“I could not do this without you,” Tagen said as she ignited the engine. It hurt him to admit it, but it was truth and truth was all he had to give her in exchange for what she did now. “It is you, not I, who is saving your Earth.”
“I know I should care about that,” she said, pulling the car around and onto the path that led to the road. “But I don’t. I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person, not one, that I can honestly say I want to save. I’m sure they’re out there. I’m sure there’s millions of shiny happy people who deserve to be safe and happy for their whole lives, but I’ve never met them. I meet people like Traynor Polidori. That’s who I meet. And I don’t really want to think too hard about the fact that I’m saving them, if you don’t mind.”
Tagen watched the trees flow by outside his window. “I wish that you were not doing this for me,” he said.
He caught the startled, hurt look she gave him in the reflection of his window.
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I do not deserve such devotion.” He rested his hand on his supply pack, imagining he could feel the burning of the dermisprayer within, still loaded with the mild sedative with which he had robbed her of choice. “I am the thief of your peace. I am putting you into this danger.”
“I…” She said nothing for a long time, only drove along the dark and empty streets. “I like you,” she finished finally. “I’m doing this because it needs to be done, and because you’re the only one who could make me do it.”
“I regret that.”
“You know,” she said dryly, “sometimes you say the most amazing, romantic and overwhelming things a girl could imagine. This isn’t one of those times, Tagen.”
He smiled a little in spite of himself. “I suppose that it is not,” he admitted. “But I am Jotan. We do not put our females into danger. They are precious even when we do not love them. I feel that I am betraying you.”
“Are there women in the army on your planet?” Daria asked, with that same infernal logic he had just known she would use.
Tagen sighed. “Yes.”
“Do you let them fly around in ships looking for bad guys? Do they get into gunfights and get shot?”
“Yes.” He glanced at her. “The difference being, they have chosen that life.”
“And I’m choosing this.”
“It is not the same.”
“It’s the closest I’m ever going to come to doing anything worthwhile with my life,” Daria said.
Silence, for a very long time.
“I am appalled that you would believe that,” he said at last.
“You had it right when you called me a throw-away person,” she countered, as swiftly and ably as if they sparred with blades and not with words. “I’ve been hiding from the world for years. The only one who’ll miss me when I’m gone is Grendel, and he’ll only miss me long enough to find a new home. I’m pointless, Tagen. I’m a worthless, pointless person. Helping you is the one thing I’ve ever done that gives my life any purpose at all. Don’t argue with me. You know it’s true, too.”
“I know,” he said, “that it is not. I have met many humans in my time. Perhaps hundreds. There is not one of them with half your strength of will. I was wrong to call you what I did that day.”
“You’re only saying that because I’m sleeping with you now.”
He did not answer that. “Our past does not define us unless we allow it to do so,” he said instead. “The circumstances of years ago should never force you into a role you have not wished for yourself.”
“Uh huh. Tell me again why you joined the army.”
Tagen looked at her sharply and then gave over to a grudging smile. “A hit,” he said. “A well-aimed hit. I could always trust to you for that.”
She winced and drove in silence for several minutes. “Sorry.”
He waved that away.
“You deserved to find a nicer person,” she continued glumly.
“Nice,” Tagen echoed, tasting the word as if it were alien fruit. “Daria, my friend, I have no use for a nice human. I found instead a clever one, a brave one. A passionate one.” He let his hand squeeze her knee briefly. “Niceness is a quality often at odds with sincerity. I have the human I desire and no, I do not deserve her, but I am grateful she has accepted me regardless.”
“Is that your way of saying I’m a bitch but you don’t mind?”
“No, it is my way of saying I prefer wit and honesty to empty politeness. If I had a wish to change you, it would be that you could see your value.”
“I wish I could, too.” Daria’s voice was low and sorrowful. Her eyes remained fixed on the road. “Because I believe you, Tagen. I have to believe you. But I just can’t see it.”
The lights of a human town were shining in the distance. Tagen could see the red and blue flash of police presence already. The sight was a sobering one, a reminder that their problems paled beside the fact of E’Var culling for Vahst among the innocents of this world.
“Do you know the way to this…movie theater…where the dead were found?” Tagen asked.
“Yeah, but they’re not going to let us in to look around,” Daria said, with a feigned brightness and nonchalance that left her previous words firmly behind them. “I thought we’d just drive through—”
“No. I have questions to be answered. It would be a grim thing to follow along this road seeking E’Var and then to learn the human police had the true killer already imprisoned. For all that we know, the humans within were burned to death or shot.”
Daria sent him several fleeting and uneasy glances. “How were you planning on finding out?”
“The same way I have done once before.” Tagen tapped his claws on the top of his supply pack. “Find me a human who seems to know something.”
Daria parked down the street, squinting ahead at a parking lot filled with media cars and lawmen. A great throng of on-lookers milled anxiously at the perimeter as several uniformed men answered the shouted concerns of the news crews. “Okay,” she said slowly. “I can see a guy talking to some reporters who looks like he knows what’s going on. But you can’t just walk up and start talking to him.”
Tagen leaned back in his seat, shrugging himself comfortable. “Wake me when he leaves this place,” he said. “And we shall follow.”
“As simple as that, huh?”
“Sometimes, Daria Cleavon, it
is
that simple.”
*
They made very good distance after the hunt, following the highway and quickly leaving the killing grounds behind. Raven would drive through the night if he told her to, but being in the cramped car after a good kill felt abrasive to him. Kane had come to recognize the word ‘hotel’ and when he saw it next, he told Raven to stop.
The rooms were arranged in two long arms along a single floor, and they all appeared unoccupied, or at least quiet, but for one. Naturally, it was the one to which Kane and his females were placed adjacent. The sounds of riotous male celebrations came right through the walls, but Kane was still in a good mood. He had filled twelve vials at the place Sue-Eye called a theater, which would themselves reduce down to six of concentrated Vahst, and that put him over the mid-mark. Kane felt a little like celebrating himself.
And so, it seemed, did Sue-Eye, who watched him arrange his equipment with a triumphant expression. No doubt she felt she’d won a battle and true enough, Kane was inclined to be more tolerant of her.
‘Ah, human,’ he thought now, good-naturedly enough. ‘Never confuse tolerance with affection.’ It was one of Urak’s many sayings, and a damned good one. One that every man in Kane’s trade knew the truth of, even if he’d never heard the phrase, and one that a hard little creature like Sue-Eye ought to know as well.
“Raven,” he said, inwardly relishing the sudden shock and anger that Sue-Eye was not too quick to smother.
Raven came to him, looking merely puzzled, and he gestured for her to sit at the hotel table. There was paper provided here and a writing stylus. Kane took them both and quickly jotted down the thirty letters of the alphabet, speaking each aloud as he drew their shapes—
jan
,
eveh
,
orus
,
tan
and on up to
eb
—and then again, making just the sounds they made.
She frowned, her eyes tracking the letters very closely, and looked down at the mark he’d put on her arm so many days before. He watched her sound the letters out, struggling at them like a child. “Eeee…vuh. Ver. Ever. What’s this?” she asked, pointing to the curt, curving mark that divided the first letter from the second.
“It’s called a
hiats
. A hard separation,” he said. “E’Var. Not ever.”
She repeated him.
“Look here.” Kane spelled his full name and then put the stylus into her hand.
He expected her to copy him. Instead, to his delight, she picked out the letters of her own name, gnawing at her lip with the strain of it.
“
Ran
,
ayro
,
veve
,
een-
-“
“
Eveh
,” he corrected, grinning. “Raven, not Raveen.”
“
Eveh
,
nan
.” She peeked up at him, and the room beside theirs erupted with cheering, as though their neighbors saluted her success.
“Practice,” he told her, glancing at the wall.
“Sue-Eye,” Raven muttered, bending over her paper.
“
Ai
,
chirak
,
uu
,
tan
,
ahm
,
hiats
,
ahm
,” he recited distractedly. He could hear, he thought, three distinct male voices. “
Ichuta’a
.”
“What does that mean?” Raven asked, writing it.
Kane’s gaze dipped to the female in question, now sitting on the foot of the nearest bed and trying not to glare at him. He smiled. “It means pussy,” he said. “More or less.”
Sue-Eye’s jaw clenched. That was all.
“Are you my
ichuta’a
?” Kane asked, his voice silky and good-humored.
She nodded.
“My eager
ichuta’a
?”
She nodded again, but her eyes were burning. She knew she was being mocked.
Good.
“You did well for me tonight,” he said. “Very well.”
He heard Raven’s stylus stop writing at the same time as Sue-Eye drew back from him. Beatings either one could take. His praise made them nervous.
“What would you like?” he asked. “If I felt like rewarding you, what would you ask for,
ichuta’a
?”
Sue-Eye hesitated, unsure of him, and Kane waited. He gave her no encouragement, no clue as to what answer he sought. He watched her agonize and he saw the exact instant she settled on a reply.
“I want to fuck,” she said.
Once again, she delivered a damned good answer. A safe answer. One she probably couldn’t imagine going badly for her. He pretended to consider it.
“You’ve been very good tonight,” he said at last. “All right, let’s go. Raven.”
“Go?” Sue-Eye echoed.
Kane tucked his harvester into the waistband of his pants and stood up. He snapped his fingers and both his females leapt up without further hesitation and followed him out the door. He walked down the side of the building to his noisy neighbors and knocked.
“Fuck off!” someone shouted irritably, but someone else came to open the door.
Kane put his hands in the pockets of his human coat and smiled down at the male who opened to him. It was a young one, too young to grow a beard but old enough to try. Its eyes went first to Sue-Eye and Raven, lingering, before turning on Kane. Better and better.
“We’ll keep it down,” the human said, and started to close the door.
“I don’t care about the noise,” said Kane, putting his foot down on the threshold. He turned and fixed Sue-Eye with his cold smile.
She stared back at him without expression.
“Invite us in,” said Kane, returning his attention to the young male before him.
The human looked back over his shoulder, his eyes seeking those of a grizzled and hard-cut male, his leader, if humans could be said to have them. The leader was sitting on one of the two beds, a smoking herb-stick between his teeth and an open bottle of something inebriating in his hand. Kane could feel the assessment in that stare, but still, the females at his side had a way of drawing even those watchful eyes and he wasn’t surprised when the leader finally nodded.
The bathroom door opened and out came the third male Kane had heard through his wall, fat and unshaven and smelling strongly of toxic fermentations. He stared at Kane and his females as they came in and the door was closed, and then he, too, looked toward the leader.
“What’s on your mind, fella?” the leader grunted, tapping ash onto the carpet before drawing another lungful of smoke.
“I’ve had a very good day,” Kane replied. His gaze slid to the tee-vee, which was on and displaying mating programs. His smile broadened. Three males, bored, half-drunk, and restless for sex. He couldn’t have planned this any better. “I thought you might like to help me celebrate.”
“Want a beer?” the young male asked, shrugging a question at his companions.
“No.
Ichuta’a
, tell them why we’re here.”
All three males looked curiously at his blonde human when Kane nudged her forward. His
ichuta’a
colored under their collective stares. Beside her, Kane felt Raven step a little closer against his side and he put his arm around her. The gesture caught Sue-Eye’s attention and he saw her lean body tense before she faced the room again.
“I want to fuck,” Sue-Eye said.
The males stared at her. The young one looked like he’d been punched, and the leader merely grunted and smoked. The fat one sent several fleeting looks up Kane’s way and then went to the second bed and lay down. He picked up an open bottle and drank from it, looking nervous and bewildered. And Sue-Eye, Sue-Eye did nothing to convince them.
“Is that my eager
ichuta’a
?” Kane asked.
Sue-Eye raised her chin and said it again, almost angrily. “I want to fuck.” She looked at him with defiant eyes. “May I please fuck them?”
“Yes, you may.” Kane pulled the room’s only chair around and nodded for Raven to sit. He watched the males exchange more guarded looks. He was enjoying himself immensely.