Calder

An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

www.ellorascave.com

Calder

ISBN 9781419923654

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Calder Copyright © 2009 Allyson James

Edited by Kelli Collins

Photography and cover art by Les Byerley

Electronic book Publication September 2009

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

CALDER

Allyson James

DNAmo compound, Bor Narga

“I got word from the directors.” A man’s voice cut through Calder’s fog of pain.

“The specimen is to be terminated.”

The room went quiet except for the faint
beep
of machines. In the darkness of Calder’s brain, his screams went on and on.

“Just what I need,” a second man said. “Directors interfering with my research.”

“He’s got to be in excruciating pain. It will be kinder to him.”

The second man growled, “Yes, but the whole
point
is to see what he can stand. I can’t do that if they terminate him, now can I?”

“Well, he’s not much of a Shareem anymore,” the first voice said. “The company won’t make any money off him like this.”

“He can still provide valuable data on how they behave in high-stress situations.

We can add it to the code for the new batch.”

“Maybe, but if they lose money, I’ll give you three guesses whose salary it will come out of.”

The second man sighed. “Damn it. Oh, all right, give me the hypo.”

Calder dragged his eyes open. The pain of the tiny movement nearly killed him.

He could see nothing but a gray haze and lumps of darker gray. He summoned all the air in his lungs and forced his lips to form words.

“Fuck you.”

Two dim blurs froze. “Gods,” the first one said. “He’s conscious. How can he be conscious?”

Because I have bigger balls than you.
“He won’t be for long.” Calder felt a touch on his arm. “You’ll be out of pain soon, Shareem. Just relax.”

“Stop!” A female voice cut through the quiet room like a knife on glass. “What the hell are you doing?”

The first man answered, “Obeying orders. He’s a write-off.”

“Get away from him. Now!”

Heels clicked swiftly across the room. Calder heard the sound of a tray falling and the crunch of a plastic hypo under a stiletto heel. He would have smiled if he could.

“Angelica…” the first man began.

“Don’t you ‘Angelica’ me. He’s in this state because of you. Now get the
hell
out of my way so I can save his life.”

“Why?” the second man asked. “He’s a total loss. Shareem are supposed to attract women.
He’ll
scare them away.”

“He has a point,” the first scientist said. “Even if you save him, he won’t be useful for anything but stress experiments.”

“If we let people live based on their usefulness, you two would have been put down a long time ago. Now get out and let me work.”

“This is our lab,” the second man said petulantly.

“And I’m commandeering it. Go whine at the directors. It will probably take you three days to get in to see them.”

The first man heaved a sigh. “All right. It’s your funeral.”

The second was more put out. “This isn’t over, Dr. Laas.”

“Don’t forget to close the door on your way out,” she snapped.

Calder started to chuckle. It hurt like hell, his burned and ruined skin pulling and cracking. All the male scientists at DNAmo were intimidated by the petite genius of Dr.

Angelica Laas.

He heard the door slide closed. A cool hand touched him.
“Calder,” she whispered. “Oh gods, what did they do to you?”

Calder tried to form a reply. “Fucking experiments.”

“No, don’t talk. You’ll damage the vocal cords even more. I’m going to fix you. Do you understand me? It will hurt, but I’m going to fix you. I’ll not let you die.”

Calder touched her hand with his two good fingers. As he closed his eyes, she burst into tears.

Great. Here I am, burned and broken, and the very best DNA scientist in the galaxy is
crying because she knows she can never make me whole again.

He calmed her with his Shareem pheromones, letting them brush over her body. At least that part of him still worked.

*

Twenty years later

A soft chime sounded.

“Time,” Calder said.

He lifted himself off the writhing woman, his cock deflating, his body cooling rapidly.

She clutched at him and moaned. “No. Not yet.”

Calder backed away and faded into the shadows. The woman on the floor whimpered. “No, please. Come back. I have money. I’ll pay you twice as much. Please. I
need
you!”

He didn’t answer. His breathing calming, Calder exited through a hidden door that noiselessly slid shut behind him.

The woman would do what the others did, plead for a while then swear at him and threaten him. Eventually she would pull on her clothes and quietly depart. He’d never see her again.
Calder made his way through the long back hall to his own apartment, far from his lair. The lights came on in his tiny bedroom when he entered it.

In his bathroom, he stripped off, avoided looking into the mirror and stepped into the cooling stream of his water shower. Calder had a more expensive sterilizer, but he liked the feel of water on his skin. It was especially nice after unsatisfactory encounters like the one he’d just had.

Fucking stupid way to live.
But there were few options for Shareem.

Calder had another appointment in a half-hours time but not with a highborn lady who wanted to experience The Beast. Every six months, Shareem had to submit to an exam and get an inoculation that prevented both conception and disease. That had been the price levied on all Shareem twenty years ago for being allowed to stay alive. Any Shareem who missed his inoculation was arrested and terminated.

Calder visited the same medic each time, in a backstreet clinic run by the Ministry of Health. Dr. Mareesh had reached her century mark and didn’t care about the genetically enhanced Shareem and their powers over women. She’d silently roll back Calder’s sleeve, administer the cocktail of vaccinations and contraceptives into his arm, slam her thumbprint on her handheld and dismiss him with a sour nod.

Mareesh saw no need to strip him down to be scanned, for which Calder was silently grateful. His weight and height never changed, and Shareem bodies deteriorated twice as slowly as a normal human’s. The scan would say the same thing each time, so why bother?

Calder dressed in a black leather bodysuit that hid every inch of skin. He pulled sun-blocking cloths around his head and face and fixed his sun goggles in place. He slid on the black gloves that hid his hands and stepped from his house into the harsh Bor Nargan sun.

People in this neighborhood were used to seeing the six-foot-eight, black-clad giant walking through the streets. Even so, they didn’t greet him, and most turned hurriedly away when he trained those blank goggles on them.
The clinic Calder sought was four blocks away. This was the heart of Pas City, the biggest slum of Bor Narga. The streets were crowded with vendors selling everything from useless robot parts to colorful sweets, from bright cloth to questionable meat on skewers. People swarmed everywhere despite the heat, Pas City always alive.

Calder ducked under the rusted metal entrance of the clinic. The place mostly catered to junkies who could afford a quick dry out, or to women with too many children who bullied their husbands into coming in for sterilization.

The receptionist gave Calder a nervous look when he stepped into the crowded waiting room and immediately ushered him into the back. Soon Calder found himself sitting on a metal table in the familiar examination room. He peeled off one glove as he waited.

The door opened and a young woman glided in. She wore the baggy silk tunic and colored leggings of women of the medical profession and an opaque veil across the lower half of her face. A few curls of light brown hair trickled from the veil draped over her head and shoulders. The color and pattern of the veils told the world that she was upper class and unmarried. That she wore a face veil told him she wanted to hold herself aloof from the unwashed masses.

Mareesh never bothered with veils. Her seamed face had always been bare for all to see.

“I’m Dr. d’Arnal.” The young woman glanced quickly at him, revealing brown eyes and thick, black lashes. She set down a handheld computer and a plain metal box, which she opened, revealing the usual hypo. “Please undress behind the screen.”

Calder didn’t move. “Where’s Mareesh?” His voice grated, his vocal chords never having properly healed.

The young woman’s nervousness screamed to Calder, who could smell fear, taste it on the air. Too bad, because what he could see over the half veil was pretty. More than pretty. Lush and sexy. Those eyelashes would feel good against his balls.

“Dr. Mareesh retired,” she said. “A month ago.”
Damn.

“She left me her notes. I’ll get a quick scan and then inject you. I’m sure you know the routine.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but her voice quavered.

Calder shoved his sleeve up his arm, baring six inches of burn scars. “Give me the hypo, then I go. No scanning.”

“But the Ministry of Non-Human Life Forms requires—”

“Fuck the Ministry. Give me the damn hypo.”

Uncertainty then anger flashed through her eyes. “I’m sorry, but that’s not what I was told to do.”

“This your first time with a Shareem?”

“Yes.”

Calder leaned forward. He’d removed his goggles but kept his facecloth tucked around the left side of his face, the ruined side.

“I don’t undress,” he said. “I don’t get scanned. That’s the way it is. Mareesh knew.”

Dr. d’Arnal met his gaze. She had lovely eyes, warm and flecked with gold. His Shareem imagination put her on the floor under him, those eyes hot with passion.