“Where are you thinking to stop?” he asked finally.
“Here. Or rather, up there.” She pointed along the road to a brightly-colored signboard marked with human letters that surely were handprinted.
“I do not read N’Glish,” he reminded her. “What does it say?”
“It says Dog Days Fair, August first through third, nine to nine, two miles,” she answered. “Which means lots of food and a place to walk around. It’s a party,” she added, catching sight of his puzzled frown. “A big outdoor party where everyone’s invited. Pricey as hell, probably, but I don’t really care at this point.”
“Here?” Tagen saw, for the first time, all the other groundcars on the road. They were filled with humans, many with children, and most were traveling in the same direction as they themselves. The oncoming traffic, by comparison, was sparse.
Dread, like sleeping coals, came to burning life inside him. Many humans, gathered in an isolated area. Loud sound, thick smells, confusion.
His expression and his silence had not escaped Daria’s notice, as so few things did. Now she was frowning, ready to be concerned at his command.
“Take us there,” he said.
“What are you thinking?” she asked and almost immediately afterwards, her eyes flashed wide. “You think he’s there?”
“I think it may attract him,” he told her, stressing the variable.
She stared up the road, her face tightening with thought. He could see her becoming aware of the same qualities of seclusion and prey as he had done. “He couldn’t,” she said at last. “It’s too hot.”
“He has his females with him.”
“In broad daylight?” Daria shook her head, but it was not necessarily a gesture of negation. “Okay then,” she said at last. “If he’s there, he’ll probably stay close to the main gate, so he can leave in a hurry if he has to without attracting too much attention.”
“I think it likely. I think also he may keep close to the surrounding woods rather than move out among the crowds. With so many humans close at hand, he is likely to feel very Jotan.” His hands were already curling selfconsciously. He could see the place where the trees terminated, and a great field filled with groundcars. And humans. Hundreds, it seemed. Thousands. “Very Jotan,” he said again.
“Hopefully, we’ll be in and out.” Daria navigated off the main road and into the field, moving slow between rows of parked vehicles until she came to the barrier of the forest. She drove right on into the bushes in order to win the cover of trees, but it did gain them shade. She set about opening windows, and then shut off the engine. “We’ll ask at the gate. If anyone noticed him, it’d be there. We can walk around a little more, if you want, but I’m afraid to take all day. The heat-“
“We shall not leave Grendel long,” Tagen said firmly, unbuckling himself. He did not need her to tell him about the dangers of heat. Or Heat. “If our questions at the gate are not answered and we see nothing at the eating place, we will leave. Heat will come to me as surely as to E’Var and I doubt that he would suffer it for long. We will be quick, but we must be sure.”
Daria followed him from the vehicle, exiting through his door as hers was blocked by branches. “You really think he’s here, don’t you?”
Tagen stared out over the tops of groundcars to the place where humans were admitted in streams to the closed grounds of ‘fair’. He could hear a constant undulating roar—a medley of happy screams and frustration, summer tempers fraying and excitement running unbounded—all of it underscored by cacophonous music and mechanical noise. There was only one way to make such a setting better primed for murder and that would be to hold ‘fair’ at night.
“My instincts tell me if he travels the same road as we, and if he means to hunt, this is a good place for it. More than that, it is pointless to speculate.” Saying this, he took his neural stunner and his plasma gun from his gunbelt and tucked them out of sight inside his jacket.
Daria’s eyes were a weight he could feel as she stared at the slight bulging of his concealed weapons. “So this is it,” she said.
He shut the car’s door, and then reached in through the open window to rub at Grendel’s head. “Perhaps.”
Her hand came to rest lightly on his back and he turned to her, bending swiftly to take her lips in a kiss. She returned the touch with urgency and finished with a stirring bite to his jaw passionate enough to remind him of Heat coming, and precious minutes only before it became evident. And ah, how much he wished he could forget E’Var and just take this female into his arms. To love her, while loving was still possible, before this day’s events and all of Earth was behind him for all time.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He wished that he could say the same and know it to be true. For all the ache and intensity of his emotion, his world did not come with its own understanding of love for a mate as hers did. Fathers loved sons, as presumably females loved daughters. Mates were for mating, too transitory a thing for the depths of endurance the expression evoked. And what was this if not transitory? He knew it. He knew it when first she brought him to her bed. Love was for keeping, not leaving behind.
And none of that mattered. Feeling her breath at the hollow of his throat, her arms around his body, her hair underneath his hands, Tagen came to the unhappy understanding that officers may think in terms of rules as absolutes, but emotions did not.
“I love you.” He said it. He meant it. Gods help him. He said it again, feeling it hurt even more with repetition.
She uttered a laugh, a thin disguise over a sob, and hugged him tight before stepping away. “Okay,” she said. She squared her shoulders, a rock in the river of humanity she so feared. “Let’s go get this guy.”
“My brave Lindaria,” he said, crookedly smiling. “Indeed. Let’s.”
*
The hunting was good, every bit as good as Sue-Eye had claimed. The woods were a welcome dumping ground for bodies and its shade, if not quite enough to keep Heat’s teeth out of him, was better than the blistering weight of full sun. The outskirts of the endless celebrations was a haven for Kane’s kind—dark men avoiding notice as they pursued their own unwholesome trades. There was drinking of toxic fermentations, smoking of white paper and of glass pipes. And there was flesh to be had, flesh for sale and flesh for fun. It was a smuggler’s haven, like any lining the docks of smuggler’s space, and every eye that passed Kane’s way passed on, recognizing him as a brother.
Kane entered the woods with Raven and Sue-Eye at his side. He was searching for a shaded place to be his killing ground, one that was out of sight from the main path, where the sounds of bone snapping might be mistaken for dry branches underfoot. Screams, he could do nothing about but try to remember to tracheate his targets.
His chosen den was occupied at first by a couple of humans mating in a drunken frenzy, but not for long. Two humans brains flushed with lust filled an entire vial with dopamine and Kane’s mood lightened. He tossed the bodies into the bushes out of sight and snapped his fingers.
Both his humans came to attention, but it was Sue-Eye he fixed on. “I want to do this as quickly as possible,” he told her.
She nodded, and beside her, Raven folded her arms and frowned.
“I get more product from a sex-fired brain,” he said.
Sue-Eye nodded again.
“You’re going to bring me males and you’re going to get them ready to fuck.”
She pulled her shirt up and tied it between her breasts, showing her bare midriff and the painted sun around her belly-dimple to the world.
“You bring them right here.” Kane indicated a fairly open place right beside the clearing they now occupied, somewhat screened by thick bushes, but not so thickly that he couldn’t cross over in a hurry if he wanted to. “And you make them ready for me,
ichuta’a
. Go.”
She went obediently, eagerly even, and Kane was left with Raven.
She was gratingly on edge, pacing the little clearing over and over as her teeth worried at her own claws. Kane tried to ignore her, but her restlessness was contagious. He found his talons flexing and digging at the ground in subconscious tandem to her tight, angry walking and the realization pricked at him. He ordered her to him just to settle her down, although he didn’t object when she came and put her hand on his groin. Heat was itching at him already, itching hard, and her fingers sliding beneath his coverings to close on his cock was a welcome thing, even if it was a little too soon. Her heart wasn’t in it, though, and her eyes were darting from shadow to shadow, continuing the spirit of her agitation even if it showed nowhere else.
“We’ll be gone from here soon enough,” he said, readying a fresh vial for his harvester.
She nodded, but her lips were tight. Her hand continued its slow, soothing manipulation but her mind was elsewhere.
Kane heaved a sigh and tucked his harvester into a pocket of his human coat. “Spit it out then,” he said.
She let go of him and backed up, although she met his eyes fiercely enough. “This is a mistake.” Her voice was low but tight. “Can’t you feel it?”
Footsteps in the woods. Sue-Eye was coming back with a younger male, sparing Kane the aggravation of having to answer that. He turned away from Raven and watched his
ichuta’a
lead her prey just to the other side of this clearing, nearly within arm’s reach of Kane although they remained shrouded by forest. The male’s sweat stank of high rut; Kane flexed his claws broodingly and waited, letting Sue-Eye get her victim’s blood high for the maximum take of dopamine. He could feel Raven’s eyes boring into his back.
It
was
a mistake. He
could
feel it. He couldn’t understand it, but he did feel it, and it infuriated him because he knew he was doing everything right. This was a good hunt, damn it all! What was chewing at him?
Kane killed these thoughts with a snarl and reached out through the branches to seize the young male Sue-Eye was rubbing against. The human was muted with one expert jab, probably before it even knew Kane was there. The male clutched at its throat, blood oozing up between its many fingers, and turned around to gape at Kane. Not run, not duck away, not even to throw itself at Kane in one last, suicidal attack, but just to stare. Gods, this planet.
In a fit of aimless irritation, Kane slashed his claws across the human’s face, flaying it open to the bone. The human’s scream came out through the hole in its throat in a red mist, virtually soundless and not very satisfying. Kane shoved it facedown on the forest floor and broke the skull open, his harvester in hand and sour thoughts circling in his brain. He pulled dopamine into a fresh vial, then scooped up the twitching meat and flung it into the bushes atop the other bodies.
Raven was watching him, not unmoved by the slaughter, but still waiting grimly for her answer.
Kane could feel a growl working its way free of his chest. It was hot, he was over-strung, and he was horribly aware that if he lost his head now, he was probably going to do something he’d later regret. He turned his head in Sue-Eye’s direction, but kept his gaze locked on Raven. “Go on,
ichuta’a
,” he said tightly. “Get to work.”
Sue-Eye retreated and neither one of them watched her go. Beyond the borders of the forest, the fair roared on.
“We need to have an understanding,” Kane said.
“You’re not my partner, you’re my commander?”
Sarcasm. She looked him right in the eye as he stood there with blood still wet on his claws and met his efforts at peace-keeping with sarcasm. Kane stared her down in silence, wondering blackly why he was surprised. This was the same human who had once been under his foot with his talons crushing the air from her throat, and who had chosen that moment to threaten his life. His fierce little Raven. He’d laugh if he didn’t feel quite so much like slapping her.
“Do you see this?” Kane asked, giving the partially-filled ampule a shake. Amber fluid splashed and settled again. “I would have to kill three sleeping humans to get what I just took from one! You haven’t been tripping over yourself to help me hunt, Raven, and now you’re just going to have to stand there and shut up while I get some work done!”
“I can hear at least ten distinctly different voices from here!” she shot back, her own scarcely carrying. “This isn’t smart, Kane!”
He lowered his hand, his eyes narrowing and his jaw tightening.
“Okay, whatever, that wasn’t smart, either.” Raven cut her hand hard to one side, almost slapping her previous words out of the air. “Hit me if you have to hit me for it, but listen! Statistics being what they are, there have to be at least two hundred guns out there and if something happens, we’re what? Half a mile from our car? With god knows how many people in between us and the only exit! If there’s a panic, they’ll block us in. If…goddammit.”
Sue-Eye was already coming back, this time with two humans. “Kane,” she called, and to her prey added, “He’s got the best shit, swear to God. You’re gonna see through time.”
Kane went out to meet them. He threw a black look Sue-Eye’s way and her smile faltered. He held her in his eyes as he slashed out and tracheated the nearest human. The second sucked in a gasp instead of running, and then just stood there staring instead of screaming. Kane tracheated him as well, and then knocked both their heads together to drop them. He got his harvester in hand, but didn’t get to work just yet.
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear,” he said coldly.
Sue-Eye tensed, color rising in her cheeks.
“I want you to bring me one human at a time. I want you to make them ready to fuck. That’s what I want and you don’t get to improvise. Bringing me more than one is not a good thing in full daylight with a thousand fucking humans running around in easy hearing.”
Sue-Eye nodded. She even had the good sense to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, Kane. I won’t do it again.”
Kane grunted and hunkered down over the shallowly-breathing males. First one, and then the other opened up under his claws, and Sue-Eye stood by with her eyes down for him to finish. He glanced at her as he waited for the harvester to quit humming. “Smile,” he commanded. “You’re trying to attract a fuck-mate, remember?”