Page 37 of Jarran

The second female moved. She came from Durik’s left side, circling toward Evie while Jarran was squared off against the first. Evie saw her coming. The female’s face was blank, professional, and she moved with the smooth mechanical precision that all the hybrids shared.

Evie didn’t think. She lunged sideways toward the steam shower.

The walk-in steam shower had a wide nozzle head on a flexible hose and a temperature dial that went high enough to fill the room with dense, scalding vapor. Evie had used it yesterday. She’d cranked the temperature up because the ship ran cold and the steam felt good after days in a freezing cell. She turned the heat and pressure up to maximum, grabbed the nozzle, and blasted the female in the face. A jet of pressurized steam, hot enough to burn. The female staggered backward, hands coming up too late. She hit the bathroom wall and her eyes squeezed shut, temporarily blinded, and a raw sound tore out of her throat.

The first female lunged.

Evie’s hands closed a heavy glass container of mineral bathing salts sitting on the tub ledge. She tossed the contents in the direction of the first female’s face and floral-scented crystals landed in a direct hit. The female reeled sideways, clutching her eyes, with salt and glitter bits sparkling in her hair.

Evie was already moving. She’d used up her element of surprise and now she had to get somewhere safe. The tube shower was close and the clear unit went floor to ceiling, with a thick plexiglass wall and a locking mechanism on the inside. She threw herself inside, grabbed the door, and hauled it shut. Her fingers fumbled over the lock, but she found the latch, shoved it home, and heard it click.

She pressed her hands against the curved plexiglass, shaking with adrenaline. Her heart hammered so hard she could feel it in her jaw.

Through the plexiglass, the bathroom was chaos.

SIXTEEN

Durik hit the tile and Jarran was on top of him before he could roll.

The memories were all there now. Every combat drill, every grappling technique, every pressure point on a Virilian body. Pella Rin’s training sat in his muscles and his hands. He could assess distance and leverage and angle of attack without conscious thought. He hated that it was there, but it was there, so he used it.

Durik threw an elbow. Jarran slipped it, got his forearm across Durik’s throat, and drove his weight down. Durik bucked and twisted and Jarran locked his legs around the bigger male’s torso and squeezed. The bathroom tile was slick with steam and condensation and they slid sideways into the base of the tub. Jarran kept the choke. Durik’s fingers clawed at his forearm, gouging skin, and Jarran tightened his grip and held.

Ten seconds. Fifteen. Durik’s movements slowed. His hands dropped. His body went limp.

Jarran held the choke for three more seconds to be sure. Then he released it and sat back on his heels, breathing hard, and looked at the unconscious male beneath him.

He could kill him. One sharp twist. The knowledge was right there, precise and clinical, sitting in the front of his mind. There were so many ways to break a neck, or crush a trachea. He knew how to drive a thumb into the soft spot behind the jaw until the heart stopped. Just the thought of it sickened him.

He felt that pushing, that pressure on his mind, almost taunting him to do it. To kill Durik. But the push was a little too hard, too eager, and Jarran scrambled back from the edge. If he became a killer, it would let Pella Rin back in. Something in Jarran would die along with Durik, and he wouldn’t risk that, even though he knew Durik would be a problem in his future.

But for now, the male was out cold. Jarran yanked a belt from one of the thick robes on the wall and bound Durik’s wrists behind his back, tight, knotting it twice. He used a second belt on the ankles. Then he heaved Durik into the tub and left him there.

The first female was on her feet. She’d cleared the salt from her eyes enough to see and she came at him fast, low, driving for his midsection. Jarran sidestepped. He knew exactly what she would do next because he knew the training protocol: Right cross to follow the tackle. Knee strike if the cross missed. Retreat and reset if both failed.

She threw the right cross. He caught her wrist, redirected her momentum and put her face-first into the bathroom wall. She bounced off it and spun, but he was already behind her, arm across her throat, pulling her backward. She grabbed his forearm and he felt her fingers flinch away from his skin. The heat was still there, radiating off him. His body temperature was running so hot that contact with his bare skin burned.

She went limp in twelve seconds. He lowered her to the floor, bound her wrists, and added her to the tub. She fit beside Durik with her legs folded.

The second female had recovered enough to stand. She was pressed against the far wall, blinking rapidly, face scalded from the steam. She raised her hands. Combat stance. Feet shoulder-width apart, weight forward, chin tucked. Textbook. He’d designed that textbook.

Jarran moved. He feinted left. She committed to the block. He came right and got behind her, locked in the choke, and it was over before she could adjust. Nine seconds. He caught her as she dropped, bound her, and put her in the tub with the others.

Three unconscious bodies in the oversized bathtub. Steam still curling from the shower nozzle. The bathroom smelled like eucalyptus and blood.

The heat finally faded from his skin. It left all at once, pulling back beneath the surface, and the absence of it hit him harder than the adrenaline. His legs went weak. His hands started shaking. He braced himself against the wall and breathed through it.

A sound came from the tube shower. Knuckles rapping on plexiglass.

He turned. Evie was standing inside the shower with her palms pressed flat against the clear wall, watching him. Her face was pale and her hair was a cloud of frizz as she stared at him with the widest eyes he’d ever seen on her. Fear, relief, and a few other chaotic emotions fought for the dominant expression.

“You can come out,” he said.

She unlatched and opened the door, then stepped out. Immediately, she crossed to him and examined the cut above his eyebrow. Her fingers were cool. The touch grounded him.

“It’s not too deep. Here. Hold this against it.” She snatched a hand towel off a rack and thrust it at him. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” Her eyes moved over him, lingering on the scratches on his forearm where Durik had clawed him.

“I’ll live.”