Page 28 of 20% Blood 80%
I knew D’alton liked me. He’d been sending me shy smiles for weeks and making us meals that resembled my favorite foods after taking the time to learn what they were. What had I done in return? Acted like a colossal jerk, totally ignoring him when he walked out of my pod, just because he’d called me strong and beautiful.
All I’d wanted was more of his lips, the heat of his embrace, the tingling in my groin when his fangs brushed my neck… But I always got in my own damn way.
Pack full of gear, I tapped my foot on the hovertube’s floor. Maybe he’d taken down a mantu and spent the night butchering it. But that didn’t feel right. “C, send me D’alton’s com link.” How had I never even asked him for his number?
At last, the door swooshed open, and I double-timed it up the staircase to level three and shouldered my way through the exit. Sand trickled through the gap as I wiggled through the narrow opening and then kicked away the berm of sand to jam it shut once more.
Wind lashed at my hair, so I twisted it into a braid before yanking a balaclava on and covering my eyes with goggles. “Fuck, it’s cold out here.”I rubbed my hands together and scrolled to the com link C had sent. When D’alton still hadn’t picked up after the third try, I put on warm gloves.Please let him be warm and cozy in front of a crackling fire, eating a giant-ass rare mantu steak.
The coordinates C had sent to my wristport flashed red, indicating the location of the hoverbay. I leaned into the wind and hurried toward the blinking dot. It had to be under all this sand somewhere. Through my goggles, I squinted at the twisted wreckage, spinning in a circle to assess the damage. My muscles tensed as I took in the three stories of plasmasteel that used to make up the above-surface portion of Thermal Station C. It now resembled half-melted candles.
How would Tern ever recover from this mammoth fuckup? All to study bacteria in the magma thatmightsave lives. Instead of saving people, they’d killed a fuck-ton of innocent workers. Who the hell authorized a project without the proper safety precautions in place? What a clusterfuck.
Half an hour of useless kicking at the sand later, I questioned the merits of my plan. A hoverbike would speed the search up, but if they were completely buried, I’d just have to go on foot. A gust of wind cleared the clouds for a moment, uncovering the sun beside the moon. The moon, God damn it! Why had I let D’alton leave? He needed blood before the moon.
Immediately, an image of D’alton leaped into my mind, his copper eyes dipping to his feet in defeat when he’d told me“The full moon’s coming, and I need blood. Fresh meat should help.” I’d been so preoccupied with the idea of him manipulating me for my body that I’d completely disregarded his plea for help. What if he died out here in this pink sandstorm? All alone.
My jaw and throat tightened until tears stung the corners of my eyes. It would be my damn fault. Why hadn’t I offered? Or even cared enough to ask what the hell happened if he didn’t get any?
“C?” I shouted into my wristport. “What happens if a Boola doesn’t get blood?”
“Sterling Peoples, Boola require blood on a monthly basis or when injured. The full moon drives the cycle. They can go a short period of time without blood, but they become singularly focused on finding a source, driven by their bloodlust. If no source is found they succumb to blood fever and their organs begin to deteriorate, eventually—”
“Stop!” I couldn’t take any more.
Think for a minute.I needed a shovel. When I’d changed the air filters, there had been a supply cupboard inside. Jogging to the utility chamber, I ducked inside, breathing a sigh of relief at the sight of a shovel leaning against the wall.
An hour later, chest heaving and sweat beading on my brow, my shovel hit metal. I prayed this wasn’t a giant waste of time. At long last, a door came into view, revealing a pad scanner. It dangled from its wires, but when I scanned my palm, the door clicked open. “Thank my lucky stars.”
The tension in my shoulders eased as I surveyed the room. Hoverbikes in all states of repair filled the floor. One corner of the ceiling had collapsed and sand had poured in, but other than that the room was remarkably intact.
On the third try, an engine hummed between my legs, and the thrusters lifted the hovercraft off the floor.Yes!I pumped my fist in the air, topped the bike up with a nearby fuel tank and tossed my gear into the sidecar compartment.
My headlamp lit up a reflective yellow rectangle painted in a cross-hatched pattern on the floor, and I eased the hoverbike closer. I hoped the yellow button dangling from a chain would open the bay door, but who knew what the hell would happen? I pressed it anyway.
The door mechanism groaned, straining under the weight of the sand, and the bay doors tilted and jammed.You’ve got to be kidding me.A river of sand hissed through the opening. The moon, framed in the crack where daylight streamed in, taunted me. I needed to hurry the fuck up.
After a cursory glance to assess whether the gap was big enough to fit the hoverbike through, I hit the accelerator. When my helmet skimmed the opening, I tucked my legs in and lowered the hoverbike a smidge, plastering my body to the chassis. Whatever it took, I was getting out of here on the back of this bike.
The foot pegs ground against the lower metal bay door, and the upper door scraped over the vertebrae in my back as I inched through the crack. I sucked in a breath, stomach glued to the bike, and held it. If the door above me collapsed under the weight of the sand, I would become the corpse serpent’s next meal.
A wondrous blast of cold air hit my face, and the bay door collapsed a moment later, shooting me forward and tearing off the rear wind fender. “Fuck, that was close.”
The wind knocked my idling hovercraft around like a ship in a storm, and I couldn’t see more than a meter in any direction. Frustration got the better of me, and I slammed my hand against the dashboard. How the hell would I find D’alton in this? On the dash, a loading screen circled for a moment, and my eyes widened beneath my goggles when a topo map appeared.
I shouted over the wind into my wristport, “C, is there anyway to link D’alton’s wristport to this map?” Where would I seek shelter if I were D’alton? I traced a couple of areas on the map, zooming in and out while cursing myself for not spending more time out of the station when I’d had the chance. A couple of low spots beside a huge drop-off that might be out of the wind had potential.
“Sterling Peoples, I’ve synced D’alton of Clan Lasting’s wristport tracker to your machine’s operating system. They have a limited range. You won’t be able to track him until you’re within five hundred meters.” She paused for a second. “Please be careful out there.”
“I’m getting him back, C, don’t you worry,” I shouted into the wind as I hit the thumb throttle and shot toward D’alton’s blinking green light.
Hang on, D’alton.
I’d been circling the same jagged black rocks for over an hour, slowly going out of my mind. The lack of progress was sucking steadily at my willpower. Retracing the tracker’s dots, I flew to the bottom of the cliff then slowly rose once more, spitting out the chalky tasting dust the sandstorm left hanging in the air. Hope rose at every nook and cranny, then plummeted when no sign of D’alton appeared.
I hovered beside the cliff’s edge, staring into the face of the full moon, dull orange and covered in blue swirls, racking my brain for ideas. If I’d just let him drink from me in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this situation. We’d be eating a delicious meal he’d created, followed by curling up in my bed watching another movie under the guise of him learning abouthumans. His gaze would have grown more and more intense, flicking toward my lips as the night wore on and our bodies gravitated toward each other.
But I’d always held back.
