This morning, a pair of grunts here strictly for the fighting and the money stood in the hallway and discussed the prisoner. “Dimon has him on the bridge,” one of them said. “Can you believe it? We actually caught Flack? I thought he was more of alegend than this…” The Kertinal male sounded disappointed, his subharmonic voice rumbling deeply in his chest.
His companion laughed, the sound a much higher squeak coming from his small Ovt body. I wasn’t fooled into thinking the smaller guy was safe, though, because I knew firsthand that Ovters could spit acid from their weird, lizard-like mouths.
“You’re an idiot, La’kon. You weren’t here yet when Flack was second-in-command, but trust me, he’s every bit as legendary as the stories say he is.” The Ovt made a smacking sound, and though I couldn’t see him, I knew he’d just licked one of his eyeballs with his long tongue. An Ovt couldn’t blink, and as disgusting as it was to watch, that’s how they kept their eyes wet and clean.
“Oh, and you know him so well? I thought you haven’t been here much longer than me?” the Kertinal responded, laughing derisively. I tiptoed around some crates to peer curiously into the hallway and discovered the Kertinal male standing with his back to me not far away. The Ovt stood in front of him, arms crossed over his scrawny chest, his long, salamander-like tail swaying back and forth behind him.
“Yes, La’kon, I know!” he said vehemently. “Don’t you think there’s a reason the captain ordered all of us to stay away from the brig? He doesn’t want Flack talking to any of us.” Flack, his name really was Flack. He told me the truth… That still didn’t mean I could trust him, but it sparked a hint of interest.
I had to get to work, but curiosity got the better of me. If I wanted to know if I could eventually trust Flack to help me escape… I had to know what was fact and what was fiction. I hadto figure out if he was as amoral as Dimon said he was—a cold-blooded killer—or if those were lies designed to scare me. He didn’t trust his own crew to feed him, so what was going on?
I climbed back into the cable duct I’d used to get to this forgotten bunk room, then quickly oriented myself and headed for the bridge. It wasn’t far from here, but I had to crawl through the ceiling above the officers’ quarters to get there. That always made me deeply uncomfortable, because while I hated Dimon, I was absolutely terrified of Xathena. The Xurtal woman wasn’t in her room, though, which meant she was probably on the bridge herself.
Through the ventilation panels, I could see inside each room. I could see the disarray of Xathena’s sheets and the passed-out male lying on the floor at the foot of the bed, completely nude and marked with red welts from his shoulders all the way down to the backs of his thighs. Xathena must not have been happy with his services last night. Dimon’s room was much neater, and only an empty bottle and a stained tumbler indicated what he’d been up to last night—celebrating alone with more Peckana.
Then I reached the bridge, and I had to worm my way through a very tight squeeze to get into the wall and down to hide behind a panel with a large crack I could see through. It always took me a moment to figure out what exactly I was watching when I crawled in here, disoriented by the tight twists and turns I had to make to squeeze myself into this space. Breathing as shallowly as possible, I hoped nobody noticed I was there, but fear of discovery still pounded in my pulse.
There was a large view screen at the front of the room that displayed only small stars against velvet black. We weretraveling, but not going faster than light, and that meant it almost looked as if the stars weren’t moving at all. There were several banks of consoles, and these were manned by some of the crew. Weapons, shields, communications, and, of course, the helm.
In a seat raised slightly to oversee it all, Dimon sat, his hands on his knees and his body hunched forward. The shark-fin rising from his back was sharp as a blade, edged with black, and, in this position, taller than his head. Next to him, Xathena looked even more intimidating, wearing leather and at least a dozen weapons strapped to her body. She was probably the sharpest, fastest shot on the entire ship, and she was more vicious than the men. There was good reason she was the second in command, and I kept wondering how Dimon could trust her at his back. She was the shark, not him, or at least, she was the bigger shark of the pair.
I had skipped over him because I wasn’t quite ready to deal with my reaction to him. When I had nothing else left to check, my eyes naturally found him, though. Flack. It was a strange name for an alien I knew absolutely nothing about and, at the same time, way too much. So many stories about all the bad things he’d done, yet none of that matched how he’d treated me yesterday.
He was kneeling in front of Dimon and Xathena, his hands shackled behind his back. The bloody bandage on his side looked much worse, but his chest was still impressive and his face was drop-dead gorgeous. Long silver hair hung loosely around his shoulders, partially restrained in a bun. His blue eyes were fierce and exotic, framed by the thick black lashes that surrounded them. The silver marks that shimmered on his skin in various places looked both savage and oddly elegant. Most appealing,though, was the way the white lines accentuated the aristocratic bone structure of his face.
There was something so disrespectful and calm about the way he sat there that his kneeling posture was far from submissive. I was a little impressed with how he pulled that off. He seemed fearless, calm as a cucumber, and like the one holding all the cards even though he was the one in chains. It was very obvious this got under Dimon’s thick gray skin in ways I’d never seen before.
“It’s the only deal you’re getting,” the captain snarled, but Flack just smirked and said nothing. Not responding, not budging, not saying anything except raising one silvery eyebrow. He tilted his head, glanced once at Xathena, and the Xurtal woman actually shifted back on her feet. Was she scared of him? I couldn’t imagine the tough woman being scared of anything, and the fact that she feared Flack seemed to indicate some of these stories were no exaggeration after all. My stomach twisted.
“You have no options!” Dimon said, but his tone said that he was the one who had no options. It galled him, but I was impressed by how much Flack had conveyed without saying a single word. He was absolutely fearless, even injured and restrained. “Get him out of my sight!” Dimon ordered, slashing his hand through the air and then pointing at Xathena. The Xurtal woman did not look pleased to be the one in charge of escorting the prisoner, but she was quick to bark orders at a pair of guys to haul him away.
It happened just as they marched out the door, Flack between them, walking proudly without so much as a hint that he was in pain. The prisoner tilted his head in my direction, and hisicy blue eyes locked onto the wall panel I was hiding behind. Locked straight onto me. Impossible, he couldn’t know I was there, could he? Nobody ever did… but the way he stared was uncanny. The cold blue of his eyes heated into something warm and molten, intrigued, attracted. No, I had to be reading that all wrong. He didn’t know. He couldn’t.
Chapter 4
Irena
I carried that with me all through my day as I crawled all over the ship and cleaned like a fiend. I really didn’t want Xathena to be upset with me for slacking off that morning, so I worked hard to catch up. My hands were sore and blistered by the time I slipped into the galley that evening to collect Flack’s evening meal. To my dismay, Trixom had already cleaned everything, and there were no scraps to scavenge for me. I’d have to go hungry tonight, because I sure as hell didn’t dare hope that the prisoner would be so kind as to share his food with me.
“Do not forget to inject him, worm,” the chef warned me as I turned to leave with the tray, silently hoping to get away before he saw me. “And don’t let me see you in here again tonight or tomorrow. You’ve got plague, remember?” He wagged a fat finger at my messed-up face and curled his lips in disgust. His yellowed teeth were chipped but still far sharper and more pointed than mine, and something black was stuck in one corner. He was disgusting, but he thought the same of me. I didn’t know who was worse, though, but I was hoping it was him.
My skirt pocket felt heavy with the contraband I’d smuggled out of a forgotten box in some storage corner. These pirates didn’t know half the things they still had. That came in handy when you needed medical supplies but didn’t dare sneak into the medbay. I was really terrified of the ship’s “doctor,” whom I was pretty sure had majored in medicine at a butcher shop, not med school. That room always looked bloody and unclean, and no matter how often I scrubbed the place, it didn’t seem to help.
With a strange mixture of fear, dread, and hope, I approached the brig that night. My head turned left and right to check that the hallway was empty before I opened the door and stepped inside. No guard for him, because they trusted the shackles and whatever I was supposed to be drugging him with. My eyes darted to the injector Trixom had placed beside the pile of delicious-looking food. What was in it? What did it do? I had no clue, but it hadn’t appeared to help with either pain or making him sleepy last time. I was pretty sure I could rule those options out.
I waited until the door had shut behind me before I lifted my eyes to look at his cell. Afraid, if I were being entirely honest with myself, that my reaction to him would give away far too much—to him, but far worse, to any of the pirates should they happen to see. I knew there were no functioning cameras inside the brig, but the one in the hallway just beyond the door was definitely functioning. It was not something I should be aware of, but I’d seized my chance the moment I had it to memorize all the cameras and their status. Nobody repaired the ones that broke, so in the past months I’d been here, the number of broken cameras had actually grown.
He hadn’t said a word, but I knew he was watching me. Cloaked in shadows because the light was so bad in here, his eyes still caught the light and reflected it back at me. They reminded me of cat eyes, predator eyes. My skin broke out in goosebumps, though it was always muggy and warm everywhere you went on theVidu.
My stomach rumbled with hunger, but I was used to ignoring it by now. As I moved down the short hallway to the cell at the end, my pulse spiked, and heat shivered through my flesh. That wasfar more disconcerting, my response to him. When he saw me, he looked at me with a glint in his eyes I had no words for. Was it heat, attraction, calculation? The curl of his mouth was certainly seductive, his bare chest a work of art I couldn’t help but stare at.
“Hi,” I whispered as I paused at the door. My palms had gone sweaty, and I wondered if I hadn’t been looking forward to being here all day—a change, a break from the dreary monotone of despair that filled my life. Unlike yesterday, he hadn’t said a single word yet, but his stare… God, his stare, it was exactly like the one he’d aimed my way back on the bridge. I was certain now: he’d known I was there, but he hadn’t given me away.
“Why, what brings you here, beautiful?” he smirked, amusement at his own joke making his mouth curl. He knew exactly why I was here. Knew I had no choice in any of this, but I kind of liked how he made light of the situation, undaunted by his predicament. “Come to bring me another meal I don’t need? Why don’t you keep me company while you have it yourself?” He wriggled his hand to indicate the empty space on the cot beside him, inviting me to sit right next to him.
Another meal he didn’t need? My empty stomach clenched painfully, leaping at the thought that I could fill it with another warm, solid meal. Last night, I’d eaten so much my stomach had actually hurt from being full. I wanted that again. I hesitated, though, because something felt off, and I didn’t believe he was actually this kind. Nothing was kind without expecting anything in return out here. Nothing and nobody.
He winked at me, his smile growing wider, and the hunger in my stomach was briefly outmatched by a flare of heat. I wasn’t scared of him this time, which was either monumentally stupidor a good thing. Maybe I’d been scared so much already that I was too fatigued to muster it now.
