“I think I dreamed you died,” he said, his voice muffled by his father’s comforting mass.
“Someday, I will.” Urak’s hand slipped up and patted Kane’s back with idle reassurance. “So will you and every other living thing. And that’s fine. Life is pleasant and death is peaceful. The transition can be a pain in the ass,” he remarked, yawning. “But you’ll find all that out for yourself. Sooner rather than later if you let that yellow-haired bitch have her way.”
“What yellow-haired bitch?” he asked, but dread had drawn every muscle in his boy’s frame tight. Some part of him, the part that made him cling like a squawler to his father’s living body, already knew and didn’t want to be reminded.
“You’ll remember when you wake up,” Urak said indifferently. “For now, just listen. She wants your mark on her, boy. She’s taking some hefty risks to win it, and that’s fine, but she’s making you take them too, and that’s not. You need to be smarter than you’re being, boy. You’re not alone on Earth.”
They weren’t on Earth. They were on the ship, his father’s ship, the ship that would be his someday. He was a boy just into breeches and it would be six years yet before he first saw Earth, before he first saw his father’s hands—the ones that combed his hair straight in the early-shift and lifted him into bed at late-shift’s end—dip into a human’s hair and crack the skull away. Kane pressed his face tighter against Urak’s chest, feeling the breath lifting and dropping him, feeling the steady thump-thud of the heart most Jotan would not believe he had. This was the ship and this was his father and this was all there was.
“Don’t go, boy,” Urak said firmly. “When she shows you the sign, don’t follow. You know well enough how to hunt without her help.”
“I don’t understand,” Kane said, but that sick feeling was swimming in his gut again. He was too young for hunts, six years too young to feel his father’s hands on his shoulders, facing him relentlessly into the bloody heap of dead humans as he was told that this was death, this was what his father dealt in. He was barely out of his pissers, he had seen only the live humans in the hold and those passing fancies his father sometimes tried to keep. But some part of him surely knew what Urak was saying because it clenched on him with cold dread.
Urak’s hand, rough as old leather, rubbed calm into Kane’s small body. Kane relaxed slowly, feeling the strength in those hands, the immortality. “You’ve done all right by yourself,” his father murmured. “You’ll be fine without me. And you’re right, boy. I do like her. I like her a lot.”
Kane smiled sleepily at the praise, not understanding its meaning, but fiercely proud all the same.
Urak gave his shoulder a pat, then tussled his hair, and finally lifted his arm away. “Go on, then. Back to your own bed. And remember what I said, boy. When she shows you the sign—”
“Don’t follow,” Kane recited, and climbed down from his father’s side. He padded back across the wide room as Urak’s slave was pulled bodily back into bed, taking the place he had left vacant.
“I loved you, boy,” Urak said when the bedroom door opened. “Only you.”
“I loved you, too,” young Kane answered, and the door hissed shut behind him.
*
Kane opened his eyes on darkness. As he adjusted to the dim light, he tried to get his teeth on the meat of his dream. It bothered him that he could not remember it. He seemed to think there was some important detail hidden in it. More, he thought he might have dreamed of his father and he wanted to remember that. There was a homesick heat and weight inside him, a pang that went right to his heart and just stayed there, feeding, but he’d hold onto the ache as long as it took just to see his father’s face clearly again. He tried, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling and chasing the half-remembered rumble of old Urak’s voice.
At last, Kane couldn’t bear another second of stillness. He shook free of his two females and sat up, scooting to the edge of the bed. He bent forward, rubbing restlessly at his brow, trying to scratch memory free of his brain.
“What is it?”
He glanced back at Raven, who had raised herself to look at him. Sue-Eye was watching, too, her eyes slitted and her breath measured to feign sleep.
He didn’t feel like dealing with his sly
ichuta’a
, but something in him needed to talk. He returned his gaze to Raven and said, “I dreamed of my father. He’s dead.”
Raven sat all the way up, looking shocked. “You can tell that from your dream?”
He breathed a laugh and tossed her a wry smile. “I can tell because I was there just before he died. But I dreamed of him tonight.” His smile faded and he looked away. “I don’t remember what he said.”
But he had been in space, he remembered that much. And suddenly, he longed to be there again, to have the engines thumping and humming, to have the stars outside every window at every hour. To be home.
He got up and went to his pack, moving pages of Raven’s writing aside so that he could open it and count his Vahst. Thirty-one vials filled with concentrated mixture. Nine empty.
All at once, it came to Kane to leave anyway. Right now. Put his Raven and his
ichuta’a
in the car and drive until his locator powered up. Go back to the ship. Go back to the Gate. Thirty-one vials was enough.
“Kane?”
His Raven. She’d anticipated him, thrown back her bedding and had one slender leg out over the side of the mattress. She was ready to rise, ready to leave.
And he was being a fool. Say goodbye to nine thousand
crona
because he couldn’t remember a dream? His father would give him one to the head for that.
Kane crawled back to the center of the bed and lay down, slipping an arm around each pair of shoulders and pulling Raven onto his chest besides. He toyed with the white tips of her hair as she settled herself over his heart. The thought that Urak approved of his Raven rooted itself in him and would not be removed. Kane turned a little toward her, nudging her up so that he could nip at her cheek, and she snuggled closer.
His
ichuta’a
, not to be outdone, wrapped her arm low at his hip, no doubt ready to tend him if he commanded her. He was tempted to do just that. A fuck was just the thing to clear his mind; a fuck with a willing
ichuta’a
with whose body he didn’t have to take too much care. He growled, frustrated and torn.
“What was his name?” Raven asked softly.
“Uraktus.”
Silence for a second or two. He could push his
ichuta’a
over, sit up, and pull her down onto his lap. Just a few seconds with her mouth to prime him, a few quick thrusts into her clenched ass as she struggled, and it would be done.
“
Uu, ran, ahn, ki, tah, uu, senso
,” chanted Raven.
Every letter, a balm.
Kane closed his eyes and smiled in the darkness. “Very good,” he said.
He slept.
*
She should have sprung for a double room. The bed was supposedly a queen-size, although it sure seemed a lot smaller than the queen-sized bed Daria slept in at home. She supposed she could live with a night of no sleep (although the thought having to drive all day in just a few hours was a daunting one) but she hated knowing her restlessness was keeping Tagen awake. The slightest wiggle on her part invariably sent an arm or a foot or something brushing up against her bed-mate.
She couldn’t help it. Her body was tired enough, but her mind just wouldn’t switch off. Every few minutes, the idea would insinuate itself that if she could just find the right position, she’d be able to sleep and the urge to move would overpower her. Telling herself that she’d been in every possible position already did nothing to shut her brain up and pretty soon, almost despairingly, she’d be tossing herself around and fracturing the steady rolling breaths of the man beside her. He never complained, merely let her settle herself before he sighed his way back to sleep, but Daria still felt guilty about it.
She couldn’t even blame the heat this time. The air conditioner worked just fine. She tried to blame the cheap hotel linens instead—the scratchy sheets, the paper-thin blanket—or the way her t-shirt kept bunching up and her panties riding low, all of it combining to make her skin seem to crawl. Plus, the road outside kept getting traffic, and the sound of the occasional car zipping by was as good as having a live lion roar in her ears.
Somewhere out there, Kanetus E’Var was probably sleeping like a baby after…
No. She absolutely would not think about him, about what he’d spent the day doing. Tomorrow was sure to be soon enough for all that misery.
He’d made a real fool out of her today, though. Not that he knew that or anything, but if he did, he’d probably be pretty pleased with himself. Of course, being who he was, he’d actually probably be more interested in opening up her skull and sucking out her brain than in making her look ridiculous and then screwing with her sleep.
How had he gotten around her? Was it really something as simple as a flat tire? Maybe he’d actually stumbled on the lethally magical Earth-food after all. Ate a Whopper with too much ketchup and dropped dead.
God, this was driving her crazy. Daria rolled around until she was staring at the ceiling. There was just enough light seeping in through the cheap curtains to help her imagine the cruelly leering face of the unknown E’Var. She closed her eyes, but he was there ahead of her, snapping his fangs and grinning his maniacal, alien grin. He looked a lot like Geoffrey Rush for some reason.
She’d know what he looked like for real if she’d just flashed her high-beams at the desk clerk last night.
No, damn it, she wasn’t going to think about that, either!
But her brain didn’t have anything else to do. It popped that tape right in her internal VCR and let that bastard roll. ‘Well, now, I don’t think I recall exactly who checked in and who didn’t.’
Daria rocked back onto her side, punching at her pillow and squeezing her eyes shut. She’d tried to ignore him, tried to sound bored and just a little impatient as she asked again about the big man and his two girls, one blonde, one with dyed purple hair. Tried to look like she knew he thought he was God’s gift to sleazy motels and she wasn’t impressed. Tried to look like he wasn’t scaring the living hell out of her when his eyes crawled over her shirt.
‘Sometimes my memory just needs a little nudge,’ he’d said. And winked.
‘Oh fine,’ she’d said, and one night later, she could still feel her stomach churning, knowing what was coming. But at the time, she’d only dug into her pocket. ‘What do you want, a twenty?’
‘How ‘bout you show me your goodies and I’ll tell you if I saw them?’
She hadn’t believed him at first. What the hell kind of motel manager actually says something like that to a complete stranger checking in? And then she’d looked wildly over her shoulder, as if to reassure herself that yes, Tagen was right outside and extremely visible in the passenger side of her car. ‘I’m not alone, Jack!’ she’d said, but her outraged tones were already splintering. She was back in that awful space, her heart hammering, panic drilling into her.
‘Suit yourself. You’ll never know now, will you?’
And she’d considered it. Standing with her hand still in her pocket for the bribe money he didn’t want, she’d actually considered flipping up her t-shirt so he’d give her a straight answer. And it had been awful, the worst kind of humiliation and shame to realize that she had a price, that he could see it like it was printed on her forehead, and that a total stranger could make her feel this dirty, and then grin about it.
It was Tagen who had ended it, not that he’d ever known it. Tagen’s voice in her mind’s memory, from that day in the kitchen when he’d thrown another drooling wolf out of her house. ‘Some things are always wrong,’ he’d said. And later, that on his planet, no man would ever get away with something like this. No woman ever had to stand there like Daria, feeling eyes like grubby fingers all over her, and seriously consider debasing herself in order to have a simple question answered.
So she’d threatened to slap him and he’d smirked and shrugged and she’d snatched up her room key and stormed out, and at that time, she’d felt that high rush of vindication like a security blanket over her humiliation. It wasn’t until the next morning when she’d found out that if she had gotten an honest answer out of the slimy bastard, E’Var could have been caught. If she had it to do all over again, she knew she’d strip down naked on the spot, and that was the worst part of all, knowing that she had a price all right, and she was even willing to put herself on clearance.
She wanted to throw up, even now.
He probably wouldn’t have told her the truth anyway. He’d have just said something witty like, ‘Nice rack,’ and gone back to his game of computer solitaire.
Daria rubbed hard at her eyes and rolled back onto her stomach, staring helplessly at the digital clock. She’d watched one o’clock come and go. She’d watched two pony up, and then gallop off. And now three had tiptoed up to plate and put a few men on the bases. She had to get up in a few hours. She picked up her pillow, brought it down over her face, and smothered a screaming groan.
Tagen’s slumbering breaths broke off. His hand moved to her hip and lightly rubbed, and Daria tried to relax. He was as tired as she was and he, at least, had a shot at sleeping. She rolled onto her back, remembered too late her determination to stay still, and sighed.
Tagen’s hand, dislodged by her movement, returned, this time to rest on her belly. “Are you all right?”
The last time he’d woken up and used those words, she’d ravished him against his will. “I’m a horrible person,” she muttered, remembering.
Tagen pushed himself up on one arm at once.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” she sighed. “I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
He did not move. She couldn’t see much beyond a pale blur above her, but she could feel him staring at her. She smiled hugely for his benefit; he’d mentioned once in passing that Jotan could see quite well at night. And it must be true, because he answered her inane grimace with a low, unconvinced, “Hm.”