Stealing Mercury (Arena Dogs Book 1) (3 page)

Samantha licked her dry lips. From behind the bars, Diablo studied her with night black eyes. Red embers flecked the black, making it easy to see how he’d come by his name. Like Mercury, he was leanly muscled with dark hair and pointed ears, but his jaw was more pronounced and prominent canines pressed against narrow lips.

A large hand landed in the middle of her back with a firm shove. One minute she was standing there and the next she went flying forward. Drake’s fist in the back of her pack stopped her short of tumbling into the cage. A hand full of claws swiped at her so close the brush of air whispered against her cheeks. Samantha jumped back, colliding with Drake. She gulped air past the constricted muscles of her throat, heart racing. The howls of the other two caged men turned into low growls that vibrated through her body.

“A month ago,” said Drake, voice ice cold, “he clawed up another patron, a woman.”

The man in the cage snarled, jerking on the bars with mindless determination. As her heart rate steadied, Samantha couldn’t look away. There was rage in him to be sure, but there was something more in those eyes, in the mindless way he struggled against the bars that caged him. The man they’d named Diablo radiated pain with every movement, every breath.

What had they done to these men?

Samantha spun on her heel, breaking free of Drake’s grip. “You shoved me!”

He grinned. “I also held you back.”

Samantha swung. Her fist connected with Drake’s jaw with a satisfying smack. His head snapped back. A stifled laugh told her Resler had enjoyed her punch more than she had. The moment the explosion of rage receded she regretted it. He’d likely make her pay for punching him, but oh did he deserve it.

Drake stroked his jaw and frowned as if her efforts had yielded no more than a tap. “I thought you should understand what you’re dealing with here. Why Mr. Owens wants them gone. Today.” He spit blood onto the hangar floor.

Samantha watched him thumb the remaining blood from his lip. She had to swallow to dampen her throat before she could speak. “Have your men start loading.” She turned and took a step toward the ship’s crew entry. “I’ll be clearing us for launch.”

“Sam!” Drake’s shout stopped her before she made it halfway across the hangar. “I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. I love a challenge.”

Samantha should have hit him harder. “You want a challenge, I’ll be sure to give you one.”

Confusion churned as Mercury watched the female walk away. She moved differently from the females of his kind—sensual but not intentionally seductive, full of energy but not aggressive enough to survive the arena. His hands could easily span her narrow waist, too small, too breakable to be a fighter, but he’d never be able to resist running his hands down her hips and around to her toned, muscular ass.

Pushing away the unwanted thoughts, he threw his head back and howled. He needed to reassure the others. His pack brothers were hurting.

The whip-master’s taunting had Lo in an unthinking rage and Carn, still weak from their last battle in the arena, was mad with worry for his mate. He’d gone wild when his cage was loaded into the ground transport and he’d only just recovered from the tranquilizer the handlers had used on him.

They needed to be alert to watch and listen for anything that might give them an edge. There had to be a way to get Carn back to his mate. The mate Mercury had promised to protect with his life. They all had to restrain the instincts telling them to fight. Drake was looking for a reason to kill them all and Mercury couldn’t allow that. He sucked in air and threw his head back in another howl, willing his brothers to join him.

When he heard the change in their baying, from raw to purposeful, he allowed his thoughts to drift back to the female. He shouldn’t have reacted to her nearness. Shouldn’t have allowed her to become a distraction.

He’d wanted to find out how her skin would feel beneath his touch. He’d wanted to taste her soft lips. He’d wanted to free her gold-brown hair and bury his nose against the pale skin behind her ear, to drag in her feminine scent.

It had been her scent he’d noticed first. Irresistible. Like honey. She smelled...right.

He could no longer see her, but her scent lingered, mixed with the vile stench of the whip-master. She worked with the whip-master. He’d let himself be distracted by a female in league with his hated enemy.

He’d failed his brothers too often. Lost control of his rage in the arena. Acted on instinct without thought, like an animal. He’d gathered his brothers together one by one. Jupiter and Seneca were dead but Lo and Carn still lived. Lo, the first of his brothers. They’d been raised in the same nursery. Learned to take a lashing together at the hands of the whip-masters that had begun sorting them by aptitude at the age of four. Carn had joined them later. He’d been an oversized and uncooperative monster headed for a short life in the cage matches until he’d learned to fight as part of their team, their family.

Mercury tugged at the unbending strength of the bars as he watched the red-suited workers load Carn’s cage into the ship. His belly twisted with the realization that they weren’t going to be removed from the cages until after they left Roma, probably not until their journey was over. How long would Carn’s mate be left defenseless in the clutches of the monsters that ruled the arena? For now all they could do was stay alive. Stay strong. Ready to act when the cages were finally opened. He had to believe it wouldn’t be too late. Too late to save what was left of his family.

The Dove

Earth Alliance Beta Sector

2210.146

“You can’t be serious.” Samantha spun around to face Drake. He and Resler sat at the table tucked into a corner of the crew commons room. Twenty-four hours into the journey and they already looked comfortable and relaxed, while she was still suffering from the nerves chewing a hole through the lining of her stomach.

Drake had again dressed in all black, wearing the synth and leather like a macabre uniform. The precise cut of the thin beard that defined his jaw provided a stark contrast to Resler’s unkempt appearance. The man must not own a comb. A deck of silver and white lambda cards stretched across the shiny black expanse of the tabletop like an asteroid field. Their half-eaten meals had been shoved aside to make way for the game.

“Very serious,” said Drake. “No food for the Dogs, Sam. None.” He met her glare with a calm that beat against Samantha’s outrage like water on baked coolie-clay. One good tap and she’d explode like a shower of pottery shards. “Come, sit.” He waved her forward with a flick of his wrist then scooped up the cards and shuffled them. “We’ll deal you in.”

“Hey,” Resler grumbled, “I was winning.”

“Don’t be an ass.” Drake tapped the cards on the table.

Samantha rolled her shoulders and waited for their bickering to die down. Stars she was tired. It had been twenty grueling hours of flight prep, getting up to speed on the peculiarities of the
Dove
and getting them all safely into skipspace—that wonderful state that bent the laws of ordinary physics and made faster than light travel possible.

She’d spent the last four hours walking the ship, doing systems checks, and she needed sleep before she had to be back at the pilot’s station to prep for the first skip-point. At each skip-point the ship had to drop back to normal space for the skip-field generator’s cool-down period before jumping again. The
Dove
was top of the line. She could probably recalculate to a 48 hour interval between skip-points. Unfortunately, she had to stick to the standard 36, if she wanted to end up at the rendezvous coordinates on schedule to meet Sevti’s people.

The ship was in tip-top shape, but she couldn’t boast the same. She needed to find a bed and climb in, but first she needed fuel. And she refused to fill her own belly until the Arena Dogs had been fed. Their cages had built-in waste and water units, but no rations. She couldn’t let Drake’s decree stand.

Patience gone, she filled her lungs, ready to shout for their attention. “The Arena Dogs, Mr. Drake. I won’t let them go hungry.”

He flipped the triangular cards through his hands again. “It’s not your concern, Sam.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and willed away the building headache. “As pilot, the wellbeing of everyone on board is my responsibility.”

Drake set the cards down in a tidy stack. “They aren’t passengers.” He twisted in his seat to face her more fully. “They’re property. And
my
responsibility, not yours. But, if it will ease your mind, there’s nothing to worry about. The Dogs were engineered for endurance and efficiency. They can easily survive without food for the three week journey.”

That stopped her for a half a minute. He said it so casually and looked at her like he thought it made everything all right. “It might be true, but it’s also cruel. The ship is fully stocked. There’s no reason to let them suffer.”

Resler smirked then reached over and snagged a chunk of tuber from his plate. “You should tell her.”

Drake shot the man a glare to rival the chill of space.

“Tell me what?” She considered that look and what it might mean. If there was something, anything, she could use to break through his resolve she’d jump at it and worry about the consequences later. Fisting her hands on her hips, she stepped close enough to tower over the seated men. “I get it. You’re afraid.”

All expression slipped off Drake’s face. “Afraid? Of you?”

“Not me. The Arena Dogs.”

“Ha!” Drake slid off of the seat then stood, forcing her to look up to hold his gaze.

Samantha resisted the urge to step back.

He leaned in, crowding her even more. “They’re afraid of me, not the other way around.”

She’d been bullied by bigger men. “You’d have to get close to the cages to feed them. I think you’re afraid they’d make a grab for you.”

 He shook his head and smiled. “Did you really think I’d be that easy to provoke?”

She shrugged, impressed that he saw through her ploy. She’d have to be careful not to underestimate him again, but that didn’t mean she was ready to give up. “Prove it then. Feed them.”

The smile tightened, giving him the pinched look of a man wearing a belt synched one notch too far. “I’ve worked with them—no bars between us—for years. If I wanted to feed them, I would.”

Samantha nodded. “Sure. But I bet you had a bunch of guards there to back you up.”

He stepped forward and her muscles tensed in reaction, but he brushed past. The pop of a storage bin opening drew her around as he dug into one of the built-in containers that lined the wall.

He pulled out a protein ration bar and tossed it to her. “If you want to bet, I’ve got a better wager.”

The packaging crackled as her hand tightened. Jaw clenched, she waited for him to continue.

“You get the Dogs to take a ration bar from your hand and I’ll let them keep it.”

She shivered as the memory of the swipe one of them had taken at her flashed her back to that terror, but the memory of the man’s pain was just as clear. And the thought of the one they called Mercury, of his breath against her wrist, created a wave of heat that chased away her fear and left her edgy and breathless.

She held the bar up. “I get one of them to take this...and they all get fed...daily.”

Drake dug back in the bin for two more ration bars then nodded. “They each get one bar a day.”

“Deal.”

“Not so fast.” Drake shoved the bin closed. “You’re asking for a lot. I think we have to make this more challenging and I want something out of the bargain.”

Samantha huffed her disgust, wondering if he had any intention of dealing fairly. He struck her as a man who’d have no twinge of conscious over dealing from the bottom of the deck. He might keep adding on conditions until there was no way for her to succeed. “Risking my life isn’t enough?”

“Now, Sam. We aren’t going to let our pilot die. The worst you’ll get is a few scratches. Maybe a broken bone.”

Resler got up and shoved his empty tray into the disposal. “She’s right. They could snap her neck.”

“If they did,” said Drake, “that certainly wouldn’t benefit
me
.”

So they were back to that—what was in it for him. “What do you want?”

“Just your company at meals, daily. Seems fair.” His smile was friendly and open as if he wasn’t bargaining over whether three men would go hungry.

Samantha bit her lip to contain her own less charitable smile.

Drake raised his eyebrows.

“Do you realize,” she said, “that you just put eating a meal with you on par with risking death?”

He scowled, twisting his lips in a cruel mockery of his earlier expression. “Let’s add a time limit. Say, five minutes.”

She sighed. If this was the only alternative to letting them go without food, what choice did she have? “All right. I’ll do it.”

Resler chuckled as he headed for the door. “This should be good. I’ll get the stun-sticks.”

Stars, she hadn’t meant to give them any excuse to hurt their prisoners. “That won’t be—”

“We won’t use them,” said Drake. “Unless it’s the only way to get you out of there.” He nodded to Resler. “Meet us in the cargo-hold.” He waved a hand at the door. “After you, Sam.”

He was uncharacteristically quiet on the short walk through the pale blue corridors. She knew the color was supposed to be relaxing. A lot of ships used it. Maybe it helped the normal crew get along better on the long journeys, but it did nothing for the coil of tension constricting her chest. Samantha entered the code, gave the door a solid push, and led Drake into the hold.

Cargo crates stamped with the red Roma logo and locked in place with gravity clamps lined the wall to the left. To her right, nothing stood between them and the bare metal of the loading doors and the hatch leading to the emergency cargo-drop. In front of them, the three cages formed a barbaric row about five meters away. Mercury and Carnage were lying quietly, but their eyes tracked her. In the center cage, Diablo paced in small, three step laps. As Resler came in behind them and handed Drake a stun-stick, the Arena Dog stopped and faced them, hands wrapping around the bars. The other two didn’t even stir.