“Your ship? The airport’s all the way across the city!”
She was already shivering, the wet PJs doing nothing. Surely he wasn’t planning on walking that far. It would take all night, and she’d end up hypothermic before they got even halfway there.
He didn’t answer. He turned a corner and cut across towards the old Dempsey building lot. She recognized it even upside down in the dark. The building had burned down when she was a kid. Stood here as a shell for years before they knocked it down, and then there had been nothing, because you couldn’t get construction vehicles through the gap the surrounding blocks left. She’d played here when she was a kid, told herself she was exploring, really just killing time before she had to go home.
“We’re here,” he announced.
“What do you mean, we’re—” she twisted on his shoulder. “What the?—”
The ship sat in the middle of the lot like it owned the place. Dark, low, and sleek, it was longer than it looked at first glance. The rain hit the hull and ran off cleanly… no pooling, no streaking, as if the surface itself were repelling it. Water off a duck’s back, she thought and nearly giggled. No way had she just compared some deadly alien ship to a duck. But… now she looked at it, the back did look a little duck-like.
He walked toward it, and the back section split open. A seam appeared from nowhere, a ramp lowering, slow and even, to settle onto the cracked concrete. She twisted this way and that on his shoulder as he walked up it, trying to take all of it in at once.
The warmth hit her before anything else… not stuffy, not the particular fug of a room with too many people and not enough ventilation, just warm. The cargo area was small and tidy, all dark paneling and low amber lighting, equipment locked into housings.
It was nicer than any place she’d rented.
“It’s huge.”
“No,” he countered, setting her on her feet. “You’re the one who’s tiny.”
She came up to about the middle of his chest. She had to crane her neck to glare at him properly, which somewhat undercut the glare. Up close he was all shoulders, and her stupid heart kicked up a beat. If she’d met him in a bar, looking like that, she’d have climbed him like a damn tree.
But she hadn’t met him in a bar, he’d kidnapped her. Which meant she had to get the hell out of here.
The ramp was closing behind her. She looked at it, looked at the gap that was narrowing. Could she make it? She looked back at him and realized he was still holding Barnaby, one eyebrow raised as if she could read his mind.
Barnaby was purring.
Draped over Thyaar’s arm like a scarf, his eyes were half-closed as he purred like a broken engine.
Traitor.
“Come on,” Thyaar ordered. His gaze dropped from her face, moved down, and then he looked away quickly. “We’ll get you something more… appropriate.”
She looked down.
Well, shit.
Her pajamas, pale blue cotton, which had been perfectly decent when they were dry, were not dry. They were so not dry it wasn’t even funny. Soaked through, they were plastered to her skin. They were also completely and utterly transparent.
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Right,” she said. “Yeah. Good idea. Lead the way.”
The ship was nothing like she'd expected.
Amelia had expected something military. All gray metal and hard edges and warriors moving through corridors with weapons on their hips, because that was what the news feeds showed you when they talked about the Lathar… troop transports that looked like flying prisons with all the warmth of an abattoir. What she had not expected was carpet.
She stopped in the corridor entrance and looked down at her feet. The carpet was deep charcoal, dense enough that her bare feet sank into it, which meant that it was as expensive as hell. And here she was, standing on it, dripping water from every inch of herself.
Thyaar didn't stop.
He was already halfway down the corridor ahead of her, leaving a trail of enormous boot prints on the charcoal pile. Boot prints that were, and she was noting this purely for informational purposes, the largest boot prints she'd ever seen in her life. Which meant that proportionally his feet were?—
No. She cut that thought off and turned her attention to the walls.
Yeah, better. Much better.
