Hope: Home World Book Three An Epic Space Opera by Bonnie Milani

Author:Bonnie Milani [Milani, Bonnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

The screams faded into a watery gurgle. Or maybe it was just his imagination, inspired by the dulling throb in his skull. Jezekiah forced his mind through the pounding ache to logic. The screams couldn’t be his; his throat was too constricted to scream. The gurgle – he pulled in a breath, decided with relief that wasn’t his, either. He pried his eyes open. Didn’t help. He couldn’t see anything beyond the knuckles of his hand. At the moment, he hurt too much to even be sure his hand was still connected to his body. But he managed to recognize the gurgle – it came from the garden’s water fountain. And the smell. The grass near his face stank of fresh blood and worse. The smell cleared his head, got him thinking again. Someplace beyond his feet heavy thumps punctuated screams that were dwindling to whimpers. Maybe the Admiral had come back? Sounded like a squad of Samurai was giving the Aryans a taste of their own.

Now there was a comforting thought. Then hands yanked him up. His captor locked a steel-tipped hand around his neck and shook him hard enough to rattle his brain.

Jezekiah slammed an elbow backward into his captor’s chest. The impact shot white agony up his arm.

“Don’t give me any more reasons to kill you, Van Buren.”

“Strongarm?” The flash of hope died with the rest of the sentence as the Lupan lifted Jezekiah by the throat. Pinpoints of pain dug into his throat beneath the man’s talons.

Strongarm twisted Jezekiah around so he dangled face to face in the Lupan’s grip. Arm’s length, yet Jezekiah could smell the blood on the Lupan’s breath. A set of fairy brights wandered over. Their dainty light danced across the blood and worse matting the patches of silver hair on Strongarm’s chest and mane.

“Where’s Bird, Van Buren?” Strongarm relaxed his grip enough to allow Jezekiah to speak without tearing his Adam’s apple out.

“If I knew, I’d be there.”

“Don’t push me. Not now.” Strongarm jerked him closer, fangs bared. But his nose twitched, testing. He uhfed, finally, in disgust and tossed Jezekiah aside.

The move bounced Jezekiah off the Sec skimmer’s hull. Wand-bruised nerves shrieked at the impact, leaving him pain-blind again. He tripped over a lump and fell face first onto something that was not grass. The stink of voided bowels told him even before he blinked sight back that he’d landed on a corpse. He recognized the dead face staring back at him as one of the Aryan guards he’d seen lounging here by the skimmer.

Explained why the two skimmer guards had looked wrong: the Aryan’s head was bent at right angles. He scrambled away from it, used the skimmer wall to push himself upright. Still, the stink helped clear his head, get his mind working again. Raised questions, too. “When did you get here?”

“About the same time as these cowards.” Strongarm stepped across another body and strode for the garden fountain.

“You mean you watched them?”

“With satisfaction.” Strongarm perked an unapologetic ear back at him.

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