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But she finally looked. Her gaze slid over the shape of a Ternetzi person on the ground… their carapace in pieces. They’d been skinned alive and left shuddering on the floor in pain…
Lucca’s mouth dropped. “Uh. Oh wow.”
Her eyes were so round—any wider and they felt as if they’d pop out. Once she looked at the flayed—andconscious—alien, she couldn’t look away.
“I got carried away,” Caligher confessed, slipping around the room to stand over the bloodied alien.
She kept her eyes on the alien. “You… did this?” Then she pieced it together—these must be the ones who’d attacked them earlier. Caligher had spent his evening rounding them up and… doing this. “This is clipping, isn’t it?”
He stared down at his latest victim rather blankly. “Clipping is permanent. If he lives through this night, hemightgrow his carapace back.” Caligher had his transparent foot rested over the step to a lower circle in the floor. Lucca’s mind seemed to be running more slowly than ever… She realized he was standing at the edge of a jumping pit. That metal circle opened to outer space.
Once she understood, everything went still and electrified. There was a true sense of deadliness in the air.
Lucca had imagined if she ever had a loaded gun pointed at her chest—this must be what it felt like. It terrified her to unnatural stillness.
Please do not open that door.
Caligher lit up, shorting lightning to the floor, causing it to split open like a camera shutter. The room ballooned—Lucca remained upright, plastered to her wall, but the proportions instantly distorted. She could feel that infinite darknessinthere, with them, swallowing her like a hungry black wraith.
She was… she was still breathing.
It took her a fewmillionseconds to realize she was still breathing. Caligher’s voice sounded so different. “You know who attacks innocent people in places they expect to be safe?” His voice was dampened through the air roaring against her ears. “Humans.”
Lucca’s eyes slowly looked down through the hole, as if she might lose her footing and topple into it. It was too much like standing at the top of a skyscraper withno safety line to the building. It was a dark, plunging drop straight to nothing.
“I’m the fool who believed we were better than that,” Caligher said to the Ternetzi at his feet. “But we’re not. It’s taken me years to figure it out. We keep doing the same things.”
Caligher, don’t.
Lucca wanted to stop him—but the words were frozen inside her chest. She couldn’t move her mouth, her eyes. She just knew, if Caligher went through with his revenge and pushed that person outside, Caligher might fall in even deeper.
She might lose him to whatever this was.
“Caligher,” she gasped, cranking her hand to her pounding heart. He watched her, eyes iced over by an impenetrable chill. “Don’t do this.”
“This is what they intended to do to you…” he said. “They deserve to know what it’s like.”
She stared and stared and stared, trying to kickstart her mind. How did she talk Caligher back from his ledge? The way it looked, he’d dragged them here and gotten ninety percent through a rage-kill before coming to his senses.
Then he’d come to wake her.
“You don’t have to do this,” she breathed.
His foot angled on top of his victim, teetering the poor man back and forth on the floor at the edge. “Have you worked it out yet, Lucca, how many humans I must have killed?” His eyes were on the male at his feet, gleaming with murder.
“I…” She swallowed. She hadn’t tried to think about it. She didn’tliketo think about it. But he was being a violent fuck right now and she couldn’t ignore it any longer.
“I’ve lost count,” he said. His foot moved further—both their eyes riveted to the person in his talons. She watched as Caligher finally pushed him through… and sent the poor male falling through the void.
She just… stared.
She couldn’t believe what her eyes were seeing.
“I think I’ve started to enjoy the killing,” said Caligher, watching through the hole. “It was terrible at first… but once you get a feel for it, it becomes surprisingly addictive.”
The prisoner on the wall behind him went haywire, struggling to break his bonds to rescue his drowning friend. Caligher circled around and retrieved him, skirting him toward the edge, holding him hostage and forcing him to watch his friend flail without a lifeline.
“And I might not have been totally honest with you before,” he said.Yes,she thought. He’d evidently left a few important things out of the picture he’d painted for her. “I admit, I feared letting you see this. Do you know what’s funny?”
