Guarded by the Kraken: Monster Security Agency by Cassie Alexander

Author:Cassie Alexander [Alexander, Cassie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Caskara Press
Published: 2024-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 31

CEPHARIUS

“You only think lights are good because that is your air-part, thinking,” I told her, carrying her back to the spaceship slowly. “Down here, lights are dangerous.”

“Lures. I know,” she said. “I’ll be careful.”

“I will make you be,” I muttered, and heard her laugh in response. She’d heard my thought, I’d forgotten we were close. “I am sorry—I will leave.”

Her panic was instantaneous. “No—don’t,” she said. “You’re already in my mind. Might as well make yourself at home. And maybe I could use your help helping me think on things? You indexed the whole Predator thing last night pretty fast.”

All I wanted to think about right now was leaving. But if I could not—this was second best. “As long as I am not hurting you anymore.”

“You’re not. I promise. And I’d let you know.” Her hand grabbed mine and squeezed it as we came upon the structure.

I lifted both of us up a safe distance away from the entrance that’d appeared in the ships side, without going near it, so that she could see what I had seen—four people in suits just like hers, clearly dead, floating around inside—and when I put her back down, I made sure to stay between her and the stairway’s first step.

“Did they all come from the station?” she asked, and then looked around. “Where are their umbilical cables?”

“The other humans back there are not telling you everything,” I warned her.

“Yeah. I’d noticed.”

She was pacing in one of her thoughtful circles again, and all that was in me wanted to whisk her away.

“Okay, so,” she said, coming to a quick decision. “I want to see inside again.” I moved to pick her up, and she said “Nuh-uh” and moved around me to take a step up the stairs.

I gasped. “Elle of the Air, what are you doing?”

“They died inside the ship, Ceph. I’m not going in, I’m just going high enough to take my own peek.”

I was aghast. “But there are dead bodies!”

And that made her laugh for some reason. “Do you know how many dead bodies I’ve seen before?” she said—and it did seem like a lot of them, between her truths and fictions. She brushed around me, putting her boot on the next step up. “I mean, usually they’re not juicy, but I’m not afraid of some skin and bones.”

I hovered behind her, and had two lower-arms wrapped mere inches front of her, ready to pick her up at the slightest provocation.

At the least, she wasn’t dying without me—I would follow her immediately.

I did not want to live alone.

Then she stopped. “Haberman,” she whispered.

It was a word I didn’t recognize. “What is that?”

“Who,” she corrected, pointing up. “He was a friend. And he must’ve been the first person they convinced to come out here.”

“Do you recognize the rest of them?”

“No,” she said, but I could feel her thinking. “But some of them are carrying amphibious rifles.” I pressed my disbelief at her and she continued. “I’ve been in some sketchy parts of the world before, Ceph.

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