Page 9 of Enthraller
The woman from this morning was staring at him.
Ed followed the direction of her gaze. Down his chest, to where he was suddenly sporting a raging erection.
He looked back up at her.
“Someone was using that to follow me.” He gestured to the anti-laz suit.
“I see.” She kept her eyes on his, almost desperately not looking down. “Are they close?”
“Yes.”
“Then come.” She turned and started down the alley at a fast lope.
Ed had just enough brain capacity to scoop up his clothes and boots, and then he ran after her. Naked as a natworm.
4
Something toldWren this morning’s rescuer would rather she not mention anything about their encounter in the alley.
That was fine with her.
She wasn’t Aponian by birth, although her parents had been. She had been brought up all over the Verdant String, so she didn’t have the same casual take on nudity as most on Aponi, but she suspected neither did the man following her.
From his blue hair, he was clearly Halatian.
The last of a people who had been visited by tragedy, compounded by cruelty, greed and inertia.
They were the walking conscience of the VSC.
She led him through the twists and turns of the back ways of the university district, places she hadn’t known about before what happened to her on Ytla, but had made it her business to learn in the past few months.
She had barely spent any time back home in Nanganya since this began. She had friends there she hadn’t dared visit. She had had to slip in and out of her apartment, avoiding her colleagues in Nanganya Special Forces while she did the research sheneeded to do. It had been a game for a while, as she enjoyed outsmarting the best of Aponi defense, the Special Forces teams.
But when they’d followed her to Demeter, begun to trail her here, and when she realized their intent might not be just to watch her, but to harm her, it had ceased being amusing.
She had found the Demeter house, and she had started taking a different route from the Depository every time she went home to it, until there were no new ways to try, and then she’d started memorizing them all.
Behind her she heard the unmistakable sounds of someone dressing on the move, and she couldn’t help grinning.
She’d have fanned herself in that alley, if she’d had a fan. She almost wished she was an Arthesian, and her hand was like a fan.
He was fine.
She had been about to step out of the alleyway and approach him when he’d stopped, turned and walked straight toward her. She’d retreated deeper into the gloom, stunned and a little afraid at how he seemed to sense her.
Then he’d begun ripping off his clothes, and she’d wondered if she should run.
She was glad now she hadn’t.
She stopped at a turning point in a back alley, waiting for him, and without a sound, he was suddenly next to her, fully dressed again, and his hand clamped on her arm. “Where are we going?”
“To a place I think is safe.” She stared at his hand, then up at his face. He was at least a head taller than her.
“Youthinkit’s safe?”
“I thought I was safe this morning, and look where that got me.” She twisted her lips. “If this place isn’t safe, no place is.”
He released her. “Lady, after the luck I’m having today, I’m assuming the worst-case scenario.”
