Page 24 of Vicious
I jerked my head toward the door and turned to leave, hoping she’d follow. A moment later she did, and then closed the door behind her to dull thenoise.
“Are you okay.” She said it as a statement, not a question, as if she didn't really care but was asking to have something to say. Still, it was a bit strange that my okayness was the direction she’dchosen.
“Fine. Uh…” How to bring this up? By grabbing it by the rusted balls, I guessed. “I’m going to blackmail the Ringers if they don’t let us through to Mayvel, and I need yourhelp.”
She leaned against the door as the scowl she always wore morphed into a winged up eyebrow and a twitch on her mouth, if only for a second. “Myhelp?”
Curious how the whole blackmail thing didn’t seem to concernher.
“I need a Mind-I. There might be one in the engine room somewhere, but I need you not to tell anyone until I know for sure who I can’ttrust.”
She stayed silent for a long moment. “What makes you think you can trustme?”
“Well, you haven’t tried to kill me yet, so you have that going for you.” I shrugged. “You seemed to have been on Mase’s side during your bar brawl on Orin. What was that all aboutanyway?”
“I didn’t like the way everyone kept staring at my scales, so I decided to put them right in the bar patrons’ faces. And my fists. And the lasers in my stun gun. And some of the bar’sfurniture.”
“I see.” A warm feeling settled over me then, a mix of empathy for her at being ostracized for something she couldn’t control and pride for Mase at not letting that kind of thing slide. Good for him. Good for both ofthem.
She shook her head, the ends of her white-blonde ponytail swishing around her waist, and sighed. “Your friend Tits isn’t the only one who has a problem withscales.”
“His name is Randolph.” I crossed my arms over my two necklaced ice picks, mirroring her stance, both of the tips punching holes through my empathy. “NotTits.”
Her gaze narrowed. “I’ll try to remember that next time he’s judging me for my scales. I’m noSaelis.”
“Noted. So what are you?” I asked, repeating the question she’d asked me on our firstmeeting.
“I’m a Chameleos. My ancestors are the chameleon. We blend in to our surroundings. That’s how I helped you and your boyfriend hide onOrin.”
“Oh. I’ve read aboutchameleons.”
She stared at me a long while, then, “My ancestors are also theSaelis.”
Yeah, I’d already guessed that. I gave a slow nod. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t trustyou.”
“Some of my relations blew up your home planet and decimated a large chunk of your population. Do you trustthem?”
I opened my mouth, but realized the answer was more complex than a simple yes or no. They were our enemies, sure, but I couldn’t really blame them after what humans did to them first. The female ghosts I’d crossed through me had been terrified when the parasites in their bloodstreams dried up and they were no longer considered useful. They’d also helped me on more than one occasion aboard this ship. The Saelis’ course had always been direct—destroy all humans. It was the humans who had warped history with lies. So did I trust theSaelis?
“No,” I said. “But I don’t trust humanseither.”
“It’s funny in a way…” Poh searched the space over my shoulder, her large, yellow eyes unfocused. “I resemble a Saelis. You resemble ahuman.”
“Resemble?” I leaned into my heels as if her words had knocked me back. “Well…I don’t hear that everyday.”
“You don’tagree?”
I had never considered myself “other.” I’d always just been…me, with a metal diet that influenced my whole being and a terrifying gift I’d never asked for. So now that that thought had been planted in my head, that I wasn’t even a human, I could stew over what I really was, if what I was had an actual name. Good times. Thanks,Poh.
“All I know is the Black War started on this ship, and probably a hundred more ships like this one.” I took a breath and watched closely to see how well she handled this next bit. “Humans kidnapped the female Saelis to harvest the parasites that lived inside them, the same parasites used to power the Ringers’rings.”
Her eyes widened, and she shoved away from the door to stare down at me. “Consumectalons. That’s what powers therings?”
Consumectalons. Now I had a name for what was inside me. Ellison had never told me, and I’d never thought toask.
“They eat iron, as you probably already know, and when they consume it, a lot of it, they create this energy that’s powerful enough to bend space,” Isaid.
“Humans kidnappedallof the femaleSaelis?”
