“Go on,” I bark, not interested in this matter now.
“They thought they knocked me out when they took the human females. They didn’t. They intended to kill me but your Rakukanna spared my life. She offered herself in exchange for keeping me alive.” Fury makes my pulse spike, but when Krisxox leans more of his weight onto me, I accept it.
“I followed them out, tracking them from a distance. They made their way just south of Illyria to the flat lands and when they arrived, they…I have no idea what tech they used, but like some kind of strange gravity drive, they were propelled up into the sky where they vanished.
“Svera’s tracking beacon deactivated in that instant, but reappeared not too long after. Here. Look.” He swipes his good arm across his left, mangled one and his life drive activates. Quickly navigating its controls, he draws up a star map. “Here. She’s here. Just at the border of the quadrant.”
“How in xok did they acquire technology this advanced? Who sold it to them?” Xa’Raku says, coming up beside me.
I lift my hand. “Irrelevant now. Now we fight. We must retrieve Svera and the Rakukanna.” My Rakukanna. My Miari.
“Hexa.” Krisxox bleeds between his teeth. He looks at me and his eyes are feral and wild, his need to destroy Rhorkanterannu rivaling mine. His ridges are an explosion of violent, visceral greys, as bloodthirsty as the black that has consumed my ridges, my face, my neck, my arms. I look down. I am a nightmare reborn and I will be until I see her, until I touch her, and until I ensure that any Niahhorru who wronged her, falls.
Xa’Raku steps up, looking at the map before us and the small speck of light among the stars that is more valuable to me than all the rest of their light. It is what will bring me back to her.
“We won’t be able to take off in the battle cruiser,” she says.
“We do not need to use the battle cruiser to take their ship.” And their lives.
“But the docks — they were destroyed.”
“Hexa.” I exhale. “But not all of them. I did not come to be Raku without surprises of my own.” And weapons enough to tear Rhorkanterannu to a thousand pieces, and from those thousand pieces, patch together a quilt from all his bloody parts.
21
Miari
A scream rips through my unconsciousness, bringing me back with a start.
Heat dripping down the right side of my face is what I feel first. Slow and syrupy, it glides from my temple to my chin, thick and viscous. Another glob drips, this one splattering over my forehead and sliding down the arch of my nose. My mouth opens and the glob enters like it was headed there all along. Sour meets metal and overcomes it in a taste as bitter as it is vile. Blood. Some of it my own, and some distinctly not. I cough and the jolt to my body is what stirs the rest of me to life.
I gasp, sucking in a breath that tastes like fire and mold. I cough and gasp again. I can’t get in enough air. There’s a pressure on my chest keeping me from it and when my eyes blink open I see a whole heap of wrecked metal crisscrossing in front of me, caging me in. I’m trapped.
Movement near my left shoulder grabs my attention and I shudder at the sight that greets me — a Niahhorru pirate impaled to the wall above my head by a fractured pipe. His black blood drips on me, yes, but there’s also thick waste water spraying into the space in wild abandon. It drips into my eyes, through my hair, over my scalp and down the back of my neck. It feels like fingers.
It’s disgusting and I want away from it, but the table that had at one time been the platter to serve me up, and at another time served as my shield, is now my prison. Braced across my sternum, I’m pinned to the wall behind me.
My breaths come shorter and harder and then cut altogether at the sound of a woman’s scream, because I know that there’s only one other woman in the room.
“Svera?”
She screams again and I hear the sounds of scrabbling. There’s a struggle happening and I can’t get to her.
“Female. You with child,” a voice below me croaks. To my right lies a Niahhorru trapped beneath another fallen pipe, this one oozing the same black slime that cascades over my face, drenching my hair and dampening my resolve. “You must calm yourself. For the sake of the kit.”
“My friend, she’s out there…”
“With Nondah, ontte.” He nods solemnly and leans his big, square head back down and that’s when I notice his spikes…they’re all broken. I see the shattered shards scattered around him and wince. He speaks evenly, but I can feel the pain emanating from him like a tangible presence. “He will keep her safe.”
I shake my head. “Then why is she screaming!” I demand as Svera screams again. Metal clangs and I hear a Niahhorru voice curse.
The Niahhorru lying prone exhales, “If it is true that she has never lain with a male before, then perhaps it causes her pain.”
“What! He’s raping her?”
“He has the rutting fever. It is a dishonor to her, not to be taken in a proper shekurr, but there is nothing that can be done when he is in the fever’s grasp.”
“You have to stop him!” But as I shout, my gaze sweeps the full length of his nude body. One of his legs is trapped beneath the far corner of the table that also cages me and the metal has pierced his plates and flesh and bone all the way through to the other side of the thigh. He can’t move any more than I can. He’s barely alive.
“There must be someone else,” I heave.
“Nondah has killed them all.”
“Comets…no…” I’m hyperventilating, fighting with the table in front of me with all my strength but it doesn’t budge. Not even a little. Reaching past it, I grab one of the pipes criss-crossing in front of me and push. It topples forward and the far side of the room comes into view.
There are bodies everywhere. Three or four lie trapped beneath a mesh of grate that ripped up from the floor and pierced legs and arms and necks and backs, holding them pinned. Another half dozen Niahhorru on the left wall were pierced by beams like the one above me. But the rest…
Five Niahhorru lie face down on the floor, pieces of their plates removed — one of them the male who tried to stop Nondah before. His gut is ripped open for all to see and my stomach rushes up into my throat at the sight of it. The only thing that keeps me from being sick all over myself is the panic at seeing the only living, uncaged feral Niahhorru left in the room.
He’s advancing on Svera, menacing over her by two heads. The only thing separating them is a fallen table and her only weapon is the little Droherion knife experiment in her hand. He lunges and she screams, thrusting the knife up in an unwieldy gesture. Still, she manages to catch his cheek.
He dabs at the fresh blood on his face and shrieks his rebellion. Plunging towards her, one of his arms finds purchase in her hair. He yanks, and tears away her hair covering. Two golden brown braids fall over her shoulders and she cries out. She battles with his hands, using her blade to draw blood from him a dozen more times, but she can’t hold him forever.
He grabs the front of her tunic and rips upwards so hard her whole body is yanked forward at the same time that her tunic splits right down the middle.
Impotent, angry tears blur my vision. I can’t watch. I can’t look away. Svera’s little body is yanked over the barrier of the table and left splayed on the bloody floor.
“Get away from her!” I call out, but Nondah doesn’t care.
He kicks her legs apart and lowers himself to his knees between them. Svera screams and swipes for his face, managing to plunge her knife cleanly into his neck. He rears back with an enraged shout and plucks the dagger from his throat, from one of the plates she must have hit.
Tossing it aside, he doesn’t even bother to staunch his own black bleeding. Instead, he grabs her shoulders and uses two of his arms to pin her wrists to either side, away from her body so that her breasts are bared to him. He uses his other two arms to tear the shreds of her robes away completely. She bucks and fights hard and his rage only builds, bubbling up to
the breaking point. Then reaching it.
He grabs her shoulders and shakes her and when her head connects with the metal grated floor, she releases a strangled cry and her body goes still.
“Svera!”
A muted roar follows the sound of my voice and I hear metal bending, then a bang. The doorway explodes inwards and hot tears pour freely down my cheeks.
Tears of relief.
Krisxox. Covered in copper blood. One arm cocked at an unnatural angle and held against his chest with a rope. His other hand carrying one of my Droherion swords. But he looks ready. He looks lethal.
“Krisxox! Help Svera!”
His eyes widen as he takes me in, trapped where I am, but then I see his lips form a word he doesn’t voice. Svera. And then his head swivels, gaze surveying the scene, and he is utterly lost.
Black sweeps his ridges and rolls down his arms, then spreads to cover his chest and stomach in splotches while fully consuming his face. With his black eyes with no irises, he looks like a shadow and he moves faster than one as he dives for the Niahhorru on the floor.
Krisxox bellows out a roar that shakes the entire room. The foundations of the ship. He leaps forward and with one sweep of his radiating blade, he removes all of Nondah’s spikes at once.
Nondah screams in pain and rears back, but his eyes are unfocused. His hands still reach for Svera’s limp, bruised and battered body on the floor. He stands no chance. No one would. Not against Krisxox on a normal day and certainly not against Krisxox now. This is another version of him I did not know existed.
It’s over too soon. Because when Krisxox takes his next step and cuts his sword through the air, he takes Nondah’s head with it. The cut is clean, just above where Svera stabbed him. Nondah’s head flies. Towards me.
I bark out a strangled shout when the bloody stump of a head smacks into the outer shell of the table caging me and more sulfuric blood sprays into my face. My chest squeezes when it makes contact, but I ignore the pain and return my gaze to Krisxox as he tosses his sword aside and removes the band that holds his left arm against his chest.
He genuflects, knees buckling as he drops down beside Svera. My panic hitches when he removes his loincloth, but only for a moment, because in the next he very carefully wraps the black cloth around her body. He takes the tattered remains of her robe and ties them hastily around her hair, then he lifts the whole bundle of her against his chest and for the longest moment, just holds her.
His eyes are closed but the colors…his ridges…the black has parted and they shine now with other colors too…many other colors. Reds, blues, greens…purple… He shines for her like Xoran shines for me when he feels the Xanaxana’s heat strongest. I gasp.
Krisxox’s gaze rips up to me and the colors die instantly. Or they try to. It’s clear he doesn’t have the skill Xoran does at controlling them because every few seconds a faint murmur of color crops up — a dusting of gold, a splash of white, a smear of lavender.
And then, at the onset of the sound that thunders towards us, back to black. Krisxox rises to his feet and grabs his sword from the ground without releasing Svera.
A dozen Niahhorru pirates thunder into the room. And they’re armed now. Krisxox can’t win. And I can’t help him. And even if I could free myself, I couldn’t help him then. We need help. We need Raku. But I need Xoran.
“Xoran!” I scream, remembering too late that I should never share his sacred name, least of all with the enemy. I choke and bang my fist on the platform hard enough that pain spiderwebs through my entire arm. “I need you.”
The first of the Niahhorru steps forward towards Krisxox, who releases a low, animalistic growl deep from within his chest. His ridges are fully black again, but just as the Niahhorru raises all four of his fists, there’s a sudden zing and a terrible twisted cry echoes from beyond this room of horrors.
The Niahhorru start to turn and as they do, I feel a lightness come to my cheeks as I spot a familiar face in the shattered doorway.
Ridges as black as space add an unsettling contrast to the different colors, liquids, bloods smeared across his cheeks and chest and arms and loincloth and legs and boots and swords. How many has he killed? Do I want to know?
I call out, “Raku!” But he does not look at me. He focuses instead on the train of Niahhorru all lined up to attack.
Krisxox starts forward, but stops, his gaze ripping down to Svera in his arms. She’s still unconscious and Krisxox is looking at her while his body is straining forward as if there are two very different desires warring within him and he can’t seem to settle on a decision. But then one is made for him.
A rumbling sound fills the entire room, shaking it, and I realize that it isn’t Xoran growling — it’s his Xanaxana. Loud and deep and mine. I feel my chest singing in response. A subtle hum ringing in my ears. I feel lightheaded and dizzy with it. And then when more blood drips into my eyes I feel dizzy for a whole different set of reasons.
“Xoran,” I whisper when I see him take a cut to the chest from a Niahhorru carrying a longsword. It doesn’t seem to slow him at all. Another one produces an ion gun, but Xoran raises his forearm and a holoshield appears in time to block it.
As he cuts his way forward, I see Xa’Raku behind him, carrying a weapon that looks more like a saw with electric tines. She wields it with both hands, looking like a whirling dancer as she slips and slices her blade over the bodies blocking her way.
There are xcleranx behind them carrying a range of weapons from my droherion swords to ion guns to other weaponry I’ve never seen and can’t name. Things that look like high tech versions of whips and chains and daggers. The Niahhorru fight madly though, and make a gruesome stand.
I close my eyes at a point, or maybe I pass out, because when I open them again, Xoran is striding towards me across a floor of bodies, so many sightless silver eyes staring listlessly around at nothing.
The urge to puke again hits me, but I take a steadying breath and refocus and when I do I smell the rich, spicy nectar that is Xoran, and I know everything will be okay. I’m safe. We’re all safe.
“Xoran,” I exhale. I can feel his heat brush against me through the table. My eyes slip closed again. “Thank you. Thank the stars…”
He doesn’t speak. My eyes flutter open. One of his huge, six-fingered hands moves towards my face, then drops, molding instead around the hard edge of the table that’s keeping me pinned. The moment Xoran pulls up on it, a groan bubbles up from the Niahhorru lying half-dead near me.
A xcleranx approaches him, sword drawn. Xoran barks, stopping him. “Leave him for questioning. I want to know about this gravity drive that allowed them to take my Mi…” His voice catches and then it breaks. He swallows audibly. “That allowed them to take my Rakukanna from me.”
With nothing else, and with what seems like no effort at all, he rips the entire table away and catches me as I collapse forward. He gathers me into his arms, into his warmth, kicking the table behind him.
The urge to sleep drifts over me, but just before it does, I lean into his neck and whisper against his jaw, “Be careful with me, Xoran. There’s a baby inside…”
22
Xoran
I stare down at her in our bed, knowing that my ridges won’t be anything but the darkest black until she wakes. Lemoria assured me she was fine. That they are fine.
My chest clenches and I can see in the dim light that my ridges have blossomed with color for a moment before returning to darkness. They are fine. They. There’s a they. An us, if she will still have me.
I would not blame her if she did not. I failed her and she was injured and because of the pregnancy I could not put her in the merillian tank even though I wished it. The concussion to her skull and the slight fracture of the delicate bones in her chest will have to heal on their own.
When I find Rhorkanterannu I will burn him alive, just to the point of debilitating pain, then I will do it all over again. And again. And again…
“Mmmph
,” she breathes. My whole body clenches and I rush forward. The furs are piled high above and below and around her and I carefully ease myself onto a pillow near her right and exposed shoulder.
Beneath the delicate orange glow of the light overhead, her red skin looks like the innards of a flame, her hair the silk of the xamxin river at its stillest.
I want desperately to touch her, but I do not know if she would approve, so my hand hovers over her for a moment before falling to her curls.
I gently sweep them back from her face and my xora stirs. Just the barest pressure of my fingertips against her skin is enough to make me want to rut her endlessly. But I can’t. She doesn’t want the one who failed her. She will not want me. I try to remember that in the bowels of the ship, she called for me to help her. But I was late. I allowed another to injure her.
“Mmph,” she says again, sounding sleepy and slightly pained. And it is my fault.
“Miari?” I murmur, tone one of pure hope.
“Xoran,” she breathes and I feel her body begin to shift, pushing itself prematurely from sleep.
“You must rest.” I slide my hand down the length of her body, feeling her curves through the thickness of the fur that cloaks her.
My xora does not agree with my words because it kicks against the xerbu cloth that covers it. It wants the one it thought it lost in the bowels of the Niahhorru pirate’s ship, so ancient that radar technology had not yet been installed and made it possible to remain just within my quadrant without my notice. Perhaps for weeks. Months. How long had that vile centag been plotting?
“Xoran?” She says again and this time she turns her face towards me and my ridges spill white light all over her when I register the expression on her face.
It is one of pleasure, her lips curved up at the corners. She blinks and her long lashes light gently upon her high cheeks before springing up towards her ridgeless brows.
“Xoran.” She beams.
I see her trying to shift and gently ease her onto her back. “Be careful,” I say, but my throat is choked with emotions and all of them are foreign to me but for the one. The strongest one. The one that rains over her in a solarverse of color.
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