Page 12 of Ghoul Huntress (Maelstrom Duology #2)

12

Cyn woke to hear Mo making an announcement. She untangled herself from her mates, slipped from the bed. For once she’d worn clothes, all of them, to bed, in an attempt to avoid sex.

It was hard to achieve that outcome. Since both of them were hard. Oh the jokes she could make. She nervously eyed them where they lay, stirring. It wasn’t that she couldn’t say no, or insist if they persisted, but the outcome of that was growing more tedious, more painful. Neither male had been happy when they went to bed merely to sleep, but they had eventually accepted her demure refusals—okay make that her growling refusals.

She stripped, tugged on new underwear and leggings, then pulled a black tunic with red piping over her head. She adjusted the burgundy-colored leggings and strapped on her gun belt as she strolled out the door toward the cockpit. By then both Rutger and Vargr were grabbing clothes and dressing, and she ignored their entreaties to stop and do naughty things. Maybe she should sleep elsewhere? And what if Maura was wrong and she found herself more vulnerable to the Lure?

Could she tell if that was happening way out there? Once upon a time, in the days following the invasion, the Lure had reached everywhere. Perhaps it still did. She should have checked for the signs, yet she had always possessed greater resistance than any humans ever did, even in the hours of the day.

Decisions, decisions. “To fuck or not to fuck. That is the question,” she murmured to herself, amused.

Along the way, she slipped past Kiko, who was working on some piece of equipment, and sidled by the larger and rockier Vincent, who waved and smiled. His scarlet-and-white kimono draped to the floor. He was already eating the first meal of the night at the smallest table while making the chair under him groan. Brupper or brinner, he was eating, and it made her stomach rumble unhappily.

On reaching the driver’s seat, she did a slick, one-handed jump over the back of it and nailed the landing. The metal nose shield was raised again, and she could see out through the glass. It had been shut for the duration of the sunlight hours.

“What is it, Mo? Report.”

“Found it. Nyah nyah . Sleepy heads.”

It? Oh, of course. “The drone?” She glared out the windshield, as if that was where Mo resided.

“Yes. Ta dah!” He shifted course and ground to a stop. She heard the whine of wheels and legs cease, and dust spilled upward, obscuring the glass for a second or two.

There it was. Their goal. A dented, dusty, rusty metal thing with rotors and wings, and twice the size of the steering wheel she leaned over.

“You need us to go out and fetch it? Or do you have, like, grappling arms?”

“I do. But you’re easier to handle. Fetch.”

Boot-steps told her that V and Rutger had caught up and Rutger seated himself in the co-driver spot as she replied to Mo. “My god, you’re getting more smartass daily.”

“Thank you.”

“He is. I assume we have no predatory animals nearby? Lions?” Rutger asked.

“Negative. I always have movement sensors and radar active as well as heat sensors.”

“Huh. So that’s our drone?” He peered out at the object lying between two green-gray shrubs. The ground hereabouts was dry and red-brown. The trees were twisted and looked as if they had bit parts in a horror movie.

“Yup.” At the back of her head, she gathered and tied her hair into a ponytail. “Who’s coming to get it?”

They both answered her with, “Me.”

Retrieving it proved simple and fast. Mo maneuvered until the door was opposite where the drone lay. They opened the door, snagged the drone, and carried it back inside. At most this had taken fifteen to twenty seconds.

“Kiko?” Beckoning him with gloved fist, Rutger carried the drone one-handed and through into the second room where Kiko could examine it. He deposited it with a small clank onto the table, dropping dirt in a rough circle onto the surface. Dragging up a chair, Kiko brought his face close then placed his hand on the top surface between the back pair of rotors. The stripes and wriggly lines on his arms trickled brighter in veins of alien blue. He closed his eyes.

Everyone else, Vincent, her, Rutger and Vargr sat or leaned on some part of the interior of this smallish laboratory tech room, and they waited.

Though the drone looked dead as dead could be, after a few minutes one small square light lit up, in a row of four on the curved top. Kiko raised his head.

“This thing is damaged, but I think I fixed everything we need to read and download whatever it recorded at the Top reconnaissance. Mo, where can we plug it in. There’s a port undern?—”

“The wall plug near your elbow will do for this, if you use the cord in the drawer at your hip…”

Mo directed Kiko on how to connect the drone. Once it was plugged into Mo’s outlet, Kiko sat up and ran his hand through his red, wavy hair, then waited with hands clasped in his lap. A square screen that hung from the ceiling, one not much bigger than the drone, flickered to life.

The film at first only showed the facade of the War Quarter scraper sliding past as the drone rose then it panned into sky, then downward. For a few seconds it swept across the Top, showing the edge where five, armed ghoul guards were looking up at it and beyond them a few people seemed to be scraping soil around plants, then the drone fell abruptly and the footage ceased.

“That’s when the skinsuits hit us,” Vargr pointed out.

“Where are the people?” Kiko asked, incredulous.

“Out of the shot. This is pretty useless.” She sucked on her cheek. If this was all it had filmed, they’d come all this way to find nothing.

There was a scrape and crunch as Vincent shifted his butt on another stool. “That will not convince the War Quarter leader, Drummer. This was night. Perhaps attacking them at night is not wiser?”

“It would be, if the skinsuits didn’t exist.” That was Rutger. “Daytime would have been worse. It would’ve made it impossible for the drone to be controlled.”

“When we go up there ourselves,” Cyn added, unsmiling, “We will go at night. The advantage for us is still too great. Daytime hurts us, maybe kills us. Or most of us I should say.” Not her.

“Huh,” someone grunted.

She was too busy thinking to see who that’d been. “Drummer, now that I think this through, will not agree to help unless we can prove Lure Resistance.” She looked around at them. “Recovering the drone may have other uses, but the footage would never have convinced him anyway. We have to go up. We have to try out something new.”

“My thoughts too.” Rutger nodded, though as grim of face as she surely was. “And I think Maura has ideas on that—on how to improve our Lure Resistance. Some she deduced from the notes Willow wrote.”

“ We have to go up?” Vargr eyed her dubiously. “Remember we are three.”

Cyn gave a small hm and a nod. If all else failed, she certainly had her own idea. Go full demon.

Though he was correct, she couldn’t do this alone. But what if gargoyles could never gain enough resistance? Who else would qualify? The logic following from that made her uncomfortable. Forcing anyone else to take on demon nanites would seem… sacrilegious in a funny, not haha , sort of way.

“I’m rerouting to return to War Quarter.” The vehicle lurched as Mo began to turn. “And stopping halfway at Maelstrom Towers for repairs and system checks. I suggest you all sleep… though knowing some of you, the activities may prove more rigorous than sleep.”

Cyn cocked an eyebrow and sniggered. “Was that a dirty joke, Mo?”

“Never, Miss Cyn. Though if you could use the apartments at the Towers, it would indeed lessen the… dirt inside my own rooms.”

Great, so now they had a filthy-minded centipede vehicle, and Mo had likely reminded Rutger and Vargr of what was missing lately: sex.

She must stay strong and resist them, for the sake of mankind.

She felt one of them move in behind her, his body pressing at hers, his large hand caressing her neck, his wings casting shadows on the walls before her. Vargr. She nibbled her lip.

“Don’t be getting ideas, V.”

“Too late.” He brushed aside her hair and bit her neck then his other hand curved beneath her breast and squeezed there, gently, while he still bit and licked at her.

“Fuck,” she croaked. Every bit of her anatomy that could get naughty had just melted. She was going to need a change of panties.

Maybe… just one more time?