Mechanical Hearts (Skeleton Key) by Nicole Blanchard & Skeleton Key

Author:Nicole Blanchard & Skeleton Key [Blanchard, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2016-06-13T18:30:00+00:00

“Take off your pants,” Ezra said.

“I don’t think so, buddy.” My brain may have been fuzzy with exhaustion and my body may have been numb with cold, but I hadn’t lost my good sense. Yet.

“If you don’t want to die,” he explained as he tugged at the button on my pants, “then you need to warm up. Staying in these wet clothes is guaranteed to kill you.”

There wasn’t much room in the small pod for me to move around let alone undress. “I can barely move,” I admitted. “My fingers feel numb.”

He muttered a curse underneath his breath. With quick fingers and efficient motions, he undid the clasp at my waist and worked my pants down my legs. He undid the knots on my boots, pulled them off along with my socks, then tugged my pants the rest of the way off. It felt better to not be surrounded by the freezing material, but the hell if I was going to admit it.

The interior of the pod was cramped. There was barely room for his long-limbed body, let alone the addition of mine, but what it was good for was heat. The small space warmed quickly. The tingling in my extremities grew more painful.

“It’ll pass. Here,” he said, and then his hands were on my legs, rubbing and massaging the life back into them.

My response strangled in my throat. “W-What are you doing?”

“Warming you up,” he said all too simply.

“Right,” I said. Because what else was I supposed to say? “Don’t you need to drive this thing?”

“Auto-pilot,” he said.

“Where exactly are we going?” My voice turned out to be much scratchier than I would have liked it to be, so I cleared my throat. “Back to Arliss?”

He studied a readout on the dash as he massaged my legs absently. “No, we’d never make it in this heap. There are some test capsules along this way, so I hope we can find one before we run out of juice or run into more assassins.”

My limbs and eyelids were heavy. “Other ports like the one you mentioned before?”

“Hmm? No, these were abandoned ages ago, but at least it’ll provide some protection for the night until we can figure out a way to signal a passing ship.”

I must have fallen asleep because the next parts were hazy. I remembered bursts of light and vibrations. For a while, I thought maybe Port Arliss and Ezra were all a dream and I was still caught in the storm. The thought ignited an intense ache in my chest and pulled me from the darkness.

The pod spun wildly out of control. Lights flashed and Ezra cursed above the sound of sirens, but there was something different about it: his voice was faint.

I glanced back at him and gasped. There was a deep gash on his forehead that I didn’t notice before. His eyes were heavily lidded, and he blinked rapidly to keep the blood from dripping past his lashes.

“You’re gonna have to take the wheel,” he said. He nodded toward his hands, releasing when mine took position.

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