Page 53 of Vicious
She doubled over to look me in the eye. “You go back there into the fray, you die. You, here, is keeping youalive.”
“Are you turning me in or not?” Idemanded.
She stood straight again and glanced at the shoulder I’d stabbed through her brown duster. “Are you going to stab or hit meagain?”
“If you deserve it, yes. Now, answer myquestion.”
Another gunshot sounded, muffled yet still close enough to jump me out of my skin. Panic ripped down my throat and scrambled my senses. I dug my fingers into the floor, desperation curling them intoclaws.
Poh ticked her gaze in the direction we’d just come. “Right now, I’m savingyou.”
“I can’t leave them. My sister. Mase. None of them.Poh.” I swallowed, my throat ticking in time with my pounding heart. “I’mpregnant.”
Her gaze snapped to mine, drilling into my thoughts to see if it was true. She backed away, her pale lips curling back to reveal her fangs. Her shoulders heaved, and for a moment I thought I saw tears well in her yelloweyes.
“The truth, Poh,” I said. “I need the truth before I go one stepfarther.”
She blinked down at my legs sprawled on the floor and took an unsteady breath. “I was hired to assassinateyou.”
The admission swept the air from my lungs, but I hissed through it. “Then why didn’tyou?”
“I did,” she growled back. “I had Mind-I video confirmation and everything of me killing thedoppelganger.”
Who had looked likeme.
“Who hired you?” I demanded. “The same people who hired thedoppelganger?”
She flicked her yellow gaze to my face. “TheSaelis.”
Rusted balls, this was heavy. The Saelis had wiped out an entire planet. What made them think a nineteen year old with questionable kleptomaniacal morals and even more questionable headspace could prevent them from doing it again? What did they know that I didn’t? Why did I matter when they were going to slaughter the rest of humanityanyway?
“The Saelis knew they wouldn’t need to hire anyone else to get the job done, correctly, not like the messy deaths of your copies, which I can only assume was the Ringers’ doing,” she continued. “The Saelis told me you would likely be near a scarred, blond man coming from the direction of The Black. Turns out they wereright.”
“Then why am I still alive?” Iasked.
Poh glanced away, a wince rolling across her pale features. “Because my priorities shifted. You’ve been touched by a higher power, and keeping you alive seems more important. Your sister knew that. The entireViciouscrew knew that. And…I do too. If I kill you, I’ll be messing with something far greater than any of us, and I just won’t doit.”
Keep Absidy alive. But it wasn’t fair that my life was deemed more important than anyone else’s. Not Ellison with her well-deep love for her freaky little sister. Or Mase with his inner and outer beauty, scars and all. Not Captain Glenn with his dreams to see his family again. Why me and not them? But the answer boiled to the top, thick aspoison.
I wasother, a ghost magnet mutant with scales. And I couldn’t changethat.
“How can I trust anything you say?” Iasked.
“How can you not?” Poh bent over me and offered me her hand, her gaze sincere. “You come with me, I’ll get us through the rings. Or don’t. Yourchoice.”
I chomped down on the inside of my cheek to keep from crumbling into a useless mess. My choices sank terror into my soul far deeper than any ghost ever could—the people I loved with every piece of my heart or the future, however rickety itwas.
Praying to Feozva for forgiveness, I took Poh’s outstretched hand, sealing myfate.
16
Parker’s shipwas larger than theVicious, sleeker, and much more modern. The smell of fresh paint followed us deeper into its halls, the marble-looking floor springing underneath with each quick step. Poh aimed the Mind-I at the wall to watch our progress on this ship’s map. Two red dots drew closer to another—the pilot, the only other soul here. It didn’t take long to find which doors led to the cockpit, or bridge on fancy ships, especially sinceBridgewas stamped on the door in freshly painted, centeredletters.
Poh lifted her fist, her gun gripped tight in her other hand, and slammed the dooropen.
The pilot whirled around from his position in front of the starlit expanse outside the window screen. He wore a blue handkerchief to hold his long, dark hair back from his face, and his scraggly, short beard crawled down the front of his high-collared shirt, which was decorated with a picture of white and blue lightning shaped into a sexual pose. She and He. His eyes crackled incessantly with the white drug, so much so that I couldn’t discern his true eyecolor.
“What the fuck? Who are you?” heasked.
