Sienna, page 10
Finally fully shifted, she peered right then left again to ensure she was alone. She was only thankful for her residual Strazanian sight, which enabled her to see so much further than her human sight. All too soon that would fade and she’d be back to using her true human sight.
Pushing back to her feet, she waded out of the water and up the muddy, slippery bank, gasping as a sharp stone cut her foot before she finally made it to the large rocks and found her clothes, boots and rapier stashed beneath.
She got dressed quickly, thankful for her stretchy bodysuit, which immediately warmed her chilled skin and felt like a long lost part of her.
Much like Gray’s armor and boots fit him like they were a part of his body.
She frowned. She had to stop thinking about the man. Yes, they’d shared a bed and enjoyed each other’s bodies, but it didn’t make them a couple. She swallowed hard, something jagged cutting her insides at the sudden wishful thinking.
He was her enemy!
Withdrawing her rapier, she held its handle and swished the blade through the air, finding great comfort in the act. She mightn’t have her trusty star flyers anymore, but her rapier had been an amazing find, one she didn’t want to go without.
She pushed it into the concealed holster inside her pants, then cleaned the blood from the gash in her foot as best she could before pulling on her boots. Climbing up the riverbank and onto the grass, she sucked in a steadying breath, then headed toward the nearest train station.
Chapter Sixteen
Gray pulled himself out of the water, his damn wing too shredded to use effectively in the water. It was far better to take a moment and strategize about where Sienna might be going rather than to rely on his presently deformed wing to try and chase her down.
She’d clearly chosen the river in the hope she’d find a fellow rare in the water, which was their natural playground. But the river was huge and the chances of stumbling upon another Strazanian would be like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
With only two days to go she was grasping at straws and hoping against hope she’d find at least one more of her kind to inform them of the coming meeting.
He gave his wings a gentle shake, gritting his teeth against the deep, throbbing ache of the tear in one of them. His kind weren’t afraid of pain, but their wings were ultra-sensitive, a weak point on their body, much like a man’s testicles.
He resisted clapping a hand over his family jewels. They were fine. It was only lucky Sienna hadn’t discovered that his wings were also his weak spot or she might well have raked them with her nails or bit down on one of them with her sharp, pearly teeth.
A shiver that was as much excitement as it was imagined pain went through him. Anything concerning sex with Sienna made him lose his mind.
He climbed the bank and retraced his steps back to where he’d left his sweatpants, and where Sienna had left his T-shirt. Being that a hoodie helped to hide his striated hair and skin coloring, it was his clothing of choice, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He’d take what clothing options he could get.
It wasn’t until he was dressed and striding away from the river and toward the railway tracks that the click-clack notes of an incoming train caught his ear. His whole body tensed. Holy shit. Was it possible Sienna would return to what she knew and take the train again? It wasn’t like she could swim in the river forever.
He sprinted toward the station, instinct telling him he needed to catch the very next train. A sedan on a road running parallel to the tracks slowed, the driver gawking at Gray as he raced at full speed, faster than an Olympic sprinter. He only hoped the driver didn’t think to record him on his cellphone. At least his markings would be blurred.
Either way, he couldn’t worry about any of that now. He crossed the tracks, just ten yards in front of the incoming train. The driver blasted the air horn but Gray didn’t break stride. He jumped a small security fence along with some shrubbery, then raced toward the distant steps that led up to the concrete platform.
He made the platform with seconds to spare, the train slowing to a crawl until its carriages finally stopped. He glanced at the passengers on the platform, only then noticing Sienna as she alighted from the very last carriage with some other commuters.
Adrenaline rejuvenated him, flushing his entire body. He broke into a sprint, pushing people out the way as he raced after her. She turned back and looked at him through the crowd, her eyes wide. Then she pivoted and ran from him, dropping onto the stony ballast and sleepers behind the carriage, where she soon disappeared.
His pulse surged. Thanks to the safety feature of the platform there was a wall opposite. There was nowhere she could go...except up the same ladder he’d climbed earlier when he’d defeated the two Dronians.
Did she know how dangerous it was up on the roof once the train got going?
The train hissed as it released its brakes, the carriages rolling forward. He dropped onto the stony ground and lunged for the ladder, his hands gripping the bars, just as Sienna disappeared onto the carriage roof.
He scowled. Was she crazy? She’d get herself killed!
The train was building up real speed by the time he hoisted himself up and over, crouching low on the roof of the carriage even as he watched in horror as she stayed upright while balancing against the steadily increasing force of the wind.
At the overpass coming into sight ahead, he screamed at her, “Sienna, get down!”
She turned to face him, her hair whipping around her face. He threw himself onto his belly, but it was too late to do anything for Sienna except watch in stunned horror as the steel beam whacked her head. Bits of brain and blood splattered him and the roof, her decapitated body toppling off the edge of the carriage and disappearing out of sight.
“No!” he roared, even as the trained rolled under the overpass and continued on, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As though the Earth hadn’t just stopped rotating and his entire life hadn’t just ceased to have meaning.
He howled like the beast he wanted to become, his soul shattering and his heart imploding. Sienna couldn’t possibly be gone? She was his reason for being here, the motive for him taking the job in the first place.
He might have fooled himself into believing his world and his people were all he cared about, and of course that was more than enough reason to be here, but it’d been his obsession with Sienna’s holo-image and then seeing her in person that had made him accept the mission.
His shoulders curled inward, his spine bending even as he shook his head and muttered, “No. No, it can’t be, she can’t be gone.”
But the bloody splatters on his skin and all over the roof confirmed the truth. The Sienna he knew was no longer alive.
It’s your fault. She’s dead now because of you.
He looked at the townhouses whizzing past him either side as the train accelerated toward its next destination, and for a moment he contemplated joining Sienna in the spiritual plane and rolling off the side and giving into oblivion.
Then he saw a group of kids on skateboards at a park next to the tracks, a young teenage boy pointing at him in disbelief. A couple of the other boys glanced at Gray with wide stares. In a blink the skate park and kids were gone, more townhouses whizzing past before the train began to slow.
He was numb by that point, selfishly careless of what might now happen to his world, his people. How could he care when he felt nothing but deep, aching despair and loss?
Making his way back to the ladder, he climbed down it as the train decelerated and the platform came into view. It had all but stopped when he jumped off, scaled a fence, then walked despondently up some stairs and onto the platform, only absently noting the passengers exiting the carriages.
His lungs were too raw, too compressed to draw in air, his whole body trembling and his skin cold and clammy. He was going into shock. An aftereffect of losing the one woman in the world who’d been everything to him.
He was lost and alone.
Something made him look into the train windows, an uncanny sixth sense that somehow functioned despite his shutdown emotions. He froze as a familiar face stared back at him.
Sienna?
No, impossible.
He blinked, his brain operating like sludge and unable to accept the likelihood of her being alive. He shook his head. He’d damn well seen her die on the roof of the train!
Seen her die, or her duplicate?
He looked down at the splattered blood on his arms. But those same splatters had faded away, revealing the illusion along with it.
He surged through the crowd of day commuters, pushing through them and ignoring their savage curses and angry shouts. He had to get on the train. The doors were closing when he alighted, barely fitting between the closing gap. His breath heaving and his brain spinning, he tried to make sense of the unexplainable.
Sienna had tricked him!
The train moved forward, almost sending a little old lady off her feet as she hobbled along the carriage aisle, her frail body hunched over a walking stick. He caught her arm and helped to balance her as he led her to the nearest seat, her silvery hair that was caught up in a bun outlining her bright blue eyes. “Thank you, kindly. You’re a true gentleman. May your life be blessed.”
He smiled and squeezed one of her crêpey hands. “You’re welcome, madam. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
He stalked down the aisle with its crowded seats, Sienna nowhere to be seen. Had she pulled another disappearing act? She wouldn’t have had time to disembark, she’d still been in her seat when he’d sprinted for the carriage.
There were three seats with empty spaces next to a single passenger. He frowned, his stare roving over the three single commuters. Wouldn’t any one of them notice if the woman beside them suddenly disappeared?
Not if she used mind control.
He rubbed a hand over his temple, fighting off a dull ache that might soon become a significant headache. Little wonder with the trauma he’d endured. He might have been an assassin a long time ago, but it didn’t make him heartless. Sienna’s faked death had affected him deeply.
He stalked back down the aisle, sliding into the first empty seat next to a middle-aged, balding man in his business suit. The man looked out the window, studiously avoiding eye contact or having to make small talk.
That was fine by Gray. He left the empty seat and strode past three more sets of seats and onto the next empty aisle seat. A young, blonde woman looked at him, her blue eyes opening wide as he nodded and took the vacant seat next to her.
Fuck.
He was running out of options.
“I love your tatts,” the blonde said with a glint of interest in her stare.
He looked down at his striated arms. “Thanks. They’re a...work in progress.”
“They’re perfect just exactly how they are,” she purred.
He smiled, not even a little bit interested in the blonde’s attentiveness. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he murmured abstractedly, before he took to the aisle again to claim the last empty seat farther down.
Not that there was a whole lot of seat to claim. An obese man, his belly hanging out of his too-small white T-shirt, took up three quarters of the double seat, his thick thighs spread apart so that few people would feel welcome or want to share the space.
Gray stopped, the train click-clacking in a gentle swaying rhythm. “Is this seat taken?”
The obese man looked up at him, his fleshy top lip curling. “Does it look empty to you?”
“Is that a rhetorical question or are you asking to be offended?”
The man’s jowls quivered. “Move along, mate, find another seat.”
Gray shrugged. “Sorry, no can do.”
He swung into the narrow space available on the seat and landed on warm, feminine thighs. A barely audible gasp, which wouldn’t be heard by any human, filled his ear.
Got you!
He immediately pushed back onto his feet and stood in the aisle, grateful that Sienna wasn’t fighting back or trying to kill him in front of all these humans. It was bad enough that she was still invisible to him and every other passenger, which meant he’d look like a crazy man talking to thin air. “You’re coming with me.”
Her breath huffed out, and the obese man shuffled way over to his side of the seat, his eyes bulging as he replied, “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Gray looked at the other man, then lifted his hand and pressed a finger to his brow. “You don’t like my offer?” He snorted. “Would it help if I said I was diagnosed with mental issues?”
“It might explain some things,” the man said, pushing even further into the window seat.
Gray smirked as he reached for Sienna’s arm and drew her out of the seat and into the aisle with him, the obese man heaving out a relieved breath. Gray marched Sienna with him to the end of the carriage, then pushed through the single door into a small standing area where people entered and exited the carriage through nearby sliding doors.
The train wheels click-clacked louder out there, the coupler that held the carriages together intermittently squealing and shrieking as though in torment. He ignored it and focused on where he guessed Sienna’s eyes were. “We’re alone out here, you can make yourself visible now.”
Sienna reappeared, her gaze flashing. “Why can’t you just let me go?”
Sudden anger made his vision haze with red. “You made me believe you were dead.” His voice broke a little. “I watched your head disintegrate against the beam of an overpass!”
The train began slowing for the next station as she blinked up at him. “Why do you even care?” she asked softly.
He exploded, his emotions volatile. “Why do you think I damn well care? I have feelings for you, Sienna. I think I had them from the moment I saw your holo-image for my next potential mission.”
She gaped, her eyes glowing with green radiance, her bodysuit hugging her every gorgeous curve and her dark, mussed hair making him want to fold her in his arms and never let her go again. She tilted her chin. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“Of course I fucking mean it,” he growled.
The train pulled up and he automatically caught her arm as they swayed. The double doors slid apart and commuters stepped into the carriage before pushing through its single door and entering the seated area.
The old lady he’d helped earlier was making her way out, her walking stick clicking on the floor, when he added, “I know we’ve only been together for a short time, but I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime. I love you, Sienna.”
The elderly lady peered up at Sienna. “Aren’t you a lucky girl? If I were you I wouldn’t let this one get away.”
Sienna blinked at the silver-haired woman, who Gray then assisted out of the carriage and onto the platform. The doors were still open when the old lady walked slowly away and he turned to proffer Sienna a hand. “Stay with me, Sienna.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sienna had never been so tempted to do anything against her better judgement in all her life. But perhaps this was her one opportunity to do something for herself for a change, to be with a man who wasn’t ashamed to tell her how he felt and how much she meant to him.
That he meant so much to her too, wasn’t something she was ready to tell him, not just yet. A piece of her was still too detached, too untrusting, to make that final leap.
What if he was lying? No. Not even an assassin, a killer, who was now a bounty hunter profiting from those people who only wanted to be free—like her—could lie that easily.
As much as she hated to admit it, Gray might actually keep her safe. His house alone was set up so that no Dronians could detect her. She bit into her bottom lip, all too aware the train doors were about to shut. “On one condition,” she finally replied.
“Name it.”
“I want to know that Nero is still alive.”
She didn’t even care about finding the rest of the rares. With any luck, they already knew about the coming meeting. She wasn’t the only Strazanian who was able to pass on the news.
“Done.”
She nodded, then reached for his hand. The doors hissed as they began to close, and he jerked her toward him so that she flew through the air and landed in his arms. He looked down at her, his eyes glistening with emotion, then his head swooped low and he kissed her as though he’d die without possessing her lips one more time.
She sighed into his mouth, her every instinct telling her she’d done the right thing. She belonged with this alien male. They belonged together.
He pulled back, then pivoted and strode along the concrete platform, passing the little old lady who cackled with delight at seeing Gray carrying her in his arms. She glanced at the windows of the carriages, the obese man she’d been huddled next to, the one and same she’d managed to manipulate into believing she wasn’t there, staring open-mouthed at Gray and the woman in his arms.
Then the train moved past them, carrying the obese man and the rest of its passengers away from the station and out of sight.
The sun was high in the sky by the time she and Gray finally stopped at the corner of a suburban block, where Nero’s old house sat. She winced, the cut on her foot worsening as she lay on her belly behind some shrubbery with Gray, hiding from prying eyes. It was only lucky humans were too busy going about their lives to notice anything out of the ordinary.
They waited for a couple of hours, long enough to know there was no movement from inside the house, no one coming or going.
“This isn’t good,” she muttered. “Nero works at night, he’s almost always home during the day.”
“Unless he considers his place unsafe now.” He frowned. “In which case, we shouldn’t be here, either.”
“You think Dronians might be watching his place too?”
He nodded. “If they’ve been mostly focused on eliminating him first, then yes, without a doubt.”
She resisted hitting the ground with her fist. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy?
