ORION’S BELT: A DARK CYBORG ROMANCE Read online

  ORION’S BELT

  A DARK CYBORG ROMANCE

  LOKI RENARD

  Copyright © 2020 by Loki Renard

  Cover image by Paul Henry Serres

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Want Paris’ Story?

  Also by Loki Renard

  Chapter One

  Josie

  Rope grazes, tightens, sears into my wrists. Sweat drips onto my forehead, rolling off the nose of the man whose meaty hands are securing the bonds tight around my extremities.

  “Let me go.”

  I say the words half-heartedly, knowing they’re expected, and knowing just as well that they won’t do a damn thing. The man who is double checking and double tying everything won’t listen to pleas for mercy. He has the cold, detached gaze of a creature who doesn’t feel. His eyes flicker over me like a lizard’s tongue, roaming my body, but coming back to focus on my face and my own gaze. He wants to see the panic. The pain. The blood.

  People call him crazy, but he’s something worse. Every second man and woman in this place is crazy. It helps, sometimes, to lose your mind. I’m struggling to keep my wits about me right now, hoping I can think my way out of this.

  His eyes find mine again and I see in his gaze that to him, I’m not a woman about to die. I have far less significance than that. I am a fly, about to have her wings plucked off.

  “Or at least do something original. Tying me to the train tracks is a bad idea.”

  “Mouthy,” he says, his teeth gritted and yellowed. He stinks of sour cabbage and the pickled slug beer which he drinks morning, noon, and night. “Why’s it a bad idea?”

  “Because everybody knows that heroes come and rescue ladies tied to train tracks. It’s practically cliche. Now you’ve tied me up, there’s probably dozens of heroes riding hard to get to me now.”

  I hope there’s one. Please. God. Just one.

  “Some things are classics for a reason,” he says. “But nobody is rescuing you. It’s going to be hotter than sin soon enough. You’ll start to cook right where you lie. Train’ll be a mercy for you. Quick. Loud, but quick.”

  I rack my brains for something to say, as if there’s some combination of words that might stop this from happening to me, but words are useless now. Sass won’t do nothin’ for me. Now I think about it, I don’t know if it ever has.

  “Beg me for mercy.”

  “What?"

  “Beg me, for mercy.” I hear the unmistakeable clicking of a gun being cocked. The barrel of a gun is pressed up underneath my chin. I should let him pull the trigger. It would make this so much easier. But he’s not going to let this happen easy. That would spoil his fun. He’s bending over me, his shadow shielding me from the nearly noon day sun.

  “Mercy?”

  “Naw, girl. Beg. Cry pretty tears for me. I know you got ‘em inside you.”

  I sigh inwardly and force myself to at least say the words, though placating psychotic men has never gotten me anywhere before. “Could you please not kill me?”

  “That’s not begging.”

  “There’s no point begging. You’re never going to let me live. You need me dead.”

  “So beg for death then. I don’t care what you beg for, as long as you do.” He leans in and I can smell every part of him. His sweat. The cologne he dabbed on this morning, souring against his skin. I can smell the iron tang of the blood at the base of his teeth where his gums give way to rot. He is coming apart from the inside out, a walking sack of sick diseased with something contracted from saloon girls.

  “Please…”

  The more I try, the flatter I sound. It’s not that I’m not afraid. It’s that fear has left me cold. He tells me the heat of the day is coming for me, but I don’t feel it.

  “You aren’t begging, girl,” he growls. “This whole time I’ve had you, you haven’t begged once. I think I should teach you to beg before the end.”

  In the distance, a whistle sounds, a jaunty little toot toot!

  He shakes his head, his eyes flashing with disappointment. “But I think you’re out of time. Can’t be here when Mr Train gets here, can I? Don’t worry. I’ll be watching. You’ll be a very pretty stain.”

  I’ve known from the moment he took me that he was going to kill me. There was no way out of this alive, but I’ve got a feeling this isn’t the end. It can’t be. My story cannot end here in this dusty desert.

  “Let me go,” I say as outrage flashes through me. “Or I’ll kill you.”

  He throws back his head and laughs, a rasping, hacking attempt at experiencing humor. “You’re about to die, and you think threatening me is going to help? You have to be the most stupid girl I’ve ever encountered. The others at least knew what to do when I put them on their knees.”

  The others are dead. I’m not.

  Toot toooot!

  Yet.

  Orion

  It’s hot as hell and twice as filthy. My saddle bags are filled with stolen bullion, and my ears are ringing from the aftermath of weapons being discharged way too close to my head. There’s a smile on my face and dammit, I’d even go so far as to say a song in my heart. These are the sorts of days an outlaw lives for. A big score and a clean escape. It doesn’t get any better than this.

  I pull my bandana up over my nose and mouth. It slipped after the heist, when we were hooting and hollering with glee, but I need it now. The air around me is thick with dust thrown up by dashing hooves. The temperature is rising steadily. In an hour, the only thing capable of surviving out here will be lizards and flies. It hasn’t rained for weeks. It probably won’t rain for months more either. The seasons on this hunk of dirt are hot, and get hotter every year.

  Shouldn't really be possible to survive here, but we make it work. Right now, we’re riding for the shade of camp made at the edge of the dust plain. Soon as we get there, we’ll tear it down and move to one of our hideouts. It’s going to be a good few weeks, with enough gold and dinari to carouse, drink, dance, and live like only outlaws can.

  “Rion!” My second in command, Paris, calls out to me. He’s lanky, blue eyed, and blond haired. Real good-guy looking type. Real deceptive appearance. Ain’t more of a lawless bastard in any of the four corners of this place, unless you count me.

  “What?!”

  “There’s something on the tracks!”

  Something on the tracks usually means someone on the tracks. Someone good and dead. On a day like this, it’s a toss up to say whether the heat or the train will get them first. We usually don’t check those scenes out. A train’ll turn a man into meat chunks, gristle and bone in seconds, and that’s not a sight I’m interested in encountering right now. The smell sticks to you, gets in your clothes and your mouth, makes it hard to breathe, and I’m in too good a mood to ruin this day with that shit.

  Paris is closer than I am, and when I don’t respond, he nudges his paint mare over toward what’s probably a fairly grizzly scene. I figure we’re going to get a full run down of the carnage screamed across the desert any second now, but what he calls out surprises me.

  “It’s a woman! And she ain’t been hit yet!”


  His shout carries clear across the plains, a good quarter mile, over the thundering of hooves on hard ground. A woman? I might be an outlaw, no-good son of a bitch with a price on my head and hell waiting for me when I die, but I’m not so far gone I won’t rescue a woman who needs it. Whatever she did to get herself put on those tracks, it wasn’t as bad as anything we’ve done in the last hour, I’m sure.

  I spur Gus into a gallop. We don’t do much good, but I’m pretty sure I can hear the train in the distance and I don’t want to hear a woman die. A woman’s scream has a way of getting into your soul and sticking there, rotting away like a piece of meat stuck between your back teeth.

  “You got a knife!?” Paris calls the question out. I’d ask where his is, but I saw him stick it between a lawman’s shoulder blades, and I’m guessing he left it there.

  “Yeah, I got a knife,” I say, pulling my horse up beside the tracks, where sure enough, there’s someone tied down. The iron is already starting to dance with the approaching train. It’s still a ways off, but they get on top of you quicker than you think, four hundred thousand pounds of hell on wheels that ain’t stopping for man or god.

  A flash of long, dark hair plaited into a braid and muddy gingham blowing in the breeze coming down the valley is enough to confirm Paris’ assumption. It’s a girl alright, and she’s not happy about her situation.

  “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” She screeches at the top of her lungs, screaming at all of us. She’s hoarse, like she’s been hollering for a while. Her eyes are wide with panic. There’s something pathetic about her, helpless like a little deer. Ain’t no way I’m leaving her to her fate, and I got to get her off these tracks before the train gets here and smears us both into the next life.

  “Stay back boys, keep an eye out and try not to let my hat get shot off my head.”

  “HELP ME!”

  The girl’s scream goes through me like a hot knife through an eye. I’ve heard, seen, and done a whole lot of bad in my life, but I swear there’s something about a distressed innocent’s cry that claws at your heart, even a dead one like mine.

  “Easy, girl,” I say, getting down on my knees beside the tracks. The boys gather round, keeping an eye out. Usually when someone does something like this, they want to watch the show. I’d put money on there being a pack of worthless men up on the ridge above the tracks, and if any one of them is handy with a rifle, we’re in danger of being picked off.

  They’ve got her bound real tight, rope cutting into her ankles and wrists, drawing blood from the raw skin. She’s been trying to fight, I can see that on her bloody knuckles and the dark bruise coming up on her jaw and under her left eye. Someone beat the hell out of this girl, then left her here to die.

  It’s said that this land is getting more lawful all the time, but if it is, I ain’t seeing it. Every day me and the boys come across something more sick than the day before. It’s getting to the point I’m not sure if we’re outlaws or vigilantes, doing what should be done by them that wear badges.

  “It’s coming! It’s coming…” She’s not screaming anymore. She’s whispering hoarsely, begging me with every breath she takes.

  She’s right to be panicking. The gravel between the rails is rattling back and forth with the force of the Deadman Flyer. It runs from Slipknot Falls way up in the mountains to Drainneck, two lawless towns connected by this train that gets robbed twice a trip without fail. Ain’t no way this driver’s going to put the brakes on, even if he had a chance to see us here, which he won’t. They’ve tied her around a horseshoe bend, a blind corner where the train is a little slower, which doesn’t mean it won’t kill you, it just means you’ll be aware of it longer. Someone really hates this girl. Wants her to suffer.

  Today’s not the day though. I get my knife between the girl and the rail without cutting her and cut the ropes, freeing her upper body before working on her ankles. My knife hits metal, and at first I think I must have hit the iron, but a second later I realize that it’s not iron. They’ve wound wire around her ankles, making it impossible to get her off the track by just cutting rope.

  THWIP! TING! THUD!

  A singing sound followed by a puff of dust tells me that the bastards who put the girl here have caught on to our presence. I ignore the bullets. Don’t have time for them.

  The boys return fire, taking refuge behind rocks while shooting up at the men on the ridge, giving me cover while I work at the wire which is wrapped over itself time and time again. The rails are shaking harder as the train is getting closer and I’m starting to think we’re not going to get her out of here in time, not with all her limbs attached anyways.

  That doesn’t stop me working. There’s blood and I’m not sure if it’s from her or me. It doesn’t really matter. I’ll be wearing her in a minute if I don’t get her free.

  She’s gone quiet. Real quiet. I hate that silence. I’ve heard it too many times before, and it always means one thing: someone has quit fighting. I want to hear hollering, cursing, screaming. She’s going to need that energy to get out of this, because train aside, the gunfire shows no sign of letting up. Bullets are pounding into the earth all around us, constant cracks coming from nearby and above, some bullets hitting the rocks where my guys are hiding and ricocheting off at unpredictable angles.

  There’s a sound like hell tearing open as the train approaches the corner and the charging wheels are forced into a curve. They protest, hot metal on hot metal. The ground underneath my knees is quaking with the force of the fast arriving locomotive as I scrabble over her, yanking nasty wire off her as fast as I can. She must realize she’s got some chance, because she starts screaming again as she feels her feet leave the rails, grabbing onto me for dear life.

  She’s cursing and crying up a storm as I pull her from the tracks just seconds before a powerful gust of air, the screeching of tonnes of heavy metal thundering over rails, and the stench of smoke and grease announces the train hurtling past. Driver didn’t even sound his horn. Not surprised. Lot of ‘em don’t even bother to look anymore. Too hard to stop the train, even harder to get the image of a person smeared across the engine out of your mind. Plenty of drivers gone crazy from it.

  “Easy now,” I growl. “Yer alright.”

  She’s wriggling like a hellcat, but I’m not letting her go. She’s got that wild look in her eye that people get before they shoot someone, and in her current state I’m not certain it wouldn't be me on the wrong end of the bullet if she were to get hold of a gun. She’s panicked, and right now she could do anything. I grab her round the waist and throw her on my horse, following her up into the saddle.

  “Settle down,” I say, grabbing the back of her gingham dress to keep her in place. Last thing I need is for her to fall off the horse and make this rescue completely pointless.

  “Quit yer wrigglin’.”

  She does not quit her wriggling. I guess she can’t help it. I have to keep a tight grip on the back of her dress, the light fabric tearing under the powerful grip of my augmented hand. You can’t see it under the long sleeve and the glove I wear, but the difference between my two appendages is obvious. I wouldn't be shredding fabric if I were using my meat paw, as Paris calls it when he’s drunk.

  The bullets are still flying from above. I can tell they’re pissed. We just stole the show and their prey, fuckin’ jackals. There’s no time to hang around and get the girl settled properly on my horse. We have to ride. Now.

  I spur Gus and we get the hell out of dodge, riding for our lives away from the train tracks and the men up above. We could stay and fight, but it’s a waste of lead and a waste of life and we don’t have enough of either to spare.

  The girl is well protected, being in front of me, but her head is down toward my horse’s wither, so I don’t get much in the way of conversation out of her. The first few miles are nothing but a mad gallop. When we’re clear of the shooters, I haul her up to sit side saddle in front of me. She’s short enough that her head tucks in under my chin when
she squishes down a bit, and together we ride back to camp, surrounded by my boys, nice and safe and sound.

  Josie

  He smells like hero. Sweat, musk, and muscle with a hint of gunpowder.

  I thought my life was over. I had no reason to think that anyone was going to rescue me. When I was tied down, the bastard who did it told me he wouldn’t let nobody rescue me. Then he tried to stop these men, but the one with his arm wrapped around my waist with a grip like iron didn’t let that happen.

  “Almost home,” he rumbles, his voice coming through his chest and into my body.

  I've never been held like this, with a secure grip that won’t let anything happen to me. It’s everything I can do to stop myself from just melting into him like a lost little kitten, kneading his powerful body which grinds against me repeatedly with the motion of the horse.

  We’re approaching a series of tents camped underneath low purple-leaved trees. It’s a rough encampment, messy. Not the sort of place men of the law bed down. That’s a good thing at this point. I’ll never trust a lawman again in my life.

  A line of crates and rocks makes an impromptu border around the camp. It looks haphazard, but I doubt any of the placement is an accident. The rider slows his horse and I find myself abruptly let down onto my feet. The outlaw — I’m pretty sure that’s what he is — follows quickly, tossing the reins over his horse’s head, ground tying him as he turns to me.

  “Alright, whats yer name?”

  No, are you alright? Just a roughly barked, whats yer name. Hardly the kind of question a hero asks after he sweeps you off the train tracks right before you get turned into minced meat, but I guess I owe him an answer.

  “Josie,” I say, rubbing my wrists where the ropes that tied me to the tracks cut into my skin. “My name’s Josie.”