Colliding Worlds Trilogy 03 - Explosion Read online

  Chapter Two

  2200 hours

  “Excuse me.” Talla Kohlm veered around the soldier blocking her path.

  He mirrored her steps, blocking her way once again.

  She heard the booted steps of his partner coming up from behind. Her only chance for escape was the dark alley between the two empty trailers at her right. Trap. Refusing to appear cowed, she glared and entered the alley.

  Better to walk into a trap than to be shoved.

  Broken glass crunched under her feet, which explained the lack of light in this particularly foul-smelling alley. The nearest post stood empty, no guard on duty. These men had planned their games well. The sounds of footsteps echoed behind her, and she turned to face her assailants. It was hard to make out their features, but she’d no doubt a sneer of imminent success already crossed their faces.

  Each man took a cautious step closer, as though they’d cornered prey like this many times before. In response, Talla took a step back, only to bump into a dumpster. One of the humans chuckled. “Don’t be scared, dragon lady. We won’t hurt you.”

  Talla clenched her teeth at the taunt soaking his words. Her wings, though banded tight behind her back to prevent flight, flicked in agitation. She couldn’t scream for help. It would do no good, anyway. She couldn’t attack, let alone kill these bastards without severe repercussions against her and her people. There was only one constant at Etzee — the humans always sided with their own.

  Hard to believe less than a year had passed since her people’s so-called peace treaty with the humans. It had taken them less than a month to round up every remaining Draeken and Sephian left Earthside to be essentially imprisoned within the high chain fences of the Etzee. The Draeken, with their wings restrained to prevent flying, were only slightly worse off than the wingless Sephians. Both races had tracking devices implanted in their necks. None were allowed to leave the Etzee unless they were leaving the planet altogether. All of this in the name of “for their own safety.”

  The humans had lied. They’d never wanted peace. They’d wanted power, control, and supremacy. They simply weren’t ready to live on this planet as equals with another race, let alone two, and so they’d fallen into old habits of dealing with others who weren’t like them.

  Every day in the Etzee was a fight to retain her heritage. Twilight had already faded to black. She’d found it suspicious the sergeant had kept her in the work center to finish a menial cleaning assignment while everyone else had been allowed to go home early. The reason became all too clear when that same sergeant stepped into the alley behind the two, putting a hand of each of his men’s shoulders. “I hope you’re not starting without me, boys.”

  “Just warming up,” the one on the left said.

  With that, the sergeant stepped between the two men. Metal clinked on metal as he unfastened his belt. With a man on each side, he stalked slowly but confidently toward her.

  “You’re a pretty one,” one of the soldiers cooed. “We’ve been watching you for a long time.”

  Talla swallowed, biting back a shiver. Both her flight and fight urges were blasting through her system. If her wings weren’t banded, she would’ve easily flown over their heads and to Laze’s trailer for relative safety. But the humans had given the Draeken a choice: have their wings banded or amputated. Like everything else the humans had done, ultimatums had been issued under the pretense of choice.

  Talla was a soldier. She’d taken on much more dangerous foes than these misfits. But fighting, regardless of who started it, was illegal, and she was already on strike two. One more strike, and she’d be put in lockdown.

  No one who went to lockdown had ever been seen again. She had to be careful.

  As the men stepped closer, they spread out to pin her in. Her heart was racing. Bile rose in her throat. She balanced on the balls of her feet, knowing she could take down one, maybe two, without leaving any marks on their bodies. Three armed soldiers moved the odds out of her favor. She pulled her arms into a defensive position. “Leave me alone.”

  The sergeant paused. “We don’t want to hurt you, honey.” He gestured to his men. “We just want to talk.”

  Except the way he said the word talk sounded anything but harmless. “Don’t come any closer,” she commanded.

  “Or you’ll do what?” the man on the right mocked. Moonlight glinted off the blade he now held.

  She saw that the other one had already pulled out a handgun. “C’mon, dragon lady. Tonight’s our last chance for a bit of fun. We don’t have time for your games.”

  “Fyet da.” Fuck you. Talla lunged to the right, swung around, and then dove at the man on the left. Her elbow connected with his sternum. He grunted, pulling his hands toward his chest. She twisted his wrist as she pulled the gun from his hand. As the same time, one of the others grabbed her long hair and yanked her off the soldier now cursing up a storm. Pain shot through her scalp, but pain she could take.

  Dropping the gun, she threw herself back onto the man pulling her against him, knocking him off balance. As they fell, she spun to straddle him and clapped his ears with all her strength. He cried out, and his hold on her instantly relaxed.

  Just as she went to leap off the writhing man, she froze. Cold, sharp steel pressed against her throat. Warm blood trickled down her neck. Any movement would result in a severed artery.

  She could do nothing while the first soldier, still wheezing and coughing from her blow, stepped around and reclaimed his weapon from the ground. Aiming it at her heart, he knelt and checked on his fallen comrade, who was whimpering while cupping his ears.

  “We were going to go easy on you before,” the sergeant said from behind. “Now it’s going to hurt.” The piercing pressure on her neck lessened only to have duct tape slapped over her mouth. She found herself kicked forward onto her hands, knocking the breath from her lungs. Before she could get her bearings, he shoved her onto her back so that she faced him.

  The soldier with the gun glared at her, fury shining in those weasel eyes. Then his fist swung out. Talla’s vision went white as pain shot through her nose. A hand gripped her face. Blood trickled down her throat. With her mouth covered, she fought to breathe, the blood choking her breaths. As her vision slowly returned through a haze of white stars, she found herself looking up at a cruel grin. “That’s for hitting me.”

  “C’mon, quit playing. Hold her down. We don’t have much time,” the sergeant said as he pulled at her pants.

  Talla shoved at his hands as she struggled to slide into a defensive position. While she was nearly as strong as one man, she was in too much of an awkward position to gain leverage. Two men had easily overwhelmed her.

  One of the soldiers grabbed her wrists and yanked her arms over her head. She mumbled and cursed behind the tape. Agony overtook her when he knelt on her sensitive wings and held her against the ground while staring down at her. Her shout was muffled behind the thick tape. If felt as though every cell under her skin had been soaked in acid.

  Her nose was already swelling, reducing her air supply to nil. The tape prevented her from coughing as blood continued to trickle down her throat. The only good thing about her situation was that she’d soon pass out from lack of air. She wouldn’t witness what they were about to do. While she still could see, she turned to face the human coming down on his knees before her. She focused on remembering the sergeant’s face, as well as the faces of the other two men. Knew that, no matter how long it took, she would track them down and kill them one by one.

  Her lungs burned, and her body fought for air even as she clenched her eyes shut, trying to will herself into blacking out sooner.

  “Sarge! Behind you!”

  Her eyes popped open. The soldier kneeling on her wings shouted an instant too late.

  Her rescuer had two large hands already on the sergeant’s head, twisting. With a pleasant-sounding crack, his head fell at an unnatural angle on his shoulders. He collapsed forward, only to have her savior shove hi
m to the side, revealing himself to her.

  Laze! She shouted his name, but it came out as “Mm!” from behind the tape. The world swirled around her as she began to sink into oblivion. Her lungs burned so fiercely. But, while the soldier with the gun was distracted, Talla used her remaining strength to yank her hands free. She ripped the tape off her mouth, sucking in a deep breath. She tried to pull herself up, but the soldier on top of her still had her wings pinned.

  Metal pressed hard against her temple, though she could barely feel it through the piercing pain coming from her wings. It wasn’t sharp like the knife had been. Then she heard the click by her ear. Gun. “Stop, Draeken scum,” the human ordered. “Come any closer, and the whore dies!”

  Her brother didn’t come closer. Instead, he leaped to the side and grabbed the third soldier who was still groggily overcoming the nasty case of vertigo Talla had given him. Laze grabbed the man who feebly batted at him in a choke-hold.

  “Let my sister go now, human,” Laze gritted out through clenched teeth. “This is your one and only chance. Do you know me?”

  She felt the gun quiver against her temple, which she suspected was sign enough the soldier was quite aware of Laze’s reputation.

  “I will see that you are tortured more than any other human before,” Laze said as he came to his full seven feet, pulling the whimpering soldier up with him as a shield, the human’s feet dangling above ground. “I will take you apart, one piece at a time, starting with your teeth, then your ears. I wonder … how many pieces a human can lose before he dies?”

  “We — we can work something out,” the soldier stuttered out.

  Glass crunched, and Talla tried to turn her head enough to see if friend or foe came. When he came into view, she realized that he was neither and so much more than both. Her Leash had arrived.

  “Captain Jerrick!” the soldier with the gun exclaimed. “Thank God! These dragons attacked us!” He waved his gun wildly at Laze. “That one killed Sergeant Thompson!”

  Jerrick — who his friends called Jax — seemed uninterested in the fact that Laze could kill the human he held in a heartbeat. Instead, his gaze fell first on Talla. His look was hard, betraying no emotion. She knew that look well. He’d been assigned to her when she had first been captured by the humans. He’d spent endless days and nights watching her in silence, with that same look that never changed. He was truly unreadable. She’d never seen another human like him.

  That had been over two years ago. Little had changed. He was still assigned to her. And, unlike most Leashes, and he was much more than her Leash. Jax was her Shadow. The human soldier with haunted eyes crossed her path every day. Was it strange that she found comfort in his presence, that she craved seeing him, a human, each day?

  Even more strange, she sensed that she brought the same reaction in him. He might be her enemy, but still her heart calmed at his arrival.

  As Jax scanned her body, his eyes narrowed and his lips soured. He glanced back up at the soldier above her. “She attacked you with her pants undone?”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” the man stammered in a rush.

  “Then get off her wings,” Jax replied drily.

  The soldier pointed at Laze. “But — but that one threatened to kill me!”

  “Based on what you did to his sister, I’m not surprised,” Jax said. “Let her go. That’s an order.” He glanced at Laze. “Same goes for you. Let the corporal go.”

  Laze didn’t move. “They must be punished.”

  Jax nodded ever so slightly. “Agreed. But you fucked up tonight by killing an officer. Don’t make things worse than they already are. You got a kid at home. Don’t leave him without a dad.”

  Scowling, Laze looked from Jax to Talla before dropping the man to his knees, then kicking him away. Similar to human anatomy, Draeken males were much stronger than their female counterparts. Where Talla was as strong as many human males, Laze could crush bones in his grip. The human scraped across the ground for several feet before unsteadily pulling himself back up and moving closer to the captain.

  When the excruciating weight finally disappeared from her wings, Talla came to her feet and lunged into Laze’s strong arms. He held her in his safe embrace, one hand on her back, the other cradling her head. “Sheescaten, ta deitan,” he repeated in a soothing voice. You are safe, sister. And she knew his words were true, even if for only that moment.

  “It’s not going to matter after tomorrow!” the one soldier yelled.

  She knew, too, that her and Laze were doomed. A human was dead. She turned to Jax. He had the control now.

  Jax watched her but spoke to Laze. “Get out of here, Kohlm. Both of you.”

  The captain’s face was hard, set in uncompromising lines. She’d learned many times over that once that particular man set his mind to something, a mouse would have an easier time moving a boulder than sway his will.

  “We’ll talk at early breakfast,” Jax added before turning his attention back to the two soldiers.

  With a frown, she glanced at Laze, who looked just as confused. The Sephians took breakfast early, before the sun rose and hurt their sensitive eyes. Since the two races didn’t exactly get along, her people waited for the second, later breakfast. Perhaps it was Jax’s way of warning her that they’d be coming for them early tomorrow.

  Shrugging, she tugged on her brother’s shirt. “Let’s go,” she whispered. She knew Laze craved to kill those two humans as badly as she did. But he was also smart. And as long as they were confined to the Etzee, they were forced to put logic before emotion. With her brother’s arm around her, they walked past the soldiers.

  “You’re going to die,” one of her attackers taunted.

  “We all die sometime,” she said without looking back. Just kept on walking. Whatever Jax had planned, he was waiting for her to leave.

  Laze and she didn’t speak once during the ten-minute walk back to their small trailers. There was nothing to say. Their fate was already sealed. They had only to wait now.

  Killing a human was a death sentence for them both.

  Chapter Three

  0500 hours, the following morning

  Talla discovered she and Laze weren’t the only Draeken in the food line for early breakfast.

  Laze nodded as she approached, and the two Draeken with him turned.

  The taller guardsman smiled. “Morning, Talla. You’re looking ravishing as usual.”

  Talla knew not to let Wync’s flattery go to her head. His interest had more to do with Draeken males outnumbering females by nearly twenty to one than anything. His eyes twinkled with humor, so very different from the black ice in the fregees’ gawking stares last night. A shiver went across her skin before she forced a smile. “Good morning, Wync. What brings you and Qan out so early this morning?”

  They shot each other a quick look. Shy Qan stammered, then started to say something. Wync nudged him, and the shorter man clamped his mouth shut.

  “Just doing something for Roden,” Wync said.

  She frowned, glancing at Laze who shrugged in response. Laze and she were Roden’s primary guardsmen. If there was something going on, they always knew about it. Then again, after last night, she wasn’t going to complain. She wasn’t feeling at full mental speed yet this morning.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Peering into the shadows, she found Captain Jax Jerrick leaning against a trailer. Even though the sun hadn’t risen, he was wearing sunglasses so it was impossible to see where his gaze fell, but she knew it was her he watched. He never approached her, always maintained a cool distance. To any passerby, he was just another soldier on break, his arms crossed over a muscled chest. Her heart sped up, and she inhaled the cool morning air to calm herself. Parts of her instantly heated when she saw the confident man in fatigues. But a warning followed in her mind. What will happen to Laze and me?

  Reminding herself that Jax was a human first and foremost helped her maintain her composure. No human could b
e trusted. Two years ago, she was his prisoner. A year ago, she was “freed” and moved to the Etzee with all the others, only to have him assigned as her Leash, perhaps to punish, perhaps to see when she’d screw up. Perhaps he’d volunteered simply because he found her intriguing. She couldn’t read him, but she believed he watched her to protect her, though it made no sense. Whatever went on in that head of his didn’t matter. She couldn’t make him stop, and she didn’t want to.

  She’d stayed at Laze’s last night, waiting to be taken. But the door hadn’t been broken down, and soldiers hadn’t come to take them away. She’d awoken after only a few hours’ sleep, and everything seemed no different. As she stood in line, there were no rumors about a human being killed, though Sephians tended to not talk much around Draeken.

  To say the two races barely put up with each other was an understatement. The Sephians here had chosen to stay behind, some to start a new life on a planet that hadn’t been ravaged by war. Most clearly stayed behind because they didn’t trust the Draeken and were looking forward to decimating them the first chance they got.

  Did Jax watch her because he didn’t trust her? What had Jax done with those soldiers after they’d left? No matter, Talla was now in a human’s debt. A debt that might be more than she could afford.

  A murmur of voices brought her back. “They say millions dead in China already,” she overheard Wync say.

  “And it’s spreading,” Qan replied.

  “What’s happened?” Talla asked.

  Wync wrapped his arm around her, leaning closer than what was proper. Laze smirked, and she rolled her eyes. Draeken propriety had suffered since they were forced from their home planet. “Remember those rumors that the humans have contracted a nasty plague?” he whispered in her ear. “Well, they’re true. Evidently, it all started nearly three weeks ago. We’re just finding out now. It’s hit several major cities in Asia already. Who knows how many lives it’ll claim.” Humor interlaced the words.