Among Galactic Ruins (4 page)

As she spoke, she glowed, with a look in her
eyes that was impossible to glance away from. She loved what she
was talking about and Damon felt invigorated by her enthusiasm.
When was the last time he’d been truly passionate about
anything?

He leaned back in his chair. “Apart from
what it’s worth, why is finding this egg so important?”

“History is important, Damon. We learn so
much from the past, and one day in the future, people will read
about us coming here and finding this lost Terran artifact.”

“So it’s not about money?”

She snorted. “Believe me, my salary is good,
but it isn’t worth risking my life on a planet like this. And even
if Marius sold the egg, I wouldn’t get anything.” She waved a
dismissive hand in the air. “It’s not about money. It’s…about being
a part of something special.”

That, he could understand. He’d joined the
Galactic Security Services with the misguided belief he’d be a part
of something special, something better than what he’d known.
Instead, the GSS had trained him to kill and sent him to wade
through the muck and darkest shadows of the galaxy until he was so
worn down, so damn weary, he’d had to leave just to give himself a
chance at surviving.

“You think finding a lost Terran egg is
something special?”

She tossed her head back, the light catching
strands of her dark hair. He’d thought it simply black, but in the
candlelight, some strands turned deep red.

“This will be my…legacy. I’ll be protecting
an important piece of history, be the discoverer of something
valuable to our past.”

God, he loved needling her. She was so quick
to light up, it made him wonder how else she’d light up, especially
under his hands.

Oh no
, he did not need that kind of
trouble. He crossed his arms over his chest and pushed his thoughts
back to this quest. “And will I get to be a part of this
legacy?”

Another toss of her head. “No. You’re just
the muscle. Unwanted muscle, I might add.”

“I know, I know. You didn’t need me to come
along. You can look after yourself. Well, Mr. Darend didn’t
agree.”

Her mouth moved into a pout. Silence fell
between them as they finished their meal. Damon had always found
silences with others uneasy. There was always a tension that made
people want to fill the void.

But strangely enough, with Lexa, the silence
was…easy.

She set her spoon down and looked up. “So,
were you really a spy?”

He leaned his elbows on the table. “What do
you think?” He was a master at deflecting questions about himself
and the work he’d done.

Her gaze ran over him in a way that made him
want to shift in his seat. Weird. He’d suffered hostile
interrogations chained to chairs for hours, and had been threatened
with everything from airlocks to torture, and they’d never made him
uncomfortable.

“You have a certain…charm. A way about you
that makes people talk. But it’s a cover.”

He raised a brow.

“I’ve seen the changes you’ve implemented at
the museum to beef up security. You know what you’re doing. Of
course, you’d have to have good credentials for the Darend Museum
to hire you.”

A sensible, reasonable assessment. He
felt…disappointed. She’d seen exactly what he showed the
galaxy.

She smiled. “But…you move like a predator.
You can fight, can take down someone far bigger than yourself. You
watch everybody and everything like you’re assessing their threat
potential. You sit with your back to the wall so no one can sneak
up on you. You always carry a weapon and I think you are probably
very, very intelligent.”

His smile disappeared. “Not just a pretty
face, are you?”

“Nope.” She toyed with her drink. “So yes, I
think you were a spy. Why you left a no doubt challenging,
important job…that I haven’t worked out yet.”

He took another sip of his ale.

“Well?” she prompted.

He shrugged.

“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”

He slowly took another drink.

She let out a gusty sigh. “You could tell me
but then you’d have to kill me, right?”

He laughed. “I just don’t want to bore you
with the truth.” He didn’t want to see the horror in her beautiful
brown eyes if he told her about the things he’d seen, the things
he’d done. “How about we talk about you? How come an heiress to one
of the largest fortunes in the central systems is out in the Exodus
quadrant playing astro-archeologist?”

Fire flashed in her eyes. “I am not
playing
at anything.” She banged her glass down on the table
hard enough to rattle their dishes. “I
am
an
astro-archeologist. A damned good one.”

He’d touched a nerve. He held his hands up
in surrender.

She pulled in a long breath and played with
the end of her ponytail. “Just because my father has money doesn’t
stop me from working, or having a career, or doing something that
matters.”

“Agreed. I just figured you’d be doing that
something at Carter Interstellar Enterprises.”

She snorted. “Hardly. I have five brothers.
Despite the fact that none of them have ever shown any interest in
being a galactic magnate, my father has never once considered me
for the position.”

“Why not? I thought he would have groomed
you for something like that.”

A bitter laugh. “I don’t have a penis. He’s
old-fashioned like that. I was groomed in looking pretty and I was
allowed to ‘play’ at studying.” She fiddled with her napkin,
unhappiness on her face. “It was expected that I would marry well
and be a nice little trophy to seal a business alliance. Preferably
with one of the other families with whom my father does
business.”

For some reason, the thought of Lexa
marrying some polished scion of a magnate family made Damon want to
hurt someone. “That’s…archaic.”

“And not just any family, of course.” She
was gathering steam now, the heat in her eyes becoming an inferno.
“It had to be the son of one of the four wealthiest families in the
Franchise quadrant. It didn’t matter if I liked them, and it didn’t
matter that they are all either obsessed with work or have half a
dozen mistresses scattered throughout the central systems.”

If Baron Carter couldn’t see the
intelligence and enthusiasm in his daughter, it was his loss. “Your
father is an idiot.”

Lexa blinked, the fire draining out of her.
She laughed and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “God, I’ve
never heard anyone call my father an idiot.”

Damon sipped his drink. “I’d happily tell
him to his face for you.”

“I’d like to see that.” Another laugh, this
one longer.

She had a really nice laugh, open and
honest. He hadn’t heard a laugh like that much during his
deep-cover assignments, where most people were the scum of the
galaxy or other spies, all lying and pretending for their own
agendas.

Lexa finally sank back in her chair and
glanced around. The bar had emptied out while they were finishing
their meal. “I guess we’d better get to bed.”

Damon was strangely reluctant for the
evening to end. “I guess.” He followed her up the stairs and down
the hall. “Well, Princess, except for a violent sandstorm, you
managed to stay out of trouble for an evening.”

She shot him a glare. “You can hardly blame
me for the sandstorm and I am
not
a trouble magnet.” She
pushed open her door. “Goodnight, Mr. Malik.”

Quick as a flash, Damon pressed a hand to
the door to stop her from closing it between them. Large brown eyes
watched him warily, and for a second, he really wasn’t sure why he
was doing this.

“Just wanted to say, if your father can’t
see what you have to offer, he doesn’t deserve you.”

Her mouth dropped open and, without waiting
for a response, Damon turned and headed down the hall.

Lexa thumped her pillow and turned over in
her bunk. The bed was so uncomfortable, and the rustic charm of it
had worn off a long time ago. She rolled again and the sheets
tangled around her legs. She sighed and flopped onto her back.

She stared at the shadowed ceiling. She’d
been tossing and turning for a couple of hours now.

Thinking of
him
.

Why the hell was she thinking of Damon
Malik?

Thinking of the way the candlelight had
highlighted the sharp dips of his face. The way he laughed, almost
as though he was surprised by the sound. The way he sounded as he’d
told her that her father didn’t deserve her.

She thumped her flat pillow again. The man
was a former intergalactic spy. He could probably tell her she was
purple with green hair like a Pegasian and make her believe it.

A whisper of noise broke through her
thoughts. She paused, trying to catch the sound again. Had she left
her Sync on?

She watched a shaft of moonlight dancing
across the ceiling. Well, at least that meant the storm had
passed.

But…wait a second. She hadn’t opened the
heavy storm shutters on the window. Her heart thumped against her
ribs.

A dark shadow raced across the room.

With a gasp, Lexa leapt from her bed. A
second shadow darted across the room, and, a heartbeat later, a
third one jumped out at her.

Her attacker’s weight hit her in the
stomach, and pain exploded as the air rushed out of her. Lexa
landed on her butt and the dark shadow leaned over her.

“Where’s the map?” A rasping voice.

Her pulse spiked. How could they know about
the map?

“Screw you.” She kicked out with her feet
and caught the man in his chest. He flew backward.

Lexa jumped up and grabbed the small,
three-legged stool by the small table. She hefted it. It was made
of cheap plas and didn’t have much weight to it, but it was better
than nothing.

Four shadows converged on her. With her
heart hammering an overloud beat in her ears, she noted her
assailants weren’t very tall—maybe four feet high—but she’d seen
they were fast. They wore rough robes, with hoods covering their
faces.

“The map, woman.” The closest man held out a
hand. It was covered in dark fur. “That’s all we need and then we
go.” He spoke with a strange, sing-song lilt.

“I don’t have a map.” She swung the stool up
over her shoulder.

“Then why you fight?”

They swarmed her.

Lexa yelped and swung the stool. She smacked
the lead attacker in the head, the stool shattering into tiny
pieces, and he fell. The next leapt at her, his arms and legs
clinging to her upper body like a Drask suckerbeast. She staggered.
The third she managed to kick. He did a graceful flip and landed
back on his feet. They were agile as well as fast. She couldn’t see
the fourth.

She slammed into the wall, trying to
dislodge the being clinging to her.

“The map, the map. Where is it?”

“Don’t…have a map.” She managed to get out
as the attacker slid his hands around her neck. She hammered at him
with both her fists. “And I wouldn’t tell you even if I did.”

Small but strong hands clamped around her
throat. She struggled to dislodge the thing, but damn, he was
strong.

Her lungs started to burn.

She watched the three others ransack her
room, upending her bag, scattering her clothes. One paged through
her Sync before stuffing it in a hidden pocket of his ratty robe.
Dammit
. At least they’d never break her military-grade
encryption.

Lexa fought to drag in air. Spots were
dancing in front of her eyes. She kept trying to grab the man
gripping her but he wouldn’t budge.

God, she was going to die here in this
simple room in a backwater village on Zerzura. She could almost
hear her father’s voice telling her “I told you so.”

No, dammit
. She spun, aiming for the
wall again. But her coordination was gone and she was feeling
dangerously lightheaded. She tried to scream but only a squeak made
it out of her constricted throat.

She shoved again, with the last of her
strength, and managed to make him move an inch. His hands loosened
for the barest second and she pulled in a tiny, precious bit of
air. Then she screamed.

He grabbed the strap of her sleep tank and
she felt it snap. Then those cruel fingers were once again digging
into her flesh, cutting off her scream.

Together, they spun again in an ungainly
dance. Huge black spots blotted her vision. She saw the small
creatures tossing her clothes all over the room. One was now pawing
through her small collection of handwritten notes, studying each
one, searching for her map.

Lexa fell heavily to her knees. She couldn’t
stay upright anymore, and unconsciousness beckoned like a
well-known friend promising good things. She blinked slowly.

Then the door burst open, letting in a glare
of light from the hallway.

Feeling as though she were dreaming, she saw
Damon’s silhouette and the green laser fire of his pistols.

One of the intruders grabbed his chest and
flopped to the floor. The other two spun and cartwheeled like
space-circus performers.

Damon, moving with lethal calm, advanced on
the closest attacker. A swift kick, and the smaller man scuttled
backward, squawking something to his friends in a language Lexa
didn’t recognize.

Damon lifted the pistol and aimed just above
Lexa’s head. He didn’t issue a threat, just stood there, radiating
a dark intensity. She felt the fingers on her neck tighten, then
release.

There was suddenly a wild scramble as her
attackers bolted through the room, running on all four limbs. They
snatched up their friend and were out the window before she could
blink.

Lexa fought to stay upright on her knees and
pull in as much air as she could.

Had she just dreamed all of that?

“Princess?” Damon knelt in front of her, his
hands molding over her shoulders. “You okay?”