"No, Father. We never expected you to discover our betrayal, but we fully expect to be the ones to walk out of here alive today." Fey stood straight and still, his gun still tight in his hand. My heart warmed at his words, even if I didn’t quite believe them.
"Do you?" Fey's father laughed with that same insanity. "Do you really?" The few remaining men in the bridge laughed alongside their commander, believing he’d save them. My eyes were flicking all over the room, looking for potential threats, potential ways out of this.
I had felt the guys waves of passion enough that I knew something was coming. I could feel the weight in the air, the twist in my stomach that always came before the waves of erotic need.
What? Was someone planning on fighting via orgasms and dry humping?
I twisted, ready to race back and pull one of my boys down if needed. Except it wasn't their power, and it wasn't a sexual need that I was feeling. Mulling over the feeling for a heartbeat, I realized it was anger.
It was anger that was making the boys grunt and groan. Anger that was making Fey's pointed gun move from his father's head, to Myro's.
"Shit." I hissed low enough that I don't think anyone could hear me over the mad man's laughter.
Fey's father, all of the gods of their planet really, didn't make people want to jump into an orgy. They had other powers. And his was inciting rage.
I nearly dropped the knife, threw it away before I did something terrible, but then I realized that, like with the boys, I could fight this. I felt the rage, but it wasn't controlling me. Likely because I wasn’t the intended target of this particular alien wave of unwanted emotion.
If I could resist the urge, I could stay focused. It was up to me.
"Knock it off!" I yelled, gripping the knife behind my back as I jumped to my feet. The older Coxian jumped as high, his eyes wide as he finally noticed me for the first time.
He knew exactly what I was. And he was terrified.
I knew it! I kept my internal party calmed as I faced the Coxian, knife aimed at his nose, and really saw him for the first time. He looked nearly identical to Fey, if Fey was fifty years older. He even had grey in his hair. I knew I shouldn't say that he was hot, considering I was nailing his son, but if Fey aged this gracefully I would be fine with that.
"A human," he said shakily as he finally found his voice. "What the... how did you...? No!"
"Well, your boy rescued me, Myro brought me here, and I've killed everyone on your ship in order to save Fey and kill you," I said with a shrug, rattling off answers to what I think were supposed to be questions. Grymm was blinking at me, still startled enough that he hadn’t reacted to stop me yet.
I readied myself, keeping my knife steady as I braced for another wave of his hatred power, ready to fight it off. But nothing happened. He stared at me, shaking as his power withdrew and Fey dropped his gun, looking from his father to me in confusion.
"Then do it. Make it clean."
A soft gasp went through the room, but I didn’t take my eyes off of Grymm. Wait. Was he begging? He sure sounded like he was begging.
"What the hell? You aren't even going to fight?" Fey twisted the gun back over to his father, clearly expecting this whole thing to be a fight. He was as ready as I was.
"Why?" Grymm gasped, still looking not at the knife, but at me. He stared me right in the eyes as though he expected something to happen. "There is no point. Why haven't you killed me already? Just kill me!"
I was frozen, unsure what to do next. Here I was, expecting some epic showdown, and instead I had an alien lord begging me to end him? Even Myro looked disappointed.
"Well, at least we know that they are in fact scared of humans," I said with a shrug as I sheathed the knife. If we had him where we wanted, I was going to let Fey make the final call. With just the little I had heard about the old man, Fey deserved that.
"Yeah, but why?" Myro mumbled, still staring at Grymm as if he could read his mind. "What's so scary about humans?"
"You don't know?" Fey's father asked with a laugh that was more nervous than maniacal. "You mean she hasn't shown you? She's been lying to you... and now we will all die."
My shoulders sagged, "What the hell is he on about?"
Here I was thinking we would get answers. I looked to my guys, who both shrugged, the tension in the air palpable. Before any of us could make a move, "Hreesh-var knucct eerth," chimed from the computer behind me. A few people jumped at the robot voice, but I looked to Myro for a translation.
"We're landing. Finish him now, Fey, before we enter the atmosphere." Myro was confident, more in-control than I’d yet heard him. Fey nodded and stepped forward as the ship shook and the massive window that had displayed the golden planet shifted into shimmering lines of gas and flame.
Gas and flame that seemed to move through the thick walls of the ship, move over my skin. Move into me.
Erupt out of me.
I recognized what was happening a second before it happened. A second before an electricity, a crackling of energy I had never felt before exploded, filling me with something like power.
"Holy fuck, I am superman."
22
Kylie
The look of sheer terror that Fey's father had given me made sense.
He had seen this before, this lightning that was shooting
