This is the infernal creature that dared to lay his hands on my mate?

Cold rage coursed through Enki as he watched his target—this so-called Damien Andross—from his vantage point in the shadows. At last, he’d found the bastard. It had only taken several nights of searching; of him quietly slipping away, leaving Layla in a deep sleep while he commandeered a stealth cruiser and scoured various corners of this strange and densely populated planet.

With the assistance of Xalikian’s mate Sera, who was well versed in locating humans who didn’t want to be found, he had narrowed his prey’s whereabouts down to this particular location after several fruitless attempts.

Enki would have kept searching for the man even if it took a hundred fucking cycles. Layla seemed not to care about what others thought of her, but Enki couldn’t tolerate what this Andross had done to her.

Layla was Enki’s mate, and when it came to her, he was supremely irrational.

He wanted her safe, spoiled, and content. That was all. Anything that even hinted at threatening her happiness, he would destroy.

No bloodshed.

Fuck.

He had promised her, but still…

Enki was a full-blooded Kordolian male, and now that he’d found his prey, every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to kill the creature. But he wouldn’t do that, because if Layla heard through Earth’s infernal Networks that Andross had been brutally killed, she would be upset with him.

Humans were odd like that, but Layla was his mate, so of course he would make an exception for her, as difficult as it might be.

Enki’s eyes narrowed as he studied the man who had caused his mate such misery in the first place.

The human was a tall, middle-aged man with grey streaks in his dark hair and a muscular body that was starting to go to fat. He sat in a raised circular pool of water on the rooftop of a high building, sipping some sort of foul smelling liquid from a glass. For some reason, a perpetual stream of bubbles rose violently from the bottom of the pool, making a glugluglug sound. Tiny wisps of vapor drifted off the surface of the water, which was obviously steaming hot.

Tch. Humans and their inane activities. To Enki, it looked as if the man were trying to boil himself alive.

Just as Enki was about to step out from behind the pillar, he heard the sound of bare feet on wood. Two naked human women appeared, tiny bumps and fine hairs rising on their bare skin as they stepped out of the plushly decorated living room into the cold outdoors, traipsing barefoot across the stone-tiled floor.

They slipped into the water, laughing. Andross spoke to them in some unintelligible Earth language, saying something that was obviously lewd and vulgar. They laughed again, but it seemed forced. One of the women cozied up to him and proceeded to dip her head beneath the water, right over his lap.

Enough.

Enki stepped out. Beyond Andross’s little pool, the busy, haphazard skyline of this infernal human outpost—New York—glittered like millions of stars in tiny boxes, but Enki paid the odd sight little attention, because he was fucking angry.

His claws were out.

His killing instinct flared.

How was it that they still hadn’t noticed him?

Then one woman did. She screamed, jumped out of the pool, and ran toward the quarters. The other woman’s head bobbed up from beneath the water. She gasped.

Ah. Now he had their attention.

“Who the fuck are you?” Andross snarled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’ve already called the bot-guard. You’ll be neutralized any fucking mo—”

Something—a machine—rose up in the air behind Enki. Without looking, he reached behind, flicked out one of his throwing knives, and…

Shik. The sound of inferior metal being torn apart by Callidum was a familiar one. The bot-thing, or whatever it was, fell by the wayside.

Enki stepped into the light.

“K-Kordolian!” the woman shrieked, moving closer to Andross, as if he could offer her some sort of security.

“Get the hell up off me, bitch. This obviously isn’t the time.” The man pushed her away, and she lost her balance, falling backwards into the water with a splash.

“You. Go.” Enki pointed towards the warmed living area where the other woman had disappeared. “My business is with him.”

The woman didn’t waste time, hauling herself out of the pool and grabbing a small cloth that she used to cover her parts as she scrambled toward the living quarters. She shot Andross a spiteful glare as she stepped inside…

And then she was gone.

“Look, you fucking moon-elf. I don’t give a shit if you’re the former conquerers of the Universe or whatever. You’re on Earth now. Our rules. If you don’t get off my property right now, I’m calling the Enforcers. What do you want? A movie-part? A pic? My fucking stash of credits?” He waved his hand around in a false display of bravado. “Go on, take it. Just get the fuck out of here. I was just about to get some mind-blowing head, you asshole.”

Enki stared at the man, exerting great self-control just to retract his claws.

“Hey, moon-elf. Do you even understand Universal? Do you know who I am?”

Enki grew sick and tired of the man’s voice. He moved, becoming a dark blur as he darted across to the edge of the pool. He grabbed Andross by the hair and hauled him out of the water. The man twisted and flailed and gasped. Enki flipped him around, grabbed one of his ankles, and strode across to the edge of the very tall building…

Where he dangled Andross in the icy wind, over the snow-covered street.

The man screamed. “Oh god, oh god, oh god!” He babbled in his own language, shouting and cursing, looking up at Enki in horror. “Who the hell are you? What do you want from me? Don’t kill me.”

Enki swung the man back over the edge and dropped him on the stone floor.

“Aaargh!” Andross screamed as his pale wet body hit the icy surface. Small white flakes of ice started to fall from the sky above, drifting slowly to the floor.

On Earth, there was beauty in the ordinary, and the beautiful—his Layla—was divine.

Enki squatted down beside the terrified naked man, waiting until Andross had calmed down enough to look him in the face. “Wh-what do you want? Man, I can pay you a lot of cred—”

“This is about Layla.”

Andross stiffened. “Layla Rose? She’s gone, man. A long time ago. That’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Oh?” Enki lifted a finger.

Andross flinched. “Wh-what d-do you want to know about her?” He was shivering now, his unnaturally white teeth chattering.

Enki rose to his feet. “I don’t need to know anything from you. After this night, you do not get to speak of her ever again.” He dropped a device in front of Andross, a small human-designed holorecording machine that Sera had given him. “Fix it.”

“F-fix what?” The man sat up and curled into a ball, trying to conserve his body heat. It was amazing how quickly humans succumbed to the cold. Enki found this climate quite pleasant.

“You know what you did to her. Fix it.” Enki was starting to lose patience. This human truly did not understand how close he was to death right now.

Or perhaps he did. Fear began to percolate in Andross’s eyes as he picked up the device with trembling fingers that had turned a peculiar shade of blue. Enki could always tell when his victims moved from denial to acceptance. The imminent threat of death tended to make that transition occur rather quickly.

“W-what do you w-want from m-me?”

“Apologize to her and record it. If you do it with enough humility and contrition, I may spare your life.”

Andross cursed under his breath in Earth-speak. “C-can we at least g-go inside? I-I’m g-gonna g-get fucking hypothermia out here.”

Enki shook his head.

Andross let out a strangled whimper. With shaking fingers, he activated the device and stared into the recording lens. “Th-the B-black T-tapes are already out there. I d-don’t know how you think this is g-going to ch-change anything.”

Enki raised an eyebrow and drew his longknife from its sheath, holding it sideways. A single flake of ice came to rest on the obsidian blade, and Enki admired its intricate hexagonal design.

“Oh god. Fuck. You j-just c-can’t do this.” Pure terror invaded the human’s voice. Enki tended to have that effect on people, even when he wasn’t really trying hard to intimidate. He didn’t know why, he just did.

He stepped forward, ice-flakes swirling all around him. A few of them landed on his face and hair; pleasant, ephemeral fragments of coldness. He liked this falling ice… what did humans call it again? Snow. Perhaps he and Layla could go somewhere where there was plenty of this snow, but without the infernal crowds.

He caught another snowflake on the flat of his blade as he stared past Andross, watching the glittering city skyline beyond. He had no desire to look at this pale human’s ugly, shivering form.“I will not repeat myself, so listen to me carefully, human. Layla is under my protection. Any insult to her I consider a direct insult to me, and I have killed people for much lesser crimes.” He turned away from Andross, walked to the edge of the building, and looked down. Below, the empty street was covered in a thick blanket of snow. The only sign of life was the occasional drone silently drifting past.

It was early in the night, after all, when most humans retreated into their small dwellings, seeking warmth.

Thinking he had an opening, Andross rose to his feet and attempted to creep away.

“Don’t.”

The foolish human froze.

Enki didn’t bother to turn around. He could hear everything, even the soft plop of the ice-flakes falling on the deck. “Do you understand me, human?”

“Y-yes.”

“Then fix it.”

“U-urgh.” The human made a sound that was halfway between a choke and a whimper.

“And if you ever bother her again, if you even so much as think of her, I will find you, and I will rip your fucking heart out with my bare hands, and I will do it slowly.” Enki caught another tiny snowflake on his knife, marveling at how the faint starlight caught its incredible angles and spikes, turning it into a dazzling jewel. It nestled against the one he’d caught earlier, appearing similar at first, but on further inspection, he realized it was intrinsically different. He wished he could show it to Layla, but she was asleep in the desert on the other side of the planet. She would be waking soon, because shortly after the sun set here, it slipped over the horizon on the other side of the Earth.

Strange planet indeed.

“Make this quick, human.” He would be home soon, slipping back into their pod before his mate even realized he’d been away.

With his teeth chattering like mad, the human started to talk.

This was going to make for some entertaining viewing, and Enki was pleased that he had achieved full capitulation without shedding even a single drop of blood.