by Lauren Esker
"You aren't a killer," she said. "In the heat of the moment, maybe. But not like this."
"People change," Lucky snarled. "Isn't that right, little sister?"
"People don't change that much." She shifted and went quickly to the control panels. The purse still dangled around her neck, hanging over her breasts and stomach.
"Can you restart the engines?"
"I don't know." She looked through the window at the engines. A low pall of smoke hung in the air, and the room stank of burnt plastic. "How bad is the damage?"
"How would I know? I'm not a mechanic."
"Neither am I, but it doesn't take an expert to tell the difference between 'lightly damaged but salvageable' and 'melted to slag'."
"My guess is it's more on the salvageable end, but I'm really not the guy you need to fix it."
"I have a team on their way down," she said absently, flicking switches.
"Great, and if Angel gets to them first, they'll either die or come through that door and blow us to kingdom come."
"No." Lucia gave her head a sharp shake. "He can't use them. They're drugged."
Lucky frowned at her. "I don't understand."
"My drug blocks Angel's abilities, the same way he can't use them on us. Most of my people have been treated. Your girlfriend was working on getting the rest of my drug supply to the ship's passengers. Angel can't control anyone now."
"Great, one less thing to worry about. I'm going after him. Hope for your sake Jen's still okay."
"Wait!" She reached a hand into the purse and took out a plastic case. Snapping it open, she held out her hand with a vial nestled in the palm. "In case you meet anyone who needs a dose. Be careful with this. I'm almost out."
"Can't you just make more?"
"It's not as easy as crying on demand, idiot." For a moment she sounded like his little sister again, as if nothing had ever come between them.
Lucky snaked out his tongue, licked the vial from her palm, and tucked it into the corner of his mouth, between cheek and gum.
"It's not for you!"
"Nowhere else to carry it," he pointed out. It still felt wrong to run around in a human-occupied area as a dragon, but the way the ship was tossing around, he didn't think he could keep his feet otherwise.
"Fine. Go find your girl." Lucia tilted her head to the side, and despite the human body she currently wore, it was a completely inhuman gesture, almost birdlike. "You really love that woman, don't you?"
He didn't bother answering. Turning his back on her, he scurried out the door.
Love—how should he know what love felt like? The only people he'd ever had to love were a deadbeat dad, a mother who died when he was four, and a sister and cousin who abandoned him. He'd thought he was in love at fourteen, to a freckled girl whose childish idea of dating (going to the mall, kissing behind the school where she attended classes and he didn't) quickly paled for a boy who'd been supporting his family since he was twelve. Again at nineteen, and at twenty-two: different girls, slightly different story, no happier ending.
Jen had freckles too, come to think of it—light ones, barely noticeable except in certain lighting. Maybe he'd imprinted on freckles at fourteen. Who knew.
Angel, if you touch her, I'll hunt you to the ends of the earth.
He ran into Lucia's group of technicians in the hallway, almost literally, with the way the ship was rolling around. They stared at him in his dragon form, while Lucky desperately tried to figure out a way of salvaging the situation ... and then the entire group of them burst into giggles and staggered into the wall before continuing on their way.
Right. Everyone on the ship was tripping balls.
At the end of the corridor, he shifted to open the door; dragon paws weren't well suited to operate human technology. And so he was in his small, two-legged form when a rush of cool salt water cascaded through the door and knocked him off his feet.
He went down, spluttering in shock. The door slammed shut. Lucky struggled to his feet in a few inches of sloshing water, draining away quickly through gaps in the floor plates.
The fuck?
"We can't be sinking," he said aloud, to convince himself more than anything else. Ice-cold horror rolled over him. The idea of being trapped, pulled down to the impossibly distant ocean floor—he could still breathe, he could reshape himself with gills, but he couldn't survive the pressure if he couldn't get out of the ship, and Jen—
No. Lucia had just been up top. He didn't trust her to share information with him, but surely "the ship has capsized" would have been important enough that she'd volunteer it.
Besides, the deck was still rolling back and forth, swinging from one extreme to the other, but not tilting in any specific, prolonged direction. He never thought he'd be glad for the damned rocking of the ship, but right now it let him know that they were still on top of the waves, where they should be.
No, they weren't sinking. They were hitting bow waves. The front end of the sphinx was the most unseaworthy bow that he'd ever seen on any vessel, and instead of slicing through the waves like a properly pointed ship's bow, it must be slapping them like a floating brick. Water would pile up between the paws and then cascade through any aperture it could find. Powerful enough waves might be able to break windows and dislodge doors. Which certainly wasn't good, especially since he couldn't imagine where the water could possibly go; if the ship had pumps, they probably needed the engines to run, which meant that without them, the ship would get heavier and heavier, ride lower and lower in the water, and probably take on water through any opening even faster—
The engines were Lucia's problem, he reminded himself. Angel was his.
He shifted back to a medium-sized dragon and went looking for an alternate route. A steep, narrow metal stairway, unlit with no handrail, let him into what appeared to be the cargo hold. This was vast, dark, and echoing with demolition-derby crashes. While most of the cargo had been adequately secured to deal with this level of turbulence, enough of it seemed to have come loose to turn this entire level of the ship into something out of a 1990s video game.
"Dammit," Lucky muttered as a heavy-looking crate trundled past his stairwell, smashed into another stack of crates, then reversed itself as the ship tilted the other way.
He thought about going back down and trying to find another way, but it was a maze down there, and he didn't relish having to go back to the engine room and ask Lucia for directions, which would mean admitting he hadn't been able to find his way upstairs without help. On this open level of the ship, he shouldn't have too much trouble finding an unflooded staircase in the vicinity of the elevators—or, if it came to that, he could climb up the elevator shaft without too much trouble as a dragon.
All he had to do was avoid getting crushed.
He waited until his side of the deck was high, sending all the debris to the other side, and sprang from the stairwell, racing across the floor with all the speed four dragon legs could muster. The floor was wet here, too, and he noted it as a potential hazard, greasing the way of any moving hazards in his path as well as making him more likely to slip.
Emergency lights in the cargo hold were few and far between. In the near-darkness, he frantically dodged sliding crates and stationary obstacles alike. High, he realized, was better than low, and he jumped, catching hold of the plastic shrink-wrap covering a stack of crates. The stack shifted slightly under his weight, but these were competently lashed down. There was no space for him between the top of the crates and the low ceiling, so he scrambled down the row as if on the face of a cliff, his claws catching and ripping through the plastic. Impacts below him wobbled the entire crate chain, but he didn't hit a loose one until near the end. His weight pulled it out of the stack; he jumped away, falling hard and landing badly, while the crate crashed down to the deck beside him.
It landed on edge, and stayed that way.
Lucky scrambled away, staring. As the deck tilted, the weight of the crate just happened to tilt in
balance; still on edge, it began to slide, until a collision with a support pillar snapped it back into equilibrium and it slammed to the deck with a jarring crash.
His efforts to keep the ship from sinking must have thrown probability out of kilter all over the ship. He'd never put this much sustained effort behind it before.
So prepare for weirdness, he thought grimly. He didn't dare stop.
He touched the vial with his tongue to be sure it was still there, and scrambled up a short flight of metal steps to the elevators. A red "EXIT" sign glowed beside them, indicating the presence of a stairwell. He opened the door cautiously with his claws, staying dragon-shaped this time in the event of flooding.
There was no water, but there were footsteps, clattering down from above. Lucky thought about shifting, but before he could, he recognized Onyeka. She stumbled down the last flight of stairs, gripping the railing as the ship dropped abruptly into a wave trough.
She'd found the time to get dressed, in a T-shirt and a pair of slacks. Her hair, uncovered, was not very long and braided tightly to her head; it made her look younger. She'd also managed to get someone to give her a gun, or possibly had stolen one. This gun was currently pointed at Lucky's head.
"Whoa, hey!" He shifted to his much less threatening human shape. "I'm on your side, remember?"
"Where's the other one?" she demanded, clinging to the railing with one hand and covering him with the gun.
"Angel? Probably right behind me. Or above you." He spit the vial into his hand and held it out. "You need to drink this."
"You just stay right there—"
"I'm on your side, damn it. This'll stop him from being able to get into your head."
"I'm not drinking anything you give me—"
He was watching for it, half expecting it, so he saw her eyes go a little glassy, and was already in motion before bullets pinged off the door where his head had been. He rolled out of the stairwell back into the cargo bay, banging his elbow painfully, but managed to keep his fist with the vial of Dragon's Tears tucked close against his chest.
Angel was close enough to control her, which meant he must be very close indeed.
Onyeka came through the door a few steps behind him, but he was ready for her, dragon-shifted. He swatted the gun out of her hand. As it went clattering into the darkness of the cargo hold, Lucky sprang onto her and pushed her down. The vial was still clutched in his clawed fist. He shifted his hand—and only his hand—back to its human configuration, and popped off the cap with his thumbnail.
Onyeka was struggling wildly, which could be either Angel trying to get her loose or understandable panic at having a dragon sitting on her.
"Sorry about this," he muttered, and dumped the vial into her half-open mouth. A look of total shock crossed her face. Lucky clamped his hand over her mouth and nose, growing the fingers until they wrapped around her head. When she'd had a chance to swallow, he cautiously took his hand away.
"What the fuck!" she gasped, followed by what was obviously a string of profanity in some other language.
"That'll block him from being able to control you." If Lucia was right. If she'd told the truth. "How do you feel?"
"I feel—I feel very—" Her eyes went wide. "Look out!"
She was looking into the darkness behind him. Lucky spun around as Angel sprang from the shadows of the crates. His massive claws swept through empty air, close enough the breeze whipped past him.
"What did you do?" Angel snarled. His tail swished like an angry cat's. "I felt her slip away from me! How are you doing this?"
"Trade secret," Lucky shot back. He scrambled away from Onyeka, retreating past the elevators and drawing Angel after him. "You think I don't have abilities you haven't figured out yet?"
He'd found the right button to push. Angel hissed and went after him, so fast even Lucky couldn't track him. Lucky sprang wildly backward, any concerns about getting Angel's attention washed away by the pure need to survive.
He needed a smaller shape, preferably with wings, but he couldn't spare the time and attention to shift; Angel could do it on the fly, but Lucky had to focus. Instead he leaped off the relative safety of the higher area in front of the elevators, back into the fray of falling, sliding crates. At least if Angel had something else to focus on, he wouldn't be quite so single-minded about Lucky.
Angel didn't slow down. Graceful for all his bulk, he sprang from crate to crate, a blue-and-white flash in the near darkness. "Whatever you're doing, stop it!" he roared. "Give them back to me!"
"No!" Lucky yelled back. "They were never yours!"
He scrambled wildly up a stack of crates, claws catching and snagging in the plastic. Angel struck him a glancing blow, not enough to get claws into him, but the jarring impact knocked him off the crates onto the floor.
Angel, snarling and clinging to the wall of crates, turned to leap after him, but instead the entire stack of crates went over on him as weak places in the straps securing them parted one by one. Panting from the effort, Lucky scrabbled backward as the heap began to slide. Seconds later, another wall of crates came down into the mess. He hadn't meant to do that—but then Onyeka emerged from behind it, sheathing a knife.
"That'll slow him down!" she shouted. "Come on!"
Lucky ran after her. He filled the stairwell in his dragon shape, but stayed that way long enough to mule-kick the door with his horny hind foot. The doorframe crumpled at the edges, wedging the door in place. Then he shifted back to human; it was easier to navigate the stairs when he could hold onto the railing.
"Will that hold him?" Onyeka asked from above.
"Not for very long, but it only has to—" He came to an abrupt halt. She was on the landing above him, and her gun was pointed at his face. Again.
So much for Lucia's "cure".
"Onyeka," he said, holding up his hands. "This is Angel, not you." Damn it, he didn't have time for this.
"It's a hundred percent me," she said, her voice harsh. "Don't move, and don't shift."
And something about the way she was standing, the way she held the gun—All he could think of was Jen in the atrium, and the way she'd held her gun on Angel—Oh great. Just what he needed.
"You're a cop, aren't you?" Were there any actual drug dealers on this ship? What next, finding out Roxy was undercover with the DEA?
"Interpol," she agreed. "Don't come any closer. What did you feed me?"
"Dragon's Tears. It'll break Angel's control over you. It worked, didn't it?"
"You drugged me!"
"And you tried to shoot me. Also, I'd like to point out, you're pointing a gun at me right now." But she hadn't gone ahead and shot him, which suggested the drug was working. And she didn't have the glazed look that suggested mind control. She just looked scared out of her wits. Which he didn't blame her for, but she could panic on her own time; right now he needed to get ahead of Angel. "Listen, you know I'm on your side. You've seen me fight him."
"I don't know what's going on. I don't know who to trust."
"Well, you've seen that Angel's out to kill us," Lucky pointed out. "At the very least, I'm the lesser evil, right? And I need to get upstairs. I think he's probably going after my girlfriend and my friends. He knows he can get to me that way. So you're going to have to shoot me, or get out of the way and help me."
The gun wavered, then dropped.
"Next time," she said, falling into step with him, "ask me before drugging me."
"I did ask. You tried to shoot me in the face."
"Fair point," she conceded.
***
Jen and Marius stumbled through water that deepened from barely enough to cover the floor of the galley, to several inches at the end of the hall, collecting into an ankle-deep puddle in front of the stairwell door and then draining the other way when the deck rolled back.
Jen opened the door. Delayed by the drug, the awareness caught up with her as she did so that the water had to be coming from somewhere—but too late, as a cool sa
lty wave of seawater broke over them.
"Shut the door!" Marius yelped.
The water washed, foam-topped, into the corridor behind them, but as the ship tilted the other way, there was no more coming in after it. "It's just waves," Jen said, peering cautiously up the wet stairs. "I don't think we're actually sinking."
The water had knocked Marius off his feet. He leaned against the wall as it receded around him, and started laughing.
"Now what?"
"I don't even know," he said helplessly. "It's just ... hilarious ... you—me—do you think we can swim up the stairs?"
"I suggest another route, one that isn't going to knock us back down the stairs every time the ship tilts seaward. There's a stairwell Lucia brought me down that I don't think opens to the outside. It ought to be safe."
"Who's Lucia?"
Oops. "Someone ... who knows her way around the ship. C'mon."
Marius gazed up at the ceiling. "I was thinking perhaps I'd just sit here for a while."
"No no, get up, get uuuup," Jen moaned, dragging at his arm. "Why couldn't I get an aggressive drunk when I needed one?"
She got him back on his feet and moving, not always entirely in the direction she pointed him. "Wow, this is hitting you way harder than it hit me. I'm sort of drug-resistant in general, though. Obviously you aren't. Do you normally get extra high?"
"I've never been high," Marius said in a dazed tone. "This is really ... something."
"You never even got stoned? Seriously? What kind of deprived adolescence did you have?"
"The sort where you spend all day every day training for a secret war."
"Marius! Now I'm sad."
"I'm not," Marius said seriously. "There are colored lights around everything. It's peaceful and nice. I don't think I've ever been this happy before."
"God damn it." She got hold of him and dragged him up the stairs after her.
"What's your story, anyway? You know mine already. Why are you on this ship?"
Well, she'd told just about everyone else; why not Marius too. "I'm a federal agent."