1. Donna
Donna
“Ah, shixsun,” I swore as alarms blared, wincing as the noise stabbed my eardrums. I ran faster, throwing a glance behind myself at the dark monastery corridor.
The whole place was made of moonstone—not the gem, but stone mined from the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons out in the Milky Way galaxy—and the grey surface ate any bit of light, making the whole place gloomy as hell.
I’d seen it as a good thing when I’d snuck in, dressed head to toe in a black tactical suit and armed to the teeth—you could never be too careful on an acquisitions job—but now the shadows didn’t just hide me, they could be hiding others.
Go to New Earth, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Definitely not full of super evil assassin monks, they said.
Bastards.
On any other day I could hold my own, but against two hundred monks trained to fight since birth in the old arts? Um, nope. Hence, running for my life.
The only slight issue? The ship I’d booked to pick me up wasn’t due for another hour. Which meant I had to find somewhere to hide for an hour, or steal someone else’s ship.
A whistling rush cut the air behind me and I ducked aside on pure instinct, letting out a yelp at the sight of the star-shaped blade embedded in the wall. Fuck, that could have ended up in my skull.
I ran faster, already out of breath. But if I got off this planet alive, the bounty in my bag would make it all worth it.
A monk spat a string of words behind me, and I gasped, pushing my body to its limits. I didn’t speak Earthian, but I imagined it was along the lines of, if you don’t bring back that sacred skull, I’ll rip all your teeth out.
Big on ripping out teeth, these monks. I’d accidentally walked in on a torture session while I was looking for the way out. That’s how they’d realised I was stealing from them.
I wheeled around a bend in the corridor, gripping the wall to swing myself into the next hall, and exhaled sharply at the big, oak door. Thank Godivha, Mistress of Killers and Thieves.
I raced for the big hunk of wood and threw it open—and promptly flung myself back through the doors. Nope. A whole horde of monks waited out there, and even better: they were elves, not humans. AKA, much, much harder to kill.
“Oh, this is not my day,” I gasped, struggling for breath as I pulled the door shut and took a dark hallway at random. “Please don’t let there be killer monks down here,” I wheezed.
I reached another heavy door, and opened it more cautiously this time, but when there were no monks outside waiting to kill me for stealing from them—okay, so maybe they had a right to be pissed off—I flung it open and slammed it shut behind myself.
My lungs were aching, a stitch pulling across my side, but I didn’t hesitate to sprint into the thick woods around the monastery, the trees’ shadows giving me cover as I ran.
How long would it be before monks came after me?
I threw a glance behind myself, breathing fast, and slammed into a solid wall.
Shixsun. I staggered back, off balance, and for a split second my only thought was twisting my body to protect the skull I’d stolen—I wasn’t going through all this to not get paid at the end of this—but a strong hand caught my wrist and tugged me up.
My eyes flew wide, my heart thumping against my ribs, and I realised I hadn’t run into a wall or a tree but a person.
“Fuck,” I breathed, ripping my wrist out of the man’s grip and about to turn and sprint from the monk when my eyes fell on the yellow crystals growing from his shoulders like a dragon’s spikes, trailing all the way down bare, muscular arms to his hands.
“Double shit,” I swore, backing away at the sight of the tattoo on his bicep—he worked for the Di Vaur crime family.
Or was one of the family. “Nothing to see here, buddy,” I said breathlessly, holding up my hands.
“Just taking a run through the forest, you know how it is, gotta get that cardio in.”
The Di Vaur’s eyes narrowed with confusion, the same sunflower yellow as his gemstone spikes. He was hot—why did he have to be hot? Damn his chiselled face and square jaw and the scar through his eyebrow that only made him sexier. Damn his biceps especially. Those fuckers.
If I hadn’t been on the run from deadly monks, I’d totally have hit on him, but the universe was being a cruel bitch tonight.
“See you later,” I said, spinning away—and halting suddenly at the sight of shadows moving through the trees in the distance. The monks. “Actually,” I said, flipping back to face him. “Have you got a ship around here?”
“Yes,” he replied, crossing thick arms over his barrel chest. My eyes drifted to his bulging muscles, my eyes glazing over at his veiny forearms, but I gave myself a little shake and focussed on his face. His handsome, chiselled face.
“I’ll give you five thousand credits if you get me off this planet.”
The Di Vaur laughed, loud enough that the monks probably heard him. “Are you serious?”
“Deadly,” I replied, grabbing his forearm—holy muscular hell—and frantically wrestling him deeper into the forest. My side protested, the stitch pulling tighter across my aching muscles. “I’m being hunted by killer monks right now, and you’re going to take me off world.”
“Oh, am I?” He frowned down at me, not taking me seriously. Dick.
“Seven thousand,” I tried, my mood darkening with every flash of cynical amusement through his yellow-gold eyes.
His pupils were slitted like a cat’s, but as I watched, they expanded, his attention stolen by something over my shoulder.
“Seven thousand and a blowjob,” I offered hopefully, not wanting to turn and see the deadly monk no doubt stalking us.
“Fine,” he agreed. “But we have to move. Now.”
I took his advice, but not before throwing a glance over my shoulder. “Um.”
“I know,” he agreed tightly, moving faster.
“The trees are walking,” I pointed out, staring at the insane spectacle. I yelped when the Di Vaur mobster grabbed my hand and dragged me through the trees. The trees that were lifting their roots out of the ground and shaking out their branches like arms. “The trees—”
“Are walking,” he confirmed tensely. “Did you do much research about New Earth before coming here?”
“Yes,” I said defensively.
The look he threw me was wry, crinkling his eyes and making him look younger. How old was he, anyway? Late thirties? Early forties? It was hard to tell in the gloom, even when his … holy fuck. Even when his yellow crystals began to glow.
“Uh,” I said, losing my speech the longer I spent with him. “You’re, ah, glowing?”
He nodded, pulling me faster through the forest, long dark hair trailing behind him as he started to run. “I’m powering up my magic.”
“Right,” I agreed breathlessly, as if I knew what the hell that meant or what kind of power he had. “Isn’t it gonna draw the monks right to us?”
“It’s not the monks we should be worried about,” he muttered, holding his arm in front of him to light the path with golden light.
“I know,” I agreed, fighting the urge to look behind myself at the creaking and groaning of wood. “The fucking forest is following us.”
“No,” he disagreed, scanning the two paths that diverged ahead. “I’m being followed.”
“You and me both, buddy.”
But who was he being followed by? I got the sense it wasn’t the monks.
I pushed myself faster, drawing forest air into my lungs as we ran from the threats at our backs. I knew I couldn’t trust this Di Vaur guy, but I needed his ship. No way could I stay on this planet, at the monks’ mercy. If they even had any mercy for thieves.
I yelped as the tree just to our right shuddered and rose, and the Di Vaur tightened his grip on me, tugging me in a winding route away from the tree creature.
We barely managed to escape being flattened as the thing started to walk, a rumbling growl in its throat that I imagined to be a threat.
I was going to be killed by a fucking fir tree.
“Nearly there,” the Di Vaur said, his breaths coming fast as he threw a glance over his shoulder—and swore. I didn’t look back. Didn’t dare, picturing a whole platoon of tree things reaching for us with their branch hands, opening up bark mouths to swallow us whole.
My stomach twisted, bile in my throat, but I could see lights through the tree cover ahead, a bright unnatural purple that could only come from a ship. Oh, thank fuck.
“Shit,” the Di Vaur spat, wrenching me back just as the dark forest in front of us split apart, like a slice through fabric, and a pale, bald man climbed out of it, his hands in long, monstrous claws, dripping red.
“Found you,” he gloated, grinning as he locked eyes on my companion.
My heart ran a frantic marathon. I’d heard of creatures like him; they fed on hearts and flesh, taking power from the souls that clung to their near-dead victims. Because they ate the living.
I’d escaped monks, but I’d run toward something worse. I wished I’d never met the damn Di Vaur.
“I don’t think so,” the man who’d doomed me growled, letting go of me and pushing me behind him like I was a damsel and not a honed fighter. But I’d rather cower behind his hulking back than face the heart eater.
Yellow magic flashed in the dark forest, and I shielded my eyes with a hand, squinting around myself for limbs of killer trees reaching out or white, spindly fingers aiming for my chest. But the heart eater had been knocked aside by the Di Vaur’s magic, a shard of sunflower yellow that had lanced through his chest like a sword, ripping through his white back.
“Run,” the Di Vaur snapped, and I didn’t need telling twice.
I sprinted for the ship as fast as I could, praying to Godhiva that the heart eater’s injury weakened him long enough for me to escape.
But that lance of magic wouldn’t keep him down for long if the rumours about his kind were right; their advanced healing was supposed to rumour even a star saint’s.