The Facilitator (13 page)

The moonlight danced off the brass railing beneath the window and ricocheted around the room. It was a tiny scattering of rainbows, barely visible yet casting a magical glow over her surroundings and the man still holding her hand.

Minnie caught her breath, knowing this was what she’d wanted the first minute she’d set eyes on him.

She wanted to see if they
fit
.

“I’m definitely in favor of experimentation.” She whispered the words as his grasp tightened and he drew her against his chest.

Her free hand slid up over the silk of his shirt to touch the warm skin of his neck even as she felt him tug the other one behind his back, locking her to his body.

His arm encircled her, his heat engulfed her and her brain acknowledged the result of this experiment.

They
fit
.

When his lips came down to claim hers, she forgot about theories, experiments, murders and mayhem. She forgot her own name.

She just fell into him.

Sworn virgin, instrument of the god’s vengeance—helpless in her target’s arms.

Blood of the Volcano

© 2011 Imogen Howson

Maya, leader of the temple maenads, has learned nothing but contempt for the weakness of her human body. She lives for the ritual that transforms her into maenad form, ready to administer the vengeance of the volcano god.

Killing a fugitive shifter is not just her duty, but her delight—until, against all odds, he captures
her
, trapping her in her worst nightmare. Her vulnerable, easily controlled human form.

Marked for destruction by his forbidden gifts, empath and shifter Philos fled the city years ago to become a warrior for persecuted people like him. Now he has the enemy at his mercy—a maenad desperate to regain her power. But when they touch, he finds his empathic power not so much a gift as a terrible danger. To his people, and his heart.

Gradually, Maya realizes Philos is not a monster deserving of death. Yet even as she hesitantly offers to help in the war against the priests, she can risk no more than the bare beginnings of friendship with the man she was supposed to kill. Anything more, and she will forever lose access to the power she cannot bear to live without…

Warning: Contains violence, deadly spider-venom, sex that gets interrupted at the last minute, sex that
doesn’t
get interrupted at the last minute, and plenty of not-your-usual shape-shifters.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Blood of the Volcano:

Maya watched him drink, cup water in his hands and splash it over his face, run wet fingers through the long strands of black hair.
Longer than mine…but then he was not born to be a fighter.

The shame ate at her, that he, a runaway, a condemned criminal, had kept her prisoner this long. It had been only luck and a spider bite that had reversed their positions, nothing to do with her god-given powers or her years of experience running with the maenad pack.

She watched him, an ordinary man, maybe five years older than she. Prettier than most, with the sweep of glossy hair and the dark eyes she remembered staring, terrified, into hers, but nothing that should have made him able to beat her, nothing that should have allowed him to keep her prisoner for a whole night and day.

Except he’s not ordinary. The thought held her still with sudden surprise. I’d forgotten that—forgotten why we were chasing him in the first place. There’s something wrong with him, some unholy power, demon- not god-begotten.

She didn’t need to know. It was nothing to her. In a short while she’d pack up supplies and leave, and if she ever saw him again it would be because he’d been stupid enough to try returning, and she—or another of her pack—would tear him to pieces. There was no reason to want to understand more about him, how he’d been able to overpower her.

There was even less reason to want to make him look at her, now that she was no longer helpless, pathetic and bound. No reason to want to make him remember her as in control, sitting here with the knife ready to her hand, on the spot where she’d successfully saved his life.

And it’s stupid. I’ve already saved him when I should have let him die, am already letting him go when I should march him in chains back to my people. I do not need to talk to him, let him pretend to be a person.

She said it anyway, as she’d known she was going to, and her warring thoughts came through into her voice, making the words shiver and run together so she sounded uncertain and almost afraid. “What is your power?”

He turned. She was looking straight at him, so his eyes met hers. Her question must have taken him off guard, because for a moment his eyes held no wariness, nor fear, only an amusement that warmed his face. It reminded her suddenly of the laughter she’d heard in his voice yesterday, when they were fighting and she’d thought he meant to rape her, then he’d said something silly, too outlandish to take seriously, and she’d known that whatever else he might do, she would never need to fear that from him.

“Did you not wonder before?” he said.

She shrugged, not liking the feeling that his eyes could see
into
her. “No. I was
busy
being marched across the desert.”

He smiled, just a little bit, one side of his mouth curling upwards. “I mean before, in the ravine. Did you not wonder why you could not find me when you first came there?”

She blinked. She hadn’t wondered. She’d forgotten those strange minutes in the ravine, when she—in the full flood of the madness, all her senses enhanced—had neither been able to see nor hear nor smell him.

He came over towards her, moving slowly, awkwardly—
he
would not be setting out today—then put his hand out, resting it on the rock face near where she sat. “Here. This is how. This is my gift.”

She frowned at him. There was nothing, he was doing nothing. Whatever he was, it was not a shifter…

“No.” He smiled again, a little bit more. “Don’t look at my face. Look at my hand.”

She did so. The wide span of his fingers was pressed against the rock, leaving a wet handprint, black on grey. An edge of morning sunlight caught the fine hairs on the back of his hand, making them shine faint gold against the brown of his skin. Calluses showed on the inside of his thumb and forefinger. It might not be a fighter’s hand, but it was not a nobleman’s hand either—it knew hard work.

She was still looking at it, wondering what she was supposed to be seeing, when it disappeared.

She blinked, instinctively shook her head, thinking her eyes must have blurred, but his hand—no, his whole arm—did not reappear. And now the rest of his body, his face, his tunic seemed to dissolve, like a mirage dissolves when you get close to it.

Then all at once her perception shifted. He wasn’t disappearing, he was
changing
. His skin and hair were taking on the colour and texture of the cliff face, matching each ridge and crack and tiny variation so exactly that if she hadn’t known he was there she’d have sworn she was looking at nothing but rock. The change—and that was stranger than all the rest—even crept out into his clothes, so there was nothing to show that a man stood there, silently, secretly watching.

Only his eyes. They alone did not change, so she had the skin-crawling sensation that something—a demon, something not just half-human but not human at all—peered out of the cliff at her.

She opened her mouth. “That—that’s your gift?”

He nodded—she could see where the bit of the seeming-cliff that was really his head moved.

“And is it just rock? Or can it be…” she made a vague gesture, unable to drag her gaze away, “…other things?
Anything?
”

“Anything, more or less. Nothing moving—not water or sliding sand. I can’t match it quick enough for it to work. But anything that stays still long enough…yes.”

He shut his eyes for a moment, and it was as if he’d vanished entirely. Almost doubting her own senses, she caught herself from reaching out to touch where he’d been. Then he swam back into visibility, his body seeming to coalesce from the air in front of her, changing to his normal self.

His eyes opened. “It’s not the only part of it. You maenads—you’d have found me if that were my only gift—”

“Not your only gift? You have…more than one?” She’d never heard of anyone having more than one gift…and black envy caught at her throat.
If I had more than one, I would not feel so bereft. And why him? Why does he deserve—

She got hold of herself. His gifts were unholy, unsanctioned—not something to be envied, no matter how many of them he had.

She looked back at his face. “You must have sinned appallingly.” The envy, not quite suppressed, coloured her voice with a harsh tone that sounded like contempt.

“What?”

“To have two gifts. It was your sin that brought that on you—”

“It was not.”

She stared at him, incredulous that he’d deny it. “You know it was. That’s why we were sent after you—you’ve been using unholy gifts, trying to conceal them—”

He cut across her. “I know very well what brought you after me. I know my gifts are what the priests call unholy. I’m saying it was not sin that gave them to me.”

At that, she laughed, scornful, a lifetime of teaching making her sure of her ground. “You’re saying you never sinned?”

“I’m saying I got my gift when I was two years old.” His voice was like stone. “You tell me, what sin could I have committed by then?”

For a moment she could think of nothing to say. It can’t be. The unholy gifts—they’re born from sin. It’s why they come at adolescence, when people move away from the innocence of childhood. Only the holy gifts can come earlier, given by the god, blessings rather than curses…

“You’re lying.” She moved away from him, standing with a jerk.

“I am not.”

“You are. You’re lying. That can’t be true. Those gifts come from sin, they can’t come from anything else, they
can’t.
”

He said nothing, his silence as much of an argument as words would have been. They were done, she and he, they’d not see each other again, why would he bother lying?

She crossed her arms across herself, tight, like a barrier, hating how slight her muscles felt, how her fingers closed on little more than skin and bone.
I shouldn’t even trouble to talk to him. I shouldn’t want to understand. I shouldn’t care at all.

“How, then?” she said. “How did it happen?”

The invaders thought they had crushed humanity. They messed with the wrong species.

Metal Reign

© 2010 Nathalie Gray

An
Impulse Power
Story

Francine Beaumont is tired. Tired of waiting for an armada of Imber ships to finish off what’s left of humanity. Tired of fear and privation. Tired of living like a rat, feeding off what scraps the cat lets her have.

When the chance comes to hit the Imbers where it really hurts—right at their fuel supply—she takes it. One stealth cruiser. One pilot. A cargo hold filled with explosives. A suicide mission for sure, but better that than doing nothing.

As the ship’s cook, John O’Shaughnessy knows everything that goes on aboard the warship. And something is definitely up with his Frankie. If she thinks he’s going to let her carry out this crazy plan of hers alone, that stubborn woman has another think coming.

Frankie thinks she’s gotten away clean…until her instincts tell her she’s not alone on her mission. Still, it’s a shock to find her peace-loving John standing there with eyes that spell murder. Now is a hell of a time to discover they’re more than friends. But there’s no turning back…

Warning: Space invaders were seriously harmed in the making of this story.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Metal Reign:

Everything happened fast.

One second, about a dozen alien ships were flying a couple thousand meters ahead and the next second, a hit sent the reefer barreling to portside. The impact rocked both Frankie and him back against their seats. Only the harnesses saved them from being projected across the bridge like the rest of everything not anchored or strapped down with thick cargo netting. Clacks, clangs and rattles drowned what Frankie yelled. Alarms wailed, lights flickered, died for an agonizing second then switched back on.

John’s instinct surprised him. Instead of trying to stay the ship, he extended an arm to grip Frankie by the back of her coveralls. Just in case. He’d never known a protective nature hid under his cynical crust.
Great timing
…

As the reefer gathered speed in its gut-flattening spiral, John braced his feet wide apart on the consoles. Gs built up. Space flew sideways in the tacscreens. Stars became white lines. Interspersed with these lines, a green blur—Earth. Fighting against nausea, John forced himself to focus on the altimeter. Too low. Too damn low.

“Take…the nav,” he growled. “I’ll…take…propulsion.”

Both wrestled the effects of gravity, which tried to keep them glued to their backrests, as they struggled to control the ship’s spiral. Frankie quickly punched in coordinates while John gripped the engines control and pushed them as forward as they could go. The only way out of a spiral was down hard and fast. With any luck, they’d gain enough momentum to break out of the corkscrew, skim along Earth’s atmosphere then bounce off into space. But then again, luck was a bitch these days.

“Hang on,” John warned a split second before the attitude jets responded to his commands. By his side, Frankie held on to the console corners.

Turning, turning. Slower. Another turn that stretched out told John their maneuver may just work. Alarms finally clicked off when the reefer pointed downward and entered into a dive just as scary as the spiral. Except that now they were in control. Somewhat.

“Tell me when it’s five degrees,” John said through his teeth.

Frankie nodded. Sweat coated her face and made limp ribbons of her usually curly hair.

Silence was only broken by their panting as they each fought with their assigned console.

“Five degrees!”