Angeli (18 page)

“I know how to increase the odds of success,” Nikolas said.

“Me, too.” She raised her voice as the geyser rumbled and began to fume louder than she’d expected. “Get your buddies to help, and your Ship, and your advanced technology. Quit lying to my people and hammer the monsters and their doorhole into pulp.”

“Ship won’t take that detection risk. Plus it goes against code. Ship has been bending code enough with the retrieval lasting so long, and that’s only because of…other factors.”

“Ship’s stupid,” she said.

He didn’t deny it or confirm it. “Gregori can’t be the one to approach the nexus.”

“Can you?”

“No. Even if we evaded all shades, the begetters can sense Shipborn DNA in the kill zone. Gregori’s idea to fling the munitions into the nexus from outside the zone is ludicrous. There’s no way, even if he’s lucky enough to get in range. The area is swarmed.”

“Go as a team,” she said stubbornly. “Kill the begetters and help each other.”

“Too risky. Multiple sentients near the kill zone would definitely attract a swarm. And even if we managed to get the device to the nexus, a leviathan can hypothetically be woken after it has been shut,” Nikolas said. “All it would take is for someone from Ship to get identified. If we all end up dead, what’s the point?”

“Then you’d have to escape. Although if the bomb affects a large area, well…” Her voice trailed off as she thought of Gregori caught in the blast radius, sacrificing himself for nothing. Was there no way for Gregori to get out of this alive?

“The explosives for nexus closure are different from what you understand of bombs. They’re broad-dimensional. Otherwise they wouldn’t affect the entities or the nexus. Because of that, they don’t explode anything. They negate life,” he said grimly. “Our bodies would remain and our Shipborn genome could still be detected.”

He stared at her. She stared back and realized she was right. His gruesome explanation had driven it home. She knew why he’d come to see her. A person with native DNA, should she get eaten on a suicide mission or discovered dead after it, wouldn’t wake this leviathan.

“I can’t fly,” she said, ticking the hard facts off on her fingers. “I can’t shoot this blaster thing, I don’t understand your technology, and I’m not a very fast runner. Let’s enlist our military instead of an out-of-shape…”

He was shaking his head, slowly. “Ship monitors your governments, your militaries, all your communications, and your population movement. Ship would know if we tried that. Your people could never keep it quiet enough to hide it from Ship.”

Adelita sat down on another bench, Old Faithful erupting in full not twenty yards away. She’d waited twenty-six years to see it, and she couldn’t bring herself to get out her camera. “It doesn’t have to be a full military operation. Find someone able-bodied and athletic. Don’t you know anyone else?”

“Of the people I trust, you’re the best candidate.” He rubbed his forehead with a sigh that sounded a lot like disgust. “We don’t have time to acquire someone else. Unless I’m reading things wrong, Ship is leaving in a few days. You already know the truth. You’re committed. You know what’s at stake. And you’re not…with child. That part is essential.”

“Of course I’m not.” Gregori was magnificent, but she didn’t think he had super sperm. There was no chance she was pregnant.

His expression lightened, as if she’d told him something he’d needed to hear. “Then you’ll do it?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that I’m scared.” She was terrified. Her knees would be knocking if she were standing up. “It’s not that I’m unwilling to make the sacrifice. It’s that…” She paused for a breath. Another. Her vision blurred in and out. “What will I have to do? Athletically and otherwise.”

“First you have to convince him nothing has changed. Be aware that with a full sensor array he can parse dishonesty if he thinks to look for it.”

“I’m an excellent liar.”

“I bet you are.” He tapped the breastplate on his armor and pulled out a tiny, transparent packet, which he offered with an outstretched arm. “After you act like you believe everything he tells you, put him to sleep so he can’t stop us. Don’t let him feed you anything. Nothing, Adelita, in case he intends to put you to sleep, too. He has fresh supplies in the armor he stole from me.”

Adelita considered what Gregori might be expecting tonight and how very much she planned to give it to him. “Can I kiss him?”

Nikolas nodded. “I don’t see how he could hide the tranq in his mouth without being affected by it.”

She accepted the packet. He backed away hastily. It contained a dot so small she had to squint to see it. “This is only a tranquilizer, correct? It won’t hurt him?”

Nikolas shot her a dirty look. “Six hours of sound sleep for him, twenty-four for you.”

“How fast will it act?”

“Don’t use it while he’s flying you somewhere.” He sat on the long, curved bench, several yards away from her. The geyser subsided to a frustrated burble.

She’d intended her last night with Gregori to contain a lot of oral things, but she’d find a way around it. This was no-man’s-land. She had to get creative. “After I get him to take this, what then?”

“Then,” he said in a dark voice, “it gets complicated.”

Adelita got out her pencil and paper and flipped past her Hal chart. If it was going to get more complicated than deceiving and drugging the man she’d fallen in love with, as well as refusing any offers of food, she was going to have to take notes.

Gregori might be the one with the sensors, but Adelita could tell he was lying about the scenario in California.

“If I take that route, I can get in and out as long as I fly at top speed,” he concluded, holding her gaze, “and scoop you off the tower before the shades climb it. You can stay ahead of them if you push yourself.”

“What about the daemons? I can’t outrun them,” she said, her voice rough from her sob-fest. As they perched on a bed in the Old Faithful Inn, she nibbled a PB&J sandwich despite Nikolas’s warning. She’d made it herself, for one. For two, Gregori wouldn’t dose her yet. After the way she’d kissed him as soon as he’d returned, despite the fact that she was crying at the time, he had to realize he had certain things to look forward to this evening.

“There weren’t that many daemons.” His eyebrows flickered briefly as he said it, and she figured that part, at least, was true-ish. However, his definition of “many” and her definition of “many” were probably not the same.

Candles burned in several locations around the room, providing a warm, guttering light. Gregori had placed sensors around the inn and assured her that all entities, Terrans and Shipborn were far, far away.

She wasn’t so sure about Nikolas, but she and Gregori would have a facsimile of privacy in the top level of the hotel for what would come after the meal. She simply had to rise above her despair, fatalism, rage, and terror long enough to grow amorous.

Even as tempting as Gregori was, even as strongly as she felt about him, she wasn’t positive she could feel sexy. All she wanted to do was cry.

She handed him a sandwich, proud to offer it without accompanying tears. “Why do you think there weren’t many daemons?”

He shrugged. “We don’t have extensive experience with post-infestation planets. I suspect the fact that I’ve been picking them off for weeks has something to do with it. Daemon populations seem to be limited. Not like shades. Once the begetter drones show up, the supply of those is endless, as long as the begetters stay fed.”

“Fed by souls.” She concentrated on Gregori instead of the fears screaming in her head. “If it’s so easy to stop more monsters from coming, why have you never done it before?”

“It’s not easy.” His gaze flickered to the side, his pupils small, as if he were tabulating numbers on a mental calculator. For all she knew, he was. He’d removed his wings but not the bands or the halo with the computer in it. “There are a lot of variables in this plan.”

“But you can pull this off without getting yourself killed.” Her throat tightened, again. “Not even by the bomb.”

He nodded, inspecting the sandwich instead of meeting her eyes.

She sighed. Why did he try to lie to her? On the other hand, his dishonesty did make her own course of action easier to justify. “I hope you’re right.”

“I generally am.” He pulled the slices of bread apart and sniffed the contents. “What is this?”

“It’s a PB&J.” This achy lump in her throat was going nowhere and made swallowing a challenge. “Peanuts, fruit, and lots and lots of sugar. Stop playing with it.”

He carefully licked the peanut butter, and then the jelly, his pupils still tiny. She wondered if his throat ached, too, or if, as a career soldier, he’d accepted the inevitable already. “The nutritional value is limited.”

“Who cares? It tastes good.” When it didn’t taste like sawdust because she was too busy feeling sorry for herself to enjoy her food.

He finally stuck his sandwich together and bit into it, which meant he didn’t suspect Nikolas had given her a tranq. Or if he did, he figured she wouldn’t use it until they’d had sex, either. Perhaps he’d had any number of PB&Js during his time on Earth and his taste-test had been an attempt to see if she’d poisoned it.

Well, he was safe. She wasn’t about to tranq him until they made love any more than he was. That being said, once the afterglow faded, she suspected it was going to be a contest to see who could tranq who faster.

Adelita waited until he was nearly done with his meal to continue the conversation. “Have you thought about whether a leviathan can be formed after we close la boca?”

“It can’t. That’s not how our scientists believe a leviathan functions.”

“All your scientists?”

His halo pulsed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to get eaten before or after.”

She wondered how much of a chance he truly had. Should she level with him? Give him the opportunity to sway her, like she’d given Nikolas? If his chances of survival were higher than hers—which Nikolas had estimated at zero—his could be the wiser plan.

But Nikolas was right about one thing. Gregori would never let her be the one to deliver the package despite the fact that she was the best available candidate for the job.

Santa Maria, she was insane to think she could do this. She’d get eaten immediately, sucked up by the black devils before she could play her part. It wasn’t suicide, but it was a suicide mission. She was dead whether she succeeded or failed.

Her stomach flopped and tears threatened again. Again, again, and again. She dashed them away. She never could stand a weeper, and here she was, crying like a widow.

Noticing her preoccupation with sniveling, Gregori caught her face between his hands. “We’re doing the right thing.”

“I know.” She released a long, unsteady breath, miles from feeling romantic. Wasn’t that the height of irony? But it wasn’t 4:00 a.m. She couldn’t give Gregori the tranq yet.

“We should rest.”

She released another breath. “I know that, too.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth. “May I?”

“Of course,” she whispered.

Hesitantly, he lowered his head and brushed her lips with his. Featherlight. Tender. He slid one of his hands into her hair, tilting her face to his.

She allowed him to part her lips with his tongue. He flicked gently, tasting and sampling, breaking off and returning. Not the raw, hot passion of earlier today, but experimental, sweet kisses. This was a man who’d never gotten his fill of kisses, or of women. One of his arms slid around her until he could rub her back, neck to ass, in a long stroke.

Adelita found herself relaxing in his embrace, closing her eyes, letting her mind drift. He kissed along her jaw and licked her ear until she shivered. Slowly, the hand in her hair fisted, and he drew her head to the side until her neck arched.

His teeth scraped the delicate skin beneath her ear, followed by a kiss. She placed her wrists on his shoulders, hands dangling, as his tongue and mouth worked their way down. He blew heat across her collarbone before his teeth latched onto the joining of shoulder and neck. His fingers in her hair clenched. The double whispers of pain threaded through her like a reminder.

Instead of shifting to her breasts as she’d assumed he would, he returned to her mouth. Now he kissed her with more commitment, demanding that she respond.

She wasn’t feeling it, but twined her tongue around his anyway. He worked the hand on her back beneath the waistband of her shorts. His fingers splayed across the top of her ass, slipping between her cheeks. His halo glowed softly. He squeezed, pulling her toward him, and some of the terrified ice inside her melted.

She slid across the mattress until the inches between them disappeared. Her torso pressed against his armor. It was relatively warm and pliant, but it wasn’t his body.

She broke off the kiss and licked her lips. “You might want to take off the breastplate.”

He released her and ran his fingers down a hidden seam, popping the shell open. Beneath it was a T-shirt he’d altered to allow space for his wing pack. He hesitated a moment before drawing it over his head.

She noticed his hands were trembling.

“Pants,” she suggested.

He didn’t draw it out or make a dance of it. He unbuttoned and removed his shorts and boxers swiftly, reseating himself before she had a chance to admire him.

His chest had almost completely healed from Nikolas’s laser. Redness tinged his pale skin but no scabs, blisters, or scars. She placed her palm over the vanished wound. His heart thudded beneath her fingers, a reminder of how human this alien man was.

How much he wanted her. How much he was willing to sacrifice for her planet. For her.

“I’m pretty sure I love you,” she told him. When his lips parted, she put her fingers over them. “You don’t have to say it back. It’s okay.”

He placed a hot kiss in the center of her palm, his eyelids half-lowered as he watched her. “Undress for me.”

She rose and stood before him. Hair curled on his legs, and his cock jutted up from a nest of dark blond. His skin appeared to be untouched by the sun, unblemished, except for that faint redness on the chest. He was like marble, except warm instead of cold.