by Nina Croft
Tannis shook her head, and then smirked. “It must be love.”
“Piss off,” Thorne said.
“You could always take her with you,” Rico said half an hour later from the shuttle’s pilot seat.
“What?” Thorne dragged his attention from the forward scanner where he was watching Trakis Twelve get bigger, while trying not to think about what they would find when they reached the planet’s surface.
“Candy. You could take her with you when you leave for wherever it is you’re so desperate to get back to.”
“My people.”
“My people? You do know that makes you sound like a pompous git, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” He knew it because Rico had told him. Many times. A few other people as well. It was just the way he was. He couldn’t actually remember if he’d always been that way. Ten thousand years was a lot of time, and he’d had to change to survive and ensure his people’s survival.
“So?” Rico asked. “Why not?”
Why not take Candy with him to Espera? He almost smiled. Almost. For a moment, he tried to envisage her on the planet among the hardworking farmers and craftspeople. She’d last about a week. She was so young. She craved excitement and adventure. Maybe he’d been the same once. Now he wanted peace—didn’t he? And that wouldn’t be found with a twenty-two-year-old werewolf with an extremely low boredom threshold. “She’d hate it.”
“Yeah,” Rico said. “Sounds boring as shit. So why go back at all?”
“They need me.”
“Pompous git.” The muttered words came from Tannis, who was sorting out weapons. She finished strapping a blaster at her waist and then tossed one to him.
“They’re used to me making decisions,” he said, fastening the blaster at his hip, though he was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be anyone down there to shoot. “I’ve led them for ten thousand years.”
“Well, maybe it’s time someone else had a go.”
What would he do if he didn’t have the people of Espera to lead? For most of his long life, he’d lived with one goal in mind… Well, two goals, really: to ensure his people’s survival, and to one day get them to the Promised Land. He’d achieved both, but he’d never really thought beyond that. He’d always presumed he’d be happy with the life—growing food, overseeing the disputes, watching his people prosper.
Now the years stretched out in front of him. An eternity. He was immortal. Could he endure watching them be born and die? Generation after generation? Of course, there were others of his people who had been changed, who would live on with him. All men of course. Women hadn’t been allowed to undergo the change.
So he’d be alone.
Werewolves might not be immortal, but they lived a long time. No one was really sure how long—he’d once asked Jon—as they usually died a violent death.
An image of Candy flashed up in his mind. She’d tasted so sweet, and he’d lost it so completely.
“Madre de Dios,” Rico said. “If you’re having to think that hard, then probably the answer isn’t worth knowing. We’re coming up on the planet. Strap yourselves in for landing, though I don’t expect it to get bumpy.”
Thorne took the seat behind him and strapped himself in.
“Is this the place where we were attacked?” Tannis asked from the seat beside him.
“The exact same spot,” Rico replied.
He set the shuttle down gently and they all released their harnesses and stood as the engines went quiet.
A sense of dread filled him. He didn’t want to go out there and see what devastation had been wrought on the planet. While not directly his fault, he could certainly take part of the blame. Maybe he should have killed Saffira. He’d known the dragons wanted her dead. They would have stayed in their own universe, left well alone, if Saffira hadn’t escaped them. That had never been part of their plan.
But he could never have harmed her. She was like a daughter to him. He’d brought her up from a baby, knowing her destiny.
Now this universe was paying the price.
The shuttle doors slid open, and the hot, dry air of Trakis Twelve filtered in, bringing with it a musty scent, and he took shallow breaths, as though it might contaminate him.
Trakis Twelve had never been heavily populated. It had very little water and most foodstuffs had to be brought in from off-planet. But there had been a prison here at one point, and a few hardy colonists had made it their home.
As they stepped onto the sandy surface, he looked around. The only vegetation was low scrubby bushes, with thorns a foot long. A ribbon of black, charred earth cut through the middle of them.
“Dragon fire?” he asked gesturing at the black swath.
“Yeah,” Rico said. “It was about a year ago. Not long after we’d gotten back here. We’d been checking out the prison in case Jon was being held there. But nada. We were here for a few days, and that was obviously enough for them to get a lock on Saffira—though we didn’t know that then.”
“Devlin was out on a patrol,” Tannis continued, “talking with the locals in case they knew anything, so we had to wait. We managed to dodge the fire and went into stealth mode. But they must have known we were still around. They landed over there.” She waved a hand to a small group of scorched buildings about three hundred feet away.
Thorne headed over there. He’d expected bodies, but he found no one in the few buildings he entered. Around the back, though, he found relatively fresh graves. Maybe these people had succumbed first, while there were still others alive to bury them. Tannis must have come to the same conclusion.
“I’ll get the speeder,” she said. “We’ll go check out the next settlement.”
Thorne leaned against the blackened wall. “How many planets?” he asked Rico. “How many attacks?”
“Including this one, four. There were other attacks, but they happened in space.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
Tannis drove up in a cloud of dust. “Which way?”
“Fuck knows.” Rico said.
Thorne stepped away, spread his wings, and rose into the sky. He searched the surrounding area, then pointed to the east where he could make out the man-made walls of a settlement. He didn’t land. Instead he flew out that way, loving the stretch in his wings. He didn’t fly enough—there wasn’t much opportunity on a spaceship—but this had been his one pleasure in his old life, back in the other universe.
For a few minutes, he forgot the pressures, the worries, even Candy, and gave himself over to the feel of the air against his wings, the sheer joy of the speed.
He could survive in space. Very little could kill him. Maybe he’d just keep going. Past the edges of the Trakis system. Past Espera and his people.
Find a new world.
Or not.
He hovered for a minute and then gently lowered himself to the ground, folding his wings neatly against his back. The speeder was still far away, a ball of dust.
This was the main settlement of the planet. There were a few obviously administrative buildings at the center, and he found a large communal grave behind the biggest. It had been partly filled in, but twisted limbs stuck out from the pale ochre soil as if still trying to escape in death.
There was no scent of putrefaction in the air, just a faintly offensive muskiness. Probably the dry air had prevented them rotting. The bodies would have desiccated rather than decayed. From the grave, he headed to one of the residential areas, where he found plenty of bodies. Some had died in their beds. But many had obviously collapsed and given up, perishing where they lay.
The moisture had been sucked from their skins, but he could still make out the faint purple tinge, the darkness of the blood crusting at their eyes, noses, mouths. Men, women, children. The poison didn’t discriminate, and for a minute, rage boiled up inside him. He could feel it in his head, swelling, and he spoke a soothing mantra over and over until calmness prevailed.
Then he went out to meet the other
s.
“They’re all dead,” he said as Tannis pulled up beside him in the speeder.
“The poison?”
“Definitely. They had time to bury the first cases, but there are still plenty of bodies around. Is it infectious?” he asked.
“No. At least the Meridian poisoning was never passed from one person to another. Just carried on the air.”
That was one good thing, he supposed. The deaths would be limited to the planets the dragons had actually visited. All the same, he needed to get back, warn his people, find ways to protect them. Maybe they could build bunkers that would shield them from the poison, like the dragons had slept in back on the old planet.
A wave of weariness and despair sucked him under. So much for his brave new world.
“Let’s go,” Tannis said. “There’s nothing else to see.”
He nodded. This time he climbed into the back of the speeder. Maybe he didn’t trust himself not to head into space and vanish forever.
Chapter Seven
Candy sprawled across her bed and stared up at the ceiling, wishing she was with them down on the planet. She wanted to be in the middle of things, but the memory of the sickness had been too clear in her mind to push the issue.
Besides she needed time alone. To think about the kiss.
She touched one finger to her lips, closed her eyes, and remembered the feel of him. She had felt the kiss through her whole body—her breasts, her belly, between her thighs. What would it actually feel like when he did touch her in all those places? She’d probably implode.
Something about Thorne had always drawn her. She’d spent long hours trying to analyze it. At first she’d thought maybe it was his sense of…stability. With the whole world going crazy around her, she’d been drawn to something unmovable, unshakeable.
But now, she suspected the opposite was true about him. She’d had a brief glimpse into Thorne’s mind, and he was anything but stable. There was a whole mess of whirling emotions and untapped powers, all pressed inside and locked down tight.
Not tight enough.
She had caught something of his fears. What would happen if the locks snapped? Just a little of that power had leaked out, and he’d inadvertently taken over the ship. And an unpleasantly vivid image of Drago’s head exploding flashed in her mind. Ugh.
But Drago had deserved to die. Thorne wouldn’t do that to anyone who didn’t. She hoped.
She’d also sensed his desire for her, and a thrill ran through her. Thorne wanted her. And he could have her. He didn’t have to leave. His people didn’t need him. She did. They could stay on the Blood Hunter, or maybe even get a ship of their own. There was a whole universe to explore. More than one. Maybe Angel would join them. Truth was, she didn’t really know what she wanted to do with her life. So much of it had been spent struggling to survive, and then getting her revenge. Now neither of those things were an issue, and she wasn’t sure what came next, except she wanted it to include Thorne.
She’d set the alarm to tell her when the shuttle returned. Now it flashed, and she rolled to her feet.
Should she stay here or go to him?
He’d come and see her. He wouldn’t leave her, not after that kiss.
Her mother had once told her that the best advice she’d been given regarding men was that they liked to do the chasing. She’d added that she’d taken absolutely no notice of the advice, and yet she’d still got her man in the end, though apparently Candy’s dad had put up one hell of a fight.
She was still wearing the tied-up tank top, and she tugged it off, tossed it in the bin, and went to the closet. She’d never much bothered about clothes, just pinched what she could. Most of her T-shirts she’d stolen from Angel, and none of them were pretty. In the end, she settled on a plain white tank top which was at least clean and showed off her breasts.
Did Thorne even like breasts? Didn’t all men?
She tied her hair in a loose plait and tugged on her boots. Then she sat on the bed and waited…all of thirty seconds. Jumping up, she paced the room. Christ, she was twenty-two; she’d been looking after herself, and Angel, since she was twelve. What the hell was she so nervous about?
Five more minutes passed.
And she headed out the door.
She was crap at waiting. She’d go find out what they had discovered on the planet. Get Thorne alone…and finish what they’d started with that kiss. He’d no doubt admit he loved her, because he was an honorable man, and then…well, they would see.
She headed to the bridge first but only found Daisy and Fergal and left before they saw her. Though, she suspected she could have danced naked in front of them and they would have remained oblivious to her, they were so focused on each other.
Next, she headed down to the docking bay where she found the rest of the crew. It looked like some sort of meeting. Though, why here? And why had no one invited her? Because no one thought of her as crew, of course. Hell, no one thought of her at all unless she pushed herself in their faces. Or nearly died.
Thorne was at the center of the small group. Rico and Tannis were there, along with Skylar and Callum, and tension thrummed in the air.
“I think you should stay,” Callum said. “You’re the only one who’s had contact with these things. You know more about them than anyone. You’ve talked with them.”
“Hardly talked,” Thorne replied. “And Saffira knows as much as me.”
“Saffira isn’t here. Besides, they want her dead. They won’t talk to her.”
“You think we should talk to them?” Disbelief was clear in Tannis’s voice. “I say we find the fuckers and blast them out of the sky before they kill anyone else.”
“Why do you care?” Thorne asked, and his voice sounded remote, as though he were pulling away from them all.
“Well, you see,” Tannis said, “once things settle down, I intend to get back to work. That’s hardly going to happen if there’s no one left to employ us.”
“So, you’re not going back?” Thorne asked Callum. “You’re going to leave everything leaderless and in chaos and go off and play pirates?”
Callum shrugged. “I was a crap leader anyway.”
“Someone’s got to do it.”
“Not me.” He considered Thorne, head cocked to one side. “You know you could always take my place. You’re perfect leader material.”
“I have my own people.”
“They’re probably safer than the rest of the universe,” Tannis pointed out.
It was dawning on Candy that he was leaving. And leaving right now. As in, not even coming to tell her he was going. She balled her fists at her sides and stepped forward. They all swung around in her direction.
“What did you find down there?” she asked.
“All dead,” Tannis replied. “Not a single person left alive.”
“And what are we going to do?”
“That’s still under discussion,” Rico said. “But what your friend here is doing is buggering off.”
“Just when he might come in useful,” Tannis added.
“I have to go home. I have to tell my people of the danger, prepare them.”
“And you can’t call?”
His face had a closed-off expression. “This is not my problem.”
“Since when has that bothered you? What happened to ‘we can’t leave the world in chaos’?”
“This is your world. I left it behind long ago.”
He whirled around and stalked across the docking bay, wings tight against his back. For a moment Candy stood and stared after him, and then her gaze flicked to the others in the group. Tannis looked pissed, Rico thoughtful. He caught her gaze and nodded toward Thorne’s disappearing figure.
“Go persuade him to stay.”
Hah. As if she could. “Why?” She’d always thought the others wanted him gone because of what he had done to them back in that other universe. What he could do to them again anytime he wanted.
“He’s our best source
of information on these things.”
“What about Saffira?”
“We can’t let Saffira anywhere near them. They can sense her. If we’re going to beat these fuckers, we need all the help we can get, and he’s”—Rico waved a hand toward Thorne, who was climbing the ramp into his shuttle—“our best bet. Besides, are you really just going to let him kiss you and then stroll happily away?”
Actually, technically, she’d kissed him. But he had joined in. “No. I’m not.”
She hurried across the open space. “Thorne!” When he didn’t turn around, or even slow down, she broke into a run. She caught up as he was entering the ship. He turned to close the door, and she blocked it with her body.
“You weren’t even going to come and say good-bye?”
His gaze flicked to her and then away. “We’ve said good-bye a hundred times. I have to go and prepare my people.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t think it’s going to be that easy, do you?”
Some emotion flashed across his face and was gone. He turned away and headed into the main chamber. This was a big shuttle; big enough to cover the long distance between here and Espera. The room was circular, about nine feet by nine feet, with seating for six plus a separate room with bunk beds attached to the walls. Thorne headed for the main console and started to flick the switches to set the take-off procedure into motion. From beneath her, the vibrations rippled through her body as the engines kicked in.
Candy gritted her teeth. “You promised to tell me how you feel. Did you lie to me?”
He swung around, and his eyes glowed purple. “You know how I feel.”
Did she? Sometimes she felt like she knew absolutely nothing. “You feel responsible for me.”
“Maybe.”
She hated that. No one was responsible for her but herself. She didn’t want to be a fucking responsibility. “I don’t need looking after.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He smiled so rarely, it changed his whole demeanor. He raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” she grudgingly conceded. “Maybe sometimes I need looking after.” She bit her lip. “I never thanked you for saving my life.”