Assassins Bite by Mary Hughes Page B

snatched the creature up and killed it with a shake.
    The boy started to say the proper thanks for the animal sharing its life but his father waggled the body in front of him. “What the hell is this?”
    â€œFood.” The boy glared. The man had no respect.
    â€œThis ain’t but a mouthful.” He threw the carcass in the boy’s face. Tiny claws slashed already bruised skin. The man yanked the boy to his feet and dragged him stumbling back to their campsite. “You ain’t getting food ’til you catch something worth eating or worth selling.”
    The trip continued. The boy lost count of the days. Doubt crept in that his mother’s people would find him. Alone for the first time in his life, sick in body and soul, the boy felt the nibble of fear.
    That was the first time he gave in, telling himself he couldn’t escape if he was weak from starvation, though he hated himself for it. He trapped a fox for the man. When he turned the pelt over for a mouthful of food, he felt dirty.
    Only the memory of his mother’s voice comforted him, soft and sweet. “Beautiful Son. Life, friendship and love. They are worth fighting for.”
    The moon waxed and waned many times before his father finally stopped in a place the boy didn’t recognize, a place of straight wide trails and fences and box houses.
    The boy remembered his mother’s words and tried to fight for life and friendship and love. But as a hated alien among his father’s people, trust and friendship withered away; under his father’s fist, hope and love died, until the boy clung to life alone, and that only by a thread.
    One day a man came to meet with his father, a small, thin man with rich clothes and an odd marking on his cheek, a line with two humps like a bird or bat. The boy hid behind his father’s chair and watched. His father pointed to a pile of furs, animals trapped and killed in the cruel way without proper thanks, although the boy said thanks to them after, behind his father’s back.
    The rich man held out a silver coin.
    â€œAin’t nearly enough.” The boy’s father puffed up, threatening like a thundercloud. The boy cringed. The man only laughed.
    His father swung one large, hard fist. The boy flinched.
    But the man caught his father’s fist. With a thin, ugly smile, he squeezed. His father cried out. When the man released him, he backed away, face bloodless.
    The man pocketed the silver coin and held out a copper one.
    His father snatched it from the man’s hand and slammed out of the cabin.
    The boy clutched himself. He knew what happened when his father had copper. He’d return smelling of whiskey and hate. The boy could only hope the man’s squeeze had softened his father’s fist.
    Then the man approached the boy where he hid behind the chair. “Do you want away from this?”
    The boy released his middle. How had the man known he was there?
    â€œCome out, boy.”
    Slowly, the boy did.
    The man smiled—flashing fangs.
    The boy ran, but it was too late.
    If Aiden Blackthorne thought he could plunk me down, order me to stay, and that would be the end of it, he didn’t know me very well. I had a job to do.
    I stomped into the station, fumbling with my belt to release my keys. I could so use me some anti-ninja cuffs. As I unlocked the restraints from my wrist, I found myself fingering them, naughty uses on certain sexy ninjas in mind.
    Abruptly I jammed the cuffs into the holder on my duty belt—not the small of the back because I’m not rupturing my L-5 disk—and mounted the stairs to the second floor. That trap in the park, with its electrified pool and the salt nearby, had been set deliberately. For Blackthorne? Most Wanted be damned, if Smith had tried to kill him, that put her at the top of my personal to-do list. As soon as I talked to Elena, I’d run the dark sedan’s plates.
    Three scarred desks held the