Exiled Guide Tamed the Beasts novel · Chapter 1 of 1
Chapter 1: Pinned
Tessa wakes astride a bound merman with bloody tools by the bed, the four Dark Sentinels burst in, and she frees him and walks out herself. HOOK: in the Rimlands a storm beast lies down under her hand.
The first thing I felt was a man's pulse under my thumb.
It was fast and hard, and it was not mine.
I was kneeling on a narrow steel bed with my knees on either side of his ribs.
My left hand was at the back of his neck.
My right hand held a curved needle and a thread of black silk.
He lay under me with his wrists strapped to the bed rails, and he was staring straight up into my face.
His hair was gold and his eyes were a deep clear blue.
Pale gill lines ran down both sides of his ribs, and they were opening and closing as he breathed.
His face was twisted with shame and hatred, and under both of those was something that looked like wanting.
I had seen that look before on dying patients, the ones who wanted you to stay.
"Finish it," he said, "or get off me."
His voice was low and quiet.
I looked at my hand.
The needle was bloody.
On the tray beside the bed lay a pair of long pliers, a scalpel, a magnet on a wire, and a wad of red gauze.
Next to them sat a small steel dish with three black beads in it, each the size of a grain of rice.
At the back of his neck, under my thumb, was a fresh seam of stitches, and it was still weeping.
I did not remember doing any of this.
A moment ago I had been asleep in a break room on the night shift, with a cold coffee and a hospice chart.
Now my wrist lit up with a small blue screen.
CONCORD REGISTRY. ROWAN, TESSA. GUIDE, RANK A. STAR YEAR 3025.
Under that, in red: SENTENCE: EXILE TO PRISON PLANET MOURNE. CHARGE: ABUSE OF S-RANK SENTINELS, FOUR COUNTS.
I read it twice.
Then the door slammed open, and three men came in.
The first was enormous and dark, with a scar through his left eyebrow and amber eyes.
Behind him, the air bent and a black panther the size of a horse stood in the corner of the room, made of shadow, looking at me.
"Get off him," the man said.
His voice was flat and cold.
"Told you," said a second man, a thin one with copper hair and a chipped tooth. "Night nine. Same as every night."
"Rafe," said the third, a huge bearded man, already pulling at the straps on the merman's wrists. "He's bleeding."
"She's going to say sorry now," the copper-haired one said. "She always does."
"Kit, enough," Rafe said. "Bastian, get him loose."
I climbed off the bed.
My legs shook, but my hands did not.
I put the needle on the tray, picked up the gauze, and pressed it to the back of the golden man's neck.
"Hold pressure on that," I said to him. "It's still bleeding, and I don't want you to move."
He flinched.
The bearded man's hands stopped on the strap.
The man called Rafe took me by the front of my jacket and lifted me until my toes were off the floor.
"Four of us in this block," he said. "You have hurt every one of us. You were warned. Tonight you go out the airlock."
I looked at the three of them, and at the golden man on the bed, who had not looked away from me for even a moment.
I did not know what this woman had done.
I only knew that none of them would believe a word I said.
"All right," I said. "I'll go."
Rafe set me down.
None of them had expected that, and the copper-haired one actually took a step back.
"I won't touch any of you again," I said. "Not unless one of you comes and asks me to."
Then I took the steel dish off the tray and put it in my jacket pocket, with the three black beads rolling in it.
I didn't know why I did it.
It was the one thing on that tray that didn't look like a weapon.
"Her name is Callan," the bearded man said quietly. He meant the one on the bed. "You never used it before."
"I know it now," I said.
The golden man's eyes went wide.
So I stepped out.
At the airlock, a speaker crackled, and a woman's voice came through it, soft and kind.
"Tessa, dear. I'm so sorry it came to this."
It was the Warden, Ingrid Sorrel, the one person on this planet who had signed my papers.
"There's water for the month in your pack," she said. "I'll send more on the shuttle. Don't be frightened. I'll look after you."
She sounded close, right behind the steel.
The inner door sealed behind me.
The outer door opened onto grey dust and a dying orange sky, and I pulled the mask over my face and went out.
I walked until the dome was a dark shape behind me and the cold came up through my boots.
Then something big moved in the dust ahead.
A storm beast stepped out of the dark, a grey animal as tall as a truck, with a jaw full of long yellow teeth.
I stood still.
It came up to me, slowly, and lowered its great head.
Then it lay down in the dust at my feet and pushed its skull under my open hand.
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