Sue-Eye rolled toward him, her eyes narrowed, but it really was her he was looking at as he set his computer aside and not Raven. She stood up and moved warily from her bed to his, more than half-expecting a fist as soon as she came into his reach. But he crooked a claw at her instead, an invitation to join him. She sat down on the edge of the mattress, her spirits rising, waiting for his command.
“You said something the other day.” Kane pillowed his head with one arm and let the other rest on his stomach, seemingly relaxed and unconcerned with her as he watched Raven write. “You said you’d been a bitch longer than my Raven. You knew how to do it better. That’s not a use for that word that I’m familiar with, but I think I take your meaning. We have a word for that, too.
Thal
. I think of you as my
thal
…when I don’t think of you as my
ichuta’a
.” He smiled thinly and moved his eyes to her. They were utterly without humor.
Sue-Eye resisted the urge to shift. She held his gaze and waited.
“Do you know what I can do with
thalan
?” he asked.
“Anything you want,” she said.
“That’s right. I can feed them. I can eat them. I can fix them. I can break them. I can do anything I want.” His voice never raised. His words remained calm and evenly modulated. His black-fathomed gaze never dimmed. “I can even humor them. Put your mouth on me,
thal
.”
Sue-Eye blinked. This was the victory she’d wanted, but she didn’t trust the way in which he acceded. Hesitantly, she reached for him.
He lifted his fist and punched her in the side of her head, not hard, but hard enough. “Did I say use your hand?” he asked. “Put your mouth on me,
thal
. Raven, your letters.”
Sue-Eye glanced up in time to see Raven turn back to the table. She felt herself blush, newly uncomfortable. Her ear throbbing and hot from the blow, she bent, bracing her hands on either side of his hips, and licked at his flaccid cock, sucking him awkwardly up into her mouth. She tongued until he hardened, and triumph bloomed in her heart. She took him into her throat, bobbing up and down, slicking the full length of him as he grew.
“That’s enough. On your belly,
thal
.”
She lay flat as he got up, waiting tensely as he crossed behind her. His hands gripped her ankles. With one yank, he pulled her legs off the bed and let them drop. Her knees burned on the carpet. He put a hand on her ass and pushed her full against the mattress, then kept it there, stretching her cheek aside.
Oh Jesus, no.
“W-Wait!” Sue-Eye gasped.
He punched her in the other ear. It was his only answer. He fit the head of his massive cock to her ass and pushed, splitting her open one brutal inch after another. He went slow, drawing out every second of agony, and she screamed into the mattress and tore at the sheets.
“A
thal
,” Kane said, timing his words to his steady, crushing thrusts, “takes…what she’s…given…and is…grateful…it isn’t…death.”
“Th-thank you, Kane!” she choked, tears streaming from her eyes. He was killing her! He was
killing
her!
“A
thal
…seeks…to please…because…she knows…her place. Move,
thal
.”
Sue-Eye grit her teeth and pushed back at him, braying with pain.
“That’s it.” Kane stopped thrusting but left his hand on her back. “Steady now. Slow and steady. And stop making that noise.”
Sue-Eye pushed her face into the bedding to muffle herself and Kane’s huge hand cracked like iron on the sensitive small of her back.
“I said
stop
!” he snarled. “Not cover, but stop!
Thalan
who can’t follow simple commands are cut open and fed their own guts as they die!”
Sue-Eye bit down on her lips until blood spat out with every sobbing breath. She yanked and twisted at the blankets, all her instinctive movements for escape confined to her helpless hands as she made herself to move on him.
“That’s better.” Kane leaned back, bracing his weight on his hands. It forced her to sit him, to actually bounce and roll instead of just push a little back and forth, but she did it. Her jaw was locked so tight against screams that she was afraid every second of hearing bones crack. She fucked him through a red mist of pain, and when he growled at her to go faster, she obeyed without hesitation.
“Up,
thal
,” he said suddenly, and shoved her forward and off him. She sprawled facedown on the floor and Kane rose over her on his knees. She felt the hot rain of his cum falling on her back, but it was a distant thing. Every nerve in her entire body was an echo of the titanic agony in her bowels. She clawed at the carpet, trying to will her jaw to relax, and suddenly retched, spitting frothy bile between her grit teeth.
Kane laughed, stepping over her on his way to the bathroom. “That,” he said dryly, “isn’t very flattering at all,
ichuta’a
. Work on that. And Raven, mind your writing. Your
leth
is crooked.”
The door shut. The shower came on. Raven dropped her pen and jumped up, kneeling down to grip Sue-Eye’s shoulders.
“Fuck off!” Sue-Eye spat, swiping at her eyes.
Raven dropped her hands but didn’t retreat. “Come on,” she whispered. “We don’t have to fight all the time, do we? I know what he—”
“I said, fuck off!” Sue-Eye swung blindly, smacking the pony a pathetic if gratifyingly loud blow on the arm. “I’m not your fucking girlfriend!”
Raven stood up again, looking down at her. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“What way?” Sue-Eye challenged. “He’s fucking me while you’re doing homework. What way is that, huh?” She climbed to her feet, advancing angrily on Kane’s pony. “You think you’re such hot shit. Well, you’re not. You’re just the bitch he met first. But I’m the one who says she wants him. I’m the one he’s fucking even when he’s not in Heat. And I’m the one he’s spooning with at night. So don’t come all over playing so concerned. I see right through you, bitch. You’re on the way out!”
She flicked her fingers along her neck to her chin and out toward Raven’s face, a slow and contemptuous physical curse, and Raven backed up a step. “Go practice your penmanship,” she snarled, and turned her back.
She hobbled into the bathroom. Kane was in the shower. He glanced at her as she entered, but didn’t speak, not even when she stepped into the tub behind him. That was all right. He let her stay and that must mean something.
Every little thing meant something.
*
Coming down the long dirt path to Daria’s house had felt absurdly like homecoming to Tagen and he knew Daria was relieved as well. They’d been up all night, they should have gone directly to their own rooms to sleep. Instead, he had come in here to stare at his map and comfort the distressed and starving cat, and Daria had disappeared into the fathoms of the house to clean something. He didn’t stop her. She needed the comfort of her routine, of action. He understood that. More than anything, he’d like to take his weapon out to a shooting range and blow a few thousand targets into vapor.
At least the itch was purely mental. The day was cool, even overcast. The door had been open all night and the front room was nicely freshened for it. The cat had missed him. Deeply. It was soothing to Tagen’s soul to be greeted in so enthusiastic a manner. He solemnly offered up his body to be the cushion for Grendel’s enormous bulk, and massaged happy growls from the creature while he studied his map. He could comfortably sit thus, with cat under hand and the gentle noise of Daria at work somewhere in the background, until sleep claimed him.
But there was work to do and the words of the human lawman kept running through Tagen’s mind. E’Var and his two human females, responsible for fifty-eight deaths at a single hunt.
Two females. Why two?
One for Heat and one for…for what? Could not both females pilot the groundcar? And if not, why keep the human who could not pilot? If one listened to Daria, it was because he liked her. Tagen found that difficult to take seriously, but then, even the very worst men could have unanticipated moments of sentimentality. Uraktus, for example, had adopted a son. And died for him.
Enough. Regardless of E’Var’s reasons, what mattered now was not who he traveled with, but where he traveled to.
Tagen sat before the map of killings, staring down at indications of trees, rivers and mountains until the colors lost their meaning and all that remained were Daria’s markings. His eyes tracked restlessly along the path of his prisoner, up and down the roadways from murder to murder. There were gaps, he was sure of it . Bodies the humans had not found, killings attributed to other causes, but E’Var was here. He and his two human companions, sweeping back and forth across the hunting grounds of Earth, taking what they needed as often as they could.
Companions. That was too gentle a word. Accomplices. That, perhaps, was a better one. They were not E’Var’s prisoners, or at least, not fully. Who but a human could tell E’Var the nature of this ‘movie theatre’ and then direct him to one? They were helping him to hunt. They were driving him around in their own groundcar. They were feeding him, sheltering him.
What had he promised them in exchange? Perhaps life and nothing more. And perhaps Tagen was being too harsh with these unknown females. E’Var had surely not asked for aid. He had abducted them. Raped them. Killed others in front of their eyes. And they were human, smaller and weaker than Jotan, unaware that they were not alone in the universe until the moment that E’Var had stolen them. Tagen supposed he could not condemn them for surrendering to E’Var’s will. Not fairly, anyway. He really was a rotten officer.
Tagen touched a claw to the black circles marking E’Var’s killings. East and east and east on foot. Well east, in the groundcar. Then North and then all over. There were great blocks of time unaccounted for, but if there was a pattern here, it evaded Tagen’s eye.
He leaned back with a sigh, pulling Grendel high onto his chest and massaging the cat’s ears. From back in the bowels of the house, he could hear a muffled thump and rattle of Daria at work. It was a soothing sound, but the map before him kept catching his eye and tightening his claws. If only he knew how E’Var was guiding himself around Earth. The humans who accompanied him were navigating the groundcar, but it must be E’Var himself telling them where to go and Tagen couldn’t believe it was purely at random. That was just too stupid a way to hunt, and stupid hunters get caught a whole lot faster than it had taken Uraktus E’Var and his crew.
Tagen put the cat onto the floor and stood up before Grendel could leap back onto his lap. The animal gripped at his knee and wailed, but Tagen unhooked its tiny claws with a firm hand and stepped over it and out into the hall. He needed Daria’s eyes. Her insight, her Earther experience, her wisdom, her…just her.
Tagen followed the sounds of movement to the utility room and there found Daria rummaging through her tall shelves. She was dressed scantily, uncharacteristic for her but quite a pleasant surprise for him. Her legs were mostly bared beneath shortcut jeans and she had a white shirt tied just below her breasts to expose her midriff. Her long hair was shaped into a rope that hung well down her back and swayed like a Kevrian tail with every movement. Tagen leaned against the doorjamb and admired her, thinking how eerily beautiful it was to see light and shadow playing through all those uniquely-human curves.
He made no sound, of that he was sure, but his stare must have grown some weight of its own because she peeked over one shoulder and saw him, startling just a little before laughing selfconsciously.
“What are you doing, just standing there and looking at me?” she asked.
“Yes.” He smiled, and let her see him run his gaze down to her heels and back up, savoring every part of her. “A most worthwhile pursuit. And what are you doing?”
“I can’t find anything since we put this stuff away,” she said, as though apologizing. “I must have re-organized this place ten times—”
“At least.”
“—but I still can’t remember where I put everything. Oh!” She stepped off the little bucket she’d been using for a step-up and displayed her prize: a long-armed set of shears. “I need to prune the trees,” she said.
“Need you?” he sighed, but he came down into the room to join her. “Then I will help.”
“Aw, you don’t want to go out there and work,” she said, but she looked pleased. “Stay in here where it’s cool.”
“It is cool enough,” he replied, tossing his shoulder in that fine human shrug. “And I may as well occupy myself with other tasks. I have never found a way to accustom myself to leisure.”
“Me, neither.” She handed him the shears and opened the back door.
“I warn you, my motives are less than pure.” He arched a brow at her with mock seriousness as he stepped out beneath the sun’s cloud-smothered gaze. “I hope that when you see how I labor on your behalf, you will be desirous to mate with me.”
“It’s working.”
“Ah, well then. I shall work the harder.”
She made a point of showing him how to operate the shears she called ‘pruners’, and then took him to her garden, where a tall step-up already waited. She tried to explain what was to be done and Tagen let her, but he had done this before, if not on quite the same trees.
“It’s the wrong time of year for this, I would think,” he commented as he took his first cuts.
“I know. But it’s easiest to tell which branches are dead when there are leaves on them. In the winter, they all look dead.”
“Do they?”
“Don’t the trees on Jota drop their leaves when it gets cold?”
“Only a very few, toward the planet’s mid-point. I suppose our trees have accustomed themselves to cold over the past several billion years.”
“I guess your winters are a lot colder than ours, too.”
“I would not know, having never experienced one of Earth’s. One can only assume, since your summers are so hot for so long, your winters must be mild. In ancient times, Jota’s winter storms were of killing force.”
“Not anymore?” she asked. “What happened, global warming?”