Tamer- King of Dinosaurs 5

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Yes,” Gee muttered. “Anger is probably not strong enough of an emotion. I am furious. Although, this is helping.” she cupped another handful of water and slowly dripped it on her stomach again. For half a moment, I was distracted by her again, but then the exhaustion hit me square between the shoulder blades, and I wanted to sleep a thousand times more than I wanted to watch a beautiful woman pour water over her naked body.

  “Everyone I’ve talked to was upset that they got taken.” I rubbed my eyes and realized that my headache was starting to return.

  “But you have not found a way back?” Gee asked.

  “Haven’t had a chance,” I said with a shrug, “but some of us don’t care anymore.”

  “What?” she asked as her green LED eyes narrowed again.

  “This place is dangerous,” I said, “but I’ve never felt so alive. I’m in charge of my destiny here, and I didn’t have the opportunity back on my home world.”

  “I wish to return,” Gee said. “As soon as possible. You will assist me.”

  “Nope,” I said, and now I couldn’t hold back the yawn.

  “Nope?” Gee asked, and her voice was an obvious growl. She was definitely the kind of woman who seemed like she was used to being obeyed.

  “I need to sleep,” I said as I gestured to the hut. “Then I’m going to continue my journey back to meet my tribe. Then we are going to continue building defenses for our fort and do some reconnaissance. There is another tribe that is filled with assholes. They are far away from us, but they were the ones who sent the flying asshole to kill me. We have to be prepared to fight them.”

  “But I need to return to my home world,” Gee huffed.

  “I can’t offer you that,” I said as I stood. “If you want to help us survive, then you can come with me and have a place in my tribe. We would like the extra help, but I can understand if you want to do your own thing.” I tried not to smile when I spoke. She could choose not to come with me and join us, but that would probably be suicide, even for a woman who radiated fire from her hair and skin.

  “Who is the commander of your tribe?” Gee asked. “I will speak with her about my goals, and she will--”

  “I’m the leader of my tribe,” I said, and she bit her bottom lip with disappointment. “Again, my offer stands. We’d love to have you join us, but our goals are survival at the moment. We might try to figure out how to leave someday, but we don’t have the time right now. Perhaps that is what these beings who kidnapped us want, but we don’t know for sure.”

  “Hmmm,” Gee said as she glanced between the fire and me. “You are the leader of your people?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged.

  “You do not seem like a powerful warrior,” she commented as her green eyes roamed up and down my body.

  “Hey now,” I laughed as I looked down at my chest. “You can’t see under this shirt, but I’ve been working out and drinking milk.”

  “Milk? Is your mother here, too?” Gee asked with confusion.

  “Sorry,” I laughed. “Bit of a joke with myself. I’m stupid tired, so I’m going to head to bed now. My dinosaurs will let me know if anything comes close, but I think we’ll be okay in this nook. If you can turn off your fire hair and skin, you can sleep with me, otherwise, you can stay out here. I don’t care, I’m just going to bed. We’ll talk more tomorrow.” There were hundreds of questions I wanted to ask her about her home world and her ability, but my head was really hurting, and the last time I felt this tired was after I had saved Kacerie’s life on the back of Hope after working on the fort walls for a full two days.

  “Sleep with you?” Gee asked as she stood, and my mind drifted back to the words I had just spoken.

  “Oh, I meant just in the hut,” I laughed.

  “It is hard for me to ‘turn off’ my hair and skin,” Gee said as she crossed her arms.

  “It always burns?” I asked with confusion.

  “This is my natural state,” she said as she gestured to her naked body. It was both literally and figuratively smoking. “I can force my skin and hair to cool, but it is annoying.”

  “Are your people just immune to the heat then?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” she asked as she raised an eyebrow.

  “Fuck, I dunno what I mean,” I sighed. “Your hair is on fire and the moss where you are standing is smoking. I’m guessing your people are immune to the heat, or else you wouldn’t ever be able to have sex with anyone.”

  “I understand your question now,” she said as she stepped toward me. “I am not the usual representation of my race. I am fire born.”

  “See, now you are just trying to keep me awake,” I laughed as I rubbed my eyes. “I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say that this ‘fire born’ thing means you are really special. Like, maybe you are the only one on your world who has it, and it makes you extremely powerful, but it comes with a cost, and you aren’t very happy on your world.”

  Gee uncrossed her arms, and her green eyes seemed to glow almost as brightly as her long flaming hair.

  “Who are you, Victor?” she asked after a few moments.

  “I dunno anymore,” I laughed. “I was a dog catcher, but now I’m not. I used to think I’m a prisoner, but you can’t be a prisoner if you want to be in the cell. I think I’ll be the king.”

  “King?” she asked, but instead of answering her, I turned away and walked the ten feet into my hut.

  It was hot by the fire, or maybe it was just hot being around Gee. The leaves of the palm fronds on my bed felt nice against my hand, and I took my clothes off so that I could feel the cool waxy leaves against my skin.

  Then I drifted into sweet nothingness.

  Chapter 4

  I woke up with a start and jumped out from the pile of palm fronds I was using as a blanket while my mind was still spinning in partial sleep. A circle of sunlight was shining into my hut through the door, and once my mind caught up to my body, I realized that it meant the morning sun was high in the sky.

  I threw on my underwear, pants, shirt, socks, and boots as quickly as I could and then I walked out of the hut. Bruce was crouched by the ember burning campfire some fifteen feet away, and he let out a soft honk when he saw me.

  “Good morning, buddy,” I said as I walked over to pet him. “You let me sleep in, huh? I bet it’s brunch time.”

  Bruce leaned into me when I petted him, and then I looked around at the moss covered nook where I had made my camp. I didn’t see Gee, and I felt a few pangs of disappointment hit me in the stomach. I was exhausted last night, but I should have made a better attempt to recruit her. We needed all the help we could get back at the camp, and the fire-woman had seemed confident, powerful, and intelligent. If she really was some sort of battle commander on her homeworld, she would probably be able to help me with military strategy.

  “Well,” I sighed as I looked down at the hot ashes of our campfire. “You think you can grab me some fish for breakfast?”

  Bruce let out a honk of agreement, and then he rested his chin on my shoulder so I could scratch him on the head easier.

  “Alright, I’m going to work on tearing down the hut. I should have most of it done by the time you are back.”

  Bruce let out another honk, and then he lifted his head from my shoulder, hopped away two leaps, and then took to the air with a powerful flap of his wide wings.

  “First, some water,” I said as I walked toward the spring and the small creek in the middle of the nook.

  I made it right up to the edge, rested on my knees, and then leaned over before I noticed Gee. The onyx-skinned fire-woman was submerged in the deepest part of the water, and I almost rolled back in surprise when her glowing green eyes opened to look at me.

  Her hair was actually flame colored underwater, and I saw that her mouth was wrapped around a wooden tube made from one of my spare branches. She was using it as a snorkel, but before I could do more than gawk at the beautiful woman, she blinked her eyes and the
n sat up in the water.

  “I have never felt this before,” she whispered after her head broke the surface of the water.

  “Uhhh, good morning,” I said as I tried to keep my eyes off the water dripping from her magnificent breasts.

  “Is it morning?” she asked as she blinked at me. “I lost track of time.”

  “Late morning,” I said as I glanced up to the blue sky. “My flying dinosaur just went to grab breakfast. What were you saying about never feeling something before?”

  “Cool,” Gee sighed as she splashed the water with her hands. “It is amazing.”

  “You always feel hot?” I asked, but then I rolled my eyes at myself. I was asking a girl with literal fire-hair and scorching skin if she felt hot.

  “When I became fire born, yes,” she said with a slow nod. “They brought me pitchers of water. It was the only time in my life I was able to drink as much as I wanted. I drank thirty-four of them. It helped with the agony for a short while but then the thirst came back, and I was never able to drink that much water again. Well, until last night.” Gee let out a happy laugh and then she splashed at the water.

  “Is being fire born a curse?” I asked.

  “Yes and no.” She shrugged and then lay back more into the water so that it covered everything but her face and her breasts. Those peaked above the surface like perfect volcanic islands. “I did it for power. I did it for notoriety. I did it because I wanted to rule over my world, and I figured that would be the quickest way. Very few live through the process, but I did, and the power let me ascend through the ranks of our navy quicker than had I just been a normal woman.”

  “So, not everyone has fire for hair?” I asked.

  “No,” she replied as she closed her eyes and sighed. “My people look as I do now. Well, their eyes do not illuminate like mine, but our features are otherwise the same. When I became fire born it burned in my soul and screamed for release. I became part of the element that possesses our world. In some ways that meant I was its master. In other ways, it meant that I was a slave. The amount of water in this small area where I lay was not even available to my empress. Citizens in my country are allowed three sips of water a day, but the upper crust are allowed three glasses.”

  “There is plenty of water on Dinosaurland,” I said as I thought through her words. I imagined her people had evolved to not need a lot of water to survive, but the idea of always being thirsty sounded agonizing.

  “That is what you call this place?” Gee asked as she gestured to the canyon walls that surrounded us.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve only explored a small part of it. A small valley that’s maybe five miles across, a valley to its east where there is a big lake, a valley to its west where there is just jungle trees, and then part of the beach another few miles to the west of that position. I think I’m really far north and east right now.”

  “And you do not know why we have been taken here?” she asked.

  “Nope.” I shrugged and then remembered that I was actually thirsty, so I moved a bit so I wouldn’t be shoving my head into the water right next to her naked body. I only needed a few gulps to feel better, but when I pulled my head up, I noticed that Gee was watching me drink.

  “You said you were the leader of your people?”

  “Yeah,” I answered as I stood from the creek bank and walked over to my hut.

  “What is your count?”

  “Seven or fifteen. I’m not quite sure yet.” As I spoke, I started to pull the palm fronds from the side of the hut and set them in as neat of a pile as I could.

  “Seven or fifteen?” she asked, and I heard more water splash behind me.

  “There are seven total in my tribe, but we found another tribe with eight people. We were trading with them, but then they decided to join us. Before they could leave their fort and join ours, I was grabbed by the flying asshole from the enemy tribe. I’m not sure what everyone is doing, but they are smart and capable, so I’m sure they will be okay.”

  “You have these large animals that you command?” she asked, and I glanced over my shoulder to see her gesturing at the stack of ferns where the stegos were concealed.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What is the count?”

  “Enough,” I said as I turned my attention back to my hut. Gee’s questions could have been benign, and she might have just been interested in my answers because she was a military commander, but I realized that I might have been showing my hand.

  I still didn’t know how to balance my desire to recruit people to my tribe alongside the worry that they were powerful creatures from other planets. I’d gotten lucky with Sheela, Trel, and Galmine. Kacerie had been a huge risk, since she was incredibly powerful, and I knew that not everyone was going to want to join my tribe, so I had to be careful with how much information I gave them.

  “You are unsure of the distance back to your tribe?” she asked.

  “Correct,” I said. “Less than four days I think. My plan was to follow the river to the ocean, then I can take it south to find the second tribe’s home. If they are still there, then I can bring them back with me to my home. If they aren’t there, then I’ll assume they all made it back to my tribe’s fort, and then I’ll just head there.”

  “Hmmm,” Gee said, and I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye as she lay back into the stream. Her face and the tips of her breasts disappeared under the flow of water, and I saw the wooden snorkel tube push up to the top of the surface. I guessed that our conversation was over, so I focused on pulling the rest of the palm fronds down.

  By the time I was halfway done taking down the bones of the hut, I heard Bruce honk above me, and I took a break from my work so that I could see what the pteranodon had brought me for brunch. He had three large fish speared on his long beak, and he let out a happy honk when I pulled them free.

  “Good boy!” I laughed as I patted his neck. Bruce honked again, and then he laid his chin on my shoulder so I could wrap my arm around him. “Did you see any of those spinos out there?”

  Bruce let out a negative honk, and I sighed with some relief. I was feeling pretty good about taking down predators smaller than the carnos, but that didn’t mean I wanted to battle anything larger, or smaller if the predators were traveling in a pack. Hell, I just didn’t want to come across any more predators at this point. I just wanted to get back home and see my women.

  “What are those?” Gee called out from the stream, and I turned to see her pointing at the fish I’d laid out on the rocks by the fire pit.

  “Breakfast,” I said. “They are called fish, and they live in water.”

  “Ahh,” she replied as she rose half-way out of the water, rested her elbows on the mossy bank, and stared at them. “I have heard of such things, but on my world, the water sources have long been put to filters and pipes that are distributed to the nearby cities.”

  “These will be good to eat,” I said as I pulled out my obsidian blade and began to gut and clean the fish. “Can you throw more wood on the fire?”

  “Hmmmm,” she said as her glowing green eyes focused on me. “I don’t feel like leaving the water. So, no.”

  “Suit yourself,” I said with a shrug. “I can eat all three of them myself.”

  “I see,” Gee growled, but after I didn’t reply back to her, the woman cleared her throat, and I turned away from my fish-cleaning work so that I could raise an eyebrow at her.

  “We should discuss how our relationship is going to work, Victor.”

  “Here we go,” I sighed.

  “Excuse me?” she asked as her eyes narrowed.

  “Ahhh,” I laughed. “I’ve just done this a few times already. Hold on for half a minute. I want to get these cooking. Then we can talk while I finish tearing down the hut.”

  Gee didn’t reply to me, so I ignored her, and then went back to gutting the fish and positioning them on the rock. Since the fire-woman wasn’t going to help me with the wood, I did it myself by
placing tinder down near the embers and stirring the ashes while I gently blew on it until the campfire was going again.

  “Alright,” I said as soon as the fire was going. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “On my homeworld, I command over ten million troops and eight thousand warships,” Gee said as she leaned forward against the mossy bank again. Her hair had been out of the water for the entire time I had prepped the fish, and I could see the ends of her mane begin to sizzle and steam.

  “And?” I walked back to my hut and began to pull the remainder of the posts out of the ground.

  “I have tactical experience that you lack. Therefore, I will be commanding your tribe once we return. I have assimilated the remnants of many enemy forces before. If you cooperate, then the transition will be seamless.”

  “No thanks,” I replied as I tried to keep the laughter out of my voice.

  “What exactly are you declining?” she asked as she pulled herself out of the stream and sat on the edge of the mossy bank. Her calves were still submerged, and the rest of her body didn’t seem to be heating up yet.

  “I think that everyone who comes to this world is handpicked by these powerful entities,” I said. “The men and women are the most powerful and attractive specimens of their species. That kind of background means that everyone has a chip on their shoulder. So I understand where you are coming from.”

  “Oh?” she asked as she smirked at me.

  “Sure,” I said with a shrug. “You’re a badass on your world. I don’t know if you are really good at fighting, or if you just command others to fight, but either way, you have reached a point in your life where you spend most of your life giving orders.”

  “You are mostly correct,” she said. “I do obey the council and my empress.”

  “Yeah, but you mentioned something when we first met about them saying you were going to betray them. It doesn’t matter. The point I’m getting to is that you aren’t on your world anymore. You’re on my world.”

  “You said you were a prisoner here and taken from your world,” Gee pointed out.

  “Sure,” I said as I pulled the last post from the ground. “But this is my home now, and my tribe is mine. I saved you last night from--”