Page 2 of Claimed By the Wraiths

“Jessa, respond.”

“I’m here.” Her voice through the comm, steady. “Door came down between me and the corridor. I can see another one sealing the far end. They’re boxing me in.”

I heard the click of her grabbing the blaster from the console. Good.

“Deyric, get that door open.”

“Already on it. The security system is local, not networked. I need to...”

“Get it open.”

Ressh grabbed my arm. “Serak. We’ve got incoming.”

I heard them. Boots on deck plating, coming from the direction we’d entered. The security response was faster than our intel had predicted.

“Thoryn,” I said.

“Holding.” Thoryn’s voice was calm. A calm that meant he was about to hurt someone.

“Jessa, how long to finish the pull?”

“Ninety seconds.”

“You don’t have ninety seconds.”

“Then I’ll go faster.”

She was behind a sealed door with hostiles closing in, and the heat was already in my hands. I looked down. Dark to the wrists.

Not because she was close. Because she was in danger and I couldn’t reach her.

“Ressh, hold this corridor. Alix, with me.”

Three Consortium security came around the junction at a run. I stepped into the corridor ahead of them.

I let the dark come. Not the heat in my hands, not the involuntary response I couldn’t control.

The other thing. The thing my people don’t talk about.

My skin went dark. All of it, not just the hands. The corridor shadows bent toward me, pooled around my feet, climbed up my legs, wrapped me from boot to shoulder.

For a moment I wasn’t standing in the corridor so much as the corridor was standing around me.

The lead soldier stopped. The second ran into him. The third raised her weapon but didn’t fire.

Her eyes were tracking me, but not finding me, not quite. Her aim drifted left, then right. The target kept sliding out of focus.

“Move,” I said.

They moved. Backward, fast, weapons still raised but pointed at nothing they could identify.

I pulled it back. Locked it down. The shadows settled.

The corridor was just a corridor again.

My hands were still dark. That was the other thing, the thing that didn’t lock down, didn’t respond to discipline. That one was about Jessa, and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Alix was staring at me. “What the hell was that?”