Free Sword and Shadow by Saje Williams Page A

he didn’t recognize. Certainly nothing smuggled in from Earth.
    Someone yelled close by and he whirled, ducking a wild slash and smashing his fist straight into his assailant’s face. Bones crunched and blood flew. He stuffed the weapon into his jacket pocket and lifted the pirate, raising his gaze high above them.
    A moment later they stood in the crow’s nest, the squat, muscular pirate blubbering in terror as Raven held him casually out over the deck with one hand. “Sorry,” he said, not sure if he meant it or not, a mere second before plunging his fangs into the man’s corded neck.
    He barely gave himself a taste before dropping his victim at his feet.
    The man curled into a fetal position inside the tiny cup of the ’nest, sobbing aloud. He winced. I hate it when they do that.
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    He wanted more, of course, but knew he couldn’t take another draught without the risk of infecting him. He could always simply snap his neck when he was finished, but Raven wasn’t a fan of cold-blooded murder, no matter how much some might think men like this pirate deserved such a fate. Once they were incapacitated, he simply couldn’t justify killing them any more than he could justify making them what he was.
    Some sixty feet below he could see more pirates scurrying about, firing their strange weapons, and screaming to one another as their intended victims began to fight back. The air filled with arrows and a couple of the pirates were smashed down where they stood.
    He spotted Val leaping between the ships, a prodigious jump for a mortal, and trading blows with a pirate for a brief second before she cut him down. She was damn good with that sword, he noted, but that only made sense. There was no such thing as an unskilled TAU operative. Psi powers were all well and good, but sometimes their job came down to sheer brute force, blade against blade. As far as he knew no TAU agent had ever been bested by a single native warrior on any of the client worlds.
    Then he saw her beset by two pirates at once and nearly jumped to her defense, only to discover in short order that she didn’t really need his help at all. She circled to the left of the one in the lead, forcing him to step into his comrade’s way, and handily skewered him the moment his attention wavered.
    The second pirate offered even less of a challenge than the first. In less than an eye-blink she was stepping over their bodies to engage another. She skipped to the side, evading the man’s initial lunge, then whipped her trailing foot up into his face. His head bounced from the deck as she strode forward and, with a casual sweep of an invisible hand, used telekinesis to toss another pirate over the side from fifteen feet away.
    He hesitated longer, admiring, but could hesitate no longer as he saw a pair of men stealthily moving up on her. He vaulted the side of the 58
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    Sword and Shadow
    crow’s nest and willed himself toward them. This short flight was not beyond him, and he alighted without a sound on the deck behind them.
    He surged into the space between them, arms shooting out and fingers like steel spikes embedding themselves in their clothing and flesh.
    He gave a sudden yank and smashed them into one another with bone-crushing force. They bounced away from him and each other, shattered and bleeding, as he made it to Val’s side in a single, ground-eating leap.
    The men would live, but not comfortably. That notion didn’t trouble his conscience in the least.
    She turned and thrust reflexively, but he leaned away from the point and slapped the rapier down. “Watch where you’re sticking that thing,”
    he said with a grin, then swept the deck with his gaze. “Looks like that pretty much took care of them.”
    “Maybe,” she murmured, frowning at the carnage around them. “I sure the hell hope so.”
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    Saje Williams

Chapter Nine
    Despite the fact that a