LITMIR.BIZ

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than he expected under the circumstances.

      Listening carefully to make sure no one followed, he strode to the roofless room where he kept his blood stores. The refrigeration unit ran on solar power, but the door was flush with the intact room adjoining it. Drakon had no need to step into the dangerous morning sunlight. He opened the two manual locks, noting again that his supplies seemed more thin than he remembered, and withdrew a vial of blood. He took a careful, measured amount—just enough to keep him strong and alert, but never quite sufficient to ease his hunger completely.

      It seemed all he had become was hunger. Hunger for blood, for peace, for revenge. And now for a woman he’d only met a few hours ago.

      He locked the blood away again, boarded up the room and returned to the labyrinthine corridors of the Hold. Lark’s unique scent seemed to permeate the entire building, and his new and constant state of arousal was worse than a week without blood.

      “Be careful,” Brita said, coming up behind him.

      Drakon turned to face her. “More rumblings from the crew?” he asked.

      “I’ve known you too long,” she said. “Don’t forget I’ve seen the stray kitten you brought in.”

      “Your point?”

      “You usually don’t have any problem with women, but that female’s got you riled, and you aren’t thinking clearly.”

      “You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” he said softly.

      She shrugged. “Whatever you plan to do with her when you have the information you want, be careful. Shank could be right—she might be a spy for the Enforcers, just waiting for the perfect time to signal them.”

      “I had considered that,” he said drily. “I’ll take your advice under consideration.”

      “Just don’t put it off too long.” With a shake of her head, she walked away.

      Damn her, Drakon thought. He should never have let it become so obvious. But Brita was right. In a matter of hours he seemed to have developed some kind of unprecedented obsession with his captive, and it wasn’t normal. Not normal at all.

      He didn’t like puzzles. He never had. In his old life, everything had seemed clear-cut, the rules easy to follow. All that had ended with his conversion.

      Now he had begun to realize that not everything had changed. Once he’d been capable of real emotion. Humans believed that even new-made Opiri lost their ability to “feel,” and Drakon had believed they were right.

      But they were wrong. And Drakon was beginning to realize just how wrong. What troubled him most wasn’t just the way Lark aroused physical need, but that she also touched parts of him he’d believed long dead. The ability to admire courage, to recognize the admirable traits among those he’d once served.

      And to make dangerous mistakes.

      He returned to his room, collected himself outside the door and went in. Lark was sitting on the bed with her knees drawn up and her eyes closed. Her lovely face was almost haggard, with shadows under her eyes and tension above her brows that couldn’t be feigned.

      “How was your meeting?” she asked, opening her eyes. “Has your crew decided to throw me to The Preacher’s tender mercies?”

      “No,” he said, standing very still as her scent washed over him and produced what had become his body’s inevitable response.

      “What next, then?”

      Drakon sat on the chair. “Tonight we have a job, and you’ll be left here under guard. When we’re done, we’ll test the validity of your information.”

      “I’m not going to run, you know.”

      “We’ll know how much you can be trusted soon enough.”

      Leaning forward, Lark wrapped her arms around her knees. “Who are you, Sammael? What brought an obviously educated and cultured man such as yourself to become a Fringe Boss dealing in stolen goods?”

      Drakon laughed to himself. Yes, in his old life he had received a fairly decent, rudimentary schooling, the one afforded all Enclave citizens. But Lark spoke of education in a difference sense, and her use of the word culture was meant to convey some kind of status far above the one he’d been born with.

      He’d never been one of the Enclave’s elite. What he’d learned of “culture” had come from his Opir Sire, who had seen something in him worth cultivating and had boosted Drakon up the Opir ladder from serf to vassal to Freeblood in a remarkably short period of time. He had stopped aging at twenty-nine, five years ago. It seemed an eternity.

      “I was one of those dissidents the government is so fond of denouncing,” he said, skirting very close to the truth. “I spoke out against certain unjust laws and restrictions, the forced separation of families under the Deportation Act.”

      “Then you agree with the mayor,” she said with what seemed to be real interest. “You’d like to see an end to deportation.”

      “I would like to see some other means of dealing with the problem of satisfying the Opiri,” he said. “But I spoke out on these matters before Shepherd came to office, and I was warned in advance that I was to be taken in for questioning. So I escaped.”

      “Shepherd held the same views then, and he was a senator....”

      “I had no reason to trust any political authority, whatever his or her promises.”

      A spark of anger flashed in Lark’s eyes, but she covered it quickly. “You’re right,” she said. “They can’t be trusted.”

      And you didn’t like hearing me criticize the government, he thought.

      “Patterson and Shepherd are very much the same, in spite of their supposedly opposing views on peace and deportation,” he said. “And whatever their earlier ideas might have been, power has a strange effect on people. It changes their commitments and alters their promises.”

      “How has power affected you?” she asked sharply. “Everyone knows it’s dog-eat-dog in the Fringe. How many people have you killed, just to keep your power?”

      “I do whatever is necessary to protect those under my care.”

      “Your care? Stealing food from people who need it, dealing in contraband, trading on citizens’ fear of deportation by demanding everything of value they have just so they can—”

      “And yet you came here knowing all this,” he interrupted. “You worked for those who abused the people from whom I steal ‘everything of value.’ What benefits did you receive from your employment, Lark?”

      Flushing, Lark looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said, as if she meant it. “We’ve all become harder since the War.”

      “No,” Drakon said. “People haven’t changed. Only the circumstances.”

      “The entire human race never had to fight for its very survival before.”

      “And now the Opir race does the same.”

      “You’re defending them?”

      Drakon knew he’d almost revealed too much. There was something about this woman that threw him so far off balance that he thought he could actually confide in her. Let her see something of himself that he’d shown no one else since he’d been with Lord Julius. Explain why he had to...

      “I’ll have a tray brought to you,” he said, turning to leave.

      “Wait,” she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

      He turned halfway, his hand on the doorknob.

      “Don’t you want the test information?”

      “Tell me,” he said.

      She did, in brisk detail, as if he were a military

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