Victoria… He smiled a little. He liked her name. Hell, he liked all of her, and he’d certainly gotten to see enough since her curves had been on full display. Gods, an Elite like that shouldn’t be alone in this big domicile—she was much too tempting a prize. Just about any male might take a liking to what he saw and follow her home.
The thought of that made Chain bristle with protective anger. The Varians weren’t the only ones he had to worry about here. But for now, they were the threat he needed to concentrate on, he reminded himself.
He heard another thump which seemed to come from a room up ahead. Sliding forward with his blaster ready, Chain edged around the doorway, looking for his adversary.
He saw a room in disarray. The cushions had been pulled off all the furniture and some had been slashed open so that fluffy piles of white filling were coming out. The small table in the center of the room had been upended and the drapes at the tall windows had been torn down. How had the Varian made such a mess so quickly?
Speaking of the alien scout, Chain saw it at the far end of the room, pulling books out of the bookcase and looking behind them before tossing them aside to the carpeted floor. The thumps he and Victoria had heard must have been the books falling—though how the Varian had made the rest of this mess so quietly was anyone’s guess. Maybe they hadn’t heard him because they were talking.
At that moment, the alien scout turned and saw him standing there. A snarl creased its face and it raised its weapon to point at him.
Chain was too quick for the Varian. He blasted the bastard right in the head, disintegrating the top half completely. Then, for good measure, he blasted the bottom half too, leaving nothing but a greasy black stain on the nice tan carpeting—which wasn’t quite so nice now, unfortunately.
Job done, Chain decided it was time to go. He would collect the T’lix-Kruthe then put a remote towing device on the Varian ship and drag it out into deep space so the bastards couldn’t track it and come looking for Victoria again.
Next stop, Priima Belle, where he was fairly certain he could buy the other half of the T’lix-Kruthe, rather than having to steal it—which made things marginally easier. Then he could bring it back to his buyer and collect a healthy payday which ought to set him up in style for quite a long time.
But what about Victoria? whispered a little voice in his head. Is it safe to leave her all alone here? What if the Varians should find her after all?
He didn’t think it was even remotely likely, but he didn’t like to leave anything to chance. Still, it wasn’t like he could take her with him—could he?
Chain frowned his he considered the possibilities…
“Chain?” he heard a faint call coming from her bedroom. “Chain, are you all right?”
Poor little female—she was helpless and unable to move until the Varian’s paralytic ray wore off. And yet she was worried about him. That was nice, Chain decided. It was also nice that she hadn’t flinched when he’d told her he was an M-Switch Kindred.
“Just a minute, sweetheart,” he called back. “I’ll be right there.”
He did a once over of the rest of the domicile and found it empty. As he’d suspected, the two Varians that had followed him from the bar were the only ones here. Satisfied, he came back to the bedroom to see that she was sitting up with his scatterlight cloak clutched to her breasts. Since the scatterlight was still activated, this made it look as though half of a sexy, naked Elite was hovering in mid-air above the bed.
Chain pushed a button on his belt to deactivate the cloak and suddenly it was the same deep scarlet it always was when visible. This had the added benefit of letting him see the little Elite’s curves, clearly outlined by the red fabric.
“Oh!” Victoria jumped and looked down at herself, clearly surprised by the sudden reappearance of the cloak and her body under it. “Are you okay?” she asked Chain, looking up and clutching the cloak even tighter to her body. “I was getting so worried about you!”
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “Though I’m afraid the carpeting in your living area isn’t. I had to neutralize the other Varian by the bookcase and it left a stain.”
“Neutralize?” She looked up at him with wide eyes which were quite a bewitching shade of green, Chain noticed.
“Disintegrate,” he clarified. “I’m afraid it left a big black mark where he was standing.”
Oh, right…” She looked faintly ill but then lifted her chin and took a deep breath, as though trying to compose herself. “That’s all right. I’m sure it’s nothing a good stream cleaning can’t get out. Well…” She shrugged. “I guess you’ll be wanting the golden Twix thing you asked me to hold for you and then you’ll be on your way.”
“The T’lix-Kruthe,” Chain corrected her. “Yes, where did you put it?”
“Initially, down my bra,” she remarked, smiling dryly. “But right now it ought to be under the fuzzy pink towel beside the tub which still has the other half of an alien corpse in it.” She shivered and made a face.
“I’ll take care of it,” Chain promised.
Striding into the bathing area, he first took care of the dead alien in the tub with another silent but deadly blaster shot. This turned the water a dirty gray color but since it also disintegrated the plug which had been holding the water in the tub in the first place, it began to drain out almost at once.
As it
