Page 30 of Defiance (The Intersolar Union #7)

Novak had known the rush of the chase many times. The invigorating tang of a target’s fear and sweat. Holding his breath in the rafters of a warehouse, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. With a career defined by a trail of bodies, his resume was longer than any other agent under Ferulis’s command.

It’s what advenans were made for.

Killing. Finding. Disappearing.

Novak did what he was evolved to do in the Hunt for Charlie. He opened his colear? to its fullest, burning his senses until the world simmered like oil in a pan.

Sparks of pink drew him into the Medial Palace, where he leapt from the archways and banisters in his BDRE suit, invisible to their security drones and silent on his feet. He locked down his hardened feathers, so that when a patrol did sense him, he’d conduct the electricity from its stunner out the tip of his tail in an arc of lightning.

Charlie had been taken to a suite to lay down in a bed that had been draped in new sheets. Director Caher, La?we Sath, and Chairwoman Guei had been with her. Caher? Smelled anxious. Sath, drowning in fight or flight, heavy emphasis on the fight. Guei, though, was her perfect self. Luxury powders, triumph, and serenity. Then Charlie left on a gurney with Guei and someone that smelled like a medbay.

Novak followed Charlie’s faint sparkle, walking across the rooftops of Hja Qiyua. She hadn’t been transported outside but through the underground passages that connected the Medial Palace to HIXBS medical center, a vast network beneath the surface. He gleaned her chemia trail from cracks in the blue marble sandstone and grates from above, trying to tap into her holotab, searching for Jharim’s parumauxi, but there was nothing.

He would have lost her if not for the Hunt.

He slipped into a ventilation shaft and cut through its industrial filters as he descended to the lobby of HIXBS’s pharmaceutical production wing far below the public hospital and campus. He crawled out of the vents behind reception, his claws marring the sandstone like hot knives in butter.

Charlie’s blood was in the air. Novak’s eyes dilated and his scales shivered with excitement. Not for finding Charlie—had he ever really lost her?—but for the violence he’d commit in her name. State-sanctioned, immune to prosecution, coming for the fucker that hurt her.

He punched the center of his chest, stowing his BDRE in the middle of the lobby with a malicious grin.

The instant panic was a symphony of chaotic screams, crashing supplies, and flapping lab coats. All the researchers and clinical assistants ran, but security barked orders and called in back-up. Killing them was like a dance, and he hummed the song he’d shared with Charlie, relishing the familiar choreography.

Soon, there was no one left to stand in his way. His tail swept the tiles as he walked down the center of the hallway in nothing but his plume mail. His naked scales slid with his stride, announcing his presence like chimes made from knives. The pendulous swing of his tail would haunt their nightmares for the rest of their lives.

Click click click click click…

He stared down at a drop of dried brown blood in a room at the very end of a secure hallway lined in administrative offices. There were only two exam rooms this deep in the bowls of HIXBS. One stacked with floating gurneys, the other labeled Private Trials.

A deep, burning plasma shot smacked into Novak’s ribs and his tail snapped out, garrotting the security officer aiming a Blue Whorl hand cannon at his chest. The shot was electric in nature and fizzled over his plumes, the discharge glowing pale blue against his raven patina. The man fell to his knees with a strangled yell, gun clattering to the stone floor as he cut his fingers apart on the scales of Novak’s tail.

Eyes blown out to near perfect red circles, Novak dragged in a lungful of acrid disinfectant. Charlie had been restrained on that table. She’d vomited something foul that tasted like acid in the air. The blood… It was the other Charlie with chemia that smelled like an empty house. Not his Charlie.

Novak’s ear twitched as the security guard fell to palms, wheezing for air. His hands slipped in magenta blood. Novak paid him no mind and followed the real Charlie’s trail to a gurney pressed against the hallway wall just outside the room. It smelled like raw cut stone, freon, and ozone.

“Open the lift,”

he said to the suffocating security guard without inflection. The man crawled on his elbows down the hallway like Novak’s tail was a leash, leaving bloodied handprints in his wake. Gagging, he smacked his trembling hand on the access panel twice and the doors opened on an empty shaft.

Novak knelt beside him and picked up his palm to inspect the cuts. He expanded his colear?. Was this the man that moved Charlie? He smelled like a young cluster. Algae, the Canal, a homecooked meal… Not like the chemical vomit that made Novak’s soul rage with cold, terrible fear.

“You really shouldn’t touch an angry advenan,”

he drawled, dropping the security guard’s serrated hand.

“Or shoot one. Plume mail is better than a bullet proof vest.”

He withdrew his tail from the man’s neck, unsticking each hardened feather from his flesh. Fresh magenta blood seeped into his uniform. Novak’s cold demeanor wrinkled with a hateful snarl.

“Which level holds the air system?”

“Sub-64,”

he croaked.

Novak stood back up and whipped his tail clean, spattering the hjarna’s blood across the wall in an arc. The lift’s access panel said he was on level sub-40.

Three hundred feet, a four second drop. He walked off the empty ledge of the lift and counted seconds in the dark as the stale air rushed up to swallow him. One, he grabbed the ledge five stories down and took a deep breath. No ozone through the seams in the door, but plenty of it further down. Two, he smelled servers and sweat. Security personnel ran this way and that, their boots hammering the floors. They were too late to help the pharmaceuticals wing, but the carnage would distract them for a while. Three, cold and quiet. Bodies, preservatives, standing water in the drains. The city’s morgue and cadaver labs. Four…

Novak pressed his eye to the seam in the lift doors, then his colear?. There was no light at all, but ozone and freon filled the air with their still, sweet flavor. Coolant systems were housed here, powering the morgue and med storage in the levels above. No sound of boots or talking. No alarms ringing. Personnel didn’t come here unless there was a problem to fix.

Novak’s tongue lolled from his mouth as he started to pant. He snapped his teeth in desperation, wedged his claws and tail into the doors to force them open. His muscles bulged and his helices twitched. The frost collecting on the seam cracked, just enough for him to hit the emergency open button in the hallway. The doors slid into the wall and he dug his claws into the floor to keep from falling further down the shaft.

He scraped his way up onto the floor on his belly, claws and scales whining like knives on porcelain. Then his muzzle dove into a bed of dark pink chemia glowing like neon under UV light. He breathed Charlie in, fresher than the scent from the pharmaceutical wing, but worse. Bloody and wreaking of bile. Not the sort you wanted to throw up.

Novak’s heart twisted painfully, terror clutching his soul. Eyes wide, short of breath, he forced himself down the endless and frozen hallway, too inky black himself to trip the light sensors.

Then he heard it. The soft tink of electricity tripping along the wires overhead. Somewhere down there, the lights were tripping.

“Charlie?”

he breathed, lungs too tight to say it loud, to hope that it was her. He sped up without feeling his legs anymore. His clawed feet clacked on the metal grates with every step. “Charlie!”

His voice echoed so hard that he couldn’t decipher his own words, like yelling in a tiled bathhouse. Her name bounced and twisted, but there was something mixed in. A lighter sound, higher pitched. It was so distorted that his ear twitched, unable to believe it was real. Like wind in icicles.

Then a pinprick of light blinked on. It was so far away that it might as well have been a grain of sand. Another distorted chime bounced through the darkness towards him.

“Charlie!”

he roared, piercing his own ears.

One by one the lights grew closer, and soon he saw a sliver of white moving in the center of the hallway.

“Novak?!”

Novak heard it for real this time, surreal and small because of the distance, but no sound had ever shattered him so thoroughly. He broke into a sprint.

She was there in the hall with bare, pale legs, hugging a white care gown to her chest. Her hair was matted, hanging like a curtain of fire around her face, but she stumbled to a stop with wide eyes, staring at the darkness in fear. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him running.

“Charlie!”

His sunset shuffled forward in hope, then started running straight for his voice in the darkness.

Her light drew closer, faster, bigger, brighter and he ripped into it from the shadows. As soon as she saw him, her face crumpled in a sob. They barrelled into each other and their arms tangled in desperation. She clutched the back of Novak’s head as his tail spiraled around their waists together so she couldn’t pull away. When her legs gave way, he held her up, heaving for breath. He stumbled back against a frigid wall, curling his shoulders around her in his arms.

“You found me,”

she whispered in awe, her voice trembling.

Novak buried his colear? into her throat to comfort himself, then jerked away in horror.

“No,”

he gasped, scrambling to push her silk away from her neck. Beneath her unruly curls was an injection site, tainted with a neurotoxin that made his colear? sting just from a brush. He cradled her face in a panic.

“Hexane, whatever that is,”

Charlie rasped, rubbing her thumbs on his wrists to soothe him.

“I’m okay. The parumauxi—”

Novak slid to his knees and pressed his face to her sternum. She brushed down on his scales as he breathed her in, tolerating the tight pinch of his claws where he couldn’t give up his desperate grip on her waist.

“I’m alright, love,”

she soothed.

“I’m alright.”

“You’re safe,”

he hissed, repeating it like a mantra.

Then the pounding of his heart morphed from terror to something hot and throbbing. Charlie’s scent burn overwhelmed him like a drug, his helices so tight that his groin cramped with need. Precum slathered the interior of his cloaca.

“You’re mine,”

he panted with wide eyes. His fangs pulsed, filling his mouth with venom in anticipation. His claws twitched on her bare legs, held captive in his grip. The hiss of relief turned to a seductive, crocodilian growl. He shoved her closer, crushing his colear? against her navel.

“Novak?”

she asked, fisting her hands on his shoulders.

“You’re mine, Charlie,”

he intoned in an ancient growl, baring his teeth. They glowed against his dark scales, his red eyes dilated to near circles. His tail slithered over her ass and up her spine, making her gasp. It curled around her neck of its own volition, pressing against her racing pulse with relish.

Charlie gripped his ears and pulled his face back, staring at him with a crease in her brow. His grin was feral, split tongue spilling from his mouth and dripping venom down the one piece of clothing separating their bodies. He wanted to rub it into her fucking skin—

“I am,”

she said slowly, brushing her thumb over his colear? as it swelled. The gears turned in her mind. He saw it behind her stormy irises.

“You won the Hunt, love.”

Ohh, he liked the way she said that. He snapped his teeth in triumph, licking at the venom dripping from his fangs.

“If we leave, eh, right now,”

she said, biting her lip with a squint, “how likely are you to kill someone?”

Novak heard the word leave and snarled. He pulled her down so that she was straddling his thigh where he knelt and curled his tail around her neck so there would be no mistake. She swallowed against the authoritative squeeze.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume the Hunt is usually consummated on the spot.”

“Yes, but—”

Her question pulled him back with a grimace. Usually? No advenan in the Union had participated in the Hunt in living memory. He didn’t know what was normal, just stories from the Outer Rim over drinks. Thinking about it made him so worked up that his vision vibrated. Every scale tingled, and the ones she touched went soft like a bird. His plumage hadn’t been soft since he was a knee-high neolate.

“Novak.”

She pinched his ears until they stung, bringing his attention back around.

“You caught me, so take me. Let your instincts go.”