Musk. He felt it first, and then could smell it, bringing with it an agony of Heat akin to disembowelment. Kane rode it out, gritting his teeth against screams, working the female only a little harder. “Raven,” he rasped, “Get the man a glass of water.”
Raven pushed her chair back and went, but all Kane’s attention was locked on the human under him. He thrust a second finger into the stretched passage of his female and started rubbing them rapidly together. She trembled violently and bucked up at him, braying shame against his hand. She flooded at last, and that was good enough for Kane.
He got a hold on her thigh again and pulled her up to envelop his aching cock. The first touch of her slippery sex was hell’s own bite. He buried himself in one thrust, quick-cum spitting from him already.
Raven was back, moving to the cold storage unit to fill her own glass again. There was a stiffness in the way she moved that had nothing to do with physical strain. He supposed she was probably jealous. It might not have occurred to her that he was trying to spare her another bout with Heat in her condition. Well, there was no reason she had to stay and watch him if it hurt her feelings.
“Go,” he panted. “Find the keys for the car.”
Raven put her glass down untouched and went fast. Kane bit down on a swell of exasperation and reminded himself that humans didn’t have a lock on unreasonable emotional reactions. He’d make it up to her later.
The female beneath him had stopped screaming, stopped sobbing. Tears still leaked from her eyes, but they were silent ones. She stared up past Kane at the ceiling, waiting in some other part of her mind for this to be over.
Fine with Kane. He didn’t need help any more than he needed an audience. Her mating oils were doing work enough. He could feel his tsesac swelling, nearing release. He began to thrust harder, rocking both of them in brutal rhythm. Her face twisted an instant before she came again, and with that release of female musk, the Heat in him finally broke. He bit down hard on a scream as he poured lava into her shuddering body, every muscle clenched and aching against the urge to slash out. But then it was done and he could drop, exhausted and emptied, beside her. The sun through the kitchen window had gone the color of open flame and he bared his teeth at it in foul humor. Soon it would set and Earth would cool and he would not go into Heat again. Not ever, if he had anything to say about it, and certainly not on this trip.
“Are you going to kill me?” the female asked dully, bringing him out of the threat of sleep.
“No,” he said. And then stirred and looked around at her. “Why, do you want me to?”
She twisted away from him, her hands in fists.
“Suit yourself.” Kane pushed himself up and found his clothes, calling wearily for Raven.
She came in from the other room, her face still stony. In one hand, she held a ring of keys. And in the other—
“Ah, gods lift you and love you,” Kane groaned and vaulted to his feet. He snatched the gun out of her open hand and kissed it, grinning savagely. The weight of it in his hand, the feel of it pressing on him when he holstered it crudely in the waistband of his pants, was as invigorating to him as a cold shower. Not that it could compare with any of the weapons the Fleet allowed their officers to carry, but it was something at least, and something the slave-fucker after him was guaranteed to underestimate. Now it only remained to tie up the human to make sure she couldn’t alert her lawmen in any great hurry, grab a bite to eat for the road and get gone.
“Raven,” he said, and nipped her on the chin. “I couldn’t do this without you.”
For some reason, that didn’t seem to make her as happy as he’d thought it would.
T
here had been much evidence over the years to suggest that Jotan had better eyesight than humans. Or at least, as much evidence as could be gathered without breaking the strict protocols prohibiting human medical experimentation. In any event, Tagen had plenty of first-hand experience to prove to himself that human vision was notably poorer than that of any Jotan, and his eyesight in particular was excellent.
So it came as no small surprise when it was Daria who bolted upright and gasped, “My God, it’s them!” before he had even seen the occupants of the oncoming vehicle.
That it
was
them was almost as astonishing. Sunrise was not far behind them, but he had by this time more than half-convinced himself that they had been passed unknowing in the night as they sat unspeaking in the fore of the groundcar. But no, the driver of the approaching car was clearly the same female E’Var had taken with him at the fair (the odds of there being two humans with purple and white-striped hair made that a certainty), and the face that gaped back at him in the brief instant that their eyes locked was indeed E’Var’s. He saw the prisoner shout and the oncoming car swerved suddenly even as it passed them before lunging on ahead even faster.
Daria was already turning the car out to follow them, the wheels flinging back a fountain of gravel and dust. “I don’t believe it, they really came,” she said, her expression simply thunderstruck. The car screamed as it struck the road, and then they were shoved forward in pursuit of the rapidly-diminishing vehicle.
“Yes,” he said, grimly smiling.
“Like you never had a doubt.” The groundcar’s engine was in full voice, a song of elation all its own, as if it too were eager to take the enemy down. “I don’t believe it,” Daria said again, shaking her head. “We’re actually going to get them!” Her eyes dipped down the console.
“So it would seem.”
“I don’t believe it!” Daria shouted. “We’re almost out of gas!”
“What?”
“We’re almost out—We’ve been idling the car all morning, we—we—” She shot him a single tight and baffled glance and said, “We have approximately ten miles to figure out how we’re going to get them to stop before our ass is stranded out here.”
They had less than that. Looking ahead, Tagen could see the trees beginning to thin and the hills rising. Soon, the mountains would open, and a mistake on that narrow stretch of road would mean a short, sharp ride and an explosive finish. Tagen bared his teeth and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, trying to think. He could allow the prisoner to escape, he could ask the gods to strike down what was apparently their favored son, or he could fire a few rounds of superheated plasma at E’Var’s groundcar, melting through its hull and inner workings, thus halting it so that they, in close pursuit, could smash into it and kill all of them. Hm.
“Well?” Daria pressed.
“I have a plan.” The name of Pahnee was famed throughout the known universe with good planning.
“Thank God. What do I do?”
“Remove this window,” Tagen said, tapping the glass beside him.
Daria’s left hand flew from the guidance wheel to her door and the window hummed down to admit an angry jet of air. “Now what?” she asked anxiously.
Tagen leaned his head out and shouted, “Pull over!” in his most authoritative voice.
She stared at him.
He pulled his head back inside the vehicle. “Well, that did not work,” he said.
“No, it sure didn’t.” She brought his window back up, her chin thrust forward. One of her hands rose in an aimless bird-like flutter before slapping back down on the guidance wheel. “You know, this whole thing has been one nightmare after another!”
“You have no idea.”
“All right,” Daria said, and suddenly laughed. It was an unexpected thing, like sunshine rendered as sound, and completely free of hesitation or fear. She smiled broadly straight ahead out the console fore-window and said, “Hold on to Grendel.”
“What—”
are you planning
, was how that was meant to end, but it was superfluous. He was not a man of great insight, but he was a soldier, and the soldier in him knew instinctively exactly what she was planning. If there was time to argue or even to be alarmed, he might have indulged himself, but there was not. He reached into the cargo hold, hooked out the crouching cat, and hugged its struggling body securely to his chest. “I love you,” he said simply. “Aim true.”
As last words go, those were fine ones. Tagen watched, at peace, as the distance between their two vehicles was eaten under the fore-wheels of Daria’s car. E’Var seemed to shout something; his arm cut an arc through the air, harnessing himself in the last instant before impact.
Daria struck the rear left quarter of E’Var’s vehicle and yanked the guidance wheel hard to starboard as she did, not merely pushing at the enemy but slapping them violently from the road. It was an unimportant sound, neither a bang or a crash, but only a hand-clapping sort of bump followed at once by the shrieking of tires as both cars spun out. E’Var’s vehicle shot off at nearly a crosswise angle to the road. There came a resounding detonation as it smashed into a tree, but this was peripheral. Daria’s car twisted violently side to side and she fought with it for control, spinning over the roadtop in a shroud of tire-smoke until the moment came that Tagen had been waiting for. The right front tire, the same one that had split away earlier, caught the road’s edge and suddenly they were airborne.
The groundcar rose and flipped twice, producing a howl of bent air and a swirl of highway and sky all around them. The cat screamed but it was the only one. Tagen felt the churn of gravity in motion. He waited tensely and in silence either to live or die.
The tumble was cut short by a crunching collision with a number of bushes that caught and suspended them nose-down and not quite fully on one side. Gradually, thin branches snapped and bent and the vehicle settled. With a muted thump, the left side of the car evened out and there they were, the rear of the car slightly hoisted and the wheels spinning freely as the engines hummed, but more or less intact.
Tagen opened his arms and the cat sprang into the rear hold, all its long fur spiked out, leaving several rips in Tagen’s uniform as proof that it had struggled. He could hear Daria breathing, which was a relief; her eyes were wide and unblinking as death, and blood was steadily making its way down her cheek to drip onto her shirt.
“Speak if you hear me,” he said tersely. The shoulder of his gun-hand was aching. He tried to move it and could, but only through a haze of white-hot pain. He unharnessed himself with his clumsy left and reached out to her. “Daria, speak.”
“Arf,” she said, which was speech, even if it was nonsensical. She drew a single shuddering breath and craned her neck to look out the fore-window at the sky. “My God, we’re alive. What are the odds?”
“Slim.”
She panted out a laugh, and then suddenly, she jerked and stared around at him. “What are you still doing here? Go on!” She began to pull at her harness, grimacing with some hidden hurt. “Go on, go get him! Run!”
Her harness wasn’t opening. Tagen tried to help her, but she slapped at his hands.
“Leave me!” she said, sounding more exasperated than anything else. “I’m not going anywhere! Don’t let him get away!”
“Daria—”
She left off her battle with the harness lock to slide her hand around his neck. He let himself be pulled to her and he kissed the mouth that sought his so urgently, but she pushed him away with the taste of her still new on his lips and gave him a severe stare. “Go get him, soldier,” she said quietly.
He held her eyes for a moment more, and then pulled out of her grip and turned away. His door was blocked and bent inward by broken trees. He crawled into the rear hold, kicked out the hatch window, and left her. He could feel her danger like a live coal in his chest, but he made himself be an officer now. He made himself leave her behind.
E’Var’s groundcar was smoking and empty. The passenger’s door hung open. The pilot’s was torn entirely away. Tagen reached into the crumpled interior and took the keys from the ignition, not to prevent the use of the car (which even Tagen could see had passed into the realm of the non-functional), but only to silence the tortured engines. He heard nothing, but E’Var’s trail was evident and bloodied.
Tagen drew his gun and started running.
*
Raven would not wake up. Her face was half-painted with blood from a wound in her scalp. Right before his eyes, her throat was purpling in a wide bar the very image of the groundcar’s harness. Her right leg had been pinned when the front hull buckled inward in the crash. It was bleeding heavily and was probably broken. He hadn’t had time to check for injuries beyond these obvious ones. He’d torn the shirt from her body to wrap her leg in and that was all.
He’d been lucky by comparison. His left leg had been knocked a damned good one when the console erupted. It ached relentlessly, but it wasn’t broken. His chest was scored by the same harness-mark as Raven’s, only in reverse angle, and it burned with every breath, hinting at a cracked rib or two, but more likely it was only bruised. Nothing seriously wrong, in other words, just wrong enough to keep him from running to his ship.
Kane had no intention of running anyway, even if he’d sprung from the crashed groundcar utterly unmarked. The Jotan he’d glimpsed in the car just before the impact had been the same one from the fair and he’d been the only Jotan in the car. The Fleet had sent just one officer to bring Kane down and now he was here, on foot and fresh from a collision. It was time to settle this.
Kane laid in a trail from the wreckage of his groundcar. He didn’t run far, but he did run clumsy, favoring his good leg much more than it deserved and counting on Raven’s extra weight in his arms to throw his tracks even more off-kilter. The blood from her injuries added an extra dimension to the lie, but it was a cold comfort with her lying so limp, so silent.
He took his time circling out after he reached the end of his false trail, even with time at such a high premium, making the best of his considerable skill at leaving no mark as he came around and back toward the site of the Fleet-fucker’s car. When it was in view (and on all four round feet, how in the fuck did he manage that?) Kane knelt and lay Raven out. She looked impossibly small and fragile against the dry earth, and the sight put the heat in him for killing. He hunkered over her, his claws combing at her hair. One of her alluring white stripes had been turned into a matted spike, and he rubbed at it futilely, trying to work up the nerve to leave her. If only she would open her eyes!