List of Available Excerpts
Titles from The Wild Rose Press:
At Sun's Rising
Dawn of the Red Sun
Here There Be Dragons
Last Chance
Vessel of Power
Angels and Ministers of Grace
SciFi Romance Adventure
Chapter 1
“What a mess,” Anya sighed, as she stared at the two holographic people standing on her palm unit. Except catastrophe was a better description. An all out disaster in the making. And these two people were her last slim hope of averting it.
The problem was, they didn’t seem like the helpful types. The man looked like stone, and the woman had a face cold as a glacier and eyes like diamond chips. These were military holoscans, so they were bound to look stern, but Anya didn’t find their unsmiling faces and hard expressions very encouraging. Searching their rigid features for even the faintest hint of compassion, she didn’t lift her head when the door to the cabin slid open and Jarden floated through, graceful as always, even in zero gravity.
“Brooding again?” the dark skinned woman asked in disapproving tones.
Still not looking up from her study of their would-be rescuers, Anya snorted and said, “Can’t imagine why. I’m only a fugitive running from the Telepath Guild, hunted by their crazy-ass assassin and for what? I’ve done nothing to them except be born with a different talent. I also managed to drag my best friends along with me on this wonderful safari, ripping them away from home and family. Why would I brood?” She was unable to stop the bitterness that seeped into her voice.
Jarden made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat and pushed off the door jam, floating to where Anya was snuggled in her sleeping cocoon against one wall. “You’ll give yourself an ulcer, fool.”
Anya still didn’t look up until the other woman ran disruptive fingers through the holograms, making them crinkle like ripples on a pond. Irritably, she glanced up into her friend’s shrewd eyes, but another voice interrupted before she could growl at her.
“And guilt is useless, especially unfounded guilt. You flail yourself to no purpose.”
Anya looked up to where Rie had attached herself to the ceiling—or what would have been the ceiling in normal gravity—and had contorted into the proper form for meditating. Even now she seemed oblivious to her human companions, the blue of her scaled skin gleaming richly in the dim light and her opalescent eyes closed.
With a wry twist of her mouth, Anya answered them in as dry a tone as she could manage. “So speak Wisdom and Conscience, my two constant, unquiet companions.”
“Girl, you better moderate that tone!” Jarden shook a stern finger at her as she drifted away, but there was a smirk on her elegant features. Tall and willowy with a cap of dark curls and large, absorbing black eyes, Jarden’s appearance was a far cry from her practical, realistic nature. She had kept Anya solidly grounded on this harrowing trip, and Anya didn’t know what she would have done without her.
About to apologize for her attitude, Anya was forestalled when Jarden asked, “Where’s Ces?” with a faint frown of concern.
With a little grimace and a sympathetic clench of her stomach, Anya tilted her head toward the lavatory. In the small silence, they could hear the sound of retching.
“Poor baby’s gonna turn herself inside out doing that,” Jar whispered with a wince, before looking at Anya with lifted eyebrows. “Still won’t let you help her, huh?”
Anya pinched the bridge of her nose to hide frustration while she shook her head. There were some people who couldn’t handle zero grav, and Cesna was one of them. She was also incredibly stubborn and refused to allow Anya to relieve her nausea. “She keeps saying I can’t tire myself out on her.”
“Well, she’s got a point. What if that guy catches up with us? We don’t know what kind of ship he took or if it’s faster than this one. What if he’s already at Far Reach Station waiting for us? You’d be our only protection.”
At Sun's Rising
SciFi Romance Adventure
When Tycho accepted this mission, he hadn’t counted on the terror.
Shifting in his seat, he eyed the bare bulkheads of the transport taking him to parts unknown and tightened his grip on the armrests. The ship’s interior seemed smaller than when he’d boarded, as if it were closing in on him.
“How—?” he croaked, then cleared his throat and tried again. “How much longer?”
His escort, who acted more and more like a kidnapper as time went on, flicked him a cold dismissive glance. “Best you stay quiet, cleric.”
Fantastic. This is what I get for saying yes to the White. He’d known he was in deep trouble when this man hadn’t introduced himself, just grabbed Tycho’s face as if he were livestock, inspected the silver White Order tattoo at his temple, and declared it would have to go. “Boss don’t like Sun worshipers,” was the only explanation he’d given.
As if that made any logical sense. The nameless thug’s boss, Webster Griffin, had agreed to the White’s offer of Ty’s services as a scientist, not a preacher. He wasn’t here to spout the order’s doctrine.
I should have known by the look on her face. He had no excuse—Mendani-met K’etarci had warned him, but he’d been so flattered to be chosen by her, so excited at the chance to serve the order. “Make no mistake, Dani Tycho. Webster Griffin is a monster, and those he employs are no less fiendish. You will not be safe. But we must know his secrets. The future of the entire galaxy depends on it.”
The sorrow and regret on her angular features as she’d sent him on his way should have been enough to make him reconsider. She’d looked as though she’d sent him to the gallows.
Dawn of the Red Sun
Sunscapes Trilogy Book 3
SciFi Romance Adventure
Prologue
Liaena Griffin remembered with crystal clarity the day the Shays came to visit, fixed the fountain, and destroyed an entire art collection. She’d only met them once before, but they’d made an impression. She’d bruised Manakai Shay’s shin for insulting her.
The day of the fountain, she met them again with a sense of disorientation. Years older, they hardly seemed the same children. Her resentful memory of them shriveled in the face of their impossible beauty and charm. Then again she was not the same either. Her fierce fire had faded, dampened by her father’s endless cold lessons on proper behavior and obedience.
Their father, Ezekiel Shay, matched her memory, a tall lanky man with ink-dark hair and a reserved smile. His eyes held the same warm green twinkle as his children’s, as if mischievous thoughts ran rampant behind his composed face. He spoke to Liaena’s father with such amazing fearless ease.
Webster Griffin terrified everyone, including Liaena. She’d never seen anyone treat him with less than absolute deference. Didn’t they know her father was dangerous? Or did they know something she didn’t?
Her father’s heavy hand on her shoulder startled her out of her fascination. “Daughter, be a good hostess and show the young Shays our Aqualyr.” He turned away with Ezekiel Shay, leaving her alone with the twins.
She said nothing at first, unsettled by the adults’ abrupt departure. Older, taller, and intimidating, the twins watched her with their unnerving cat-green eyes and identical faint smiles. She wasn’t sure what to do.
“Are you going to kick me again?” Manakai asked with a tilt of his dark head.
Liaena straightened with as much dignity as she could muster, face burning. Remembering her father’s lessons, she responded, “Of course not,” in an even tone.
Sinsudee slanted her brother a quick look, smile deepening. “Aena, what’s an Aqualyr?”
Liaena blinked, distracted. A nickname? Didn’t people use nicknames when they liked someone? She wasn’t sure; she’d never been around other children. “Um, it’s the Water Room. One of Father’s art collections. All the pieces are made of water or have water in them. It’s this way.”
She headed on uncertain feet down the corridor, gaining confidence when they followed. They moved with such silence she kept checking to make sure they still trailed her.
“I like art,” Sinsudee offered in a soft lyrical voice.
“I’d rather slice,” Manakai said. “Is this water room any fun?”
Liaena shot him a puzzled look. “Fun?”
“Yeah, fun. Like games, a slide maybe. Or hey, it’d be fun to chuck things at my sister. Got any water balloons?”
“You’re a booger, Kai,” Sinsudee declared, smirking.
Liaena reached the entrance to the Aqualyr, turning to them with a frown. “What’s a water balloon?”
“What’s a…?” He gaped at her, which should have made him look dumb but didn’t.
“Close your mouth, Brother.” Sinsudee studied Liaena, a shadow in her green eyes. “What do you do for fun, Aena?”
Having no answer, Liaena shrugged and opened the door, waving them through. She watched them as they entered, waiting for the usual gasps of amazement, awe, and avarice. The Shays only glanced around with mild curiosity at the hangings, sculptures, and framed art.
“Huh.” Manakai stopped next to the ornate marble fountain in the center of the room, hands on narrow hips. He sent Liaena a grim look. “No slides.”
“This one’s pretty,” Sinsudee commented, gesturing to a water sculpture held together by a film of glowing, multicolored energy. “It looks like an angel. But I don’t get that one.” Making a face over her shoulder, she pointed to a tangle of tubes with colored fluid bubbling through them. “Is it supposed to look like a pile of guts?”
A strange sensation moved in Liaena’s chest, like a bubble trying to escape. It took her a second to recognize the urge to laugh, something she hadn’t done in a long time. They didn’t fear her father and his wealth didn’t impress them. Her father flaunted this collection, but it bored and grossed them out. Crushed under a wave of youthful admiration, she swallowed her laugh and watched them with wide eyes.
“Your fountain’s busted,” Manakai announced, staring at the apathetic streams of water gurgling out of hidden spouts. His face brightened. “I can fix it.”
Sinsudee winced and swiveled toward him. “Um, Kai…”
He bent, searching the base of the fountain. “Just have to find the control panel. Ah, here it is.”
“We’re not supposed to touch things,” Liaena said with a surge of alarm when a panel slid open under his fingers.
“Seriously, Brother, this is not a good idea.”
He knelt next to the fountain, studying the panel display with an absorbed expression. “Told you, I can fix it. Dad says I have a natural talent.”
Moving behind him, Sinsudee bent and frowned over his shoulder at the display, her hair cascading forward in a rush of blue-black silk. “Dad was being nice. You break things more than you fix them.”
“Oh, shut it, Sinsi. This thing reads like there’s low pressure. I’ll bet it’s the regulator.”
“It’s slow, not broken,” Liaena tried. “I’m sure maintenance could—”
“Why wait?” Manakai interrupted, shooting her a dazzling smile. “We’re here now. Just have to find the regulator.”
His sister reached over his shoulder and touched the display, pointing when a schematic of the fountain appeared. “It’s right there. But I’m pretty sure the regulator’s not the problem.”
“Bet me.” He closed the panel and sidled along the edge of the fountain, opening a different slot. “Who put his own slicer together from parts?”
Sinsudee scoffed, her tone full of contempt. “Oh sure, you did a great job. Does it fly yet?” She crouched, looking inside the fountain with him.
Manakai glowered at his twin and mumbled, “Bad parts.” Then his expression lightened, eyes gleaming with triumph. “I found it! Okay, just a sec.”
Liaena stared at the two of them, nonplussed. Her father had given her a simple order. How had it gotten so out of hand? Yet she couldn’t stop watching them, absorbing everything about them. She’d spent most of her isolated life with adults who either ignored or avoided her. The exotic revelation of the twins blew her away. They glowed with energy like mini-Suns, fearless and vibrant. They reminded her of her mother’s island, of the beaches that had been her playground, of warm light and life.
“There!” Manakai bounded to his feet with athletic grace and made a theatrical gesture. The fountain gave an odd rumble, the gurgle of water lurching to a foaming stream. “Your fountain is”—water exploded from the spouts, spraying in all directions—“fixed,” he sputtered, turning his face away and lifting a hand to ward off the deluge.
Liaena clapped her hands over her mouth, staring in frozen horror at the catastrophe unfolding before her. The water pressure knocked sculptures off stands, hangings and frames off walls. It ricocheted off the ceiling and drenched the entire room. Cold water soaked her hair and clothes, dripping down her face like ice tears.
Sinsudee laughed. The sound held no malice, no ridicule, only pure humor and lyrical delight. She held out her arms, looking down at her water-logged self. “Kai, you’re an idiot!” she chortled, stepping forward, angling her hand in one of the streams, and hosing down her brother.
He yelped in gleeful outrage and splashed her back. They chased one another around the fountain, laughter ringing through the room.
Liaena giggled behind her hands, shivering with terrified wonder. The Shay twins had taken disaster and turned it into a playground without a hint of fear for what they’d done. Weren’t they worried what their father would say and do to them? Instead they were having…fun.
A small part of her remembered fun and stirred. Warmth spread through her, as though she danced on a beach again, listening to her mother’s laughter.
“Aena, grab him!” Sinsudee called in a light breathless voice. “We’ll show him ‘fixed.’ ”
The door slid open and Liaena froze again, ice shooting like white lightning through her heart. Their fathers stood on the threshold, expressions blank with surprise. Liaena’s father touched a control next to the door. The fountain gasped and died.
For a moment, silence held, broken only by the drip of water off every surface. Then Ezekiel Shay said in a low rueful tone, “Oh, Sun’s blood.”
His children stepped forward together, their laughter gone.
“Sorry, Mr. Griffin, I was trying to fix—”
“I tried to stop him but he wouldn’t—”
“Fountain wasn’t working right, so I thought—”
“Never listens, he’s always trying to—”
“Tweak it a little, it’s a mess but—”
“We’ll clean it up,” they finished in unison.
“Web, I apologize for my children.” Mr. Shay was gazing at the twins, hands clasped behind his back. Liaena searched his features for disapproval, anger, or malice, but found only mild censure and furtive amusement. “At this age, they’re twin typhoons. I’ll reimburse you for any damages.”
Liaena’s father chuckled, casting an indulgent smile on the twins, but she saw the chill in his eyes and shuddered. “No need. We did send them off to entertain themselves, although this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.” His hard icy stare flicked to Liaena long enough to freeze her heart with the promise of painful punishment.
Ezekiel Shay made a sound of amusement, his twinkling gaze moving to her as well. “Don’t be too hard on your daughter, Web. Not much can stop these two when they get rolling, and I doubt she helped.”
“Oh, no.” Sinsudee stepped forward, sending Liaena an anxious glance. “Aena didn’t do anything.”
Manakai stepped forward with his sister. “She told me to leave it alone.”
“Well, there you go,” their father said, mouth twitching with the beginnings of a smile. “Sin, Kai, apologize to your hostess for the trouble you caused her.”
Liaena realized her hands still covered her mouth and dropped them, shuffling with nerves as the Shay twins approached. She tried to speak, to say they didn’t have to apologize, but her voice failed her. Sinsudee reached her first, wrapping her in a gentle hug. Liaena made a squeaking sound, body stiff with shock.
“I hope you’ll forgive us,” Sinsudee whispered in her ear. “And if you want to kick Kai again, that’s okay with me.”
With a muffled snicker, she let Liaena go, stepping aside for her brother. Liaena stared up at Manakai, wondering with dizzy horror if he would hug her too. Instead, he gave her a charming smile and clasped her hand, his touch shockingly warm.
“I’m really sorry, Aena. I hope you don’t get in too much trouble.” He bent and kissed her cheek, sending her world into a spin. “It was fun, though,” he whispered with a mischievous grin and a wink.
Then they left her there, wet and dripping, full of unnamed emotion, etching the day on her memory in bright, unbreakable lines.
DeeDeck Design
SciFi Suspense Romance
Chapter 1
“Doctor Bannen? Ma’am, can you hear me?”
The anxious voice seemed to come from far away, muffled and distorted by distance. She struggled to make sense of the words, to put them in some logical order. Was that her name? And what was that ringing noise?
“Doctor, you have to wake up now. Please, please wake up!”
She recognized that voice from somewhere but didn’t think it normally sounded so…terrified. Male, young, habitually deferential. Yes, she knew him. Couldn’t remember his name, though.
But I know my name, she thought with muddled relief. Moira Bannen. I’m Moira. She tried to say it out loud, but the only sound she managed was a garbled moan. That seemed to be enough for her anxious companion, though.
“Oh, thank the Void… Doctor Bannen? Can you open your eyes?”
Can I? She gave it a try. Blurred color and light peeked into her dark world, disorienting to the point of nausea. She didn’t give up, though, stubbornly blinking until the shapes sharpened and began to make sense. A face hovered over her, narrow, young, and drawn with worry. She still couldn’t name him, but the face was familiar.
“Wh-what…?” she managed to whisper, appalled at the effort it took. And there was something wrong with her voice.
“Doctor, there was a—a problem with your transfer. There wasn’t time and I didn’t know what else to do. I know it’s not the ideal situation, but—”
She closed her eyes with a pained frown, unable to follow what he was saying. A problem? Transfer? Where was she? And what was she doing here?
As if the question was the spring to a trap door, the answer dropped neatly into her consciousness. She was here on assignment for the Department of Disease Eradication and Control. The DDEC had sent her to this sector to investigate reports of a swiftly spreading deadly disease. This place was one of the great intergalactic transfer stations, Beta 1 of the Bode’s Galaxy. She’d scheduled a transfer of her psychic pattern from her original body in the Milky Way Galaxy to a clone of herself in this galaxy. The fastest way to fly.
But a problem? The trap door had no answer for that.
“What…?” she tried again, with similar results. Why did her voice sound so rough, even at a whisper?
“I’m really sorry, ma’am. If I’d just had more time, I could have found a more compatible match. But there was an unprecedented surge in the buffer. We were losing your pattern and I had to—well, it was this or let you die. I’m sorry to say your clone didn’t survive.”
She was dead? That didn’t make sense—dead people didn’t normally have conversations. She shook her head in confusion then realized what she’d done. Motion was possible. That meant she was in some body, if not her own.
Yeah, that was a problem.
The young man was wringing his hands, watching her with large, traumatized eyes. With good reason—it was his decision that put her here, wherever—whoever—here was.
“Who…?” she tried to ask and stopped with a grimace. Seriously, she needed some kind of lozenge. She’d never sounded this bad even in her worst bout with a cold.
“You do remember who you are?” the man asked with fresh anxiety, his smooth forehead folding into wrinkles of concern.
She nodded, waving a hand to dismiss his question and rather thrilled that she could do both things at the same time. But the glimpse of the hand she wielded gave her pause. It seemed distorted, or maybe her vision still hadn’t cleared. What kind of clone had he put her in? She checked the downward arc of the limb, bringing it to her face for closer inspection.
And received the greatest shock of her life.
The hand wasn’t distorted. It really was that large, with thick, blunt fingers and fine, dark hairs on the back. Not to mention calluses, by the Void.
Reaching out, she caught the front of the transfer tech’s tunic in that big, hairy fist and yanked him closer. “You dumped me,” she snarled in a low, guttural voice, “in a man?”
Felinar Chronicles
Paranormal Romance Short Stories
The First Felinar
She saw him through the trees and froze, berries falling from her nerveless fingers and the basket sliding off her lax arm. It landed with a muffled thump at her feet but she didn’t hear it over the frantic pounding of her heart.
Twilight is their time, her grandmother had told her. Time and again she had been warned to be home before sunset, but this patch of berries was so difficult to reach and yielded the best fruit. She hadn’t wanted to stop until her basket was full. It was a risk but she was young enough to feel more excitement than fear when taking such risks.
She was afraid now, though. He was watching her in human form and that made it worse, somehow. If he attacked her in his animal form, it would seem almost a natural death, violent and tragic but not obscene. Yet there he was, green-gold cat-slitted eyes piercing her while he stood as utterly naked as when he was born.
He began to stalk her with leisurely, cat-like grace, his every movement unhurried and confident. Her legs nearly buckled when she realized why he was taking his time—she had nowhere to run and no one would hear her scream for help. With a sob, she covered her mouth with shaking hands and watched her doom stride toward her.
At least Death was beautiful. She had never seen such a finely made man with such synergy of muscle and grace. She’d never seen this much of a man before either—she was still a maid, though the regent’s son had begun courtship in earnest. She was a farmer’s daughter, though—she knew what an aroused male animal looked like.
With a choked moan, she whimpered, “Please don’t hurt me,” behind her hands when she realized the extent of her danger. He would disgrace her before he killed her. She had overheard such whisperings from the matrons but hadn’t understood, hadn’t believed it possible.
Her knees gave way and she stumbled back only to find herself in his arms suddenly, though she hadn’t seen him cross the last distance. He was hot as if he burned with fever and he smelled like singed cedar, sharp with a hint of flame.
He said something in their language, something low and soothing, his voice like a rough purr as his glowing eyes captured hers. He lifted a hand, running his fingers lightly down her cheek and throat, pausing over her frantic pulse while shivers of terror and something else passed over her skin. “Are you really so afraid of me?” he asked with a smile that did strange things to her insides. “I mean you no harm, little one.”
His hand slipped around the back of her neck, holding her secure and tilting her face to his. “I want only your sweetness. In return, I’ll show you freedom and pleasure.” His mouth brushed over hers as he pressed her close, coupling her first kiss with the shocking feel of hard, aroused male against her every curve. “Will you give me a taste?” he whispered against her lips, caressing the sensitive skin beneath her ear with his thumb.
Quivering, she tried to think, tried to understand, but he didn’t give her time for either. His lips moved on hers in ways she’d never dreamt of and his hands moved over her with stunning familiarity and skill. How did he know such things about her when she hadn’t known them herself? He held her captive with discovery, fear and confusion ebbing away under mounting pleasure.
When he lowered her to the ground, she was aware of nothing but his heated touch and the eager response of her flesh. As night fell true, he kept his promise to show her freedom and pleasure. And then he gave her a gift.
A child.
Here There Be Dragons
Sunscapes Trilogy Book 2
SciFi Romance Adventure
Prologue
T’Zai studied his companions with a care and familiarity born of years of intimate service. The four of them sat in the small, darkened meditation room, facing one another. He was the only one not sitting on a cushion, the hard marble floor a stern reminder of his mortality; his old bones and joints ached with the cold, unforgiving contact. He gave his discomfort scant attention, too used to the protests of his failing body to be concerned now.
He had more important matters to focus on.
Lekasha sat on his right with a liquid ease belying her advanced years. She looked as limber as he remembered from their younger days, fond memories of their shared pleasures bringing a smile to his lips. She appeared unchanged, her luscious body rounded and inviting, her dark skin unmarred by age. As the Blue Order’s Mendani-met, the head of the sect, she was too important to gallivant about the galaxy seeking new experiences, but she would still be keeping her hand in. Both hands, if he knew her.
Mendani-met Berrabas sat on T’Zai’s left, the golden ceremonial robes of his order draped around him with care. Plump and balding, his generous smile and unassuming air had led many to underestimate him. The twinkle in his eyes did not fool T’Zai; he knew how shrewd and ruthless the other man could be.
The White Order’s Mendani-met, K’etarci, sat across from him, her spare frame rigid and straight, sharp eyes and sharper features aimed at her companions like a dissecting instrument. Unlike Berrabas, her appearance reflected her personality, all defined lines and quick angles. An air of impatience swirled around her, suggesting she’d rather be elsewhere, but T’Zai knew she just did not like to wait for information. He expected her to break the silence first and was not disappointed.
“Would you like a few more moments to reminisce, Mendani-met T’Zai? Or do you feel like disclosing your reasons for calling us together?” K’etarci’s voice cracked like a whip in the small room, a magnificent reproach if he’d ever heard one.
“Ah, Ketty, would you war with me?” he asked in a wistful voice, much to the amusement of Lekasha and Berrabas.
“Don’t cozen up to me, you old battle-ax,” she snapped, but a glitter of humor lightened her eyes. “Just get on with it.”
T’Zai sobered, meeting their gaze in turn. “It has begun.”
“Good,” K’etarci responded, her expression somewhat worried. “Perhaps now order will be restored.”
“Balance, sister,” Lekasha corrected, her musical voice gently chiding. “Balance, not order.”
K’etarci nodded as if the difference were of no consequence, but faint color appeared on her cheekbones. “The outcome?”
“Still unknown,” T’Zai answered.
“Calculated percentage of success?”
He grinned at her. “You would calculate chaos?”
“As much as you would cultivate it,” she retorted then glared as his laughter bounced off the walls. “You are enjoying this far too much, T’Zai.”
“He is in his element, sister,” Lekasha murmured. “This is war, after all.”
K’etarci turned her piercing glare from him to the other woman. “And you always take his side.”
“There are no sides in this room, Lady Ket,” Berrabas said in his smooth baritone. “We are together in this.”
She snorted. “Diplomat,” she spat at him like an insult.
A boyish smile lit his features. “Egghead.”
She held stern for a second longer, then gave in to a smile and became surprisingly beautiful. “Children, one and all,” she sighed, but it was said with fondness.
“Perhaps our time would be better spent discussing potentials,” Berrabas proffered with an enquiring look at T’Zai.
“I’d much rather fight with Ketty,” he grumbled, winking at the woman across from him. “But if I must.”
Then he told them, these friends, colleagues, lifecompanions, and the only family he had left. He detailed the conflict, the strategy, and the possible outcomes. When he fell silent, they stared at him with wide eyes. But they had not risen to the level of Mendani-met by chance. One by one, they rallied and offered their support, their own unique abilities, and sovereignty.
Together, they braced for the chaos ahead.
Chapter 1
Please, not again. Always the same dream. She was helpless to stop it, helpless to turn aside from her fate.
She hummed an off-key rendition of their favorite song as she walked with a steady, unhurried stride down the corridor. The lights stunned her with bright menace and the corridor stretched on forever, yet the lab doors at the end approached with terrifying swiftness.
Oh Stars, the smell, she whimpered in the back of her mind, but the rest of her was oblivious to her horror. Her stomach rumbled, and her mind conjured an image of an old-fashioned barbeque as the enticing scent of cooked meat wafted to her.
“Dinner time,” she murmured and the inevitable thought, I wonder if Dmitri has eaten, drifted through her mind. Deep within, she groaned in abject misery, fighting with all her will to break free.
Despite her efforts, the lab doors opened to admit her. The smell intensified a hundredfold, an overpowering charred stench coating her skin in a thick layer, filling her lungs like greasy smoke. She made a sound of disgust, her hands rising to cover her mouth and nose. “What the hell?”
Inside, she gibbered with terror, her litany of no-no-no-no having no effect, like screaming at a solid wall. Instead of closing her eyes, instead of running as far away as she could, she stepped forward into the lab. The room was dim and the stations dark, like a prelude to despair. Off to her left, in an open space between two stations, a large shape lay on the floor covered in shadows.
Her traitorous legs drew her forward. The eyes she couldn’t close witnessed what she’d been so desperate to avoid. The shadows became scorch marks; the shape a body of a man whose face had been burnt beyond recognition. But she still knew him. She recognized the hands that had touched her, the arms that had held her, the form she knew as well as her own.
Dmitri, a cold part of her mind named him, as if to drive home the point. Then she screamed, her feet only now moving backward. She bumped against a station and ricocheted into the wall, nausea rolling up behind her screams like a tidal wave. Her legs buckled, and she sank down the wall into darkness.
Last Chance
Sunscapes Trilogy Book 1
SciFi Romance Adventure
Prologue
"Why?” Sinsudee Shay leaned back in her chair and propped her feet on the corner of the enormous desk, watching Nick with a cynical gleam in her green eyes. Her brother Manakai slouched against darkened viewers in the shadows behind her, his arms folded and expression bored. The beautiful rich, the powerful elite, deigning to watch him beg.
Their callous nonchalance stung nerves already raw from the trip through their vast headquarters to this huge, darkened room. The shadows surrounding Nick seemed ominous. He couldn’t help being defensive. “Because he’s my brother. He stayed in the Core for me. He deserves—”
“Not what I meant, and you know it. Why should we help? What’s in this for us?”
“I’d owe you,” he said through stiff lips. Owing these people would not be easy to live with.
“That’s nice,” she murmured with a wry twist of her mouth. “Nice, but not enough. Try again.”
“You’ve been looking for a new pilot.”
“Most pilots are easier to come by than your brother.”
“Not the kind you’re looking for,” he challenged, setting his jaw. Let her try and deny it.
Her features lost expression and she studied him with a new glitter in her eyes, a subtle tension in her lithe form. Maybe pushing had been a mistake. “Tell me,” was all she said.
He told her. It took a while. At one point, she lowered her eyes, propping her chin on one hand with a faint frown creasing her brow. When he finished, she was silent for a long moment.
Then she breathed, “Sins of our fathers,” so low Nick almost didn’t hear. Her brother stirred behind her in the shadows with a whisper of protest.
“Pardon?”
She raised her eyes to his again with a brittle smile. “You’ve asked for our help. You have it.”
Chapter 1
“I see lots of pain in your future, Del. Just do the job, like a good mutt, and maybe it’ll change.”
Del looked up at the big man standing next to him with soul-deep contempt. This guy was proof human brutality hadn’t evolved in the many millennia since people had left Earth and spread throughout the galaxy. Brax was just another drone in Quasicore’s army of thugs, a small cog in the vast machine of the Core’s galaxy-wide criminal organization, a petty handler tasked with keeping Del in line. Easy for Brax to threaten a guy on his knees with arms clamped behind his back in magnetic restraints, stuck in this crappy, burnt-out warehouse in the middle of nowhere with no one around to hear the torture. And no one, on-planet or off, would care if they did.
“Screw you, Brax,” Del muttered.
Brax responded as he always did. The man’s shovel-like face writhed in a grimace and he lifted one brawny arm, bringing it down like a sledgehammer.
Blinding pain burst through Del’s skull and he went down face first. Twisting, he caught most of his weight on a shoulder but cracked his jaw on the metal floor. A spurt of fury spiraled through him, erasing common sense. He mule-kicked Brax, gratified when the man barked with a hoarse cry of pain. He’d pay for it, but when he maneuvered back to a kneeling position and caught sight of Brax doubled over, he decided it was worth it.
“Enough,” said someone out of Del’s range of vision, and he tensed. Brax was big, but simple and obvious. The man who walked around to crouch in front of Del was neither. He eyed Del with cold, pale blue eyes and a gentle smile. “You are out of choices, my friend. Do the job or give us what you owe.”
“You want me to kill somebody. Not gonna happen, Trev.”
Trevani’s eyes flashed with something dangerous, but his smile didn’t waver. “Squeamish, are we? Well, who’d have guessed? Then all you have to do is pull a hundred thousand credits out of your empty account and we’ll part ways. Think that’s gonna happen, Del?”
Del stared into the man’s pale eyes with a combination of fierce hatred and black despair. Any answer he gave would put him in a world of hurt. Brax was slow, but good at following directions. Trevani loved giving directions and was very creative when it came to pain.
His smile widened. “I see we understand each other. We’ll give you four days to follow through.”
He flicked one hand at Brax, and the big man released the restraints. Rubbing his sore arms, Del rose to his feet.
Trevani followed suit, studying him with an expression as cold as his eyes. “The job or the credit, Del. You have no other option.”
Del didn’t bother to answer. He turned and strode toward the exit, feeling with careful fingers at the bump behind his ear from Brax’s blow.
Before he reached the door, Trevani called to him. “And, Del?”
He paused and glanced over his shoulder with weary resignation.
“I know you’re thinking of skipping out on us and the job, but my heartfelt advice is this: don’t run.”
He ran.
Light of Kaska
SciFi Romance Adventure
Chapter 1
Chase Stryker paused in the middle of the hard-packed dirt lane and studied the little town. Mind-boggling. No spaceport, no ships, no ground transports or modern mechanics of any kind. Not even lights—the flickering glow in the odd window was lantern flame.
He shook his head. He shouldn’t be here. The little agricultural planet was a great hiding place, but he shouldn’t have set his ship so close to the little town. Even though they were oblivious to his nightly prowls through their community, his luck couldn’t last and someone was bound to notice him soon. But he didn’t leave, kept coming back. After so much time alone in the black of space, running, always running from the Collectors, something about this cozy little colony pulled at him.
He settled for calling it curiosity.
Each night he found something new to marvel over. No power sources except a rickety windmill to grind grain. The low buildings were made of wood or hand-made brick. They used strange, six-legged animals for transportation and heavy hauling. They had no security. None. Not a sensor or deterrent, not even a flimsy seal on their hinged doors. Kessu’s balls, he could have stripped this town bare five times over, if there’d been anything valuable to steal. Kicking at the dust under his boots, he slowly shook his head again. Not even a decent road or landing pad.
A sound caught his attention and he lifted his head, instinct tightening the skin at the back of his neck. It was one of those strange six-legged beasts calling from a stockade, the sound echoing inside the big, wooden structure. Stryker cocked his head. He’d never heard them call in the night before. Thuds and snorts signaled an unusual level of restlessness.
The hunter in him woke and he prowled toward the structure, hand on the grip of his weapon. He hadn’t seen many predators on this planet, but it could be a night-hunter like himself, stalking the trapped prey inside the building. An animal…or maybe human, the worst kind of predator.
He should know.
As he approached, the beast called again, trumpeting in fear or warning. Stryker felt his muscles loosen with readiness, skin prickling. The huge doors stood ajar. He could smell it now, the earthiness of big, warm bodies, dung and hay—and blood. He bared his teeth at the metallic scent, eyes flicking over the darkness. Deep in the building, he saw a faint glow of flame.
The night was still, too still, the anxious banging of caged animals the only sound. A faint breeze cooled his skin and he backed away. He recognized the work of his own kind. He couldn’t get involved—he’d stayed too long as it was on this little farm ball. Fugitives shouldn’t take such chances.
Time to go.
Before he could blend in with the night, the door burst open. Three men appeared, jerking to a halt when they caught sight of him. The surprise didn’t last nearly long enough. He had time to pull his weapon, responding to their haggard faces and burning eyes, before they lunged for him.
They weren’t quiet about it. With hoarse shouts of, “Murderer!” they plunged through the darkness at his retreating form. They were clumsy and unarmed—Stryker lifted his weapon but didn’t fire, moved by instinct to run instead of fight. Murderer. They couldn’t know him, so they weren’t naming him for past crimes but blaming him for the blood inside the stockade.
Not good.
He evaded them with practiced ease, dodging their grasping hands and tumbling one to the ground before sprinting away. He needed to get to his ship, to get off this rock fast before they figured out who he was and called in the Collectors.
But they surprised him again. Their reaction-time was uncanny, almost creepy. The residents boiled out of their houses, as if they’d just been waiting for the signal to mob. He was suddenly surrounded, every escape route clogged by hysterical, unarmed people.
Stryker skidded to a stop, raising his weapon and spinning in a warning circle. The survivor in him urged him to fire, to make a hole. But though they converged on him with hostility in their eyes, not a single one carried a weapon. The innocence in their dress, in their manner, and the wild grief burning in their eyes made him hesitate.
“The boys, the twins!” one of his original pursuers shouted. “Dead, ripped apart. Murdered…”
“My babies!” a woman shrieked with such piercing agony that Stryker winced.
“I’m no baby killer,” he growled, snapping the weapon around in clear threat from one horrified face to another.
They didn’t seem to hear him. They didn’t seem to notice his gun. Almost as a single body, a many-throated beast, they roared their rage and swamped him. His finger tightened on the trigger, but then he simply dropped it and fought with his hands. Fought to get free, not to kill. He’d told them the truth—though death and violence had been his lifelong companions, he was no baby killer and these people were still the innocents of his grim universe.
Innocent or not, there were too many of them, too many big, beefy farmers fueled by righteous fury. Stryker held them off, but only for a moment. The crush of bodies quickly made it impossible to land an effective blow. With sheer numbers and weight, they brought him to ground. The irony was unbearable. To have escaped and evaded the Collectors for so long, only to be brought down by a bunch of farmers bent on exacting revenge for a crime he didn’t commit.
Any faint hope he had of due process was squashed by the ranting of the mob, the pure hatred and madness that flowed from person to person like a sick cloud. They were determined to pin the deaths on him, whether he was guilty or not. Lying crushed in the dirt under a mass of heaving bodies, wheezing and tasting blood, he sensed the rising madness around him with a knot of ice in his chest. He heaved and thrashed with desperate urgency when he heard their plans for him, but it was too late. He was caught.
They trussed him up like a hog for slaughter and dragged him through the dirt. He twisted and strained at the ropes, fighting madly to escape. Visions of bonfires and sizzling flesh lent savage strength to his muscles, but the ropes only shifted, tightened. Something heavy smashed against the side of his head, searing the night with sick flashes of white lightning, before all was black.
No Such Thing
SciFi Romance Adventure
Prologue
“Mem Soliere, we must have her under control.”
Ryelle stared at the Director of the Telenetic Institute and gripped her mother’s hand tighter. To her young eyes, he seemed impossibly old, with gray streaking his hair and stern lines framing his unsmiling mouth. But his murky eyes were alive and seething with things she didn’t understand, things that made primitive fear crawl up her spine. He didn’t look at her but she still felt his regard like ice on her skin.
In contrast, her mother was a beacon of warmth and strength. Aceline Soliere stared at the Director, slim back straight, chin up, dark eyes snapping with anger and resolve. “She is not yours to control. You are here to train her in the use of her telenetic abilities, not enslave her with some cruel contraption.”
“You are being melodramatic, Mem Soliere. No one wants to enslave your daughter but her telenetic ability continues to grow and the danger she poses to herself and everyone around her grows with it. Do you not recall her catastrophic introduction to the Institute? She destroyed every building on the campus, injured numerous people, and very nearly killed several—”
“She was five years old. She had never been apart from me and she was terrified. You separated us and treated her like a lab rat. What did you expect?”
“Most telenetic children are separated from their families at first—”
“Just because it is common practice doesn’t make it right. The courts agreed with me, which is why you’ve been burdened with me these past seven years.”
Ryelle didn’t understand the hard and bitter edge to her mother’s voice and studied her grim features with a knot of sick tension in her belly.
“You’re not a burden. You’ve been most welcome as an invaluable assistant in training Ryelle and on your own merit as well. But you must see how dangerous it has become for her to be without any kind of controls in place.”
“She controls herself just fine. She doesn’t need some horrible pain inducer to—”
“There have been numerous incidents over the years, destructive and costly. The most recent incident injured her trainer quite badly.”
“That was an accident.”
“An accident that was almost fatal. How many injuries will it take for you to see reason? How many deaths?”
Aceline stiffened, her grip tightening to the point of pain. Ryelle went still, fear causing the hair to stand up on her arms. The Director had a point. She was dangerous. Her telenetic ability was monstrous and sometimes uncontrollable. She hadn’t meant to hurt her trainer and felt sick about it, but it had happened anyway. Even now, her power unraveled around her in an invisible wave, fear loosening her hold on it. The furniture shivered, the items on the Director’s desk vibrating a low and menacing warning. Her mother had never faltered in her belief that Ryelle would learn to use and moderate her talent like she’d learned to use any other appendage. But now, with the Director’s words thickening like poison in the air, would she change her mind?
Aceline took a deep breath. Then another. She didn’t seem to notice the items dancing on the Director’s desk. When she spoke, her voice was crisp and final. “While I am her guardian, she will never wear that vile piece of torture you like to call a training tool. The courts have given me full access and final say to what happens with my daughter, and I’m telling you right now, if I hear one more word about pain inducers, we walk. I will take Ryelle far away from here and to hell with your Institute.”
She surged to her feet, tugging Ryelle upright. Giddy with a glorious burst of relief, Ryelle nearly staggered. She wanted to cry out to her mother yes! Let’s leave now! Let’s go far, far away…
“Mem Soliere, please,” the Director said with utter calm and scary eyes, holding up a hand to forestall their departure. “Let’s not be hasty. Had I known you felt this adamantly against the training method, I would never have distressed you with it. Please, sit. I understand a mother’s need to protect her child. Taking her far away may indeed reduce the risk to those around her but might put you both in even greater peril. News of the GenTec’s encroachment into our space grows more distressing by the day.”
Aceline stared at him for a moment, her face still. Then, to Ryelle’s dismay, she slowly eased back down to perch at the chair’s edge.
“Mom,” Ryelle whispered through stiff lips. She wanted to scream don’t trust him! Can’t you see his eyes? But she had no voice.
Aceline’s gaze turned to her, warming into such boundless love and reassurance that Ryelle felt her chest ease and muscles relax. When Aceline patted her hand and tipped her graceful head at the spot next to her, Ryelle sat without further hesitation. Her mother would know what to do. She always did.
Aceline faced the Director again. “You know Ryelle is more than capable of protecting herself. That’s why you want her—to be your shield against the GenTec.”
“Without proper training, she may not be able to shield even herself. But she has enormous potential. She could save so many lives in this war. Isn’t that worth the minor aggravation of staying with us?” He smiled with a gentle warmth that didn’t reach his eyes.
“It’s not worth my daughter’s pain and suffering.”
His smile faded into something like shock. “Of course not. If you are referring to the pain inducer, please consider that matter closed. You still seem distressed—will you have some hot tea? I find it helps to soothe the frayed edges of the day.” He rose and stepped over to a small counter, gathering a little tea pot and cups onto a tray. “Perhaps we may discuss alternative avenues of harnessing your daughter’s amazing talents.”
Aceline watched him, a crease between her brows. Ryelle didn’t like the silky tone of his voice either but could find no reason to protest. When he returned to the desk and served out measures of hot liquid into three cups, she minded her manners and thanked him as graciously as she could.
Sitting behind the desk again, the Director cradled his cup and leaned back in his chair, smiling blandly at them as he expounded on the different training techniques used with other telenetics her age. Ryelle sipped politely at her tea but couldn’t understand what they were still doing there. Why couldn’t the man get to the point? Why didn’t her mother just get up and go? Why did adults have to talk everything to death? As far as she was concerned, the reason for the meeting was over—her mother had won and she wouldn’t be wearing that horrible headdress. So why—?
A sharp movement caught her attention. She looked over in time to see her mother toss the teacup violently away. At first, Ryelle thought it was on purpose and gaped at the rudeness. But then Aceline jerked in her chair, body arching in a bow, head flinging back while her eyes bugged in their sockets.
“Mom!” Ryelle cried, catching hold of her mother’s arm. It twitched and squirmed in her grip with a gruesome sort of animation, but she didn’t let go. “Mama, what’s wrong?” She heard the Director calling for medical care, his voice urgent and steady, and felt a small spark of relief in a sea of horror. Something was very, very wrong with her mama but they would fix it. Someone would fix it.
“Mama,” she sobbed, still holding on as her mother convulsed out of the chair and onto the floor. Ryelle knelt next to her and Aceline’s eyes met hers, wild and fierce, her throat working as if she would speak but the only sounds she made were awful gurglings and retching gasps. “Help her, help her,” Ryelle moaned, rocking over her mother and hugging her arm to her chest while her tears blurred her vision. Her world rocked around her, thrown into chaos by the loss of the only secure thing in her life.
“Ryelle! Stop!” someone shouted but she didn’t understand, moaning in abject terror as her mother’s eyes rolled back in her head. Then an explosion of pain cracked across her cheek, rocking her on her knees. She gasped, feeling the heat and sting in her skin. Lifting her head, she stared at the Director and realized with numb shock that he’d struck her. No one but her mother had come within touching distance of her since she’d demolished the Institute, and now her first contact from another person was a slap across the face.
The Director’s face was grim and hard, eyes bright with something she couldn’t understand. Triumph? Pleasure? Paper fluttered between them, catching her eye, and Ryelle saw for the first time the cyclone of objects strewn around her, the shattered furniture, the cracks in the walls. Oh, no. What have I done?
“Ryelle, you must let the medical team help your mother.”
They were standing in the doorway, staring at her with wide eyes and pale faces.
“Please,” she whispered to them. “Please. Help her. There’s something very wrong…” The arm she clutched to her chest went limp. Her mother’s eyes had closed, her face slack. Ryelle moaned in helpless horror.
“Stand back, Ryelle. Let them through.”
Stepping Stones
The Huntress Series of Short Stories
SciFi Romance
A Stone’s Throw
“There’s something you haven’t considered.”
Stone leaned back in the pilot’s chair and reached his arms over his head in a joint-popping stretch, ignoring the android. A giant yawn took him by surprise, the hinges of his jaw creaking with the gusty inhalation. Rubbing his face vigorously, he slumped in the seat and closed his aching eyes. He thought about putting his goggles back on to rest his burning eyeballs, but the damned ‘droid would just use it as an excuse to torment him some more. Not that he needed an excuse.
Stone listened to the silence in the control room, clenching his jaw against the sure knowledge that Warren was staring at him. Waiting. The asshole probably had a smirk on his face, too. But in the short time that they’d known each other, Stone had learned that Warren was nothing if not persistent, especially with his games.
With an explosive sigh, he cracked an eye. Yup, definitely a smirk. Plus, patronizing humor twinkled in his brown, surprisingly human eyes. Shit.
“All right, what?” Stone growled, in a tone guaranteed to make the average person nervous.
But Warren wasn’t average. The smirk widened to a teasing grin, though he had enough sense not to call Stone on his aggression. “You’ve talked with Mike about making your Hunter status official, right?”
Stone narrowed his eyes in irritation. “Yeah, what of it?”
“And you mean to partner Mea as a hunter?”
“Spit it out, ‘droid, before I take your head off and put it on backwards.”
Warren chuckled, as if the threat had been a jest. “I just don’t think you’ve thought it all the way through, is all. What happens when you get old and she doesn’t?”
Stone frowned at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The metal alloy. The genetic enhancement. Mea’s got decades ahead of her as an active hunter.” Warren sobered, his eyes studying Stone with a hint of compassion. “When you’re shriveled up and useless to the Corp, she’ll still be in her prime. Are you going to let that happen?”
A weight settled on Stone’s chest, and he clenched his jaw in reaction. Losing Mea, even to the relentless demands of time, was not an option.
When Stone didn’t answer, Warren smiled and stood, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “That’s what I figured. Good luck, big guy. You’re gonna need it.”
The Huntress
SciFi Romance Adventure
Chapter 1
“What a shithole,” Mea muttered under her breath, looking around the bar in disgust.
She’d seen worse, though the place still ranked about a nine on her yuck-o-meter. She’d entered the building through the back door after her quarry and had to maneuver through rubble to reach the bar area. Though someone had braced the crumbling structure with large metal beams, the occasional creak and groan over Mea’s head was not comforting. Neither was the dusting of debris that accompanied the noises. She was grateful for the hood of her cloak and her boots. Who knew what sprinkled down on her head or what nastiness she stood in? The deep shadows fought a winning battle with the lighting over the bar, keeping the details of the bar’s decay a blessed mystery.
After traversing the rest of the moonbase to reach this location, she wasn’t a bit surprised by the unhygienic ambiance. The atmosphere dome that contained the air for the moonbase blurred the stars into smears with its coating of grime. The crumbling settlement oozed apathy and the sullen furtiveness of vermin. Hunting in this little piece of space was like wading through a sewer.
“Best place to find shit.” Warren’s voice sounded tiny but cheerful over the transceiver in her ear. He would be cheerful—he didn’t have to walk in it.
She hummed in response as one man staggered from the bar to vomit on one of the steel beams then meandered back to his seat. She wrinkled her nose in disgust when the smell drifted over, a freshening of the bar’s rancid bouquet.
“Charming,” she sighed and shook an arm out of her cloak, tapping the genetic tracer on her wrist. It lit up like a nova when she turned it toward the group huddled at the bar. “Target acquired,” she murmured tonelessly.
“Acknowledged.”
Shifting through the darkness like a living shadow, she made a quick headcount of the patrons, the stragglers in the rubble as well as those at the bar. About twenty men hunched desperately over their alcohol, her target dead center. Just as she was about to move forward to extract her man from the group, the front entrance slid open.
Mea glanced over to see how many more would join her target but went still when she got a look at the man who entered. On the surface, he wasn’t that out of place. Hair buzzed almost to the skin like most spacers and face pale from lack of UV, he was average height, his worn and stained flight suit a bad fit over his muscular build. He wore shaded goggles. At night and in the dim lighting, that was curious enough, but his muscles moved over his bones with a powerful menace that kept her eyes trained on him, hunter’s instincts tingling.
With only a cursory glance at the bar, he moved into the rubble and the darkness. Once in the rubble, he stopped and became still as stone. If she hadn’t been watching him, he would be a seamless part of the dark.
Another hunter would have ignored him and continued with the hunt, but what made her one of the best was she never ignored her instincts. She recognized him as another dangerous animal—had her target hired protection? That didn’t seem likely. But perhaps her quarry’s boss had sent a watchdog to throw a monkey wrench into her hunt.
Keeping her eyes trained on his piece of shadow, she stayed still in her own darkness and waited with the patience of a true predator. He was not on her list of targets, but she’d hunt him if he made it necessary.
Not more than two minutes passed before the door opened again. Mea watched in disbelief as a child stepped through, stopping to stare with wide, wary eyes around the bar. This was a deeply dangerous place for a little one. In the outposts, children were a commodity and a novelty for the sick-minded, and every face in the bar turned toward the youngster hungrily. No one moved for several heartbeats.
Then the shadow man she’d been watching stirred.
Swearing under her breath, she moved forward, breaking cover to place herself between them, back to the man as though she was unaware of him. On close inspection, she realized this was a girl, but the choppy brown hair and clothes made her look like a boy-child. She was staring at Mea, her dark eyes glossy with fear.
“Child, you will be eaten alive in here,” Mea said in a low, stern voice.
The girl twitched as though prodded, eyes widening even more.
“No, she won’t.”
The deep rumble came from behind Mea, but she didn’t turn, watching relief wash over the girl’s face. The girl knew her shadow man—had she followed him here? But just because the girl seemed to know and trust him didn’t mean Mea should. His behavior was seriously suspect. He’d been lying in wait for her. What kind of ugliness did he have in mind?
Mea tilted her head toward him, keeping her eyes on the child. “Friend of yours?”
“He’s my father,” the girl said with a lift of her chin, eyes flickering into the shadows with a shade of defiance.
An obvious lie, but the man said nothing.
“Well, your father should know better than to let you in a place like this.” Mea paused for a moment, but neither responded.
The girl shifted in place and looked into the shadows again, fingers plucking at the hem of her vest. She was around ten years old and would have been cute in a fey sort of way if she’d had more hair. Girls didn’t usually wear it quite so short and it looked like it had been hacked off with a careless knife, the strands sticking out in all directions.
Mea raised her hand to the girl’s temple. “Did he make you cut your—” Her fingers hovered a breath away from the child’s tender head as a sharp object pressed into her back. A thrill ran through her.
“Hands off.”
Slowly letting her hand drop back to her side, Mea grinned with a hunter’s delight.
The Third Sign
SciFi Romance Adventure
Chapter 1
“What the fuck is that doing here?” Bailey asked, pointing to the screen with an appalled, accusing finger.
It showed the figure of a naked woman standing in the middle of a bright scanning room. She was so beautiful his breath cramped in his chest and his dick sat up like a dog begging for a treat. His brain knew better, though. He recognized her, despite the distracting acres of creamy skin, rosy, puckered nipples, and coy, dark triangle between her thighs.
“Best wet dream I eva’ had, that’s what,” Sherman answered in a hoarse voice, hand moving stealthily under the desk while he stared at the screen, eyes glazed.
With a snarl of disgust, Bailey cuffed him on the back of the head, knocking him forward until his nose nearly touched the screen. “Dumb shit. Take yer hand off yer rod and look at the scan.”
Sherman peeled his eyes from the sleek figure with a look of sullen petulance. But when he saw the scan, a yelp of surprise strangled out of his throat. Red warnings were jumping all over the scan like fleas on a griddle.
“Do I gotta ask whose dumb idea it was to get that bitch transferred here?” Bailey asked with thinly suppressed rage. Sherman didn’t answer, eyes fixed on the scan with a look of incredulous horror. “Neva’ mind. Just send her back whereva’ Pax found her.”
“He—he didn’t. I mean, he cleared the transfer, but last place she was at requested it.”
“What place?”
“Regellion Base Five.”
“That’s a level five facility! They shoulda been able to handle her. Why in hell would they wanna transfer her here?”
Sherman shifted in his seat, eyes downcast, blunt fingers drifting over the touch pad below the screen. He didn’t answer.
Bailey snarled a curse under his breath. “So they didn’t ask for this place. Pax snagged her off the general transfer list, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. RBF was just lookin’ to get rid of her. Didn’t seem to care where.”
“And Pax was lookin’ to get his rocks off, that it?”
Sherman said nothing again, eyes still lowered. His silence was answer enough. Pax hadn’t been the only one thinking with his dick.
“You numb nuts even look at her specs?”
“Data came in with her,” Sherman mumbled, which meant no, they hadn’t any idea of who and what she was or why she was in the penal system.
“Lemme see it,” Bailey said with a weary sigh. The problem with being the chief supervisor of a penal facility out in the bum’s ass of the galaxy was he got all the rejects, inmates and employees alike. If it wasn’t for the fact that working the system—skimming off the inmate stipends and cooking the books—was funding a very comfortable early retirement, he’d have left long ago.
The data appeared next to the woman on the screen, and Bailey leaned in to read it with a gloomy feeling of impending doom. What he read only darkened that feeling to downright depression. He’d known the basic sketch of her story through the news flashes and alerts relayed to this far-flung outpost, but the details didn’t make him happy at all. She was going to be a serious problem.
“Boys,” a female voice slipped into the room and they both jumped, focusing on the screen. Bailey’s new problem remained in the required stance for the scan, feet apart, arms out from her body. But instead of looking straight ahead, she’d turned her face up to the vid feed. “When you’re done circle-jerking over me, can we get on with this? It’s a bit nippy in here and quite frankly, I’m getting bored.
Bailey looked into her gorgeous face framed by an inexplicable curtain of dark hair, looked into her cold eyes, and had an epiphany. He’d been about to return her sorry ass back to where it came from, but now excitement stirred, visions of a much earlier retirement dancing in his head. “Send her to the interview room.”
Sherman flashed him a quick, puzzled look but did as asked, triggering a door to open in the scanning room. Without hesitation, the creature moved forward, her movements lithe. Both men paused to watch the muscles bunch and flex in her rear, the sway of her hips an unconscious invitation.
Sherman made a sound in his throat and wiped at his mouth. “We keepin’ her, boss?”
“For now.”
“She ain’t really the Widow…is she?”
Bailey didn’t bother to answer.
When he reached the interview room, he could see on the vid feed that she was already seated in front of the opaque divider, legs crossed with an elbow braced on her top knee, foot bobbing in casual rhythm. She looked utterly relaxed, as though she was in a lounge instead of naked in a prison, looking at life without parole. Her only sign of discomfort was the roughening of goose bumps across her pale skin. He knew she couldn’t see him through the divider, but he saw a small smile curve her lips when he sat across from her.
Trying to dispel a sudden surge of unease, he retrieved her specs on his console and pressed the control to make the divider transparent. She looked up at him then, smile still evident. He’d been about to speak, but when he met those eyes his breath caught in his throat. Colder and more disconcerting close up, the unnatural metallic gray of her iris surrounded the black of her pupil and seemed to quiver and pulse, like a reflection of the beat of her heart. He knew what caused the effect, knew she was doing it on purpose, but it still forced him to pause and collect himself.
Then, with a grim thinning of his lips, he launched into speech. “Welcome to the cold side of hell. I’m Warden Douglas Bailey and this is M564, otherwise known as Freezerburn. This is a level four facility, so no more comfy solitary for you, Widow. You’ll get—”
“Warden,” she interrupted in a low, pleasant voice with a hint of mockery. “What an antiquated title. The others all called themselves God.” Her voice turned suggestive, smile gaining wattage as she added, “Do you want me to worship you on my knees, too?”
His dick bobbed an enthusiastic yes while the smarter parts of him broke out in a cold sweat. He tried to continue as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’ll get no special treatment here. You take your chances with the rest of the wild animals. Lockdown once a tenday—”
“So you want me in the general population. Why’s that, Warden?”
“Shut it and listen,” he snapped, feeling that film of sweat start to bead on his brow, his diction breaking down under stress. “I ain’t talkin’ to you fer my health.”
“No, you aren’t,” she agreed, that maddening smile still in place. Her lips had started to turn purple along the edges, but she gave no sign that she felt the cold. “There’s no need for you to process newcomers yourself out here, with no direct supervision or checks and balances. So you’re talking to me because you’ve got an agenda.”
A trickle of sweat slipped down his temple and Bailey was infuriated to realize she was getting to him. She was supposed to be the one feeling vulnerable. Instead she was making him feel naked and defenseless. Turn it on her, he thought fiercely.
“You talk big for somebody who ain’t gettin’ out ‘til yer ‘bout a thousand. How many life sentences you got on yer back? You even rememba’ how many people you jacked, Widow? I know what you are, but that don’t cut shit wi’ me. I can make yer time here real hard—”
“Harder than being turned loose in a pit full of vipers?” She sounded on the verge of laughter.
“You push me,” he snarled, “and there’s always topside.”
This time she said nothing, but a smile still played around her mouth and her head cocked to one side, as if she was waiting for the punch line to a joke. He sat back in his seat, trying to collect himself. He wanted to wipe the sweat off his brow but knew that would look like a sign of weakness. Showing weakness to this creature would be deadly.
“Your file has a Galactic Security seal on it. Only shit I got on you is what you done inside, which is plenty. You got a name besides Black Widow?”
“If I do, it’s as much a mystery to me as you. I don’t remember my past. But never mind that. Did the GS leave a note?”
He scowled. How had she known about that? “They don’t want you dead.”
“Of course they don’t. They have too much invested in me. Maybe someday they can make me sane and obedient again.”
“Accidents happen, Widow,” he threatened, leaning forward with what he hoped was a menacing glare. “I don’t give a shit what the GS wants. Out here, what I say goes. I got nuthin’ to do but wait out my time here and make yer life miserable, so—”
“Ah,” she interrupted again, sitting back in her chair with a look of satisfaction. “Now I see. You’re turning me loose in the general population to thin the flock for you. Inmate stipends arrive until you notify home base that they’ve died. So if they die, and you don’t inform them right away, who benefits from the stipend? Where do you plan to retire, Warden?”
Bailey felt the blood rush out of his head, leaving a ringing sound in his ears. He stared at her, unable to say a thing. Her smile turned sly and she winked at him.
“Up to you how nasty it gets here,” he finally managed in a hoarse voice. “Behave and maybe it won’t go so bad. Your life’s in your hands.”
“It always has been, Bailey,” she said with horrible gentleness.
He touched the control with shaking fingers and the divider clouded over. Then he contacted Sherman. “Finish processin’ her. Don’t bother wi’ regulation gear—put her back in her own clothes and throw her to the wolves.”
“Yes, boss.”
Bailey was rubbing his face, trying to dispel the stiff shock he still felt in his cheek muscles, when a small tap on the divider made him jerk and bolt to his feet.
Her voice floated through the divider to him. “Pleasure talking with you, Bailey. Until next time.”
The silky threat almost made him piss his pants.
Vessel of Power
Fantasy Romance Adventure
Chapter 1
This is it.
Heart thumping hard, Eylee’ai slipped over the rail of the ship, flowing into the shadows like a piece of liquid darkness. She kept her skin black as the night and body supple but shifted her hands into long talons, hard enough to rip out a man’s heart.
Or a prince’s.
Eyes fixed on her prey, she slunk closer, concealing herself behind barrels. Three men formed a triangle on the deck, one of them the elemental prince. She knew the prince by description but didn’t recognize the other two. If she was fast enough, they wouldn’t matter. All she needed was time to get her claws in the prince’s throat. After that, her death was an acceptable price for the safety of her family, if it was the gods’ will.
She drew a deep breath, eyes flicking over the trio, seeking the best approach. For my mother and sister, she thought. May the gods preserve them. Her muscles drew taut, thrumming with violent purpose. She’d never taken a life before, but with so much riding on it she wouldn’t hesitate. She could not hesitate.
The prince’s voice rose, ringing with steel and cold fury. “Is that a challenge, Uncle?”
She hesitated.
Did he say uncle? Mother of All, two royals? The gods must not be feeling merciful. She stared from one to the other, wondering if she could take them both.
The older man raised his voice to match his nephew’s. “If a challenge is what it takes to teach you respect, boy, then so be it!”
The third man stepped between the combatants, holding up a hand to each. Anxiety edged his features as he looked from one to the other, his voice low and careful. “Wait, please, let’s not be hasty. May I speak with you, cousin?”
Three royals? Eylee’ai sent a glare to the heavens, wondering what she’d done to deserve this twist of fate. On the other hand, the two younger men were moving toward her, coming within easier reach. Her muscles tensed and teeth sharpened. Shifting back into the shadows, she went still, poised for a lethal leap as they approached.
“Soul brother,” the cousin said with low urgency, “don’t do this. He’s been baiting you since he came aboard. He wants a fight, wants to remove your claim. With you gone—”
“For gods’ sake, Rune, I’m not daft.” The prince’s stony features eased with a hint of amusement. “Uncle Storm wouldn’t know subtle if it struck him between the eyes.”
“Right,” Rune muttered with a wry tilt of his head. “No king of cleverness, that one. So why take his challenge?”
“Uncle Storm’s aboard to root out all I know about the Vessel, and then find it first. I can’t have that. He has to go.”
“But a fight, Des?” Rune asked, expression growing anxious again. “Why risk it?”
“No risk. I won’t lose. And it’s good reason to keep him off my ship.”
“There’s always a risk! He’s—”
“Rune, I won’t lose because I can’t fail. Father gave me this mission and I won’t fail him again. Last time I did, he gave me this, if you’ll recall.” He made a sharp gesture toward his face to a scar cutting across his cheek and marring the curve of his upper lip. “That was just for losing a hunt. What do you think he’ll do if I don’t bring him the Vessel?”
The two young men stared at one another, grim and silent.
Eylee’ai swallowed hard, holding still with an effort. It dawned on her she wasn’t going to attack. Rune’s concern for the prince and the companionship between them had startled her. It was so unexpected from a people she’d always believed heartless. Their revealing conversation had also distracted her, but the prince’s scar unsettled her the most. She knew something of violent fathers and the consequences of defying them.
Gods curse it, why does he have to be human? She bared her teeth, yearning for a hatred that wouldn’t come. If she let him live, he would destroy everything she held dear. The uncle had made a challenge, though. She’d never seen an elemental duel, but maybe one royal would do away with the other and save her the trouble.
Rune sighed, his shoulders slumping a little. He reached out and rested a hand on the prince’s shoulder. “I suppose you’re right, Des. Take an extra swing at him for me, would you?”
The prince snorted, though she couldn’t tell if the sound was humor or irritation. His face had settled back into a stony mask once again. They returned to the third man without another word.
Eylee’ai sagged against the bulkhead, covering her face with shaking hands. What was she doing? How could she risk so much because of a scar? I can still do it, she told herself. If he’s still standing after the challenge, I’ll end him.