Dark Paradise

DARK PARADISE

Cassidy Hunter

www.loose-id.com

Dark Paradise

Copyright © January 2012 by Cassidy Hunter

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eISBN 978-1-61118-720-5

Editor: Antonia Pearce

Cover Artist: Anne Cain

Printed in the United States of America

Published by

Loose Id LLC

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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter One

Cin had lived for twenty-six years but could have sworn she was a hundred. Too damn old to be out in the wilds of Ripindal, trying to find the items that would buy her some supplies and eventually get her into paradise.

Thank God it was summer. At least she wouldn’t freeze to death. She crouched lower, her back against a gnarled tree, and stared into the misty semidark of the clearing. She was hungry. Here on Ripindal the slow-moving, tiny birds called
poes
came out in bunches in winter, but in the warmer months they were harder to find.

But she’d learned patience in her many long weeks on the mining colony. Eighteen months. Seemed like years.

Her job was to mine the moon for the
shrube
the Gamlogi so desired. From what she’d been told, the shrube powered not only the Gamlogi themselves, but their world. Energy in the form of the curious little stonelike items was necessary for the aliens’ survival, and they were stockpiling. If they’d been able to breathe on Ripindal, they wouldn’t have needed to buy humans from Earth to do it for them, and she wouldn’t be here now. Fucking Gamlogi.

But she scoffed silently. Like being in a prison on Earth was any better. At least here she had the hope of paradise. On Earth, in the grim prisons, there was no hope of anything more than a swift death. A painless death would have been too much to even hope for.

Yes, definitely better on Ripindal than in prison. She wouldn’t have been allowed to see Alana in prison. Wouldn’t have wanted the sweet girl to see her there anyway.

At least it was beautiful here, and she was outdoors.
That’s right. Think positively
. She smiled.

The sky was a dark purple, a clear canvas against which a pale poe could be easily spotted. Her eyes were strained and tired, but she didn’t dare rest them. Poes were slow, but they were cautious.

At last she saw one, its delicate wings carrying it ever closer to her clearing. She held her breath.
Come on, little fellow. Come on…

Her legs began to cramp as the bird floated to a gentle landing on a lily pad not four feet from her. It stood as still as a stick, absorbing the sounds of the night, waiting, perhaps, to see if danger lurked.

Finding none, it lowered its tiny beak to sip. She could almost feel the little poe’s ecstasy when the cold crystal water touched its tongue, and hated herself just a little for having to bring that joy to an end.

Drunk on the liquid to which they had little resistance, the tiny poe had no chance at escape when Cin burst from her crouch. She dived at the slow bird, her hand closing around its warm body as she belly flopped into the shallow pond.

Its squeal was horrifying, but she’d long ago learned a valuable lesson. It was the poe or her. And she was a survivor.

She didn’t even allow herself to climb from the pond before she stuffed the little bird into her mouth. It got harder if she waited, if she thought about it.

Closing her eyes as she chewed, she did what she always did when she caught a poe; she imagined some delicious food from her days on Earth, and that’s what the bird became.

They were special, the little poes. They didn’t just keep the humans from starving; they also lent a quick energy that lasted for days. But best of all, they took on the flavor of whatever food a human imagined.

Then there was no blood, no ligaments to chew through, no soft gut or exploding heart. Only a small, chewy bar of chocolate. She moaned as she swallowed the last bite, wishing for another, but her stomach was already protesting the bounty, the tricky hugeness of the meal.

“Fucking poes,” she said, sighing and then smiling for the first time that day. The food hit her system like a drug, and had she been a little less strong, she would have fallen over to the dewy grass and wallowed in the good feeling, content.

But she was too smart for that. On Ripindal, a lone human girl couldn’t afford to relax. Not if she wanted to stay alive. And for some crazy reason, she did. She had her goals. She had her reasons for living.

An image of Alana intruded, and she shoved it away as quickly as she could. Forgetting about her baby was impossible, but dwelling on her brought only pain. Soul-searing, tormenting pain. In the beginning she had curled into a knot and prayed for death, too depressed to gather the energy to kill herself.

Besides, what if somehow, some day, she got to return to her daughter? At the thought, she pushed her knuckles into her eyes, chanting the litany that would allow her to function.

You can’t go back. You can never go back.

Because she couldn’t. Not ever. She would never see Alana again, and dwelling on the horror only made it worse. Alana was safe with Cin’s mother. She’d be okay. Motherless, but okay.

She just had to keep telling herself that. And try harder than she’d ever tried for anything to stop thinking about the little girl she’d left behind.

If only she could turn back time, could go back, could change things…

“Shut up!
Shut up
!”

Guilt was of no use here.

She was strong. She would be okay.

Paradise awaited the strong, and she planned on getting her reward someday soon. The poe lay heavy and comforting in her shrunken belly, and in seconds, she went from exhausted and starving to full of energy and feeling invincible. This was the power of the poe.

She’d camped out in this clearing for a week with no luck but had known her persistence would pay off. Good thing too, because she was out of items and low on supplies. Now she’d have the strength to work the caves of Manitua, where the best items could be found. Once she’d supplied herself, she would head to the mountains to search for the mother of all items, the shrube. The shrube would buy her a place in heaven. Well, ten of them would. She had one. Nine to go…

She snatched up her near-empty pack, filled her water bottle, and set off. There was no time to waste. The poe would help her stay awake for around three days and nights, and by then, she hoped to have found a shrube or ten. If not…well, she’d been here for eighteen months. She’d just keep looking. What the hell else was there to do?

In a little less than an hour, she was standing at the bottom of a tall, barren hill, looking up into the gaping black mouths of the Manitua caves. Despite the poe and the heat, a shiver wracked her body and cold chills raced over her skin.

She had her two fighting knives encased securely in leather sheaths low on either side of her hips and caressed their carved hilts with tender, calloused fingers. The one on her right was called Saint and the one on her left Satan. She hadn’t named them; they’d come to her that way, and she hadn’t the idiocy to rename them. They kept her safe. If she started calling them pussy names or pissing them off, they might decide she wasn’t a worthy mistress and leave her to fend for herself.

Saint was blue smoke, and Satan was black fog, and both were beautiful enough to take a person’s breath away. They were sinister and deadly but to a stranger looked innocent enough. At least until she pulled them from their sheaths and offered them their taste of sweet, hot blood.

She didn’t unsnap the straps that restrained them. Not yet. They got angry when they were stirred up for no reason. But her fingers rested on the hilts, and she was ready.

Time to go treasure hunting.

The lone call of another being trickled down to her, and she stiffened. Of course there would be more hunters. She hoped they were all human; knew they weren’t. She took a deep breath. No matter. She’d been up against the others before, and she was still standing.

She started up the hill, lips pressed together in a tight line. The sooner she found items to trade for supplies, the sooner she could tackle the mountains.

The hills to the caves were tricky, full of deep holes, mounds of hard-packed dirt, thick, twisted roots, and broken stumps. Some of them were deliberately planted traps to break the ankles—or worse—of competitors, but most were just the naturally occurring changes in the dark terrain of the mining moon, Ripindal.

Full dark descended rapidly, but in seconds, the light from the stars and overly plump moon blanketed the area with a fresh silver light. There were things to be thankful for here.

Halfway to the cave entrances, she paused for a drink of water and a quick look around. Nothing burst from the shadows to attack her, and all was silent. Too silent, really. Usually that meant there were others around, and she could not be surprised. There were always miners gathering items to trade to those who ran the trading posts.

She walked on, grasping hanging roots and available rocks and half-rotten stumps to help propel her up the steep hill. At last she reached the top. She wiped sweat from her face and took another long pull of water, then pulled a precious lightstick from her bag. The moonlight would not reach far into the black caves. She wound the stick around her head like a glowing bandanna, and it cast its soft bright light ahead of her, leaving her hands free to gather, but also, and more importantly, leaving them free to release Saint and Satan should the need arise.

Time to go to work.

Sometimes a treasure hunter would neglect the first caves, thinking perhaps that the first caves would have already been scavenged for whatever goods might be hidden there, but Cin could not pass them by.

Still, she did only a cursory search, and finding nothing, ventured deeper into the caverns. The maze of caves took up miles and miles of Ripindal. It was said that if all the miners on the planet spent five years looking, they would still not search out all the treasures of the caves, and that was just the surface area. Hidden beneath the black earth, treasures abounded, but there was little need to work so hard to find items. Surely there would come a time when the surface was raped and robbed of all its wealth, but she hoped to be long gone by then.