Flying Through Fire (Dark Desires)

by Nina Croft

  The shift always took a toll on her metabolism. She inspected the shuttle. No way was she up to scrambling over the top again. She glanced at her friend then back at the little ship.

  Pushing herself to her feet, she shuffled over, stood beside the broken shuttle, and then did a twirling thing with her finger. When that didn’t work, she pushed against the metal side of the craft.

  He stared at her for a moment, and then he rose to his full height and she nearly backed away. He was so big. He studied the shuttle, reached out with a clawed hand, gave a gentle push, and the craft shifted and rolled onto its side.

  She did the twirl thing with her finger again—this time he caught on straight away, gave another push, and the shuttle was upright.

  She headed for the door. “Open.” Nothing happened. What a surprise. She pressed her hand to the manual panel to the side and still nothing.

  Tapping her foot, she looked around for something to hit it with, when a black claw reached past her. The talons slid through the metal like scissors through silk, and the door was plucked out from its lodging and tossed aside.

  She swallowed, not sure that such a show of strength was what she needed right now, but at least she was in.

  Taking a bowl of porridge, she sat on the chair to eat it, striving for some sort of normality. She scraped the bowl clean, not wanting to take more until she knew how long it was going to have to last—or rather, whether there was any other food to be had on the planet, and if she could get to it. As she sat, a bead of blood dripped from her nostril into the bowl, and she dropped it to the floor with a crash. Reaching up, she pressed a hand to her nose, staring at the dark red blood that stained her fingers.

  No headache yet at least. How long did she have before it overcame her? And how long could she keep shifting each time it happened? Maybe indefinitely, but it would leave her with no strength or time to search for a way out of here on her own. She could be on an inhabited planet; after all that bucket must have come from somewhere.

  And if there was a chance she could help herself, she wanted to be in a position to take it. And she wouldn’t be if she spent her whole time bouncing between feeling like crap and shifting.

  The alternative was to stay in wolf form, but while she was still quite capable of thought as a wolf, her mental processes were simpler; her wants and needs weren’t the same.

  Another notion crossed her mind.

  There was only one cure for the Meridian poisoning that they knew of, and that was the Meridian treatment—though “treatment” was hardly the right word. She got herself a hot drink from the dispenser and sat again while she went over in her head everything she knew about Meridian and the change.

  It was some sort of asexual reproduction. The dragons had killed off all their females a long time ago and so didn’t reproduce normally anymore. That was, if you could call dragons having sex “normal” under any circumstances. Did her friend out there have a dragon penis? She shuddered at the thought.

  So, Meridian… She’d once asked Thorne what had happened, and then Saffira to see if he was telling the truth. Apparently, the dragons produced some sort of growths like tentacles. Thorne had said he’d gone to a chamber—they called it the birthing chamber—and it was crawling with the things. He’d walked through them until one had sort of chosen him, twining around him, becoming one.

  He’d said it had been the most pain he’d ever felt in his entire life. That didn’t sound too good, but she supposed a big dose of pain, over and done with, was better than waking up with your head splitting open and your nose bleeding out every morning. And it would make her tougher, and that had to be a good thing in her present circumstances. Werewolves were tough, but nowhere near as tough as the Collective.

  There was one major problem with her plan, though. She was a woman.

  Dragons had a thing about women—they really didn’t like them, and they certainly didn’t want to do the reproduction thing with them. That was strictly men only. Apparently they hadn’t allowed any of the females in Thorne’s crew to be changed, and had referred to Tannis and Skylar as abominations. So how likely was her new friend to help her?

  And clearly she couldn’t do it without his help. He had to produce the stuff. Ugh.

  On the good side, he had saved her for some reason.

  She had to convince him that without it she would die and be of absolutely no use to him.

  Her headache was getting worse, little nails being driven into her skull. She was going to have to shift or persuade him. Time to get a move on. He was outside when she exited the shuttle, and she got the distinct impression he was waiting for her.

  The hammering in her brain nearly brought her to her knees. She stumbled on the ramp, righted herself, and glared. The hammering stopped. He clearly wasn’t stupid. He could pick up on what she was feeling, if not her thoughts.

  And she was guessing he wanted to talk to her—that was what the hammering was all about. But for some reason they couldn’t communicate. Time to persuade him there was a way to change that. She hoped he wasn’t going to think she was asking him for sex.

  She tightened the knot in her sarong, straightened her shoulders. A girl had to do what a girl had to do.

  Coming to a halt only a foot away, she swallowed. He made her feel so insignificant, so tiny and unimportant, and it wasn’t merely his size. He radiated a sense of immense age. Of knowledge.

  She wiped her hand across her nose and held it out to him, palm up, showing the dark crimson stain of blood.

  “I’m sick,” she said. She was pretty sure he didn’t understand her actual words, but maybe her meaning would get through to him. She gave a raspy cough for good measure and then couldn’t stop. She fell to her knees, retching up blood onto the sandy soil.

  She rummaged in her bag, found a bottle of water, and eventually managed to unscrew the top, taking some deep gulps to stop the hacking cough. When she looked up, he was regarding her with what she was sure was curiosity. She took a deep breath. If she didn’t persuade him soon, she was going to have to shift. She couldn’t risk leaving it too late. If she lapsed into some sort of coma as she had in the brig of the Blood Hunter, there was no Thorne to pull her back.

  She rubbed her chin as she considered how to get through to him. She tapped her chest and then pointed at him, then crossed her fingers to indicate them joining.

  Nothing. Maybe he wasn’t so bright after all.

  She tried again. She lay down and pretended to be dead. Then she got up, pointed one hand to him, then the other to her, and clasped them together.

  Still nothing.

  She pointed to his wings, then tapped her shoulders and grinned like an idiot, then ruined it by coughing again and almost choking on the blood in her lungs.

  But when she stopped coughing and looked again, she knew something had changed. There was a gleam in his eye, as though he’d made a decision. He rose to his feet, stretched out his wings and lifted easily into the air. Hovering over her, he stretched out a clawed talon and gripped her lightly.

  She forced back her immediate panic response, her instinctive need to pry herself free. Either he’d understood her, and was taking her away—hopefully not to have his evil way with her, but to where he could make some Meridian—or he was fed up with her and was about to crush her in his claw, or squeeze her until her head popped, and put her out of his misery.

  Whatever he was going to do, hopefully he would be quick, because she could sense her mind drifting.

  She’d closed her eyes instinctively as they rose; now she forced her lids up and gazed around her. They were flying about fifty feet above the ground, plenty high enough to smash her to pieces if she fell. And they were headed toward that wall of broken mountains she’d noticed the night before. As they drew closer, he didn’t rise up to fly over but swooped into a gap between them, narrow enough that his wing tips nearly touched the edges. Then they were through, reaching a circular valley surrounded by rocky outcrops, like mo
untains with the tops blown off. Something nudged at the back of her mind. She knew of this place, had heard of it in stories she’d pried out of Thorne. She searched the area and spotted the burned out remains of two shuttles.

  And suddenly she knew where she was, if not how she had gotten here. Saffira had told her the story of how she and Devlin had been pursued by the dragons. How the whole world had exploded around them, and they’d fled to the shuttles but been burned by dragon fire before they could reach them. This was the Circle of Change.

  Which meant she was in a whole different universe.

  But she didn’t have time to process that. The dragon didn’t falter, just flew her over the floor of the valley to land lightly on the sand in the shadow of one of the bigger mountains. He released her gently, but she still tumbled to the ground. She rolled onto her knees and pushed herself to her feet. The dragon tipped his head, and she followed his stare and found a narrow tunnel that burrowed into the rock.

  When she hesitated, he snorted in annoyance, smoke trickling from his dark nostrils, his wings twitching.

  “Okay, hold on a goddamn minute.”

  She looked at the sun, then at the tunnel, coughed some more, took a deep breath, and squeezed herself into the narrow gap. It scraped her skin on either side, and the light gave out within minutes, leaving her in a deep, stygian darkness with only the touch of her hands to guide her. Then the tunnel widened without warning, leaving her lost and disorientated, with no clue which direction to take. She focused her mind, took a step sideways, then another, until she the felt the rock wall against her fingertips. She stopped for a moment, breathing in; the air was warm and heavy with some sort of spice. The smell reminded her of Thorne, and the thought comforted her. She moved forward, keeping her fingers in contact with the surface of the rock. She didn’t know how long she moved through the darkness until she became aware of a faint luminescence up ahead, a violet glow, the color of Thorne’s eyes, the color of the dragon’s eyes. She was heading toward the light, and it grew brighter until she could make out her surroundings. She was still in a tunnel, but wide and high, and the light seemed to originate from somewhere ahead of her. The hot scent of spice increased until her head swooned, and she dropped her arm to her side as her feet moved of their own accord. Finally, she stood in an opening and stared at the chamber beyond.

  For a second, her mind recoiled from what she had to do, but as she stared, she started to make sense of what she was seeing. The glow came from the myriad of tentacle-like structures that clung to the walls and ceiling, and rose from the floor. Dormant when she first looked, now they were waking, as if sensing her presence, waving languidly as though in a nonexistent breeze.

  Now or never.

  She had to make a decision. Though, in truth, it had been already made.

  Reaching up, she wiped the trickle of blood from her nose.

  The shuttle was beyond help; it was never going anywhere. This was her only hope of survival. She took an unsteady step, her body stiffening as she anticipated the pain. But the things waved toward her then away. She took another step until she was surrounded, but still they leaned away from her as though in rejection.

  What the fuck was wrong with her?

  She walked on, reaching out to trail her hands over the tentacles, and now they leaned toward her. Prickles ran through her fingers but nothing more. She stopped in the center and closed her eyes for a second. These things were alive—she could sense them, not sentient, but not dead, either—and they called to each other and to her. Then she felt one voice louder than the others. Without opening her eyes, she started moving again. Then she came to a halt and blinked.

  In front of her was a tentacle, tall and upright, a deep humming emanating from it. Slowly it bent toward her. Candy stretched out her hand, and her fingers stroked over the tip. Faster than she could follow, it twined around her arm, and red hot needles burrowed into her skin. She threw back her head and screamed, crashing to her knees as fire flowed through her veins, saturated her system, burning her from the inside out.

  Her head filled with a blinding white light, and then everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thorne leaned against the wall just inside the docking bay as Fergal paced the floor. As he reached the far side he slammed his fist into the wall—ouch—and turned, repeating the process.

  “You’d think he wasn’t happy to see his dear old dad,” Rico said cheerfully from beside Thorne. At least Hatcher’s imminent arrival had taken the vampire’s attention from his hunger. Or maybe he thought Hatcher might provide an answer to that little problem.

  Daisy hurried across to where Fergal stood, wrapped her arms around him, and gave him a hug. “You don’t have to see him,” she said. “We can deal with him for you.”

  “Aw, sweet,” Rico murmured. “But someone has to deal with the bastard. You should have killed him when you had the chance.”

  Daisy cast him a dirty look and turned her attention back to Fergal.

  “It hardly matters now,” Thorne said. “He’s dying of Meridian poisoning.”

  Rico grinned. “A fitting end, and not without a certain degree of irony, considering he was responsible for the destruction of the Meridian source in this universe.”

  Devlin appeared at that point, pulsating with hostility he made no effort to hide. Most of his life had been devoted to bringing down the Church. “What the hell can the bastard want with the Blood Hunter?” he snarled.

  Hatcher’s hatred of them was probably even greater than theirs for him. The man was a zealot. He saw them as a combination of Satan’s children and abominations—as was anyone with mixed DNA. He’d dedicated his life to eradicating the latter from the universe—along with anyone else who he considered less than human—and had nearly succeeded with the crew of the Blood Hunter six months ago.

  Thorne reckoned only the vampire’s curiosity had stopped Rico from blowing the priest’s ship out of the sky. It had been a close thing, and Rico’s finger had hovered over the blaster button for long seconds.

  Thorne didn’t think anyone would have stopped him. Even Fergal.

  At that moment, the docking bay doors beeped and parted. A shuttle flew through and landed in the center. As the doors opened, Daisy stepped a little closer to her man. And there he was: Temperance Hatcher, the leader of the Church of Everlasting Life, and a total asshole.

  “Jesus,” Rico muttered. “He looks like a walking corpse.”

  His tall figure was hunched over, wrapped in a gray cloak which did nothing to hide the skeletal thinness of his frame. He shuffled down the ramp, a young priest on either side, and Thorne was sure they were all that was keeping him upright. He raised his head as he reached the bottom of the ramp. His silver eyes still blazed with a zealot’s fire, but dark blood was crusted at the corners, and his skin was tinged violet.

  He looked around, his gaze settling on Fergal, and that hideous parody of a face broke into a smile. He shuffled forward again, toward Fergal, who was holding himself very still.

  “My son.”

  Fergal shook his head, but said nothing. Hatcher’s gaze slid from him to Daisy at his side, and bony fingers reached for the cross around his neck. He clutched it in his fist, muttering some sort of exorcism.

  “My Lord has allowed me to see my son again,” Hatcher said. “My Lord is merciful.”

  Rico stepped forward. “Not that I’ve noticed. So what the fuck do you want? Say your piece then get the hell off my ship and die somewhere else.”

  Hatcher turned his head. “I wish to talk with the abomination.”

  “Which one?”

  “The captain of this ship.”

  Rico strolled forward, hand resting casually on the laser pistol at his hip. “I’m afraid that particular abomination isn’t available.”

  “She’s dead?” Was that eagerness he could hear in Hatcher’s voice?

  “Sadly, no. But all the same, you’ll have to make do with a… What did yo
u call me at our last meeting? A spawn of Satan instead. So get on with it. Your companions are making me hungry.”

  Thorne bit back a smile at the expressions of alarm that flashed across the faces of the two priests.

  Hatcher cleared his throat, then coughed—a deep, hacking cough as though his lungs were disintegrating. When he could speak again, his voice was raspy. “I have come to ask for your help.”

  “Say that again.” Rico sounded skeptical.

  “The Lord sent me to seek out your help. It came to me in a vision,” Hatcher continued. “There is no one else. You caused this pestilence, and now you must rid the world of it and ensure the survival of my people.”

  “Which particular pestilence are we talking about?” Rico asked.

  “The winged demons from the skies and their wretched disease.”

  “Ah. I presume you mean the dragons.”

  “Dragons are the things of fairytales. These are monsters created by the devil himself.”

  It occurred to Thorne that the man had finally crossed the line to total madness. Whether it was the ravages of the disease, or a natural progression he would have come to regardless, he didn’t know. Even so, he suspected this time, the priest’s ravings had some basis in truth.

  Rico must have thought the same. “What’s happened?”

  “They have gathered in the skies above Trakis Five. They are circling, ready to annihilate the last of my people.”

  “Have they landed yet?” Fergal asked.

  They’d concluded that the dragons had to land in order to release the poison that led to the sickness. It wasn’t transmittable by person, but was something in the air. Hatcher had been exposed while visiting another planet already affected. But if the dragons had landed on Trakis Five, then there was little point in trying to save the population. Maybe they would be better off to burn and die quickly, rather than this slow, agonizing death.

  “No. They remain in the skies. But I saw a vision where the world burned. You must stop this.”