Blood Will Tell Read online

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  Description

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Part Two

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Other Books by Christine Pope

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  BLOOD WILL TELL

  ISBN: 978-0-9836841-7-6

  Copyright © 2012 by Christine Pope

  Published by Dark Valentine Press

  Cover design and ebook formatting by Indie Author Services

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Dark Valentine Press. Permission is given to make one backup copy for archival purposes.

  Please contact the author through the form on her website at www.christinepope.com if you experience any formatting or readability issues with this book.

  Blood Will Tell

  Welcome to Iradia, where the Gaian Consortium looks the other way if enough money changes hands, and the best way to ensure a long life is to secure passage off-world…

  When Miala Fels’ father is murdered by a vicious crime lord, she decides the best way to get her revenge is to hack the accounts of the man responsible and bleed his hoard of ill-gotten loot dry. Her plans go awry when Mast is killed by a rival, and she ends up nursing one of his men, the notorious mercenary Eryk Thorn, back to health. Her only thought is to have Thorn help her get off-world in exchange for half of Mast’s treasure. The last thing she expects is to lose her heart to him…or to have the consequences of that love change her life forever.

  PART ONE

  Iradia

  I

  They had been gone far too long, that much she knew. Although there were no chronos in the compound’s kitchens, Miala had trained herself to make a rough estimate of the passage of time without any visual aids. She knew that at least four, and possibly closer to five, hours had to have passed since Arlen Mast and his various lackeys and hangers-on had enthusiastically sallied forth en masse to watch the baiting and eventual deaths of his latest batch of prisoners. “Cheaper to kill ’em than to feed ’em!” he’d guffawed, and everyone had laughed at his wit, or at least pretended to.

  Except Miala. Unlike the others, she had no stomach for that sort of thing. The compound had emptied down to the lowliest kitchen drudge—except for her. She had a knack for hiding in shadows, making herself easily overlooked, and so no one gone in search of her when she vanished into one of the larders as everyone else was hastening out the rear entrance of the building and into their various sand-skimmers and all-terrain transports. At the time she had only thanked God that she would have a few hours of uninterrupted time to resume her careful hacking into Mast’s security system.

  That fat bastard would probably have had a long-overdue heart attack if he knew how far she had already gotten, but she was careful to cover her tracks. Anyhow, she knew the basics of the system well enough; it was her father who had programmed it, after all, and he had trained Miala in the tricks of his trade. Good thing that Mast hadn’t bothered to investigate Lestan Fels closely enough to discover that Iradia’s best hacker had a daughter, let alone one who rivaled her father in her ways with a security system. No, Mast had thought himself very clever to hire Fels and then have him killed once the security system was in place. He hadn’t thought that there was anyone on this miserable rock who would even notice the hacker’s death, let alone bother to avenge it.

  She’d come here two months earlier, already aware of what had probably happened to her father, and she’d been careful to come disguised. Mast’s lechery was legendary, and Miala, after carefully regarding her reflection before setting out, had come to the dispassionate conclusion that she was just pretty enough to attract attention if she didn’t do something to alter her appearance. Nothing drastic, of course, but it was amazing what deliberately dirty hair pulled back in a severe knot, a few carefully applied blemishes, and exaggerated shadows under one’s eyes could do to make a person look absolutely unappealing. Even so, she’d been on the receiving end of a few nastily significant glances from Barris Jax, Mast’s self-styled majordomo and right-hand man. She counted herself lucky that it hadn’t gone any further than that—and perhaps his unhealthy interest was what had led him to hire her in the first place.

  But now—she settled back on her heels and sighed. She’d made good progress during the past few hours and felt confident that, given a little more time, she would finally be able to hack the codes that protected Mast’s vaults and gain access to the treasures she knew he hoarded there. Of course she would never be able to bring her father back, but at least she could steal his murderer blind and finally get herself away from this forsaken planet once and for all. And while her main goal was to gain access to Mast’s off-world accounts, she’d be a fool not to take as much cash from his vaults as she could. The amount she could carry would certainly not be enough for him to ever notice.

  The silence around her was disturbing. She knew the compound as well as anyone, but it was an unsettling place even when fully occupied and somehow much worse when it was apparently deserted, as it seemed now. What could possibly have happened? There had been whispers that one of the other crime bosses had been planning to make a move on Mast, but treachery among the bosses was as expected on Iradia as its frequent sandstorms, and Mast had laughed off the rumors, claiming there was no one in the region who could possibly get the drop on him.

  Still...

  Miala pushed her chair away from the computer console in the security office. Like the rest of the compound, the room had been hewn out of the native Iradian sandstone, but the banks of machines were an incongruous note in the otherwise primitive surroundings. It was cool in here, though, air conditioners working overtime to ensure that the precious computers didn’t overheat. Perhaps it was the temperature of the room that made her shiver.

  Or perhaps it was something else. She suddenly felt she couldn’t stand the silence a moment longer. The air seemed laden with ghosts; she wondered how many hapless prisoners had met a violent death in the building, and she shivered again, harder this time.

  Anything would be better than sitting here and wondering until she slowly drove herself mad. She remembered how her father used to tease her for her endless questions. Why are there three moons, Dad? Why do trees only grow in an oasis?Why doesn’t it ever rain?

  Anything of course, but the questions she had really wanted to ask. Why don’t I have a mother like everyone else? Why did she hate me so much that she left? But even at five Miala had known better than to ask some questions...

  Shaking her head as if to rid herself of these unpleasant recollections, Miala made a sudden decision. She knew where the compound�
��s sand skimmers were kept, and of course she would have no difficulty getting through the security system that sheltered them. Surely Mast’s people had left one or two behind. If something really had gone wrong, wasn’t it her responsibility to discover what had happened? She hadn’t allowed herself to make any friends during her tenure at Mast’s compound, but at the same time she didn’t think she could leave people she had worked with to die out in the desert. Assuming that the worst had happened, of course. It was entirely possible that Mast had decided to be particularly creative with his executions this time, and they were taking longer than usual. Somehow, though, she guessed that was a false hope.

  The parking garages were located at the rear of the compound, not far from the small landing pad kept for the private use of certain guests who didn’t wish to fly into Aldis Nova. There were two sand skimmers left behind, both of them looking the worse for wear. Looks were deceiving, as she knew all too well; Mast’s mechanics kept them well-tuned. On one wall of the garage was a gun locker, and she keyed in the code—stolen during one of her hacking sessions—and lifted out a heavy pulse rifle and a pair of smaller pistols. It was getting close to dusk, and although she knew from watching the sweeps made by the automated security systems that no hostiles seemed to be within a ten-kilometer range of the compound, she didn’t want to be out any later than necessary. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew better than to wander the open deserts of Iradia after dark.

  She selected the skimmer closest to the garage entrance, more for ease than because it looked better than the other one. Since it was an older model, it had a chip-matching system rather than a biometric starter, but the chips had been stored in the locker along with the guns, so it was easy enough to get the thing started and maneuver it out of the garage.

  Even now, this close to dusk, the heat was intense, enervating. Miala knew she would never get used to it, even if she lived to be a hundred and died on this rock. But she had brought a few flasks of water with her, knowing that even without direct sun she could die of dehydration within a few hours if she wasn’t careful. She took a few sips, then set the flask down on the passenger seat. The next stage of the journey was going to require both hands.

  Mast’s preferred spot for his executions was located roughly southeast of the compound, near a canyon that allowed him to pitch prisoners into the abyss when he tired of other amusements. Even going as quickly as the terrain would allow, it was a good hour’s ride. Miala cast a nervous glance over her shoulder at the setting sun and prayed that she could make it there before the last bit of light disappeared. As good as Mast’s security team might be, they couldn’t drive away all of the planet’s natural predators, and she didn’t care to become yet another statistic. No one would come looking for her if she disappeared.

  The smell of burning greeted her long before she reached the Malverdine Cliffs. Acrid, heavy, the scent of smoke hung in the hot desert air like the memory of a bad dream, impossible to ignore. Miala slowed the skimmer’s headlong flight as she came onto the site of the disaster.

  There was nothing left, except some scattered wreckage and a few unpleasant dark blotches on the sand. Whoever had hit Mast’s party had obviously done so hard and fast. Black smoke still swirled heavily in the dead, hot air.

  She brought the vehicle to a stop, then reached for one of her pistols. Just because she hadn’t seen any movement didn’t mean that predators couldn’t be lurking nearby.

  After making sure the safety on the pistol was off, she climbed out of the skimmer and moved toward the cliff’s edge, stepping carefully between the pieces of shrapnel and other, less distinguishable bits of wreckage. The cloying smell of burning flesh rose to her nostrils, and she forced herself not to gag, making herself breathe through her mouth despite the painful dryness at the back of her throat.

  There was nothing here, nothing to salvage, no one to save. It was stupid for her to have come; all she had done was risk her own safety when she could have holed up in the compound and worked at the security system until it yielded its remaining secrets. Obviously, no one would have come back to disturb her.

  With a sigh, she turned and took a step back toward the skimmer. It was only then that she heard a faint moan from somewhere behind her.

  Whirling, she held the gun out before her, one trembling finger hovering over the trigger. “Identify yourself!” she called into the gathering dusk, hoping her voice sounded more confident than she felt.

  No reply except another faint groan, this one fainter than the last. Whoever or whatever it was, they didn’t sound very threatening. However, she knew better than to lower the pistol as she retraced her steps toward the precipice, taking care to maintain a respectful distance from the cliff’s edge. The whispered horror stories she’d heard from the other kitchen drudges—“You drop so far there isn’t even a thud when you hit the bottom!”—were enough to convince her that she needed to give the jagged gash in the ground a wide berth.

  As she inched closer, she finally saw the man who lay face down in the sand. From this angle he looked dead, his body armor scored and even smoking in a few places, the dark cloth he usually wore wrapped around his face and head torn away, lying like a ragged scarf against the ruddy sand. Even in the dimming light Miala could see blood gleaming in his short-cropped hair, black against black. But then she saw one of his hands move slightly, a futile clenching gesture that seemed as if he were trying to gain a purchase so as to pull himself farther away from edge of the cliff.

  Although she’d never seen his face, she recognized him at once. Eryk Thorn, the notorious mercenary Mast hired for the times when he needed people disappeared instead of dropped off a cliff. Just one of the myriad scum the crime boss had infesting his compound. For one moment she was tempted to leave Thorn there to die—after all, the man made his living from human misery—but almost as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she knew she could not abandon him to the desert, no matter who he was or what he had done. Anyone who had the strength of will to survive an attack that had killed everyone around him deserved a second chance.

  She squatted down in the sand next to him. “Thorn?” she asked softly. “Can you understand me?”

  The smallest movement of his hand was his only reply.

  Still, it was better than nothing. “I’ve come from the compound,” she went on, thinking that perhaps her words would give him something to hold on to besides the pain. “I have a sand skimmer. I’ll bring it closer so I can take you back.”

  This time there was no answering movement, and Miala could only hope he had heard and understood. As quickly as she could, she threaded her way through the wreckage back to the skimmer and then maneuvered it as close as possible to the wounded man. Once she had clambered back out again, she looked at Thorn and swore softly. He would be no help to her in his condition. How she was supposed to maneuver his approximately ninety kilos of dead weight into the skimmer was beyond her. She’d seen nothing in the immediate vicinity that would help her lift him up off the ground, and she was afraid to leave him to go look for something in the wreckage farther away.

  In the end, she did it through brute strength and sheer force of will. She was young and healthy enough, and the last few months had hardened her muscles to the point that she found in herself the power to do what was necessary. Somehow she managed to half-lift, half-drag him to her vehicle and then push/pull him into the passenger seat. These operations did nothing to improve his condition—halfway through her maneuvering he finally fainted, for which she was grateful. She hated to think of even Eryk Thorn suffering the kind of pain her awkward handling must have caused.

  Finally she was able to take the driver’s seat and then push the accelerator to maximum, retracing her path back toward the compound. At some point during the time she’d been dragging Thorn into the skimmer, the sun had dropped even further, and now was only a bloody smear on the far horizon.

  Speed was the only thing that could save them now, and she
used it brutally, jouncing the skimmer with reckless determination over landscapes not meant for that sort of travel. She had thought Thorn still completely dead to the world, but after one particularly harsh drop-off she felt his hand tighten on her leg. Startled, she’d looked down for a second to see him shake his head slightly.

  “Don’t do that again,” he whispered, before passing out once more.

  “No problem,” she muttered, but she did ease off the accelerator just a bit. He was right—it wouldn’t help if she upended the skimmer in a ravine or particularly deep sand dune, or pulled the treads off their gears by hitting a rock outcropping at the wrong angle.

  After what seemed like an eternity but was actually less than an hour, she saw the walls of Mast’s compound appear on the horizon, glimmering faintly in the purple-hued hour after sunset. The security perimeter was still in place—she could see the faint bluish haze between each of the markers—but she had a remote with her that would deactivate it long enough to allow them inside. What she was going to do with Thorn after they reached the relative safety of the garage, she wasn’t sure.

  Whether it was just luck or the aura that still surrounded the compound even though its owner was now dead, they managed to slip inside the perimeter unremarked and unmolested. Miala pulled the skimmer into the garage, then leaned over to make sure that Thorn was still just unconscious and not actually dead. Yes, there was still a pulse in his throat, but it was thready and weak. She needed to get him into a med unit as quickly as possible.

  Mast did have a fairly well-stocked med center in the compound, for whatever reason. Possibly to keep his victims alive between rounds of torture, or possibly because he had some valuable slaves and other hangers-on who were of more use to him alive than dead. Most likely, though, it was because he feared his own mortality but knew better than to avail himself of the official medical facilities in Aldis Nova. Although she had never been there, Miala knew where the med unit was located; she had made it her business to learn as much as she could about the compound and its inhabitants.