Ride the Stars/once Bitten (6 page)

She knew that smile. "I wouldn’t try it. I think Domino would murder you and hide the body."

The elevator arrived. "Ye of little faith," he murmured, allowing her to go first.

Inclined to argue, Bali opened her mouth, then slowly shut it at Icki’s expression. He wasn’t looking at her, but at the ceiling, and he had a tense, listening look.

She strained her ears, but couldn’t hear anything.

He punched the button for the floors below her suite, but nothing happened. The elevator kept going up.

Icki reached for her and slid her behind his back, moving them both to the side. "I think we have company waiting, dearest. Stay behind Icki, won’t you?" Not waiting for a reply, he reached around and pulled two guns from behind his back.

Mouth dry, Bali didn’t say a word. This was all too familiar, except for the part about Icki being there.

How many times had her bodyguards intercepted vigilantes lying in wait for her? She’d dismissed them for her trip here, thinking she had little time left anyway. She’d thought she’d been ready to die.

She’d underestimated just how strong her survival instincts were.

Icki flipped the safety off his guns and ordered, "If you can, take a running leap at the first door you come to! Not yours, they’ll have someone in there. I’ll be right behind you."

The elevator doors slid open, and Icki jumped out, firing with deadly precision. Two men with guns went down, but not before they got a couple of bullets hit their mark. Icki jerked as bullets tore into his left pectoral and lower abdomen, but he kept on firing as more men poured from the hallways.

Bali didn’t pause to think, just dashed out and took a running jump kick at the first door in range. It crashed inward on a mercifully empty room. Icki was seconds behind her, shedding his coat even as he ran for the balcony. "Come on!"

Bali followed him out, trying not to dwell on the blood pouring from the wounds on his bare chest.

"Grab on! Wrap your legs around me and hold on tight," he ordered as he jerked her into his arms, his jacket dangling from one fist. Then he leapt over the balcony and dropped three stories.

Bali screamed. They had twenty stories to go before they smashed into the concrete like a couple of water balloons. Amazingly, their decent began to slow. Thinking she was losing her mind, Bali opened her eyes ... and caught sight of the huge bat wings that were battling gravity above them.

They were attached to Icki’s back.

Understanding suddenly flooded her and she closed her eyes. Oh, Icki.

He hissed in pain as his feet met concrete and quickly set her down. His wings folded tightly back on his back as he disguised them with his jacket.

"Come on," he mumbled. Bright bubbles of blood seeped from his mouth. "Grab a cab."

Bali snared a cab, using the excuse that Icki had been in a fight to excuse his appearance. They headed for Domino’s. She didn’t dare take Icki to a hospital. They’d treat him like a freak--if they agreed to work on him at all. She prayed Domino would know someone who could help.

She was shaking with shock by the time they made it to the club. Hari sized up the situation in one look and started barking orders in his headset even as he half-carried Icki from the transport.

Domino met them at the door, talking on his own handset. He helped carry Icki into the swiftly clearing game room and laid him on the pool table. Hari started stripping off Icki’s clothes.

"Help is on the way," Domino told Icki. "Hold on. I’m going to take care of Bali." Without preamble, he turned to her. "How much of that blood is yours?"

While she vaguely recalled the sting of several bullets, Bali only shook her head. "Icki can’t go to a regular doctor. He’s..."

"I know." Without preamble, Domino took hold of her short sheath and ripped it from bodice to hem, tossing away the pieces.

"What are you..." Shocked, Bali stood there in her panties as Domino scanned her, looking for bullet holes. He found several, but....

"These are already closing," he said, looking into her eyes for an explanation.

She gulped and crossed her arms over her breasts. "I heal fast."

He gave her a sharp look but shed his shirt and wrapped her in it. "Skye will have to dig any bullets lodged in there out." He sat her in a chair and turned back to Icki, who was fading fast.

The next half hour passed in a blur. A tall Draconian arrived and set to work on Icki. Another arrived and took the bullets out of Bali’s thigh and arm. The one in her side had passed clean through, leaving a messy hole in its wake. That one had bled quite a bit before her body had sealed it, and she was grateful when he gave her a pain blocker. Shock combined with the effort to heal her body left her exhausted, and she didn’t complain when Domino finally wrapped her up and carried her to his private elevator.

The drugs kicked in as she felt him lay her on a soft surface, and then she was out.

"Will he live?"

Skye looked up from the lines connecting Icki to the medical machines and nodded slowly. "I think so.

He seems to heal almost as fast as your girlfriend does." With shoulder length black hair, the same golden eyes and tall build as Domino, he looked enough like his brother to be his twin, but he’d lost a little of his intensity since his marriage to Sesame Calais.

"She’s not my girlfriend," Domino grated as he ran a hand through his hair. It was late, and he had two injured guests and a couple of medical techs besides his brother Skye taking up his private residence, stealing his cherished peace. "She’d have kept her bodyguards if she’d had any sense."

Skye shrugged. "Would you? She didn’t know what it would cost her." He glanced at his unconscious patient. "At least she had the sense not to take him to a hospital."

Too tired to pace, Domino sank farther into his chair and stared at the wall. "She has reason to be wary of them." And after tonight, she would have to confess her sins to him. He’d taken her and Icki in, blood and all, gotten them competent, discreet medical help and put up with her disappearing act of the last five days while Icki had breathed down his neck via long distance com. Her debts were swiftly adding up, and he was determined to get some answers.

Bali woke with a sharp ache in her head and several intolerable cramps. Recognizing the signs of speed healing, she forced herself to get up and relieve her bladder, knowing that food, a hot soak and some pain killer would go a long way toward clearing up the pain. Nausea hit her as she slid out of bed, and she barely made it to the bathroom before dry heaving in the commode. It was a struggle, but she levered herself up and used the pot for its intended purpose, breathing shallowly to still the toxin-induced queasiness.

Her father hadn’t been so smart after all. When he’d designed her body to heal so fast, he’d neglected to consider that her liver and detoxification organs would have to deal with an unnatural dump of tissue.

A reluctant glance in the mirror confirmed that she was yellow as well as terribly dehydrated. She needed salt. She needed water.

She needed clothes.

Groaning at her near nakedness--all she had was the underwear of the night before--she stumbled out of the bathroom and wrestled a sheet from the double bed. Wrapping it around her, she shoved her messy hair out of her face and went searching for signs of life.

"Bali!" Domino got up from his seat on the couch as soon as she entered the room. "What are you doing up? You’re yellow."

"Jaundiced. Need saltwater. Lots of saltwater." She let him seat her on the couch as he grabbed his com and headed into the kitchen. Since it was separated from the comfortable living room by a long bar, it was easy to watch him bustle around, all the while speaking tersely on the com. It only took him a minute to assemble a tray with fruit juice, water, a saltshaker and fruit.

He hurried to her side and set the tray on the low refreshment table. "Here. Your doctor will be here in a couple of minutes."

"What doctor?" She was feeling a trifle vague. Near death experiences did that to her.

"My brother Skye. He’s the one who saved Icki, and before you ask, no, you can’t see him yet. He’s sleeping."

"Alive is good. He’ll keep." Concentrating on keeping her habitual tremors down long enough to suck down the large glass of saltwater, she set it down with a clumsy thump and reached for the juice. "He could have told me he was a mutant. Did he think I would shun him?"

Domino waited until she set the empty glass down before asking with deceptive mildness, "I could ask you the same thing. You should be dead." He glanced at her bandaged shoulder.

She rubbed it self-consciously, stalling for time. "Stupid thing, speed healing. Shrapnel gets sealed in and has to be cut out, bones knit crooked and have to be broken and reset."

"And your father did that to you. What else did he do?"

Bali took a deep breath. They’d come to it, and there was no going around. No matter how he reacted to the story, she owed him answers. "He started experimenting on me when I was seven ... eight ... I don’t remember which. Those years kind of blur together." She frowned, remembering the pain, the tears ... and finally the numb horror. "It stopped when I was sent to boarding school. Things were starting to unravel for him." He’d gone on the run after killing off as many experiments as he could, but it had been hard to hide that many bodies. Traces had been left. Files had turned up.

Shaking off the darkest memories, she continued, "I’m highly sensitive to light and get migraines from sunlight, but I can see in the dark. I heal fast, though that comes at a price, too. There’s nightmares, and green water freaks me out. I’ve tried to get over it, but I flashback almost every time I get near it. I’ve been in that pool so many times...." Her breathing started to shallow, and she quickly closed her eyes and took deep breaths, fighting it off. To distract herself, she forced herself to continue, holding out her hand as an exhibit. "I’m falling apart. Icki can’t fix me, and the medicine doesn’t work anymore. He wants me to get bit."

"What?" Domino had rounded the table to reach her. Her words froze him in his tracks. "What do you mean, ‘get bit’?"

Lightheaded, she leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes. It was all too tiring. "Your fangs.

The adaptogen. He thinks it will heal me, but I...." Fatigue was pulling her down. She thought she heard the door open, heard Domino demanding an answer, and then she was out.

"Her color’s better." Domino glanced at Bali, who was sleeping on the couch again after she’d roused enough for a quick shower. Clad in one of his button down shirts and snuggled on the couch, a cover pulled to her chin, she looked fragile and helpless.

"But not good." Skye watched his brother pace, then shook his head and put away his scanner. "She needs rest and food. I can’t do much more for her than that."

Domino rounded on him. "Is Icki right about the adaptogen?"

Skye had been avoiding that question, and his scowl said he didn’t like it any better now. "Maybe. You know how powerful it can be, but you also know the cost. You can’t just bite her and walk away. Our people will see her as your wife. You’ll see her as your wife. She’s a mess waiting to happen, and you shouldn’t take the risk."

A muscle jumped in Domino’s jaw. "She set me free from that hellhole. I owe her."

Unable to argue, Skye let his breath out through his teeth. "Swear her to secrecy, then. No one needs to know who bit her. You’ll still be free."

"They’ll figure it out." Domino stared at Bali, trying to figure out how a sick, unconscious woman was going to inspire enough passion in him to activate the adaptogen. "She shakes so badly she can hardly hold her cup now. If I wait any longer, she’ll die."

"Her chances don’t look good as it is. Rumor has it that the vigilantes who tried to kill her are hard to dissuade. She’ll end up dead in a restroom somewhere, or drink poison at some restaurant. She’s the daughter of the most hated man in our generation. Can you live with that?"

"I can give her a chance to overcome that, but first I have to give her life." He looked at Bali’s body in frustration, fighting his instincts to leave her alone, to listen to reason and his own desire to remain free.

He didn’t want a wife. What he felt for her wouldn’t last ... but it was the right thing to do.

Skye closed his eyes, then opened them forcefully. "I’m going to check on Icki. I’ll let myself out the back way." He stood there, looking as if he badly wanted to say more, then stiffly walked away.

Domino wished he could do the same.

Bali opened her eyes and looked at him. "You were the boy."

He looked at her quickly, then tensed. "You were awake."

She sat up and pushed her hair from her eyes with unsteady hands. "You woke me up. For the record, I think it was mutant haters that tried to splatter me, not vigilantes, though I’ve had my share of those, too.

They’re going to remember Icki." Her eyes narrowed. "And I’m going to remember them." A moment passed before she looked up and assessed him. "You said you owe me. Are you willing to bite me, then?"

He canted his head. Tension lines bracketed his mouth as he stared back. Something in her manner had changed. She was harder, more like the woman who had first entered his life with an explosive birthday card. He didn’t trust the change, didn’t know what to predict of this alter ego. "It’s not that simple, but yes."

A faint, mocking smile twisted her lips as she rose to her feet. "You won’t get a bride out of the deal, Drac. I’m not going to do that to you." Her hands went to the buttons on her borrowed shirt, quickly working them free to just below her navel. Her blue eyes dilated and her breathing quickened as she sank to her knees before him in a flutter of white. "I have to arouse you, don’t I?"

"Bali...." he said warningly. Slender hands crept up and slowly circled his thighs, moving in a light caress.

He sucked in a slow breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Certain she didn’t know what she was doing, he forced them open and looked down at her. "If I bite you, you won’t have a choice anymore.