Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 149470 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149470 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
I managed not to bash my brains out, but it was still a nasty fall. I got the wind knocked out of me in a sharp little cry as I felt the sharp pavement cut my cheek. My entire side felt bruised and I was pretty sure I was going to feel this the next day.
If there was a next day. Because now I was stuck there, lying like a log beside the ramp to the ship, unable to get up and climb inside. I could still see the warm interior glimmering in the open doorway from the corner of my eye. It almost seemed to be calling to me.
Come on, little one—get up! Why don’t you come inside?
Or was I imagining that the ship was talking to me? Was I going crazy? Or just freezing to death?
Well, I was definitely doing that. I couldn’t move and it was getting colder and colder. What was going to become of me?
I had no answers and no way to move as I felt the last vestiges of warmth I had left leaking away from my body into the cold, rough pavement below me.
“Sir,” I thought weakly. “It’s so cold here…I’m so sorry…I never should have tried…”
But then it got too cold to think anymore and I felt myself drifting away…
THIRTY-SIX
SIR
The Goddess-damned Sweepers were everywhere. The Baron came out of the lift with a shout, laying down a trail of flame that made most of the creatures skitter backwards, trying to get away from him. But some of the larger ones were bold. They dove past the gout of blue and gold fire spraying from the muzzle of his weapon and headed straight for me.
“Ware!” Baron Vik’tor bellowed. “I can’t keep all the fuckers off—don’t let them get you!”
I had my head lifted, trying to smell past the scorching odor of the flame to find little one. At last I caught her scent—sweet and lingering in the air like a fast-fading perfume. It led towards one of the tunnels, I thought, moving in that direction.
At that moment one of the biggest Sweepers scuttled towards me, its long, chitinous legs scrabbling on the floor and its lower jaw gaped open, showing glistening, needle-like fangs.
“Fucking watch out!” the Baron shouted. “Coming right at you!”
“I know,” I said coldly.
And though I had sworn to myself not to use my Mental Abilities again, once more I broke my own rules. I reached out with the invisible force that lived inside me and gripped the skittering creature, picturing an enormous hand enfolding the huge arachnid.
I lifted the Sweeper and crushed it, ignoring its piercing shrieks of pain. I tossed it aside with the power of my mind and then I did the same to the next bastard that came at me. And the next and the next…
Baron Vik’tor was staring at me, surprise written all over his face. He worked the flame gouter in his hands mechanically, keeping the Sweepers away, but he was looking at me, as though wondering what I might do next.
What I did was follow little one’s scent trail. It did lead near to the mouth of a tunnel, but not inside it. There was another scent there too—another human female, I could tell. The two of them had lingered for some time and the other female had run into the tunnel, but not little one. Where had she gone?
Suddenly, I felt her flame inside me flickering and I seemed to hear her soft voice whispering in my ear.
“…so cold here,” I thought I heard her say. “So sorry…Never should have tried…”
“Tried what? Little one, where are you?” I asked aloud, desperately. I felt almost insane with anxiety—I would gladly have rushed into a burning building to save her at that moment, if only I knew where she was!
Stop, I told myself. Think. Be logical.
Her voice had said she was cold and that she never should have tried something. But what?
I casually crushed three or four more Sweepers and leaned down to sniff the area where she had been. Turning, I followed my nose in the direction her trail led—to the front doors of the building.
Oh gods! My heart began to hammer even faster in my chest. Surely she wouldn’t have tried to go out in the killing cold and attempted to open my ship! I had told her that it would only respond to me. If she was out there, she wouldn’t make it inside—there was no way the ship—which was a semi-sentient being attuned only to my thought patterns—would open for her!
I headed for the double doors and heard the Baron shout from behind me,
“Don’t go out there! It’s not fucking safe! The cold—”
But I didn’t hear any more because I was into the antechamber between the first set of glass doors and the second and I could smell little one’s scent. She’d lingered here for a few moments, probably debating what to do.