Teeth & Claws_A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure

by Michael-Scott Earle

  I spared a glance back at the guards, but I couldn’t see their faces because of the helmets they wore. I was suddenly glad I decided to bring a pistol, and I casually reached under the tablecloth to make sure the weapon was adjusted in my holster for easy pulling.

  I doubted anything would happen here in my own castle with half a dozen guards watching me, but the memory of what happened while we were on GUAAY - 23 - c was still fresh in my mind. I hadn’t been paranoid enough then, and I’d almost lost my friends to slavers.

  “Are you nervous about the rite?” I asked.

  “Are you?” she laughed a bit.

  “Yeah,” I admitted. “I don’t want any of you to get hurt.”

  “I’m not worried about the traveling,” Paula said. “Well, that’s not entirely true, I’m a station girl, so I’ve never had to survive out in the wilderness, but Madalena has been training us on what to expect, and I’ll be with Eve, Zea, and Kasta.”

  “What about the creature you have to slay?” I sighed.

  “Eve said that her powers will work on animals,” Paula said with a shrug as she raised her glass to her lips again. “I gotta tell you that my hands are raw from practicing spear thrusts for five hours straight every day. I think I can kill one of those uiun-bairs in my sleep. I’m joking, of course.”

  “Yeah,” I said as I smiled at her.

  We turned back to the performance, and I lost myself in the beauty of their voices for a few minutes. Then I noticed the man beating the drums glare at me again, and I met his eyes. He didn’t back down, and I realized I was going to have to do something.

  “What’s wrong?” Paula asked as her fingers caressed my arm. I was a bit surprised by her touch, but her cheeks were a little red, and I guessed she was starting to feel the effects of the aquavit.

  “The drummer keeps giving me the stink eye,” I said.

  “Hmmm.” Paula looked at him and then looked back at me. “Yeah. He doesn’t like you at all. Doesn’t seem to care that you know.”

  The song ended just then, and we both applauded. As soon as the two singers bowed, I gestured for the skald to walk up to our table while the servants took our plates away.

  “Yes, my king?” he asked.

  “Remove your drummer,” I said as I gestured to the man at the distant side of the feasting hall.

  “My drummer?” the skald asked with confusion.

  “Yeah,” I replied. Then I turned back around to the six guards standing behind me. “I’d like two of you to escort the man to a cell so that the Prime Valkyrie can speak with him.”

  “Yes my lord,” said one of the men, and then two broke off from the group and walked toward the stage.

  “My king, I apologize if Yanick has offended you. I will--”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I am really enjoying your performance so far. Please, continue if you can without a drummer.”

  “Yes, my king. We can continue without him easily. The next part of the performance speaks of Helgi Hundingsbane. He is one of our ancient heroes.”

  “Sounds good.” I nodded at him, and the skald began to sing softly.

  The servants brought us our next course, and Paula and I each opened our eyes wide at the giant slabs of red meat covered in gravy, potatoes, and wild onions. The smell was thick with a peppery twist, causing me to guess that this was the main entrée.

  “Skal,” we both said as we toasted each other, and then we sipped our drinks before we turned to our food.

  The meat practically melted in my mouth, and I had to close my eyes for a few moments so I could appreciate the magnificent array of herbs and textures. I opened my eyes to find that Paula had also closed hers, and we both shared a chuckle when her eyes finally opened.

  “Damn, that’s great,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed as I cut another bite.

  “Probably won’t eat this good for a few weeks. That is how long Madalena thinks it will take for us to complete the rite.”

  “Paula, can I ask you a question.” I turned my eyes to her and then wiped my mouth with a cloth napkin.

  “Yes, but I’m pretty sure I know what you are going to ask me.” Her lips turned up into a smirk.

  “Oh?”

  “You want my honest answer? I’m pretty drunk, so I might as well give it to you.” She grabbed her glass of aquavit and then took a long sip after she spoke, and then she sighed and stared into my eyes.

  “Of course. I want your honest answer.”

  “I’m doing the rite because I’m in love with you. I have been since we were in my apartment when I didn’t want to help you save the station, and you told me that you would have saved my sister in the alley. I’ve tried to ignore my feelings, but they haven’t gone away.” Her words sped up a bit as she spoke, and her cheeks flushed red as soon as she finished.

  “I --”

  “Maybe it is foolish,” she interrupted me. “You don’t know me that well. Hell, this is the first time we’ve really been alone together, but while you don’t know me, and I don’t expect you to share my feelings, that doesn’t mean I don’t know you. I’ve watched you struggle to do the right thing every day. I’ve watched you win against impossible odds. I’ve watched you risk your life to save us. I’ve watched you be the man that I want to spend my life with, but I’ve always watched you love others.”

  “Paula, I--”

  “It’s fine,” she cut me off again. “I know you have your lovers, and they are all my friends. I respect them, and I never wanted to put myself or my sister in a position where we might get kicked off Persephone, but at the same time, I have always wanted to be part of the inner circle. For you, but also because it would make me closer to them. I’ve always been an outsider, my only friends were the androids that I made. Now I have friends who I adore, but I don’t share the one thing they all have in common.”

  “Friendship doesn’t hinge on the love of one man,” I said.

  “No, of course not,” she said as she smiled at me sadly, “but I still feel as if I’m apart from them. The distance will grow once Zea and Eve return from their rite and submit to you. Then it will be one more aspect I don’t share.”

  “Yeah,” I said as I turned from her. I didn’t know exactly what to say, and my brain was a twisted knot of emotions.

  “You aren’t surprised,” she said after a few moments of the skald singing.

  “Kasta hinted as much,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Paula sighed.

  “Does that mean I’m an asshole for not talking to you about it sooner?” I asked.

  “No, of course not,” she scoffed. “This isn’t your problem. You are great. I’m happy to belong to Persephone’s crew. I’m happy that I have this family. I’m… well… I’m happy. I didn’t think there would be anything left for me after my revenge, and there wasn’t. Then again, you were there, and you saved me.”

  I nodded again and then took a sip of the aquavit. It was hard for me to get drunk, but the liquor kicked like a mule, and my blood was feeling warm.

  “So what was your plan?” I said.

  “With the rite?”

  “Yeah, when you got back.”

  “My plan was to talk to Zea.”

  “About submitting to me?” I laughed. “Why not talk to me?”

  “Adam,” she whispered as her blue eyes met mine. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve studied people all my life in my gambling enterprises. I know you are attracted to Kasta and me. Would you refuse us?”

  “I haven’t performed the mental exercise,” I said as I closed my eyes to avoid her beautiful eyes and face.

  “We stayed away from each other. We should have because it was complicated. But after the rite, I’ll be Nordar. Kings can have as many wives as they want. I don’t want to hurt Zea, but I feel like she’s accepting that--”

  “Look, Paula,” I said. “I am attracted to you, but I’d need to think more about it. I don’t want to force anything on Zea.”

  “But like I sai
d, she has become more open to the idea. She’s made a few jokes to Sis and I about it while we trained with Madalena. You know how Kasta responded, and Zea just kind of laughed it off.”

  “She doesn’t like it when everyone walks on eggshells around her,” I chuckled as I took another bite of the meat.

  “She won’t have to,” Paula said with a shrug. “Madalena has talked to us about what it feels like to be submitted to you. It reminds me a lot of the feelings I shared with my sister.”

  “You could sense her emotions?” I asked.

  “Kind of,” Paula said as she smiled sweetly. “Twins have a connection. I love the Kasta I made, and I never want to be without her, but I miss the feeling of that bond with someone. I would like to share it with you, the man I love, and them, the women I love like sisters.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’m worried about you all finishing this safely. We’ll cross this next bridge when you finish and Madalena, Sivaha, and I return from talking to the other Blood Overlord Clans.”

  “Okay,” Paula chirped, and the expression on her face made me think that she believed she would get what she wanted.

  And maybe she would.

  Paula was a genius, cunning, no nonsense, and beautiful. She had led a criminal gambling and muscle syndicate back on the station Queen’s Hat by using one of her android creations, Byron, as the front man. Since she joined our crew, I had come to respect her immensely, and her engineering skills saved all of our asses too many times to count.

  “Adam,” she whispered to me under the sound of the skald’s singing voice, and I turned to see her staring at the stage with narrowed eyes.

  “What’s--”

  “Something is wrong.” her words were slurred. “I think we’ve been conned.”

  “Huh?” I asked as I turned to the stage. The skald and the female singer were still performing, and the band standing behind them had their heads down. I didn’t really see anything out of the ordinary, but her words suddenly made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  “The first man was a diversion!” she hissed, and I turned around to see the four guards standing behind me begin to pull their pistols out of their holsters.

  And the pistols had silencers on them.

  Chapter 2

  I spun to my right and kicked out with my left leg. The ball of my foot connected with the seat of Paula’s chair, and the blonde woman went flying away from me just as the guns cleared the assassins’ holsters.

  My guess was that they had intended for us to be drunk, but these fuckers didn’t know I was a super-soldier tiger-man with incredible healing. The booze hadn’t really done anything except warm my insides, and due to my lightning reflexes, my own pistol cleared my holster a fraction of a second ahead of theirs.

  I didn’t have time to aim for a headshot, but I twisted my pistol toward the arm area of the closest armored guard and feathered my trigger. The bullet left my pistol with a welcome kick, and the man’s armored arm bucked away from me with the impact.

  I was a bit surprised they were using centerfire cartridge pistols instead of the usual Vaish pulse pistols, but their choice of weapons meant that their barrels were extended a bit by the silencer. I managed to get a second shot off at the next asshole in line before the other two got their weapons pointed at me.

  They fired, and I launched myself up from the chair and toward them as I twisted through the air. A bullet nicked my nose, and another nicked my ass, but somehow I was okay, and I slammed into the group of four like a flung bowling ball.

  These were big men in power armor, but I wasn’t a small man, and my human form still possessed incredible strength from my tiger side. They went over as a group, but as we fell, a spread of automatic gunfire hit the wall above us. Paula let out a shout, but I didn’t have time to look at the musicians who I guessed were shooting at us. I needed to get rid of the obvious threat first, so I grabbed one of the men’s pistols with my left hand and tried to wrestle it up to his helmet while I pushed my own pistol down toward another man’s chest.

  Hands, fingers, and arms locked around me, and I heard the servos of their armor whine as their arms filled with artificial strength. I had one fucker’s pistol pinned under my leg, another’s under my hip, and the fourth’s was laying on the ground from when I shot his arm. I felt the muscles in my arms turn into steel as I tried to wrestle against them, and the four men panted through their helmets.

  For what felt like an eternity, we were locked in place like trembling statues.

  I began to shift, but before I could actually free the beast, one of the fucker’s hands slipped from my right arm, and my pistol swung forward. I squeezed the trigger and put a bullet through the helmet of one of the men who I hadn’t shot yet. His hands fell away from my left arm, and I was able to overpower the man whose pistol I held. He let out a scream as I angled his own gun toward his helmet, but then the remaining two assholes grabbed onto my chest and tried to knock me away. I still got the shot off in time, but my aim was a bit off and I heard the bullet graze his helmet like a metal coin skipping off a stone table.

  The two men landed on top of me, and my pistol was pressed against my body in such a way so that I couldn’t get my barrel up into them. It was a quick fix though, I just bucked my hips to bounce the two armored men up off of me, and then I twisted my weapon so that they landed in the barrel’s sights. I squeezed the trigger three times and each of the bullets ripped through the men’s power armor like hot daggers through foil.

  I kicked their spasming bodies off me, put a bullet in each of their heads to ensure they were dead and looked under the tablecloth toward the stage where the other group of gunfire had emerged. I didn’t see any movement, so I turned up to Paula.

  “You okay?” I whispered as I pulled my magazine free of my pistol to check on my bullets.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  “Okay,” I said as I studied the pistol’s magazine. I had eight shots left, but I noticed that each bullet was armor piercing. Lux probably figured if I was going to use the weapon, I’d need all the stopping power I could get, and her acumen in loading my pistol had just saved Paula’s and my life.

  “I don’t hear anything from the other side of the room,” she hissed.

  “My king!” I heard the skald shout, and Paula and I glanced at each other. “Are you alright?”

  I reached for the closest one of the pistols that the guards had carried and passed it to Paula. Then I motioned for her to crawl to the far end of the table in order for her to get into a shooting position against the stage. I began to crawl in the other direction and checked the men I had shot to ensure they were all dead. One of them was still alive, but his breathing was labored under his armor. I needed one of these assholes alive for questioning, so I quietly put their three pistols in my belt to ensure that he couldn’t grab one and shoot me in the back. The movement only took me a dozen seconds, so I continued toward the far end of the table and peered under the tablecloth every half meter.

  “No, he is dead,” I heard the skald moan. “My king is dead. I have failed Odin.”

  “No,” a woman hissed. “You did the best you could.”

  “Wait,” I called out. “I’m alive.”

  “My king!” the man shouted. “Belinda and I have been shot, but we have taken out your attackers.”

  I glanced back at Paula to make sure she was in position, and then I hesitantly poked my head over the table.

  On the stage, I saw the corpses of the three musicians spread across the wood. The skald and the beautiful woman were also on the floor clutching each other. There was a rifle at the singer’s feet, and I guessed that he must have wrestled it away from one of the attackers.

  “Are they dead?” I asked over the table.

  “Yes, my king,” the skald hissed. “I have known these men for eight years. I have no idea why they would have attacked you, but I grabbed one of their--”

  The door to my left opened,
and the two armored guards and the drummer leaned around the corner with silenced pistols. I wasn’t in my tiger form, but nonetheless, I was still faster and stronger than most Nordar warriors, and I managed to pump five shots into the wall where the men took cover before their weapons could target me. They still fired though, and I felt the bullets whiz past my face half a moment after my armor piercing rounds tore massive holes into the wall.

  I knew I hit the men, but I didn’t know how badly they were injured, so I sprang up from behind the table, darted across the open space, and jumped through the doorway. One of the armored guards was lining up another shot, but I fired my pistol as I traveled through the air, and my bullet ripped his arm off at the elbow joint as if a shark had taken a bite out of it. He screamed, but the sound was less pain and more disappointment.

  One of my bullets had taken the drummer in the right shoulder, but he was trying to grab his pistol with his left hand so that he could point it at me. I had a bit of time to think through my next action, and I decided that having three men alive to question was better than two. I pushed off the wall when I landed and then kicked the weapon out of his hand instead of the more satisfying choice of opening his skull with one of my bullets.

  There was a shot behind me, and I spun with my pistol raised. A group of four heavily armored guards had their pulse rifles raised in my direction, and I realized that I’d jumped too far away from the door when I kicked the gun out of the man’s hand.

  There was nowhere for me to dodge, and I felt the tiger unleash a panicked scream in my mind.

  “My lord?” the armored woman in the lead asked as she brought down her rifle.

  “Fuck,” I gasped with relief as I let my pistol relax in my hand. “There has been an attempt on my life. Alert the Prime Valkyrie.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the woman turned to the other three and barked out orders in the Nordar language.