Doctor Who_ Beyond the Sun - Matthew Jones [108]
Kitzinger seized her moment. She pulled up her foot and with all the force in her body kicked its knee out from under it. The Sunless lost its balance and toppled on top of her.
She screamed in agony as the blunt end of the crystal smacked into her, bruising her breast-bone. But she felt it slide up into the Sunless, skewering it. The dead weight of the creature was suddenly on top of her. Its head cracked against her skull and suddenly she was looking directly into its dead eyes. They looked no different now from when it had been alive.
She pushed the corpse off her angrily and staggered to her feet. Her chest hurt. She could feel a deep graze under her clothes. It had almost killed her! She wanted to kick it but she stopped herself. She didn’t have much time before they would discover what she had done. She had to leave.
Escape wasn’t on her mind. She knew that there was nowhere for her to go on this barren planet. There was only ice, rocks and the Sunless.
She took the male figurine from her pocket. But if she could get a few miles between her and the chamber, she might be able to bury the figurine somewhere where it would never be found.
And then whatever Nikolas hoped to awaken in this room – weapons, power, whatever it might turn out to be – would stay buried for ever. And once it was hidden she would wait until the wind and the ice and the snow ate into her body and sucked the life out of her.
She turned and fled from the cathedral-sized room that had been her prison for the last year.
22
SUNLESS ‘Я’ US
‘Hey, dragon boy, your teeth are getting smudged.’
‘What?’
‘Come here.’
A little reluctantly, Scott bared his teeth and Tameka wiped away the tiny smear from the otherwise perfect triangles she had created by blacking out parts of his front teeth. It was a waste of extremely expensive eyeliner, but she had to admit that it was pretty damn realistic. His teeth looked as dangerous as razors. Vampire sharp.
She had used up all of her pale foundation giving them all Sunless complexions. Almost half of it had been used to whiten Michael’s dark, purple face. She’d always found Jeillo boys sexy, with their deep skin tones and muscular bodies. Michael looked really weird ghost-white. His head looked unreal, somehow, like it was made of clay. There were still traces of purple around his eyes, where she hadn’t been able to cover his skin completely. Close up he looked as if he hadn’t slept in about a thousand years.
And she didn’t find him sexy any more.
She stood back and admired her handiwork on Scott. With their freshly shaven heads, uniforms and shark teeth they all looked alarmingly like the real thing. But the brothers’ shiny mercury eyes left them actually indistinguishable from the grey men. Tameka was feeling curiously confident. As long as no one got too close she had a sneaking feeling they were going to get away with this.
‘Have you finished?’ Scott asked, the irritation evident in his voice.
She was a lot less confident about Scott. ‘Yeah.’
He went to move away, but she tugged him back. ‘Hey, give us a kiss.’
‘What?’
‘For luck. Yeah, I know luck’s a profiteer’s concept. But just do it, all right?’
His face broke into a gentle but not wholly easy smile. He leant forward and pressed his colour-less lips to hers. ‘Be careful,’ he said softly. ‘I don’t want you to smudge my make-up.’
Tameka laughed.
He looked puzzled. ‘Have I said something funny?’
She sighed. ‘Forget it.’ She was about to let him go, when she couldn’t stop herself and blurted out, ‘I’m really pissing you off, aren’t I?’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘This isn’t the time, Tameka.’
‘There might not be another time,’ she said and then instantly regretted saying something so clichéd. Particularly as it was probably going to turn out to be true.
‘Tameka, what you want of me makes me feel uncomfortable. Since we had sex I feel as if I am standing in a room full of people when I am alone with you.’
It took her a moment to realize what he was saying. She was crowding him. Oh shit.