Hotbloods 5: Traitors

However, there was something weird about the hole. It wasn’t smooth like a normal bullet hole, but oval, with rough edges, like something had eaten its way through the metal.

All of us whirled around at the sound of a ship descending out of the darkness, taking us all by surprise. A battered, cobbled-together vessel landed next to ours with a clank and whirr of ancient engines. It was a ship I knew, though I’d only seen it once. Before it had even set down, a figure dropped out of the open hatch, landing gracefully on the frozen ground. It was hard to make him out in the glare of the junkyard ship’s lights, but he was dressed all in black, with a glowing blue bracelet clamped on his wrist.

“Get in the ship!” I yelled, but it was too late. The man in black removed his bandana, revealing his third eye, freezing us in place.

It was the guy from Tristitia Lake—the leader of the scavengers, who’d looted what was left of the lakeside mansions. Ronad had called him an ambaka, the last of his kind.

“The name’s Stone,” he drawled. “I don’t ‘ave much time to get to the point, so I’ll be swift. Yer first question is likely to be, who am I an’ what do I want, right? Well, you know who I am now, so that’s the first ‘un dealt with. Second, what do I want? I want what’s owed. Youse rudely missed me drop-off, an’ I don’t take kindly to missed drop-offs. I’m ‘ere to deliver and collect.” He spoke with an almost Celtic lilt, though sometimes his words were said too quickly to catch everything. “I’ve come all the way from t’other side of the planet fer this because I don’t care fer rude no-shows, an’ that kind of dough is too handsome to just chuck away.”

He had paused for breath when I felt something knock into my side. Somehow, Mort had managed to avoid Stone’s gaze and had reached for the gun strapped to my back. I guessed he’d been standing off to the side and had morphed into something small and camouflaged, free of the ambaka’s glare. Mort fired the weapon, and the shot rang out, the bullet hurtling toward Stone. Barely batting any of his three eyelids, the ambaka lifted the wrist with the glowing blue bracelet. A gleaming shield arced around him, and the bullet shattered to pieces against the glowing light.

The bracelet generates a protective forcefield, I realized.

“What’d you do that fer?” Stone sighed, no hint of anger on his face. Now, Mort was just as stuck as the rest of us, his lunge for the gun bringing him into the scavenger’s field of vision. “Your turn. You look like the leader o’ this motley bunch,” the ambaka said, smiling as he blinked his third eye.

Through watering eyes, I realized that Navan was moving his head, tilting it from side to side to relieve an ache. I supposed that Stone could unfreeze certain parts of a person whenever he wished to, with the blink of his third eye.

“We apologize for not showing, Stone. A lot of things have been happening here, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Navan said coldly. “I’m sorry you came all this way, but we don’t want the item anymore. So, if you’ll just release us, we’ll be on our way, triclops.”

Stone promptly blinked his eye to shut Navan up. “Hey, hey, hey, no need to be name-callin’. Call me a triclops, would you? That’s like me callin’ you a grayskin. I doubt you’d be down with that. Probably have all yer coldblood mates come runnin’ to your aid!” He sighed wearily, tapping his boot on the ground. “Look, folks’ve gotta learn: you don’t make deals on the black market without payin’ up. It’s bad form, and it’ll not stand. I hate to be the baddie, but someone needs some schoolin’.”

Suddenly, he turned to me. “Ma’am, you look like ye’ve gotta question. I’m all ears to you.” With a blink of his eye, he freed my body, my muscles instantly relaxing.

“We’re so sorry about the missed pickup. We didn’t mean to miss it, honestly,” I blurted out. “But how did you find us?”

He grinned, the smile giving him a cheeky quality. “Ah, shoulda included that in me little starter speech. Knew I was forgettin’ summat,” he replied, chuckling. “I traced yer location from my communication marker. I embedded it into the messages I sent you, so I could track you if youse didn’t show. We retraced your signal scatter, an’ it led here. My crew’re pretty bloody great at that kinda stuff.”

“Again, we’re sorry. We’ve had a hell of a couple of days,” I said, taking a breath. “Now that we’ve got you here, though, I was wondering if you could answer another question for me. Have you ever sold weapons to a coldblood named Orion or Ezra?”

Stone shrugged thoughtfully. “Might’ve. Hard to say. I sell a lotta things to a lotta people, an’ in my game, you gotta be bad with names an’ faces, if you catch me meaning.”

“It’s really important that you tell me if you sold anything to those coldbloods,” I pressed.

“Who I sell to doesn’t matter to me, an’ it shouldn’t matter to you,” he replied, kindly enough. “Folks like us, who don’t have no gray skin, we shouldn’t ‘ave no stake in these wars. I’m out ‘ere to survive, nothin’ else. If you’re as smart as you seem, you should do the same.”

“It does matter!”

“Even so, I can’t help ye,” he said, a hint of apology in his lilting voice. “Only thing I’m ‘ere to do is get this item off me hands and get me money off you. Right about now’d be good, before them beefy brutes start comin’ this way.”

“But we don’t want the item, Stone. We changed our minds. We’re sorry, but we can’t give you the money anymore.”

He smiled. “Damn, if it doesn’t break me heart to hear you speak so soft, sweet lass,” he murmured, shaking his head. “But I always collect an’ make fair situations that’ve gone awry. I’m a creature of balance—I gotta make injustices right, one way or t’other. Right now, you’re bringin’ an injustice to me table.” He stepped toward me, freezing my limbs in place.

He started to frisk me, and my anger rose. I opened my mouth to speak, but he blinked his third eye, silencing me. Slowly, he sank to the ground, pausing at the notebook I’d stowed away in my leg pocket. My heart raced with fear and fury as he reached into the pocket and took out the notebook, flicking a few pages before tucking it into the waistband of his torn black trousers. He kissed my hand while he was down there, flashing me a cheeky smile. I wanted to kick him in the head for being so presumptuous, and for stealing my things, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.

As he stood back up, he took the gun that was still slung around my shoulder and tucked it under his arm, before turning his gaze to my frozen crewmates. “I think I’ll be takin’ summat fer the slave trade and all. One of you might be worth a decent amount, in the right auction house.”

He wove through the frozen figures, scrutinizing us closely. “Not you two—not worth the trouble,” he said to himself, dismissing Navan and Bashrik. Apparently, coldbloods didn’t sell on the slave trade. He smirked when he reached Mort. “I’d getta penny for one o’ your sort. I can go anywhere and pick up ten of you, shifter.”

Reaching the human contingent, he paused, giving a cartoonish whistle of delight. “Now, now, now, this’un is an interestin’ wee lass. How’d I not see you before, sweet one? What were you doin’, hiding way out back here? Savin’ the best till last, eh?”

In my peripheral vision, I watched him unfreeze Lauren. My stomach sank as he took her in his arms and dragged her off, kicking and screaming.

I wanted to chase after him and tear her out of his hands, but there was nothing I could do to stop him. Instead, I had to stand there and listen.