Broken (2 page)

“Okay,
here goes nothing,” she said, sitting down near his hand and putting her feet
at his shoulder. She wrapped her right hand around his wrist and pulled, using
her legs to give her leverage. Her left hand went around his forearm, feeling
the break through the skin. After five minutes of steady pressure, the bones
slid back into place. She breathed a sigh of relief, then grabbed the splints
and leather and quickly bound his arm so that the bones would knit properly.

“Okay,
that went well,” she said, wiping her forehead. Outside, the sun was beginning
to drift down the other side of the sky, and she knew she only had a couple
more hours to finish this up.
He’d better not die, not after all this
effort.

Sky
set the left leg next. It went quickly as the muscle relaxers kicked in a bit
more. That break wasn’t any more complicated than the left arm. The hard part
was going to be his right thigh. She wasn’t looking forward to dealing with
that mess.

“You
are a lucky fucker,” she told him as she shrugged off her leather vest. The
shirt she wore was sweat-soaked, but she had no time to change. She had to fix
his thigh before she lost all the light, and it was going to take a bit of
finesse. She rolled her shoulders to work out the kinks and sat down,
inspecting the wound. She’d positioned him near the cave entrance so the
sunlight would fall on him, and she had a good view of the break. She’d have to
pull on his leg hard, ease the splintered bone back underneath his skin, and
hope for the best. It didn’t look like the bone was shattered, thank God,
because there was fuck all she could do for that.

She
took a deep breath. “Last bone to set, you can do this, Sky.” She grabbed his
knee, setting her legs against the outside of his thighs. It would be easier if
she could’ve pressed against his groin, but doing that would probably demolish
his junk beyond function.
“Though I’m still trying to decide
if maybe I
should
kick you in the nuts, just as a sort of
rape-preventative, so you’d better behave.”
With that said, she went to
work.

****

A
half hour later she lay flat on the ground at the cave’s entrance, wishing
there was more of a breeze because she was dying from the heat. Setting the
Xyran’s
thigh bone had been unpleasant.
Exhausting.
Gory.
She’d had to set the damn thing twice before it
stuck in place correctly, and then she’d had to sew muscles back together
before finally wrapping the whole thing up tightly.

“And
I used the last of my poultice on you, too, asshole,” she said, turning her head
to where he lay, motionless. All she could see were his big feet. “You’ll
probably get an infection anyway, and die. Ugh.” She wiped her face with her
arm, smearing the sweat around. She was hot, tired, and hungry.

She’d
had to strip off his weird-ass armor before she could get his clothes off. It
lay in a giant, ugly pile near his head, like a tombstone. To her relief, he
hadn’t smelled too bad when she’d unclothed him, not even after lying in the
sun for who knows how long.
Actually,
he
kind of
smells like cinnamon,
she thought, grinning suddenly.
I wonder if he
tastes like a sticky
bun?
She giggled out loud.
That was when she knew she had to get some food and water in her body.

“Okay,
no time to go loco. First things first: water.” Sky forced herself to her feet
and padded to the back of the cave. Her water bottle was full, as were her two
backups
Thank you, paranoia.
She drank half the first
bottle, then grabbed a couple pieces of dried rattlesnake and made herself eat
them. With that done, she carefully sliced open a pad of prickly pear cactus.
She’d already peeled them this morning, discarding the spines, but that didn’t
mean she was looking forward to dining on them. She had no seasonings left, so
all she got was charred vegetable for dinner. “Yummy,” she muttered, carrying
it to the front of the cave. She quickly started a small fire and staked the
cactus on a stick over the flame. It would cook while she straightened up her
living space.

“Hope
you like vulture stew, because that’s what I’m feeding you tomorrow,” she said
to the
Xyran
, picking up bloody pieces of his pants
and throwing them into her garbage pile. She’d have to discard them before she
went to sleep. She sighed, wondering if maybe she’d finally jumped the shark.
Only crazy people talked to comatose aliens.
And he probably can’t understand a word I say, anyway.

The
Xyran
didn’t move while she cleaned up. He didn’t
move while she ate her veggies. He didn’t move while she stole back her bedroll
and reclined next to him, staring at the sun setting over the horizon.

He
finally moved in the middle of the night.

Chapter
Two

“Where
did you drop him?”
Zoen
asked, snarling. He curled
his hands more tightly around the throat of the ship’s second officer.

The
Xyran’s
eyes bulged, but he didn’t answer.

Zoen
narrowed his eyes. “If you do not tell me, I will begin to peel your skin off
in sections. Scars created like that lose the ability to shift hue.” He lied,
but the second officer didn’t know that.
Zoen
had no
intention of leaving anyone on this ship alive, no matter what he was told. He
eased up on his chokehold so the officer could speak.

“Slave!
I
do not talk to your kind!” the
Xyran
retorted.

“I
am a slave no longer, as you well know.”
Zoen
let go
and pulled out his favorite blade. The officer couldn’t go anywhere because
he’d hooked him to the command chair with sections of his own armor. “I don’t
know why you are all so very stubborn,”
Zoen
said,
leaning forward. He eased the blade down the officer’s cheek, smiling as blood
welled up. The officer’s skin went green,
then
shifted
to a pale yellow color, signifying the creature’s total lack of control over
his own gifts.
Zoen
spat to the side of the chair,
disgusted. “You call yourself an officer? Lord
Jaxt
has never lost control of himself as you just did.” He straightened up to his
full height and looked down his nose at his prisoner.

“You
are nothing but his whore,” the officer retorted. “You stink of him, even now.”

Zoen
considered his options. He could kill the officer right now and end this tedious
conversation. He could expel the oxygen from the ship with the officer still
tied to the chair. That might be amusing, but it would be messy and he needed
to use that chair soon. Or, he could simply wait.

The
officer had clamped his mouth shut.
Ah, waiting it
is,
Zoen
thought, pleased. He cocked his head and let his
skin slowly change from his usual flesh tone to black, activating the smart
armor to shift also. His knives did not change. He knew that the rows of golden
blades sticking out from his chest plate disturbed seasoned warriors. When he
let his skin go dark, it seemed to upset them even more. Something about the
color of his
Alphan
eyes in a
Xyran
warrior body made everyone unhappy. His prisoner was no exception.

“You
are Alpha scum!” the officer said.

“Yes,
that is what my
Xyran
father said,”
Zoen
replied easily. “He is dead now.” He fingered the
blade in his hand.

The
prisoner paled even further.
Zoen
watched blood drip
down the soldier’s neck, wondering how much longer this would take. He was a
patient creature, but he didn’t have
that
much time.

Finally,
the officer broke. “We left him on Earth.”

Zoen
froze, so even his breathing stilled.
“Earth?
Where
the oceans have swallowed up the land?”
Jaxt’s
chances of survival there would be slim, especially if he’d been injured, as
Zoen
assumed.

“May
he
rot
there, along with all the other traitors to
our honor,” the prisoner spat.

Zoen’s
arm barely moved, but his aim was true. The golden blade he’d thrown appeared
in the center of the prisoner’s forehead like a strange piece of jewelry. It
would even have looked pretty, if not for the blood and the bulging eyes.

****

“Earth.”
Zoen
sighed and strapped himself more securely into the
chair. He’d painted the walls with the blood of the crew, and he was tired. He
checked the displays, noting power-cell levels and reserves, then flicked on
the
hyperdrive
. The ship shuddered for a moment,
then
settled down as it eased into the journey.

When
Zoen
had woken up in the brig that morning, groggy
and naked, he’d known that which he had most feared had come to fruition. The
crew of the Warship
Kinruul
had turned on their master, his blood-sworn kin, Lord
Jaxt
,
and drugged
Zoen
while they’d committed mutiny.
They’d
had
to drug him. He would’ve
killed them all before he let anyone lay hands on
Jaxt
.
So instead they slipped fainting herbs into my nightly tea,
then
kept me dosed for a week until I succumbed.
Cowards.
He smiled grimly.
They all died anyway.

He
and
Jaxt
had grown up on neighboring estates on
Xyran
.
Zoen
had been born a
slave, the spawn of an
Alphan
female and a tribal
lord, deformed with golden eyes like his mother.
Jaxt
had grown up the favored son of his father, Lord
Kaxt
.
Even though he was also the son of a stolen
Alphan
female, at first, he had no such defect as
Zoen
to
betray his mixed blood. Their mothers had been taken together in a secret raid
on an
Alphan
ship as a way for their fathers to
cement an alliance between their tribes. The ship had been made to look like it
had exploded with no survivors, and the enemy never suspected their females had
been captured. Unlike
Zoen
,
Jaxt
had looked like a perfect
Xyran
—until the day his
mixed genetics emerged, and
Jaxt’s
father had done
the unthinkable to preserve his position as lord of his tribe.

“Someday,
I will make you pay for what you did to your son,
Kaxt
,”
Zoen
murmured, remembering the day they’d met.
Jaxt
had fled into the woods, blood pouring from his head
as he tried to outrun the cruelty of his father. His sire had dug out
Jaxt’s
nascent
Alphan
horns with
his own dagger.
Jaxt
had been eight.
Just a child.
And he had found
Zoen
in the forest, starving.
Near death.

“Just
a child, but still he saved my life.”
Zoen
tapped a
screen, frowning when he saw how long it would take to get to Earth. Not that it
mattered. He’d travel the length and breadth of the universe if that was what
it took to find his kin.

****

Sky
screamed in her sleep. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t
see,
which was worse. She threw up her arms with fisted hands and hit something, hard.
A man groaned. Abruptly, she woke, and grabbed instinctively for her lone
working flashlight. She clicked it on and shined it into the dark. The white
beam highlighted black eyes staring at her from black skin in a swollen face.
She yelped and scrabbled backwards.
Fuck. He’s awake.

“What
have you done with
Zoen
?” he yelled, impressively
loud. Then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed back onto the cave
floor.

It
took fifteen minutes for Sky to stop shaking. She swallowed, hard, and crawled
towards him. He didn’t move. She touched his face.
Shit, he’s burning up.
Not surprising.
She looked at the cave’s mouth. Stars twinkled down at her.
Goddamn,
it’s
way too early for this shit,
she
thought irritably, then hauled herself to her feet. She mimed a kick in the
Xyran’s
direction, slipped on her boots, and headed out
into the night.

****

“Drink,
asshole,” she muttered several hours later. He was dead to the world, but still
breathing, so she had to get this shit into him. She’d gone back to the place
where she’d seen the vultures circling the day before. In the dark, hiking in
the desiccated remains of what was once deciduous forest was decidedly
dangerous. Hunting was even worse, but she’d had no choice. He needed buzzard
broth to help fight off the fever.

“I
know it smells like shit, but this stuff is better at fighting off infections
than anything in the world,” she said, tipping his head and dribbling more of
it down his throat. He coughed, still unconscious, then swallowed. “Also, do
you have any idea what a pain in the ass it was killing this thing in the dark?
No?” She dribbled some more into him. “And then I had to pluck stinky feathers.
And cook this sucker. I really, really hate cooking vulture, asshole.” His skin
had faded back to flesh tone, fortunately. The black skin color
creeped
her out.