Perdition (The Dred Chronicles) Read Online Free Page A

friend, his nursemaid and mother. She hit him once, and he shook it off, finished his kill.
    There were ten bodies on the ground when he stopped moving.
    “Priest’s people,” she said, not even breathing hard.
    That meant less than nothing to him, but in time, he’d figure out the politics.
    The trek through the ship was enlightening in other ways. Anything that could be stripped, stolen, or recycled had been. In places, whole wall panels were missing, and others showed signs of hard use, pocked with holes and rust and ominous stains. The floors showed just as much wear, to the point that it was miraculous Perdition held together at all.
    “What’ll happen when someone pries off the wrong piece?” he asked.
    She cut him a wry, appreciative look. “We’ll asphyxiate. No great loss, right?”
    That might do it. A jolt of anticipation startled him.
I could die here.
And it wasn’t an awful, terrifying thought. It was like the promise of sunrise at the end of the longest, darkest night. Another man might raise a fist and rail because he hadn’t asked to be born. But Jael could only whisper in his own head:
I didn’t ask to be created.
    But that was too pathetic. He’d grown accustomed to his status as renegade science project. Even took pleasure in killing the people responsible from time to time. Not all of them, of course. Some had to live because otherwise, how could they enjoy turns of tortured fear?
    He smiled.
    “What did you mean when you said you read me?”
    “I’m Psi,” she said flatly.
    He actually stumbled. “Oh, shit. You’re not a mind reader, are you? I hate those fookers. Always poking about, looking for your darkest secrets.”
    She surprised him with a husky laugh. “No, though I’d keep busy for a thousand turns in here if I were. You can’t go five steps without stumbling over some ass with a dark secret.”
    “I don’t have any. So what then?”
    “I find killers . . . and I feel how they go about it. If it’s rage or pleasure-driven.” She was holding back, he could tell. The way she bit her lip to prevent another round of explanation.
    But it was enough for now. He’d charm the rest out of her later. Women liked him; or they always had, right up until it was too late to reconsider. When you got right down to it, there was a monstrous face beneath his smooth skin.
    “And me? What did you see?”
    “You’ve taken pleasure in killing but not in a psychotic way. Your pattern felt . . . organized. Like you were righting a wrong, real or imagined. You don’t kill in anger. In fact, you’re mostly cold, pretty lad, like a field of endless snow.”
    How right she was. It shook him a bit, so he summoned a caustic smile. “Look, I’m properly undone. Watch now, you’ll have me weeping. Do you think you could fix me, queenie?”
    “No,” she said. “I can’t fix anything. I can only break it. Or kill it. But you’re welcome to come sleep in my boneyard.”
    “Now there’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

3
    Bad Omens
    Dred had told him the truth, as far as it went.
    Reading him had been instructive . . . and unique. She’d never encountered anyone with so much pale energy, limned in darkness. Otherwise, there was little color to him at all, as if emotion had rarely touched him. In fact, he only offered curls of cobalt blue, like a dark sea one could drown in, the color of sorrow. So he had been sad . . . and he’d frozen thereafter. His past became a mystery wrapped in that context, but it would remain unquestioned. She didn’t need to know his secrets.
    As she’d said, everyone had them inside Perdition, crimes for which they’d never been charged or convicted, sins that had driven them to darker deeds. There was some solace in the bottom of the abyss; this was where people rolled to a stop after an interminable fall.
    After the fight, they didn’t speak again. She led the way quickly through the other borders, and she didn’t stop until they reached the dubious safety