Blood and Metal

by Nina Croft

  “Okay. What the fuck is going on?” Rico snapped as he stalked onto the bridge.

  “There are a whole load of dragons breathing fire at the compound,” Tannis said.

  “Your friends, I presume?” Rico asked.

  Fergal realized he was speaking to Saffira, who was pacing the floor, rubbing her forehead.

  “They can sense me. I think I’ve worked it out. It’s hard for them to get a lock when I’m moving, but we’ve been in one place too long and they found me.”

  “Then it’s time to get moving again.” Rico threw himself into the pilot’s seat. “Ready for takeoff.” He turned to survey the room. “Is everyone on board who needs to be?”

  “We’ve lost Candy,” Tannis said. “Again.”

  “Fucking little bitch is more trouble that she’s worth.”

  “She had a reunion with Jon and Alex, then promptly vanished. Thorne went after her.”

  “Well, they’ll have to catch a ride on one of the other ships. They’ll be safe here once we’re gone.” He turned to Saffira. “I’m presuming your friends will follow us.”

  Saffira nodded. “I think so. You want me to—”

  The rest of the room turned on her as one. “No!” they said in unison.

  “I’m getting better,” she said.

  “I don’t think we’ll risk it just yet,” Rico said.

  Risk what? Fergal had no clue. But he was more interested in something else. “Dragons?” he said to the room in general. He was presuming they didn’t mean real dragons. “And if anyone mentions long stories I might explode.”

  At that moment, Daisy hurried onto the bridge. She’d obviously showered. Her hair hung damp around her shoulders, and she’d changed her clothes. More black pants, but a red shirt this time, which showed off her white skin. He couldn’t believe how pleased he was to see her when he hadn’t expected to again. His plans had gone to shit, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face. He walked across, wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, and kissed her.

  She looked slightly bemused when he released his hold. He glanced up to find everyone watching them. Daisy shook herself awake. “What’s happening?”

  “Dragons,” Fergal said, watching closely for a reaction.

  “Crap. Not again.”

  Not the reaction he was expecting.

  “Okay, everyone,” Rico said. “Strap yourselves in. The ride might get a little bumpy.”

  Fergal followed Daisy to the seats at the edge of the room and sat in the one next to her.

  The ship was rising now, the monitors showing the walls of the cavern and the ceiling. He expected it to part so they could get out of there, but it remained stubbornly closed.

  “Are we going to crash?” he asked.

  “Rico is waiting for the last minute to open the doors. Less chance of them burning us.”

  “Burning?”

  “The dragons. You know, breathing fire…”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He sat back in his seat and tried to relax, but failed.

  They were going to hit the roof. He was going to die here. And he wanted to know about dragons first. He reached across and took Daisy’s hand and squeezed then risked a glance at her face. Her eyes sparkled with excitement, and a grin stretched her lips. Fucking crazy.

  At the last minute, the roof parted and The Blood Hunter was free. At the same time, the screens filled with fire—crimson and orange flames—and he swore the temperature rose inside the cabin. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

  For a second the monitors cleared, and he saw a…dragon.

  “Fuck me. Dragons.”

  “Hold on,” Rico said, and they were away.

  As The Blood Hunter shot from the planet, the acceleration pushed him back into his seat. Within seconds, the flames cleared from the screens.

  Below them, the planet was vanishing into the distance. But a whole horde of winged creatures were on their tail.

  “Go to stealth,” Rico said.

  Now, while the screens still showed the dragons, they were no longer following, but milling around aimlessly. And finally, like the planet, they vanished.

  “Well, that was fun,” Rico said. “Next time could you give us a bit more warning?”

  “I’ll try,” Saffira said.

  “Okay, we’re on our way to Trakis Five, people. Let’s go blow the Church to pieces.”

  Not part of Fergal’s plans. But right now his nosiness was hands-down beating any concern for the future. “So tell me about dragons,” he said to Daisy.

  “They followed us back from the other universe.”

  “Right. Of course they did.”

  “No. Really. They are the source of Meridian. It’s their secondary form of reproduction—they produce this…stuff that combines with human DNA and forms a sort of hybrid. Hence the wings.”

  “So will he”—he nodded toward where Callum stood, wings folded neatly at his back—“eventually turn into a dragon?”

  “We don’t think so,” Daisy said. “Thorne is already ten thousand years old, and he hasn’t changed any more. Breathing fire would be cool, though.”

  “I’m not sure ‘cool’ is the word.”

  A slight headache nagged at his mind. Time for his medication. He reached into his pocket for the bottle, shook the last pill out onto his palm. A bitter reminder that time was running out. He needed to find Stefan. Even then, what were the chances that he would have the antidote handy? Not high, especially if he’d been incarcerated somewhere all this time. This was the end. But instead of being pissed off that he wouldn’t get to stand in front of his father, he had an image of Daisy all warm and sweet beneath him. Or on top of him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He gave her a sideways glance, and she nodded toward the pill still lying on his palm. “Yeah,” he said. “Just a headache.”

  It was weird. Before he hadn’t wanted to die. Now he wanted to live. The difference in perspective from those two similar outcomes was huge.

  He threw the pill to the back of his throat and swallowed. It stuck on the way down, and he swallowed again.

  So he wanted to live. But at what price?

  How much time did he have? This would either be fast or it would be not at all. He needed to beat The Blood Hunter to Trakis Five, find Stefan, and get him out.

  But he needed help. He looked over to where Rico huddled in a little group with Tannis, Callum, and Devlin. They all raised their heads to stare in his direction. Without a doubt, they were discussing him. Tannis frowned.

  The thing was—why would they trust him? He knew their plans, and they had no reason to believe he wouldn’t betray them. They owed him nothing. Well, except maybe for Daisy. He had saved her life back at the prison.

  Could he confide in her? Would she trust him enough to help him?

  He really wanted her to, and not only because it might be his one small chance to live, but because he…well, the sad fact was he wanted her to like him.

  His muscles locked up tight, and a tic jumped in his cheek. Sweat still beaded his forehead, and he wiped it away with his sleeve. He hadn’t cared whether someone liked him since his mother, and look how well that had turned out. In the end, she had seen killing herself as the only way to free him. As long as she was alive, his father had had complete power over Fergal. Only alone, with no one to worry about but himself, would he have a chance to get away, be free.

  That’s all freedom was. Another way of saying you had fuck all else to lose and no one left to care about.

  God, he was bitter and twisted. He wouldn’t wish his godforsaken character on anyone. So his plan was…

  Keep his distance. Especially from Daisy.

  Use her, but don’t let her mean anything to him. Or not more than she already did. He was still safe. Could still walk away.

  Well, if he was alive and capable of walking anywhere.

  On with the plan.

  He turned to her, and she blinked those
huge green eyes at him. She seemed at peace. Her skin flushed with the blood she had taken.

  “What is it, Fergal? Tell me. You can trust me—I’ll help if I can—whatever it is.”

  It was what he needed to hear, but a little pang of guilt prodded him in the middle. “Do you think I could have a shower?” he asked. “I sweated a little back there—you know, the whole dragon thing.” He took a deep breath. “And maybe we can talk.”

  She smiled brightly, her face lighting up. “Come on, we’ll go to my room.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  They both got to their feet and headed to the door. Fergal couldn’t miss the meaningful look Rico cast Daisy as they left the room, and it occurred to him that maybe, if Rico didn’t trust him, that was because Daisy had said something.

  They took the bubble to Daisy’s room. “You want clean clothes,” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll go find you something.”

  She left him alone, and he stood looking around, searching for anything that might help. In a drawer, he found a set of silver cuffs. Kinky. But he slipped them in his pocket, together with the key, and headed for the shower.

  When he came out, wrapped in a towel, Daisy was sitting on the bed with a pile of clothes in front of her. He realized he didn’t want to get dressed. He wanted to lose himself in her.

  He strode across, hunkered down in front of her, and kissed her. For a minute, she seemed to abandon herself in the kiss before pulling back.

  “No?” he asked.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Not without…” She raised her wrists, and he knew she meant without tying her up.

  “I’m game if you are.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe not a good idea right now.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s fucking honest anyway.” And it hurt. He’d wanted her trust.

  “How can I when you won’t talk to me? Won’t tell me what’s going on? All I know is that you need to find a man, but how or where…?” She gave a helpless shrug.

  He stood looking down at her, considering his options. He couldn’t think of a way to do this without Daisy’s help, and he doubted she would do that without him revealing more of what was going on. “Give me a second to dress and we’ll talk.”

  After grabbing the bundle of clothes, he headed back into the small bathroom. He dressed quickly, in black pants and a black shirt—Rico’s, from the size and style—then transferred the cuffs into the pants pocket and pulled on his boots.

  Daisy was still seated on the bed, and he crossed the room and sank down next to her, leaning his back against the wall and stretching his legs out in front of him. Now he was here, he didn’t know how to begin, and he stared straight ahead until her small hand edged into his and she squeezed his fingers.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  Maybe he needed to go back to the beginning. Perhaps not the very beginning, but the start of this particular episode.

  “I didn’t go undercover in Cybercom because I wanted a story,” he began. “I went because I’d heard they’d discovered an alternative to Meridian. A way to be immortal.”

  “And you wanted that?”

  He shrugged. “Who wants to die? Anyway, as you know, I chopped off my arm, got in there on the pretext of getting another, and once on the inside, I signed up for their alternative program. It was still very much in the experimental stages, and a lot of the volunteers never made it. When you picked me up the first time, twenty years ago, I’d only been in the program a couple of months. I was responding well but still on the antirejection drugs.”

  “Is that the pills you’re taking now?” Daisy asked.

  “No. They’re something else, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Things weren’t too bad back then. We were confined to the space station, but I never felt like a total prisoner. That changed after the Church took power. Again, at first it wasn’t so bad. There was a lockdown on all personnel, but the research went on and we were allowed access to the comms so we knew what was happening in the world.”

  “And that changed?”

  “Yeah. The last five years we were virtual prisoners. My room was nice enough, but it was really no more than a cell. They still went on with the research, but we were no longer told what the procedures were and what the expected outcomes would be. We were in effect lab rats with no say. I got the impression that the research wasn’t going well. A lot of people vanished.”

  “Dead?”

  “Some. Others… Six months ago, I woke one night to find a man in my room—a friend, or the closest thing I had in that place. His name is Stefan Wolfe, and he was the top scientist at Cybercom. He told me that the company was about to be taken over by the Church. He was convinced they wouldn’t allow him to continue with the research and there was something he needed to do. Something had gone drastically wrong with the last phase of the process. He showed me all the others. They’d been turned into mindless drones, unable to think for themselves, only able to do what they were programmed to do.”

  “And will that happen to you?”

  “I hope not. Stefan had been working on a suppressant that should solve the problem, but the last stage needed six months to mature—time to combine with human DNA and become active. Normally, that would have been done in vitro, but Stefan was scared he wouldn’t be allowed to finish.”

  “So what did that have to do with you?”

  “Everything.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Daisy held her breath. Where he was going with this? Fergal had the sharpest brain of anyone she knew—the idea of him as a mindless drone was inconceivable.

  But he was opening up to her. This was what she’d wanted. Except she hadn’t wanted to hear anything really bad.

  “Stefan told me the attack was imminent,” Fergal said. “They didn’t have time to get everyone out and besides, if they tried the Church would come after them. But he believed he could get me out.”

  “He wanted to help you. Why?”

  “I told you we were friends. And it wasn’t help, exactly. He injected me with the suppressant he was working on. The idea was, I stayed alive for the six months it would take for the drug to develop, then I would go find him.”

  “But that’s good, isn’t it? So you’re going to be all right?”

  She’d been sitting beside him, but now she shifted around so she could look into his face as they spoke, try to discern the answer in his eyes. They were blank—he’d gotten too used to hiding his emotions.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  She swallowed. She could do this. “So tell me the rest.”

  “While he was my friend, he knew me too well, didn’t trust me. So he decided not to leave it to my altruistic urges to go back.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, he made sure I had to go find him after the six months was up. He didn’t only give me the suppressant. He gave me a poison at the same time.”

  “But why? Why try to kill you?”

  “He wasn’t trying to kill me. Stefan was playing it safe. He knew there was a good chance that given the drug I would fuck off and he would never see me again.”

  “And would you have?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know, but he didn’t give me the option. He injected a lethal poison into my system and gave me enough antidote to last six months.”

  “The pills you’ve been taking. They weren’t for headaches?”

  “In a way. The first sign the poison is affecting my system is a headache, so I know when to take the pills. I’ve been trying to spread them out, but I wasn’t sure how far I could go.”

  Something occurred to her. “You took the last one just now.”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you got?”

  “Twenty-four standard Earth hours.”

  “Shit. We have to go find this man. I’ll help. We’ll find him.”

  “I already
have.”

  There was that bad feeling again. She swallowed. “Where is he?”

  “On Trakis Five.”

  “Shit.” She studied him but could still tell nothing from his expression. “How long have you known?”

  “Since before your first attempt on the prison break. I had a transfer all set up to Trakis Five. As a prison guard, I could have gotten access to Stefan easily.”

  “And we messed that up.”

  “A little. It might still have worked if—”

  “If you hadn’t broken your cover when you saved me.” She jumped to her feet, unable to sit still any longer, and paced the room, her mind whirling. “Is this guy in the prison on Trakis Five? Is that who you were looking for?”

  He shook his head. “No and yes. I was looking for him, and he was definitely transferred there, but he’s not registered at the prison. My guess is, he’s being held at the Church’s headquarters.”

  “So if you had gone through with the transfer, you might have been there when we attack, and you’d be dead.”

  “I’ll be dead anyway.”

  “There has to be a way around this.” She paced some more. “Maybe you could go in with the advance party. Find this Stefan guy while the others are dealing with Hatcher.”

  He ran a hand through his short hair. “Can you say, with 100 percent certainty, that your friends will help me?”

  She chewed on her lip, and her fang nicked her flesh. The taste of her own blood flooded in her mouth. Would they help him? Tannis would do anything for her crew. But Fergal wasn’t crew. When Saffira had asked for help, they’d refused her. But that had been different. It would have put them all in danger.

  Would this?

  She didn’t know. She believed Fergal, but did she believe him enough to put her friends in harm’s way? Could she help him without involving them?

  Because if she went to Tannis and she refused to help, that would be the end. And Tannis might very well assess the risk as too high, even if she believed Fergal. Daisy hoped not, but she was in no way sure. Tannis had become driven. She blamed herself for Janey’s death, and maybe it had been her fault. But it meant that Tannis was focused on two things: keeping the rest of the crew safe and killing Temperance Hatcher. Until those tasks were done, she wouldn’t be deviated. And she might well see allowing Fergal in, when he knew of their attack, as too big a risk.