Pirate Nemesis (Telepathic Space Pirates Book 1) (22 page)

Reaper hesitated.
They found no evidence of Willem Frain or Veritas aboard this ship.

That’s not unexpected.
She cut a piece of steak, juices flowing from the meat.
You did tell Dem they have access to a teleporter, right?

He is aware.

I can’t explain how, but I know I’m right about this, Reaper.

I don’t doubt you.

Mercy went rigid beside him, dropping her fork and knife with a clatter. “What the hell was that?”

Everyone looked around, though Reaper wasn’t too concerned. He had a suspicion of what had startled her.

What is wrong?

“Something just brushed against my leg! Something…” Mercy paused, struggling, and Reaper was intrigued to see a flush of embarrassment color her cheeks. “…something with fur.”

“Oh.” Everyone relaxed again, Sanah smiling as she spoke. “That’s just Rasa. Tama’s
kith.
You get used to it.”

Mercy didn’t relax. She looked under the table, then around the room. “Ah, no offense, but where I come from imaginary friends do
not
feel real.”

“Rasa is not imaginary.” Dem gave a heavy sigh. “Show yourself, Rasalas. It is rude to remain camouflaged if you are going to interact with our guests.”

Reaper had seen Rasa before, so he was prepared when the large furry shape materialized beside Mercy. She, on the other hand, leapt out of her chair swearing viciously. The great cat looked back at her, calmly blinking green-gold eyes. He’d grown since the last time Reaper saw him, standing nearly as tall as Mercy’s chair. His white fur shimmered with a faint luminescence in the light, broken up by coppery-brown whorls that formed a striking pattern. His long tail flicked back and forth, and a faint sound rumbled in his throat.

“Mother protect us.” Mercy put a hand to her throat. “I-I’m so sorry for my language. I don’t normally swear in front of children.”

Tamari was giggling into her napkin.

“That’s all right,” said Sanah. “We’ve all been given a fright once or twice by Rasa.”

“Not all of us.” The words were a faint growl from Dem’s end of the table. Sanah gave him a
look.

“Is…is it purring?” asked Mercy, her shock fading as fascination took hold.

“He is.” Sanah sighed, taking a drink of wine.

“He likes you!” Tamari sounded positively joyous. “He’s never met a queen before. He says you feel different.”

“Thanks?” Mercy cautiously retook her seat, keeping one eye on Rasa, who hadn’t moved beyond the flicking tail.

Tamari leaned toward her mother.
Rasa says he’ll have my steak, Mama.

Sanah raised an eyebrow. “Rasa had his own steak before everyone arrived.”

Tama’s lower lip came out as she pouted. “But he’s hungry.”

Rasa chose that moment to yawn, displaying wicked fangs. Mercy flinched. “Maybe he could have another.”

Sanah narrowed her eyes at the cat as his rumbling purr grew louder. “Only because the queen asks.”

She placed a hunk of steak on a small plate and set it on the floor. Mercy tensed as the cat languidly stretched and moved closer. Reaper could tell it would take time for her to trust that Rasalas wasn’t truly a danger. It was amusing how she found the cat’s predatory nature unsettling, but was so accepting of his own.

You don’t have fangs longer than my thumbs.

It startled him. He hadn’t realized he’d been projecting that particular thought. Mercy turned her green eyes on him, smiling.
Now you know what it feels like.

What?

Having someone in your head when you didn’t give them permission to be there.

Reaper raised an eyebrow.
Mercy, you gave me permission the moment you requested I teach you. I gave you access past my shields not long after. This is just the first time you’ve used it.

Oh.
Her smile widened.
I still surprised you.

He had to concede that.
True enough.
In more ways than one.

“So, what are
kith
?” Mercy asked out loud. She looked around the table as she spoke. “Obviously they have some…abilities.”

“They are Talented in their own way, as we are.” Dem answered her question. “On their home planet they form psychic bonds. Symbiotic pairings across species. When we colonized it – when Hunters colonized it, they found humans made excellent partners. Tamari is Rasa’s bond-mate.”

You are an interesting species. You have strengths we do not. And weaknesses we can balance.
The voice was resonant, male, and had an odd burr to it. Reaper saw Mercy’s eyes widen.

“Did he just talk?” She stared at Rasa. “You can speak telepathically?”

The cat inclined his head, and then began industriously rubbing at his whiskered cheeks with a paw. Mercy watched this with almost hypnotic intensity. Then again, the paws were huge. Easily bigger than the plate Sanah had used to serve his steak.

“Like Killers,” said Treon, “Hunters have a Talent unique to them. They can track someone psychically.”

“I know.” Mercy forced her gaze away from Rasa. She glanced down the table at Dem, then away. “I’ve been tracked by one before. Well, technically he was tracking my mother.”

An awkward silence descended on the dinner. Dem lifted his wine glass, staring at it with a frown. “A Hunter never loses a mental signature once he has it.” He took a drink as Mercy’s head came up.

Reaper could practically feel her tension as she vibrated in the chair next to him.

“You mean you could still track her? Find her?”

“No.” Dem set the glass back down. His face was so still it might have been carved from stone. But something like regret gleamed briefly in his eyes. “Pallas is gone, Mercy.” His voice was as gentle as Reaper had ever heard it, outside of when he spoke of Sanah, or Tamari.

Mercy stared at him. The rest of the table remained silent. Tamari looked from one adult to the next, her eyes wide. Sanah brushed a hand across her daughter’s head, and Reaper saw the little girl’s lip tremble.

Finally, Mercy released a breath that shuddered. “If she’s dead, just say that. Don’t use a euphemism. Be blunt. Be honest.”

“When a Hunter tracks someone dead, there is nothing.” Dem spoke the words slowly, as though he was choosing each one with care. “No hint of a trail to follow. No presence in the universe that can be felt. I only met Pallas a few times, when I was a child. My sense of her was never particularly strong. But it led me to Verath 6. I
felt
her there.” He hesitated. “And then I felt her vanish.”

Mercy swallowed. “You felt her die?”

“No.
Vanish
. When I think of her now, when I have thought of her every time since, I don’t feel the sense of
nothing
I should. I feel a void.”

Mercy’s brow furrowed in confusion. She looked at Reaper, but he had no answers for her. He could only shake his head, just as confused as she was.

“Isn’t a void and nothing the same thing?”

Dem looked frustrated. “It is difficult to explain. The Hunter who led me on my Hunt could not understand it either. No one has ever experienced anything like it as far as I have been able to determine. But no, the void is not nothing. It is simply…as though her trail is swallowed by emptiness.”

“You’re saying she’s in some kind of limbo.”

“I don’t know where she is, whether she lives, or not.” Dem paused. “And no one else can answer that question, either.”

M
ercy made
the walk back to her own quarters lost in a mental fog. She didn’t remember much of the meal’s end, or the wonderful dessert Sanah had provided. The soft, rich cake might as well have been made from sand, instead of whatever sweet concoction it had actually been. Mercy hadn’t tasted it. Hadn’t heard even half of the conversation around her. Her mind kept turning back to what Dem had said.

After all this time, she still had no idea if her mother lived or died. But it almost didn’t matter anymore. Because she was gone. And it was more clear than ever before that whatever had befallen Pallas, she was not coming back.

Mercy would never find her.

Gradually, she became aware that Reaper was still with her. When they reached her quarters, one of his dogs stood outside. She couldn’t remember his name. The one with the shaggy hair.

It didn’t matter. She said good night, opened the door and walked inside mechanically, expecting Reaper to leave. He didn’t.

“Mercy.” He said her name out loud. She realized he’d already said it mentally more than once, but it had sounded distant. Separate from her thoughts. She turned and looked at him as he stood in the doorway. It felt like she was moving under heavy gravity, each movement painfully slow and ponderous.

“What?”

“I’m not leaving you like this.” He walked into her quarters without waiting for permission, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. He crossed to the bottle of whiskey she’d left sitting out from Wolfgang’s visit, and poured some into a glass.

Mercy just stood in the middle of the room, feeling at a loss until Reaper grabbed her hand and forced her fingers around the glass.

“Drink this. I think you might be in shock.”

She almost laughed. But it bubbled up her throat and then faded to nothing. “I can’t be. Mom’s been missing for fifteen years. It’s hardly a surprise anymore.”

Reaper frowned at her. He looked really grim, but his eyes were still bright blue, not the pale winter color that would have been a warning. Because it seemed like he was going to loom over her until she drank, she lifted the glass to her lips and swallowed. Fire burned its way from the back of her mouth, down her throat. It burned away the numbness, flooding her with warmth. She inhaled sharply, and promptly choked on the lingering fumes. After a short coughing fit, she took another long swallow.

The burn gave her something to focus on that wasn’t her mother.

“All of that is true.” Reaper watched her closely. “But I think you’ve been holding on to the possibility of finding her for all these years.”

Mercy turned sharply away from him, unable to bear seeing herself reflected in his eyes. She raised the glass to her lips and drank it dry, gulping down the whiskey like it was water, welcoming the burn that brought tears to her eyes and closed her throat, making speech impossible.

But Reaper was relentless.
That is no terrible thing, Mercy.
His mental voice was soft, but still inescapable.

She closed her eyes.
Isn’t it?

Then tell me why. Explain this response you’re having. I don’t understand.

She shook her head. The whiskey had accomplished one thing. It had steadied her. She was able to cross the room easily, without feeling that heavy weight. She moved to the bottle and poured more into her glass.

I’m not going to leave until you talk to me.

“Then I guess you’re in for a long night.”

You’re angry.

“Guess again.”

He cocked his head, considering her. She did her best to ignore him, looking anywhere else, pacing the room as she sipped the whiskey more slowly this time. Getting drunk sounded like a great idea.

“You are. You’re angry. But also sad.”

Sad was too tame a word for what she was feeling. Reaper stood silent for a few minutes, long enough that Mercy began to hope he would leave her alone. She stopped her pacing and rested her head against the wall, her eyes closed.
Please, just leave me alone.

“No. But I can leave. I’ll ask Wolfgang to come—”

Mercy’s eyes flew open. “No!” She pushed away from the wall, alarm making her voice rise. “Not the Wolf. I can’t—I can’t face him right now.”

“Why not? He’s your family. He should be with you.”

Mercy rounded on him. The words burst out of her of their own volition. “Because I got his daughter poisoned, maybe killed, and it was all for nothing!”

Suddenly so furious she couldn’t contain the emotion, her free hand curled into a fist. She threw the glass with so much force it shattered against the nano-graph wall, spilling onto a plush hand-woven rug that probably cost more than three smuggling runs put together.

Reaper didn't react to her fit of rage. He just stood in the middle of the room, stoic and silent. He didn’t look reproving, or sympathetic, or raise an eyebrow at her to ask why. He just stood there. Mercy couldn’t decide if that was infuriating or an enormous relief. Maybe both, as odd as that was.

She covered her face with her hands, sitting heavily in one of the chairs. She took a long, shuddering breath, then another. Calmer, she let her hands drop.

“She told me not to look for her. It was a directive. An order. Above all else, if she ever disappeared I was supposed to do two things: run, and never look back. Never look for her. It was too dangerous.” The words sounded leaden and dull leaving her lips. “But I ignored that order from the very beginning. I never stopped looking for her. Not when it risked my own capture. No even when it put my only friend in jeopardy.”

“You were a child.”

She shrugged. “Like that’s an excuse.”

Reaper knelt beside her. “That’s your guilt talking. But it isn’t the real reason you’re unhappy.”

It forced her to look at him. So she glared. “No? I’m listening. Go ahead and tell me what I’m really unhappy about. This ought to be good coming from a guy who doesn’t feel.”

If she hoped to get a reaction from him by lashing out, she was doomed to disappointment. His body language didn’t change, his face didn’t so much as twitch, and his eyes remained bright blue.

“You’re finally accepting the loss of your mother. You’ve spent the last fifteen years in denial, and hearing Dem tonight made you understand that you can’t deny it anymore.”

Mercy didn’t answer right away. She looked away again, down at her hands, linked together in her lap. Finally, she cleared her throat. “That’s really perceptive for a guy who doesn’t feel.” She spoke the words softly, not intending to hurt this time.

“Just because I don’t feel as connected doesn’t mean I don’t understand loss. I grieved when my mother died.”

This time she met his eyes willingly. The anger was draining away, leaving sadness and shame in its wake. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “An advantage of
not feeling
is not taking things personally.”

Mercy winced. “Yeah, I didn’t mean that.” She reached over and took one of his hands. “I know you feel things. I’m just…looking for someone to take it out on.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry it was you.”

“I’m not.” His hand closed around her fingers. He stretched his legs out and sat on the floor. It couldn’t have been entirely comfortable, but Mercy was glad he didn’t move away to sit in the other chair. “Sanah told me you’d need me tonight. She could feel what was happening.”

Mercy gave a short laugh. “Well, that’s embarrassing.”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t have dinner with someone to show them all of your most private emotions.”

Now Reaper raised an eyebrow. “Keeping secrets on this ship is very difficult. I would think you’d know that by now.”

“I guess I’m still getting used to it.” Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked them back. She was too tired to cry. “I miss her so much. I don’t know how to let her go.”

For the first time, Reaper looked uncomfortable. A frown pulled at his mouth. “I don’t know how to help with that. For me, my mother’s death was final. One day she was alive, and the next she was not. There was no in between. There is no such thing, with death. It just is.”

“I will probably never know what really happened to her. I’ll never have closure in that way.”

Reaper was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his tone was thoughtful. “Maybe not, but you can be assured of one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Your mother loved you enough to leave everything behind. To take you away from the rest of your family and into the territory of our enemies to protect you. She loved you very much.”

Mercy leaned her head back against the chair. “She did. But she was grieving, too, when she made that choice. My father had just died.”

“An accident?” Reaper’s tone made it clear he didn’t believe that any more than she did.

Mercy shook her head. “She never talked about it, or him. Eventually I stopped asking because she would only tell me he’d died to protect us. It was too painful for her, I think. But reading between the lines, I think Lilith had him killed.”

“A strong possibility. Your mother didn’t have consorts. She chose a husband. With him gone, she wouldn’t be producing more children anytime soon.”

Mercy tilted her head to look at him. “Do you remember him at all?”

“A little. I know Lilith didn’t approve of the marriage. Your father wasn’t a Core member. He was just a pilot with a fairly strong telekinetic gift. No one of consequence, in the Queen’s eyes.” Reaper was stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. It felt nice. Between the warmth of the whiskey in her stomach and the heat of his hand stroking hers, Mercy almost felt relaxed. “I don’t think Lilith was expecting the match to produce a queen.”

“What, she wanted my mother matched with someone powerful, but she didn’t want powerful grandchildren?” Mercy couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her tone.

“Oh, she did. Lilith had plans for all the members of her family, the more powerful the better. She just didn’t want any rivals.”

How did someone become like that? Was it the way Lilith was raised? The society she grew up in? Or something else, something she was born with?

“Do you think I’ll ever be like her?” Mercy voiced one of her greatest fears; that in embracing being a queen, she would grow to be like her grandmother.

Reaper gave her the ghost of a smile. “If I thought that, you’d be dead by now.”

This time she did laugh. It came out a little breathless. She blamed the whiskey. Or maybe there was something wrong with her that she found Reaper so attractive, even when he discussed the possibility of killing her. No, of
not
killing her.

She focused on his face, staring into his eyes. Her heartbeat increased. “Sanah told me something, too.” She sat up in her chair, leaning dangerously close to Reaper. He remained still, watching her. “She said if I wanted things to move forward, I was going to have to move them. That you don’t believe yet.”

“Believe what?”

“That you can be more than what you are.”

She leaned forward and kissed him. This time he accepted it right away, his mouth pliable and responsive. Heat flared between them immediately, combining with the whiskey in her gut to spread throughout her body like a flame. That didn’t stop Mercy from shivering with a sudden chill as Reaper broke the kiss.

“I think you might be a little bit drunk.” His face was still very close to hers. She could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin.

She laughed. “Clearly you’ve never seen me drink before. I drink hardened smugglers under the table when I want to.” She reached out and threaded her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. “I have a choice here. Either I can get drunk enough to forget everything I’m feeling tonight.”

She didn’t need to voice the other option. It hung in the air between them.

“You might regret this later.”

“Why? Because you’re a Killer? Please. We just had dinner with your brother and his family. Don’t hide behind what you are, Nik.”

He gave a small jerk of surprise at her use of his real name.

“For fifteen years I haven’t been able to forget you. I’m pretty sure the same is true for you. Don’t sit here and tell me I’m making a mistake.”