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Dark Host

Kim Knox

Dark Host

Kim Knox

Published 2009

ISBN 978-1-59578-571-8

Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509

reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise,

without the prior written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Liquid Silver Books

http://LSbooks.com

Email:

raven@LSbooks.com

Editor

Devin Govaere

Cover Artist

Anne Cain

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of

the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual

events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Blurb

Feline Mosaic, Charis Sur, thought her mission aboard the INS Pagidion would be

quick and easy. All she has to do is watch her target and keep him alive until Betelgeuse

goes nova.

Simple. Until one of the passengers drops dead in front of her.

Suddenly everything is not simple. Her life depends on a successful mission and she

has to protect her target from whatever killed this man. That throws her into the path of

Jason Narak, the one man she never wanted to see again. The man who burned her six

months before. Yet, even as her past with Jason hurls her mission, her life into disarray,

Charis finds that…something…is waiting for them aboard the INS Pagidion .

It calls itself darkness. And it needs a host.

Chapter One

Everything about Ciro’s stateroom doorway smelled wrong.

The sharp scent of non-humans stained the metal frame and the tight-locked door

panel. I didn’t stare. I stopped and glanced along the empty promenade raised above the

curved green swathe of parkland cultivated around a glistening lake. It was early and the

other tourists still slept. Lucky them.

I should have been sleeping too. It’d been a long, uncomfortable journey to get to the

INS Pagidion . Strapped into a high-speed shuttle was not my idea of fun. However, the

Company said it was urgent, so I endured. It was better than being dead. I rubbed at my

spine, still red with strap welts after six hours. Better. Just.

My room on the secondary sphere was sumptuous, the bed soft and yielding. Yet, I’d

fixed my gaze on the mirrored ceiling and sleep eluded me. I can never sleep. Not really.

And this was what I got when I couldn’t shut my eyes and not have my thoughts tearing

in a wild rush through my head. I was stuck with an overactive nose, one that I couldn’t

ignore.

I leant against the golden rail running along the promenade, my fingers tapping idly

against the warmed metal. Just another tourist enjoying the view. With my back to the

door, I stared up at the great curve of the Pagidion’s transparent hull. Space stared back;

space filled with the bloated mass of a dying star.

I shivered. The damn thing made my skin crawl.

Pushing the fear away, I drew the scrubbed air deep into my lungs, letting instinct

pick apart the individual scents. I closed my eyes. One of the ship’s menials had wiped

down the door, five, no, six hours before. Underneath the sharp cut of cleaning fluid, I

followed the trace of four individuals.

I probed deeper and winced. Two Lofn had completed a mating spray against the

frame. The poor menial must have had a hard time scrubbing that crap off the metal. I

was surprised the yowls hadn’t reached even my cabin buried in the secondary sphere.

Another scent lay under the Lofn. Years of training and instinct deconstructed it. And it

had me gripping the rail until my knuckles hurt. Before the Lofn had sprayed, a Mosaic

had entered the room.

What the hell…? I was supposed to be the only Mosaic onboard. I took a deep

breath, pulling in more of the scent, but the trail was too old. There was just the familiar

hint of twisted DNA; a scent I carried too.

What was the Company playing at? They should have told me—

But then the last scent had me backing away. Everything in me screamed that I run,

grab a shuttle and jump ship. Right now .

Abandon my post? I could count on my right hand how many hours the Company

would let me live for betraying them.

I grabbed at the rail and forced my retreating body to stop.

I couldn’t name it, but something in that scent scraped raw the Mosaic in me. Shit,

why did I have to be feline? Why couldn’t I have some solid bovine sewn into my human

strands? Or porcine? I’d always envied their intelligence and their easy attitude towards

food. No, my mix of ancestral DNA had to come from a particularly skittish and fussy

series of cats.

I moved forward, each slow footstep dragging me closer to the door.

The scent of whatever-it-was burned through me. It was something acrid, with the

harsh taste of rust. I pushed back my enhanced senses; buried them. My breathing eased.

Calmed, I smoothed back my hair and straightened.

Something was in that cabin and another Mosaic had followed it in. Whether the

Company was playing games or not, I had to do my job. I had to protect my mark, the

Lord Admiral Sir Raoul Quinn, from every possible threat. Ciro's stateroom had to be

investigated.

I checked the long curve of the promenade again. Still empty. No doubt the other

passengers were in the process of struggling out of bed and dialing up their party cure-

alls and cleansers. Ciro's name and company data scrolled above the pad in a repeating

loop. All the damn doors had the same stream of personal information and the cat in me

itched to chase the bright line of letters. I focused and slid my hand over the ident.pad,

sensitive fingertips teasing out the lock.

With a hiss, the door panel parted, clunked and then eased back into the frame. The

room beyond was empty, silent. I controlled the nervous cat within me and stepped

inside.

It appeared to be just another stateroom. Wrought gold, vibrant carpets, strewn

animal skins, priceless artefacts and furniture assaulted the senses in a wild rush. The

displayed wealth was almost painful. Raoul Quinn had one that looked very much the

same. He was staying in the suite next door. I’d stolen in to watch him sleeping. Not

exactly a part of my brief—I was supposed to keep my distance—but the cat in me was

curious about him. Damn feline genes. I should have stayed away. Quinn

was…unpleasant.

I pulled my focus back. Nothing seemed out of place in Ciro’s stateroom. Edging

past the same arrangement of lounging sofas and chairs grouped to take advantage of the

view, I kept my eyes averted. The wall had a one way viewing system. No one could see

in, but the occupant enjoyed a full view of the dying sun. I shuddered. I hated looking at

that damn star; and now it was following me. I moved away, searching through the

numerous rooms, but found only bedrooms and marble-rich bathrooms behind the closed

doors.

“No one home,” I murmured and my voice echoed.

I took a deep breath and let the sympathetic shift of my feline genes settle over my

senses. The golden surfaces gleamed bright and a dry prickle meant my eyes had lensed

to compensate. The cabin was silent, broken only by the soft hum of the power streams

through the metal walls. I stole a touch from the deep fur throw slung over the back of a

sofa. Cool, soft and just so… Heat built in my chest and I willed down the urge to purr.

Lifting my head, I scented the air.

I drew in traces of the Mosaic. He… yes, male… smelt familiar. I frowned. That was

the problem with our kind. Besides gender, our scent didn’t differentiate us. If it was

there, even my sharp nose couldn’t detect it. And then there was the other scent. I

clamped a hand to my mouth to stop the sharp hiss I wanted to spit against its rankness.

My fingers arched into long claws, nails sharpening into points as the heat of the fight

burned through me.

It was alien, but like no alien I had ever encountered before. Something about the

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