Heat (94 page)

Kane growled and looked back out the window. Well, fifty
crona
was still fifty
crona
, and she was ornamentation anyway. Without her, he’d still have enough to hide out long enough to procure a fast ship with decent cargo space, and some top-line chemist’s gear. A ship like that and the name of E’Var would be enough to lure his pick of the best in his business for a crew. It was all coming together. It was all falling in line. Why was he so damned restless?

“Get off the road,” Kane said suddenly, and then snarled as Raven began to slow and said, “No, don’t. Keep driving.
Chok
.”

He threw himself back into his seat, furious at himself and his unfocused apprehension. He had the very strong sense that Sue-Eye was, in some bizarre way, responsible for his mood and the urge to slash at her itched all down his killing arm. He thought, forcing himself to reason from his head and not his gut.

“Take me back to the mountains,” he said. “Near to where I found you.”

They’d go on foot once they got there, and he’d harvest every human he came across. If he went home with a few empties, so be it. Being edgy made him impatient, and as old Urak was wont to say, prisons were filled with impatient men. Prisons and graveyards, both. He could afford to go home a little light. A few more trips like this, with Raven to pilot him over Earth’s surface, and he would have the funds necessary to finish his father’s Gate.

After that, he would be the sole supplier of wild-caught humans, the sole source of freshening stock to every breeder, miner, and sex-slaver in the entire universe. The price for his goods would go into fucking orbit around him. He probably wouldn’t need to make a trip to Earth more than every other year to see a god’s own profit. He could farm his captives. With Raven’s help, he was sure he could extend their life expectancy several times over. He could easily see himself operating a fleet of breeding facilities, introducing new blood now and then to keep the stock strong. Perhaps he would specialize, maybe teach the females Raven’s art of the human blowjob and sell them solely to Kevrian sex-houses. Hell, open a few of his own. He could build a second Gate, out in the far reaches where his base of operations would be, and never have to risk a jump through one of the Fleet’s ever again.

‘Slow down, boy,’ he told himself in his father’s voice. ‘First hunt, then home. Everything else will follow in its own time.’

Solid advice, but the ghost-memory of Urak’s growl brought back that strange, crawling dread. He shifted, flexing his claws on Sue-Eye’s thigh, and scowled.

“Talk to me, Raven,” he said curtly. “What’s the first thing you want to do when we get back into deep space?”

“Learn the language,” she said immediately.

Kane smiled faintly, the tension that had seized his heart already beginning to relax. Such a sensible answer. Not in the least surprising coming from his far-thinking Raven.

“Then I’ll learn how to work your computers,” she continued. “And fly a ship.”

A human navigator. Kane found the idea at once absurd and incredibly attractive. No one else he knew of had ever used a human as true crew. There was no way to quantify such a warped situation. But she would be his fuck-mate, and he would be commander, and so the rest of the crew would probably just ignore her. Treat her like a
rurr’ga
he’d somehow trained to poke at buttons, and give her distance. She’d be invisible to them. They’d…talk in front of her.

Kane could feel himself growling deep in his chest, could feel the smile stretching his lips until his fangs gleamed. He mused on the delightful image of Raven on the bridge of his ship, a listening shadow in his absence, and then turned to Sue-Eye.

“What about you?” he asked. “First thing.”

“Whatever you want me to do,” she said.

“How convenient.” He faced front again. “I’m going to want you to fuck.” He intercepted a piercing look of triumph as it passed from his
ichuta’a
to Raven, and chuckled to himself, rubbing Sue-Eye’s thigh. “Calm yourself, little bitch. I never said I was going to be the one to fuck you.”

The blonde stiffened and gave him a wary look that could not quite be confusion.

“For a few days,” he mused. His hand slipped up underneath her skirt and continued its rubbing on her smooth mound. “And I want you to be the very best fuck you can be. I want you to make me really proud,
ichuta’a
.”

Her thighs parted to him, and he obligingly stroked up into her moist folds. She shivered and leaned back into the seat, her head back and her eyes closed.

“And you’re going to make me proud, aren’t you?” he murmured.

She nodded languidly.

“Every last male I send in to you is going to tell me you were the best fuck he ever had. You’re going to cum for them and you’re going to mean it.”

She nodded again. “I’m going to use my whole body,” she said quietly. “I’m going to suck them off and rub my tits all over their cocks and give them my ass and my cunt and my feet if they want it that way. They can tie me up or hang me from the ceiling and I’ll still cum for them. They can hit me and scratch me and hurt me and I’ll cum for them. I’ll make you so proud of me.”

Kane penetrated her with his finger and thrust hard and steady, rewarding her. “It’s going to hurt and you’re going to love it,” he said. “You won’t sleep much and you’ll hate the food, but you’ll still love it. You’ll live for the fucking, won’t you?”

“Yes!” She opened even wider, bucking her hips at his hand. “Yes, Kane! Thank you, Kane!”

“You’re welcome,
ichuta’a
. Cum.”

She did, spasming wildly on his finger, and then sagging breathlessly back into her seat. When he held up his hand, she took his wrist and sucked her oils from him without him needing to speak a word.

“And if you’re very good,” Kane said mildly, watching her lips work around his knuckle. “I’ll give you back your eye.”

She started and stared at him.

He pulled his hand from her slack grip and open mouth and gave her cheek a pat. “Raven’s right about me,” he told her. “I take very good care of my tools. What do you say?”

“Thank you, Kane,” she whispered. She still looked stunned, but she was beginning to smile. “I’ll make you so proud of me! I’ll fuck a thousand men for you! Oh, thank you, Kane!”

Kane leaned back in his seat and smiled at Raven’s face in the forward mirror. She smiled back at him and he closed his eyes to doze. Everything was going to be fine.

*

She never would have thought waking up after only five hours of sleep could feel so good, but then, Tagen had a unique methodology. He was nibbling at her stomach. Her toes were curling even before her eyes were open. She laughed and ran her fingers lazily through his hair. “Already?” she sighed.

“I tried to break the news gently,” he said, and rolled away to stand.

She watched him go through satisfaction-slitted eyes, listening to her body still hum its happiness from the night’s work. “Ancient Jotan cure,” she said accusingly.

He laughed and went to release Grendel from the bathroom, calling back, “Ah, but it
did
work,” before shutting the door on her.

Daria indulged herself in a stretch and remained sprawling across the bed until the sound of water thundered up through the wall and Grendel came leaping up to lie with her. It was too tempting to shut her eyes again with a cat purring at her side. She found the remote control for the TV on the bedside table and switched it on. After thumbing through the cartoons and perky morning shows aimed at hausfraus, she finally found a local station broadcasting the news.

Suicide bombers in the Middle East, baby boomers bitching about pension fraud, gas prices still going up—just your basic news. No new bodies, or rather, no new unexplained cases of head trauma. There were plenty of bodies. Lots of gang violence going on over on the East coast, school shooting in the Midwest somewhere, some prostitute slashings down in California. Lots and lots of bodies.

Daria pulled Grendel onto her lap and petted him while the steady stream of gore washed over the screen, somberly narrated and subtitled and reduced to a sound bite. As she watched, she experienced an odd doubling effect in her own mind. The images were certainly no different from hundreds of others Daria had seen, but suddenly she was seeing it all through two sets of eyes. There was the Daria who was no stranger to morning news reports, to the smoke and riot of foreign streets, to crying children, to courtroom chaos and stone-faced defendants in clean navy suits. But there was also the Daria who saw all this as Tagen must see it, as an unbelievable deluge of violence. And for a moment, Daria was a little shocked with herself that she could watch this with even a shred of indifference.

She understood all of a sudden that this was how Tagen’s prisoner and all the others like him were able to make their money. Because no one was appalled anymore. Everyone turned on the news and watched blood and bombs and rubble while they drank their coffee and ate their doughnuts, and then they went to work like all the world was at rest. Even the people reporting the news acted like the things they were saying was happening in some other dimension, utterly removed from consequence. Oh yeah, six people died in Allan’s Pass this morning when a disgruntled office worker brought an automatic rifle to his company picnic, and in other news, the budget crisis at the planned community hospital worsens when administrators mislabeled donations meant to provide waiting room amenities. Like there was any comparison at all between the lives of six people and the loss of a coffee machine.

Daria put the remote down and picked the cat up, pressing her face into Grendel’s ample sides and breathing in through a filter of fur. Grendel hung heavy in her grip, his loud purrs effectively smothering the continued babble from the television.

When she let him drop again in the swaddled sheet around her hips, the desk jockeys were talking about the motel murders in Pinesborough. One of them even brought up the bar in Blue Ridge and the movie theater in Hillmark. “Is it just me,” this prescient little twerp asked of his co-anchor, “or is the heat wave here just making people crazy?”

“Don’t I wish, pal,” Daria muttered. “Crazy guys get caught.” She switched off the TV and tossed the remote off onto the floor, out of sight and therefore out of mind, like all the content it had just shown her.

What had E’Var been up to yesterday if it hadn’t been killing people, though? She was starting to think that maybe he really had headed back to his ship, all his little lunchboxes full up with brains. In which case, he might have traveled all through the night, loaded up, and hit that starry road by now.

Tagen came back into the bedroom with one towel around his waist and another rubbing at his damp hair. “What news?” he asked crisply.

“None.”

“Mm.” Tagen scowled at the dark screen, shaking his head-towel out and draping it over the back of the room’s complementary chair. “Well, what thoughts?”

“This is your balliwhack, not mine.”

“My what?”

“What I mean,” she said with a sigh, “is that chasing bad guys is what you do. You need your kitchen counters scrubbed, that’s when you ask my advice. Besides…I’m fresh out of ideas.”

There had been a frown growing on him from her first words, but now it smoothed away and he regarded her with open sympathy. At last, he even smiled faintly. “There is an ancient Jotan cure for lack of inspiration.”

“I’ll just bet there is.” Daria heaved Grendel off her lap and stood up, earning his full and appreciative attention as she walked naked to the bathroom door. “Probably the same cure for nervous energy, right?”

“And for lethargy, come to think.” Tagen removed his towel and bent to collect his uniform. “I suppose, seeing as the ancients knew so few females and so many ills, it only seemed sensible to have one common cure.”

“Kinda makes a girl wonder what they prescribed for hyper-sexuality.” She closed the door on his thoughtful expression and her own teasing smile soon faded. She met her reflection’s eyes in the mirror, but not for long. The bathroom was too small to share between two naked women, especially when they were both in such disturbing moods.

She stepped into the shower and turned on the water. Tagen liked his cool and Daria kept it there, scrubbing at the worst of herself with the little soap he’d left for her.

What thoughts? In other words, where to? Should she finish doubling back and re-checking all the hotels they’d passed since yesterday? Should she turn back around and head west again, on the grounds that he wouldn’t turn off onto another road until after he’d killed? Should she try to get in between him and his ship?

She concentrated and brought, with effort, a mental image of the map and where E’Var’s first kills had been. He’d been on foot and headed east, which meant his ship had to be reasonably close and to the west. If he really wanted to head home, the best way was still to go west to I-5 and then south to Highway 20. And that would be Daria’s best route, too. There might be shortcuts somewhere, but she didn’t think E’Var would use them. He hadn’t so far, anyway. She didn’t think his driver had a map.

His driver. Like he’d hired her.

All the heat went out of the lukewarm water. Daria shivered and shut it off.

Tagen thought the girls E’Var had taken were working with him. It was possible. Likely, even. She’d forgotten what they called it when victims of violent abductions started empathizing with their captors. Stockhand’s symptom, or something like that. And E’Var was an alien. Daria knew only too well that nothing was more important than getting okayness back when there was an alien in the room.

Daria toweled herself dry with the doormat-sized scouring pad the hotel provided, and then went back into the bedroom, savoring the feeling of clean for as long as she could. She hadn’t brought extra clothes on this trip and she hadn’t been terribly consistent about rinsing them out at night. She supposed, considering what she was out here trying to do, it didn’t really matter how she smelled, but it bothered her. Tagen looked like he’d magically stepped out of a recruiting poster. She didn’t know how the hell he did that. His uniform was spotless, the creases sharp, and his hair was pulled back into his severe ponytail without even the benefit of a comb. He was getting stubbly again. That was vindicating at least.