Sneak Peek Volume IV
A merciless fighter with a lost past.
A woman with the skill to awaken his memories.
A kiss that might save the world.
My name is Coran Burke.
I’m unique among the fighters in the Black Squad.
I’m more than human. I can fight longer than my comrades. I am impervious to pain.
I fight until my opponent is destroyed.
My new assignment takes me to Dassuria, on the trail of an alien dragon lord. To beat him, I’ll have to dig deep into my own past.
At his side is a woman with deep entanglements in his dealings. Despite my misgivings, I can’t get her out of my head. She’s unearthed feelings I’d long ago abandoned and has stirred something in me like no one has ever done before.
She should be my enemy, but she appears to be the key to my survival – a puzzle I’m hesitant to solve.
Love or duty.
Passion or loyalty.
Dragon or human.
The choice is mine, but at what cost?
Reading Sample:
Chloe saw the New One’s clenched fist speeding towards his opponent’s chin, as if in slow motion. The move, though flawless in its powerful execution, meant nothing but trouble for her. Worse yet, if the New One triumphed in this fight, Chloe would lose her job – and that was if she got off easy. In a worst-case scenario, her sister would be punished for her “misconduct” and Shor Dasquian wasn’t squeamish when it came to punishment.
For a second, she allowed herself the luxury of an alternative: she defied her boss’s instructions and let Coran (that was the New One’s name) win. She imagined Shor’s dumb face, and how his usually pale skin would be marked by purple-red, pulsing veins. That thought brought her right back to her senses. She had seen what a furious Shor was capable of, once before, and she had no desire to experience this for herself – or to watch what he would do to her sister. So, she concentrated on both men again, waiting for the right moment, as they went at each other in the ring.
It wasn’t easy to influence another creature’s emotions to the point of making them act as she wished. Chloe’s gift (or her curse, depending on whom she was dealing with) was a two-edged sword. Whenever she penetrated another’s head, to manipulate his feelings, she experienced a kickback, for want of better word. The thing she selected and strengthened, so that she could provoke a certain reaction, always came back to her. There were days when Chloe wasn’t sure any more, if she still had feelings of her own, or if she merely fed on foreign emotions, like a parasite.
The noise from the audience around her swelled, as Coran’s opponent landed a painful hit and then added in an extra kick. The noise sounded like a collective intake of breath, which faded to a sigh of disappointment in slow motion. The audience in “Starfighter” paid many space dollars for these illegal fights and they demanded blood. A face that had been pounded into mush or a heavily wounded fighter who had to be carried out of the ring – those were all extras. However, blood was an absolute requirement of every fight. Chloe suspected that some of the colorful species who gathered here on Dassuria, preferred blood as a source of nutrition. One could see it in the way their eyes glazed over and their nostrils flared, as soon as the first drop flowed. The coppery smell mixed with masculine sweat from the ring and stirred the masses up.
Chloe watched the New One teetering in the corner and silently hoped that he would be able to pull himself together without her help. He was strong enough to confront his sparring partner, as long as that one didn’t shift. Chloe knew something that Coran had no way of guessing: his opponent was a dragon shifter. If things started to get tight for the beefy Shassir, he would start the transition.
Since everything was allowed at “Starfighter,” from kicks to one’s own bodily weapons, such as fangs or razor-sharp fingernails, Shassir was allowed to shift, to win the fight. It was, however, illegal to send a dragon shifter into the ring, and also dumb in Chloe’s opinion, to say nothing of being downright idiotic. Not that Shor Dasquian would have worried about a concept such as “illegal”. Heaven knew the entire concept of the Starfighter Club was forbidden on 90 percent of all planets.
No, what made the hair on the back of Chloe’s neck stand up, was the fact that there was not a single fire extinguisher in this stinking, packed room. She suppressed hysterical laughter when she realized that a fire extinguisher would probably have little effect against the hot breath of a dragon shifter.
What was wrong with her today? Her thoughts were jumping around, uncontrolled like a bouncy ball. This could have fatal consequences. There was too much at stake today. Just now, even at this exact moment, Chloe had been watching Coran’s elegant moves with absent-minded admiration, instead of doing her job. Enough already!
She closed her eyes. First, she tuned out all of the noise, and then the smells. Usually, it didn’t take more than a few seconds for Chloe to start to feel empty and for her heartbeat to be the only thing she could perceive. Today was different. She just couldn’t manage to glide into the familiar state of emptiness, where she was nothing more than a bare vessel for foreign feelings. Chloe worked out the kinks in her tight neck muscles. She hoped that none of the audience members would notice that her head was turned in the direction of the boxing ring, but that she couldn’t see a thing through her closed eyes. Her stomach did a somersault when someone crashed into her from behind and she almost lost her balance. Instinctively, she reached for the nearest arm to save herself from falling. She was rewarded with a mean hiss from the man to whom she was clinging.
There went her concentration again. Before she tried anew, she caught a glimpse of Shassir and Coran through the crowd. A black eye decorated the dragon shifter’s face. By tomorrow, it would probably be shining with all of the colors of the rainbow. Coran seemed to be unhurt except for a scratch below his chest. He had pulled his dreadlocks back into a tight ponytail and his sweat had made them look darker than usual. His broad torso was glistening with perspiration and, if you looked closely, you could see by the furrow between his eyebrows, that the physical exertion was taking its toll. Not because he was at the limit of his physical strength, but because he was slowly starting to lose patience with his opponent. That one was making a game of fleeing just out of the reach of Coran’s long arms and stomping around him. If you knew, as Chloe did, that Shassir could shift to a dragon, you could see the similarities between the human and the shape shifter. Shassir moved heavily on his feet, but his massive body was more flexible than a normal human was. Chloe had heard rumors about deviant experiments in which different races had been crossed with each other. Maybe Shassir was the result of one of those experiments. When she looked at him, she could almost imagine him setting fire to a laboratory, so he could escape.
She focused on the men in the ring again, because Coran had knocked his opponent off his feet. As Chloe had feared, the New One was gradually losing patience. However, instead of kicking Shassir while he was down, as the dragon man had done to him a short while ago, Coran held out his hand and pulled him to his feet. Chloe sighed to herself and wondered if Coran had any idea what he was doing. Being noble was not a virtue in the Starfighter Club and, accordingly, discontent was high among the paying guests. They jeered and whistled.
One of them, who seemed to be quite drunk already, went as far as climbing on a table, pulling down his pants and pointing his naked ass at the fighters. Chloe wished she hadn’t seen that, but it was too late. The sight of the hairy behind and the blue-veined, dangling testicles was burned into her memory now, distracting her from the job at hand. She wiped her wet palms on her black, shiny pants and took a deep breath. Two more times, and she would be free. She only had to influence a fight two more times, to Dasquian’s liking, and then she would have fulfilled her part of the bargain.
She stretched her feelers out carefully in Coran’s direction and felt her way towards his emotional center. This was hidden in a different part of every person’s body. Many women had their emotions in their heart, which is traditionally what you might expect from the more emotional sex. Men were more diverse. Their affects could be hiding anywhere. Chloe usually only needed a few minutes of careful observation to release an impulse. Dasquian’s emotions were tiny and hidden underneath his eyes. That made sense, since he evaluated everything and everyone based on the benefit they might offer him. Chloe had been able to determine that Shassir’s feelings were located in his hands, with just one look. That made sense, since he loved to beat up his opponents with his bare hands.
Coran was one of the few men who had the center of his emotions in his head. His feelings were determined by logic and structure. That made the task of influencing him a balancing act. If Chloe went too far, he would go insane. If she were too hesitant, he would hardly notice anything and just ignore the impulse she had implanted. On top of that, something made Chloe deeply uneasy. She could sense his feelings, but it was like looking through a thick, gel-like layer. Not once had she managed to feel him directly. There was always a distance that felt artificial. They had talked once or twice, which in and of itself was strange, since Coran usually kept his distance from most of his other co-workers in the club. His questions had been harmless enough – where are you from, what are you doing here, how did you find this job – but Chloe hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he was hiding something behind his smooth exterior. She had tried to dive into him more deeply once, but his gaze had become terribly empty and she had pulled back without accomplishing anything. She cursed her hesitance, since it might cost her sister her life.
She could see Isabelle’s face in front of her and could see her trying to replace her slack expression with an alert one. Chloe’s pain and her bad conscience burned like acid in her throat when she thought about Isabelle’s dependence. Over the last three years, she had learned to hate her sister, but she still hadn’t hesitated for even a second to submit to Dasquian in exchange for… a strange, soft whirring hit her ears, and she opened her eyes. Where was that noise coming from? It wasn’t loud, but it was piercing, and it had the effect of making her hairs stand on end. Instinctively, she looked for the closest exit, but it was blocked by two bouncers. Neither the men, nor the audience seemed to notice the sudden electric tension in the air.
Her view of the ring was blocked by a woman who was screaming hysterically. Her fat rolls were in a state of upheaval and threatened to burst the see-through skin that counted as clothing here on Dassuria. Chloe dug her elbow into the woman’s well-padded ribs, so she could make more room to try to get to the front. The next obstacle on the way to the boxing ring was a very thin man. Four hooved feet stuck out from his flowing robes. At least he made room for Chloe voluntarily, as opposed to the last man who had separated her from Shassir and Coran. She snuck by him deftly, catching a strong whiff of body odor as she passed.
Finally, her view of the ring was clear and unobstructed. The air around Shassir shimmered. Coran had stopped mid-punch and was staring at his opponent. Chloe didn’t even have to read his feelings to be able to guess what was going on in his head.
He had the look of a man who had just realized that he had been tricked.
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