He began to drink again, but paused as a new thought occurred. Curse Daria’s closeness to him; her pessimism was having an evil effect on him. “E’Var is a chemist,” he murmured, unaware he spoke aloud. “So perhaps he will not suffer after all.”
“A chemist?” Daria echoed, and he started and looked into her narrow, suspicious eyes. “You came all this way after a rogue chemist? You told me he was killing people!”
“He is.” Tagen drank again, eyed the cubes in the empty glass, and rose to add more water. “He is using your people to make his chemicals.”
She was still staring at him when he returned to the table, and he sat down and drank, watching comprehension sink into her eyes. She was naive at times, his Daria, and at times almost scarily fixated upon the darker motivations of both their kinds, but she was not stupid.
“You don’t mean chemist,” she said slowly. “You mean he’s making drugs. He’s using people to make drugs.”
“Yes.” He did not know the word, but he trusted to her definition.
Her mouth worked in silence for a few seconds, and then she slammed both hands down on the table and shouted, “How can you just sit there? Why aren’t you out catching this guy?”
Irritation drove a thin, hot spike down through his body. “How do you suggest I go about it?”
“The old-fashioned Earth way, asshole! Just
look
for him!”
Tagen felt his patience slip. “I am looking. And I will find him.”
“But only if he leaves a bunch of bodies behind him. I mean, that is your big plan, right? Just wait for him to kill a busload of nuns and you don’t even give a damn!” She worked herself up into a good seethe while Tagen mentally recited the Jotan alphabet backwards. He’d made it to
leth
when she exploded. “If he were killing your people, you’d call him a murderer and he’d be goddamn well caught by now, but no! He’s here on backwater Earth, so he can butcher humans all he wants and you send one fucking
narc
because that makes him just a drug dealer!”
“You humans have drugs and the men who make them, yes?”
“It is completely different!” she hissed.
Headache and Heat crept towards each other from the polar points of his body. “I see.”
“People don’t die when humans make drugs.”
“No? Earth has only peaceful chemists? The men who use the drugs do only kind deeds while seeking them?”
“That’s different, goddammit! I’m talking about people killing people just to make it, and I’m talking about you thinking I wouldn’t even need to know!”
Naturally. He knew this would become his fault at some point. “I did not design the drug or the means of its manufacture. I did not train Kanetus to hunt humans and kill them for Vahst. I did not help him to kill his guards and take his ship and give him the tools he needed to come to Earth and make his drug.” Tagen’s voice was rising. He heard it happening, and he knew exactly what words were going to come next, and he was utterly incapable of stopping himself. “Humans kill each other for reasons and in numbers I cannot imagine. It never occurred to me to think you might notice what small percentage E’Var took in his work.”
She rocked back and then glared at him. “That’s what you thought, huh?”
“And I think I was correct to do so, as you sit there and tell me you have not seen…how did you put it…? Anything unusual about the way your kind is dying. E’Var is not killing busloads of nuns. He is clever enough to kill only those your kind never notices anyway. He is harvesting that vast wash of unnoticed and unimportant throw-away humans of which you, Lindaria Cleavon, are damned well one, and if
you
cannot tell where he is, you can hardly expect me—”
She slapped him, not hard, but fast enough that he never saw it coming, much less have time to block her. It made a sound that, for just an instant, he thought might be his own restraint snapping. The urge to knock the table across the little room and seize her by the throat was so strong that he could actually feel the faint resistance of her flesh in his grip.
Tagen closed his eyes. Took a breath. Took another. Opened them and said, “I am going to bed. I am sorry you think badly of me. Perhaps on your world, your police are allowed to set their own policy, choose the criminals they seek when and how they wish it, but that is not the way of things on Jota.”
He stalked from the kitchen, leaving Daria alone at the table to watch his ice cubes melt.
*
Daylight and back on the road. Kane dozed, riding in the passenger seat of the groundcar with his hat pulled low over his eyes. Raven was an exhausting companion when she was drugged. He hadn’t done much sleeping the last few days.
No, not much. He should really be more irritable, but it was hard to work up a good steam with so many fond memories.
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips even now. He had no idea how much Raven remembered of her lying-in. Every so often, he’d catch a puzzled kind of expression dashing across her face, but she never gave him a clue as to what her thoughts were. Too bad. She was fair enough when she was free and sober, but she was a force of fucking nature when she was under the blanket of that painkiller. Kane had worked and reworked the combination of chemicals six times in the last four days, and he had yet to discover what had made her so merry…and mouthy. Gods, her mouth…
Never mind. Her mouth was good for plenty of other things, and she’d probably bite just because he told her to, anyway. Although…half the fun of it had come from her spontaneity. From her wanting to bite, and from the obvious pleasure she’d taken as she’d done it. Sure, she’d obey him if he gave her an order, but it wouldn’t be the same.
It’d be something, though. Fuck it, he’d tell her to bite.
“Oh shit.”
Kane turned toward Raven, but before he could ask what the trouble was, he felt the car lurch and then slow. The engines sputtered and cut out. Steam billowed from beneath the hull’s fore-panel and the smell of hot oil and rubber filled the interior.
Raven cranked the wheel, guiding the vehicle with apparent effort off the road and onto the soft side. The car ground to a halt there, hissing as it died. She stared straight ahead, pale and frightened-looking. Her jaw was tight, as if expecting a blow.
Kane drummed his fingers once on the top of his pack. “Trouble?” he asked mildly.
“I…I can’t fix cars.” She still didn’t look at him, and her hands on the steering wheel clenched white.
“Do you know what’s wrong with it?” Hell, he could have a look. Engines were engines.
“It’s the heat,” Raven said. “I probably ran out of radiator fluid or something.”
“Let’s have a look.” He took the keys from her by habit and got out. The fore-panel popped as he walked around front and it only took a second or two for him to figure out how to open it. The panel was hot as a hard fuck; Kane shrugged out of his long coat and wrapped it around his hand to touch it, and then studied the grimed interior of the groundcar’s guts.
Internal combustion engine, fuel accelerated and electrically supplemented. As straightforward as they came. Kane could see the problem. He didn’t know what it was called in human, but the coolant tank had run dry. He supposed they could refill it with water for a stop-gap, but they’d still have to wait for everything to cool down before he could touch it. Besides which, they had only one bottle of water between them in the car. He wasn’t sure that would be enough to even get them to a repair bay. Not to mention the fact that a mechanic would want to be paid.
Another groundcar pulled onto the roadside at Kane’s back as he considered the situation and a male voice called, “Need help?”
“Nope.” Kane slammed the fore-panel shut. “Shot to shit.” He turned around, unwinding his coat from his arm, and smiled at the human who had addressed him. The lone human. In a decent-looking groundcar. He strolled over. “Hi,” he said.
“Rotten day to have to walk fifteen miles into town,” the human remarked with a sun-ward glance.
“True.”
“I guess I could be persuaded to give you a ride for a few bucks.”
“I don’t have a few bucks.” Kane heard his groundcar’s door open and Raven’s footsteps crunching on gravel. He watched the human look past him as she approached. The human seemed a little unpinned by the addition of Raven, but he recovered quickly.
“Ah, what the hell.” The human gave a wave to the inside of his groundcar. “Hop in.”
Kane smiled wide and stepped back, catching Raven’s arm and towing her out of easy listening range. “Get my pack,” he said, and quietly added, “Sit with him and keep him distracted.”
“How distracted?” she asked, looking nervous. “Do…Do I have to…?”
“No, I’m going to kill him.” Kane paused and cocked his head at her, teasing. “Why, do you want to…?” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the unspoken and snapped his teeth at her.
She recoiled so cutely that he couldn’t resist leaning in and nipping at her jaw. “Just distract him,” he said, and got into the car behind the human.
“That your girlfriend?” the human asked, watching Raven jog away.
“Just someone I picked up.”
“Really? Well. Some of that going around, I guess.”
Raven came moments later with his pack in hand and joined the driver in the front seat. “Hi,” she said.
“Well, hi.” The human started up his engines and pulled out onto the road. “So. Where you two headed?”
“West,” Kane said.
“San Francisco,” Raven added, tugging her skirt up a little higher. “At least, that was the plan. Now that the car’s dead, who knows? This isn’t the best hitching weather.”
“I hear ya.”
The humans chatted and Kane listened just closely enough to ascertain that Raven wasn’t slipping in any warnings. Mostly, he watched the driver in the console mirror, smiling whenever their eyes met.
“Well now, sounds like you’ve for sure got your problems,” the driver said, and Kane detected a faint strain beneath the casual tones. “Now, I could drop you in Tallahook easy enough. It’s right on my way, maybe fifteen miles. But I’m headed to Portland myself.”
“Really?” Raven glanced back at Kane.
“It’s not all the way for you folks,” the human continued, in that same too-hearty tone that spoke all kinds of warnings to one who was listening for it. “But it’s halfway at least, and you shouldn’t have any trouble catching a ride from there.”
“That’d be great,” Raven said.
Kane waited.
“So I’m thinking,” the human said carefully, and cleared his throat. “I’m thinking, what’s that worth to you?”
“We’re…kind of low on cash,” Raven said, sending swift glances in Kane’s direction.
“Did you have cash in mind?” Kane asked pleasantly.
The human uttered a self-effacing sort of laugh. “Well, no sir, I did not. But there’s still time for me to stop you off in Tallahook, if you’d rather. But I am offering to tote you a couple hundred miles for free.” He shrugged, still smiling, but plainly nervous. “I’ve got no diseases and I’m not a weirdo. I’ll even wear a condom if you will.”
“If—” Raven stuttered to a stop and then turned all the way around and stared at Kane.
Kane looked back at her. Something in the set of her eyes told him the driver had changed the game slightly.
“What do you say?” the human pressed. “We can send your girl here out to a movie and you and me…” He shrugged again, watching Kane closely in the console mirror.
Comprehension came home to Kane. He rubbed his jaw to hide the smile breaking free of him and when he was quite sure laughter wouldn’t leak into his voice, he said, “I’m going to have to insist my girl stay with me. Strange town, you understand.”
“If it don’t bother you, it don’t bother me,” the human said. He was relaxing, grinning in the way of a man who had made a blind leap and found solid ground instead of space beneath his feet.
“She does amazing blowjobs,” Kane informed him and settled back in his seat. “There’s no reason she should have to sit and watch. We can take you together.”
“I…That’d be fine.” The human drove, his hands clenching on the wheel. “Hot damn,” he said after a moment.
“In fact, there’s no reason we should have to wait at all, is there?” Kane smiled at the mirror, where the human’s eyes were on him. “Pull us over.”
“What, here?” The human licked his lips. “Now?”
“If you want.” Kane leaned forward, letting his breath tickle at the human’s ear. “I want.”
The groundcar’s wheels screeched as the vehicle found a turn off the main road and into the woods.
“Back,” Kane said. “Well back. I want to be loud.”
“You got it,” the human said hoarsely.
Kane cocked his arm over the back seat and watched the road disappear behind him. He glanced back and saw Raven staring at him. He showed her his fangs in a cheerful smile and she blinked.
The human parked and Kane got out. “Pack, Raven,” he said mildly, and shut his door.
The human stepped over to him, his face flushed with excitement, and Kane leaned against the side of the car and smiled invitingly. Personally, he would never understand why any male would want to fuck another one when there was a perfectly good female standing right there, but there was something genuinely inspiriting in knowing such a male wanted Kane. He hooked his thumb into the fasten-seam of his pants, and the human’s eyes went straight to it. The human knelt.
Kane held out his hand as the human tugged awkwardly at his fastens and Raven put his pack strap into it. By the time he had his harvester out and loaded, the human had finally managed to work out the way his clothing opened. Kane got to hear the swift, awe-filled breath the human took as he saw Kane’s cock, and then the end came in a snap of bone.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Kane remarked as the body thumped over on its back. He dug the gland he needed out of the mass of brain matter and let dopamine collect drop by drop. “Flattering as all hell, though.”
Raven snickered. “For a second there, I actually thought you were going to do it.”
“Fucking is fucking,” Kane said with a flick of his claws. “So my father said, and I believe him. But a man is permitted preferences and mine is for pussy. If I haven’t managed to make that plain enough, then clearly, I need to be fucking you more often.”