“Thank you,” Raven said. She filled in the registration card under the name Cain and Cindy Francisco, with a completely fake address in Seattle.
“You folks should have stayed up north,” the old man remarked, setting a heavy brass key on a plastic tab down on the counter. “Nice and cool, s’ I hear. Even rains now and then.”
“Well, we’re headed back,” Raven told him. “Had to…see my sister’s baby.”
“And don’t they come at the worst times?” he asked merrily. “I hear you, I hear you. Now, it’s thirty-five for the room, and I’ll just run a copy of your driver’s license and let you folks tuck in for the night.”
“Um,” said Raven. “The thing is—”
Kane glanced at her, then slipped a hand around the old man’s neck. It seemed to Raven that he didn’t even move particularly fast, but he must have, because the old guy didn’t even get out the first word of a “What the heck are you doing?” before it was over. She heard the coconut-hollow whack of the old guy’s head hitting the counter, and then Kane’s hand was back in his pocket and he was watching, just standing there and watching, as the old guy crumpled off his chair and onto the floor. He landed facedown and mouth open, blood spilling in a wide ribbon onto the cheap carpet.
Raven must have made a sound, because Kane looked at her. “Wasn’t that the tricky bit?” he asked. He was smiling again, teasing her.
“I could have told him something,” she said.
“His listening days are about to end.” Kane took his arm off her shoulders and moved around the counter. He hunkered down, opening his black pack and taking out that rodlike machine he’d used on the brains of the men Raven had been riding with, but then paused and looked more closely into the motel guy’s face. He grunted and touched a fingertip to the old man’s neck. “Damn,” he said mildly. “I think I killed him.”
“You were going to kill him anyway,” Raven said. Not a smart thing to say, but she couldn’t call the words back any more than she could take her eyes off that little winding stripe of red coming out of the split in the old guy’s brow.
“True. But I wanted to harvest him first.” Kane straightened up, dropping his device back into his pack. “Never mind, he’ll keep. Let’s close down.”
Raven picked up the room key, registration card and pen, wiped down the counter with a fold of her t-shirt, and used the back of her elbow to flip the ‘no’ switch for No Vacancy. “I need to move the car,” she said.
“All right.” Kane yawned hugely, showing Raven two rows of pointed carnivore’s teeth. “But we’d better make it quick.”
She parked the car around the back of the motel, away from the road and casual sight. Kane sat beside her in the passenger seat, tapping his claws on one knee and looking very relaxed for a man who’d just killed a guy and was preparing to sleep in the same building as the body.
The disuse of the season was evident in the musty smell of Room 3. Raven kept the lights off, closed the curtains, and moved at once to the air conditioner mounted in the wall. It started up noisy as a ‘67 Chevy, but it did start up, and it worked pretty fast, howling glacial air into the little room. Kane waved a hand before the vent as he closed the door and looked impressed.
“Nice,” he said, and gave Raven a stinging slap to her hip that held no hostility at all. “Let’s wash up, human.”
She led him to the little bathroom and flipped on the light there, reasoning that the only window here faced the woods and she wasn’t likely to attract any attention. The bathroom wasn’t the smallest she’d ever seen in a motel, but it was plenty crowded with the two of them in it, and she stripped off her shirt selfconsciously, hoping he would maybe realize there was no way she could crawl through the narrow window and so leave her alone.
No such luck. Kane shrugged out of his overcoat and dropped it indifferently on the floor, then unfastened the black band hugging his arm and set it on the counter next to the sink. He rubbed at the pale flesh that exposed with a grimace of pleasure, and then started working his way out of his pants. Raven’s shoulders slumped. He wasn’t going anywhere, and since he was deliberately blocking the door, neither was she. Privacy was a thing of the ancient past, at least for now. Blushing, she sat on the toilet and urinated for what felt like forever, her eyes fixed on the floor.
“Been a while since I used something like that, either,” was his only comment. “Ah, civilization.”
Raven flushed and stood up, stepping into the bathtub to finish undressing behind the curtain.
“Cool water,” he told her. The sound of piss emptying at male capacity was drowned out when Raven turned on the tap. He raised his voice to say, “Gods, I already feel better,” and then slapped the flusher, briefly flooding her with scalding water.
Then the shower curtain was pulled back and he joined her in her hiding place. The water struck him in the chest and came off him in rivers of red-brown dust. Raven unwrapped the little bar of hotel soap and passed it to him. He turned it over in his claws and handed it back to her, and then leaned back against the tiled wall at the foot of the tub and looked expectant.
Yeah, okay. Raven soaped up a washcloth and started wiping him down, beginning with his face. He closed his eyes for one deep breath, and let it out in a low growl. He was still smiling, but there was no cruelty in it now. It was the smile of someone half-asleep and already dreaming. An innocent smile, on the face of the man who still had dried flecks of brown blood under his claws.
Raven washed him, scrubbing gentle as a geisha down his arm to each finger, cleaning each claw—first the left hand, then the right. She rubbed broad circles over his chest, and in short up and downs across his hard stomach. His eyes remained shut, his breath even. He turned around when she paused to re-lather her washcloth, presenting her with his bare back and leaning into his folded arms.
“Warmer,” he muttered. “A little.”
She adjusted the temperature and the angle of the spray, and then began to rub his shoulders with soap. His growl smacked of sensuality. Raven worked the taut muscles of his back, soothing and smoothing him beneath her hands. And he relaxed, gradually and not completely, but he
did
relax.
Raven knelt, kneading at his hips and buttocks where her own hurt the worst after the long car ride, and he groaned appreciatively into his arms. His thighs flexed as she massaged and cleaned them, spreading just a little for her to work. She went all the way to his feet, and when she’d washed his talons, he turned again.
She worked her way back up his powerful legs and when she reached his hips, her hands working in lather alongside his huge, hanging organ, he reached out to comb a single claw through her hair.
He didn’t speak. She didn’t need commands.
She encircled him with her soapy cloth and stroked, down, around and up again. Water sluiced over her, wiping him clean to be lathered again. She could feel him stirring, stiffening in her grip; she could see his abdomen ripple, see his thighs tighten. She leaned up on her knees and licked just once at the rising head of him with the very point of her tongue. He leaned back into the tiles again. His hand stayed light and playful in her hair.
Raven moved her washcloth to his stomach, to the V-shaped plain above his base, and rubbed in tiny circles, the same circles she now licked all down the underlength of him. She tasted the place his balls should be, and then danced a trail back to his glans. She closed her lips on him and sucked slow and hard as she lashed her tongue atop his sensitive tip.
“
Sang chi’ay
,” he whispered, and pulled at her head, but not insistently.
She went willingly anyway, letting him pull her along his cock, angling up to open her throat for him. The washcloth on his belly pushed as her other hand gripped his base and squeezed. He thrust slowly, drawing himself almost completely out of her before pumping into her mouth again. His three fingers flexed and relaxed on her head, flexed and relaxed.
She ran the soap through her fingers and wrapped her hands around his shaft, twining and tickling as she coated him with slick foam. Then she began to milk, steady and gentle and strong, rapidly lashing at him with the tip of her tongue only and sometimes pausing either to suck once or to blow a stream of air or water at his glans.
“Up,” Kane said hoarsely. “Up now.” His claws clenched painfully in her hair, pulling her faster when she didn’t rise fast enough, and then he pushed her into the long wall and lifted her, pulling her legs around his hips.
She didn’t have time to brace herself, but it wasn’t as bad as she remembered. The soap helped. He stroked up inside her all the way, forceful but not brutal, urgent but still calm. She hung her weight on his shoulders and tried not to feel what he did to the rest of her. He took what he needed from her with constant, indifferent motions, his taut stomach slapping wetly at hers with every swift thrust. It’d probably be over soon. That was something at least.
Then he pulled her thighs up, tilting her hips, penetrating even deeper, and suddenly the swollen friction of him was in a whole new place, one that sparked violently in unwelcome response to his movements. It startled a gasp from her, an instinctive tightening of her arms, and God help her, he noticed. His laughter was deep and nearly soundless, a rumble that passed from his body to her bones, melting humiliation into every pore of her.
She twisted her face away, but couldn’t unfeel his touch and now he was slowing, stroking at her with exquisite deliberation. She felt herself whimper, and then heard herself beg. “Please…just…No, please, no…just finish, please, just—”
His hands rubbed slickly around to her ass, pulling her even tighter, positioning her for an even fuller fit. His cock scoured her, massing at her from her pussy clear to her throat, and her traitor body seized on him and flooded with heat. She began to fight futilely, trying to squirm up and off him, but of course, succeeded only in adding to his rhythm. “I don’t want to!” Raven cried, but she knew what was coming. “Oh God, no!”
“No?” Kane gasped. He sent a tight succession of short, sharp thrusts against her, each one yanking her a little closer to that hateful climax. “This doesn’t feel like no to me.” He started to say more, and then hissed in breath as she came and let it out in a strangled, “
Chok
, Raven! Ah, gods! Ah,
chok-se en erashe
!” His body locked up tight and he unleashed an awful, strained groan and bucked twice into her with bruising force, cumming in shudders.
Raven sobbed, covering her eyes behind one hand, hating herself and the pleasure that still glowed out from her womb. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t stand to see his mocking smile.
He leaned into her, only a little shy of breath, and slowly let her slide down his body to her own feet. He stepped back, combing once at the lock of her limp, purple hair, and then he reached down and tugged hard at her pubic down. “I hate the feel of this,” he said. “Take it off.”
Raven blinked wetly around the shower stall. “There’s no razor,” she said. “If we go to a store tomorrow, I can buy one.”
“Soon enough, I suppose.” He scratched lightly at the half-beard lining his jaw and then suddenly grinned and put his hand hard between her thighs.
She uttered a shrill, mewling sound and pressed herself flat against the tiles, trying to clench away from him.
“Now where…?” he breathed, pushing up, parting her. Even his finger was thick and long; her body gripped it greedily even as her guts churned. “Ah, gods! Feel that!” he grunted. He pumped his hand, and Raven broke into tears. “Move,” Kane said. “You know you want to.”
“I don’t want to!” Raven wailed.
Kane grabbed her hip with his free hand and pumped her towards his thrusting finger. Her nerves, already heightened, flared out in ugly orgasm. Kane paused again, his lips parting as he stared at her belly with that incredulous grin on his face. “I’ve never felt anything like that,” he remarked, and pulled his hand free of her at last.
“You bastard!” she sobbed, stupidly but beyond caring. In that moment, still with hellish pleasure tingling through her, she wanted to be dead.
He laughed at her. “Wash up,” he said cheerfully. He picked up the bundle of her shed clothing and his pants and tossed them in the tub with her. “Do what you can with these and hang them up to dry. And don’t take too long. If I have to come in here after you—” He stroked his open hand once across her pussy. “—I might get distracted.”
She covered herself as soon as he moved his hand away, shivering, and he left, still laughing. Raven found the spongy sliver of soap in the bottom of the tub and rubbed it over herself, her tears coming even harder. There wasn’t enough left for her to get clean. There wasn’t enough soap in the world for that.
*
Tagen burnt the bodies.
It took most of the night, too much time to spend in idleness, but Tagen sat watch over the burning regardless. He did not know the funerary customs of humans, but this much he could do for them. Despite the urgency of his mission, there was a guilt in him that needed to be assuaged, and he hoped that honoring the dead in this way would bring him that little peace.
He watched the bones blacken and shrink, and in his mind’s eye he heard the deafening crack of their weapons. Pellet projectiles. Crude, but quite effective in their own way. Had Tagen not been armed himself or had he been a little slower to return fire, he had no doubt he would be dead at this moment. It was a truth he did not ignore, and for that, he felt perhaps less responsibility for their deaths than he otherwise might have. But the ease with which he had extinguished their lives seemed more significant to him. He could have used his neural stunner. He had killed them instead.
His thoughts returned to the sight of the smaller human buckling and falling. It had not even tried to fire its weapon after it had seen its companion die. Its face had been stricken, disbelieving. The more Tagen thought on that, the more it bothered him. He wondered if the smallness of the human had been an indicator of age rather than mere size. He began to think perhaps he had killed a father and his son.