Which is ridiculous, because she’s going to stink of musty old coats and nothing but time makes the old war memories fade when they decide to come on like this.
“What’s wrong with your arms?” she says.
“Nothing,” I say. “My scales harden when I go in to battle mode. Great for deflecting laser fire, not so great for moving gracefully.”
“You’re not in a battle,” she says.
I tap my head. “Brain sometimes takes some persuading on that.”
“Like PTSD?” When I give her a blank look, she elaborates. “Um, veterans of wars on my planet sometimes get this disorder where their bodies think they’re still at war, or something like that. I saw a documentary one time about how art therapy was used to help…” she trails off, shaking her head. “I’m blathering again.”
“Sounds like you watch a lot of documentaries,” I say.
“Boring, I know.”
I shake my head. “Does this disorder involve flashbacks?”
“I think so.”
“Then maybe I’ve got something like it.”
She’s quiet a moment, then, “Do you want to tell me about your flashback?”
I think of her last night, shaking her head when I asked her if she wanted to talk about her bad memories.
“Will you tell me about yours?” I say.
“I don’t think they’re comparable. You fought in a war. You must have experienced far worse things than I ever did.”
“Soldiers don’t have monopoly on trauma,” I say. “Just because you might perceive mine to be worse, doesn’t make yours any less valid.”
She stays silent, eyes locked on the floor.
“This mountain…” I say. “I think they were mining Leshantu crystals down here. Leshantu crystals block electronics. The Prenetashi used them as weapons. You can suspend shards of Leshantu crystals in a special liquid that neutralises them temporarily, then all you have to do is drop the vial with the shard inside it on to a ship. The vial smashes, the liquid runs away and the crystal starts transmitting again. Take down a whole battlecruiser that way. Very dangerous. Quite often the person trying to use the weapon ends up dying, too. I was remembering a time when we lost one of our battlecruisers. A ship that size might have ten thousand souls on board, and not even half of them soldiers. Doctors and nurses and cooks and cleaners and engineers and analysts. Civilians helping the soldiers fight. The battlecruiser fell out of the sky and all those people… their lives ended in fire.” I scrub my hands over my face, trying to root myself in the now. “Most of the time it’s like there’s a box in my head for all these things. They stay in their box and I’m fine. But sometimes things open that box just a crack, and memories slip out.”
“I think the Abbarax blew my box wide open,” she says.
I look across at her, catching her eyes in the half light.
“You don’t have to tell me yours,” I say. “But you can, if you want to.”
She grimaces. “It was my fault, really. I’ve got a sister, she’s six years older than me. When she was seventeen, she started seeing this guy. An older guy. He could drive and buy alcohol, so we thought he was the shit, you know? Nat used to dress to impress him, loved that he thought she was mature, not like the other girls her age.”
My scales had been softening, but her words make my heart kick again. Not my own fear or panic, this time, but a cold dread about where this is going.
“I was in awe of him, of them. I used to try to be like Nat - dress up in nice clothes, wear make up. I thought… I thought maybe he’d think I was cool, too, that he’d want to include me. He was taking Nat out all the time, for dinner, to hotels. It had always been just me and my sister before then, you know? I missed her, and I was jealous about being left behind. I used to follow him round like a puppy, do everything I could to get his attention. And one day, he gave it to me.”
I grit my teeth, trying to breathe through the rage the fighting instinct is filling me with. My scales are diamond hard and nothing would make me happy like finding this guy and biting the hands he used to touch her clean off.
“I was fifteen,” she says, and I hope she’s not aware of the battle I’m fighting to stay calm. “He didn’t get very far. Someone… someone intervened. It wasn’t even that bad. But for weeks afterwards, I used to imagine all the ways that it could have gone if that person hadn’t saved me. That’s what the Abbarax was showing me. The imaginary scenario, not the reality.”
She looks across at me, frowning. She leans forwards, raising her hand, touching it gently to my chest. I look away. I don’t want her softness against my rough, hard scales. In that moment, I hate the aberration that I am, wish the snarling, instinctual, scaly Dravosic side of me didn’t exist.
“Still in battle mode?” she asks.
I can’t tell her that I want to kill the man who abused her and made her feel like it was her fault.
“It will pass in a minute,” I say.
She nods, takes back her hand. But then she pushes herself up, shifts herself so she’s sitting next to me, resting her head on my shoulder, taking my hand in hers. Calm steals over me, a sense of rightness, of wholeness. Her touch pushes back the rage and the fight and my scales soften, my heart slows back down until I feel normal again.
“You’re not spiking my head anymore,” she says, then lets go of my hand, pressing hers to my chest again. “Back to normal.”
I should make a joke, lighten the mood. Or at least just tell her we should get moving again.
“It wasn’t your fault, Charlie,” I say instead.
Her eyes dart away from mine. I catch her face in my hand and draw her back to me.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I say again. “You were a child.”
“You don’t stay a child long where I’m from,” she says. “I should have known better.”
“He should have known better. Not. Your. Fault.” The last words come out on a snarl, the scales on my chest rippling against her hand as they start to harden again. I’m immediately ashamed, worried I’ve frightened her, but she just smirks at me.
“You don’t have to protect me from Mark, Captain, he’s in prison.”
“So he should be,” I say.
I push myself away from the wall, going to stand, but before I can, Charlie’s arms go around me, her body pressed against mine. Her head nestles on my shoulder, and I’m so surprised that for a long moment, I forget how to breathe. When my neurones start firing again, I wrap my arms around her, hold her. Note how perfectly her body fits against mine.
She draws back, but before she leaves my arms completely, she presses her mouth to my cheek. No one has ever put their mouth on my body before, and if you asked me five minutes ago what it would be like, I’d have thought disgusting. But the soft press of her lips sends tingles through my skin that I feel long after she leaves my arms.
We’ve been walking for another half an hour or so when Charlie stops, pointing ahead of us.
“Looks like there are lights,” she says, keeping her voice low.
I cover the light I’m carrying with my hands. Without its glow, it’s easier to detect the light ahead - a subtle, but definite shift in the quality of darkness.
“Put this under your coat,” I say, handing her our light. “And stick behind me.”
I can’t hear anything, but it pays to be careful. As we creep forwards, the light ahead gets brighter. I can see the end of the tunnel now, the mouth of it dark against the glow beyond. I gesture for Charlie to wait, then unclip my knife from my belt. As I edge closer to the end of the tunnel, I see what’s giving off the light and drop my guard.
“Come here,” I say to Charlie, holding a hand out to her.
She takes it, and I draw her into the clearing beyond the tunnel. She lets out a soft exhalation of breath as she sees what’s ahead of us.
Crystals. Luminous blue crystals. Hundreds of them glittering out of every surface around us.
“They’re beautiful,”
she says, spinning to take them all in, her bad foot forgotten.
“They are,” I say, but my eyes are on her, the way the blue light of the crystals gives her an ethereal glow. The way they sparkle off her irises. She is so vecking beautiful and I am in deep bovi-shit.
“Are they those crystals you were talking about? The ones that can take out battlecruisers?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Funny, isn’t it, how something so pretty can be so dangerous.”
Funny indeed.
The walk gets harder after that, the tunnel beyond the Leshantu cave definitely inclining upwards. It’s good and bad. Good that we must be getting closer to the exit. Bad that walking up is so much worse for Charlie. She’s breathing hard after a few moments, but struggles on, never complaining once. When the incline increases, I stop her with a touch and pick her up, carry her until the floor levels out again.
After another half an hour, I see something ahead of us that makes my heart lift.
“Is that…” Charlie says, her voice breathy with the effort of walking.
“Daylight,” I say with a grin. “It’s daylight.”
I don’t think we’ve gone far enough to be at the surface yet, but sunlight is streaming in from somewhere. I hurry forwards, listening for any sign of hostiles as I emerge into the next clearing. It’s a cavern, huge as the one we rested in overnight, but unlike that space, sealed off from all light deep in the belly of the mountain, this space has to be close to the surface. Because high up above us, a gap in the rocks looked out onto blue sky. Light drips down from the gap like molten gold.
“It’s much warmer here,” Charlie says, shrugging off the heavy coat as she steps into the beam of sunlight, turning her face upwards into it.
Bathed in light, her bumps and bruises are much more obvious. The brand new white top is brown and black with dirt, occasionally rusty red where she’s been scuffed and cut. The material has ripped in place, as has the material of her trousers. She has to be hurting far worse than she’s letting on.
My fierce little survivor.
My Dravosic instincts put a lot of strength behind that ‘my’. I close my eyes and force that primal side of me back down. This is just a schoolboy crush on a woman I can’t have mingling with needs that have gone too long unfulfilled. It’s not true mating instinct. Dravosics only mate other Dravosics. Mate bonds don’t go across species. It’s part of why hybrids are so reviled. It’s seen as a perversion of the sanctity of the mate bond.
Even though not all species have them. Even though my Dravosic father forced himself on my Garvenian mother and didn’t think that a perversion. Just that I was born as a result of it.
I’m a twisted mess of emotions and right on the edge of my control, but Charlie’s voice cuts through all that when she calls to me from a little deeper in the cavern.
“Dhak? I think we’ve got a problem.”
Chapter 18
Charlie
There’s a flipping canyon in the middle of the room. Not quite on the scale of the Grand Canyon, perhaps, but it’s deep and wide. I peer down into it and get vertigo before I can figure out if I can see the bottom.
Basically, if I fall in there, I’m dead. That’s all I need to know.
I back up away from it, just in case the ground next to it isn’t stable. I’ve seen cartoons. Edges of cliffs crumble all the time. I’m not going to be that person who stands too close and has a brief moment of terror as they fall before they’re reduced to a pile of jam.
Nope.
Dhak apparently doesn’t have these totally realistic and reasonable concerns. He just walks straight up to the edge, dropping down into a crouch and examining what looks like a few charred bits of wood.
“Think this used to be a bridge here,” he says. “This was probably the main entrance for the mines, with that cave of crystals so close by. Whoever was operating out here must have blown it when they abandoned the mines. Wouldn’t want the enemy finding their source of Leshantu crystals.”
“Not very considerate for people trying to escape,” I say, trying to keep my tone light, though panic is making my heartbeat flutter.
I can’t walk much further. Dhak’s already had to carry me once, and I’m in so much pain right now, I can’t even contemplate going back down into the mountain and finding another route out. I’m hungry, I’m tired and reaching the end of my ability to cope.
Dhak steps back a bit, looking up. “There are some support beams up there. They look pretty solid.”
He unhooks something from his belt. My eyes widen as I realise it’s a grapple.
“Who are you, Batman?”
Dhak frowns, confusion on his face. Guess there is no translation for Human superheroes.
“Is a grapple standard issue for space police officers?” I say.
“No, this is a left over from my army days. This thing has got me out of more jams than I can count. Don’t go on any adventure into a haunted mountain without one.”
With expert precision, he aims, fires, the grapple shooting through the air and somehow wrapping round one of the beams overhead. Then takes the other end and attaches it to a device on his belt. When it’s securely in place, Dhak leans back and tugs on it, testing his weight on it. The grapple holds, and his weight doesn’t so much as shift any dust.
“They’re solid,” he says.
“You want me to swing over the ravine?” I say.
I change my mind. I can walk. I can run a marathon.
“I want you to hold tight to me while I swing us both over the ravine,” Dhak says.
“Both of us?” I squeak. “On that tiny little wire?”
“I’ve used one of these carrying heavy equipment, fallen soldiers - things that weigh a hell of a lot more than you do. It’s safe, I promise.”
He holds out a hand to me, and I edge forwards, watching the ravine closely incase it decides to move any closer.
“Charlie,” Dhak says, his voice gentle, but a little teasing. “Trust me.”
I step up next to him, and he puts an arm round my waist, pulling me close.
“If we plunge to our deaths, know that all the way down, I’ll be blaming you,” I say.
He just chuckles, and close as I am I can feel it in my entire body. He has a nice laugh, and it doesn’t feel like he’s laughing at me.
“Wrap your arms around me and hold on,” he says.
I do, gripping him as tight as I can. He leans back, testing the wire again and nothing moves, nothing shifts. Then he reels the grapple in until I’m completely off the floor, dangling from his neck like a terrified child, and his feet are just barely touching the floor with the tips of his toes.
“Ready?” he says.
“No,” I say, burying my face in his chest so I don’t have to see my impending death.
He takes a few steps back, then runs forwards and jumps.
I let out a small squeak as we take off, the ground dropping out beneath us. We fall a little, but the wire catches us with a little jolt and then we’re flying through the air, graceful. It’s almost pleasant.
Then Dhak releases the grapple and for a millisecond we’re free falling. His feet touch down almost straight away, but my heart doesn’t quite register it, pounding in terror. I continue to grip him, not yet ready to let go. He sets me down very gently.
“We’re safe on the other side now,” he says, laughing again.
“My feet know that, but my brain doesn’t quite believe it yet,” I say. “I’m blaming the Abbarax.”
I release him a little, letting my good foot take my weight in stages, checking it’s not going to give out beneath me. Then I realise I’m standing with one arm looped across Dhak’s shoulders, the other pressed against his chest, enveloped in the circle of his arms and I don’t think it’s just my elation that I’m not splatted on the bottom of the ravine that has my heart racing.
Because damn, being in his arms feels all kinds of incredible.
“Has your bra
in caught up with your feet yet?” he says, voice all husky and sexy. And apparently I don’t even care that he’s an alien - blue skin, scales and all - because the flutter in my stomach is definitely attraction.
“Just about,” I say, my voice an embarrassing squeak that I’m sure I can play off as recovering from terror.
God, I hope I can. Because this hero worshipping crush I’m developing is frankly embarrassing.
I pull myself together, stepping back from him. My bad ankle is still a symphony of pain but I try to keep it off my face.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
The next tunnel angles upwards steep enough that whoever made it has attached a rope to the wall. I try to haul myself up, but I don’t have the strength left to keep going. The third time I have to take a breather to keep myself upright, Dhak picks me up, cradling me in his arms.
And then, at last, blinding light at the end of the tunnel. I have to shield my eyes to look towards it, hope bursting in my chest at the thought of finally being out from underneath the mountain. I’m aware that it’s just step one on the journey to being safely back on the ship, but it’s a pretty big step one, and I’m so happy to finally be ticking it off our list.
Except, as we get closer, it becomes clear that the mountain isn’t quite done with us yet.
Dhak sets me down on the floor then walks up to the metal gate that’s blocking our way. It looks like the kind of old-timey jail cell that a pirate would be locked in - heavy metal bars and a big lock. Dhak grips the bars and shakes them, but they’re as solid as they look.
“Locked,” he says.
“Don’t suppose you have a lock pick on that utility belt of yours?” I say.
“Jaxran was the lock picker,” he says.
“Better hope he finds us, then.”
I close my eyes. The heat of the sun is soothing away some of my aches, but I’m exhausted. I could fall asleep on the hard floor, even though it’s not been that long since I got out of bed this morning. Pain has drained me of all my energy.
Dhakhar Page 16