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  The T’varri measured her with his eyes.

  “Why is every ring miner this side of the galaxy about to descend on the rings? Because there’s a fortune to be made, of course. And because Verrai and his squad cleaned out the nest of pirates on Chndra.”

  “So we heard,” I said. “Just didn’t know if we could believe it.”

  “Oh, you can believe it. They brought back footage—saw vids of the bodies myself.” He nodded and took another sip of ale.

  “And the Widow?” I asked. “What about her?”

  The T’varri shrugged. “Nobody knows. Her control station is quiet—nobody goes in, nobody goes out. That’s why everyone’s been holding back. But now that the Gold Skins proved you can get in and out with no problem—even if you kill the Widow’s pet pirates—I’m thinking a Hell of a lot of miners are about to follow.”

  “You could be right.” I knew for sure I was going in. Teeny had to be on the small moon, Chndra somewhere. The Net being down and Verrai’s squad killing the pirates made my job a hell of a lot easier but it also made me nervous.

  It seemed…too easy somehow.

  “Wasn’t the head pirate who was killed a, uh, T’varri?” The name sounded exotic on Leah’s tongue. “Like you?” she asked the T’varri timidly. “I mean, did you know him?”

  “Who—Arn?” The T’varri laughed, eyeing her again in a way I didn’t like. “That son of a motherless grondag had it coming.”

  “How so?” Leah asked.

  The T’varri frowned. “He wasn’t honorable in his dealings. That’s the problem with pirates—they got no fucking values. Word was, he’d kidnapped an innocent female and was holding her against her will.”

  My heart thumped in my chest at the indirect mention of Teeny but I tried to keep my face blank.

  “Is that right? Any word on what he did with her?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I heard—I only know he took her.” He frowned. “It’s shameful to take a female without a contract like that.”

  “A contract?” Leah raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

  I cleared my throat. “The T’varri sign a binding and legal contract with a female before they bond her to them. It spells out exactly what they’re willing to do.”

  “To do?” Leah frowned.

  “Sexually.” The T’varri’s voice dropped a note and he eyed her again, his live tattoos writhing with interest. “We demand that a female submit to us completely but only within the confines of the contract. To take a female without establishing her limits and learning her sig`nal is shameful.”

  “Seen-yahl? What’s that?” Leah asked.

  “When love play grows rough, as it so often does with my kind, the female must have a word they can give that will stop their male from continuing,” he explained. “It keeps things from…going too far.”

  “Oh, I see.” Leah’s face got a little paler and she took a step closer to me. “Like a safe word.”

  “Enough about that,” I growled. I was tired of discussing the depraved sexual practices of the T’varri and doubly tired of the way this one was eyeing my female, which was definitely how I thought of Leah, even though we weren’t bonded.

  “Suit yourself. I was just explaining.” He shrugged and took another drink of the bright blue ale. “So, are you going to the rings? Got a stake in a mining operation? I didn’t think Braxians went in for that kind of thing.”

  “Not mining exactly.” I thought about hiring him…and then decided against it. If the pirates were dead—and it seemed certain they were—I would have no need of mercs to watch Leah’s back while I went after them. We could concentrate all our time on the search for Teeny.

  “Well, if there’s nothing else, I do have a stake to claim.” The T’varri rose, scraping his chair back against the metal floor.

  “That’s all,” I said. “Thank you for your candor.” I offered him a warrior’s clasp and after a moment he took it, gripping my forearm tightly.

  “May you find what you are seeking,” he said formally. And then, with a look at Leah, “Though it seems to me you’ve already found it.”

  “Thanks,” I said shortly, releasing my grip. “May the Goddess go with you.”

  “Oh, she wouldn’t have me.” He gave me a dark grin. “But thank you anyway, brother. And thanks for the ale.” He looked like he might say something else to Leah but a look at my face changed his mind. He simply nodded and left.

  “Whew…” Leah blew out a breath and looked up at me. “Now what?”

  “Now,” I said. “We go find Teeny.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Leah

  “She’s not here. I swear by the Goddess of Mercy I’ve searched every-fuckin’-where I could think of and I can’t find her anywhere,” Grav growled, sounding extremely upset.

  I couldn’t blame him. We’d been searching for hours and had turned the pirate’s compound upside down but we hadn’t been able to find Grav’s little ward anywhere.

  The compound itself was a large, split-level building set in the middle of a scorching blue desert. There was sand swirled everywhere in drifts and dunes and all of it was different shades of blue from the palest sky-blue to the deepest shade of midnight. I didn’t know how the different shades stayed together instead of mixing to form one single multicolored-hue, but somehow they didn’t.

  The different shades swirled around each other without ever mixing, making me think of waves in an ocean or clouds in the sky. Since the sky was a light tan, it made me feel like I was caught in an upside-down beach where everything had been reversed.

  Outside, to the right of the compound, the Imperial Guards had stacked the bodies of the pirates they had killed. I tried not to look at the grisly sight but it was hard—my eyes kept wanting to wander back to those bodies stacked like so much cordwood in the shifting blue sands.

  Though it couldn’t have been long since they had been killed, the desert was already beginning to dry them out. Some of them even had gray faces and lipless mouths that had drawn back to reveal black gums and yellow teeth.

  “Don’t look, darlin’,” Grav muttered, seeing where my gaze was going. “It’s not a sight a female like you oughta have to see.”

  “I was just…just thinking that the desert is already drying them out,” I said, my voice coming out slightly sick. “Look—those ones with the gray skin—”

  “Those are Biters,” he interrupted me. “They always look like that.” He took a step closer and leaned over, examining the bodies. “Looks like the Gold Skins knew what they were doing—these were shot in the head. It’s the only way to keep a Biter down for good.”

  “A Biter is one of the cannibal people you and the Principae—Teeny’s grandfather—were talking about, right?” I asked. “Which of the Twelve Peoples are they?”

  “They’re not,” Grav said flatly. “Biters aren’t born—they’re made. The Biter’s Curse is a virus that’s passed in the saliva and blood of one of the infected. When they bite you and the virus gets into your bloodstream, well…” He shook his head.

  “There’s no cure?” I asked.

  “None. And the Curse rots your brain. Makes you an eating machine and what you want to snack on is other sentient beings.”

  “So…they’re some kind of zombies?” I shivered. “That’s awful! But how could the pirates use them as soldiers if they’re so mindless?”

  “They can be controlled—usually with impulse collars.” He nodded at one of the Biters. Around his throat a scratched gray metal collar was winking in the pitiless desert sunlight.

  “But they’re not the same person they were before they got bitten?” I guessed. “Even with the collar on?”

  “Exactly.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Gods, I wish we could find Teeny and make sure she’s all right! Just the thought of one of those Biters going after her…” He glared at the neatly stacked dead bodies, as though he wished h
e could bring them back to life just to kill them all over again.

  “Let’s search inside one more time,” I suggested. “Being out here in the heat is miserable. If Teeny’s still here, she wouldn’t be out in the sun.”

  “I hope not.” He made a noise of frustration. “All right—I feel like we really turned the place upside down but we can do one more pass before we move on to scouring the desert.”

  “How long will we look?” I asked.

  He sighed again. “I want to say until we find Teeny or some trace of her but it could take months to scour this entire moon and it’s not smart to stay that long. We don’t know if the Web is really dead or just out of commission for a while.”

  The Web, as far as I could see on the viewscreen of Grav’s shuttle, was a grid of large, dark red spheres spaced at intervals in a mind-bogglingly huge net around the Lavara solar system. It stretched as far as the eye could see—well, as far as my eyes could see, anyway.

  Grav had told me that when it was operational, red lasers stretched between the balls making a nearly impenetrable blockade that no ship could get through. I had no wish to see it in that state—especially if it was keeping us from getting away. I could understand Grav’s reluctance to stay here longer than we had to. But still—I had a very strong feeling that we needed to find Teeny. And that we would—if only we looked in the right place.

  “Come on,” I said and went back into the compound again.

  Inside it was dark and at least fifteen degrees cooler, which was nice after the sweltering heat of the desert. I already felt like I’d lost ten pounds just from sweating.

  The living quarters showed signs of a struggle—furniture knocked over and drinks spilled on the floor. It hadn’t been a very nice place to start with but it was still sobering to see smears of blood on the walls and realize that most of the pirates had probably been shot where they stood and then dragged outside and stacked up. Captain Verrai and his men had been ruthless and extremely thorough.

  “Teeny?” I heard Grav calling from the second floor. I’d been up there already—it was made up like a barracks and I guessed that was where most of the pirates had slept. If so, I didn’t envy them—it was much hotter at the top of the house than on the bottom level.

  It reminded me of the house I’d lived in with Gerald. During the summer months, there was only so much the AC unit could do to cool the upstairs. Luckily the master bedroom had been located on the bottom floor of the house. Although when it got really hot, I always wished I could go sleep in the basement. That was always the coolest spot in the house. The basement…

  Suddenly it hit me—we had looked all over the compound but we hadn’t seen a basement. But that didn’t make sense—in a hot climate like this, wouldn’t there be at least one subterranean floor? But where would it be located?

  The kitchen!

  I went back to the food prep area, ignoring the mess of dirty dishes buzzing with flies in the sink and the dried puddle of blood on the floor. It smelled awful in here—a putrid stench that came from a huge square machine that sat in one corner. Grav had opened it briefly and we had both nearly puked from the odor that emerged. It was full of raw, rotting meat, most of it in advanced stages of decay.

  “To feed the Biters,” Grav had explained, shutting the door quickly and covering his nose with one hand. “Damn, that’s fuckin’ awful!”

  I knew his nose was much more sensitive than mine so I really felt sorry for him. We had left the kitchen in a hurry after that, having looked in all the cabinets and drawers and found nothing of interest.

  There was still nothing to see, but this time I covered my nose and looked…really looked around. If I was going to hide a door that led down to a cellar or basement, where would I put it?

  Unfortunately, there was only one place big enough—the big square meat freezer that had gone bad. I stepped up and tried to look behind it but it was flush with the wall and bigger than a vending machine—there was no way I could budge it. I looked up and down its smooth, black sides but I didn’t see any kind of button or lever to push or pull either.

  This is stupid, Leah, I told myself as I examined it. There’s probably nothing here. You’ve read way too many gothic romance mysteries where pulling a secret book in the library or pressing a stone carving on the fireplace reveals a hidden passage. You’re wasting your time.

  But when I get an idea in my head, I can be stubborn. And somehow the idea that there was a secret entrance in the kitchen wouldn’t leave me—it buzzed around my head like one of the flies from the sink.

  I knew what I had to do.

  “All right,” I muttered, pinching my nose extra hard. “I’ll look just one more time.”

  I yanked on the metal handle of the big black meat freezer, pulling it open and letting out a gust of putrid air I could still somehow smell even with my nose pinched shut.

  “Ugh!” My eyes watered at the stench and I felt my stomach clench like a slick fist. But this time I made myself look—really look at the inside of the freezer.

  The last time Grav and I had taken one glance at the rotting, maggoty meat and slammed the door closed as fast as we could. This time, despite the piles of green flesh, crawling with black and yellow alien maggots, I made myself stand there and study the inside of the freezer.

  The thing that struck me almost at once was that the freezer didn’t seem deep enough. The outside of it looked to be at least four feet deep but the inside was more like two feet—if that. So where were the missing two feet?

  A fly flew past my face, looking to get at the meat.

  “Shoo!” I waved at it but it brought my eyes up to the top of the tall freezer. Way up in the top left hand corner, half hidden by a hunk of meat boiling with maggots and half-grown roach-looking creatures, was a small, black button.

  Ugh…no. No, please, no! I thought. But my eyes wouldn’t leave the button. Probably it was nothing—just some kind of temperature control or light sensor or something. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was the way to open the freezer and reveal a secret door?

  I called myself crazy, stupid, and all kinds of other names but the feeling that I was supposed to press that damn button was too strong to deny. I had to do it. But in order to reach it, I’d have to lean in to the freezer filled with rotten meat and get my hand around the buzzing, crawling chunk that was right in front of it. The one that looked like it was covered in half-grown roaches.

  Have I mentioned that I hate roaches? Because I do—so, so much. In Florida we have these big, flying ones called Palmetto Bugs that always get into the house when it rains. It’s absolutely horrifying to pull back your shower curtain and see one of those monsters sitting there, ready to fly in your face. None of the bugs I saw crawling on the rotten meat were that big but I didn’t discriminate as to size. When it came to roaches, I hated them all.

  Still, there was no other way.

  “All right,” I said to myself, mostly talking to that implacable gut feeling that was telling me I had to press the black button. “All right—let’s do it fast.”

  Taking a deep breath—which I immediately regretted—I stood on my tiptoes, reached in and pressed the black button as fast as I could.

  Then I jumped back, gasping and shaking my arm which was crawling with bugs.

  “Eww!” I cried, shaking and grimacing as my stomach twitched and rolled. Eww, eww, e…” The last “eww” died on my lips.

  Without a sound, the front part of the freezer swung forward revealing a dark space behind it.

  I had found my secret door.

  Suddenly Grav appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  “What is it? What’s wrong, darlin’?” He looked at me, concerned. Obviously he’d heard my shouts of disgust as I shook my arm to get the bugs off.

  “Grav—I found something. Come look.” My voice sounded funny with my nose pinched shut but there was no way I was going to let go and get a really big whiff of the aw
ful odor.

  “Coming.” He pulled the front of his black tank-top up over his nose and mouth to block some of the stench and came forward.

  “Look,” I said, gesturing to the dark doorway that had been revealed when the shelf of rotting meat swung forward. “A hidden doorway.”

  “Well I’ll be damned.” Grav looked really surprised. “That’s great darlin’—how’d you find it?”

  “By reading too many gothic mysteries.” I saw his quizzical look and smiled. “I had a hunch, that’s all.”

  “Looks like it was a good one,” Grav remarked. “That’s a small space though. You’d have to be a flexible as a damn hyl’dy to get in there. In fact—”

  “Wait.” I put a hand on his arm. “Say that again.”

  “Say what? That it’s a small space?”

  “No…no, about the hyl’dy.” The words of Captain Verrai’s underling came back to me—he’d also said something about a hyl’dy. And for some reason, that idea in conjunction with the Majoran captain bothered me.

  So what? whispered a voice in my brain. What’s so important about a…

  A hyl’dy. Magda’s hyl’dy on Sincon Delta. Suddenly her words came rushing back to me…

  “You’ll meet a male…One you think you shouldn’t trust. He will ask you questions you feel you mustn’t answer… Now, listen to me child: trust this male. And tell him what he needs to know. The fate of the very galaxy depends on it.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered faintly. Captain Verrai and his questions about Earth—about Charlotte. I’d refused to tell him anything because I felt instinctively that I shouldn’t answer! “Oh my God!” I moaned again.

  How had I forgotten all about what Magda had told me? How had it gone so completely out of my head?