I darted in, tried a strike to the ribs, and had it blocked.
“You’re gonna have to take me down for real. Only way they’ll believe it.”
Her smile disappeared.
“I thought you hated regen tanks.”
I caught her with a solid kick to the thigh, and then tried a punch to the head.
“How bad do we need for Cas to get into their feeds?”
Her next hit got through, and I tasted blood as light danced through my head. I blocked the one after that, side-stepped the leg sweep, but couldn’t quite coordinate a return attack.
“You’re slower than I thought, kiddo.”
“You’re faster,” and I ducked under her next swing, closed in tight, and tried winding her, again.
She turned, blocking my next two strikes with a downward sweep of her arm, and then turned back with a palm strike. I lifted my head, but it caught my shoulder, and she changed the attack, closing her hand in a tight grip and pulling down, as she brought her knee up.
Well. That kinda hurt.
Things got worse after it.
I think I got another two, maybe three good hits in, but Delight had done this a hell of a lot more than I had, and it showed.
“Do I need to break anything?” she asked, when she had me pinned, face-down on the floor.
I tried a negative, but only managed a mumble that tasted like iron and bile.
She poked a pressure point that turned one arm into a useless mass of pins and needles, cuffed my hands behind my back, and got off me.
“Give it a minute,” she said, and I nodded without lifting my head from the floor.
Pretty sure I was gonna need a lot more than a minute. I tried to ask her how long it would be before we reached wherever it was that Costoganzi had made his home, but I couldn’t get the words to form. Delight pulled the question out of my implant, instead.
“Two days,” she said, “and you’ll be spending them in a shuttle with me, Pritchard and the dog.”
Great.
“I’ll have the ship come in about three hours behind us. Maybe make it look like they were following and hoping to intercept before we hit the station. It’ll give the story more cred.”
Yup. That it would.
I heard her feet move, and tensed, waiting for the next blow to land. Instead, she walked past me, stopping as she reached the door.
“Keevers was right. You’d have made a good Odyssey agent.”
I settled for giving her the mental finger, and heard her laugh as she walked out, shutting the door behind her. I really didn’t want to move, right now. Or think. Even thinking hurt.
20—Sasha and Derevo
I still hadn’t moved, when the door opened, and Delight, Pritchard and Cascade returned. The dog’s reaction was instantaneous. He whined and ran over to me, sniffing at my hairline and giving me anxious licks around my ears and what bits of face he could reach.
And then he turned and put himself between me and Delight, a savage snarl rippling up from his chest. I turned my head, and tried to reach out and wrap a hand around his forepaw, only to discover I was cuffed. I managed to snag his doggy snout, instead, when he nuzzled my hand.
“Is ’kay, Cas. I asked her to.”
That got a puzzled half-yelp, half-whimper out of him—a kind of doggy ‘what the fuck’?—so I explained.
“We need to go see the Wolves. They need to think I am prey.”
I don’t know how much he understood, but I showed him images of Wolves, and of Delight handing me over. Maybe not my best choice, but…whatever, right? He rumbled out another growl, and I stroked my fingers along his nose, waiting until he went quiet.
“We have to be prey to make them prey,” and I imagined Pritchard and Delight turning on our receivers once we were close enough.
He sat down, his back to me, but still between me and Delight.
“Really?” she said, and Cascade thumped his tail.
Treat?
“Seriously?”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. It was such a Rohan thing for the dog to do. I turned my head so I could see what Delight did next. As far I figured it, she’d better give the dog his treat.
“Laugh it up, short stuff,” she said, but she held out a hand to Pritchard, who passed her a small meat pie, which she then palmed to Cas. “There. Treat. Now, let me get her up so we’re not later than we already are.”
And Cas moved out of Delight’s way. I don’t think he even noticed when Pritchard reached into my implant and transferred the tether from my head to his own. Pritchard noticed me watching him.
“The Wolves will look,” he said. “There’s always at least one psi.”
I was going into a Wolf centre. As a prisoner. And there’d be psi?
“Yup,” Pritchard said.
“Pretty much,” Delight echoed, stepping around Cascade to drag me to my feet.
Well, this couldn’t get any worse.
Which, of course, was when Pritchard hit me upside the head hard enough to set my ears ringing as he tweaked my implant and dumped in a few extra files.
What the…? Well, they’d come out of nowhere. One Sasha Prime and Derevo Slim. Bounty Hunters extraordinaire. And I’d thought I’d landed somewhere safe. Before I could react to either of them being in my private cabin, Sasha had given me her perkiest smile, and smacked me again, letting Derevo catch me as I stumbled sideways, my whole world slipping just a little bit more.
He picked me up and threw me over his shoulder, and Sasha grabbed the dog, clipping on a leash, even though Cascade was being as cooperative as heck. I’d have to speak to Rohan about that. Couldn’t have the mutt going soppy over every stranger who handed him a pie.
It was a quick trip through the cruise liner’s corridors as they headed for the shuttle bay. I thought about sliding off Derevo’s shoulder and making a break for it—maybe even making a fuss—and hit the deck
