He wasn’t sculpted, like his band mates, but rugged. Hard. Deadly. Just looking at him sent shivers down her spine, not all of them bad. Sometimes he’d gaze at her with fierce, possessive, lust-filled eyes. At least, that’s how Starla took it. Then she’d look in the mirror.
She was too skinny to be attractive. Her frame was filled with wiry muscle. Discipline the body, discipline the mind, was the Vastus’s teaching, and she’d been a good pupil. The few lovers she’d taken had never been particularly impressed with the discipline of her body. Every single one of them ended up with wonderfully curvy vixens after they left her. The women Tygor had been holographed with in the past had all been that way.
Still, the man on stage seemed out of place compared with his hologram images. He played the part well, but Starla was certain he didn’t really want to be up there. His songs were dynamic and charismatic, but he didn’t interact with the audience as she’d seen in the holo images. Something was… off.
Men and women fawned over him, yet he shunned all of them since she’d joined the troupe. Other members of Darkest Knight took their pleasures often and exuberantly, but in the two weeks Starla had been with them, she had yet to see Tygor Gold take a lover. Man or woman. Even the band members commented on it. She supposed his sudden celibacy made her job that much easier, but it was disconcerting and raised her hackles. People did not suddenly deviate from their normal habits without a reason. Perhaps Tygor had decided to act responsibly as a result of the attempt on his life three months prior.
Starla had been sent here by Darkest Knight’s manager to be Tygor’s bodyguard. The singer had come very close to death when he was attacked, and her job was to prevent it from happening again. She’d spent two weeks in surveillance, planning her defensive stance before joining them, then another two weeks living near them and getting to know them. This was a new situation for her. Normally, she took the offensive, but her instructions were to protect only. Under no circumstances was she to go after the assailant. It made absolutely no sense to her.
She ground her teeth in frustration, not for the first time. Babysitting. She was a glorified babysitter. A glorious waste of time for a Vastus mage. The Continuum only sent their highest-level mages on the most important -- or highest paying -- missions. Starla couldn’t fathom why they had sent her to babysit a rock star.
As she rounded the perimeter of The Haze, the bar on Spaceport Adana the band had played for the last three days, she had to push her way through the undulating, screaming crowd. The noise beat into her brain, and bodies pressed against her. For a moment, she lost sight of both Tygor and her next checkpoint.
Making her way through the crowd as she set watchful spells proved more difficult than she’d originally thought, but she made steady progress forward. Once she reached the bar, she ignored the bartender and hopped up to sit on the end of the bar, craning her neck to see around the crowd, looking for possible threats. Why in the damned universe this man chose to put himself out in the open if he was so worried about his own safety was beyond her.
Hiring a woman to protect him? It was an image Starla found hard to buy. He was a man who always seemed to be in control. She shrugged. Oh, well. Who was she to complain? Tygor was the hottest man she’d ever seen. Sometimes she had to shake herself to keep from staring. Sometimes, she almost reached out and touched him.
She sighed as her thoughts turned inward, trying to escape the noise. The mind spells she’d set throughout the crowd would alert her if anything were amiss. This was a mentally exhausting mission and once she confronted Tygor Gold and forced him out of the limelight, things would get worse. She didn’t have any choice. Keeping up with the group’s exhaustive schedule for even two weeks had weakened her mentally and physically, though it galled her to admit it. She needed sleep. She needed to get Darkest Knight off the stage and away from places like Spaceport Adana.
As she contemplated exactly how to accomplish this, her thoughts were interrupted when one of her spells exploded in the crowd, forcing everyone away from the stage. Immediately, Starla jumped to her feet on the bar and launched herself in the general direction of the stage. Her heart was pounding, but her training took over, and she blocked out everything but what her spells and her own senses fed her. Her eyes were firmly fixed on Tygor. Her top priority was to get him out of danger.
She hadn’t yet determined where the threat originated from, but her other spells spoke directly to her mind, being her eyes and ears in all directions.
There. Behind one of the speakers.
Sniper.
That he’d made it so far into the bar alarmed Starla greatly, but she’d have to think about that later. He was aiming at Tygor, using the singer’s confusion to his advantage.
Starla focused on getting to Tygor and taking him down. It was imperative she give the gunman another target. She was confident enough in her own magical shields to make herself that target.
Tygor looked all around him, his stance ready for battle. She vaguely registered this as she hit him in the midsection with her shoulder, effectively taking his place in the sniper’s line of fire.
There was a quiet little zing zing
as the porcelain projectiles launched from the gun, and Starla felt like someone had thumped her in the shoulder and back with a mining rod. She lost all feeling in her right arm, rendering her gun hand useless. Whipping her head around, she caught sight of the assailant. Their gazes locked. Got you.
The gunman’s eyes widened a fraction before the full effect of her power struck him. His gun fell from his spasming hands before he went completely and utterly still.
Letting the full effect of her spell take hold of the would-be killer for about thirty seconds, Starla knew the terror she had spawned in the man. She was a Paralyzer. A rare and unique talent even among the Vastus. She could stun her prey for a few seconds, or render them completely immobile. She had control of every muscle in their bodies -- voluntary and involuntary muscles alike. This time, she’d paralyzed the man’s respiratory system, but not his heart. She had never stopped someone’s heart, and hoped she never had to use her gift to such extremes. But when she wanted to make an impression on her prey and show them exactly what she was capable of, this was the best way.
Struggling to her feet, she stumbled to the man, never taking her gaze from him. “You aren’t going to die today. Not yet, anyway. I only want you to understand what I can do. If left in your present state, you would expire. Slow and painful though it would be.” She gave him an evil smile, as if she’d enjoy watching just that. “I have the ability to stop your heart, but I would prefer to bring you to the authorities unharmed. You should know, however, that if you give me any grief whatsoever, I have no qualms about simply killing you and being done with it.” She released her hold on him, allowing the now red-faced man to breathe. “Do we understand each other?”
He collapsed on the floor, nodding twice, breathing hard. Satisfied, Starla motioned to two rapidly approaching security officers to take the man away. She turned back to Tygor, her body starting to feel the effects of the gunshots.
When she did, she slammed into a massive, hard chest and cringed at the pain the jarring caused her.
“Your instructions were not to go after my assailant under any circumstances. Can you not follow even the simplest of orders?” He didn’t sound like a man who was grateful she’d just saved his life.
“It’s not like I chased him halfway around the station.” Starla kept her gaze on the prisoner as they marched him out of The Haze, tying off a mind spell that would let her know if the man caused any more trouble. The pain in her arm was becoming almost unbearable now. “I didn’t even raise a finger to apprehend him.” It took all her strength of will to keep her voice anywhere close to normal. Her arm was still basically useless, but it ached horribly from her shoulder to her fingertips.
“Indeed,” Tygor sneered. The big man grabbed her uninjured arm in a bruising, vice-like grip, turned, and stalked toward a door just offstage, practically dragging her with him.
Starla grimaced. This whole thing puzzled her. She needed to rethink everything she’d been told and thought she knew about Tygor, but it was going to take everything she had to simply make it to her safe area on the first level of the station.
“You’re going to have to move faster. Your arm’s hurt, not your legs,” he growled at her, and Starla flinched inwardly. Damned man. She didn’t know him that well, but she decided that second she didn’t like him.
She knew he was right, and she had no reason not to be moving more quickly, but the pain was getting to her. She was a mage, not a warrior, and had never experienced a wound such as this. The pain was making her sick and light-headed.
Vaguely, she was aware of him turning and throwing something long, dark and heavy around her shoulders. Muttering under his breath and giving her an annoyed huff she had no hope of fully appreciating, he hefted her up to lie across the back of his shoulders. The pain in her arm pierced through her like a laser knife, and she cried out.
“Bite your lip,” Tygor hissed. “Don’t make a sound and don’t move.”
Starla wanted to argue, but something in his voice kept her quiet. She closed her eyes tightly against the pain hitting her with every jolt. After several minutes of her body jarring against Tygor’s with each hurried step he made, she ached all over, and her shoulder throbbed. The second bullet had hit her in the right side of her upper back. The pain had merged with the shoulder wound, and now even her fingertips were tingling with pain.
This was going wrong. All wrong. She was supposed to be the protector, and here was her charge saving her ass. She’d be discharged from the Vastus for sure.
When at last Tygor approached a door -- which promptly slid open to admit them -- the right side of Starla’s upper body was in agony. Still, obeying Tygor, she didn’t utter a sound until he dumped her on a huge bed. She groaned then, the sharp, stabbing pain becoming intolerable.
“Stupid woman!” She barely registered his words. Her ears rang and her head swam so that she couldn’t concentrate on anything. “You did exactly what they wanted you to.”
Starla tried to speak, wanted to defend herself. She’d saved his life, for crying out loud! But her vision started to fade at the edges, and she didn’t care anymore.
* * *
“Good thing she’d prepared armor spells around her. Those might have been porcelain projectiles, but they had an exploding tip. Illegal, to say the least, but they do get on station.”
Starla recognized the voice, but she simply couldn’t muster the strength to open her eyes. She fucking hurt like hell, but the pain was more tolerable than when she’d passed out.
“Will she be all right?” That was Tygor’s gruff voice.
“She’ll be uncomfortable, to say the least, but she should be good after a few days. Thank goodness she’s in good shape. If she’d been one of the fluffy women you normally associate yourself with, the concussion might have killed her.”
She groaned. It was the only sound she could make, but it wasn’t because of the pain. She’d fucking passed out! How embarrassing was that? So much for the great Vastus Paralyzer mage. After this, she’d be lucky if they allowed her to keep her abilities at all.
She was the first Paralyzer the Continuum had allowed the Vastus in over five hundred years. They had tried to breed out the Paralyzer gene within the mages, and anyone exhibiting that quality was quickly altered. The doctors within the Continuum were able to isolate the “mage” genes, but not specific traits within them. When they tried, they destroyed them all. Once her abilities had manifested themselves, she should have had the “mage” gene removed, but instead the Vastus had convinced the Continuum that, with careful supervision, they should nurture her ability under the strictest of controlled environments.
The reason she’d gone on this mission was to test not only her ability, but her control. There was no denying she’d controlled her magic in every aspect, but her abilities would now be severely in question. The magic was easy, but she’d failed utterly in the primary mission she’d been given. Instead of protecting Tygor, he’d had to get her out of trouble.
“About time you came around.” Tygor’s gruff, husky voice was above her now. “Now that you’ve proven yourself to be an effective Paralyzer, we need to get the fuck off this station and you back to the Vastus.”
He sounded supremely pissed. When she finally managed to open eyelids that felt like they’d been glued shut, she saw he looked just as annoyed as he sounded.
Starla shook her head, trying to pull herself together. “I can go myself,” she managed to get out. “I’ll call for a replacement and stay until…”
“You will do what I tell you, silly mage,” Tygor snapped. “You almost got yourself killed today. I’d prefer not to have your death on my conscience.”
“I saved your life.”
He rounded on her, showing a side of the man not in his bio. “You exposed your talents to a hostile force. We’re on the outer fringes of civilization. Do you have any idea what that means out here?”
Starla was taken aback. She’d been sent here to use her talen
ts, not hide like a rat on the station. “I was sent here to protect you. The only one who insisted I not use my powers was you. Why did you bring me with you if you wanted me to sit on my ass and let you get killed?”
Tygor stuck a finger in her face. “This isn’t about me now, little girl, it’s about you, and you’ve played right into their hands.”
The pain in her shoulder made it hard to think clearly, but this just didn’t make any sense. Starla batted his hand away and sat up gingerly. “Look. I was sent to protect you, and that’s exactly what I did. I even took two bullets meant for you. So tell me. How is this about me instead of you?”
The room was sparse and contained only the bed against one wall where Starla lay, two chairs and a table. Metal bulkheads left unadorned gave the room an impersonal feeling. Where were they?
“Because --” the man whose voice she’d recognized earlier leaned against the bulkhead and crossed his arms, “-- this has been an elaborate ruse to see if there really was another Paralyzer mage within the Vastus.” Posh, one of the band members, had a small grin on his face, as if he were waiting to see how the scene would play out.
Starla looked from Posh to Tygor and stood up slowly, careful not to do her body any more harm. She just wanted to get back to the Continuum and the Vastus where things made sense. “That’s absurd.” She shook her head. Tygor growled and advanced on her, looking for all the universe like the feline his name suggested. “Wait!” She held up a hand to him and took an involuntary step backward until her legs bumped the bed. “I mean, how could anyone possibly know I’d be with Darkest Knight? The Vastus do not send high level mages to babysit.” She tried to look indignant, but was sure she failed miserably when Posh snorted and Tygor rolled his eyes.
“Well,” Tygor’s voice almost purred, “here we are.” He spread his arms out, a mocking expression on his face. “And there you are. High ranking mage and all that.”
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