Flying Through Fire (Dark Desires)

by Nina Croft

  “Let’s go,” she murmured, placing a hand on Thorne’s arm. The muscles contracted under her palm. He felt like steel, and something about the way he stared at Drago made the skin on her neck prickle. “He’s dying, Thorne.”

  “Not fucking fast enough.” He shook off her hand and stepped toward the other man. His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, but still he didn’t reach for his weapon.

  Drago collapsed to his knees, clutching his hands to his head. Blood seeped from between his fingers, then from his ears, until his head was a mask of crimson. She heard a dull thud as his skull exploded, sending blood and gore flying across the room. The corpse toppled to the floor, twitched once, and then went still.

  Candy stared at the body, trying to make sense of what had just happened. She was pretty sure Thorne had done something, but there was still no weapon in his hand. Her mind was numb. She’d wanted Drago dead for so long, but somehow she felt cheated.

  Thorne stared at the dead man, his lip curled in a vicious snarl. Then his expression cleared. For a moment, his face was blank, then shock widened his eyes. “Holy Meridian.”

  Yeah, that about covered it. “What the hell just happened, Thorne?”

  He shook himself, wiping a speck of blood from his arm, then another, and she got the distinct impression he was thinking up what to say, which seemed sure evidence that whatever it was wouldn’t be the truth. Finally, he looked her in the face, his expression guileless. “A natural progression of whatever was killing him I would guess.”

  “Of course,” she replied. “Because there are all sorts of diseases that make your head explode.”

  He shrugged. “What else could it be?”

  While she didn’t know, she had a few ideas. But she’d get no answers from Thorne. A shiver ran through her.

  He gave one last glance at the corpse and stalked out. Candy followed. There was a bowl of pinkies—a common recreational drug—on the bar, and she snatched one up as she passed, tossing it in her mouth and swallowing. She definitely felt the need. The adrenaline that had sustained her was draining from her system, leaving her shaky and cold. Thorne glanced back and gave her a look of disapproval.

  “Hey, it’s not every day you see someone’s head explode,” she muttered.

  He shrugged and headed out onto the street. She followed because there weren’t a lot of options.

  Thorne had always been a bit of a mystery. He’d first appeared when she was only two years old. Apparently, he’d told her parents he’d recently been in an alternate universe along with the crew of the Blood Hunter, but had managed to get back ahead of them. Tannis had told him that they would all rendezvous here on Trakis Two once they got back to their own universe, but the Blood Hunter had never turned up.

  Thorne would visit every few years, seeking news. He lived with a bunch of colonists on a planet outside the Trakis system, and so far, they’d evaded the notice of the Church, which was just as well. The Church had been eliminating the Collective wherever they found them. And while Thorne denied he was Collective, the violet eyes and the wings made that a little hard to believe.

  Determined to look after herself and her brother, she hadn’t contacted Thorne as her mother had asked. But he had turned up four years later, again searching for information—shortly after her first run-in with Drago, actually. By then she had known her mother was alive. While she hadn’t risked a message, the Church had been eager to parade their reacquired High Priestess across the comm-waves for all to see. There had been no sign of her father, but they had presumed he must be alive, since he was the only thing that would keep her mother behaving like a good little priestess.

  Thorne had been pretty much a constant in their lives after that. For some reason, he seemed to think that she was his responsibility. He had tried to persuade her and Angel to come back with him and live on his godforsaken hole of a planet, but no way was she moving away. If anything happened, it would be here.

  And finally, the Blood Hunter had reappeared. Twenty-two years late.

  She’d grown up on stories of the Blood Hunter and her crew, until they were almost a legend to her. Rico the vampire, Captain Tannis—part snake, part human—Callum Meridian, Devlin.

  And from the moment they’d appeared, they’d treated her like an incompetent child. She’d managed to keep herself and Angel safe for nearly ten years, but they hadn’t taken that into account. All the same, they’d been her best hope of getting her parents back, so she had gone along with them.

  She’d learned since, from Saffira, that Thorne was over ten thousand years old, though he’d actually been born in the Trakis system about fifty-odd years ago. At the age of thirty, he’d set out on a journey to start up a new colony. On the way, his ship was sucked into a wormhole and spat out in another universe, ten thousand years earlier. It boggled the mind and sort of made it a little easier to understand why he considered her a kid. That didn’t make her one, though.

  She dragged herself back to the present. On the way to find Drago, she’d been preoccupied by the coming confrontation, and she hadn’t paid a lot of attention to her surroundings. Now, she could smell the faint miasma of death that clung to each breath she took, could sense the despair hanging heavy in the air.

  In front of her, Thorne slowed to a halt as he, too, sensed the atmosphere.

  “What happened here?” she asked. “What was wrong with Drago? Do you think everyone is sick? Or dead?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe we should find out.”

  “Sardi?”

  Sardi was a friend of Rico’s. He’d actually left Earth with the vampire on the ship, the Trakis Two, a thousand years ago. Sardi also happened to be a demon, but he was a good guy, even if she’d never tell him that to his face. He was another one who had come to their aid after he discovered Alex and Jon, her parents, had been taken. But he was cool and didn’t treat her like a child. Well, not after she turned sixteen and grew breasts.

  “Yes.” Thorne didn’t sound too happy about the idea. But then, he and Sardi had never really got on.

  Sardi lived across the city. “Should we go pick up one of the shuttles?” she asked.

  “No, I’ll fly us.”

  “Really?” That was a first. Thorne had never flown her anywhere. That would involve way too much body contact. “Are you sure you can risk it?” she asked. “I might be overcome by lust and—”

  “Shut up,” he said and scooped her up against his chest. Her arms automatically went around his neck as his wings spread. They beat languidly and Thorne rose easily into the air. Exhilaration filled her. She was flying.

  And she was in Thorne’s arms. They were high above the city now, moving with incredible speed. She pressed her face into the curve where his throat met his shoulder and breathed in the unique scent of him, spice and smoke. Her heart raced, and she stopped thinking and allowed sensation to take over.

  “Look,” Thorne said, dragging her out of her sensory world. They had slowed and were hovering over Sardi’s compound. Below them, a speeder was pulling up outside the gates, Tannis driving, Rico beside her.

  Oh crap, she was in trouble.

  They’d both threatened to lock her in the brig if she disobeyed orders again. And stealing a shuttle and coming here would qualify. Thorne landed gently beside the speeder and set her on her feet. She took a deep breath and stepped back.

  Tannis stood in front of the gates to the compound, arms folded across her chest, foot tapping, a seriously pissed-off expression on her face. Rico lounged against the side of the speeder, eyeing Candy up and down. “That’s my coat,” he drawled.

  She waggled her fingers. “Hey, Uncle Rico. I knew you wouldn’t mind me borrowing it.”

  “And did you know I wouldn’t mind you ‘borrowing’ my shuttle?” Tannis snapped.

  Candy winced under the intimidating glare, but decided silence might be her best response.

  “Did Fergal arrive?” Thorne asked.

  “Yeah.”

&n
bsp; “What are you two doing here?” Thorne asked. “I said I would deal with this.”

  “Well, you see,” Rico said, “Fergal gave us some information which we thought we’d better check out.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Apparently, Hatcher told him that there was some sort of disease at large in the Trakis system and that it had started here. We came down to see for ourselves.”

  “And there’s no one around,” Tannis said. “Where the hell is everyone?”

  Thorne shrugged. “That’s what we came to find out.”

  “Then let’s go ask the demon.”

  Chapter Three

  “It started about six months ago,” Sardi said. “Pretty much right after your flying friends visited and you made your hasty retreat.”

  “No fucking friends of mine,” Tannis replied.

  Sardi ignored the comment. After setting glasses out on the small table, he filled them all with amber liquid. He picked one up and carried it to Candy. “Here you are, baby girl.”

  She actually fluttered her eyelashes at him, and Thorne felt a growl trickle from his throat.

  He tried to pull himself together. But he’d been feeling jumpy since he had lost it so spectacularly back in that bar. An image popped in his mind—or rather, not an image but a feeling. The sensation of a man’s mind exploding into nothing.

  And he’d done that without the slightest bit of effort. An angry thought and Drago was dead. But the bastard had boasted about stealing Candy’s innocence. Thorne almost wished he hadn’t killed the man so he could kill him again.

  Shit.

  Losing control was not an option. He needed to calm down. Though, right now, he wouldn’t mind blowing Sardi’s head right from his body. He wasn’t sure he could enter a demon’s mind. Rico and Daisy, the vampires, were blocked to him. Probably the fact that they were no longer human meant he had no link to their minds.

  Candy he’d never tried, or the other werewolves, but he suspected…or maybe hoped…that he couldn’t.

  Not for the first time, he wished he’d found out more from the Old Ones, as they’d called the shadowy beings who had inhabited the planet where his ship had crash-landed so many years ago. But the majority of the information he’d received from them had been accidental, seeping from their minds as they slept.

  He’d recently discovered the Old Ones were actually dragons. Since they had awoken, Thorne had searched the vastness of space, seeking a connection, but they were closed to him. Whether it was on purpose, or it was just the way things were, he couldn’t be sure.

  But there were things he needed to know. He had the power to shut down minds, even destroy them. Up until today, he’d managed to control that ability, use it cautiously and only when there was no alternative. But inside him, the power was growing, pushing at the edges of the walls he had built to contain it. He’d killed Drago with an angry thought.

  Was he a danger to everyone he was close to? And maybe not even close. He could project his thoughts across vast distances. Who knew what else he could do.

  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, closing up his mind, locking it down tight. When he blinked them open, everyone was watching him with varying emotions.

  “Are we keeping you awake?” Rico asked.

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he took a step forward and grabbed a glass from the table, swallowed the liquid in one go, loving the burn of it in his throat, his belly. He felt as though he were on the edge of exploding. He’d always been so in control. For ten thousand years he hadn’t strayed from the right path. Had always done his duty and now…

  He held out his empty glass and Sardi refilled it, one eyebrow rising.

  “Get on with it,” Thorne growled, and his voice sounded strange in his ears. Maybe this was another change. Like the telepathy and the wings. Christ, he wished he had one of his own kind he could talk to.

  He took his drink and leaned back against the wall to listen. Whatever was happening here wasn’t his problem. He still had every intention of returning to his people. But something was going on, and it might conceivably impinge on his faraway planet. It was his duty to find out as much as he could. His gaze slipped around the room to settle on Candy. She was studying him in return, her brows drawn together, no doubt coming to all sorts of crazy conclusions.

  Sardi gave him a long look and then nodded. “At first we didn’t think much about it. People were obviously sick, and it was some disease we’d never seen before. The first one died a month later. After that, they started dropping with alarming frequency. No one recovered.”

  “What are the symptoms?” Tannis asked.

  “Headache, a blue tinge to the skin, and general weakness in the beginning. Later they start hemorrhaging from everywhere. Eyes, nose, ears…they eventually bleed to death.”

  “Shit,” Tannis said.

  “You know what it is?”

  “It sounds like Meridian poisoning,” she replied.

  If a person was exposed to the source of Meridian, but the actual transfer of DNA didn’t take place, then they faced a certain and unpleasant death. Though the actual symptoms weren’t generally known, probably because most who succumbed to it had been prisoners sentenced to the mines on Trakis Seven, the planet where Meridian had originally been found, and the details were kept from the general public.

  But Tannis would know. She’d been sick with the poisoning, the only person to ever recover, and only after she had undergone the joining.

  “Have any of their heads exploded?” Everyone looked around as Candy spoke.

  Sardi frowned. “As in literally?”

  “Yeah. Blood, gore, brains everywhere.”

  “Not that I’ve heard.”

  She glanced across at Thorne, raised an eyebrow, but he kept his expression studiously blank. She couldn’t know for sure that he’d been responsible. With a little luck, she wouldn’t share her suspicions with anyone else.

  She was perched on the arm of the sofa, one long leg swinging. And she was so beautiful she made him ache. And so young. Her tall, slender body was encased in black leather—pants that clung to her long legs, the absurd, too-long coat that was open now to reveal the black vest top hugging her full breasts. He had a flashback to the feel of her in his arms, their softness crushed against his chest. His cock jerked in his pants, sending a flood of panic through him. He’d gone thousands of years without even a twitch, now he was obsessing about sex.

  “Are we talking hypothetical heads here?” Tannis asked, interrupting his thoughts. “Or someone’s head in particular.”

  He waited while Candy considered her answer. Would she tell them what had happened? But she shrugged. “Just something I heard. A rumor, nothing more.”

  “Now why do I get the idea that you’re telling whoppers?” Rico murmured. “What have you two been getting up to down here?” His glance shifted from Candy to him and then back again.

  Candy lifted one shoulder. “Nada.”

  “Hmm.”

  “So, exploding heads aside,” Sardi continued, “about half the population are already dead and the rest are on their way. I don’t think there’s a single human who hasn’t succumbed.”

  “Only humans?” Rico asked.

  “That I know of.”

  Tannis paced the room, one hand raking through her short, dark hair so it stood on end, her violet eyes glowing. “Let’s get back to the ship,” she said. “I’ve got some ideas about this.”

  “What ideas?” Sardi asked.

  “No. Not yet,” she replied. “I need to think them through. I don’t like them, and I suspect I’m going to like them even less when I’ve thought about them some more. Right now, let’s get back to the Blood Hunter. This place is giving me the creeps.”

  “You want to come with us?” Rico asked the demon. “The city is going to be unpleasant for some time to come.”

  “No thanks,” Sardi replied. “I have a ship ready. There are a few of us leaving. We were just…wai
ting I suppose. Hoping. We all have human friends here. But if it’s Meridian poisoning, then there’s no hope. Everyone dies.”

  “Should we let them leave?” Thorne asked. “Maybe the planet needs to be quarantined.”

  “Yeah, right,” Tannis snapped. “Why the hell do you always have to be Mr. Sensi-fucking-ble? We’ve all been exposed. If we quarantine this shithole, that would mean we would have to stay as well. And no way is that happening. Anyway, it’s pretty clear that it’s not infecting the non-humans.” She paced some more. “Besides, I think we may be too late.”

  He suspected she was right. Saffira was going to be pissed if she’d gone to all that trouble to save humankind, just to have them all killed off so soon afterward. He straightened and placed his empty glass down on a nearby table. “I’ll see you back at the Blood Hunter.”

  Across the room, Candy also stood. “Me, too.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Tannis said.

  “I need to get the shuttle.”

  “Callum came down with us. He’s already picked up your shuttle and taken it back to the ship. You come with us.”

  She glanced between Tannis and Rico, who both appeared grim. Then she cast a peek at Thorne. “I don’t suppose I could come with you?”

  He shook his head. It was about time she learned that her actions had consequences. And he didn’t think for a second that they would actually harm her.

  “Traitor,” she muttered.

  He had to pass Rico on his way out. The vampire cast him a cool glance. “Exploding heads?” he murmured. “We really must talk about this some more.”

  “Never going to happen.”

  Then he was out of there.

  …

  Candy stared out of the porthole as they came up on the massive bulk of the Blood Hunter.

  Nobody had actually beaten her up or tortured her on the way back—though in some ways she would have preferred that to the silent treatment. Not that she’d really expected them to hurt her. She knew deep down they were sort of fond of her, even if it was only because of who her parents were.