His Human Hellion (Ultimate Passage Book 2) (10 page)

Finn fought back the scoffing laughter at the religious beliefs of his uncle. This was not the time to antagonize him. Nevim turned and left. The door remained open behind him. Finn knew the guards were still there. He knew they would try to block him. He needed a plan.
He turned around the vessel, slowly, taking note, working on a strategy.

Finn
crashed into the console, knocking things down, making as much noise as he could, then collapsed to the floor, coiled, poised and very ready. Both guards rushed in, they dropped their weapons, and hovered over him. Finn swept his foot under one, knocking him flat, Finn roared, grabbed one of the weapons, jumped to a stand, and cracked the other one on the head with the butt end. He didn’t want to fire a weapon for fear the noise would bring more soldiers around.

The second one collapsed, unconscious
. The first one stumbled to his feet. One strike to the jaw, and he was joining his fellow soldier on the solid metal floor.

Finn grabbed the second weapon
and the ammunition refills from their belts, then hurried to the door. Verifying that there was no one around, he ran across the plank, down the first hallway, took a sharp right and waited, paused in the alcove. If it had not been for all the hours he’d spent exploring the hallways and tunnels of the settlement, he’d have been in a lot of trouble. A sign of a misspent teen life, the son of a soldier growing up on a military compound would give him the means to hide and to make it to the tunnel that led to the Lesser League exit. His uniform should provide him with a cover that would keep him safe, at least until word got out that he had fled. For now, he had to trust that the general public did not know that the Council of Governors-Select had not met, had not made a decision, and that no one was looking for him.

All he needed to do was get to the back way to the tunnel, then he’d follow it to Lesser League. No one ever loitered in that tunnel. It was too dreary too dark, and too full of dark memories, like a gallows walk.

Marissa

A wet, cool cloth covered Marissa’s forehead and shrouded her eyes. This wasn’t the act of an enemy. Her mind wasn’t fuzzy. She had full realization of where she was, in the sense of that she was on Kormia. Her last memory was a struggle with that bastard Talik. She got a few good hits in, but then he clocked her. And now—

She wanted to open her eyes to see who was helping her, but if it was Asazi, then what? With the exception of Finn, Kal, and Nevim, she had no Asazi
allies. And yet, someone was being kind. She raised her hand slowly, pushed the washcloth up higher on her forehead, off her eyes, and opened her lids.

An Asazi woman
, her skin a soft, peaceful green denoting her serenity sat on a stool nearby, eyes focused on Marissa. There was no hostility in her gaze.

Marissa contemplated talking to her. Wondering if that would bring on a phase of unfriendliness.
“Do you speak English?” She prayed that when Finn told her they learned English on Kormia, that he meant all of them did.

“I do.” The woman’s
voice was calm. She was young, a little younger than Marissa. Her clothing was a peach-hued filmy fabric that draped over her flesh, but didn’t obscure a view of her body. Her nudity beneath the barely-there clothing did not seem to embarrass her. She sat straight, her breasts thrust forward, nipples erect and dark brown. A fuzzy patch was visible where her legs met. Marissa averted her eyes to keep from embarrassing the young woman, though she doubted she could. This was only her second experience with an Asazi woman. The first and only other one had involved that woman named Alithera, who’d been in an Asazi soldier uniform. She’d been quite sexless, unlike this one, who exuded sexuality.

Marissa tried to reconcile
the young woman’s attire with what she remembered Finn had told her about Asazi—that they didn’t do sexual. That they weren’t motivated by sex. So the way this Asazi maiden was dressed seemed a contradiction, one that puzzled Marissa.

She
surveyed the room. The walls were of a gray stone, but it was refined and smoothed. Wooden shelves held decorative items on display that were carved of wood and bone. There was fabric and some type of soft mattress beneath her. It didn’t seem to be a prison and it was far plusher than the Asazi settlement she’d been in when she first arrived. “Where am I?”

“You are a guest of
Saraz.”

A
new name. “Who is that?”

“I am
Saraz.” A voice came from a doorway she hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it had been closed. “I knew you would come.” The voice had a quality to it, almost as if it echoed and bounced off the walls, but in a subtle way, one that didn’t offend the senses.

Marissa
studied the man who belonged to the voice. The first thing that struck her was that he was definitely not Asazi. But he also wasn’t human, even though he had human characteristics. “Are you Kormic?” The words slipped out before her damned filter could stop her.

The Asazi woman sucked in a breath as soon as Marissa asked her question.
The man considered Marissa, studying her as if she’d lost it, then he laughed. His laugh reverberated around the stone-walled room.

“You have never seen a Kormic, have you?”
he asked. He glanced at the woman, waved his hand.

She slippe
d behind him and left the room, flowing fabric billowing gracefully behind her.

Marissa shook her head
, she never had seen a Kormic, and Finn had not described one to her. It never seemed important, while they were on Earth, immersed in their own life, far from Kormia and all of this.

“If you had, you wouldn’t ask that question.”
He was attired in a gray shimmering robe-like outfit. Actually it reminded her of what sheiks wore. Except it didn’t cover his head. He was bareheaded, with hair that fell below his shoulders in a thick black sheet.

The next thing she wanted to say was that she could tell he wasn’t human, but that didn’t seem to be a wise tactic. Of course he wasn’t human
, he had a grayish black skin that glistened and shimmered, scales seeming to move on their own. He did have that in common with the Asazi, as their skin resembled a type of scale at times. Except that his scales were definite and overlapped, though not as tiny as Finn’s. His eye shape was normal, his irises round, of a pale, iridescent lime color, the pupils a black vertical slit, and though they were emotionless, the black line in the midst of the pale green made his eyes menacing. His lips were full and sensual, a direct contradiction to his cold eyes, jawline strong and defined.

This man was eerie, but
had this underlying undeniable sexuality that brimmed over. Looking into his eyes was mesmerizing. She thought of a cobra and a snake charmer, but which was he? A combination of both. A barely elevated ridge down the center of his forehead went all the way to his nose, subtle, but prominent.

T
hen it hit her, and she didn’t know why she didn’t key in on it before, unless it was because she was so busy staring at him.
Or because he’s hypnotizing you,
the voice said. Yeah, right. She didn’t believe in that crap. But she should have clued into this before. When he first said that he known she’d come.
Dammit.

She pulled herself out of the funnel cloud of thoughts he stirred in her mind.
“What do you mean you knew I would come?”

He smiled, revealing perfectly white, perfectly human teeth, in
a face that was far from completely human, but too sexy to resist. Sexy? Resist? Did she really think that?
He’s putting thoughts in my head, he must be.

“Yes, I knew you would come. You are prophesied about. You are Carrier.”

Carrier? Of what? Was there some sort of disease that she carried that she’d bring to these people—creatures—society? “I’m what?”

“You are with child, are you not?”

She scoffed. “Should it surprise me that you know this? It seems every Asazi I’ve run across knows.”

He raised a
dark eyebrow, a stark slash on the gray skin. “I do not talk to the Asazi.”

“
The woman that was just here.” Marissa countered. “She’s Asazi.”

He shrugged.
“She is different.”

Boy was she ever, with that outfit.
“How can she be different? She looks the same, she has the same skin. How is she different?”

“
She does not interact with the Asazi. She is one of mine now.”

“One of your what?”

“One of mine.” He stepped closer, his nostrils flared.

Marissa
slid back, but was already almost against the wall behind her. It felt like she was going around and around with him, and getting nowhere. “I need to get back to . . .” What would she call it? “The place where I was.”

“You seem to have been through quite a bit. First let us take care of you, make you better.”

“I’m quite fine.” Marissa swung her legs over the side of the comfortable bed and sprang to her feet. Except that when she landed on her feet, she immediately collapsed to the floor. Landing first on her knees, and then on her palms. Her legs had completely given out on her. Fury at her helplessness mushroomed, threatening to spill out in a scream of pure rage. She gained control of herself, somewhat. Through a clenched jaw, she asked, “What the hell just happened?”

“Maybe you are not accustomed to the specifics on
Kormia? Could it be gravity? Some other kind of force?” Saraz’s tone was innocent, void of answers.

Yeah, his tone was too innocent. Way too innocent to buy that act.
“That can’t be. I’ve been here for . . .” How long had she been here? How long was she unconscious? “Probably at least a day, I think. It would have happened sooner, wouldn’t it?”

Sara
z’s eyes narrowed, ominous black and lime. He snapped his fingers. Two Asazi women ran through the door, both young, and like the other woman, both in attire more revealing than not. Loose diaphanous fabric flowed with every step, clinging to their legs, their bare breasts, their skin a light green tinge, their nipples beneath the opaque fabric a shade of dark rose, prominent against their green skin. Marissa couldn’t help staring. She wanted to ask why they were dressed more like concubine girls from an Arabian harem, but for a change her filter seemed to act before her mouth.

Saraz
folded his arms across a broad chest. “Our guest has fallen. She is in need of assistance.” His tone commandeering, he truly was more sheik than extraterrestrial.

Guest.
She didn’t feel like a guest, especially since she did not want to be here. She took the proffered hands from the young Asazi maidens. Really, not so far from her own age, but their bearing was one of naiveté. They half-carried Marissa and her weak legs to the bed.

“Thank you,” Marissa muttered. “I think I need a doctor.”

“We have no doctors here, Carrier.” One of the maidens responded in a low voice.

Marissa looked at
Saraz for confirmation, not sure why she’d trust him to affirm, or even tell the truth. Yet, he nodded, as if it was fact indeed.

What if one of them became sick? Then what?
“And if you need a doctor?”

“Why would we?”
The other young woman asked.

Marissa was stumped. What kind of place was this where they had no
doctors? “If you are attacked by the Kormic?”

The women looked at one another, a small smile playing on their lips, as though they enjoyed a secret. They glanced at Saraz, the same mystical smile was on his. Then b
oth of the women laughed a soft tinkling sound of merriment.

“What’s so funny?” Marissa
seethed. She had to get the hell out of here and find Finn, and ultimately get herself back to Earth and away from this hostile place, and these two airheads thought she was making jokes.

“We are not worried about attack from anyone. Saraz will protect us.”

“Great.”
Just great.
Now what? She had a pair of useless legs, and Finn was who-knew-where.

Marissa looked at
Saraz. “What’s up with this Carrier stuff?”

“
You carry Bearer.”

Oka
y, first she’s Carrier, now her baby was Bearer? And none of this meant a thing to her. Maybe she should have asked Finn more about Asazi mythology or history. Then again, he wasn’t much of a believer. “My baby is Bearer? What’s that mean?”

“It is written about in the Sacred Writings
,” one of the women answered.

Again
, Marissa looked to Saraz for affirmation, though again she had no idea why she would seek his confirmation on any matter.

Saraz nodded.

She sighed. She didn’t even want to ask. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to be here long enough to find out. “I just want to get back home.”

“First.”
Saraz put a finger up. “Tell me what a human woman is doing on Kormia with an Asazi TripTip weapon.”

TripTip
weapon? That had to be the blade that Nevim gave her. “My—”
What was Finn? A boyfriend? Ugh.
Was she supposed to call Nevim her boyfriend’s uncle? Was Finn even her boyfriend? They’d never even talked about things like that. She and Finn lived day-to-day, never thinking or making plans or labeling their relationship. They simply enjoyed each other—that and had a lot of feelings involved. “The uncle of my baby’s father gave it to me.” Gosh, that family line sounded like something from daytime talk shows where they try to establish paternity.

“Why did
the Asazi banish you without a trial?”

“
If you don’t keep up with Asazi, then how do you know that?”

“
You would not have been in Midland if you were not banished. None go there by choice. You left the security of the Asazi for Midland. It had to be because you were banished. So what crime did you commit?” He was talking to her in the simplest of terms, and repeating concepts as if she were a simplistic child.

Marissa
grit her teeth at Saraz’s condescending manner and contemplated the idea of lying to him, but she didn’t think she’d get away with that any more than she had anything else since she arrived on this godforsaken planet, so why bother. “I killed an Asazi soldier. On Earth. I really thought I was in danger. But they don’t believe in guilty until innocent and stuff like that. So they brought me here and then they threw me out.” That summed it up nicely. Now she needed some information herself. “How far are we from where you found me?”

“
In terms of distance? Not far. Almost impossible to reach the spot we found you without the right escort.”

“Why?”

Again with the raised brow. “Roving Kormic, jungle cats, hostile Asazi, many things would kill you.”

Marissa rubbed her head. This was getting her nowhere. “Who are you? I mean exactly?”

“I’m Saraz. I am the author of the Sacred Writings. I am god. I am deity. I am forsaken, and unforgiven. I am to live here until I can return to my home.”