Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [80]
It was like the marketplace, only more sinister, without the bright spiciness of making a living. The thoughts and emotions swirling through the gloom were darker, more dangerous, against the brassy twirling of the little dark-clothed, insectoid band. “Are you sure it’s safe?” hummed Nightlily, clinging once more to his arm, and Trevagg patted her hand. Her fear reacted on his hunter’s instinct as her anxiety and distress had earlier—prey signals that read as an invitation to conquest. He felt an almost overwhelming desire to crush her in his arms.
Instead he cradled the back of her exquisite coned head in one hand, said, “With me, you’re safe, my blossom. With me you’ll always be safe.”
They took one of the small booths to the left of the raised entry vestibule, Nightlily gazing around her, fearfully marveling. In addition to being a virgin, she had confessed to Trevagg over lunch, she had never been away from her home planet before, had never seen anything like this. As well she hadn’t, thought the Gotal, amused at the way she relaxed under the influence of Wuher the barkeep’s drinks computer. In another booth a completely illegal card game was in progress between a ghoulish Givin, a giant one-eyed Abyssin, and a big fluffy white thing of a species even Trevagg had never seen; in another a shaggy, ferocious-looking Wolfman sipped his drink alone. While Nightlily sighed, and giggled over her second drink, and asked him, “Are you truly sure, beloved? Mating is such a solemn thing, such an awe-inspiring thing …” Trevagg was searching the crowd with his eyes and, more importantly, with his cones, seeking out the vibrations of danger and blood, the vibrations of another hunter, as he had once been.
“It is as nothing,” Trevagg said. “No sacrifice is too great for what I feel for you.” The fact that she couldn’t even detect him in a lie—that she didn’t have that much sensitivity to the vibrations of his mind—only redoubled his contempt for her. So desirable—so innocent—so stupid … No wonder they don’t let virgins travel off her planet. She’d told him that, too. They’d never make it home.
Not as virgins, anyway.
Meantime, his hunter senses roved the dark forms, seeking another hunter.
The two tall human females drinking by the bar were a maybe: They sparkled with danger, a flamelike brightness that some assassins had. But the color of their aura wasn’t quite right. The Rodian at another card table, with his small earlike antennae swiveling nervously in the noise of the room—yes. Definitely a killer, though Trevagg wasn’t certain he could take on Predne Balu. The Wolfman, yes; he looked big enough, tough enough, to take on the human and win. The brown-haired human talking quietly with an enormous Wookiee at another booth—maybe. The edge was there, but not the darkness. The thin man smoking a hookah at the bar—absolutely. His aura was dark, terrible, but there was a coldness about him that made Trevagg wonder if he could be approached at all. That was one, he thought, who killed for a huge sum … or for his own pleasure. Nothing between.
For the rest, they were locals: the foul Dr. Evazan and his disgusting Aqualish friend were well known to Trevagg, dangerous but not for hire; the horned and sinister-looking Devaronian swaying his fingers dreamily to the music of the band was much less dangerous than he appeared. The old spacer in most of a flight suit Trevagg recognized as a smuggler who worked for the monastery, probably involved in something illegal—like most of the religious brothers of that organization—but he would stop far short of murder.
And then he felt it. The rushing, buzzing sensation in his cones, the strange humming confusion,