CHAPTER 13

V ince and I have landed on our sides, so we’re basically spooning, every part of me fitting just right with every part of him. One of his bare, muscled arms hugs my chest. The other curls around my waist. His chin nestles in the mess of blue strands at my temple, breath blowing in heavy pants against my skin.

Any other time, I’d be digging the situation.

But not now. Because we’ve skidded to a halt in what can best be described as a stinking pile of pterodactyl shit. Or maybe giant-bat shit. Some sort of reeking, gelatinous excrement forms a puddle near the back of the cave, and we’ve landed smack in the middle of it. It seeps cold and wet along my right arm and side.

I guess the fact that it’s not fresh, hot, and steaming is a small win.

As my pupils adjust to the dark at the back of the cave, I stifle a shriek. I’m lying face-to-face with what appears to be one of Dinobird’s other victims.

It’s furry, and the size of a large-breed dog. But the two yellow, blunt-tipped teeth that protrude from its long, pointed snout, and the beady black eye glimmering in its dog-sized skull identify it as something more along the lines of a massive rodent. A red, circular wound punctures its throat, but the rest of the body is intact.

For a moment I worry it’s only unconscious, like Sam, and might wake up and chew my face off with those creepy rat teeth. But the creature’s fur-matted ribcage remains completely still. It’s not breathing.

Vince groans and loosens his grip on me.

I lift myself on my right elbow, trying not to slip in the rancid puddle, then reach my left arm around to get leverage. My shoulder doesn’t feel great, but I push up anyway. Pain races down to my fingertips and across my shoulder blade like the electrified twin tines of a lightning bolt.

I hiss and drop back to my side.

“You okay, DJ Girl?”

“Shoulder.” It’s hard to disguise the pain in my voice. “Might be dislocated.”

Vince kneels next to me on one knee. He wraps an arm across my back and hooks it under the armpit of my non-injured side, then lifts. “Let’s get you into the light.”

Despite his gentleness, it still hurts like hell. I choke down several pained curses.

At the mouth of the cave, Vince turns me so my injured arm faces daylight. “I’m going to unzip you so I can take a look at your shoulder blade. ”

He holds the collar of my tattered and dirty jumpsuit with one hand and tugs the zipper down to my waist with the other, letting the material fall off my injured shoulder and bag at my bent forearm.

I’m wearing a sports bra and leggings underneath the jumpsuit, so it’s not too awkward. Not that I’m opposed to getting naked with Vince. I’d just prefer it to happen when my arm is fully attached to my body and my hair’s not drenched in shit.

Vince traces a finger lightly over the curve of my shoulder, then spreads his hand when it reaches my back so his palm arcs over the top of my shoulder blade. His other hand cups the bottom of my scapula. I wince when he presses the centre of the bone gently with both thumbs.

“Okay, I want you to keep your elbow bent like that and slowly rotate your arm to the left.” He keeps his hands in position.

I begin to rotate and pain spikes through my shoulder. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Tactical first aid is kind of a must in this line of work.” Vince catches my eye. “Trust me.”

I have to admit, the bounty hunter is gaining… maybe not my trust, exactly. But my faith in his abilities. He’s shown his competence on multiple occasions. Jumping on Carlson to save Tori. Keeping tabs on the crew while pretending to be faded. Scaling this cliff to help Sam .

If the man says he knows first aid, I believe him.

Despite the increasing pain, I slowly arc my bent arm outward, tugging the bunched blue fabric of the jumpsuit with it.

“This may hurt a little,” Vince warns. “Push through it.”

As I continue to rotate my arm, he presses his thumbs into my shoulder blade. It hurts more than a little. I bite back a pained cry, but I keep rotating. He pushes harder.

A pop echoes, sharp pain jabs me, and an embarrassing whimper escapes my throat.

Then the pain’s gone.

I wiggle my arm gingerly, then roll my shoulder. “Wow. Tactical first aid, huh?”

Vince eyes me from bare shoulders to midriff. That hunger from last night flashes in his eyes before he smothers it with a smirk. “Handy tool on the job, and a great way to get pretty girls undressed, too.”

I use my newly functional arm to smack him.

But the desire in Vince’s gaze, combined with his words, calls back the memory of our encounter in the lounge. His weight pressing against me, feeling good in all the right places, even with our clothes still on. His fingertip tracing the outline of the vial against my breast. If I hadn’t promised Tori I’d put business before boys, I’d be sneaking into Vince’s bunk tonight to finish what we started. Uninterrupted this time .

-X-

At the base of the cliff, Tori, Mitchell, and Ballga crouch over Sam’s small, still body. They’ve cut the chains that lashed him to Mitchell’s back and laid him on the dark green fabric of Ballga’s jumpsuit, which she’s removed and spread across the gravel.

Vince hangs back, but I run to the group and squat next to Tor. “How is he?”

“He’s alive, but we can’t get him to wake up.” Her rosy hand rests against the blue skin of Sam’s chest. His small ribcage rises and falls in shallow breaths beneath his unzipped shirt.

“No visible blow to the head,” Ballga says. She runs a rough-padded palm front-to-back along the boy’s crown, then scoops under the back of his skull, lifting his head slightly to feel for bumps.

Mitchell raises Sam’s limp arm and presses two fingers to the too-pale skin of his inner wrist. “His heart rate’s lower than it was when we first got him down here, and that was already too slow.”

Unconsciousness… reduced heart rate. Two symptoms on a familiar list. An image of the beady-eyed rat at the back of the cave pops into my mind. “There’s no puncture wound?”

Mitchell glances at me. “What’re you thinking? Venom? ”

“I’m not sure.” I lean over Sam and move my fingers along his neck, feeling for an invisible wound. “An animal in the cave had a puncture wound to the neck, but I don’t remember Dinobird having fangs.”

“Hmm.” Mitchell tugs Sam’s collar, pulling the shirt down off his narrow shoulders.

Tori gasps.

I wince.

A round, purple puncture mark about a centimetre in width puckers its ugly lips where Sam’s trapezius muscle meets the outside edge of his clavicle—the same shape and size as the wound on the rodent’s neck.

Mitchell stands, glowering at the carcass of the winged predator, fallen haphazardly on yellow rock not far away. He mutters under his breath as he strides to the body and goes down on one knee at its head. Vince and I join him.

Mitchell lifts the animal’s snout from the gravel, turning its head toward us. Its beaklike jaw is locked half-shut. Headlight-sized eyes stare blankly, open but glazed, protruding slightly from either side of the knobby, triangular head. A bloody gash mars one eye.

Vince takes the bottom jaw while Mitchell grips the top, and, straining, the two men prise open the creature’s snout.

“Damn…” Vince draws out the word like he’s impressed with what he sees. “That’s a lot of teeth. ”

“No fangs, though, like Gemma said,” Mitchell responds, examining the double row of jagged, sharklike teeth. Nothing in the gaping maw looks remotely like it could have made the wound on either Sam or the rat.

“Hang on…” I cock my head to one side as I eye the lolling tongue that looks way too long even for this creature’s monstrously long mouth. I crouch at the side of the beak where it dangles. Shuddering, I grasp the thick, slimy appendage and raise it so I can examine the spear-shaped tip. “Do you think the tongue could have done it?”

I poke the tip gingerly. It’s hard enough and sharp enough to puncture skin. And there’s an opening at its centre.

“Look at that,” Mitchell says, lowering his head next to mine to peer at the strange thing. He turns to look at me, and there’s something soft and a little quizzical in his expression. “You really are smart.”

Something in my chest does a weird fluttering thing. Luckily, Mitchell looks away. He glances at Sam’s limp form and the lines of his face are all tension again when he says, “Let’s cut this thing out and double-check.”

He retrieves my fallen burn-blade and uses it to cut the disgusting appendage out of the monster’s mouth. Then we return to the others and Mitchell holds the tip of the tongue near the wound at Sam’s shoulder. They match. “Gemma’s right,” Mitchell says. “It’s definitely some kind of venom. ”

Ballga shoots him a worried glance.

Tori looks to the captain, too. “So we just… wait? And he’ll wake up when the effects of the venom wear off?”

“I don’t think it’s going to wear off,” I say, stomach knotting. “The animal in the cave… its only visible injury was the puncture wound. And it was dead.”

Ballga’s worried gaze flicks to me, then back to Mitchell. “We can draw the venom out.”

“It’s been in his system for hours, spread all over his body,” Mitchell says, running a hand through his hair like he does when he’s extra-stressed. Which is something I know about him because of the record number of tense situations we’ve been in during the two days I’ve known him. “There are steroid shots and epi-pens in the first aid supply, but I’m not sure they’ll do much.”

“It won’t help.” I have enough of a history with venoms to be confident in my assertion. “I have an idea, but it’s kind of… gross. And it’s a long shot.”

-X-

“You can’t risk it, Gee,” Tori hisses. She and Vince haven’t stopped hounding me since I explained my plan. “What if your mods glitch and your body doesn’t make the antidote? ”

“At least it doesn’t look like a painful death.” I’m having a hard time keeping exasperation out of my tone. Tori’s supposed to be my ally. She’s supposed to have my back. And yet somehow she’s gone from trying to protect me from Vince to teaming up with him, fighting me on this while Sam’s life slips away.

Our little group has convened about a football field’s length away from where Mitchell still crouches by the kid’s side. I dragged my crew here so they could voice their obvious disapproval out of the captain’s earshot. For all I know, Mitchell could have aural mods, and I don’t want to take the risk he’ll overhear us. The last thing I need is a moral dilemma where Captain Goody-Goody feels like he’s got to choose between me and Sam. The choice is mine to make, not his.

And it isn’t Tori’s or Vince’s choice, either.

Vince paces away and then back, pinching the bridge of his nose like my plan’s giving him a headache. “Look, I hate to break it to you, but the kid’s not going to make it. There’s no point risking your life. That altruistic shit does nothing but get people killed.”

I take a deep breath. “It’s way lower risk than you’re making it out to be. My mods are only acting up for a few seconds at a time. Even if I do glitch, I’ll be fine.”

“No.” Vince shakes his head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do this.”

“Let me?” I cross my arms .

Vince steps closer, towering over me as he meets my glare with one of his own. “We’re on the job. I’m your boss. I say no.”

“Look, Boss .” I move into his space even though he’s already crowding mine. “In the extremely unlikely event that something does happen to me, you can still do the hit and split the payout two ways instead of three . This, though? This is my choice. It doesn’t affect you. So pull your panties out of your ass crack and deal with it.” I glare daggers at Vince. Despite the fact that he just fixed my arm and that only a few minutes ago I was fantasizing about getting busy with him in his bunk, he has no right to tell me what to do.

I turn to Tori next. “And I love you more than anyone, Tor, but I’m not exactly good for you. Neither of you needs me. Sam does.”

More protests burst from both my partners in crime at once, but I’m done arguing. I can’t tell them the truth—that it’s my fault Border Security fried the light drive, my fault we’re stuck on this poisonous planet, my fault Sam’s dying.

Even the stupid dinosaur thing’s needless death is my fault. I can’t stand to have more blood on my hands. Especially not Sam’s.

I turn on my heel and stomp back toward Mitchell, gravel crunching under my boots.

Vince catches up to me. “Hang on, DJ Girl.”

Eyes straight ahead, I keep walking .

“I didn’t mean to piss you off.” He reaches for me, but I shrug out of his way. “I just… I’m worried about you, that’s all.”

My steps slow. I’ve never heard that tone from Vince before. Soft. Like he… cares. About more than just the job or landing the next innuendo.

“At least let me or Tori administer the venom.” He glances at Mitchell’s crouched form across the expanse of gravel. “I don’t trust these guys.”

We’re the ones who shouldn’t be trusted, but it can’t hurt anything. I sigh. “Fine. If it makes you feel better, you can play doctor.”

The worry in his expression melts away. I think I see a smirk coming on, already. “Kinky.”

I roll my eyes. Yup. Right back to his usual self. But I think I’m starting to get Vince. Having some modicum of control over the situation has clearly allayed his worries. As someone who despises feeling out of control myself, I can relate.

“Let’s do this,” I say when we reach Mitchell.

He gently lowers Sam’s limp arm to the fabric of Ballga’s jumpsuit and removes his fingers from where he’d been checking the kid’s pulse for the hundredth time.

I don’t ask. I already know Sam’s heart rate is dropping steadily.

As we leave Sam and move to the body of the monster that poisoned him, Mitchell asks, “You sure this is safe? For you? ”

He’s already asked multiple times.

“One hundred percent,” I lie yet again.

We stop beside the creature’s massive cranium. The stump of severed tongue sticks out between its teeth like a grotesque meaty chew-toy.

“Hold up the head so I can cut into its throat,” I direct. “Venom glands are normally located in the tissue above and behind the fangs, but since this creepy thing’s venom is in its tongue, I’m betting we’ll find the gland in its lower jaw, near where the tongue connects.”

“You seem to know a lot about venom.” Mitchell gives me a curious look as he hugs muscular arms around the creature’s snout and lifts, baring its throat.

“I was… into poisons and venoms for a while. It’s what got me interested in chemistry,” I admit, thumbing the trigger of the burn-blade.

Vince has sauntered up behind us to watch the dissection, his usual swagger back in full force. “Oh, I know what gets girls into venom. I’d be willing to bet you dated a Senuthian. Or maybe a Marl.”

I glare over my shoulder, pointing my blade at him. “You can keep your musings about my dating history to yourself.”

“Whoa.” Vince’s smirk grows even as he takes a step back. “Too close for comfort. Got it. ”

Way too close for comfort. Except that I don’t date. Dating would involve a relationship, and relationships are not what I’m after when it comes to boys.

I consider nicking Vince’s stupidly handsome face, just to show him how much I appreciate his insight. But since time is of the essence, I turn back to the no-longer-flying reptilian monster and take out my annoyance on its throat. My burn-blade slices through the tough hide with a satisfying sizzle.

I make a long incision from the tip of the monster’s pointed under-jaw to the base of its wide throat. Then I cut a horizontal line across its jaw from hinge to hinge. Belting my knife, I ease the fingers of both my hands between warm flesh where the incisions intersect, and pull like I’m spreading a curtain made of thick, pink muscle. There’s a gross tearing, peeling sound before a whitish organ is revealed, ballooning out from under a thick trachea. “Jackpot.”

“That’s the venom sac?” Mitchell peers down from where he’s still hugging Dinobird’s snout.

“Yeah. Now we just need Ballga to come back with the syringe.” Granny Cat cheetahed back to the ship for supplies after I explained my plan. I hope she’s fast. Sam can’t have much time left.

As if on cue, a hoverbike rumbles in the distance. I look up to see Ballga hurtling toward us over the treeline. She dives downward and skids to a halt in the gravel and rock next to the reptile.

In a heartbeat, she’s next to me, pulling a syringe from a satchel thrown across her shoulder. “Tell me what to do, Rich Girl.”

“I’ll take that.” Vince plucks the syringe from Ballga’s brindle-furred grasp.

“A quarter-millilitre.” I look Vince in the eye. “Directly into the vein.”

The vein is risky; the poison could travel too quickly in my bloodstream and get to me before my mods kick in. It would be safer to inject the venom into muscle. But we don’t have time for the slower, safer route, so I just… don’t mention it.

Vince inserts the needle into the venom sac. I watch as he draws exactly a quarter-millilitre of the oil-coloured poison.

“All right, DJ Girl. Here goes nothing.”

I look away as Vince presses the syringe to my vein, feel a sharp prick like a bee sting. But the rush of heat I’m expecting doesn’t come. He draws the needle away too quickly. Suspicion snakes through my veins instead of poison. Before Vince can react, I whip around and dart for the syringe, grabbing it out of his hand.

“Fuck. Gemma, you don’t need to—”

“You didn’t inject even half of it.” I glare, but I don’t have time to berate him like he deserves. Before Vince can waste any more time, I press the syringe into my own vein.

“Dammit, DJ Girl, you’re gonna get yourself killed.”

Mitchell starts at the comment.

Before the captain can intervene, too, I hit the plunger hard. The familiar fire of poison burns outward along my vein from the injection point. “There. It’s done.”

My eyes lock with Vince’s in a defiant clash. What the hell was he thinking? That I wouldn’t notice? Vince growls with frustration and turns, kicking gravel and muttering something about “a girl with a goddamn death wish” as he stalks away.

Whatever. I move to Sam’s side, Mitchell and Ballga at my heels, muttering to each other about my stunt, Mitchell sounding worried. Tori’s already on her knees in the gravel, taking Sam’s pulse.

“Can he hold out for another five minutes?” I ask as I drop down beside her.

“He’s at around thirty beats per minute,” she says, frowning at the tiny dot of red on my inner arm. Her magenta eyes meet mine. “You okay so far?”

“Perfect,” I say, though a tingling numbness has already replaced the initial burn of the poison, radiating out from the injection point. I can’t bend my fingers. “This is going to work. ”

Mitchell glances at me with furrowed brows as he crouches over Sam, placing two fingers on the pulse point at the kid’s neck, as if checking once more might change the fact that his child’s heart is failing.

I catch the captain’s eye. “Just so you know, I’m clean. And I’ve got the best immune mods money can buy. So you don’t need to worry about giving my blood to the kid. Even if I pass out, you should still try.”

“Why’re you saying that?” His eyes narrow. “You’re feeling the poison, aren’t you?”

“I’m a little numb,” I admit. “I can’t move my arm. But it’s normal. It can happen like this sometimes. My mods will kick in.” Even as I speak, the right side of my mouth feels droopy.

“Gemma!” Tori’s arm is around my shoulder. “Gemma, you’re talking funny.”

My vision goes fuzzy. I sway.

“Gemma, stay awake!” Tori’s worried expression looks upside down. I think my head is resting against her chest. Pink hair falls around my face.

Then Vince’s head looms into view. Garbled words tumble from his mouth. Angry.

Dark eyes blur and become green-brown suns. They hover before me, inviting me to focus. I lift lids that were falling. Lips move, hazy.

I wanted to kiss those lips. What was it that stopped me ?

Too good for me, that’s what it was. So good I might be tempted to trust.

I relax against Tori.

Why did I feel so urgent a moment ago?

It was… heavy screens dip over my eyes.

It was… weighted curtains rise halfway.

Then they close.

Blissful black nothingness curls narcotic fingers around my brain. I’m not quite sure who I am. My lips curl into a smile.

This is what I love about venom.