Abducted Read online

  “Sarden,” he said, waving at me. “So good to see you again. I’ve come to transfer the credit to your account and take possession of my new collection. I hope you don’t mind—I brought some moving droids to do the heavy lifting.”

  “That’s fine.” I picked my way over to him through the medical equipment. “But don’t you want to examine everything first?”

  “I’ll take a look, of course. But the chip-drill and sensitivity tank are the two items I’m most interested in.” He stepped inside, followed by several lumbering moving droids, each with a shell on their backs capable of lifting and holding items weighing up to three metric tons. He would need them—the hold really was crammed full of the Assimilation equipment.

  “So…the tank?” He raised his eyebrows inquiringly. “Or would you like to show me the chip-drill first?”

  “The chip drill is this way.” I wanted to give the household droid a little more time to clean up the slime. We made our way around the perimeter of the room with Doloroso commenting delightedly from time to time over the “priceless collection” and “wonderfully preserved artifacts.”

  I was glad he liked what he saw—I wanted him to pay and get the hell out as soon as possible. My feeling from The Suck Hole had only grown stronger—though he was paying an exorbitant amount for the medical equipment and had been nothing but courteous, I didn’t like him. Not one damn bit.

  “All right, now where did I put it?” I looked on the shelf where I’d last seen the chip-drill but it wasn’t there.

  “Is there a problem?” Doloroso looked concerned.

  “No. It’s here somewhere, I know it is. I must have misplaced the damn thing.”

  Exasperated, I looked around—where in the Frozen Hells could the chip-drill be?

  “Ah-ha!” Doloroso said from behind me. “Here we are—it must have fallen and rolled—the bottom part is round, you know.”

  I turned to see the round blue bottom and twisting curved metal end of the drill at his feet. He was just bending over to pick it up when a familiar voice cried,

  “Stop!”

  “Well, well and who have we here?” Doloroso murmured, picking up the chip-drill by its round, bulbous blue end anyway.

  I turned to see Zoe standing in the doorway to the hold. She was wearing another one of my formal shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the black material made her pale, lovely face glow like a distant star. Her long curly hair was a wild mass of ruby red around her shoulders and her bare legs were both shapely and tempting.

  All in all she looked fucking gorgeous. I felt a surge of possessiveness fill my chest—I didn’t want Doloroso seeing her like this. Or at all, for that matter. Zoe, however, seemed oblivious to the way he was looking at her.

  “Really, get rid of that thing—you don’t want to touch it,” she said, gesturing to the chip-drill in Doloroso’s hand as she came forward. “It’s extremely dangerous. Look—see what it did to me?” She pointed to a long scratch across her cheekbone which I hadn’t noticed earlier. I would have to heal it for her later—if I didn’t kill her for disobeying orders first, that was.

  “I see. So this is your blood, my dear?” Doloroso asked, examining the end of the drill.

  “I’m lucky it wasn’t my eye,” she said. “Another inch to the side and it would have been. Just don’t get it too close to your face—it stabs out with no warning.”

  “Zoe,” I growled, feeling another surge of possessiveness fill me. “What are you doing here? I thought I told you to stay in your room.”

  “Well, I got hungry,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest which caused her creamy cleavage to become more prominent in the v-neck of the shirt. “So I was going to make something in the food-sim but just as I was passing by the hold—”

  “The food prep area isn’t anywhere near the hold,” I pointed out.

  “As I was passing by,” she went on, ignoring me pointedly. “I saw your, uh, friend here about to pick up that extremely dangerous stabby-stabby corkscrew thing. I was just trying to warn him—you don’t want him to lose an eye, do you?”

  “I assure you, my dear, I am quite safe. I collect antiquities and oddities like this for a living.” Doloroso gave her a greasy smile I didn’t like a bit and set the chip-drill down on the shelf to hold out his hand. “Might I know your name and planet of origin? It isn’t every day I meet such an enchanting creature.”

  “Oh, well…” Zoe gave him her hand—the one with the inhibitor on it—and I saw Doloroso look at it sharply though he made no remark about it. Instead, he bent over the back of her hand and kissed it wetly, as though he was a Gods-damned courier from the Court of the Divine Empress on Femme 1.

  “Charmed, I’m sure,” he murmured, looking up to smile at her as he licked his lips, almost as though he was tasting her skin.

  “Uh, thank you.” Zoe smiled uncertainly and took her hand back as soon as she could. I saw her surreptitiously wiping it on the side of my shirt when she was certain he wasn’t looking.

  “And you are from which world in our fair galaxy?” Doloroso asked.

  “From—”

  “Salex Prime,” I said quickly, before she could finish. “Not many people know it—it’s on a far arm on the other side of Femme 1.”

  “Ah—close to the court of the Empress. That would explain why you look so radiantly divine,” Count Doloroso said smoothly. “And tell me, how do you like life on Salex Prime?”

  “It’s, uh, nice,” Zoe said, frowning at me.

  “Very nice,” I said. “And now, if you’d like to see the tank, Count Doloroso…”

  “What?” Zoe interjected. “You’re going to let him get close to that thing? I nearly drowned in there!”

  “You were in the sensitivity tank today?” Doloroso gave her a sharp look. “Were you being tested?”

  “An incomplete test only,” I assured him. “And an accidental one at that. Zoe wandered out here to the hold—where she doesn’t belong…” I glared at her and she glared back. “And the sensu-pods apparently grabbed her and dragged her into the tank.”

  “Where they nearly drowned me,” she repeated stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest again. “So be really careful around it. In fact, if I were you, I wouldn’t even go near it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry my dear—it won’t hurt me.” Doloroso gave an irritating, tittering laugh. “But I would be most eager to hear what happened during your little, ah, attack.”

  I felt a jolt of possessive rage surge through me and had to fight to keep my features calm.

  “You know damn well what happens during sensitivity testing,” I growled. “There’s no need to ask her to rehash it for you.”

  “Ah—forgive me. I misspoke.” The Count made an elaborate bow of apology in Zoe’s direction. “What I meant to say was, I’d like to know the events that preceded the attack. The sensu-pods, you see, don’t normally reach out of the tank and take a subject of their own volition.”

  “Well, this time they did,” Zoe said, frowning. “One of them kissed me on the cheek—well, that was what it felt like anyway—my cut cheek, here…” She pointed to her wounded cheek again. “And then the next thing I knew, they were dragging me into their tank. Ugh!” She shivered.

  “So first the chip-drill stabbed out at you and cut your cheek and then the sensu-pods tasted you and liked you so much they pulled you in?”

  Doloroso’s eyes were bright for some reason and I really didn’t like the way he was looking at Zoe. There was a hungry, avid light in his shiny eyes that made my protective instincts kick into high gear.

  Mine, an angry voice whispered inside my head. He can’t look at her like that—she’s fucking mine.

  “Yes, I guess so. That’s pretty much what happened.” Zoe nodded.

  “But my dear, do you have any idea how extraordinary that is? What a unique specimen you must be for both the drill and the sensu-pods to react as they did to you?”