“Ah. Yes.”
“The difference being, you went along to become a famous intergalactic lawman and rid the universe of evil-doers. I went along and ended up answering phones and filing invoices at Kruegar and Lauder.” She sighed, a dispirited sound. “
Then
I became a neurotic shut-in.”
“You are a part of…ridding the universe of evil-doers,” he said cautiously.
“Yeah, a small, neurotic part.”
“The sea is filled by single drops.”
She laughed again, encouraging him.
“I will never find E’Var without your help, Daria Cleavon,” he said, and her smile faded. She avoided his eyes but he continued to keep his gaze locked on her, trying to convince her with sincerity she had to feel since she would not look at him. “I know better now how much it has cost you to have me in your home, and still you offer me aid. I am grateful.”
She ducked her head, her cheeks burnished with pink.
Tagen steeled himself and very gingerly touched his hand to her back. He felt her muscles ripple as she first locked up and then relaxed. He opened his palm, gradually resting his hand until he touched her fully.
He could have stood thus for hours. She was not trembling. She was not tight or apprehensive. After a moment or two, she even smiled.
Tagen’s breath eased from him. He patted twice, awkwardly, and then returned to his chair to await his meal. It was a start. A fresh start.
*
Sue-Eye awakened to the sound of screams. She jerked upright, but as fast as she was, she was no equal to Kane, who flipped to his feet like an acrobat and was at the window in an instant. He twitched the curtain aside with one claw, admitting a stripe of daylight that turned his black eyes briefly pure white.
“What is it?” Raven asked sleepily, sitting up as the sheets pooled around her waist. Her hand drifted to her stomach and rubbed.
“Kids,” Sue-Eye said. The pitch of the screams, now that she was awake, was unmistakable. Only teenage girls could shatter glass like that. “Just kids fucking around.”
“They’re not fucking yet,” Kane grunted. He remained at the window, brazenly naked, searching the outsides with an idle curiosity.
Sue-Eye rolled onto her knees and stood up stiffly. She found her top and pulled it on, wincing at the sweaty smell of it. All well and good for Kane to hang out in his skin as the window stopped above his waist, but she wasn’t about to flash her tits to the good people of this pissant little town. She went to join him, shading her eyes against the direct rays of the morning sun.
There were four or five teenies in bikinis out by the pool, shrieking and splashing each other with that blasé hyper-sexuality instinctive to snotty rich girls. They knew they were attracting attention and they knew exactly what kind, but they were untouchable. All around the pool, cabin curtains were pulled and male faces were staring. Like the lifeguard behind the towel-table, all of them kept a discreet distance to do their drooling, which only acted as a kind of encouragement to the teens.
Suddenly, one of the girls noticed them. She looked at Sue-Eye, looked at Kane, smirked at Sue-Eye, and then flipped her top up and shook her tits at them. Her friends exploded into shrieking giggles.
Sue-Eye glanced at Kane. He was watching the swimmers with that same indifference with which he had looked her over the night before. Not a tit man, clearly.
“You like what you see?” Sue-Eye asked him, nodding toward the pool. “Bored little bitches like those, you could probably get one in here just by waving.”
He turned his head and stared at her for while, then glanced back toward the pool. He smiled thinly. “I was looking,” he said evenly, “at the water. There is such a thing as being too eager,
ichuta’a
.”
The teenie waggled her tongue at him.
Kane gave a ‘Jesus-Christ’ kind of head shake, and let the curtain drop. “Where were they when I was out in the woods?” he muttered, and then focused on Sue-Eye. His eyes dipped down and his lip curled. “Put the rest of your clothes on,” he told her, and shoved her out of his way to go to Raven’s side.
Cheeks burning, Sue-Eye went to fetch her skirt from the floor. She could feel Raven watching her, and she didn’t dare look up for fear her smart mouth would open up and dump one of those kidney-punch-earning cracks out into the world.
“It’s a swimming pool,” she said instead. “Haven’t you ever been swimming?”
“On a ship?” Kane paused long enough to give her an incredulous stare. “Use your fucking brains. Water doesn’t fall out of the sky in space.” He picked up Raven’s shampoo bottle and put it into his pony’s hand. Raven immediately began rubbing lotion into her piercings. “I was wondering why you humans would make something like that with a real river in plain sight,” he continued, watching Raven’s hands.
“It’s just something rich people do to waste money,” Sue-Eye said. “Like vacationing in shit-holes like this and eating bugs.”
Raven snickered.
Kane gave his bitch a glance and then turned all the way around to fix his gaze on Sue-Eye. “How much money do we have left?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. A couple hundred bucks at least.”
“Enough to stay here another night?”
“Sure, if we don’t eat too much.”
Kane nodded, his eyes flicking to Raven. “Good,” he grunted. “I don’t want to travel today.”
Raven paused in the act of working the last drops of lotion free from her bottle and looked up at him. “I can—”
“Don’t argue with me,” he said, not taking his eyes from Sue-Eye. He reached out and she felt a sting as he touched the split in her lip, a leftover from yesterday’s slap. He bared his teeth and turned away, snapping his fingers for her to follow as he went to the table and his waiting pack.
He slid his finger along the seam and the lid raised. He folded his computer out of the way, revealing his gear. Next to the neat rows of vials—the ones he’d squeezed the Pack’s brains into—were a number of bottles of powders and fluids. He picked through them until he came to one about the size and shape of a Chapstick, and brought it out. He ran his eyes over the lettering scored down the side and grunted. “Better than nothing,” he muttered, and turned to face her.
The thing opened like a Chapstick, too, but instead of a nice petroleum bullet, there was a pinpoint hole oozing a thick, grey paste. Kane took a dot of this onto his fingertip and then applied it carefully to Sue-Eye’s split lip. “Don’t swallow this,” he warned her. “Unless you want to be vomiting blood for the next twelve hours.”
“Is it supposed to sting like this?” she asked.
“It should numb over in a minute.” He glanced Raven’s way, his eyes narrow and assessing. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
Kane’s face set and darkened. “Don’t lie to me, Raven,” he said quietly.
“I do feel fine, for being on my period,” she said hurriedly. “It’s not like being fine any other day, but it’s normal, okay?”
Kane stared at her, his eyes lingering longest on her face. “Get something to eat,” he said finally, and went into the bathroom. He came out fastening his pants and switched on his computer, ignoring both of them.
Sue-Eye flipped through the room service menu as Raven got out of bed. She watched from the corner of her eye as the bitch shuffled to the bathroom, her hands at her stomach and her back bent. Killer cramps, Sue-Eye guessed. Probably with the stuffy headache and that sick, bloated feeling to match. On a hot day like this, with the whole room smelling like sex and sweat, she was probably nine-tenths of the way to a puke-fest already.
Sue-Eye looked down at the menu in her hands. She smiled. She picked up the phone and ordered three of their biggest breakfast platters—eggs, sausage links, bacon, fried potatoes, and fritters. She made sure Raven’s eggs were fried, too. By the time the bitch came out of the bathroom, Sue-Eye had innocently hung up and was back at the window, watching the teenies splash around.
The food came. Sue-Eye hadn’t taken the covered plates more then three steps into the room before she saw Raven’s nose twitch. The bitch went pasty almost immediately. Sue-Eye pretended not to notice. She sat at the edge of the bed where she could watch Kane and Raven at the same time, her face a stoic mask over malicious pleasure.
All of Kane’s attention was on his work. He ate mechanically, ignoring his fork in favor of his claws, his eyes moving constantly over the changing monitor. Every so often, he’d type for a short spurt and then watch again.
Raven sat with her plate balanced on her knees, looking pale and strained as she pushed food around. Once in a while, she’d bring a crumb of egg to her lips. Her face looked like it was made of wax.
“Are you okay?” Sue-Eye asked loudly.
Kane turned at once.
Raven straightened up fast and nodded. “Sure. I’m just…thinking.”
“You need to eat,” Sue-Eye said, feigning concern. “You’re starting to look a little puny.”
Kane frowned.
Raven put a forkful of egg in her mouth. She chewed far more than eggs needed chewing, and Sue-Eye watched her face gradually green up.
“Want my bacon?” she asked, stabbing her greasy offering forward directly under Raven’s nose.
Raven yanked herself back, and then bolted, flipping her plate over as she raced for the bathroom. Kane shoved his chair back and stalked after her, his hands drawing into fists. He looked dead furious.
Sue-Eye righted Raven’s plate, scraping eggs and bacon and fritters back off the bedding. She listened to Raven retch, groan, and then really puke. “This is fine, huh?” Kane snarled from the bathroom. “This is normal.” The gratifying crack of open palm on bare skin, followed by a high cry, brought a smile to Sue-Eye’s lips. But then—
“All right, get up.” Kane’s voice was rough, but no more than merely irritated.
Raven sobbed, the sound echoing in the small room as Sue-Eye listened.
“Does this hurt?”
“No.”
“This?”
Raven cried out.
Sue-Eye moved toward the bathroom, frowning. She watched Kane kneel down before his pony, his hands gentle on her stomach as he inspected her. He glanced aside at the little wastebasket, at the bloody tissues wrapping Raven’s tampons.
“This is more blood than there was yesterday,” he said, and looked up. “Is this…Did one of those males hit you in the stomach?”
“No,” Raven sniffled. “This happens sometimes. I swear. It’s worse than usual, but it’s still normal.” She hugged her belly with both hands, looking wrung out and thoroughly miserable.
Kane put his hands on his thighs and leaned back, considering her with his fangs gleaming. “Do you want me to make you something?” he asked at last.
Raven shook her head. “It won’t last much longer.”
Kane snarled out a breath and stood up. He glanced back at Sue-Eye and then looked again at Raven. “Truth, Raven,” he said. “And you’d better goddamn believe I’ll know a lie if I hear one. Is there even a chance that you are dying?”
Jesus. Sue-Eye could feel a burning in her bitter heart.
“No,” said Raven. “No chance.”
Kane searched her eyes, taking several slow breaths. Finally, he nodded and turned around. “Get her something else to eat,” he told Sue-Eye. “No more of that other shit. Meat. Good red meat.”
“And tea,” Raven said in her sick-girl, shaking voice. “Hot tea. Peppermint.”
“That’s more money,” Sue-Eye pointed out.
Kane’s eyes narrowed. “If we run low, I’ll whore you out,” he said evenly. “Your kind pays for fucking, I’ve seen that clear enough.”
Sue-Eye’s jaw tightened.
“You and I can make the food we have already last us all day,” Kane continued. “But you get her that meat…and this…tea. Right now.”
Sue-Eye went.
She placed the order, already thinking ahead. So her little ploy hadn’t ended quite the way she’d wanted. It had worked to start with, and Kane still didn’t trust Raven. There were cracks in the tie that bound those two together. Kane thought Raven was lying, and Raven
was
lying, which was the best part. There had to be a good way to exploit that.
And suddenly, Sue-Eye had an idea.
It wouldn’t work now. Kane needed a little time to get good and edgy about what exactly was going on with his bitch. But it would work, Sue-Eye was sure of it, and the tenser he got, the more it would pay off for Sue-Eye. Even better, it would let her push Raven around a little and there wouldn’t be one thing the bitch could say or do to stop her.
Kane came back into the main room and sat at the table that was his work station. He tapped at the keyboard distractedly, and then turned and fixed Sue-Eye with a piercing stare. “Do you have periods?” he asked in a low voice.
She couldn’t have scripted a better question. “All women have periods,” she said.
“You bleed like that?” he demanded, tossing his chin at the bathroom. “You fall down? You vomit?”
Sue-Eye gave him an owlish blink. “No,” she said. “I’m careful never to let it get that bad.”
He let it go at that, although he stared at her for a long, unnerving while. Then he returned his eyes to his computer. After a while, he took a bite out of his bacon and continued typing. He said nothing.
That was all right. He was thinking.
And Sue-Eye could wait.
*
Raven was hurting.
Kane watched her in the reflection of his monitor. Her hand was curled at her belly, her face was pale and twisted with pain, and she couldn’t seem to lie in one position very long. Eventually, she rose and went into the bathroom. The sound of the shower drumming on the tiles soon came to his ears.
He hated to admit it, but Kane was worried. Being upset even a little made him feel frustrated and disgusted with himself, but there it was. Something was wrong with his Raven and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. She’d refused his offer of pain killers, and even if she hadn’t, he was uneasy about dumping chemicals in her when her system was so obviously unbalanced. He’d seen his father kill too many humans that way; what worked once wouldn’t always work again if something was already wrong.