With a flash of instinct I charged, clawed my way around the ceiling as I bee-lined for the Keeper and rammed him. He had a shield up but I ran through it, the magic sparking against me as he didn’t have enough time to fully call it forward. My mouth filled with sweet human blood as I flung him down the hallway and spun, running back to the hole I’d almost completed, dropping down as two more shots were fired over my shoulder, one of them snagging the edge of my wing.
It burned, but I didn’t have time to feel it. Adrenaline was pumping, training sliding away as the blood filled my senses. Keepers. Damn Keepers. Always showing up when I didn’t expect it, always causing problems, thinking they could control me. They did control me for a hot second. Look where that got them.
The memory of my collar, of the dark cells and cold meals and silver-edged blades all fueled the fire inside, raised my bloodlust to the point of instinctual mayhem. I was halfway to the engines when a small group of them assembled in the hall, demanding I stop and raising weapons at me. Something inside screamed in anger and I lost myself.
I didn’t come back to my senses until something hit me on the side of the head, and hard. Slammed me to the ground, body wrapped in a thick blanket that was sopping wet. It froze over into a thick sheet of ice. I began to break through it, elbows shaking ans the ice split, when something broke near my nose and shot into my lungs, pungent and gross and laced with magic.
My head cleared almost instantly, the smell of ammonia and ethanol clearing out the blood. Clearing out my head.
I spun in my frozen sheet to find Rod standing over me, a broken case of smelling salts in his hand. He gave me a look before passing a hand over the sheet, the ice turning back into water and leaving my fur damp as he slid it off and started stuffing it back into his pocket.
“This isn’t helping her,” he stated. “You’re not defending the kid by going on a murderous rampage, no matter what you think. Get the engines and get out!”
I hesitated, listening. I was way off course. I looked down and around. I had…that was a lot of pieces of people.
I turned and we ran down the halls together, back to the engines. Rod worked the panels while I began to tear at the wires, at the heaps of fuel nearby, at the welded bits of metal that were keeping the engines attached. Something metal groaned and snapped, the engines whining before they sputtered out. Electricity in the entire room died and I checked with him. Rod nodded to me. “It’s done. I took the programs and you took the main engine.” He grabbed his hat and spun it at my feet, the hat sinking into a hole that began to spin and twirl with magic at the edges. “Inside. Now!”
I snarled a response at him but stepped forward, leaning into it. My body was yanked, pulled, twisted before coming upright. I was back inside Miles’ ship, back in the kitchen. It was…disorienting a little, a small hole where there hadn’t been one before. Rod leapt through and swung his hand over it, the hole snapping shut and popping back into the form of a hat. He grabbed it and turned to me.
“Lick yourself off, go take a shower, whatever you need to do to clean yourself up,” he said, voice even and factual. “Because while I don’t have the same complex as you, I’m fairly sure you won’t want the kid to see you dripping in five different kinds of fluids.”
I shook my head with a gruff growl, shifting back down to four legs with a groan and grunt. “What were you even doing there?” I snapped. “Miles said you were helping some other way.”
“I was. I heard from Miles you had flown out the airlock and were ripping apart the Keeper hull. You and Keepers are a bad mix. There’s a reason they were after you before, and you’re running out of favors. I can’t keep cleaning your records, she-wolf. And…” he took a breath. “I know you thought you were going over there to protect Layla. But I know you better than she does. I know what happens when you get blood in that blunt nose of yours. You’ve tried your best to get away from old habits and I didn’t want you falling into this one hard enough to mope around and regret your actions. I’ve had enough of that from you for a few years.”
Miles’ voice crackled through the speakers. The Keeper ship was breaking off, engines going down one by one. Rod nodded to himself. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to discuss something with our captain and her companion. And you have…cleaning up to do. I’ll stall the kid for as long as I can.” He left before I could protest, locking the door behind him.
He was right, as always. I glanced down at my matted, slick fur. Tail. Wings. The kid hadn’t seen me like this yet…and it wasn’t exactly a pretty sight. So I trotted back down the kitchens in search of a bathroom. There was no way I was going to ‘lick’ myself clean. That’s disgusting.
