Her skin was dark, black as coal, and her eyes were an intoxicating violet. They shone when she laughed.
She laughed often. It was a full sound, alive, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
She laughed when she met me, so out of place. What was someone like you doing in a place like this? her laughter seemed to ask.
She laughed when we went to bed for the first time, laughing at the irony: an angel and a demon. Then the laughter had turned into something else, a sound and sensation just as addictive.
She laughed when I brought her flowers, a soft, surprised, delighted noise as she realized I was serious.
I’d never been so serious in my life.
The only time she hadn’t laughed was when my father took a black sword and buried it in her chest. She screamed then, violet eyes wide and dark, full lips parted and gasping for air. Her eyes stared at me, accusing, as my brothers held my arms and forced me to watch.
I gasped, and my silver eyes flew open. My chest was heaving, a sheen of sweat coating my skin.
Bad dream? Lilith’s voice was a soft murmur. She sounded half asleep, but I didn’t know if she ever slept, now.
What do you do when you have no body? When you’re just a soul, trapped in a blade and in the mind of an angel?
I don’t want to talk about it. I sat up, rubbed my palms across my face, and pushed my hair back behind my ears. Lilith and I had been on speaking terms since I’d approached her, hat in hand, and done my best to thank her graciously for saving my hide.
It was three days since the attack on Clarion.
When I’d come to from my drug-induced unconsciousness, I sprang up so fast that one of the robot arms struck me across the back. To my surprise, there’d been no pain, and when my fingers scrabbled across the wound, all I could feel was a clean, square bandage and several layers of adhesive gauze that wrapped around my chest and over my shoulder.
Erin had been waiting quietly on the observation deck.
I wanted to leap across the intervening space and grab her by the throat for lying to me — Localized anesthesia, my ass — but as I took my first step out of the med bay, she turned to face me, and I froze.
“Nice to see you up and about.” She grinned, and I was struck by how easy and natural the expression looked on her face.
The Erin who had helped me escape had been cold, precise, and businesslike. But this Erin looked like a different person. All she wore was a pair of checkered flannel lounge pants and a simple red t-shirt with a faded capital S and a scraggly-looking pine tree printed in the middle.
I abruptly realized that it had been years since I’d seen a woman, a real mortal woman, in anything other than military fatigues and body armor. Somehow, Erin’s simple outfit struck me more powerfully than any flirtatious cocktail dress or seductive lingerie.
I noticed all this not because I was attracted to her — I wasn’t, of course — but because, as my eyes widened, looking her up and down, it felt like she was wearing something intimate and revealing.
Ah… And then it was back to business.
My eyes traced down her figure and stopped. The brace of holstered Tribute H52 pistols were strapped to her thighs, bunching the loose flannel. There was something about those pistols…
But I couldn’t remember at the moment.
Instead, I scowled. “Up and about? No thanks to you. What did you hit me with, a Cratak tranquilizer?” Crataks were massive eight-legged beasts of burden, popular on agricultural worlds for their low-maintenance and surprisingly long lifespan.
There was a cup of coffee in Erin’s hands, and she blew at the rising steam. I could smell it across the room. “It was actually an extract of Icoh venom.” She held up a hand as my frown deepened. “It was barely anything at all. Just so you’d be quiet long enough to let me take care of your back. How’re you feeling?”
I opened my mouth to protest again, then shrugged. “Better. Rested.” I wanted to grumble, but I couldn’t argue with her results. Even if she had used the venom of a dangerous sea reptile to knock me unconscious. “How long was I out?”
“Twelve hours. Most of that wasn’t the drugs, though. Your body just needed to knit itself back together. I’m actually amazed. I’ve never seen such a rapid healing process. Is that an angel thing?”
And just like that, we were past it. I actually surprised myself.
Usually, I’m the type to nurse a grudge. But over the next two and a half days, I had almost forgiven Erin for tranquilizing and kidnapping me.
I didn’t answer any of her questions, of course. It wasn’t like I trusted her or something. But… and I was loath to admit this… it was nice to have someone around to talk to. It was the first space voyage in years where it wasn’t just me, Lilith, and a room full of silent, golden coins.
Now, sitting in the darkened room on the edge of the long, black couch, I stared out the huge windows at the empty sky.
The ship was currently speeding through a Verin Cloud — a spontaneous collection of mostly-inert gases and particles — and beyond the clear glass, the vacuum of space was a wispy, swirling haze of mist. We’d entered it in the last few minutes, and the view was almost calming.
There was a soft whoosh behind me, and the second door in the back corridor opened. It was the door to Erin’s cabin, the only room on the ship I hadn’t visited.
“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked without turning.
The woman yawned softly, and I heard cloth brush against her skin as she stretched. I didn’t look back, but I knew that I would have enjoyed the sight if I did. Which is exactly why I didn’t look. My thoughts were still dark and brooding from my dreams.
Can’t afford to be distracted, I reminded myself.
Erin coughed, then sniffed. “Something’s messing with the autopilot,” she said. “Probably just the Cloud.”
I nodded. Verin Clouds were mostly harmless, but sometimes they did strange things to signals bouncing through them.
“The computer asked me to come down and take manual control for a bit. You?”
I shrugged my bare shoulders. “Just thinking.”
I heard Erin’s footfalls as she approached, then stop. There was a momentary pause, and I heard her take a breath, as if to ask me something.
She decided against it.
“I’m heading down to the cockpit,” she said instead. Then, almost hesitantly, she added, “Care to join?”
I chewed the inside of my lip. “Sure.” I pushed myself up and arched my back, feeling my newest scars tighten and stretch, then turned.
I gave her a look that wasn’t exactly hostile.
Erin was wearing her usual sleeping outfit: the same flannel pants and another red tee shirt. This one had a pair of bulls charging each other against the backdrop of a golden circle. The dim light of the room shrouded her halfway in shadow, but my eyes weren’t hindered by the dark. I traced the smooth curves of her body and my gaze lingered on the blocky pair of trusty Tributes strapped to her thighs.
I glanced back up into her green eyes just as she looked back up at my face. It was then that I realized I was shirtless, wearing only the billowy white pants that matched my robe. I turned away without saying a word, scooping up Lilith.
I slung the swordbelt around my hips.
“Do you go anywhere without that thing?” Erin asked as we padded barefoot down the stairs.
I snorted. “Rarely. She’d probably come to bed with me if she could.”
You wish, Lilith commented derisively, reminding me that even sheathed, the demon could hear and see everything around her. Through me.
A little problem I still hadn’t figured out how to deal with.
“She?” Erin sounded surprised as she turned into the central hallway that led from bow to stern on the main deck. She glanced over her shoulder. “Your sword’s a girl?”
I backpedaled mentally, realizing I’d almost slipped. Get it together, Lucian. I ordered. You can’t let your guard down. “Sure,” I muttered. “Like a boat… Or a spacecraft.”
“Huh.” Erin’s long crimson hair swayed down her back as she strode ahead. “She have a name?”
“Lili—” I started to answer without thinking, then caught myself. “Liliana,” I finished lamely, hoping Erin hadn’t noticed my hesitation. She’s fishing, I thought grimly. Looking for names, details from my past. Just like those angel questions. Trying to learn whatever she can about me, get any advantage. It was smart. Slipping little, innocent questions into midnight conversations.
It’s what I would do.
But Erin just nodded as the door to the cockpit slid open with a gentle hiss. We entered together. Erin slid into the pilot’s seat, and I leaned over the copilot’s chair on my forearms, scanning the dashboard.
She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “Relax,” she said, grinning. Her teeth were white in the dim light. It was a pretty grin. “You’re always so uptight.”
But I just tightened my jaw. I was on guard now.
My eyes left her face and traced over the dials, knobs, and switches. Meanwhile, Erin tapped a few commands into the screen before her. Outside, through the broad, front-facing windows, the Verin Cloud swirled like mist, obscuring the way ahead.
“Error,” the synthetic voice of the computer system intoned. “External scanner malfunction.” The computer had automatically slowed us down to several hundred miles per hour as we passed through the Cloud, and I could feel the engines rumbling as they pushed us through the opaque, fog-like particles.
My jaw tightened. “That doesn’t sound good.” A cluster of red blips appeared on one of the computer screens. The kind that would usually worry me, but Erin just nodded and pointed to it. The blips moved slowly, drifting closer in front of us.
“We’re getting close,” she said. “Kubos 3E3 should be just beyond this asteroid cluster. The scanners are just unhappy with us going through the Cloud. Sometimes the electromagnetic waves get distorted and—”
Even as she spoke, I jolted upright and pointed out the front window. “What the hell is that?”
Through the swirling gas, emerging from the mist with frightening speed, was an asteroid.
It hadn’t shown up on the scanner. And we were heading straight for it.