Thrill-Kinky (11 page)

Now the San’balese and the other man had their weapons trained on Mik. The leader gestured with his hands, indicating no…

But the male Blemondian shot anyway.

With some sixth sense Rita hadn’t known he possessed, Mik hit the floor, letting the shot pass over where his head would have been and shatter an exhibit case. “You break it, you bought it,” he said calmly, and tugged on the whip.

The Blemondian’s face darkened. His fingers clawed at the whip around his neck.

“I don’t take well to being cheated,” Mik said amiably from his place on the floor. “Don’t like finding out my crew and I are being set up to take the fall for someone else’s heist and attempted murder. And really, really don’t like finding out you’re planning to kill us. You might want to reconsider this whole plan.”

The Blemondian managed to laugh even with the whip cutting his air supply short. “We have Belesku,” he choked out. Rita couldn’t decide if Mik was deliberately keeping him alive or his thick Blemondian neck meant that he could be in a heap of misery, but Mik couldn’t quite kill him. It would be smart to keep him alive, seeing that he was more likely to know about the people behind the plot than the two thugs, but given the size of his neck, and the black-ice look on Mik’s face, the luck of genetics could be all that was keeping him breathing.

“You’re all dead,” the other man said. “Just too dumb to lie down, which I’d expect of back-system hicks like your lot, but I’d have expected Drax Jalricki to come up with a better plan than this.”

It was Drax’s turn to laugh, and his laugh was rich and free as air and sunlight despite the situation. He dropped the cape, unfurled his wings, magnificent in the narrow space and, probably not accidentally, all but hiding both Rita and the small case that held
Soaring Creation
. “What makes you think this is my whole plan?”

There was a second of quiet, broken only by the black-clad Blemondian’s struggle to breathe, during which the Blemondian in camo and the San’balese woman were obviously trying to come up with a verbal riposte.

The quiet was filled with the distant sound of shattering glass, an angry shriek, and the mocking laughter of an insane little girl.

Or an adult felinoid having the lethal time of her life.

“What made you clowns think you were the only ones who could find an assassin?” Drax’s voice was remarkably sweet under the circumstances.

“Does she know we have your money and credit-chit?” The San’balese woman had a point, Rita thought, or would have if the assassin in question had been anyone but Xia.

“Oh, she doesn’t work for money,” Rita taunted from underneath Drax’s wing. “It’s her hobby.”

As if to confirm her story, more noises wafted in from a distance: more screams, curses in several languages, and more of Xia’s laughter, sounding more demented than ever.

“Told you.”

The big Blemondian in camo moved remarkably fast for a guy who looked like he should lumber.

His huge fist was both meaty and rock-hard at the same time. Rita knew this because it connected with her face.

And then everything went nova. At least Rita thought it did, but she was too busy sinking to the floor, her head swimming and her limbs suddenly uncooperative, to give the situation her full attention.

Drax saw the oversized Blemondian through a haze of red fury. He was pretty sure the huge lunk was one of the thugs who’d tried to kill him last night, but Drax couldn’t hold much of a grudge for that. Didn’t like it, sure, but it was business. Plenty of people had tried to kill him over the years. The ones who tried for profit or politics, as opposed to having a bad case of hate for him personally, had almost ceased to bother him.

Hitting Rita was another story, one that could have only one ending.

The long vest that went with his borrowed history-flash outfit did a nice job of hiding a sidearm. Especially when you had a reputation for not using them.

At such close range, he couldn’t miss.

The Blemondian’s eyes went wide, their lizard-like pupils flickering. “But you don’t…” he managed to say before greenish blood poured from his mouth and a wound in his chest. He swayed like a tree about to fall in a heavy wind.

“Rumors and calumny,” Drax said. “Clearly, I do.” He gave the dying man a little shove and he tumbled backward, hitting the malachite floor with a sickening thud. Yellow-green blood seeped out from under his skull, startlingly bright against the more subdued green of the floor.

Drax suspected the whole incident, from the late, unlamented thug hitting Rita to him landing on the floor dead or dying, had taken less than a Standard minute. But time seemed to slow for everyone but him and the dead Blemondian. Nobody moved. No one even spoke.

As soon as the Blemondian fell, things began moving too fast to track.

Mik pulled his whip back, leaving a bleeding, swollen line on the remaining Blemondian’s neck, and began using it to attack the heavily armed San’balese. Which was good, because she was shooting. Buck was shooting too, but neither of them seemed to be doing a great job of it. The Blemondian man was staggering a bit, but he was reaching for a weapon too.

This time, the whip got him around the wrist. Mik flicked it and the laserpistol flew out of the Blemondian’s hand and crashed into a case. Luckily it was an unbreakable case and equally luckily the gun didn’t go off.

Drax knew he needed to act, to subdue the living bad guys for the police, who ought to be here soon, and then go help Xia. This was his case, after all. His problem. His duty.

But some things were more important. He bent down to check on Rita.

She winked at him. “I’m fine,” she insisted. Then she blinked twice and added, “Okay, make that light-headed and miserable, but not dying.”

He took a quick look. He was no medico, but some things he recognized, in this case because of personal experience. “Your nose is broken, and you’ll have a hell of a black eye.” But she’d live. Wouldn’t need anything drastic to fix her up, apart from a quick visit to a medico to make sure the nose set right, and she’d survive without that.

Which meant he could get back to the business at hand, which was helping Mik subdue the Blemondian boss.

Once the boss was down, the San’balese dropped all guns, raised all four hands, and said, “I surrender. And by the way, I quit. I was blackmailed into doing this. You all hear that, right?”

Drax just laughed as the three men worked to tie up the quadruped. They ended up appropriating some of Rita’s climbing rope.

He fought off a strong temptation to kick the San’balese a lot when she was down, as she’d done to him the previous night. But there was no need. Vengeance was inelegant
and
it didn’t pay the bills. Therefore, it wasn’t his style.

Rita, however, had no such compunction. She staggered to her feet, still bleeding, a bruise already starting to form around her eye and on the corresponding cheek. She wasn’t entirely steady, but she managed to walk over to the San’balese and kick her in the ribcage. It probably wasn’t hard enough to do any damage, seeing that Rita was small compared to the corrupt guard, but it was enough to elicit a grunt and a curse. “That’s for Drax,” she whispered, her voice as sweetly bitter as Leeric kallinga-root candy. She drew back her foot again. “And this one’s because you’re a lying glaspoid and not even very good at it.” The kick connected in the same place as the first one. Good technique for an amateur.

Drax’s sense of satisfaction was shattered by a piercing, eerie shriek—the sound of a felinoid in pain and mortal terror.

Chapter Eleven

Rita, Mik and Buck all started to move, but Drax spread his wings and blocked them. “Stay here. Guard them. For a shot at me, Belesku might spare her and the rest of you.”

He was already running, wishing there was room to fly because even with his injuries it would be faster than running and certainly quieter. He pelted along, following the horrible sounds, which were only getting worse as he got closer.

Why was the folasking museum so marling huge? It hadn’t seemed so big when they were sneaking in.

Belesku normally went for a quick, clean kill, but if the felinoid had given in to her species’ love of playing with prey, Belesku would want payback. Which was good in a way. As long as Xia was screaming, she was still alive.

Where were the police? Were they all so busy picking up drunk tourists that they hadn’t gotten to the museum yet? Had Mik and Gan’s coms been lost in translation software? Had his com to his San’balese counterpart been so cryptic—a necessity on an open channel—that she hadn’t gotten the point?

Stars and sand, the Blemondians might have paid off the cops. They certainly had enough moneyed backing. Or Belesku had. He didn’t know of any police she had in her pocket in this town, but according to the BIC’s intel, she’d bought law enforcement all over the galaxy. Maybe they’d just missed the corruption here, or it hadn’t happened until recently. Face it, San’bal wasn’t normally a hotbed of intrigue, except for the romantic kind.

He wheeled around the corner, skidding on the slick green floor, and entered a vast lobby, its ceiling extending up four stories to the
other
skylight, the one they hadn’t used because it was on the front of the building and thus too visible.

Drax assessed the situation at a glance. The naturalistic rock sculptures that the San’balese fancied studded the space. They’d be decent cover from laserpistol blasts and most ranged weapons, unless Belesku actually had a military-grade lasercannon, in which case he and everyone within a square kilometer was screwed. In honor of the festival, the statues were festooned with purple and green garlands and ropes of purple and green flowers. Huge bouquets of flowers, in lumpy earthenware vases as tall as Rita, added their own festive touch.

Or must have added a festive touch before Nitari Belesku and Xia got going. Now at least two of the huge vases were shattered on the floor, the water they’d contained saturating torn, blood-spattered blossoms. Bits of garland and destroyed floral roping were scattered everywhere, shiny and pretty in a macabre way considering they mingled with far too many drops and smears of blood for his peace of mind.

In the middle of the big room, at a distance that under the circumstances seemed positively interplanetary, Nitari Belesku had Xia backed into one of the stone sculptures, a long knife at the felinoid’s throat. Nitari wasn’t unscathed herself. Her black tactical jumpsuit might have protected her against bullets, but was no match for a felinoid’s claws. Some of the blood spatters were hers.

But she was bigger than Xia and right now, hurt or not, she had the clear advantage.

It took about two heartbeats to analyze the situation and less than that to determine what he needed to do. There was no way he could take Belesku down from a distance without risking Xia. A direct shot with a laserpistol might go right through Belesku and into Rita’s friend, even if he managed to hit the right woman in the first place. With the way they were struggling, that wasn’t guaranteed. Even a crack shot might have trouble under the circumstances. Sadly, he wasn’t one.

Belesku, her attention all on Xia, hadn’t spotted him yet.

So it was nice and dramatic when he stepped from the shadowed hallway into the brilliantly lit lobby and proclaimed, “Let her go.”

Belesku pivoted, dragging Xia with her. The knife, at least, wasn’t right at the cat-girl’s throat anymore. “Drax Jalricki. I’ve been looking forward to this moment for years.”

With a precision of movement that astonished Drax even after all the research he’d done on her, the assassin dragged Xia in front of her, knife back at her throat. Petite as she was, Xia was still an effective shield—especially if Belesku had done her homework, and realized that he wasn’t going to use a gun unless he had a clear shot. And it let him get a good look at Xia’s injuries.

Which were numerous.

Xia had done a lot of damage in her own right. The assassin’s face was slashed from scalp to jaw on one side, raked with claws. He couldn’t tell under the mask of blood, but he suspected one eye was damaged. At the very least, her vision was obscured. She wasn’t going to be able to aim as accurately as usual.

Which meant she was only a better shot than he was, not an insanely better one.

But while Xia had been able to cut through the tactical suit, and apparently bite a few times as well, the suit had blunted the impact enough that Belesku wasn’t in imminent danger. She should be in pain, but endorphins would take care of some of that, and a lot of professionals carried stim-kits to keep them going in emergencies.

Xia was another story. The slash across her belly looked deep, dangerous. She was bleeding badly from a cut on her left forearm and several on her flanks. And of course there was that knife on her throat. She managed to snarl and hiss and curse in several languages, her gold eyes lit from within by a wild, predatory light. Still, she was at a definite disadvantage in the fight and needed medical help quickly.

“Who is she to you, Jalricki? A lover? An old friend?” A trickle of bright-red blood stained the tawny fur of Xia’s throat. “Someone it would pain you to lose?”

“Just a kid I hired to get me into the museum. A silly, little cat-girl who thinks she’s tough and got in way over her head taking you on. I warned her you and your associates were out of her league.” Xia shot him a look that told him he was doomed. Since he figured he was unlikely to survive the next fifteen minutes, he wasn’t worried about her revenge.

“A felinoid would take that as a challenge. And she
is
tough. Quick reflexes, good instincts. Just not good enough to overcome my training.” Belesku sounded honestly admiring, which was creepy under the circumstances. “Almost a shame to kill her.”

Drax pitched his voice to a low, persuasive tone. “So don’t. She’s just a street punk, nothing to you. But you’ve been after me for years. Harm her further and I’ll put everything I have into destroying you. Let her go and we can end this tonight. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder all the time. Tired of the game. Tired of other people getting hurt in my place.” He realized that he was speaking the truth. Not that he wanted to die, not a bit—but he wanted to live another way. A way that wouldn’t involve people like Nitari Belesku.

“We can end this tonight anyway. You’re hurt. And she’s a witness.”

Drax forced himself to shrug casually. “What’s she going to do, talk to the cops? She’s a criminal herself. A young criminal who’s not San’balese. They’d probably lock her up on general principal.”

Xia’s tail twitched. “I don’t know what’s going on here, lady. I thought the pretty winged man was just trying to steal something before your crew got it.” Drax swore that despite her injuries and the danger, she was smiling. “It was supposed to be in, out, zip, zip, he gets his shiny object, I get enough credits to get me to a Jahari beach when the tourist marks are in season, and no one gets hurt. But I wouldn’t get my credits if you got there first, so I tackled you.” This time she definitely smiled. “Sorry if I got rough. You squirmed and that brought out my prey-drive. But he was trying to scam you and you caught him, so fair’s fair. It sounds like you two have history, which is kind of critical intel that he should have told me. No fur off my tail if you two go at it.”

Damn, she was good at thinking fast in an emergency. She’d make a great operative, assuming she ever found a side that made her care enough to commit.

Assuming she lived that long. Between the injuries she’d already suffered and Belesku’s reputation, that seemed unlikely.

Belesku nodded solemnly. “Everyone lies, kitten, and no one gives you all the information. Unfortunately, I doubt you’ll live long enough for that to sink in.”

“She walks,” Drax repeated. “You’ve got me. You won.”

The assassin laughed, and like her approval of Xia’s fighting earlier, it seemed honest, a hearty, pleased sound. It was disturbing coming from her ruined face. “You know, I think I’ll take you up on it. No one’s going to pay me for killing a stray kitten, no matter how much the kitten scratched and bit.” She shrugged. “Whereas killing you will be both satisfying and profitable. At least five individuals, two syndicates and one government will compensate well for proof of your death. Although since one of the individuals works for your own agency, I’m not sure if he counts as an individual or a second government.” She pulled the knife away from Xia’s throat and shoved her away. “Run, kitten. And remember this Banjali. He is a thief and a liar and worse, but he’s been a worthy antagonist for many years. In the end, he gives his life for a girl he hardly knows. May you someday find such a good enemy to keep you sharp.”

That was another scrap of intel they had on Belesku: that she had a strange and old-fashioned sense of honor despite her profession, and a romantic streak worthy of a San’balese fiction writer.

Xia’s eyes were wide. As she ran toward the exit, she shot Drax a look of genuine anguish.

Drax noticed, though, that she didn’t actually
reach
the exit, just a rock sculpture near it. Belesku, intent on him, didn’t.

He took a deep breath and let his gun clatter to the floor, followed by his borrowed knife. He’d normally have others, both laserblades and the old-fashioned but reliable metal kind. He figured the assassin would know that…but she’d also know why he was a bit shy on knives at the moment, and why his hand-to-hand skills would be sub-par, even considering the high gravity.

His heart racing, he took a step forward, his arms and wings outspread to show he was truly without weapons.

His life would probably end in the next couple of minutes, one way or the other.

He hoped he’d bought enough time for Rita and her crew to get away.

At this moment, when his life should have been flashing before his eyes, all he could see was Rita.

Okay, Rita and a few desperate escape routes, because he wasn’t quite crazy.

Just crazy about Rita, and wasn’t that a damn thing, to fall for someone at last on the day he was going to die.

He glanced up toward the skylight, trying to gauge the distance. “You’ll never make it,” Belesku said. “If you could fly after the beating last night, you wouldn’t have needed to hire an accomplice and you certainly wouldn’t still be standing there looking like a rather decorative idiot. That’s one thing I know you aren’t. Insane and as irritating and toxic as an Ianari dart-tree thorn, but not an idiot. And unlike you, I didn’t drop my gun.”

He looked at the skylight anyway. She was probably right, but maybe with the amount of adrenaline in his system, he could pull it off. He might also plummet to his death, but dying on the wing would be a better death than whatever she had in mind for him.

Then he caught movement near the ceiling.

Rita, dangling from her climbing ropes.

If they somehow all survived, he was going to kill her.