Chapter 80
CHAPTER EIGHTY
AIRIK
The door lifted open.
A bright light flicked on from the bottom of the ramp, forcing his eyes shut. But he kept his head up, tracking their movements by the shadows rushing toward him on the floor.
Voices screeched, both organic and robotic. More heavy footsteps rushed up the ramp. Humans flanked him. Airik forced his eyes open.
He instantly wished he hadn’t. All of them were suited up in gear universal in its purpose—to protect against the fallout of combat. Most held guns, distinct in their shape. As his vision adjusted, he made out the outlines of long, thin gun barrels—outdated technology but still lethal.
His hand flinched—entirely out of his control.
They all shouted at once, the pack of humans tightening around him, suffocatingly close. Words flew around him at ear-piercing volumes, but they all spoke too fast for Airik to understand a single one. “I—please. Slow.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the unmistakable handle of a knife on a belt.
“No,” he gasped, suddenly remembering his own knife in his boot. But the humans were not listening, or maybe they didn’t understand, and they packed around him tighter until he could smell their fear through their suits.
“No…sharp things near my face,” he warned, because that had been the mistake of those who had tried to kill him on the Lemides.
A knife had been aimed at his eye. It had plunged him so far into the blackness—a memory triggered so long ago he couldn’t remember why, only that the scar on his cheek throbbed in response.
“Shut the fuck up,” the one with the knife barked. They raised the barrel of their gun, and Airik stared straight into its black depth.
He averted his eyes, sucking in deep breaths. But now it was too late—he knew the knife was there, and it was as if it were just he and it together in this room. He swallowed thickly. He could not murder all of these humans before they could help Nora.
“I—I have Nora Shaw,” he said again. “Her blood needs to be cleaned. Please help her. She has no time.”
“Do you not understand Shut the fuck up?”
Airik held firm, fighting the urge to tear out the one man’s throat as the man stepped closer, the gun’s muzzle only a hand’s width from him and entirely too close to Nora.
One of the other suits turned to speak into a square box on his shoulder. “Confirming that there is a woman here matching the description of Nora Shaw. Bleeding and unconscious. An unknown humanoid male of considerable stature is speaking…English—”
“No time,” Airik growled, giving them the full force of his glare. “Get her help—”
“Both hands in the air—now!” Something cold and hard pressed against the base of his neck. “Did you see that, Holmes? Motherfucker has fangs.”
Airik closed his mouth, biting his tongue.
Another barrel swung into his vision, pointed at Nora. “Get your hands off her!”
Airik dropped his body over Nora’s, shielding her from the undisciplined soldier’s aim. Had he brought her here only for them to kill her?
Murmurs erupted around him as he turned his head, pressing it to her chest. Her heart—he could barely hear it now.
“Jesus fucking H. Christ.” A woman’s voice shot up from the end of the tunnel. “I can see how fucked she is from here, Jerry.”
“She’s…not…fucked,” Airik whispered, holding her closer.
“I swear to God,” the woman continued. She had to be one of the suited figures rolling a bed and wired equipment, walking toward them. “If Joeseph Shaw hears you’re holding up retrieval because you’re scared of the big bad alien, he’s gonna rip out your ribcage and wear it like a hula skirt.”
Airik strangled a gasp. There was no doubt that humans were capable and would’ve beheaded morazir—violence laced into their language with poetic and terrifying ease.
The one with the black box made a concerned sound. “I’m not sure she’s alive—”
“She’s alive!” Airik shouted.
Silence shot through the command hall, all helmets snapping to him.
Something twisted in his chest, staring back at all the shields—an unraveling—and a black haze overtook him, sparks over his vision. He forced his head down, back to Nora.
A tear dripped off his chin, onto her cheek. “She’s—alive. Her blood. It has something in it. Killing her. Clean it. In her nose. Her mouth. Her lungs.”
The man to his left stepped back. “Is she infected?”
“No, there are small things in her blood. Like glass. But will not hurt anyone else—”
“Jerry, run a pathogen analysis.” Another woman spoke, her voice rising above the others.
Unmasked and without protective gear, she stood with arms crossed behind the crowd.
Her short hair was gray, a shade darker than his own and slightly yellow.
She looked directly at Airik as she spoke.
“I want to properly greet our guest and get his lady all patched up.”
A flush of adrenaline, now focused on something other than the knife, helped him sit up straight. He held Nora closer while meeting the woman’s gaze. The woman waited patiently as the man, Jerry, activated a device that scanned the ship’s interior and their bodies with red light.
Unlike everyone else on the ship, trembling in their oversized suits, the woman casually glanced around him, as if surveying a peaceful field of flowers.
His heart clenched, reminded of Aelior, who, like this woman, never carried any weapons once retiring the Sword of Ulliel, confident she could overcome threats with the skill and strength of her body alone.
“You speak English,” the woman said, a slight smile on her lips.
“A little,” Airik said.
“Should I be afraid to ask how you learned it and why?”
A day ago, he would have said no. But now he knew nothing, and he was afraid. “Maybe,” he replied. “But—if she lives, you shouldn’t be.”
“Already setting conditions?” The woman’s grin widened. “You arrive in your honest-to-god flying saucer with one of ours”—she motioned toward Nora—“nearly dead, and you’re starting with a threat?”
“I started with a trade,” Airik said, his voice a low rumble. “A payment in weapons. You are wasting time. She doesn’t have any of it left—”
“Everything’s clear,” Jerry interrupted as the red light flashed green.
Airik pulled Nora against his chest as the crowd parted, making way for the woman. A murderous rage swelled in him as he turned his head to follow her, who slowly circled them, scanning the drozekar’s interior. Were humans so blind they couldn’t see the blood spilling from Nora?
The woman’s gaze lingered on his empty weapons harness, then she approached Airik, stopping just short of his arm’s reach.
“Hi.” She waved her hand as Nora had the first time she’d woken, but when this woman did it, he wanted to tear her arm from its socket.
“Welcome to the Valhalla Research Colony. I’m Commander Wendy Davis, and I run shit around here.
” The woman looked down with bright blue eyes that could’ve been ti’rosi if they glowed.
“I prefer to be called Davis—pleased to meet you. I’d shake your hand, but I’m not sure if that’s an invitation to mate or whatever, and since I’m not into tentacles, let’s play it safe and leave it here. ”
She gave Jerry and the other man, Holmes, a disapproving scowl. “You’ll have to forgive our less-than-stellar welcome. We don’t get much action out in this neighborhood.”
Her gaze—finally—dropped to Nora. Airik had never wanted to rip a head off a body with such intensity.
Aelior had been right about humans—they lacked empathy and were a psychotic species that should be left to rot in the far-flung system they were forsaken to.
Nora was the best of them—of this, he was now certain.
Davis’s light yellow eyebrows furrowed as Nora’s breath came out in a gurgle. “You need to let her go.” A cool mask dropped over her expression as she glanced at the knife in his boot. “I’m not about to let any of my staff get near an armed unknown.”
“No.” The refusal was out before he could stop it.
They’d take her from him. All of her. He’d have nothing left.
But Davis’s lip twitched up. “Not a choice, lover boy. You let her go, and she might live. You don’t, and she dies. Is it just the two of you aboard?”
Airik thought he saw a flash to his right as the rolling bed was wheeled around them. His stomach turned. “Do not bring sharp things near my face—an injury—I sometimes can’t control—”
A large needle was thrust into his face, aimed at his neck.
Airik reached for the handle of his knife in his boot.
Something pressed against his neck. He let out a loud roar.
And then he was reaching for…Nora’s braid in his pocket. His head drooped forward just as his hand closed around it, and then his body was no longer under his control. Suddenly he remembered he’d forgotten to close the regeneration chamber doors, leaving Torren and Lucky exposed.
But it didn’t matter anymore.
Airik sank into the darkness again, except this time, his body didn’t fight for its life as it always had before.