Quantum

by Jess Anastasi

“So they could stick him in a holding cell for a few months and then let him out to try it on some other poor woman? You know me, Ella, you know me like no other person in this universe. You shouldn’t be surprised at what I’m capable of, or how I handled this situation.”

  Her lips pressed together, and she nodded, then she gathered the tattered edges of her dress and tugged them closed over her breasts.

  He clenched his fist on the knife handle and knelt to clean the blade off on the dead man’s shirt. That done, he cast a quick look at Ella, who stood there with her arms wrapped around herself, before he strode down to the water to wash the blood off his hand. He couldn’t do anything about his shirt until they got back to the Imojenna.

  “How did you know?”

  He hadn’t heard her walk up, but her words sounded close behind him, and the scent of moon jasmine wrapped around him with the night breeze.

  He stood but couldn’t find the words to answer her question and sure as hell couldn’t face her. The glittering, shifting water of the lake stretched out before him, a serene contrast to the violence within him that his mind didn’t even try to process anymore.

  “How did you know I was in trouble and exactly where to find me? I don’t even know where we are. He dragged me several blocks before we got here.”

  “I felt you.” The words came out so low and uneven he couldn’t be sure she’d even heard him. But then she moved to his side, stepping into his peripheral vision. “I felt something I couldn’t fight, and when I let it take me, it brought me here.”

  She reached up and put her hand on his shoulder, flattening her palm against his too-tense muscles. And for the first time, he didn’t flinch away when someone dared touch him, didn’t get that churn of sickening disgust at the simple human contact. But he got even tighter all over, like all his limbs and muscles and his very flesh had started turning to super-heated stone like rocks birthed from lava.

  He couldn’t move. Ella stepped around him until they were face-to-face. Her hand slid up his shoulder to his neck. When her fingers came in contact with his skin, he couldn’t help but shudder at the blooming calmness spreading through his fevered body, chasing back the greasy darkness within him.

  Her other hand came up to frame his face, palms gentle yet firm against his jaw. She pulled his head down, and no other thought besides warm pleasure cascaded through his mind. She moved closer and brought her forehead to rest against his.

  Tingling energy seemed to trickle into him where her hands pressed into his skin, and she released a long sigh, as though she could feel the sparkling, decadent energy between them just like he did. For all he knew, she could sense that and more; she never had explained her abilities or how they worked.

  His hands moved without conscious thought, cupping her shoulder, finding satiny-smooth skin. Mercy of christ… He couldn’t ever remember feeling like this. No—he almost could. Some long-lost distant time past, when he’d been a different man, before the Reidar shredded everything inside him.

  A light flashed in his peripheral vision, rousing him as though waking him from the thick fog of a dream.

  With a jolting shock that jump-started his system like getting two thousand volts to the heart, he dropped his hold on Ella and jerked back a step. The light flashed again and held on them, and Rian raised his arm to shade his face, trying to see the source of the light.

  “Both of you, stand right where you are and no sudden movements!”

  Now what? Rian lowered his arms and clenched his fists as the light dropped to point at the ground, and a man strode with purposeful steps toward them. Oh, frecking hell. A CP officer. And beyond him, at least two other officers stood over the dead body of the scum-bastard rapist.

  Christ. Why had he and Ella stood around here like they were on a Sunday picnic? They should have left the body and hightailed it for the ship before the dead man’s blood could even pool on the ground.

  “I’m CP Officer Hayashi.” The officer stopped several steps away, pointing the flashlight right at the middle of Rian’s chest, directly over the bright stain of blood. “In accordance with IPC law, the two of you are being taken into custody in relation to the dead body over here.”

  Rian stepped forward, clenching his fist over the urge to get his palm on a weapon.

  “Fine, you can take me, but why are you arresting her? She was the victim here. That bastard was trying to rape her. If he got killed over it, then I say it’s no big loss.”

  “Turn around and place your hands behind your back.” The officer jerked two pairs of flexicuffs out of his belt.

  Rian didn’t move but leveled a cold, hard glare on the officer. “Leave the woman alone. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You were both found within steps of a dead body. Until the forensics come in, you’re both under arrest.” Hayashi stepped forward and grabbed his shoulder, jerking him around to face the other way. Any warmth Ella had imparted was razed under the maddening indignation of the officer manhandling him.

  Rian clenched his fists tighter as the cuffs zipped into place around his wrists. He could have taken the shorter man down in less than a second. They could be back at the Imojenna and launch into orbit before any of the local authorities could put together the dead body with the unconscious officer to form a picture of their suspect escaping.

  Yet he already had one false charge of intergalactic terrorism hanging over his head—he didn’t want to add murder and fleeing the scene of a crime to that repertoire. Once the CP officer took him in and saw the truth of the situation, they’d let Ella and him go. Sure, it would delay their departure by a few hours, but some tiny speck in the place where his conscience used to be wanted to do the right thing for Ella’s sake.

  Hayashi stepped past him and started toward Ella.

  She held the edges of her dress tighter across her chest, hunching in on herself slightly.

  “Turn around, miss, and put your hands behind your back.” Hayashi at least didn’t jostle her the way he had Rian. Lucky for the man’s sake. Cuffs or no cuffs, he’d still have found a way to beat the man senseless for touching her when she was already so vulnerable.

  Hayashi’s expression and stance were unyielding; the officer would physically make her cooperate if she didn’t do as requested.

  Ella glanced at him, and the vulnerable sheen in her mossy-hazel gaze stabbed right into the middle of his chest. The darkness within him roused again, coming up faster, after being so recently loosed.

  “Get her something to cover herself up with.” His voice came out at not much more than a growl, and he clenched his fists, trying to resist the killing urge bubbling to the surface. Ella might get over the fact he’d killed her attacker, even if she didn’t agree. But if he killed one of these officers, he got the feeling it would take him to a place he couldn’t come back from, reminding him of something she’d once told him.

  A vortex of blackness from your soul, something that was slowly sucking the life out of every good thing you have in your heart… You’d be lucky to live out another year. And if you did, you wouldn’t like the soulless creature you’d become.

  Rian had believed for so long that there was no redemption for him, though Ella had tried to convince him otherwise. Now, as his destroyer’s instincts warred with what his logical mind told him was the right thing to do, a third desire clambered for attention. It came from the same depths of his soul that had sent him running out here in the first place—protect Ella at all cost. Even if it meant denying the dark pits of his nature, because she believed he could.

  Unsurprisingly, Officer Hayashi ignored his demand to cover Ella and reached out to grab her upper arm when it seemed like she wasn’t moving fast enough for him. He secured her wrists behind her back. Now she was faced away from him and the other CP officers, but when she turned back around, she’d be half naked for everyone to see and unable to keep the torn halves of her dress covering herself.

  Rage pulsed through him in hot waves. He fle
xed his wrists against the cuffs and glanced over his shoulder to see what the other two CP officers were doing—examining the body and not paying too much attention.

  “I’m going to have to search you for a weapon, miss,” Officer Hayashi was saying. Something in the tenor of the man’s voice snagged Rian’s attention, as though the guy was all but drooling over the fact he was about to frisk a half-clothed woman.

  The notion snapped the last of his logic. Rian jerked at his arms while twisting to snap the flexicuffs—wasn’t the first time he’d escaped the bindings and probably wouldn’t be the last. He shot forward and grabbed Hayashi’s arm, bending the limb behind the man’s back and grabbing the officer’s shirt collar to steer him around like a body shield so the other two officers didn’t shoot him.

  “How—” Hayashi started to stutter, but Rian turned his fist in his shirt collar, tightening it around the man’s neck and cutting off his words.

  “I asked you to get something to cover the lady up with. She was attacked, and you’re treating her like a criminal. Obviously the IPC forgot to train you backwater, inbred hayseeds the basics of liaising with the public.” He glanced over at the other two officers. “Now one of you is going to give Ella your jacket, or Hayashi here is going to start having a very bad night—worse than he already is.”

  The two CP officers shared a quick glance, and the one on the left shrugged out of his jacket. The officer held the jacket up and started forward with hesitant steps. As he got closer, Rian released Hayashi’s arm but unholstered the man’s pulse pistol and shoved Hayashi away.

  When the CP officer got close enough, Rian snatched the jacket and motioned for him to move back with the other two. Shifting, he caught Ella in his peripheral and saw she still stood with her back to them.

  “Ella? Come over here, and I’ll cut you free.”

  She shuffled back, and he pulled out his knife. One of the officers started to make a move, probably thinking he was distracted, but Rian squeezed off a shot at the ground about an inch from the officer’s foot, making the guy freeze.

  “Next one is going into your face, and I don’t have this thing set to stun.” Rian passed a glance over the other two men, making sure they got the message that the same went for them. He might have had second thoughts about killing them first off, but if they pushed him far enough, he would end them to get Ella and himself out of this situation, IPC law be damned.

  Once the three officers were still again, he lowered his gaze long enough to flick the tip of his knife through the flexicuffs on her wrists. That done, he dropped the jacket onto her shoulders. Ella fastened the garment up to her neck and turned, sending him a small smile, her expression grateful yet still guarded.

  “Now what are you going to do?” Her tone came out quiet and even, chasing back some of the burning agitation within him.

  He glanced back at the officers and as he did caught sight of several more figures moving across the grass toward them. Great. Reinforcements. A feminine figure stepped forward, coming to stop next to Hayashi. Ah, hell. It was that interversal liaison chick. Because he really needed this situation to get more complicated via government involvement.

  “Ms. Faulkner,” Ella greeted as the woman cast a quick glance over them.

  “Please, call me Alyssa.” She sent Hayashi a quick, unimpressed glare. “What’s going on here?”

  Rian lowered the gun, since he didn’t have a reason to shoot Faulkner…yet.

  “Would you like to explain, Officer Hayashi?” He set the pistol back to stun and tossed the gun so it landed at the man’s feet.

  Hayashi cast him a thwarted glare then bent to retrieve the weapon. It seemed like the guy wasn’t so tough now that Faulkner had made the scene. Just how much pull with the high president did the woman have?

  Ella shifted, her shoulder brushing his as she stepped closer to Faulkner.

  “If I may, Alyssa, I’ll explain.” Her calm, light tone was at odds with her ripped clothing and tearstained face.

  Faulkner nodded, and the two women walked a few paces away. Ella’s voice was quiet but firm as she explained the scene. Diplomatic as always, she made it sound like self-defense when she told the other woman the part about him knifing the bastard who’d attacked her. When Ella was finished, Faulkner glared at Hayashi.

  “Captain Sherron, I’m sorry that our CP officers tried to detain you over this incident when you were clearly only trying to protect yourself and Ms. Kinton. We’ll need to get an official statement from both of you, and the case will need to be finalized before you can leave Nadira, but I’m sure you understand and won’t mind staying for the duration?”

  Rian stared at her, trying to keep the pissed off from showing in his expression. Just how long would it take them finalize the case? He and his crew needed to get offworld to intercept the Swift Brion like yesterday. Ella returned to his side and nudged him, so he cleared his throat and nodded.

  “Of course. I understand.” And if he sounded unimpressed about it, then too bad. This was about as polite as he got.

  “Thank you. Now, I’ll let you return to your ship and expect you at the law offices in the morning for a statement.” Faulkner inclined her head politely toward them and then turned to glower down her nose at Hayashi. “Officer, if I might have a word?”

  Rian took Ella’s arm and steered her away from the scene, taking a roundabout path to avoid the body.

  Delayed, again. His luck was running a crappy streak like usual. But at least he hadn’t ended tonight in a prison cell. He glanced down at Ella keeping up a quick pace as they walked along silently. He wanted to curl his arm around her shoulders, keep her close and safe from any more harm. Instead, he set his palms on his weapons and concentrated on keeping an eye out for anyone else looking to tangle with him tonight.

  Not that he’d need weapons if Ella decided to employ those Arynian abilities every now and then. He still didn’t have a clear picture on her full range of powers, but he was pretty sure she could have put that scum-bastard would-be rapist down for the count with a single thought. Screw whatever teachings she’d gotten on that cloistered planet to not retaliate unless her life was directly threatened. Out in the harsh dark of the galaxy, a person needed to utilize everything in their arsenal to protect herself.

  That was the lesson she needed to learn. But it sure as hell wasn’t his obligation to impart it to her. He didn’t want the responsibility and definitely didn’t need it.

  But no matter that he tried his damnedest to stay detached from her, fate kept finding ways to shove her into his orbit. And like a moon attracting meteors, it was getting harder and harder to resist.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Onboard the Ebony Winter

  Mae watched as the crew of the Ebony Winter stowed the crate they’d stolen from the Isis Delta shuttle. She glanced over her shoulder, but Zander and Captain Forster were nowhere to be seen. Who knew where they’d disappeared to, but she’d bet her entire emergency fund stash that they’d still be having the my ship is bigger than your ship argument.

  Stupid men and their stupid egos. She still couldn’t believe Zander had yanked her away from Forster like that, as though she was some bimbo damsel who couldn’t take care of herself. Okay, maybe a small part of her had been secretly thrilled that he’d all but staked his claim, despite every complicated thing between them. Except now Forster knew if he wanted to piss Zander off, all he had to do was flirt with her, and it’d be all on. Forster might want to keep his hands to himself, however, or she’d show him exactly why it was she didn’t need Zander’s arrogant, caveman-like protection.

  Mae pushed the thoughts aside and kept her face blank as one of the women came over, aiming a friendly yet hesitant smile at her.

  The woman held out a hand as she stopped. “Hi. I’m Lucie Somers.”

  Mae returned the handshake. “Mae Petros.”

  No point dealing in rank out here. Besides, she hadn’t actually been back with the IPC military and tech
nically she’d gone AWOL, even though the official paperwork probably had her listed as dead after the not-so-accidental shuttle crash.

  Mae returned her attention to the two guys finishing up securing the crate. “So, am I allowed to ask what that’s all about?”

  Lucie glanced across the cargo bay and then shrugged one shoulder. “You can ask, but I probably won’t tell you. How much information you’re given is up to Qae.”

  “Qae?”

  Lucie looked back at her with a short smile. “Sorry. I mean Captain Forster.”

  She cast an assessing glance over the woman, trying to get a read on her body language. “So either you’re sleeping with him, or Qae doesn’t stand much on ceremony.”

  Lucie laughed, a wicked spark in her gaze. “Wow, that was blunt. I like you already.”

  “I’ve generally found dancing around an issue doesn’t get me very far in this universe,” she answered, distracted when the two guys who’d secured the crate walked past them, heading out of the cargo bay. She looked back at Lucie. “So, what’s next for the Ebony Winter? More raiding, or are you delivering that cargo?”

  Lucie shot her an exasperated look. “I said I liked you, but I’m still not saying a word. You’ll have to take it up with Qae. What I can do is give you a tour and find you a bunk.”

  Some of the tension drained out of Mae’s shoulders. Lucie seemed nice enough. While it would be smart to keep on constant guard until Zander and she got off the Ebony Winter, she didn’t sense that any of the crew meant them any harm, or even that they were bad people.

  She returned Lucie’s friendly smile. “Lead the way.”

  “So, you’ve seen the cargo bay.” Lucie swept a hand out, indicating the space around them. “Next stop is utility storage.”

  Mae followed her out of the cargo bay, but when they reached the passage where a short set of stairs led to the levels above, they bumped into Zander coming from the other direction.

  “There you are.” A relieved expression crossed his face, then the captain admiral mask was firmly back in place. “If you wouldn’t mind, I was hoping we could have a private word?”