That was when Karn knelt down on the filthy, blood-spattered floor, still taller than the biggest of the kids, but not looming as much as he did standing. He was talking to the children, but pitching his voice, choosing his words, to soothe Xia as well. “I know this is scary. Things were bad before for you, but now you’re afraid they may turn even worse,” he said, his voice deep and soothing. “But we really are here to help you. My friend’s going to call someone who can get you out of here, take you someplace safe.”
Xia hadn’t wanted her father to be involved, but at a time like this, Mik would know what to do. After all, she’d turned out almost okay, way closer to okay than someone with her history ought to be, thanks to Mik and Gan.
She tapped her left temple three times to reactivate the neurorelay. Even though she didn’t need to speak out loud, she did anyway, letting the deceptively calm sound of her own voice steady her. “Dad, could you and Gan get a flyer and come to the coordinates I’m about to send you?”
“Kids in trouble?”
“The worst kind of trouble, but you’ll take good care of them,” she said. “You always do. I’m great at some parts of this job, but not the important one.”
She held it together until Mik and Gan landed on the roof and came inside—breaking down the still-locked front door because Xia had come in through the window—and until they worked their magic and calmed the three small victims.
They calmed her as well, simply by being there.
For a few minutes in that fetid room, watching them with the traumatized children, she could remember that one of the worst nights of her young life had also been the best because she’d found a family.
They’d commandeered one of Rahal’s personal flyers just big enough for them and the kids. Though there wasn’t much room, Mik and Gan offered them a ride back to the palace anyway, but she declined.
“Don’t want to be closed in?” Mik asked.
She couldn’t actually speak, but she mouthed, “Right.”
“I understand, kitten. Stick to the rooftops and try not to kill anyone else on your way back. It won’t help.”
Only after they left did she let herself break down.
Then she realized that Karn hadn’t gone with the others, that he was still leaning against the wall, staring at her with eyes as cold as frozen methane on the surface of Strunk Six.
Meeting that stare, she forced herself to lick blood from her hand. If the guy who sold weapons that could wipe out entire cities was going to get all weird about her killing one truly evil person, she’d give him something that would really make him twitch.
She didn’t expect to savor either the blood or Karn’s reaction. But he should know better than to start acting like a Vega system missionary toward a predator who’d just taken down prey.
The blood was worse than she expected. Drug riddled. Putrid.
And she felt herself falling into a cold, damp black place, with no hope of escape.
Her last coherent thought was, It wasn’t just the fountain. It’s something to do with Lysander as well.
Cal thought he knew terrifying. But he’d never seen anything like the brutal elegance of Xia dispatching the rapist, or her beatific smile as she licked his blood from her claws. It was one thing to know your lover was capable of killing someone with her bare hands, but another to watch her do it. One thing to know she was from a predatory species and another to watch her savoring blood the way most women he knew savored chocolate.
Xia was a predator and she’d been shaped by her awful childhood to be what she was. And he’d have shot the rapist himself if Xia hadn’t been there, which would have merely left a tidier corpse than her method. Still, he was going to need a few minutes to process the fact that his lover ranked among the most lethal people he’d ever met. Given his line of work and the fact that Rahal Mizyar was his other lover, that was saying something. He turned away, tried to soothe the children. Someone had to, and it was clear Xia’s head wasn’t in the right place for soothing anyone.
It was only after Mik and Gan came and went that he let himself look at Xia again.
Look at her and see that she was far from smiling beatifically. Far from all right.
“There’s blood on my tail,” she said in a young, fragile voice, although her tail was one of the only parts of her that was clean. “I think it’s mine.” She looked up at him with huge eyes that didn’t seem to see him at all. “I need a bath.”
He nodded slowly, trying to hide the sharp despair that stabbed at him. “You do. Let’s go get you cleaned up.” He held out his hand.
She scrambled away, hissing, claws out. “Don’t touch me.”
“I won’t. I won’t.” He backed away until he bumped into the bare metal wall of the prefab tenement.
Oh great marling stars, she was having a flashback. As he’d done with the children, he crouched down to make himself smaller, then gave up and sat on the floor. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Better not. I’ll gut you. No one is going to hurt me ever again.”
He should get Mik back here. Her stepfather would know exactly what had triggered this, though Cal had a gut-wrenching good guess. Maybe Mik could break through the delusion. Or Gan, who’d been trained to deal with this kind of shit. Cal was only a private lawman. A good PL, but he usually didn’t have to deal with survivors when they were still bloody and hysterical.
And Xia, whatever else she might be, was a survivor of a horrible crime. Make that another horrible crime, in addition to the one he already knew about. It must have happened years ago, but right now, she didn’t know that.
Mik and Gan, though, were busy with the children, who were in even worse shape than Xia. He’d have to manage this one on his own. Xia was likely to harm herself if he didn’t, and possibly a bunch of other people in the process. This was what he’d been warned about when he took on the case. The Mrrwr attaché might be a lying and possibly murderous sack of glaspoid crap, but he’d been right in his warning.
Of course, the attaché might have reason to know that the woman he sought was professionally trained in violence and had suffered enough trauma to keep a planet’s worth of shrinks busy.
Right now the trained killer was holding herself like she’d been gutted, though the dead man had never gotten a chance to touch her, and her eyes were looking across time and space as if seeing something awful.
He needed to get her back to the palace safely.
Even if the part of his brain that had been doing his job for a long time screamed he should take this opportunity to whisk her back to his shuttle and get her off-planet before anyone noticed, including her.
He’d been hired to do a job, and the Cal Janssen he’d always been would do it in the most efficient way, even if it ripped Xia away from the only family she’d ever known. He’d even feel good about it, feel like he was restoring order.
But a few days in Karn the Viking’s more flexible world and he just couldn’t do that.
Xia whimpered.
He ached to get closer to her, touch her, offer some comfort, but at the moment, his touch wouldn’t be comforting. Instead, he extended a hand that she could take if she chose to. “We should go. This place isn’t safe. The driftdwell might have friends.”
“I’ll kill them too. If they’re friends with a person like that, they deserve it.”
He thought fast. “If we go, you can find somewhere to wash. I wouldn’t want to take a bath in this dump, would you? You’d just get messy again anyway, considering there’s blood and guts everywhere.”
“Bathtub’s probably disgusting if there even is one,” she conceded. “You know somewhere cleaner, Mister?”
“The friend I’m staying with has an amazing house. Really big, so you can have privacy to clean up if you’d like, but there are lots of people around if you want company.” Including your
fathers and friends you were willing to kill or die for, but I’m not sure you remember them right now. “He’s a felinoid like you, so he’ll understand how important it is to be clean. He might even know the best way to get the blood out of the fur on your tail. I don’t have fur, so I’m not sure.”
“If it’s dried, you can brush it right out. But it’s still sticky because it’s so humid.” Which it wasn’t tonight, but often was, he thought, on Lysander. “I’ll need good shampoo, the kind only other felinoids have.” Xia’s eyes narrowed. “So fine, I’ll go. But if you or your friend try to do icky things to me, I’ll hurt you a lot.”
Thank the stars for neurorelays that didn’t require talking out loud, so he could let Rahal know what was going on without alarming Xia.
In her current state, she really wouldn’t like knowing they’d already done “icky” things to and with her, with her adult self’s full and enthusiastic consent.
She refused to take his hand, rolling to her feet with her usual grace and flair. “Okay, where to?”
Good question. Even in this zelacxi nest of a city, someone was bound to notice Xia’s state. He’d already learned she could hide in plain sight when she wanted to, but he wasn’t sure she’d understand the need at the moment. “The drenched-in-blood look is so last season. People will stare, even here, and not in a good way. And if we have to kill more people, it’ll take that much longer to get to my friend’s house and get you a bath. We’re going to need to be sneaky.”
She nodded sagely. “I understand. I’m good at sneaky.”
“Besides, going over the rooftops will be fun.”
That, at last, brought a smile to her face. “Bet you can’t keep up with me. You’re just a human.”
“You’re probably right. But I need you to keep pace with me. This city isn’t a friendly place, and I bet you’re tougher than I am.”
She looked him up and down and it sent a flicker of confusion through Cal’s groin. So like the way she’d checked out his body on various occasions, and yet utterly different. “Nah,” she finally said. “You’re way bigger than me and you look strong. I can do things you can’t, though, and I have claws. But I’ll stick with you. I don’t know where I’m going.”
Neither do I, kitten. Neither do I. And every place I used to think I was going doesn’t sound very interesting anymore.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rahal paced up and down the length of the stunning marble-and-gilt hallway.
Pacing was something he did a lot anyway, now that he was leading a settled, sedentary life. Sure, a life in a decadent, over-the-top palace, and one broken up by occasional bouts of random violence or insane sex, but still a settled life. Pacing kept him from doing the kinds of stupid things even a felinoid might regret later—punching his secretary ’bot (he’d hurt his hand on the damn thing), throwing all his would-be advisors out a high window (when, and more to the point why, had he stooped to the point of having advisors rather than drinking buddies?), burning the palace to the ground and decamping (maybe that wasn’t a terrible idea, but he’d have to think it through so no one who didn’t deserve it got hurt).
Pacing, in short, served a purpose when there was no one around to fight or fuck, and he had too much bubbling in his brain to take a nap like a felinoid should be able to do if there was nothing else going on.
This pacing was different, though.
It had started out the same. He was bored and there was no one around with whom he wanted to get into mischief. Xia and Karn were out avenging the innocent and his sworn brother, Drax, wasn’t nearly as much fun as he used to be, now that he’d met a woman. Rita seemed like she’d be happy to join him and Drax for mischief when she and Drax came up for air, but that wouldn’t happen any time soon.
There was no point in worrying about Xia and Karn. Xia had proven she was good at what she did, Karn was a badass, and they had each other for backup. Karn knew that guns freaked her out, so he’d was carrying a distance weapon that wasn’t exactly a gun, a dart pistol. Much the same effect, but it looked and sounded different.
If Rahal felt a little twitchier than usual, that was just boredom and horniness.
He twitched even more when Mik and Gan tore in and demanded the use of a flyer to pick up some children in need of medical attention and care.
But that had been restlessness, the urge to jump into action, knowing he couldn’t. The last thing the kids needed was the warlord himself turning up in the middle of what must already be a nightmare. He’d done way too good a job of playing up the flamboyant monster image and sometimes he made children cry just by looking at them. Not what kids who’d just been rescued from a metaphorical zelacxi nest needed.
Then Karn relayed him.
Something was very wrong with Xia.
Now Rahal was worried.
No, he was terrified and furious at the same time, two emotions he hadn’t experienced in a long time, let alone together. Oh, he’d been anxious sometimes, or concerned that some scheme of his was more dangerous than clever. And he thought he’d been angry at the state of his poor district, at the kind of scum who gave decent criminals like him and Karn a bad name.
Now all he wanted to do was tear off into the night and find Xia. See her, smell her, fold her into his arms if he could, and if he couldn’t do that yet because she was too frightened, try to talk her down. She was his mate, even if he hadn’t told her that yet. He should be able to get through to her.
Somewhere in there, he’d punch Karn. Not because it was actually Karn’s fault. If anything, it was his own for not giving Karn adequate warning that this was personal for Xia.
But he and Karn were two of a kind. They needed some kind of physical release from tension, and fucking at this point would be totally inappropriate, even by felinoid standards.
Only he couldn’t go to meet them because he was the marling warlord and the warlord didn’t go rushing off into the night on his own. When he moved, he had an entourage of bodyguards and enforcers. The only way he’d get out on his own would be if he snuck out. For all he was supposed to be in charge around here, the mechanisms of state had taken on a life of their own.
Each individual person around him seemed to be cowed and deferential. But collectively, they, and the self-created legend of Warlord Rahal Mizyar, had him caged. What if he was out of contact and something went down, enemies attacked or something?
Rahal stopped in his pacing so abruptly he skidded a bit on the marble floor. “Fuck that!” he roared.
He ran toward the flyer bay, relaying to Karn as he did.
He’d meet them halfway.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Xia froze in her tracks on the dark rooftop.
She’d been here before. In fact, she’d been here kissing that tall human who was traveling with her but seemed to be keeping a respectful distance.
Kissing him and touching him and it had all been her idea, though he’d taken part enthusiastically.
Her name was Xia. Xia Suarez. She was twenty-two Standard years old—not a child, even by human standards, and as grown up as a felinoid was likely to get. She’d killed a man tonight—not because she was a helpless kitten who’d been forced into a terrible situation, but because she was a tough, competent grown woman whose job at the moment was to rid the galaxy, or at least this city, of particularly vile driftdwells. She’d taken this particular scumbag’s throat out before he even knew she was there, let alone had a chance to harm her in any way. All the blood on her was his.
By killing him, she’d saved a couple of little children from any more of the horror they’d already endured.
She must have suffered something similar at some point in a past that still seemed blurry. Only someone had rescued her—her adoptive fathers, although her memory of them was hazy at the moment—and she wasn’t that helpless kitten anymore, even if she’d felt that way for a
few minutes.
“I know who I am,” she said, perhaps more loudly than she should have.
The tall man moved closer to her, and for not quite a second, her hands flexed, popping claws. But, no, it was all right. She knew him and she liked him. From the look on his face, he liked her too.
“Thank the stars!” He’d dropped his voice to a whisper, but it carried in the darkness with the force of a prayer. He moved closer yet. “I was worried. Didn’t know what to do to help. I hate feeling helpless.”
“Boy, do I understand that.” She paused, studied him. Marling stars, the man was hot for a human, his face all sculpted planes, his hard body shown off by tight pants and a sweeping duster. She’d definitely kissed him recently. And not long ago, she’d done more than kiss him. She could almost taste the sweet heat of his body, even with the vile taste of tainted blood lingering in her mouth.
All kinds of things were coming back to her. This tall, cool drink of human wasn’t the only person she’d been playing with lately. There was also a delicious male of her own species, one who was tough and sweet and crazy, all at once, kind of like the man who was with her. Good to know she was enjoying her adult life thoroughly, since she’d apparently had a black hole’s worth of suck in her childhood. “I remember who you are too. You’re Karn Anders. And you’re a bit of a nashbet sometimes, especially considering what you do for a living, but you’re a lot of fun in bed.”
Karn chuckled, a deep sound that carried, even over the noisy night in the heart of the city. “No one’s ever called me a nashbet before.”
“Probably no one had the guts.” She bounced the few steps it took to close the gap between them. Close enough that she could smell his spice-and-leather scent and the man underneath it. “You come off as stern and scary sometimes, and you’re a good shot. But I know what you’re really like.”
“And what’s that?” He started to reach for her then stopped. “I want to touch you, Xia. I want to hug you…and do a lot more than that, but I’ll start with a hug. But I won’t do it if it’s not all right.”
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