Page 10 of Vicious
My lungs pinched together when I glanced up into a glassy pair of dark blue eyes, the centers of which appeared cracked like plastic. White starbursts webbed through the blue irises and seemed to darken the pupils into black holes. The strange eyes belonged to a giant of a man with a bald head and alabaster skin. The four men at his sides wore guns within easy reach, and the white energy sizzled across their eyes in erratic pulses. One of them thrust a tablet at me. A color photo of Mase staredback.
I blanked my face while my thoughts rioted. Feozva’s hell, we had to get out ofhere.
“You need to tell me if you’ve seen him around here,” the man with the cracked eyes growled, but his voice didn’t sound human. The words scraped out of him like gears grinding over petrifiedbones.
My mouth pinched tight automatically at his order, and he seemed to zero in on it as if waiting for a lie to spill out. Or reading my body language to see if my actions matched my answer. I had a strange feeling he didn’t miss much. But I’d acted my way aboard theVicioussomewhat well, enough to convince a distracted crew I was a fourteen-year-old boy. I could get us out of thistoo.
I steeled my spine, examined the picture of the face I knew so well, then flicked my gaze up to meet his. “Never seenhim.”
He gazed at me for several more heartbeats as if telepathically splitting open my skull to peer inside. Then he shoved past me with a hand as pale as hisface.
Randolph stepped in as if from out of nowhere, his face unnaturally calm, and pointed at Mase’s picture. “Mind if I see that?” Without permission, he plucked the tablet with the picture away from the other man’s hands. “Oh, yeah, I’ve seenhim.”
I ticked my gaze to Randolph and willed him to shut the fuck up. What the hell was hedoing?
“He was standing over by the river bean stand about five minutes ago.” Randolph pointed vaguely behind him. “I noticed him because he needs a haircut. Bad. Said he was going to stock up on milk after he was done because he drank all of it. If you hurry, you can probably catch up tohim.”
Somehow, he kept the venom out of his voice even though the ambiguous accusation was still there, even though now wasnotthetime.
“Find him,” the cracked, pale man who had to be Parker said to hiscronies.
The four of them swept past the fruit tent while Parker loomed over me as if he could hear all my truths behind my thrashingheartbeat.
“Until we meet again,” he said, his voice like a grindedthreat.
“We’ll look forward to it,” Randolphsaid.
Rustedballs. I nudged my foot forward and stepped on the back of Randolph’sheel.
He cleared his throat. “What I meant to say was good luck rounding that fellow up. I’m sure he deservesit.”
Parker eyed us both before stompingoff.
“We’ll look forward to it?” Ihissed.
Randolph’s eyes widened, and he held up his hands. “I don’t speak drug baron. They’re going in the opposite direction as we need to go, right? I did Mase afavor.”
“Listen to me.” I held to his vest, desperation tightening my grip. We had minutes before Parker doubled back, if that, and we were still scattered all over the planet minus most of what we needed. “You get what you have there and the table, and I’ll get everythingelse.”
“What?Everything?”
“Meet me back at the ship.” I wrapped my arms around his bulk and pressed my cheek to his chest as I lifted the ship’s key from his pocket. “Head down, Randolph,” I said on a wobble, and then I shot out ofthere.
Elbows flying, I sailed through the crowd as fast as I could. I snatched up meats I didn't recognize the names of that weighed as much as I did. An unattended wheelbarrow sat between two tents, so I dumped everything into it and claimed it as mine. After piling a variety of breads on top, I spied a tent filled with clothing. And corsets, some of which made my mouth water and not just because they were decorated with metal. Since the credits on Nesbit’s currency card were being eaten up fast, I quickly settled for a pair of leather pants and a cheap corset, though I wanted every single one of them because I had corset dreams andgoals.
While I wheeled everything toward theVicious, I twisted around to see if I could spot Randolph in the lively marketplace. No orange vestanywhere.
With his phone pressed to my ear, I tried Mase, the captain, and Ellison. After the thirtieth ring on Ellison’s number, I finally gave up. Why was nobodyanswering?
When I made it to the ship, sweat poured from my hood-covered hair and stung my eyes. I'd forgotten how hot my hair and chains were, especially bundled under a thick sweatshirt in the poundingsun.
The wheelbarrow was so heavy that it kept rolling backward down the ship’s ramp and even tipped halfway over before I shoved it upright again. Once it was safely locked inside the ship, I headed toward the squat red buildings in the distance at full speed. They shaded the cobblestone roads, so I kept to the shadows to cool my skin. The roads branching off from the main one were narrow, about enough space between buildings for two side-by-side people. More buildings sprang up at the ends of those paths, red stone with bright bluedoors.
The few people and aliens who wandered here had hoods drawn over their faces, too, as if this whole part of the planet was shifty. Some leaned against walls, peering out with unseen faces at those whopassed.
With no idea where I was headed and no time to get there, I stuck to the main road. Large trucks lined one side, and both people and a variety of aliens worked together to heft large wooden crates inside them. Standing between two trucks were an olive-skinned man and a stocky black man wearing all black, his arms crossed over his chest. CaptainGlenn.
I strode toward him for help to speed our exit off this Feozva-forsaken planet, but a large, black-hooded figure pushed away from a building as soon as I passed. His—maybe a his—footsteps thudded against the cobblestone road behind me in time withmine.
