Page 47 of Silent Lucidity

The scent of burning flesh stung Abella’s nose.

Abella took a two-handed grip of her blaster and raised it toward the other assassins, but her enemies were too close. The nearest assassin darted forward and kicked the weapon from her grasp. Before she could even register what had happened, an arm slipped around her neck from behind, yanking her backward.

With a choking grunt, Abella clutched the iron-strong forearm with both hands and swung her legs up, kicking the assassin in front of her with both feet. The blow caught him in the chest, and he staggered backward.

Just as he recovered his balance, a gray-skinned hand fell on his shoulder and spun him around. The assassin jerked, made a wet, gurgling sound, and fell to the ground.

Tenthil stood on the other side of the body, holding a knife in his blood-soaked hand. His feral black eyes met Abella’s gaze.

Rage roaredthrough Tenthil’s veins, and he was too lost in a battle haze to determine its exact sources. All that mattered in that moment was the danger to his mate’s life.

One assassin dead, one seriously wounded, two still in the fight. The vorgal acolyte had Abella in a choke hold, while his only standing companion, a stone-skinned bokkan, had turned toward Tenthil, brandishing a meter-long energy blade in each hand.

The odds meant nothing while Abella was threatened. Tenthil had overcome far worse with less motivation.

The bokkan charged, his energy blades creating arcs of blurred light as he swung them.

Tenthil drew his blaster—from the belt Abella had been wearing not long ago—and fired rapidly from his hip, backpedaling to avoid the swinging blades. Several of the bolts dissipated against the bokkan’s armor, hissing with flashes of orange and red, but several more struck unarmored parts of the acolyte’s body.

One of the energy blades flew from the bokkan’s nerveless fingers after a plasma bolt struck the underside of his arm. Tenthil swayed to the side. The whirring, crackling blade zipped through the air centimeters from his face, eliciting a fleeting electric tingle across his skin.

The bokkan recovered with surprising speed despite his injuries and swung his other blade toward Tenthil’s side.

Abella screamed Tenthil’s name, but her voice was cut off by a choked grunt.

Tenthil reversed his hold on his knife and stabbed downward. The blade punched through the bokkan’s hard skin with a crack; at the same instant, the bokkan’s energy blade struck Tenthil’s side. He grunted at the searing pain, but his own strike halted the blow before it went any deeper. Keeping his blaster low, Tenthil angled the barrel upward and fired two shots into the underside of the bokkan’s chin.

The plasma bolts burst out the top of the acolyte’s head. Deep cracks spread across the gray skin surrounding the wounds. The energy blade dropped to the ground, hissed against the concrete, and sputtered out.

Tugging his knife free, Tenthil shoved the bokkan aside and shifted his attention to Abella and the remaining acolyte. The black-garbed vorgal had dragged her several meters down the street, her struggles no match for his superior size and strength.

Tenthil charged forward.

The vorgal’s eyes widened when they fell upon Tenthil. He reached down and drew a knife from his belt, raising it toward Abella’s head.

Though already impossibly hot, Tenthil’s fury intensified. Before the vorgal could get his blade near Abella’s face, Tenthil straightened his arm and fired his blaster. The weapon made its high, punchy sound, and the plasma bolt zipped past Abella’s head, singeing a few strands of her hair, to strike the vorgal between the eyes.

Abella cried out in startlement. The vorgal’s arms dropped, his dagger clattered to the ground, and he sagged forward. She twisted aside, heaving his collapsing bulk away.

Tenthil slowed and turned his blaster toward the ilthurii, who was on her belly, dragging her limp legs and tail behind her as she crawled down the street. He shot her twice in the head before dropping his weapons into their holsters and rushing to Abella’s side.

He caught her arm in his hand, forcing her to turn and face him. Her fear-filled eyes were wide when they met his, and her body trembled. He grasped her shoulders and steadied her as he swept his gaze over her body from head to toe.

“Are you hurt?” he asked. At a glance, the only damage she’d suffered was some redness around her neck and a bit of burned hair, but not all wounds were readily apparent.

“N-No.” She looked down at his side. “But I saw you—”

“I’m fine,” he said, releasing his hold on her. His pain was distant; the shallow wound wasn’t bleeding—energy blades cauterized the injuries they caused. It would require some attention to heal properly, but there was no time for that now.

These were acolytes from the Order, and they’d targeted Abella—they’d attempted to take heralive.

“Tenthil, you’re not fine,” Abella said. “I... I saw him hit you!”

He stepped aside, slid off his backpack, and crouched over the vorgal. He transferred the dead acolyte’s ammunition and supplies into the bag and tugged the blaster from the vorgal’s holster before rising and striding to the ilthurii corpse to repeat the process. Only when he was about to move to the next body did he notice the device attached to the ilthurii’s wrist armor. After slinging the backpack over his shoulders, he lifted the acolyte’s limp arm and touched the control on the wrist device.

A holographic screen appeared, displaying a map of the surrounding area. There were five dots on the map—four green and one red. Tenthil’s brows fell as he flicked his gaze across the dead acolytes. Their positions corresponded with the green dots on the map.

He met Abella’s gaze. “Step back.”

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