Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Time slowed down for Niir. His head was a throbbing mess of heat and pain and a growing rage that pulled the chains that kept it contained…temporarily. This new development did not help the chaos boiling in his head.
Warlord Mek-la was Pella Rin. This was not expected.
Niir’s acute senses took in every nuance of the male, from his sharp features to his careful movements.
He wondered if the warlord had been manipulated, bribed, or blackmailed, but a hologram?
Sweat poured down Niir’s face, steaming off his neck.
He wouldn’t be able to hide his condition much longer.
He wouldn’t have to. Battle was in the air. He could smell the anticipation, feel the heightened senses of the surrounding warriors. The primal form writhed, knowing it was breaking free. Soon, it would be unleashed on his enemies.
The problem was, Calinae stood in the middle—literally. Naked and exposed, she had nothing to keep her safe when the fireworks began. Only that powder, which could have the effect of turning the guards mad. She was holding off from using it. He didn’t know why.
Trak, the wise idiot, raised his hand in the middle of this. “Before you start shooting, I have a question.”
Pella Rin raised one arched brow in response, which Trak seemed to take as a go-ahead.
“I possess enough morbid curiosity to want to know what happened to Warlord Mek-la.” He smiled, clearly trying to diffuse some tension and buy some critical time. “He’s a…well, not decent fellow, but an interesting one. Is he locked in a brig somewhere?”
“Mek-la was killed and disposed of shortly after he hired you. It was done humanely, if that helps.”
“Oh, well. That’s the difference, isn’t it?” quipped Trak. “Glad to hear it wasn’t he who put that bounty out on us. Good thing you didn’t have to pay out, eh? Still, it’s a shame about the warlord, though. His wives will be beside themselves with grief. What happened? Did he get greedy?”
Maybe Pella Rin knew Trak was stalling, but indulged Trak’s questions because he thought there was plenty of time to gloat and kill them. Maybe there was time for both, but Niir knew Trak well enough to know he didn’t stall for no reason.
Pella Rin’s dark eyes narrowed. “You want to hear the story of it before you die? Very well. The Sislus warlord prospered greatly from possessing fourteen well-trained terti processors who were immune to the flower’s effects. Increased production was making him very rich.” Pella Rin smiled smugly.
Niir could see pride and arrogance slide over his enemy’s features. Vanity was such a common weakness, it was almost sad.
“So, it was greed, I suppose,” Pella Rin continued.
“Mek-la’s role was to keep the females hidden and in good health until the time came for me to collect them.
But he balked about handing them over, forcing me to take them.
I dropped them at one of my terti facilities on a Yerkin moon.
I could have forgiven his poor judgment, but he found out where they were and hired you to retrieve them.
” He bared his teeth and slammed a fist to his chest. “I made them. My team created them. They belong to me. He should have been satisfied with this one as payment enough.” With surprising speed, a hand flashed out and wrapped in Calinae’s long blue hair.
He jerked her towards him. She yelped and stumbled, falling to her knees before him.
Niir watched in horror as her loose bracelet fell off her wrist, to the floor.
Pella Rin’s detached gaze flicked over her.
“It will not be hard to find one willing to spend the credits for the rights to this one.”
Niir heard Pella Rin’s words as if through a buzzing, malfunctioning transmitter. His mind blanked the moment the other male touched her. His fury exploded when he heard her cry of pain.
He saw her reach for the bracelet, which had rolled just out of reach.
He saw Trak’s pained glance turn his way. The armor covering his red-veined skin was cracking along the seams as his body enlarged with the change to primal form.
“That was most enlightening, Pella—Or do you prefer Lord Rin?” asked Trak.
“It hardly matters,” the dark-eyed Virilian said. “As you will be dead before you have another occasion to say my name.”
“Pity,” Trak said, at the very same moment that Niir released the bellow of rage that had been building in his lungs.
His armor flew off his body. Horns, long, curved, and flaming, grew from above his temples and flicked off the helmet. It was almost a relief, after all this time, to let the primal form take over. His thoughts flattened out and simplified. Adrenaline flooded him with a tidal wave of energy.
Swinging his blades was effortless. They sang through the air as he lunged for the closest enemy and attacked faster than a normal being could.
Pella Rin’s guards fanned out in a semicircle. Some fought hand to hand, like Niir. There were storage crates, small transport vehicles, and large refueling platforms—plenty of things for both groups to hide behind.
“Get the females to safety,” Trak snapped into this V-link, giving orders to their unit. Niir could only hear Trak’s side, as his v-link had burned off. “Yes, he went primal,” Trak shouted over the blaster fire. Then, “Do you think I have a death wish? No—I’m not asking him that.”
The smells of discharged plasma and the acidic vapor emitted by blasters, filled the air.
The shouts and scuffles and clash of weapons swelled through the hangar.
Blasters fired around him, at him. Some, he was able to deflect with his blades.
Others connected, but his changed body could now absorb certain attacks.
He took out two guards so fast, they didn’t even have time to fire.
From the corner of his eye, he watched Calinae. She was using her bare foot to reach for the bracelet. Pella Rin hadn’t noticed, yet.
Beside him, Trak rolled into a crouch and neatly shot two guards.
He wore a furious expression. A blaster mark reddened his shoulder and some of his hair had been burned off, too.
The expression was probably because of the hair.
Trak was vain about his blond locks. He looked at Niir and nodded for him to take the left side.
The other Virilian guards who had accompanied them had taken positions. They covered Niir and Trak and the few others who fought at closer range. Pella Rin still held Calinae by the hair. He barked orders into a V-link on his ear as he slunk from the fight.
Full battle rage flowed through Niir like a strange relief. Something about this felt different.
Even as he drove his blade through an enemy and felt the sting of blaster fire sear his back, a cold, sickening dread coiled in him.
The primal form had full control over him.
It filled him, possessed him, controlled him utterly.
The past times he’d made this change had not felt like this.
Even though they’d been long ago, he still had some control. This time, he had none.
It was as he’d feared. It was what he’d fought for so long and why he’d dedicated so much of his time to studies and meditation: this time, he wouldn’t be changing back. The knowledge poured over him like ice water.
He looked at Calinae. She had retrieved the bracelet and held it between her hands. She looked back, eyes wide and afraid, but not of him. Her frightened gaze turned up to the male holding her in his brutal grip. When she looked back to him, she mouthed his name.
His name. Even in this nightmare of his, she called out for him, trusted him.
She pressed the button. A cloud of light yellow powder enveloped her and Pella Rin.
Niir let out another bellow, but this one was tainted with anguish. Throughout the hangar, small pops could be heard and billows of powder enveloped the fighters.
The seconds stretched out as gasps and moans were heard through the hangar. He saw her through the haze, even as the terti powder infiltrated his faculties.
The certainty hit him—Calinae could never be his. He was a monster. Even if he somehow managed to change back, he wouldn’t be able to hold on to it. The dreams he’d had of her, of them, of the life they might have had, fell away like water through fingers.
His fate was sealed, but hers wasn’t. He may not be able to have a life with her, but she would have a life.
He quickened his stride, striking down Pella Rin’s guards as though they were toys.
Plasma hit him in the thigh. That hurt. His pace slowed.
He deflected another shot from a plasma gun and dodged another.
Trak’s forces could fight easily now. They could disarm the unmasked guards without killing them, and thus, avoid a bloodbath.
Niir was almost to her. Pella Rin hadn’t even noticed.
He held a hand over his face and was making growling noises.
Calinae was gazing up at him, tears flowing from her eyes.
Her body shone with sweat and trembled in fear.
Blaster burns blackened the floor near her, revealing just how close some errant shots had hit.
Niir raised his blade, ready to slice off the hand that held Calinae’s hair in its brutal grip, followed by the villain’s head.
As the last bit of distance was closed, Pella Rin whipped around, plasma gun aimed directly at Calinae’s head. A cruel smile curved his lips. His eyes were watering, bloodshot. “I would stop, if I were you.”
Niir stopped. If the gun had been pointed anywhere else, he wouldn’t have. If it had been aimed at his own head, his blades would have continued their course.
But the gun was pointed at Calinae and he simply could not move. Even with the terti burrowing into his senses, he would protect her at all costs.
“Drop them,” Pella Rin ordered, blinking furiously.
Niir’s blades fell from limp fingers. The injuries began to hurt—all of them—especially the shot to the leg. Even his primal form body wasn’t invincible to plasma.
Pella Rin turned the gun on Niir, who sighed in relief because it wasn’t pointed at Calinae any longer. “Hold still,” the traitorous Virilian snarled. “You keep moving.”
He wasn’t moving at all. That was the terti’s doing. “Let her go.” Niir raised his flaming gaze to meet Pella Rin’s. “I can’t fight you like this.”
That earned him a smirk. Pella Rin released her hair with a flourish and held out his hand. He was about to say something, probably taunting, when something over Niir’s shoulder distracted him.
There was a rush of footsteps. The sounds of different weapons crackled through the air. The color in Pella Rin’s face drained away. For the first time, Niir saw fear on the male’s face.
Then he heard it—the unmistakable sound of the Baylan language.
Baylans? Could it be that Trak’s favor was being returned, after all?
That shocked him enough to cast a glance over his shoulder and look.
Sure enough, Baylan warriors flooded the hangar, led by none other than Saar-king Harc Gral-Nak himself.
The tall, imposing male directed his soldiers and, surprisingly, some of Sintra-1’s security force.
Face shields snapped down over faces, shielding themselves from the thick clouds of powder.
It was the last thing Niir—and clearly Pella Rin—expected to see. His muddled, primal mind struggled to grasp that it meant the end of this conflict. He still rode high on bloodlust and the warping mental effects of the terti powder.
Pella Rin’s plan was foiled and his forces defeated. Niir turned back to the enemy male just as pain exploded in his chest and he smelled discharged plasma.
He staggered back, then looked down to see a gaping hole in his chest and blood boiling out of it. Niir glanced up in time to see Pella Rin’s uneven grin. The dark-eyed Virilian had done what Niir had not—acted.
There was nowhere to go but down. Sounds blurred to a smeary din.
His vision became washed out. There was chaos around him.
A scuffle of bodies and fists and yelling in too many languages to distinguish.
He was dying. There was no other explanation, and he couldn’t even fight it.
It wasn’t easy to die well these days. A warrior’s death was all any true Virilian could hope for.
Suddenly, Calinae’s face was right there, filling his vision. Large, gold eyes, overflowing with tears, stared earnestly into his. She was close—too close. She would get burned if she didn’t get away. He tried, with what feeble strength he still possessed, to push her away, but she pressed closer.
Inexplicably, soft, cool hands moved over him.
One pressed to his cheek, but his vision was graying out.
Whatever madness this was, he was grateful for it.
To die with the feel of her hands on him was even better than a warrior’s death.
That hand slapped his cheek, roughly. “Niir,” he heard her desperate voice, but only faintly.
“Don’t leave me.” She sounded so far away. “Niir, stay with me.”
Oh, he wanted to, but he was so tired. So very, very tired as his mental visions turned psychedelic and bizarre from the drug settling into his brain.
He tried to smile, but it was just so much effort.
His eyes closed, sliding him further away.
This is how it should be, he thought, as he let go and gave over to the darkness.