An Apocalyptic Need

• Title Page
  
• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  
• CHAPTER TWELVE
  
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
  
• CHAPTER TWENTY
  
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  

Published by Sam Cheever

Copyright 2014 Sam Cheever

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~AN~

She might be the enemy. He might have to take her down. But all he really wants to do is make slow, sweet love to her.

Grimm Forbes has been captured by sexy spaceship Captain Cari Pascale and turned into her sex vassal. But, as alliances conspire to take down his old friends at the Authority, Grimm worries that the woman who ignites his sexual fantasies might be at the epicenter of the treachery. It's possible he'll have to make a choice between his friends and the woman he wants in his bed. He only prays he has the strength to make the right decision, because the consequences of making the wrong one will be apocalyptic
.

Grimm Forbes stood outside a rough, wood hut buried deep in the untamed woods of the distant planet, Delta Raze. He lifted his hands slowly, his brown gaze sliding over the Amazon warriors encircling him. Their deadly spears jutted in his direction. He knew from speaking to the locals that the spears were tipped with a slow-acting, neurological poison that would paralyze, enabling the statuesque females to torture information out of him before he died.

That didn’t sound like any fun at all. He held himself very still and addressed himself to the one in the center, the biggest female and the one who exuded the most authority. “I mean him no harm. I only came to speak with him.”

The leader had long, dark hair that hung in thick, bristly looking dreds. A wide, beaded headband encircled her head. Her forest-green gaze slid over him and she licked full lips as if anticipating how he’d taste covered in sauce.

Wondering if the rumors he’d heard and discounted—about the Amazons being cannibals—were true after all, Grimm tried his best to look stringy and tasteless.

The woman jerked her spear. “Who sent you?”

“No one. I came on my own.”

“Why?”

The Amazons lifted their gazes, focusing them on a spot behind Grimm. He turned to address the owner of the deep, rusty-sounding voice.

The big man who unfolded himself from the small door at the center of the hut eyed Grimm with a startling silver gaze, one big hand caressing the long rifle in his grip.

Grimm kept his hands in the air to show how harmless he was. “Do you know the black witch Edwige?”

The silver gaze narrowed and the business end of the rifle swung in his direction. “Do not say her name again in my presence.”

Grimm stilled. “I assure you, sir, I don’t mean to bring you hardship. I’m simply on a fact-finding mission.”

The other man didn’t lower the gun. “If it’s facts you want, I have a few. The facts are these, hunter. I no longer perform at the whim of the Authority. I am not working with the rogues and I’m not trying to undermine the Huntsman’s contract with the reborn.” He shook his head. “You may return to the Huntsman and tell him to impale himself on his own fist. As far as I’m concerned, the Authority no longer exists.”

Grimm frowned, surprised the man was aware of the whispers about him, considering he’d secluded himself in the middle of frickin’ nowhere. “I’m not here at the behest of the Authority.”

The recluse cocked his head, clearly curious. “Then what?”

“I have a friend who has need of knowledge. That’s all.”

The man’s silver gaze slid past Grimm. He addressed the Amazon leader. “Go, Teniff. Thank you for your diligence.”

The woman inclined her head and, with a final assessing look at Grimm, turned away and melted into the forest. Her warriors fell in behind her in two lines, disappearing without a sound.

The man known as Gerith Grimes lowered his rifle, covering the handle with both hands and leaning on it like a walking stick. Though Grimm knew him to be in his forties, the man looked no older than mid-twenties. He was still broad-shouldered and heavily-muscled, with very few lines on his classically handsome face. “You’re in luck today, son. The Amazons don’t call me recluse because I resemble a spider. I prefer my own company over that of any others, yours included. But I’m feeling antsy these days…bored. So I’ll hear what you’ve come to tell me and then send you off again. At the end of my rifle if need be.”

Grimm nearly smiled. He’d heard stories about the legendary hunter…all of the Sorceri had. The more their leader, the Huntsman, had tried to squelch the rumors, the wilder they became. Until the man had taken on god-like proportions.

Gerith Grimes had once been the Huntsman’s right hand man. He’d been a powerful hunter with the ability to capture another’s power and use it for his own. That had been Grimes’s unique Sorceri power. The trouble had come later, when the Huntsman discovered Grimes was dabbling in wizardry.

The authority didn’t allow wizards in their midst. Gerith Grimes was banished.

Grimm was certain there had to be more to the story but he wasn’t going to ask for details in that moment.

He counted himself lucky to still be among the living.

Inclining his head to accept the other hunter’s conditions, Grimm responded. “My friend is looking for someone. Someone important to her. I think you might know where that person is.”

Grimes held Grimm’s gaze for a long moment before his eyes widened in understanding. The rifle came up again. “I have nothing to say on that subject, hunter. You may leave now.”

Grimm fought the urge to argue. He lifted his hands again and nodded. “Suit yourself, sir. But I assure you, you’re making a huge mistake.”

“That’s my prerogative, isn’t it, son? To make my own mistakes. It’s part of what it means to be an adult. You should try it sometime.”

~AN~

Deep in thought, Grimm positioned himself in front of the control room window, staring out at the black sky filled with jagged points of silver light. Every once in a while a different colored light would pulse in the distance, a brief warning that something passed nearby through the endless void.

Those blips made his stomach twist with an unformed yearning for something he couldn’t quite name. Since he’d been thrown out of the only organization he’d ever wanted to be a part of, he’d been on a bit of an emotional bender, his mind and heart at odds with each other.

He’d thought his mission on Delta Raze might settle him a bit. But it had only turned an uneven temper into a slightly depressed one. He’d failed. Again. Just one more failure in a sea of them.

Another blip made Grimm frown. He’d rarely seen more than one passing ship in a day, let alone within minutes of each other. He turned as the ship’s door slid open with a sigh. The captain of the
Avenging Angel
, a laughable name given the crew’s proclivity for stealing from everybody they helped, sauntered in with a cocky grin on his craggy face. “Why so grim?” he asked, laughing heartily at his own bad joke.

Grimm turned away, murmuring. “Yeah, like I’ve never heard that before.” Another blip had him stepping closer to the portal, his eyes narrowing. “Captain Gladrial, are we close to a port city?”

The captain stopped before a wide screen filled with moving numbers and pointed to something on the screen, instructing the tech manning the station to make a change. He turned away to look at Grimm. “No. Why do you ask…”

Grimm never got a chance to respond.

Captain Gladrial’s blue gaze slid away and his face paled, his lips tightening as he focused on something over Grimm’s shoulder. “Shit!” Gladrial started barking orders. “Incoming! Battle stations. Protocol one five six. Evade, engage thrusters, and for god’s sake find a wormhole!”

Grimm turned around and stilled, his lungs locking down on the last breath he’d taken as his heart beat hard in surprise and fear. A glowing sphere hurtled across the black sky, its edges flinging off blue sparks as it spun, seemingly out of control. It was headed directly for them.

He swallowed hard. It was a random piece of space clutter. The most dangerous kind of threat because they were by their very nature completely uncontrollable.

Grimm was knocked sideways by a tech running to man his station and caught himself against a nearby communications panel. He shoved off, heading for the door. “I’ll engage a fighter and see if I can blast it out of the sky before it hits us.”

The captain didn’t seem to hear, he was barking orders, flying around the control room with a desperate kind of precision.

Grimm tore down the hall and jumped into a lift, punching the panel to send the elevator plummeting toward the belly of the huge ship. He grabbed a mask from the wall and slid it over his head, the special mix of Oxygen and super-gravity gasses burning their way into his lungs.

The ship lurched sideways as the doors slid open and Grimm hit the wall, bouncing off to launch himself into the open docking bay. The bay doors were open and the black abyss beyond the gap showed the spiraling glow of the oncoming structure.

Masked techs ran in all directions, screaming orders and leaping into fighter pods with helmets still under their arms and flight suits hanging half off their bodies. One by one the small, agile ships cast off tethers and lifted from the floor of the docking bay, spinning in a slow circle to head out into the void.

Grimm found the pod he’d arrived in and leapt inside, not bothering with one of the helmets the fighters used to communicate with the main ship. If things didn’t go well there would no longer be a main ship to communicate with. And if they did, well, there’d be no need to communicate. He hit the button to untether the pod and spun the small ship in a circle, pointing it toward the opening. Going with his instincts, Grimm guided the pod into an upper channel rather than get in line behind all the other ships.

As he shot toward the star-filled blackness, a wrenching roar sounded and the ship trembled around him, flinging the escaping fighters into one another and sending more than one screeching across the floor in a fiery ball.