by Zara Zenia
“Akrawn, we’d have to make it to the main subway and arrive there undetected. How can we achieve that?”
“Leave it to me, my Cat. I will make us undetectable to machines through our AI’s.”
“You can do that? Make a cloaking device?”
“Cloak? What a strange language.”
The gang member was equally bad at the job of lookout as he was at tailing people. He spoke animatedly on his phone. I locked the door behind me. We hugged the walls to round the street corner. But we didn’t make halfway up the block when a whistle warned us the gang back-up had arrived. We picked up the pace and raced toward the end of the neighborhood and across the street.
I put my head down, veered from the footpath to the road, and pumped my legs. There were fewer pedestrians and obstacles in my way than the footpath. The Lobos de Sangre gang did the same. I was fit and fast. But one of the jerks was faster and gained ground. The gap in the traffic favored me as I crossed to the third block.
The Lobos de Sangre gang member seemed to have stopped at that crossing. Had I entered another gang’s territory? I doubted but concentrated on pounding up the road. The waterfront was tantalizingly close, across the next street. Raw, salty smells embraced me. A maze of warehouses and shipping containers beckoned. As I darted toward a gap between two containers, a stocky arm belonging to an even more solid troll body hooked me and swung me to a locked arm-hold. A knife prickled my throat.
I looked back to find that Akrawn was nowhere in sight.
“Right, Missy. We want that alien. My knife dances with your skin if he’s not here in ten.”
“Sure, I’ll call him,” I said.
I fumbled for my phone with my right hand and took a deep breath preparing my body for a well-practiced-on-colleagues-only, do-only-in-dire-need maneuver. I raised my phone high above my head, and distracted troll by saying, “I think he’s behind you.” With the troll confused, I grabbed his knife hand with my left, bent his wrist back, and yanked his arm down so his elbow hooked over my shoulder. The knife was now clear of my throat. Then I threw the phone back into his face while I twisted my whole body under his knife arm and forced his arm behind his back. But not without the knife doing damage to my shirt. Too excited to feel much, and with no time to stop, I prayed the knife had not cut deep into my breast.
What next? I couldn’t let him and his knife hand go, but my arms shook. He pushed back into me, then tried to drop his head to throw me. I pressed the knife into his skin and kicked the back of his knees.
“Well done, my Cat. I think it is my turn now.”
And with one swing of his fist, my alien prince downed the man.
I looked up to smile and collapse into his waiting arms, only to find myself gathered up and swung over his shoulder.
“Sorry, my brave warrior, but more of them come our way.”
I watched the ground fly beneath his feet. We reached a heavy metal door, which refused to budge.
“Perfect,” said Akrawn. “Can you climb?”
As I nodded, my prince’s lips bared and his nostrils flared. “I will kill them all, one by one—Cat, stay strong. I will find a place for you to rest. Please, my Cat, stay strong for me, just a little longer.”
And before I could ask what the devil he meant, he had me over his shoulder again. He climbed the side of the garish pink warehouse and inside via a broken window. He ran across steel girders and swung down to the floor.
“Akrawn put me down. I’m sure I can keep up with you now that we are on the floor.”
“No my Cat, save your strength. You must not die on me. I-I could not survive.”
“Akrawn, I’m fine. Put me down unless you want me to die from nausea by being hung upside down for too long.”
“My Cat, you bleed. You must not bleed to death.”
“Put me down now.” I pummeled my fists into his solid back to make my point.
Next thing I knew Akrawn wrestled open another steel door as thumps on the main warehouse door echoed throughout the warehouse. We entered, and I was gently lowered to lie on the floor. Silence shrouded us after he closed the door.
Akrawn twisted the metal of the door lock as he said, “There, that should buy us some time free from the Lobos de Sangre.” Then he sat next to me, pulled my head onto his lap, and added, “Cat, lie still. Your heart suffers a wound. Blood weeps from your chest.” His voice ended on a husk and tears gathered in his eyes.
Am I in such shock I can’t feel my injury?
My fingers trembled as I unbuttoned my torn and bloody shirt. With a soft clasp, he pried my fingers away and took over. Together, we looked down at my right breast. It was a mess of red.
“Akrawn, help me get my shirt off.”
“Now? You want to play sex games now as you die, my warrior?”
“No, no, no. I wish to mop up the blood with the shirt. I think this gash isn’t deep. Besides, my heart is on the left, not the right.”
“Is it? You are certain? Mine is to my right side.”
“Yes, well, here is where it beats.” I placed my hand to show him.
The Lobos de Sangre hunted for us on the other side of the steel door. As I lay in my bra and jeans with my head in his lap, my alien prince rested his large Trilyn hand over my left breast and counted my heart beats.
“You are right. Cat, I have won a true prize in you. A Trilyn woman would never have survived that encounter with the brute who accosted you.”
“Akrawn, we should move. We need to make the subway. We can’t lie here waiting for the gang to bust through this door.”
“Peri, tell her.”
“Cat, this warehouse has basement docks which open to the sea, and there is also direct access to routes underground between the docks and the wharf subway station next door.”
Chapter 11
Akrawn
My Cat is a joy and a treasure. She had a wound that a Trilyn woman would not have survived. Such a grievous injury to her, but she braved the pain as we moved into the antiquated transportation system.
Cat walked stealthily ahead of me on the cracked and pocked floor. She insisted on taking the “point position” as she called it, though I would have preferred if it was me that walked ahead. She insisted she must protect me. Otherwise, humans grew lazy and useless or worse yet felt they had no value so, as the prince I was, I let her do her job.
I thought these Earth people did not understand royalty. They had some of their own, but I had met them, and many were like kept pets. They seemed to have lost the concept, or perhaps they never had it, that royalty served the people. Their elected officials seemed to fill this role more, but even here I had observed that some seemed to think the people served them. When humans introduced “taxes,” it stunned us. As princes, we were caretakers of many things that allowed us to provide for the welfare of the people who lived on the lands we kept and protected. Our father saw the value of many sons for this critical work. Though had he known that Mother was not as strong as she pretended, he would have insisted she bore no more children.
So many things were a bitterness to us that many of our people thought that we should live what was left of our lives and let our people die out. My father refused to believe this and sent our explorers through the vast universe to find a species with which we could join and continue our race. There were several species genetically compatible but socially and physically were unappealing. The worst were creatures that were a gelatinous blob with tentacles. Not that they weren’t perfectly lovely people. And they had no prejudices about who they mated with. But that was one image we decided would not go out to the people so as not to further discourage them. When we found the humans, who were remarkably like us and were descendants of the same space-faring race that were the ancestors of the Trilyn, we rejoiced. We overlooked the fact that their social development needed work.
The humans may have shared a common ancestor, but they were not Trilyn. They were hardier and more resilient than the average Trilyn t
hough we were physically stronger. Human aggressiveness was off the charts compared to other sentient races. I had no doubt that should we desire such a thing that we could make an army of the humans, and they’d be perfectly happy.
This species love of competition, as they called it, and combat was endemic in their thought processes. Children’s past times, for the love of Tri, involved hunting and killing different prey in video games.
Even housewives had different competitions called bake-offs and cook-offs. When I first arrived, I watched these entertainments to understand this species better. It amazed me that they made food preparation a competition. One show that I would never forget was a chili cook-off, which sounded mildly amusing until I learned some contestants used rattlesnake meat. Not knowing what rattlesnakes were, I researched the creatures to find out these things harbored deadly venom. And yet these humans caught these health hazards, cut off their heads, and skinked them to add to food. Then I heard that the rattlesnake meat tasted just like chicken. Then why in Tri’s hell wouldn’t you use the more harmless chicken? These were the things that only humans understood, which made them scary people.
But we couldn’t blame them because their environment shaped them. They didn’t realize what a violent and unstable planet they lived on. It horrified us to find that their world was subject to great spasms that produced earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic activity, windstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. They suffered these things as an ordinary course of life and then to our surprise, other unrelated humans sent people, food, currency, and other aid to help them rebuild. It was the most remarkable thing to see these people handle adversity, and it was a lesson we princes quietly swallowed. Their ability to bear up, sustain, and even thrive in the face of great challenges humbled us — all except for me. I was the most stubborn of my father’s seven sons, a trait I freely admitted.
So now I followed my warrior princess through the tunnels. These places crumbled from some tragedy that the humans wouldn’t tell us of. But they were sturdy enough I could make my escape from human law enforcement. I gratefully knew that my Cat had put aside her allegiances to her employers and her society to do this. And this was another strength these humans had, or at least some of them. When discerning injustice, they would lay aside the comforts of their society to right the wrong. The more I learned about humans, the more I was in awe. But I wouldn’t tell them that.
We followed the map that Peri provided, leading to the main line that would get us to a working part of the subway.
“Are you sure you are okay, my Cat?”
She looked over her shoulder and sighed. “Akrawn, it’s a flesh wound. Inconvenient, a little painful, but really, I’ve had worse. We have bigger worries.”
“But you lost blood.”
“Yep.”
“And it does not concern you?”
“Akrawn, women lose blood every month. It’s not a big deal.”
The idea horrified me.
“What do you mean?” I was concerned now. “Why, how do women lose blood every month?”
“You don’t know? Trilyn women don’t— Oh hell, Akrawn. We don’t have time to give you a human reproduction lesson.”
“Losing blood is part of reproduction?” What kind of crazy people are these?
“We’ll talk about it later,” she said.
Cat sounded annoyed, and I didn’t know what I did to elicit that emotion in her. Human women were much more complicated than I thought.
“Tell me this. Is this loss of blood dangerous?” I had to know. I couldn’t bear it if Cat was in danger from this monthly release of blood.
“No. It’s inconvenient, but we’ve learned to live with it like we learned to live with crazy aliens who come to our planet wanting our women.”
She flashed a sly smile at me, and I saw it wasn’t me she was annoyed with. That was a relief, but there was much I didn’t understand about her.
Water dripped from above and plopped with a hollow sound onto the old tracks submerged in water and the lights in the ceiling winked irregularly with a buzzing noise. I disliked this place.
“What is that smell?” I said as I wrinkled my nose.
“That? Like fish gone bad?”
“Something’s rotting.”
“Organic material in the dripping seawater decays and produces a gas called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. The pungent gas is what gives ocean air that sort of fishy, tangy smell.”
I stared at her. How did she know these things?
“What? I aced Ecology 305 in college.”
“I know you are brilliant,” I said.
“Oh, brother,” she muttered. “Let’s keep moving.”
There was no escape should someone attack us, but there was no alternative. There were too many eyes on the streets above. I had underestimated these Lobos de Sangre. The territory they claimed was far ranging. I could see this was another problem that we Trilyn would have to resolve before we brought more of our people here. We didn’t allow such lawlessness on our planets.
Cat stumbled, and I rushed forward to grab her.
“Akrawn,” she said, annoyed once more. “I’m fine. My heel caught on a crack.”
“I would not be much of a mate if I allowed you to come to harm.”
“Mate?” she said with surprise.
“Yes, of course. I have chosen you, and we have joined.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We had sex, but that doesn’t mean—oh, hell, Akrawn why do you have to make things complicated?”
“It is not complicated,” I said stubbornly.
“Get this through your alien brain. We are not mates.”
My Cat was gorgeous when she was angry. Her face flushed to the most appealing shade of dusty pink, and her breasts heaved as her breathing quickened. I could forgive her for not knowing the resolve a Trilyn man had for the woman who captured his heart. Women did not give up their hearts as easily as men. I smiled because it would be sweet when she finally accepted me. But until then it was best to go along. At least I had declared myself, which was all I could expect at this point of the mating.
“Of course, my Cat. You have every right to think so.”
“Good,” she said. Cat peered down a darkened tunnel and glanced at her AI to check our course. But then she looked over her shoulder at me, and her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why did you agree so easily?”
“Because my Cat, at this point in the mating, I have no right to expect you’ll agree.”
“Damn straight. You have no right.”
“My mother rejected my father, who was the crown prince, three times, and there are some mating’s on record where a woman rejects the man twenty-times.”
Her mouth opened. “Twenty? On Earth, we consider that stalking.”
“Because your men are unworthy and do not know how to court women properly. I have watched your television shows. ‘Honk, honk,’ and the woman comes running out of her apartment to meet the man. Ridiculous. On Trilyn, when a man is serious in his attention, he strews the path to her door with flower petals. He will present her with gifts worthy of her and sings her songs—”
“Yes, I’ve heard your singing,” she said.
I ignore the cutting edge in her voice. “We do everything in our power to show the woman how precious she is because in her lies the hopes of continuing our lines and our families. There is nothing more important to us.”
She stared at me as if she couldn’t believe my words.
She shook her head.
“You did not strew flower petals at my door, Akrawn,” she said.
“For—”
Her arm flew out in front of me and struck me in the chest.
“Sssh,” she hissed. “Do you hear that?”
I strained my ears, and I heard several sets of footsteps behind us. I nodded my head. Cat used her fingers to point down the darkened hallway, and though I disliked the idea of treading it, I saw no alternative.
Looking over my shoulder, I spotted the
beams of flashlights piercing the darkness.
“Run!” I whispered.
With a glance backward, Cat sprinted forward, and I followed down the litter-strewn hallway. My AI provided enough light to light a path ahead of me just enough to illuminate a few footfalls at a time.
“Here, Chica, Chica,” said mocking heavily accented voice. “Bring the Trilyn, and you can go. We want no beef with the police.”
Cat spun and drew her weapon.
“SFPD,” she snarled. “You’ve got a beef for threatening an officer. Down on the ground.”
The man laughed. “Like that will happen, Chica. This dirty Trilyn messed up our guys. He has to pay. He had no right to do that.”
Cat fired, and I winced. The load report of the percussion weapon exploded in the same space and made my ears ring. It had to do the same to the Lobos de Sangre members.
“Run,” she said.
“When you do.”
“Run, you fool. They’ll shoot soon.”
That was it. I would not let my brave mate continue to place herself in danger. So I swept her into my arms and ran down the hall.
“Get ‘em,” I heard, but I was faster than they were.
My muscles were used to the more massive gravity of Trilyn, and I’d kept up my workout routines so as not to lose muscle strength. Cat yelled at me and beat on my chest with her tiny hands, but I would not listen. I’d given her far too much latitude, and I would not let her endanger our future by her heroics.
A bullet whizzed by my ear, and Cat beat harder on my chest to let her go, but I would not. I now heard the rattling of a train behind a wall. We were getting close to the active subway system, which was our objective.
Another bullet sped past, and Cat hitched her body over my shoulder and fired off some rounds. A man screamed, and I could only assume my Cat hit one miscreant.
But then disaster.
I skidded to a stop where the hall ended in a pile of rubble.
“What?”
“Earthquake,” snarled Cat.
This was too much. But I couldn’t fail my Cat, and I set her to the floor. “Point your gun and defend us,” I said, “while I take care of this.” Cat crouched and held out her weapon while I pointed my AI at the pile. “Survey and return reports of weaknesses,” I said. Quickly it showed the top of the pile was the weakest, so I scrambled up the rocks and pulled them away. I tossed them over Cat’s head, and they hit the floor with a loud thud.