Page 6 of Only Cold Depths
“Here we are,” Rina drawled. “Home sweet home.”
She’d stopped in front of a metal gate at the end of a deserted street. Rina punched in a code on a keypad, and the gate rattled back. She stepped through to the other side, and the other bounty hunters shepherded me forward.
Like the marketplace, this area was also a large square, but instead of booths and trinkets, rusty transports and broken engines filled the space, and buckets of nails, bolts, and screws glinted like metallic diamonds in the noon sun. Tumbleweeds of snarled wires listed back and forth in the breeze, and the scents of machine oil and smoky exhaust greased and clouded the humid air.
Despite the danger, I perked up. Most people would have called it a junkyard, but to me, it was a trove of treasures just waiting to be discovered—and potential weapons I could rig together to escape.
“This way,” Rina called out, heading deeper into the junkyard.
We went down one aisle after another, moving past busted machines and castoff pieces that were jammed together like a jigsaw puzzle and piled higher than my head. The bright Tropics sun reflected off all the metal, making the junkyard as hot as a Quill Corp smelter.
Rina skirted around a low concrete building in the center of the junkyard and headed to the back side of the structure. Here the transports and engines had been pushed to the sides to make way for a crude landing pad, and a small blitzer was parked on the hard-packed dirt, close to a dilapidated Regal carriage that squatted on a tower of cracked blocks instead of wheels, like a ragged wooden queen perched on a crumbling cement throne.
Unlike everything else, the blitzer was in excellent condition, and the cargo-bay ramp was lowered, as if it was just waiting for passengers to board.
Rina spun around and held her arms out wide like a salesperson showing off a brand-new spaceship on a factory floor. “Welcome to your new home, Lady Vesper. This is my blitzer, theTempest. I’m sure it’s notnearlyas big and fancy as whatever Regal ship you’ve been traveling on, but you won’t have to suffer our cramped accommodations too long. My ship will have you back on Corios in a few days.”
Dread punched into my heart. My seer magic surged up again, and the image of another blitzer shimmered in the air—Pretty Boy, Zane’s ship. My brother had taken me back to Corios, the Imperium’s home planet, so that Callus Holloway could tap into my truebond with Kyrion. Even now, all these weeks later, I could still feel the greedy siphon’s power blasting over me like hundreds of robotic needles stabbing deep into my body, then abruptly, painfully retracting and sucking out my magic, along with my life.
I shuddered and shoved the memory away. The second ship vanished, leaving only theTempest. Dread punched into my heart again, although it was quickly drowned out by my pounding anger.
“I’m not going back to Corios. And unless you release me right now, you and your men won’t be going anywhere but into the great beyond.”
Rina laughed at my threat. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had the pleasure of getting Regal blood on my hands. Normally, I would give you a sporting chance to get the better of me, but I’m in a rush.”
I suppose I wanted to give you and Kyrion a sporting chance.Zane’s voice drifted through my mind.
Even more anger pounded through my body. My arrogant jackass of a brother had said that was the reason he’d slowed down Adria and Dargan Byrne when the three Arrows had been hunting me. Well, I didn’t need anyone to give me a sporting chance. I was more than capable of making my own luck.
My fingers tightened around the straps of the shopping bag still hanging from my shoulder. The bounty hunters hadn’t bothered to search me, and my stormsword was still hidden inside the cloth—
A silver light flared around Rina. The brief flash of my magic was the only warning I had before the bounty hunter swung her fist at my face.
She was probably trying to knock me out with one quick, decisive blow, but I whipped to the side, and her punch plowed into my right shoulder instead of my jaw. Pain erupted in my upper arm, radiating down past my elbow. I staggered back, and the shopping bag slipped off my shoulder and dropped to the ground.
Blast it. That hadhurt. Rina must have strength and speed enhancements just like so many of the other bounty hunters Kyrion and I had dodged over the last few weeks.
I shook out my arm, waiting for the pain to die down. Rina grinned and raised her fist for another strike—
“I told younotto damage her,” a cool, light, feminine voice cut in.
Rina whirled around, as did the four male bounty hunters. I also turned around.
Two more people now stood in the junkyard. Like Rina and her men, the two newcomers looked to be in their late thirties, the same as me.
The first was a tall man with dark blond hair, dark brown eyes, and ruddy skin. His biceps and thigh muscles bulged against his tight gray tactical shirt and cargo pants, and his broad shoulders and sculpted chest made him look like he was carved from solid stone. He was clutching a long, oversize hammer in each hand, with the heads pointing down at the ground, and he idly swung the hammers back and forth and back and forth, like they were the hands of an enormous clock counting down the seconds until he could use the weapons.
The hilts of the hammers were gold, but the actual weapons were crafted from lunarium, a precious mineral that could enhance psionic abilities and transform them into physical elements like fire, ice, lightning, and wind. Even more curious was the shape of the hammers. One side of each weapon was flat, like a regular hammer, and lined with jagged teeth like a saw, while the opposite side featured a large, sharp spike. All the edges glinted with a razor-sharp sheen. Not regular hammers—war hammers, instruments of death and destruction.
The second person was the woman with wavy, shoulder-length, dark red hair who had bumped into me in the marketplace. She was still wearing that long red cloak, and the garment ebbed and flowed around her like a scarlet wave. Given her confident stance, I got the sense the woman wore the cloak because she wanted to, not because she’d been trying to hide her clothes like I had been.
The woman’s skin was pale, but her eyes were a deep, dark green studded with bright flecks of gold. Just like the man, she too was dressed in a gray tactical shirt and cargo pants, but her clothes were much finer and embellished with green ribbons and gold buttons. A dagger with a gold hilt and a long, curved lunarium blade hung from her belt.
The four male bounty hunters tensed, their hands tightening around the blasters still in their hands.
Rina wet her lips, then stepped forward, held her arms out wide, and plastered a bright smile on her face. “Esmina! I was just getting ready to signal you.”
Esmina tilted her head to the side like a Tropics tiger lazily studying its prey right before ripping it to shreds. My seer magic erupted like a Magma volcano, and a blaze of silver light flared around the other woman, gilding her from head to toe. I winced against the harsh glare, quickly blinking it away, but a telltale chill slithered down my spine. Rina and her bounty hunters might be dangerous, but Esmina was the true threat here.
