by Carysa Locke
“Who did this to you?” she asked.
“A Killer,” he said softly. “Her name is Akyra. She’s unlike any of her kind I’ve ever met before.”
“In what way?”
“Young. Cold, but also volatile. She enjoys what she does. She really enjoyed this.” He gestured to his body, and Mercy’s mouth tightened.
They didn’t speak again as she finished washing him. He didn’t flinch, not even when she knew it had to be painful. She could feel it thrum across their connection, though.
Somehow, the times she and Sebastian had shared his Talent had also strengthened the connection she had with him, until it was stronger than the other bonds she felt to those she’d claimed. By the time she finished, the water had begun to cool. Sebastian pressed a hand to the pressure plate that turned it off, and then he pressed another, and warm air began to blow on them. Mercy grabbed a towel for her hair, and handed him one as well to help speed things along.
“Some of those look like they’re already getting infected,” she said. “Let’s hope as painful as it was, the cleaning helped. And let’s hope we get the hell out of here soon, and we can get you to a med kit.”
“I’ll be fine, Mercy. I’ve been hurt worse than this many times. She only wanted you to think I was dying.”
Mercy didn’t say anything in response. Akyra had done a damn good job, and that was something Mercy intended to pay her back for in the future.
It was nice feeling clean again. The capsulet Ghost had given her was starting to wear off, and her knee ached. Nothing she could do about that, unfortunately.
She was drying her hair, squeezing the length of it with her towel, when she became aware of just how close she and Sebastian were standing. And that she had a view of all of his assets.
He was clearly feeling well enough to be anticipating getting back into bed with her.
She let her towel fall to the shower floor. Her skin was dry now, and the warm rush of air felt comforting and pleasant. Mercy was feeling warmth of a different kind as she stepped even closer to Sebastian.
“I think it’s time for part two of my action plan,” she said, her voice husky.
“Is it?”
She leaned in close, pleased that he was only slightly taller than her. “Take me to bed, Sebastian.”
His dark eyes lit with a familiar fire. “If my Queen insists.”
“I do.”
She swayed closer, expecting him to kiss her. Instead, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her out of the bathing room and back to the bed.
“Sebastian, what are you doing? You’ll start bleeding again.”
He set her on the bed, his hair sliding forward to fall across her arm as he propped himself above her. It was already dry, the silky strands making her shiver as they slid across her body.
He leaned in until his lips were next to her ear, his breath warm on her neck. “Worth it,” he said, and put his lips where his breath had been.
His hands bracketed her as he placed open mouthed kisses along her throat, trailing them across her collar bone. When she would have turned toward him, he put a hand on her shoulder and pressed her back into the bed.
He turned his head, smiling the sort of confident smile that had her heart pounding. “Patience,” he said. “I’ve thought about this a lot. I’m going to take my time.”
He trailed kisses down her body. His hand stroked her arm, her ribs, his fingers trailing along places she didn’t even know were tense until she found herself relaxing under his touch. She felt loved and cherished, melting beneath his hands, warmth moving languidly through her in the wake of his lips. When he sucked one of her nipples into his mouth, she nearly came up off the bed. There’d been no lead up, just one minute relaxing, worshipping hands, and the next hot pleasure spearing through her gut.
He made a pleased noise, clearly happy with her reaction. His hands still moved over her body, but there was more urgency now. No longer targeting knots and tension to relax, now they sought to stimulate and bring pleasure.
Every time she tried to turn the tables on him, Sebastian stopped her. With a touch. With a kiss. With the stroke of his thumb over her clit. Finally, she stopped fighting it.
The first time she orgasmed, it was with his mouth on her clit. The second, with his fingers inside her. She tried to urge him faster, to get him to do what she wanted and was ready for. He continued to wring pleasure from her with a methodical devotion that seemed designed to drive her mad.
Finally, her patience snapped.
She reached down the connection she shared with him, and let what she was feeling flow down the link. The pleasure that wasn’t quite enough. The need for more. He groaned and shuddered, his breathing uneven and harsh.
She arched against him, the movement deliberately provocative.
Just in case he wasn’t getting the message, she nipped his shoulder with her teeth. “Fuck me, damn you.”
He chuckled. “We’ll have to work on your patience.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but patience is your virtue, not mine.”
“You’ll learn.” Somehow, he made those two words sound like a carnal promise.
Mercy felt a frisson of something that might have been anticipation. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, he finally gave her what she wanted, sheathing himself inside her in one smooth motion. She gave a strangled gasp, nails digging into his shoulders. She froze, immediately letting him go.
“It’s fine, Mercy,” he said softly. “You didn’t hurt me.” To prove it, he started moving inside her.
She moaned, her thoughts scattering. It built between them quickly. Sebastian, who had shown such restraint until now, finally lost control. His breathing grew ragged. He made small noises of pleasure with each thrust, and Mercy, still connected to him through the link, felt her own pleasure echo his. She bit her lip as the pace increased, becoming frantic. The pleasure built, and built, and built. When it crested, she bit her lip, her body shuddering in his arms. Just as her own wave receded, Sebastian’s crested, and the pleasure lapped through her all over again.
She’d lost count of her orgasms. She couldn’t remember how many this was, only that the last was the most intense of them. The pleasure went on and on, and when it finally began to fade, they lay entwined together, breathing hard. Sweat slicked their skin, and their hair lay in a tangle around them.
After a moment, Mercy laughed.
“What?” he asked, opening one eye. He didn’t seem any more inclined to move than she was, and for just a moment she felt a spear of pleasure that he hadn’t taken her chuckle personally.
“Nothing. It’s just, well.” She grinned ruefully. “Now we need another shower.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Treon hadn’t imagined that he’d necessarily end up fighting beside Thirteen, but he couldn’t say he disliked doing so. She was fascinating. She alternated between firing the huge rifle she carried and wielding Talent like some kind of sorcery out of a tale. The cat-like creatures that attacked them had lightning fast reflexes and a truly impressive leap ability. Long and sinuous in their musculature, their tawny fur was marked with blood red stripes. Their tails lashed the air right before they attacked, a very feline move.
But it was their heads that really grabbed his attention. Triangular and long, with a strangely flat snout filled with rows of menacing teeth. Not something he wanted anywhere close to him.
Thirteen was more of a fighter than he ever would have guessed. She cut them with phantom claws, shot them, and pinned them in place with pure, raw Talent.
So, she had telekinesis at the least. Except it didn’t feel like standard telekinesis. He couldn’t quite place what she was doing. Every time he got close, one of the beasts would distract him.
The girl spun and cut, leaping from one beast to the next and cutting a path through them with her soul blade. Wisps of white smoke followed in her wake, and Treon followed behind her, forced to admire her
ability even if she was more eager than any Killer he’d ever seen.
Even with all of their strengths, though, it seemed the beasts were endless. It was as though the ship crashing had called every single one of them on the entire planet. For every one they cut down, three more filled its place.
Their minds were fascinating, alien, but still susceptible to him. He spun fantasies out of thin air, making one beast think the one next to him was human. It would turn and viciously attack, and the two would engage in a vicious, brief battle, either killing one another or falling to Akyra’s soul blade, or Thirteen’s rifle.
Still, they were tiring, there was no doubt of that.
Where, Treon wondered, was Reaper? Or Ghost? Or any of the others. He had a faint reading of their minds. He knew they were alive.
Most of them, anyway.
He couldn’t feel Mercy, Cannon, or Declan at all. He found he didn’t like this planet where people could simply vanish from his ability to find them with his mind. At least Titus and the children were safe aboard Heresy. As far as he knew, these creatures couldn’t tear through metal and nanograph.
Something bright flashed in the atmosphere, glinting as it streaked across the sky.
“A ship,” he murmured, watching it descend. “Now, I wonder who that might be…”
“Doesn’t matter,” Thirteen said. “I only care about our ship. Move!”
They only made it a short distance before the next wave of creatures attacked. It was a bloody, brutal fight for every inch of ground. Treon was sweating profusely by the time they reached the dropship, still somehow miraculously intact even after he’d fired all of those plasma rounds at it.
Thirteen ran to the door and triggered it open. She ducked inside, and he and Akyra were fast behind her. He breathed a sigh of relief when the door slid shut.
“I’ll get us prepped and ready to hit the air,” Thirteen said. “Get the others on board, or we leave without them.”
Treon started after her, only to stop short when the tip of the girl’s blade was suddenly in his face.
“Is that really necessary?” he asked with barely suppressed impatience.
An unsettling smile spread across the teenager’s face. Unease touched him. This girl had a Killer’s blue eyes, but the cold void of emotion he was accustomed to in his brothers was subtly different in her. There was something behind her smile, a sense of wrongness.
Treon eased back a step. He had the sudden, powerful feeling that this girl wasn’t just making a threat. She wanted very badly to kill him. Despite how much Thirteen or her Queen wanted him, she was considering ending his life right now.
“I’ll just wait here,” he said, forcing a smile. He didn’t take his gaze from her, keeping his body language casual. As though he were simply a guest and she his host.
“Perhaps you should follow Thirteen’s order,” he said carefully.
The girl eyed him for a tense moment, and then the blade vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. A soul blade, triggered with Talent, the same one he’d seen cutting a swathe through the creatures outside. She was probably wearing it somewhere on her person as something innocuous. The blade could come back with a whisper of thought.
She turned away with an insolent swagger. “Seems you’re really something special, planewalker.”
It took all of Treon’s will not to react. For just a second, he wondered… but no, this girl was not the Queen, merely a young Killer in her service, twisted into something even worse.
“Not really,” he said.
The girl laughed, and the sound chilled him to the bone. Light and carefree like a child’s, and yet there was absolutely nothing innocent about her.
She contemplated him, and her eyes bled of color. “You’re supposed to be something rare,” she said. He did not like the way she was looking at him. He let his Talent spiral out, tendrils winding through the space between them, carefully brushing her shields. “A real prize.”
“I don’t like being referred to as a thing,” he said softly.
Strong shields, well made, but with hairline cracks in places. An imperfect vessel.
She cocked her head, ignoring him. “Planewalker. What is that, exactly? I’ve never heard of that Talent.” She flashed a smile at him. “I’ve never killed one of your kind before.”
Treon’s Talent wrapped around her shields. The cracks were thin, barely present, but he didn’t need more. “I think I’m done being threatened by children today.”
The smile slipped from her face, and she stepped toward him. Watching for it, familiar with the subtle movement involved, he knew the moment she triggered the blade.
“I’m no child,” she said. Petulant emotion threaded through her voice when it should have been eerily devoid of feeling.
Treon raked her with his gaze, allowing himself a smile that curved toward a sneer.
“I’m no child!” she spat, and lifted her blade. She froze, arm upraised. Confusion and anger warred on her face.
Treon stepped close to her as she strained to move. He lifted a hand and flicked his fingers. Her blade vanished into smoke. The wisp of it wrapped around her, winding about her arms and her waist, until she was bound. Her mouth dropped open in shock. She stared at him incredulously. She struggled for a few moments, but the smoke held tight. Her eyes narrowed, and he was sure that in normal circumstances, he would now be dead.
He smiled.
“This is what I do,” he said. “You’re in my world now. My creation. I control everything that happens here. That light. The door. This room.” You.
The last word he said in her mind.
She stared at him, her face bloodless. “That’s impossible. Talent doesn’t work in mental landscapes.”
“You asked what a planewalker does.” He spread his hands. “This. I do this.” Deliberately, he turned his back on her. He still held her immobile.
She swore at him. “I’ll kill you the instant I’m free.”
“Better Killers than you have tried.”
She struggled. He watched her, amused. “I guess your friends aren’t going to make it back before we leave. Oh, wait. You don’t actually have friends, do you? People are just things to you, put here for your amusement, and to die.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Treon.” Thirteen stood in the doorway with her arms crossed.
He frowned. She shouldn’t be here. He hadn’t included her in the mindscape. Hadn’t wound his Talent around her as he had Akyra.
“Let her go. Akyra, don’t try it. I’ll kill you before you touch him.”
He shrugged and snapped his fingers. The dream drifted away, smoke vanishing into clear air. Akyra glared at him, anger vibrating in every line of her body. For a second, Treon thought she’d control herself. Then she lunged at him. He backed up, grabbing for her mind, but he needn’t have bothered. She swiped at him but her soul blade disintegrated before it touched him, vanishing into white smoke. She teetered and almost fell, clutching at her throat.
She couldn’t breathe. She was choking. She fell to her knees, gasping. Her eyes rolled toward Thirteen, pleading. They were normal, deep blue, nothing of the Killer in them.
Treon felt her die.
“I told you.” Thirteen watched the girl’s body slump, shaking her head.
“You killed her.” He didn’t know why it shocked him, but it did. “How did you — you killed her.”
Thirteen turned back to the cockpit. “She was becoming a real problem. She enjoyed killing too much.”
Even so, Treon stared at her, silently re-evaluating everything he thought he knew about this woman.
“Strap in,” she said. “We’re leaving.”
It occurred to him to refuse. It was just the two of them now. “What about your people?” he asked, temporizing, buying time.
“Kieran is dead. Your brother killed him. Desmon is dead. Koal is dying as we speak, trapped in a hole somewhere, hiding. I can’t get to him, and he can’t get to us. I
t’s unfortunate, but none of my people are left.”
The deck rumbled beneath his feet, and she took the flight controls. Her gaze swept him as the dropship rose into the air. “I said strap in.”
Well. He’d made his choice already, hadn’t he? At least he knew Reaper had survived. He sat in the co-pilot’s chair, and secured the safety harness. This was his grand plan, after all. No sense changing his mind now.
She flicked a hand and a holoview appeared before them. The ship they’d seen entering the atmosphere swept over the area. Turrets cut the monsters into pieces. A few ran, aware that a larger predator had arrived.
“Who do you think that could be?” He didn’t recognize the make of the ship. It had a military look, but no markings to distinguish it.
Thirteen shrugged. “If they aren’t friends of yours, who knows? More mercenaries, maybe.”
She kept the holo up as they flew, so she wasn’t as immune to curiosity as she acted. The strange ship landed, and group of men disembarked. By their dress and bearing, Treon could see clearly enough they were military, even if they weren’t in uniform.
The man in the lead looked young, tall and muscular with fair hair and a commanding bearing Treon recognized even from this distance. The man looked up, his gaze tracking their progress with an unreadable expression.
Interesting.
Thirteen turned the holo off. “Even if they take to the air, we’ll be long gone by the time they reach us.”
Unease moved through him. The others were still down there. He had every confidence in Titus’ ability to get Heresy functional for flight again, but the rest were scattered across the area, perhaps easy targets alone against a military force. Had he made a terrible mistake?
Kieran was dead. He could, he hoped, safely reach his brother without risking distracting him into a fatal error. Reaper.
“None of that,” Thirteen said.
His brother’s mind faded from Treon’s awareness. He tried again, but he couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t reach any of them.
He stared at Thirteen. “Isn’t that an interesting trick?” he murmured.
