Not only did he hold me pinned to the wall, but the silver creature that hugged him like armor had slid from his flesh and onto mine. It cradled the back of my head and my shoulders, and where it touched, any lingering aches and pains faded, and fatigue vanished. Despite the fear that filled me, I could also sense that he was not harming me, and perhaps even… healing me. Could Sons of Ragnar do that? So I licked my lips, watched how his eyes tracked the movement, and said no.
“No?” he hissed, his body pressing further into me, hands braced on either side of my head, his forehead almost pressed to mine. His scent surrounded me, his anger washed over me like a blanket, and yet my fear was sliding through me, out of me, and… into him? “You’re scared, yet you rebel. Are you stupid?” he demanded, mocking. He knew exactly what he evoked in me, and he seemed to relish the thought. He really was a bastard.
“No,” I said again. “I’ve got a perfectly developed sense of survival.” Daring to oppose him felt like making a bold move in a chess match. Would this make him back off or press closer? Would he kiss me? His eyes flicked to my mouth again, as if he were actually contemplating the very odd notion bouncing around my brain. Sense of survival? Clearly, I hadn’t woken up with that part of my psyche intact. I made a mockery of my own words by acting the way I was.
The moment drew out, seeming to last forever rather than just a few short seconds. Then he lifted his head, and something flicked over his face that I could not decipher. An emotion, a hint of respect; maybe it was confusion. It probably wasn’t respect,nothing so flattering. He likely still thought I was an idiot, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. I couldn’t explain why I was acting the way I was, either. Trauma, shock, grief—take your pick.
Then he laughed, and for the first time, there was a hint of warmth in his voice. Maybe I had actually managed to amuse him this time. I’d take it, the result was...fruitful. He lifted away from me, cold air replacing the warmth of his body. His symbiont also dripped from my flesh, pooling on the ground before taking on the shape of a Gracka—a hound-like creature native to the icy, cold Talacan homeworld. It had very sharply pointed ears and a narrow snout, a bit like a German Shepherd. Only the Gracka was sleeker and more heavily muscled, much like its companion.
I discovered I was not scared again. Numb? I didn’t think so either. It was somethinghedid. He was walking away again, his laughter fading, petering out and reclaimed by the dark ship. But he halted at the corner leading toward the bridge. “Well, are you coming?” he called out, soft, low-pitched, as if this was a one-time offer he was not going to repeat for anyone.
I pushed away from the wall and jogged after him, far less unsteady and sluggish. Any hint of stasis sickness seemed a memory, and I was certain his symbiont was the reason. Ithadhealed me somehow. It wasn’t until I’d reached the corner and ducked after his silver form and the sleek hound at his side that I realized one astonishing truth: not all of his strange, alien companion had left my body. No, some of it clung in thin strands around my neck, and more circled my wrists. Like strange, skin-heated jewelry, or perhaps these were more like shackles...
Chapter 7
The Sineater
I had not felt this strong in months, and I knew the sole reason for that was the human female jogging after me like a stray Gracka puppy. My injuries from the fight had healed when she’d woken and filled the hold with her terror. Only a small part of me felt a hint of guilt over that, but the bigger part was relieved. We needed me at full strength if she wanted to get out of here alive. That thing I’d fought? It had caused some nasty injuries, the damage more serious than I would have expected. Maybe there was truth to the planet’s terribly deadly reputation after all.
I’d have to kill it before we could escape this sunken tomb. There was no way it would let us go, and the last thing I wanted was to fight that thing in the water, it would have the home advantage. Fear was not a familiar emotion for me to experience; usually, Val and I fed on the fear of others. My own? It was useless to her, but I did feel it. For the first time in centuries, I’d run into an opponent that might be just as strong as I was.
Only a Terafin metallurgist I’d had a run-in with a few years ago had come close to matching my strength. He had not inspired any sense of fear, just a hint of respect. After all, we’d been on the same side, more or less. This thing? I wasn’t even sure it had any rational thoughts; it seemed to exist with the sole purpose to consume. Feed. Destroy. One could say my existence was no different, but I did not kill without some higher plan, usually. The feeding… that was where the creature and I matched, and I did not like looking into that kind of mirror.
My human stray was quiet as a mouse as she tiptoed after me, and I realized I’d adjusted my stride just a little to make sure she could keep up. I thought her quiet steps meant she would not pose a further distraction, but I was wrong, she crowded my thoughts and filled my senses. The truth was, she was no idiot; wanting to stay with the biggest bad around was a smart thing to do. I wouldn’t want to go back into stasis either, even if all my friends were dead, not that I had many. Of course, the stray thought my half-hearted invitation meant we were now best buddies.
“Thank you,” she whispered when I paused at a crossing to tilt my head left and right. I was considering the best options. Would it have tried to follow us? How did it track? Where was its den? She had other plans, things like conversation. I curled my lip as she began the silly ritual of introductions. “I’m Frederique Moretti,” she offered. “Freddie for short to my friends. What’s your name?”
Introductions. I hadn’t made one in so long that my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and my brain briefly went white. My name? Everyone called me the Sineater, that was what I was. One very obnoxious Ulinial engineer dared to call me “Sinny,” but only if she thought she was well out of striking range. The last time I’d given anyone my name was shortly after Asmoded found me. I’d been wounded, hungry, and alone on some Aderian planet with far too many happy people. That was dozens of years ago…
“The Sineater,” I said, voice grating in my throat as I gave her the name I’d been given aboard theVarakartoom—a name that had echoed in the wake of my footsteps for centuries already and fit like the cloak of night. It was the truth; I might as well embraceit. She did not need to know anything else, no matter how much a part of me was tempted to say more.
She came to stand right next to me, her hand casually reaching out to stroke Val between her pointed ears. I’d expect my symbiont to snap her teeth, coil away, or growl in fury, but the traitor was wagging her tail and leaning into the touch. The pleasure that sank through the bond into my bones made me envy her and long to feel those slender fingers on my skin.
Not scared now, and not because Val and I had sucked it all out of her. No, it had gone away the moment I’d made the suggestion she come with me. Even before that, it had begun to wither and fade, replaced by warmer things, like safety and… trust. I bared my teeth at the hallway to the left but held in the growl that wanted to slide from my throat. She was infuriating, she was an idiot, and damn it if she wasn’t brave and competent, too. Not to mention noble, given the mission that had brought her here, according to the ship’s logs.
“Sineater? Is that your name or just what they call you?” she asked, cutting through the anger simmering in my veins with that far-too-clever question. I felt exposed, raw, like she’d read my mind and known exactly what kind of turmoil went on inside it. Was this how I made everyone feel—always knowing exactly when they were scared, or angry, or hurting?
“Does it matter?” I barked at her. She shrugged, shaking her head so that the black, springy curls swayed around her face. She was pale, probably from the long space journey and exhaustion, but a hint of a natural tan still lingered. I recalled all too well what she’d looked like in her barely-there stasis clothes—down to the intriguing little black mark on her slender wrist. The cuffsof her uniform jacket now hid that, but I cut my eyes down to glance at that wrist anyway. That’s when I saw it: the glint of silver that was all Val, still circling her wrist.
“Damn it!” I snarled, eyes flashing to Val’s Gracka head and piercing her with a sharp glare. “You can’t be serious now. Her? Are you crazy?” The Gracka flicked her ears back and tilted her snout up to pierce me not with a glare, but with something all condescending and bored—like she didn’t give a damn that what she’d done was going to change the course of our lives forever. Frederique’s too. And wasn’t that just marvelous? Not. I did not need another to drag along on this crazy ride that was supposed to be life. Not when Val and I were splintering, failing, and possibly dying of hunger. Though granted, neither of us was hungry now. Not like before. No, now a different kind of hunger filled me.
“Are you talking to your symbiont?” Frederique asked, all curiosity. Her hand twitched against her thigh, as if she wanted to do something with it but couldn’t. Then the other resumed petting Val’s regal head as if she were a damn pet, and Val practically purred for her. Val never purred, and she had never felt so clearly happy to me, so strongly present inside my mind.
I did not give the stray human an answer, but turned away again to consider the hallways, bridge, or quarters. Would it return to the med bay, where it was likely responsible for the deaths of Frederique’s crew? And why had it spared her but not the others? Because she was pretty? Because she was the one in charge, and he was saving her for a special occasion? It, I should say, but the face inside the mass of tentacles and shadows had seemed male. Male and human.
“What’s the name of your symbiont?” Frederique asked next. Val had forgone all pretense of being a respectable, ancient alien being. She’d slunk closer to the human, pressing much of her body against Frederique’s hip and side, and tilting her head to offer the best spots for scratching. Her tail was wagging so much that it swished across the floor and thumped into the human’s boots with a whack. Hard enough to make her wobble. I reached out a hand to steady her by the shoulder before I could stop the impulse.
Nobody had ever so much as considered that Val had a name, that she was anything more than a strange, liquid extension of me. She was not a person, not a being, but a thing. I’d never bothered to correct anyone, and Val had never appeared to want me to, either. But it was odd what that single question did—as if, suddenly, it validated her presence and made her real: a flesh-and-blood being with feelings and desires. I knew that, but nobody else had, until Frederique.
My voice was brusque and a little choked when I snarled, “Val. She’s called Val.” Then I couldn’t stand around any longer and picked a hallway at random. What did it matter, anyway? The creature was trapped on the ship just like we were, it would find us eventually, and then I’d kill it. I ignored the warm words of welcome to my symbiont Frederique was uttering, and the way Val was soaking them up.
My skin prickled along my spine, where the creature had struck me with its fanged tentacles before and drawn blood. It was the only hint of a warning I had before it attacked. I’d never been this off guard before, but I was stronger than when I first got here, thanks to Frederique’s delicious fear. Even when thecreature jumped on me from above, where it must have been hanging from the ceiling, it did not injure me.
Val might have been occupied with her new best friend, but she was there to watch my back right away—more of her sliding over my armor to protect me, the rest slicing into the thing with sharp, silver blades. I pulled my gun and a knife and fought to subdue the thing, to strike it a killing blow. At all times, I was sharply aware of where my little stray human was. One errant tentacle or blade, and she would die where she stood, and that I could not allow. No, not now that Val had chosen her and she’d defied me with her bold little no’s. She was mine—to pleasure or to harm—not this twisted thing’s.
With a furious rage as cold as a glacier sliding through my veins, I fought this thing. Nothing got the better of me, and nothing was going to take my stray from me now. I roared in its twisted, human face, clawed through the dripping pink and blue tentacles, and burned laser fire into the shadows writhing along its back and chest. Val curled around me, and with a fist, I was ready to punch a hole through the bastard's head. It abruptly chose flight over fight, slithering from my grasp as if it had turned incorporeal. With a screech that pierced my eardrums, it fled down the hall.
I was left standing, victorious but not satisfied. My feet were braced against the metal floor, my body alive and humming from the perceived danger in ways I could not recall feeling in a long time. Perhaps I’d been bored, because I wanted to chase after the thing and do it all over again. It was very tempting to prove my mettle against an opponent strong enough to draw blood. Prove that I was the strongest.
