Dark Matters - Michelle Diener Page 0,51
would be honored to have you.”
She sent him a sidelong look at that, very skeptical of the truth of it, but he seemed sincere enough.
“I'd be honored to go,” she said at last.
He nodded, his gaze going over her shoulder suddenly.
With an internal sigh, she took the last sip of grinabo, guessing it was Virn coming to say they were moving again.
They'd been traveling for three hours, not exactly inland, but to the west, with a slight inland trajectory.
It was deserted out here.
The Tecran really seemed to think the only address worth having was on the cliffs.
“Is it just the people who live in Fa'allen who are obsessed with the cliffs?” she asked. “Or are there different Tecran cultures on different parts of the planet who do things differently?”
“They're all like this.” Dray held out his cup for Virn to take, but the asshole didn't take it.
“Put it away yourself.”
The words were short, and Virn's featherlike hair was clumped together it was so wet.
She saw Dray nod and walk to the back of the hover, and it was only because she'd spent time watching him that she noticed the sudden stillness in him. The spike of anticipation.
He'd wanted an excuse to rummage in the storage hold of the hover. Virn had just given him one.
To give Dray a bit more time and less scrutiny, she turned, cup in both hands, and held it out imperiously.
“You can take mine. I'm done.”
Virn flicked the cup out of her hands and stomped on it.
It cracked audibly under his boot.
“Temper, temper.” She let her eyes laugh at him, even though she felt a frisson of fear.
He'd had time to think about what he'd been ordered to do. And the other members of his team had had a chance to express their frank views, none of them positive. He was starting to feel a little trapped by circumstances.
It was not completely out of the realm of possibility that he'd decide the easiest way out was to murder her and Dray and bury their bodies on this endless, foggy, forsaken moor that would have given even Heathcliff and Cathy pause.
“I won't put up with your disrespect.” Virn stomped on the cup again, so it broke into two pieces.
“You want to calm down.” Dray was suddenly back, standing beside her. “If all Tecran soldiers are as undisciplined as you, I'm sorry we didn't choose to go to war. We'd have won it in a heartbeat.”
He was drawing Virn's ire, making him focus his aggression on Dray, not her.
It settled something in her.
Because although she knew it was crazy, that no one from Earth could come save her, she had still felt abandoned.
She didn't even need someone to save her. She just needed someone to try.
He was trying.
Although she worried he was trying a little too well, and that he'd push Virn too far.
Virn reached out, grabbed the part of Dray's restraints that drooped between his wrist and jerked him forward. “I would watch what you--”
Something sent up a howl, a long, wavering note that rose her hackles and caused every hair on her arms to stand up. It seemed to be coming from somewhere close, although in the thick mist it was impossible to even tell the direction.
Virn dropped his hold on Dray. “Time to go.”
He moved to the hover, not wasting a moment, and the other members of his team moved just as fast, just as quietly.
She didn't argue. Even though she was dying of curiosity, she didn't ask what was making the noise. She jumped up and had to lean back against the back hoop for balance, because Virn didn't stop to retie her hands behind her, or even tie her on.
She felt a glimmer of hope despite the unsteady beat of her heart as the howl was joined by a second, and then a third.
Virn made mistakes when he was under pressure. She and Dray would need to keep sharp, wait for their chance. If they were patient, it would come.
The hovers rose and then shot through the swirling gray white, and she had to tighten her grip on the seat with her inner thighs. There was no way she was holding on to Virn himself.
In her head, she sang Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights.
It made a great soundtrack to the howls that were now behind them, and the fear she could sense from Virn.
She looked over to the hover Dray was on, saw he hadn't been tied on either.
They exchanged a look.
Yes. They would