She felt his arms tug her tighter against him, his tail now coiling around and massaging her waist. He stung her again, and now she found she couldn’t keep her hands off him.
A fog descended over her mind, a feeling of confusion, of wading through fast-moving water. She watched his heart beat, his fingers as they combed through her hair. She heard the purring sound when it started deep in his chest, like a giant cat, deeper and somehow more melodious than the sound Laksri made.
The last of her resistance fled; her bones and flesh felt like water, or maybe just heated blood. She couldn’t remember where she was, or who Trazen was exactly… at least, who he had been before all of this. A distant part of her fought to hold onto some remnant around what she remembered, gripping it in her mind as if her life depended on it, trying to remember why she’d seen all of this so differently, even just a few minutes before…
Briefly, she fought to extricate her mind from the tendrils of the venom, but all that came out was a kind of helpless gasp, along with a more intense desire to have his hands on her.
His tail coiled around her more aggressively.
When she opened her eyes next, she was gripping Trazen’s arms, leaning into his mouth as he kissed her.
He made a low sound against her, and she felt the barb as if from far away as he stung her again. She could feel him now, the whispers of his mind where she held him.
He was aroused. He was really, really aroused.
He wanted…
He wanted that fear of hers to go away.
The thought managed to surprise her again.
Some part of her thought he’d be okay with her being afraid. She’d expected the want, but she thought it would be anything but benign. She’d expected him to want her…
Submissive.
His desire worsened as he felt the thought in her mind.
He wanted that, too. She felt him wanting her that way.
He let her see him imagining it, even as his body warmed against hers. He wanted her like that, but not the way she’d expected. He felt frustrated, instead. He could feel that she wanted him.
He could feel her understanding him, too.
He didn’t understand why she was still…
…Fighting it.
Was she fighting?
What part of her was fighting him?
She tried to find that part, to fix it somehow, but his arms only crushed her harder against his chest, and Jet felt so confused there––but only because it all felt so familiar. She felt like she belonged there, in his arms. An image of a blonde, doll-like woman, wearing almost no clothes passed through her mind, tried to make itself meaningful.
A kind of pained cry left his lips when he saw her thinking about it.
He caressed her face, and she felt that other thing on him again, frustration, even a kind of desperation. His fingers massaged her neck, her arms, her chest. He skirted around more intimate parts of her, but she felt him wanting to touch her there.
Wanting…
Laksri said… he’d said…
He said Trazen’s consorts never lived very long.
The Ringmaster raised his head, looking down at her.
Jet saw a heavier look rise to his dark, fathomless eyes, those stunning, gold-rimmed eyes, even as he seemed to force a faint smile to his lips. He stroked her hair, caressing it out of her face, leaning down to kiss her again.
The different images blurred.
She felt him try to assert one thing into her mind, then another. She felt a kind of futility on him as he realized she felt him through it, that she recognized him past the disguise of the angry brute who hated humans.
His fingers were rougher than Laksri’s, yet oddly gentle, too.
His mind moved differently.
Fast, like Laksri’s, but somehow, the thoughts there were sharper, had more behind them. She felt empathy for him, touching the sadness below the…
Mask. The mask he wore.
She could see it now.
She couldn’t help but taste who he was, see things through his eyes, feel the world through him, even as he tried to convince her the mask was really him. The nearness shocked her. It seemed to shock him, too. She felt him consider moving away, creating distance, but as much as he thought it, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to do it.
Instead, his mind lingered with hers, his hands skirting around the parts of her he didn’t feel ready to touch. She felt him explore the connection between them, trying to understand her. He seemed to be touching her with his mind as much as his fingers, trying to make sense of how the parts of her fit together.
He seemed surprised by some of what he found.
He seemed touched, hurt, perplexed… even angered.
She felt him wanting things he felt there, seeing them as belonging to him. Something about the possessiveness touched her, even as she heard him thinking…
He’d made a mistake.
He stung her too many times.
He held her tighter. The jealousy worsened. She would hate him, but he would want her more after this. So would the Prince. He would want…
Feelings conflicted in that single point, grew lost.
What the hell was he doing?
Jet felt a kind of resignation steal over him.
She followed all his thoughts like trails through the rabbit warren of his mind, the profusion of feelings, with a kind of wonder. The empathy of the venom helped her to see how intelligent he was, how patient. He could wait a little longer.
He could wait, to get what he wanted.
Now was not the time.
Now was not the time.
He repeated it in his mind, convincing himself. Maybe he wanted her to agree with him.
Maybe he wanted her to argue with him, too.
He couldn’t, though.
Not yet.
Rationalization or not, lie or not, he couldn’t undo it now.
Even when the venom left her system, the connection would not leave either of them, not entirely. She would be able to see him, even when she didn’t want to. Even when she’d gone back to thinking of him as the enemy, she would see him.
He would see her, too.
That connection would strengthen in time, if he let it.
Even under the watery flow of the venom, his certainty brought a flicker of nerves back to Jet’s mind. It also worsened her desire, making it unbearable.
He watched her come to the realization that she wanted him.
His hands tightened on her skin as the feelings intensified. He pressed against her, kissing her again. He deepened and slowed his kisses until she couldn’t pull apart his wanting from hers. She felt the promise there.
She felt him wanting her to feel it, to take it seriously.
He wanted her to believe it, to understand how intensely he meant it.
Jet was still standing there, trying to think, when it occurred to her that he had a hand under her shirt. He was touching her, still avoiding anything he considered too close. He touched her back, massaging the muscles under her skin.
He touched her belly, and she desperately wanted his hand to travel either higher or lower, but he wouldn’t and she couldn’t decide how to feel about that, either. His fingers soothed away some of the frustration behind that desire, partly from the faint air of ownership she felt lingering around him.
The two feelings tangled, grew confused, enough to paralyze her.
When the hand went away, she felt close to tears.
Minutes later… or maybe hours… she found herself sitting on the bed next to Laksri’s inert form, fighting to breathe.
Trazen was gone.
Her body still trembled with his venom, vibrating like it suffered from an electrical shock. She couldn’t move, couldn’t look up from where she stared at the floor. Panic pooled in her belly, fed by the absence of him, the lack from the venom without its owner.
She felt alone.
Really and truly alone, despite the heartbeat of Laksri lying next t
o her on the bed. That throbbing pulse only served to obscure both of them, to make both of them harder to reach. The other pull remained, making the pain in her gut worse.
He was gone, though.
Trazen was gone.
9
Distracted
Jet stood behind a granite boulder next to a clump of oak-like trees with wide roots.
Her eyes took in the landscape, knowing none of it was real.
She gazed down over the flower-dotted, virtual field, centering her mind.
She focused on the primitive-looking town on the field’s other side, the dwellings and business structures made mostly of mud-bricks and stone. She could see flickers of metal and black armor in glints against the sun, but further away than her eyes could accurately identify.
They were definitely hiding her target there.
It was there, in that town.
She still hadn’t figured out what these so-called enemies of hers were after, exactly.
She hadn’t even figured out what they were supposed to be, species-wise.
They definitely weren’t human or Nirreth.
They might be real, one of the species from another world the Nirreth conquered. Or they might be completely made up, since she’d never seen anything like them in the xenobiological lessons she’d been force-fed as part of her assimilation studies.
Whatever they were, they wore a kind of armor that reminded Jet of ancient humans.
She’d seen something like it in paintings hanging in Nirreth art galleries, with stoic human faces wearing beards and long hair and clutching giant swords. The weapons of these creatures were modern, though, if not of a type used by humans or Nirreth.
Anyway, it hardly mattered what they were.
Jet had already worked out their weapons’ basic range.
Given the way Rings matches usually worked, she guessed she’d just stumbled upon the location of their nearest base, meaning the town itself.
From its layout, she could guess the location of the closest sentries, from looking at the topography of the field and the layout of the surrounding forest. More importantly, from the demo she’d witnessed a few miles back, when half of her virtual companions had been killed, Jet now knew what their weapons could actually do.
One direct hit would essentially blow a hole in her the size of a baseball within a hundred meters of being hit.
So yeah, not a lot of wiggle room there.
Worse, she’d lost track of the physical layout of the arena itself––meaning the actual, physical layout of the Rings, minus the virtual overlay and electronic impulses sent to her via the sense-suit. She no longer knew where she was in relation to specific landmarks, such as the lake, the weapons turrets, the ladders, the moving walkways.
That was the real reason Jet slowed down.
That, and the fact that she’d managed to run down too much of the clock for what otherwise appeared to be a relatively simple “capture the flag” type run, as her trainer, Alice, called them.
Jet needed to take stock, revise her strategy, but she didn’t have time.
Once she lost track of her location inside her mental map, she couldn’t help but feel like she was just ticking down seconds until she got shot.
Or eaten.
Or taken prisoner.
Somewhere in that drop from the exploding bridge, the wade-run through the swamp and then running for her life through poisonous, stinging undergrowth to get away from that sniper and his guerrilla team, Jet got completely turned around.
All that stuff ate up a lot of time, too.
Jet knew she would lose the run if she couldn’t find a way back into the arena’s physical layout, and soon.
The Rings operators had been experimenting of late, trying to find ways to throw her off-balance. They knew all about Jet’s “special skill,” as they called it––her propensity to memorize things, especially spatial-type layouts, after seeing them only once.
Richter called it a photographic memory.
Jet supposed it worked something like that, but until she came to the Green Zone, she had no idea how rare it was.
Jet’s “special skill” won her a higher ranking in the Rings. Unfortunately, it also meant the operators tended to get creative with her, and while she was happy she made their jobs more interesting, she wished they didn’t get quite so much fun out of trying to outsmart her.
She could hear water.
White water, rushing and tumbling over rocks, gravel, sand, branches, trees.
Jet looked around.
The river had to be in the forest somewhere. Behind her, maybe. Too far away to use for approaching the town unseen. Too far away to give her a good landmark for the Rings arena. Several canals wound through the arena’s main floor; she could use those, but it would take at least one more landmark to help her pinpoint her exact location.
She didn’t have time for that, either.
She knew Trazen was probably the real reason she struggled with the course.
As Ringmaster, he functioned as Lead Designer for the runs.
Of course, according to Richter, Trazen had a whole team of designers and operators working under him, and generally didn’t create the runs from scratch, not at his level. He mostly approved designs by his people, tweaking them or improving them as needed.
That might be true of most Rings players, but somehow, Jet didn’t buy it for hers.
It wasn’t arrogance, or paranoia, or self-importance that made her think so.
She swore she felt Trazen’s stamp on her runs.
She felt Trazen here, even now.
Shoving any thought of the Ringmaster angrily from her mind, Jet focused back on the mud-brick huts. She knew the goal of this run; she was supposed to free some prisoner they held, one of “hers” according to the story that accompanied the virtual world.
He held vital secrets to… something.
Truthfully, the storylines had started to blur in Jet’s head.
She gripped her sword, Black, tightly in one hand as she tried to decide how best to approach the alien town. Even as she did, her mind betrayed her, drifting back to the Ringmaster, seemingly on its own.
The worst part was, she could feel the difference.
Thoughts about Trazen carried something different now, and not only because she remembered how sure he’d been that they would.
Laksri hadn’t exactly argued the point when Jet brought it up with him.
She noticed the difference the first time she’d seen Trazen after he’d stung her, in a civilian eating establishment, a few days later.
He’d been sitting with members of the Rings Board, including Al-En Mosq, and once again, he’d been draped in half-clothed human females.
He hadn’t spared Jet so much as a glance.
Even so, she distinctly got the feeling he noticed her walk in, that he felt her stare. She watched him wrap his arm around one glaze-eyed companion a heartbeat later, but something about that gesture struck her as not wholly uncomplicated, either.
Even so, it enraged her.
Hell, she could even admit it to herself.
She’d been jealous.
More than jealous, she’d been angry.
Some part of her actually believed his indignation while she’d been drowning in his venom. Without admitting it to herself, that same part bought his denial that he really went through a different human consort every week––whether because he killed them off, or simply due to a short sexual attention-span.
She hadn’t really let herself think about the improbability of his denial until it stared her straight in the face.
And yeah, the consort had been one Jet had never seen before.
She’d looked a little like Jet herself, actually.
Well, not physically. Physically, they bore little resemblance, but the human came more from the skag end of the spectrum than the well-fed house pets born in the Green Zone. Trazen’s slave had dyed white hair, and larger breasts. She’d al
so worn some kind of cave-girl outfit that left most of her belly and legs bare.
Needless to say, Trazen had her so doped up on his venom, the skag could barely seem to remember how to put food into her mouth when it arrived.
Laksri hadn’t been with Jet that night.
Someone must have told him Trazen had been in attendance, however, because Jet hadn’t been allowed to eat out since, not even with Laksri at her side.
In fact, she’d barely left the confines of their quarters, even to eat at one of the restaurants inside the Royal compound.
She hadn’t been outside the gates of the Royals at all.
She tried asking Laksri about that, but he never really answered her.
Then again, Laksri hadn’t said much of anything to Jet about what Trazen had done. She had no doubt he and Richter pow-wowed about it. She also knew Laksri visited Anaze. He’d also visited Trazen, not long after he woke up.
Jet hadn’t been privy to what occurred in any of those conversations.
Someone must have told him right off, though, about Trazen.
Laksri barely met her eyes when she first saw him awake.
She’d tried to confront him about what he’d set up with Anaze, but truthfully, she only went after him half-heartedly. Most of her reasons for storming into that recovery room the first time had been eclipsed by what happened with Trazen.
She was still angry at Laks.
She still felt manipulated.
She still strongly suspected Laksri was running his own game, conspiring with Anaze and Richter and whoever else to do it. She knew she’d be stuck going along for the ride to Astet, and they’d likely lie to her about that, too.
More than that, Jet was afraid.
The thing with Trazen scared her.
Not the stinging part, per se.
Not even in terms of her physical safety with Trazen himself.
For the first time, it really hit Jet how completely outmatched she was, in terms of being on equal footing with the Nirreth as a race. The incident with Trazen clarified that for her in a way that nothing else had, despite all the time she’d had to consider the ramifications of the venom with Laksri in the previous months.
It also threw everything she thought she’d felt in those same months completely into question. If she could be convinced to sympathize with, even to have feelings for Trazen, given what she knew about him, how could she trust anything she felt for Laksri?
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 54