“I’m bored,” the woman said then. “Best of luck, pretty lad. You’ll need it.”
She spun on her heels, threading toward the dark corridor beyond. The lights flickered, yielding an intermittent burst that made it look as if she glided, taking only one step for every meter. Despite her leather and chains, she was graceful. Quiet. And he could hear so many things. Too many. This place would drive him mad in short order, and it wasn’t as though he had far to travel.
He expected her to pause to give him a chance to reconsider, but she didn’t. In fact, she’d already written him off. That tore it. With inhuman speed, he closed the distance between them and leapt over their heads, dropping down into a fighting crouch before them.
“Maybe I was hasty,” he said. “It’s a curse.”
“Come on then. We can’t linger.”
Her two minions fell back, talking softly. Jael heard every word though they were trying to be subtle. This was a skill he didn’t advertise, but he could’ve told the woman at his side that she had slight arrhythmia.
“What do you think of the fish?” the blond giant asked.
“Too soon to say. He seems smart enough . . . and skilled. Not crazy.”
“Do you think she took him because he’s pretty?”
“What do you care?”
The giant sighed. “Because I’m not.”
Hm. So the big scarred brute had a thing for the princess in chains. I wonder if she knows.
Before he could calculate how the information might serve him best, he stopped cold, held up a hand. Occasionally, his acute hearing proved useful in other ways. Jael could also hear the slight hitch in her breathing when the décor changed. New territory, he guessed. She was afraid, but the adrenaline kicked in. The woman beside him was ready for a fight—wanted one—and that was . . . enticing.
“Party guests on the way. Shall we show them a good time?”
She nodded. “Let’s.”
He had no weapon, but it didn’t matter. The enemy couldn’t have anything more than shivs, chains, hunks of metal forged into something equally primitive. There would be no blasters, shredders, or disruptors. Which made for a fine melee . . . for him, anyway.
Jael whirled into battle as the convicts broke from the shadows. They all wore the same colors, and they carried homemade knives. They radiated a desperate, frantic air; he’d seen the same light in the eyes of holy warriors—fools convinced they were dying for a holy cause instead of just dying.
Punch, block, roll. He came up behind his target and broke his neck cleanly from behind. The giant’s surprised grunt told Jael the other man was surprised he had the brute strength to manage the maneuver. Everyone was, until they realized he wasn’t normal. That he was other. Then the whispers would start, even here.
It was hard not to stop and watch her because she was beautiful like a ferocious storm. Her chains twirled and lashed. He leapt them while the henchmen held back, clearly worried about getting in her way. But he wasn’t afraid of a misdirected blow. It was only pain, his old friend, his nursemaid and mother. She hit him once, and he shook it off, finished his kill.
There were ten bodies on the ground when he stopped moving.
“Priest’s people,” she said, not even breathing hard.
That meant less than nothing to him, but in time, he’d figure out the politics.
The trek through the ship was enlightening in other ways. Anything that could be stripped, stolen, or recycled had been. In places, whole wall panels were missing, and others showed signs of hard use, pocked with holes and rust and ominous stains. The floors showed just as much wear, to the point that it was miraculous Perdition held together at all.
“What’ll happen when someone pries off the wrong piece?” he asked.
She cut him a wry, appreciative look. “We’ll asphyxiate. No great loss, right?”
That might do it. A jolt of anticipation startled him. I could die here. And it wasn’t an awful, terrifying thought. It was like the promise of sunrise at the end of the longest, darkest night. Another man might raise a fist and rail because he hadn’t asked to be born. But Jael could only whisper in his own head: I didn’t ask to be created.
But that was too pathetic. He’d grown accustomed to his status as renegade science project. Even took pleasure in killing the people responsible from time to time. Not all of them, of course. Some had to live because otherwise, how could they enjoy turns of tortured fear?
He smiled.
“What did you mean when you said you read me?”
“I’m Psi,” she said flatly.
He actually stumbled. “Oh, shit. You’re not a mind reader, are you? I hate those fookers. Always poking about, looking for your darkest secrets.”
She surprised him with a husky laugh. “No, though I’d keep busy for a thousand turns in here if I were. You can’t go five steps without stumbling over some ass with a dark secret.”
“I don’t have any. So what then?”
“I find killers . . . and I feel how they go about it. If it’s rage or pleasure-driven.” She was holding back, he could tell. The way she bit her lip to prevent another round of explanation.
But it was enough for now. He’d charm the rest out of her later. Women liked him; or they always had, right up until it was too late to reconsider. When you got right down to it, there was a monstrous face beneath his smooth skin.
“And me? What did you see?”
“You’ve taken pleasure in killing but not in a psychotic way. Your pattern felt . . . organized. Like you were righting a wrong, real or imagined. You don’t kill in anger. In fact, you’re mostly cold, pretty lad, like a field of endless snow.”
How right she was. It shook him a bit, so he summoned a caustic smile. “Look, I’m properly undone. Watch now, you’ll have me weeping. Do you think you could fix me, queenie?”
“No,” she said. “I can’t fix anything. I can only break it. Or kill it. But you’re welcome to come sleep in my boneyard.”
“Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”
3
Bad Omens
Dred had told him the truth, as far as it went.
Reading him had been instructive . . . and unique. She’d never encountered anyone with so much pale energy, limned in darkness. Otherwise, there was little color to him at all, as if emotion had rarely touched him. In fact, he only offered curls of cobalt blue, like a dark sea one could drown in, the color of sorrow. So he had been sad . . . and he’d frozen thereafter. His past became a mystery wrapped in that context, but it would remain unquestioned. She didn’t need to know his secrets.