“Hey, I’ve spilled every single bean there is to spill to you. You asked for vicarious romance, and I’ve given it to you,” Angie teased, prompting Lauren to pull a queasy face.
“Yes, but there’s such a thing as too much information.”
I gaped at Angie. “Did you and Bashrik…?”
She blushed. “This kind of conversation requires appropriate attention and consideration. I can’t just rattle it all off to you here, with certain people listening in,” she protested. “As soon as it’s just the three of us, alone with no eavesdroppers, I’ll tell you everything.” She winked, letting me know there was at least some juicy gossip to look forward to.
Lauren flashed me a warning look. “Believe me, you’ll wish you’d never asked.”
“Hush, you. My tales of romance and seduction are way better than any of those trashy romances I just know you’ve been sneaking out of Brisha’s library.”
“I haven’t been stealing anything like that! I don’t think a lot of Vysantheans are interested in that kind of thing, anyway.” Lauren laughed, giving our friend a playful shove.
“Oh, believe me, they are,” Angie whispered in a sultry tone.
I presumed Angie didn’t want to talk too much about it with Bashrik around, in case she said something that might embarrass him, but I was dying to know what they’d been up to since the last time I saw them.
Part of me wished Lauren had someone she could gossip with us about, but she’d always been more tight-lipped about boys than Angie and I. Plus, she didn’t seem to mind that there wasn’t a great romance in her life; she seemed happy enough to indulge in ours, listening and offering advice. Saying that, I knew it would happen for her one day, and when it did, it would be worth the wait. In fact, it would probably blow any other romance out of the water.
Once I was clean and dressed in fresh clothes, the three of us walked toward the cockpit. I could hear the guys debating over where to go next. Mort was suggesting a tropical moon and Bashrik was agreeing, but Navan wasn’t too thrilled by the idea of putting off our ally search. We’d already failed spectacularly with the Titans, but I was glad we hadn’t gone to them in the end, not after seeing how little they respected life. We wanted to stop all three factions from succeeding with the elixir, and we needed an army strong enough to eradicate the rebels, at the very least, but I didn’t want vast numbers of innocents dying because of it. I wanted soldiers who valued innocent life as much as I did. There might be bloodshed—I wasn’t stupid enough to believe otherwise—but I only wanted blood to spill from those involved in the fight. I wouldn’t have the deaths of children on my conscience.
“Why don’t we go to Mallarot, see if we can pick up any shifters to join our cause?” I suggested, drawing a sour look from Mort, who was back in his shifter form. “We can always drop in on anyone you want to see while we’re there, Mort.”
Angie made a face at him. “What are you? Are you crossed with a testicle?” she asked, forcing me to swallow a bubble of hysterical laughter.
“Angie, that is extremely disrespectful!” Lauren chided, though I could see she was struggling to hold back a giggle, too. “He is a shifter. That’s why you’ve seen him as both a frostfang and a coldblood.”
She chuckled. “I apologize, Mort. I shouldn’t have said that; you don’t look like a ballbag at all.”
“You think you’re clever, sunshine, but I’ve been called just about everything there is to call a guy like me,” he shot back. “My skin might look like one of your human testicles—and hey, you should know, sugar—but I assure you it’s pretty thick these days!”
Angie raised her hands in apology. “Honestly, I take it back! I think what you can do is cool. I wish I could transform into anyone I wanted. I’d start with a supermodel.”
“No, you don’t want to start there. Believe me, it only ends in disappointment and bits melting where you don’t want them to, at the worst possible moment,” he warned, before turning his attention back to me. “Mallarot might be your best bet if you want to get some easy allies. Shifters are easily persuaded into joining any cause that comes along, as long as it benefits them. We’re not particularly loyal to our own kind, for the most part. It’s why you’ll see us in most sections of the universe, handing out our loyalty like a creep with puppies.”
I glanced at Navan, Ronad, and Bashrik, who were grinning away at the exchange between Mort and Angie. “Mallarot it is, then! Set a course for the shifter planet.”
“Aye, aye, Captain!” Navan smiled, pulling me down into the copilot’s seat. He forced the throttle forward, the ship surging with it, putting as much distance between us and the Titans as possible.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
We’d only gotten as far as the icy plateau beyond Nessun’s mountainous walls when a warning sign flashed up on the control screen. The cockpit lights turned red as the sirens blared, and everyone came running into the room to see what was going on.
“What’s the matter?” I asked anxiously.
“It’s saying we have a breach in the hull. We can’t leave Vysanthe’s atmosphere if there are any holes in the exterior—we’ll break apart,” Navan explained, a frown furrowing his brow. “I’m going to set us down so we can take a closer look. Hopefully, a repair will only take a few minutes.”
“I knew we shouldn’t have flown in this rust bucket,” Ronad murmured, peering through the windshield at the bleak, dark landscape below. It was still night, with only the ship’s floodlights to illuminate our surroundings.
“We must’ve taken some fire from the aerial fleet without realizing it,” Bashrik said grimly, as the ship descended onto the icy wasteland. At least there were no Titans here.
As soon as the vessel landed, the seven of us hurried out into the bitter night to see what repairs needed to be made. I knew I could be useful here—engineering was my forte, after all, and I was really starting to get the hang of Vysanthean technology. Before I headed down the gangway, I snatched up the gun I’d taken from Korbin, just in case we came face-to-face with any stray soldiers. I also grabbed two blankets from the cargo-hold. I bundled one around me and threw the other to Ronad as we set off to investigate the ship’s exterior. Lauren and Angie had their own coats. According to Navan, the warning monitor had said there was a small hole in the lower left quadrant of the vessel, just below the water converter.
Sure enough, there was a tiny bullet hole in the metal shell of the ship, so small that nobody would have noticed it if the controls hadn’t pointed it out. I was glad they had. If we’d gone into outer space with even a tiny gap in the hull, it would have compromised the pressure of the interior, putting all of our lives at risk.
However, there was something weird about the hole. It wasn’t smooth like a normal bullet hole, but oval, with rough edges, like something had eaten its way through the metal.
All of us whirled around at the sound of a ship descending out of the darkness, taking us all by surprise. A battered, cobbled-together vessel landed next to ours with a clank and whirr of ancient engines. It was a ship I knew, though I’d only seen it once. Before it had even set down, a figure dropped out of the open hatch, landing gracefully on the frozen ground. It was hard to make him out in the glare of the junkyard ship’s lights, but he was dressed all in black, with a glowing blue bracelet clamped on his wrist.
“Get in the ship!” I yelled, but it was too late. The man in black removed his bandana, revealing his third eye, freezing us in place.
It was the guy from Tristitia Lake—the leader of the scavengers, who’d looted what was left of the lakeside mansions. Ronad had called him an ambaka, the last of his kind.
“The name’s Stone,” he drawled. “I don’t ‘ave much time to get to the point, so I’ll be swift. Yer first question is likely to be, who am I an’ what do I want, right? Well, you know who I am now, so that’s the first ‘un dealt with. Second, what do I want? I want what’s owed. Youse rudely missed me drop-off, an’ I don’t take kindly to missed drop-of
fs. I’m ‘ere to deliver and collect.” He spoke with an almost Celtic lilt, though sometimes his words were said too quickly to catch everything. “I’ve come all the way from t’other side of the planet fer this because I don’t care fer rude no-shows, an’ that kind of dough is too handsome to just chuck away.”
He had paused for breath when I felt something knock into my side. Somehow, Mort had managed to avoid Stone’s gaze and had reached for the gun strapped to my back. I guessed he’d been standing off to the side and had morphed into something small and camouflaged, free of the ambaka’s glare. Mort fired the weapon, and the shot rang out, the bullet hurtling toward Stone. Barely batting any of his three eyelids, the ambaka lifted the wrist with the glowing blue bracelet. A gleaming shield arced around him, and the bullet shattered to pieces against the glowing light.
The bracelet generates a protective forcefield, I realized.
“What’d you do that fer?” Stone sighed, no hint of anger on his face. Now, Mort was just as stuck as the rest of us, his lunge for the gun bringing him into the scavenger’s field of vision. “Your turn. You look like the leader o’ this motley bunch,” the ambaka said, smiling as he blinked his third eye.
Through watering eyes, I realized that Navan was moving his head, tilting it from side to side to relieve an ache. I supposed that Stone could unfreeze certain parts of a person whenever he wished to, with the blink of his third eye.
“We apologize for not showing, Stone. A lot of things have been happening here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Navan said coldly. “I’m sorry you came all this way, but we don’t want the item anymore. So, if you’ll just release us, we’ll be on our way, triclops.”
Stone promptly blinked his eye to shut Navan up. “Hey, hey, hey, no need to be name-callin’. Call me a triclops, would you? That’s like me callin’ you a grayskin. I doubt you’d be down with that. Probably have all yer coldblood mates come runnin’ to your aid!” He sighed wearily, tapping his boot on the ground. “Look, folks’ve gotta learn: you don’t make deals on the black market without payin’ up. It’s bad form, and it’ll not stand. I hate to be the baddie, but someone needs some schoolin’.”
Suddenly, he turned to me. “Ma’am, you look like ye’ve gotta question. I’m all ears to you.” With a blink of his eye, he freed my body, my muscles instantly relaxing.
“We’re so sorry about the missed pickup. We didn’t mean to miss it, honestly,” I blurted out. “But how did you find us?”
He grinned, the smile giving him a cheeky quality. “Ah, shoulda included that in me little starter speech. Knew I was forgettin’ summat,” he replied, chuckling. “I traced yer location from my communication marker. I embedded it into the messages I sent you, so I could track you if youse didn’t show. We retraced your signal scatter, an’ it led here. My crew’re pretty bloody great at that kinda stuff.”
“Again, we’re sorry. We’ve had a hell of a couple of days,” I said, taking a breath. “Now that we’ve got you here, though, I was wondering if you could answer another question for me. Have you ever sold weapons to a coldblood named Orion or Ezra?”
Stone shrugged thoughtfully. “Might’ve. Hard to say. I sell a lotta things to a lotta people, an’ in my game, you gotta be bad with names an’ faces, if you catch me meaning.”
“It’s really important that you tell me if you sold anything to those coldbloods,” I pressed.
“Who I sell to doesn’t matter to me, an’ it shouldn’t matter to you,” he replied, kindly enough. “Folks like us, who don’t have no gray skin, we shouldn’t ‘ave no stake in these wars. I’m out ‘ere to survive, nothin’ else. If you’re as smart as you seem, you should do the same.”
“It does matter!”
“Even so, I can’t help ye,” he said, a hint of apology in his lilting voice. “Only thing I’m ‘ere to do is get this item off me hands and get me money off you. Right about now’d be good, before them beefy brutes start comin’ this way.”
“But we don’t want the item, Stone. We changed our minds. We’re sorry, but we can’t give you the money anymore.”
He smiled. “Damn, if it doesn’t break me heart to hear you speak so soft, sweet lass,” he murmured, shaking his head. “But I always collect an’ make fair situations that’ve gone awry. I’m a creature of balance—I gotta make injustices right, one way or t’other. Right now, you’re bringin’ an injustice to me table.” He stepped toward me, freezing my limbs in place.
He started to frisk me, and my anger rose. I opened my mouth to speak, but he blinked his third eye, silencing me. Slowly, he sank to the ground, pausing at the notebook I’d stowed away in my leg pocket. My heart raced with fear and fury as he reached into the pocket and took out the notebook, flicking a few pages before tucking it into the waistband of his torn black trousers. He kissed my hand while he was down there, flashing me a cheeky smile. I wanted to kick him in the head for being so presumptuous, and for stealing my things, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.
As he stood back up, he took the gun that was still slung around my shoulder and tucked it under his arm, before turning his gaze to my frozen crewmates. “I think I’ll be takin’ summat fer the slave trade and all. One of you might be worth a decent amount, in the right auction house.”
He wove through the frozen figures, scrutinizing us closely. “Not you two—not worth the trouble,” he said to himself, dismissing Navan and Bashrik. Apparently, coldbloods didn’t sell on the slave trade. He smirked when he reached Mort. “I’d getta penny for one o’ your sort. I can go anywhere and pick up ten of you, shifter.”
Reaching the human contingent, he paused, giving a cartoonish whistle of delight. “Now, now, now, this’un is an interestin’ wee lass. How’d I not see you before, sweet one? What were you doin’, hiding way out back here? Savin’ the best till last, eh?”
In my peripheral vision, I watched him unfreeze Lauren. My stomach sank as he took her in his arms and dragged her off, kicking and screaming.
I wanted to chase after him and tear her out of his hands, but there was nothing I could do to stop him. Instead, I had to stand there and listen.
“RILEY! ANGIE!” Lauren shouted. “PLEASE HELP ME! PLEASE—” Lauren’s harrowing cry echoed in my ears as Stone carried her into the belly of his junkyard ship. What made it worse was knowing Stone could’ve frozen her again if he’d wanted, but he hadn’t. I guessed he wanted to test the extent of her strength before he committed to selling her off to some unsuspecting bidder.
Stone stood in the open hatch and kept his eye on us as the ship rose up, taking him and Lauren far away. I had no idea where they were going. The terror was overwhelming, surging through my body in devastating waves. Tears pricked my eyes, but the rest of me remained frozen, unable to express the agony I felt rising inside me.
I wondered if this was how the coldblood miners had felt on Zai, trapped inside their opaleine prisons. At least for us, this would be over as soon as Stone turned away his gaze.
I’d never wanted to scream so much in my life. He’d kidnapped one of my best friends, and he’d taken the notebook that could potentially unlock the code to the immortality elixir’s formula. I knew which one I wanted back more, but I also knew which was more dangerous, left in the hands of a nasty scavenger. If he found out what was in those pages, he would sell it to the highest bidder. We already had three factions fighting to succeed first—we didn’t need a fourth.
The ship was almost thirty feet in the air when Stone disappeared from the lip of the hatch, releasing us all from our frozen states. Without a word, Navan opened out his wings and took to the sky, struggling through the altered balance of his damaged part, while Bashrik soared upward in a twisting spiral. They flew as hard and as fast as they could, but the ship flew higher and faster, taunting them. For a piece of patchwork junk, it was remarkably swift.
For a moment, it looked like Bashrik was going to reach the underside of the ship, Navan trailing a short distance behind. He reached out his
hand to grasp the lip of the hatch door, when it slid open, revealing an irreverent Stone. He hadn’t yet put his bandana back on, and as soon as he looked down at Bashrik, the coldblood’s body—wings included—froze solid. He fell out of the sky like a rock, hurtling toward the ground.
“BASH!” Angie screamed, running underneath him as though she could somehow catch him.
I kept my eyes on Stone, watching him disappear into the belly of his ship. “Bashrik, beat your wings now!” I shouted, knowing Stone’s hold on him had gone.
He extended them, but it was like he was a parachutist whose chute had failed. He was falling too fast and too wildly, spinning out of control. Navan soared after him, tucking in his wings to make himself more aerodynamic, while Ronad joined Angie in running around underneath, in the hopes of catching him before he crashed into the earth.
I screamed as a Titan appeared beside me from nowhere. It ignored me, moving toward the area of ground that Bashrik was headed for. Carefully, it lay down on its back with its potbelly facing the sky. A moment later, Bashrik careened into the fleshy mass, which disintegrated like a crash pad, deflating on impact. The Titan had saved Bashrik’s life, the coldblood rolling away from the folds of skin, apparently shaken but no worse for wear.
“You owe me for that,” Mort muttered, morphing back into his shifter form. The fleshy pools at his knees and elbows looked more saggy than usual, with a few extra flaps of skin under his chin. “Mother of a waggleflapper, it’s going to take weeks for that to shrink back to normal. This is why we don’t do big shifts! It ruins us!”
In any other circumstance, I would’ve found what had happened funny, but right now I didn’t feel like laughing. Nothing could make me smile. Not with Lauren gone.
I sank to my knees, overwhelmed with pain, looking skyward at where my friend had disappeared. Navan landed close by and moved to kneel beside me, wrapping me up in his arms, but nothing could comfort me. That bastard had said he was going to sell her in the slave trade—what horrible fate awaited her, wherever they were going? It didn’t bear thinking about. All I knew was, she was alone and probably terrified, being stolen away by a bunch of ragtag scavengers… and I wasn’t going to stand for it.
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