Blood and Steel

Chapter 1

Fleeing in terror wasn’t something Elyn Castel did. People usually ran from her, not the other way around. Besides, after she'd spent fifty years as the slave of a sadistic sociopath, there wasn't much anyone could do to inspire terror in her.

But Elyn ran now, and she ran hard.

She darted down the concourse in long bounds that made the humans gape, leaping over tables filled with diners, spinning around astonished space station security guards, ducking the angry clawed swipe of a huge A’vi warrior.

Her sensors revealed Jarl “Blade” Bladin was still behind her, matching her stride for impossible stride. But when the ill-tempered A’vi tried for him, one swing of an armored fist sent the massive alien down with a crunch and a started, agonized “Chik!” The pursuing security guards had to stop to help the injured A’vi.

Never piss off a guy named Blade. Her own master could have told the A’vi that, had Blade left the vicious fuck alive.

Elyn had heard that Blade did a very thorough job on Kruz. She would have thanked him for that, if only he hadn’t targeted her next.

Just that instant, Elyn’s cyplant whispered, and she shot in the direction it indicated, a service corridor that snaked out to one of the station’s ten huge cargo holds. She could lose Blade there if she got lucky, or kill him if she had to. Or die if she failed.

Odd. A few months ago, Elyn would have viewed the prospect of dying as a relief. But Kruz still trapped her then, vicious blight that he was. Now she had no interest in dying. She was curious about what life would be like as something other than a vampire’s slave.

Elyn might not deserve to live, but she wanted to give freedom a try.

As she ran for the service corridor, she was acutely aware of the distance between her and her target. Cold star-flecked blackness lay beyond the towering transparent walls of the Kring Station concourse, along with the elegant white shapes of the great passenger liners and cargo vessels that orbited alongside space station. Beyond the ships lay the vast blue arc of the planet Cameron, with its landmasses in a hundred shades of green and brown. A thoroughly beautiful view, had she not been running for her life.