Intimidator (2 page)

Once, above his head would’ve swayed a tangled canopy of trees. Grearth, forest planet.

He felt his hand move on the padding inside his glove. His skin was striped with black, his color the mark of the Feya, a people born under trees.

When it had happened, he’d been off planet. A few million had been evacuated. Some higher up had held off using the Planet Breakers and instead ordered Grearth razed by flame. The difference had seemed miniscule. Turn the planet into dust, or burn it. He’d watched from holoscreen as they’d detonated the bombs, the firestorms rendered in deep reds, oranges and black. The superheated carpet of fire had crept silently across the world, burning everything to nothing.

Yet the evidence before his eyes had meant zero. He hadn’t believed, not until they’d been dropped in to clean up remnants.

At least someone would have a future here, maybe not for a hundred years, but the world would recover. He stared bleakly outward, vision blurred. Nasskia was gone. His bond mate. His heart. His soul. His one and only Nasskia who could never be replaced, and his little ones. May demons take the Bak-lal; his little ones were gone too.

His eyes stung with wetness again, but he refused to blink, sniff or show weakness. Someone would make this land green and well again, just not him.

Slowly he stood, with a handful of his burnt land in his left fist. He opened his hand, and let it fall away. The acrid smell penetrated his mask.

Before him, on the ground, among the fragments of burned earth and wood and perhaps Feya, the black grit stirred. An eye blinked up at him.

A creature surged upright in an eruption of black, its arms reaching for him. The ashes whirled. To either side, other scorched figures flew up, uncovering themselves and lunging at his armored warriors. Without hesitation, he shot the one in front of him, then swung his rifle and shot those fighting his men when he could. Pieces of Bak-lal soldier splattered and joined the dark floating flecks. At least none of these had grown weapons from their limbs. Those ones were difficult to kill.

As always when they met the converted, he repeated the words in his head.
Not people. Not people, not anymore.

Screams began.

His men were dying.

A new thing. Some of the enemy planted glowing hands on his men.

“My armor’s melting!” While the soldier staggered back, a second Bak speared the soldier’s chest and slaughtered him.

Stom shot that one too. The crack and whiplash whistles of homing rounds drummed in his ears. The jerk of the rifle jarred his arm, as he fired and fired and thumped the stock into the Baks that rushed in close.

By the end he was panting, sweating, his rifle empty, his armor scarred by yellow goo that still bubbled and hissed. The last Bak-lal he’d shot lay before him, nerves dangling from its shattered neck in loops of glinting wire. A small one, this. Tiny.

He swallowed then turned and walked away.

Elger flicked his gaze across the body and said the obvious. “A child.”

“Yes.” Then he whispered more words to himself, as if he could make them true by pure force of will. “Not mine. Not. Mine. No. Kak, no.” Choking, he splayed his gloved hand over his face. “Please, god, no.”

The barrel of his abused rifle steamed, smoke curling from the end. For a second he swayed, dizzy.

His comm came alive. The Baks were rising again all over the planet. They’d been buried and factory queens were somewhere deep under the ground, waiting, replenishing from stored bodies, remaking their soldiers deadlier than before.

That was the last day his planet existed. He became an orphan. Adrift.

He left with the survivors. They brought in the Planet Breakers. The command ship showed the destruction of Grearth on screen for anyone who wanted to see the planet break apart, but he hadn’t watched. Instead, he’d been in his bunk room cleaning weapons and armor. If he couldn’t be the giver of life, he would be the bringer of death.

For many battles, he threw himself into the very worst of the fighting. He didn’t pray for his death because he wanted to live so that he could kill more of
them
. But the day came when he did too much and they awarded him some paltry thing, and they took him away from his game with death. Diplomacy said he must accept the accolades. And so he smiled and shook hands and said yes.

When the ship carrying him emerged from warp space, he beheld the blue-and-green planet Earth.

“This will not take long.” Once they matched him up, he’d find this pet, like they wanted him to, lose her, leave. What did he want with females? An honorable Feya male took one and only one partner in his lifetime.

He’d play this game, and accept this battle honor, only as far as he had to so as not to insult anyone.

Nasskia.
His Nasskia. He wept for the first time.

With the woman leaning on her, Willow had to struggle to get the keys out of her handbag. Whatever drug Kasper had given her wasn’t wearing off. Not surprising really. Poor thing. As long as she didn’t get worse…

She kept her arm around the girl’s waist and kept rummaging. One day someone would make keys that wormed through all the other crap in your handbag and leaped into your hand. Then she’d probably die of a heart attack.

Using her arm, Willow nudged the opening of the bag wider. She peered in. If she could see past her nose it would be a bonus too.

She really should get the porch light fixed.

“Where the hell are you?” she muttered. “Ah!”

The girl made small moaning noises as she inserted the key in the lock and jiggled it, searching for the angle that would engage the frickin’ stupid damn lock.

Kasper would have found out someone had stolen his victim by now. She’d seen him touch the girl’s drink. He’d spiked it. Must have. While he was talking to someone, the woman had slowly slumped into the corner at her seat near the ladies’ restroom. She’d heard through the gossip at the pub that Kasper had done this before. Dope ’em, get them back to his house, rape them, party on, let the boys do them again, then let them go miles away.

No one around here seemed game to tell the cops when they came investigating. Or if they had, there’d been no evidence found.

Lucky for this girl…
Was her name Monique
? Luckily, it’d been the end of her shift. After three rum and cokes, nobody was this knocked out, and it was definitely three. She’d served two of them herself.

Breathe slowly.

“Hey, girl, Monique? Is that you? Maybe you can tell me a number I can call?”

Just as she found the spot for the key, a car pulled up behind them, headlights blazing across the neighborhood. Loud music cut off and a door slammed.

She swallowed, feeling the scrape as the key rotated against metal. Once inside, she’d be safe. The house repelled angry people like it was anti-matter for angry. Crazy but true. Boyfriends with their knickers in a twist never made it through the door. If they got angry while inside, they never stayed long. It had to work on Kasper too, didn’t it?

This old house of her aunt’s was Castle Freaky. It wasn’t normal but she’d given up trying to figure out how or why, years ago, soon after her aunt died.

The key turned all the way.
Click.
The door swung open.

“Hey. Where the fuck are you going?” The low, menacing voice carried yards in the night air. She’d heard Kasper talk like that to a man lying gasping on the ground, two seconds before he kicked him in the guts. “That’s my girl you’ve got there. Did you ask her if she wants to go in?”

From the sounds, they’d leaped over the gate and there were too many footsteps to be from only one man.

Go, go, go.
She did
not
want Kasper as her enemy but she ignored him. She staggered in with the girl weighing down her shoulder, then swiveled and kicked the door shut. It locked automatically. Someone jumped onto the porch, and there was silence, except for the harsh male breathing inches away, on the other side of the door.

He spoke again. “You better never, ever, turn your back on me again.”

Cold tendrils crackled into her flesh.

Shit.
Her eyes refused to close. He was going to punch his fist through the timber any second. Still holding the keys tight so they wouldn’t jingle, she gave him the finger.

Asshole.

“Get out here!” A kick slammed into the door and shook a boom through the house.

Her hand trembled. She swept back a twirl of hair dangling across her eye.

She did nothing more – didn’t move, didn’t talk, tried not to breathe.

A minute passed. Another. Something made long dragging scratches on the other side of the door.
Scre-e-eetch. Scritch.
Her heart cowered down small and painful in her chest. It might stop beating, she was that scared. It hadn’t taken this long with that craziest boyfriend, Alan, had it?

She heard the thumps of footsteps on the porch again then car doors opened and shut. Maybe they were pretending?
Maybe, maybe, maybe
ran frantic circles in her mind, bouncing off the walls, while she waited for some new frightening sound.

The engine revved and they drove away, the noise lessening, dwindling, gone.

Fuck.
Light-headed from breathing barely enough for a mouse, she opened her mouth and hauled in a long draught of air.

Muscles braced, she let the girl slide slowly to the floor where she lay in a pile.

“God.” She took another big shuddery lungful. “God dammit. Don’t you throw up on our rug.”

She hadn’t wanted Kasper to know. Phoning for an ambulance or maybe driving the girl to the hospital ER had been her first plan. But after she bundled Monique into her car, the girl had started crying about not wanting the cops involved. When Kasper exited the pub a few yards in front of her car, she’d made a snap decision – take her home. After all, she lived only three streets from the pub and Monique seemed okay, just plastered.

He knew though, he did. Disaster.

Bright side, he hadn’t punched in the flimsy door or broken a window to come in that way. The freaky house effect had worked.

She grinned. Kasper was the big bad wolf trying to blow the house down.

Problem was, she had to leave sometime. What
had
she been thinking?

The lights were on down the hallway. The girl lay curled on the floor, breathing quietly and drooling on the rug. Her blond hair was as short as Willow’s black curls. She looked sweet and terribly innocent even if her skirt was petite enough to show glimpses of her panties, her upper arm had a bleeding heart tattoo…and she was in trouble with the cops.

What was she going to do with her? “Monique! You got some angry guys after us. Can I call the cops now? Monique?”

The croaked
no
and the head shake that stirred the rug were determined.

“What the hell did you do? Rob a bank? A church? Flick a booger on a cop?” She stuck her splayed fingers in her hair. “What am I going to do with you now? Maybe I can have you stuffed and mounted on my mantelpiece?” Pity she had no mantelpiece. She yelled out, “Ally? You there?”

She hadn’t thought at all. Now she’d gone and involved Ally, her younger cousin, the one she’d protected all these years, and for what? To get them both killed by some dickhead when they went to get groceries?

“I’m here.” Ally trudged out of her bedroom and stood blinking at her, in her PJs, clutching her teddy bear. Twenty-three, she still had a teddy, and Ally was as scatterbrained and out of this world as they came. “Who’s that, Will?” She frowned down at their guest.

Maybe Ally could help? Though if her meds for the night had kicked in, she might be too drowsy to think straight. That she’d taken this long to emerge after all that ruckus, and wasn’t spazzing out like a frightened Bambi, meant she must have swallowed them a while ago.

“Monique. I think that’s her name… You’re always on the ’net. Seen her in any crime stories?”

“Not that I remember.” Ally knelt and tucked the bear into the girl’s hand.

The girl looked up at them blearily. “Will? You’re a boy?”

She grunted. It wasn’t worth explaining the whole Will was short for Willow thing.

Actually, Ally was so agoraphobic she barely left the house. The only one likely to get grabbed or assaulted by Kasper was her. And the house
had
worked its magic. In the past, boyfriends had totally forgotten arguments. As in gone, completely. Willow sucked on her lip. If Kasper forgot, truly, she could use this.

She’d play it cool for a few days and listen to see if people heard about her Good Samaritan blooper. She thought about the neighborhood with the heroin and crack addicts, the gangs, the occasional stupid violence. On the days that she walked in to work, she had to take care not to step on needles. If anything like this happened again, no way was she standing aside to let someone be abused.

She’d tread carefully for a while. Willow leaned back against the door and patted the panel.
Good house.

She could use this if she had the balls. Fuck sitting around and watching shit happen. Who else ever got the chance to be the superhero?

You can only die once.

Willow frowned. Bad saying.
When life serves you lemons, make lemonade? When the shit hits the fan, get a shovel?

Yeah, one of those. Definitely not the dying one.

When she went outside in the morning and found
SLUT HOWSE
written in blood on the door, she didn’t change her mind. Who listened to bad spellers anyway?

But she scrubbed it off before Ally could see it.

The Bak-lal factory queen examined the altered human through the eyes of the little spidery rover. The metal legs snicked quietly as they extracted his breathing tube. The human gasped and coughed up blood and phlegm then stared unfocused for a few seconds before sitting up on the table. More blood specked the places on his hands and feet where she’d first pierced him.

“Are you aware and functioning correctly, Christopher One?” The rover’s voice came out with an over-riding buzz but then nothing was perfect after so many years.