Chapter Six #6
The question was unexpected. Liam looked at her with a wary sort of surprise, shifting in the bed until he had achieved something resembling an upright position.
Her inquiry was tricky. She had to know the answer already, since she knew so much about his professional history.
Was she fishing for data? The idea of her working him for information flooded him with frustration.
The heated irritation vanished instantly, however, as she began to stroke comforting fingers over his injured arm again.
“I know pretty much everything,” he said evasively.
“I figured you did.” She nodded grimly. “So do I. You can’t create weapons to kill and incapacitate unless you completely understand the target,” she explained needlessly.
He ought to have realized that a government contract would have given her access to a lot of secrets.
Liam felt instantly crappy for suspecting her of manipulation.
He counteracted the feeling by laying his hand over hers and toying with her fingers.
Devon’s hands were long-fingered, capable, and graceful.
While he ran his thumb over the soft contours of her knuckles, he imagined them painstakingly creating weaponry to fight a formidable enemy.
An enemy that wanted her dead for daring to do such a thing.
“Very few people have a true concept of what it means to make a weapon,” she said very carefully, as if she were contemplating the impact every word would have.
“There is a responsibility to it. A philosophy even.” She depressed the hypodermic of antivenin a few millimeters more.
“When I created this antivenin, it was a task I took enormous satisfaction in. I believe eventually it can be refined to the point that recovery will be a mere two days if the venom is caught early enough. I’m especially glad I can use it to help you. ”
It wasn’t until she turned the stark pale green beauty of her gaze directly onto him that he realized how intensely he had been waiting for it to return. There was a tenderness in her eyes that completed the meaning of her words and her gentle hands.
“Liam, when I created the weapon prototypes in the armory downstairs, I knew they would be used to threaten and possibly destroy a specific race of people. In my heart I wish they would only be used to provide protection, balance, and equalization, but I know humans too well to blind myself to the truth.”
“Yet you still made them. You made them. No one else. You saw to it that it was your hands alone that molded and crafted these weapons. Devon, I have been in this business too long not to know that that is as personal as it gets. What did the Morphates do to you that makes you want so deadly a form of vengeance?”
“No,” she sighed, the breath long and deep as he felt it rush warmly over his bare skin.
“Not vengeance, Liam. A long-overdue punishment. The Morphates in question will come to heel. I swear it. If I have to pick up arms myself, they will be made to feel fear and caution. They will come to understand what it feels like, being alive just because it suits the whim of someone more powerful than they are.”
“That sounds … tyrannical,” he noted in a stunned tone. Her passion floored him. Even though she had numbed it with flat tones and even breaths, her fury went bone deep and he could feel it radiating off of her like the building energy of an impending explosion.
“Call it what you will.” She stood up suddenly, breaking all personal contact with him as abruptly as she extracted the now empty syringe.
She discarded it, moving efficiently about as she checked things that didn’t need checking.
Her body was tense with unspoken anger and frustration.
“For all their airs of superiority, these particular Morphates are wild, undisciplined children running loose and threatening not only humans, but every future opportunity for them and others like them to be a civilized race among the other civilized races of this planet. Don’t you see?
There is a war coming, Liam. And trust me when I say that without my weapons to stop them, the worst of my people will cut a swath through the very best of yours unlike anything you have ever conceived of.
Humans will barely be able to blink before they will find themselves subjugated by the likes of Ambrose and his clan, used as slaves for purposes you don’t even want to envision.
I know this because it already happens. I’ve seen it with my own eyes! ”
Overcome with emotion and memories that flooded her features with horror, Devon sat down hard on the bed once again, shaking violently. He could see her hands trembling as she covered her face with them.
He sat up, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the warning warmth of fresh blood soaking into the bandages. He reached out and grabbed her by the chin. With a hard tug he forced her face out of her hands and made her meet his hard eyes.
“What the hell do you mean by ‘my people’?”