“Well, I don’t know the exact measurements of the damn thing but I do know it’s called a ‘ceiling’ for a reason, so I do,” Wheezer remarked. “I heard the Yonnite Mistresses talking when they met here for council right before it was put in place. It’s meant to cover the entire rec-yard, as I understand it, and run a few meters out on the sides for good measure.”
“Oh…” Ari whispered. The panic inside her had turned to dread—dread as cold and heavy as a lead weight in her stomach. The transport balloon she’d paid so much for was structurally strong but vulnerable to projectile weapons and beams. In other words, if she and Jak tried to escape in it, they’d be fried and burned exactly like the hapless bird she’d seen lured down by the huge inmate.
Goddess of Mercy—how are we ever going to get out of here now? she thought, feeling sick. And where is Jak anyway? I have to see him…have to tell him…
“But watchin’ Wayboid eat birds isn’t why I came to find you,” Wheezer said, breaking her desperate train of thought. “I told old Mukluk that you’re a fixit and he was real pleased, so he was. We’ve been needing another fixit around here for some time.”
“Oh, thank you,” Ari said vaguely, hardly knowing what she was saying.
“And I found that Blackthorn fella that you were looking for,” Wheezer went on.
“What?” Ari rounded on him, her heart in her throat. “Where is he? I don’t see him out here in the yard anywhere.”
“That’s because he ain’t in the yard.” Wheezer looked suddenly grave. “I’m afraid he’s in the hole, Ari-lad. And according to what I heard, that’s where he’s bound to stay for a time yet.”
“The hole?” Ari asked. “What’s that?”
Wheezer shook his head and chuckled.
“You really are green, aren’t you lad? The hole is solitary—way down in the dungeons-like. They stick you down there on nothin’ but protein paste and water and you don’t never seen sunlight. Cramped up in a tiny cell—smaller than ours even—in the dark with no light or companionship. It ain’t much fun, I can tell you that!”
Ari was horrified.
“So he’s locked up in the dark with hardly anything to eat and nobody to talk to?” she exclaimed. “How can anyone survive like that—it would drive you crazy!”
“Most often it does,” Wheezer said seriously. “The good news is, though, that this friend of yours has only been in the hole five or six solar months.” He frowned. “I knew there was a reason I hadn’t seen him around lately.”
“Five or six months!” Ari cried. “That would feel like an eternity with no light or anyone to talk to! That’s…that’s cruel and unusual punishment!”
Wheezer shrugged. “That’s Yonnite Mistresses for you. Sorry, lad.”
“But…when can I go see him?” Ari asked. She looked around wildly, wondering if she could go right now. She would probably get into trouble if she snuck out of the yard early but—
“Oh, you can’t see him, I’m afraid.” Wheezer shook his head, his cracked glasses winking in the weak sunlight. “Nobody’s allowed down in the hole but the prisoners stuck down there and the guards. You get caught down there without having some official business or a damn good reason to be there and you’ll likely be thrown in the hole yourself. Worse luck for you.”
“So…Jak’s stuck down there and I can’t even see him?” Ari demanded.
“I’m sorry, lad.” Wheezer patted her shoulder awkwardly. “You were that close, were you?”
“I…” Ari shook her head. She couldn’t answer, couldn’t even begin to form words. The pain and disappointment and panic were still too raw—too fresh and new to process. Shaking her head again, she wandered away from Wheezer in a daze.
Jak’s down there—down in the hole and I can’t get him out—can’t even see him. And even if he was out in the general population again, there’s no way I can save him or myself. I’m trapped—stuck here in BleakHall and there’s no getting out.
The thoughts ran over and over in her mind—an endless loop of fear and pain and despair as she wandered aimlessly in the vast Rec Yard. She didn’t even realize that tears were dripping down her cheeks until a deep, familiar voice said,
“Ari? What are you doing? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be out here?”
Though Lathe told himself he didn’t care what Ari did or where he went, he couldn’t stop himself from keeping an eye on the boy, even when he was supposed to be working out. The yard could be a dangerous place if you wandered into the wrong territory and Ari had already proven he was good at that.
In the meantime, Lathe had a lot of frustration to work out and exercise was a damn good way to do that. He pumped the heavy steel-bricks with a single-minded purpose, trying to purge himself of the unwanted emotions that rose inside him like dark currents in the waters of his psyche.
It didn’t matter what Ari thought of him or his fangs, he told himself as he pumped, lifting the heavy weights over his head as the wooden bench strained beneath him. It didn’t matter if the boy refused to be healed. There was always the chance that the orbital fracture would heal on its own once the swelling went down. But he didn’t have a lot of hope for that—a trapdoor fracture was nothing to fool around with and—
Lathe became suddenly aware that Ari was out of his line of sight—the boy must have wandered off while he was preoccupied with pumping.
With a grunt of effort, he came up, still holding the bar full of heavy weights, and deposited them carefully on the ground in front of the bench. He never used a spotter because no one else at BleakHall could lift as much as he could. Like every other aspect of his prison life, Lathe was alone when it came to working out.
Alone until Ari came along, whispered a little voice in his head. But where was the boy? If Tapper was anywhere near him…
Then he saw Ari, wandering out in the middle of the yard where he wasn’t supposed to go. The prisoners were supposed to keep to the perimeter for the most part, leaving the interior of the vast rectangular yard free for the guards to keep an eye on them.
Of course, that was how it worked in a regular prison staffed with humanoid guards. Since the Horvaths hated the outside so much, it would probably take them some time to come out into the middle of the yard. But once they did, Ari would be in for a world of hurt. Any of the lizard-guard forced to come out under the open sky to retrieve a prisoner was going to be short on patience and generous with his pain-prod.
“Ari?” Lathe jogged over to the boy, whose back was to him. “What are you doing?” Lathe demanded. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be out here?”
Still the boy didn’t answer.
“Ari!” Fed up with the silent treatment, Lathe took him roughly by the shoulder and spun him around.
What he saw shocked and worried him.
Ari was crying. Not outright sobbing, thank the Goddess, but his large, dark eyes were filled with tears that were rolling silently down his flushed cheeks. He looked utterly miserable…and utterly vulnerable.
“Gods,” Lathe muttered harshly, looking around to see if anyone had noticed the boy’s state. Tears were dangerous at BleakHall—they were an obvious, outward sign of weakness. Crying anywhere—especially in the yard where everyone in the whole damn prison could see—was like hanging a “fuck me up and rape me” sign around your neck.
“Ari, you have to stop,” he told the boy urgently. “I don’t know what started you off but you can’t cry in the fucking yard. It’s dangerous.”
The boy looked up at him, his face full of so much sorrow and misery that Lathe’s heart ached for him. He understood suddenly that the boy couldn’t stop. He was in the middle of an emotional upheaval as unstoppable as any physical urge. In fact, it might only be a matter of time before things got worse—a whole hell of a lot worse.
“Here…” Lathe put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and for once Ari didn’t pull away. “Come on,” Lathe muttered, leading him away from the middle of the rectangular fie
ld, overgrown with stubby gray vegetation. “Come on—over here.”
He led the boy to the far corner of the yard which was currently unoccupied, hiding Ari’s face with his arm as much as possible. He took a look behind him and saw that Wheezer was watching with a sharp eye but no one else seemed to have noticed. Making a sign to the old trustee, he raised his eyebrows.
Wheezer nodded back and hooked a thumb towards his cracked oculars.
“I’ll watch your back,” the gesture said. Good.
Lathe nodded and then turned back to Ari. When he was certain the boy’s slender frame was completely sheltered by his own broad back and that no one could see Ari’s face, he tilted the boy’s chin up and looked into his tear-filled eyes.
“What is it?” he asked softly. “What happened, Ari? Can you talk about it?”
The large eyes overflowed and the boy shook his head mutely. Clearly whatever the pain was, it went too deep for words.
Lathe felt his heart twist at the boy’s mute misery. What was it about Ari that affected him so deeply? Why couldn’t he stop feeling for the boy?
“All right then,” he said roughly. “If you can’t talk, that’s all right. Just let it out but try to keep quiet if you can. It really isn’t safe to cry in the yard.”
Then he did what he’d been wanting to do from the first moment he saw the boy. Putting his arms around the slender shoulders, he drew Ari close and held him.
At first Ari felt stiff in his arms—a block of wood. But then he seemed to melt against Lathe. Burying his face in Lathe’s chest, he began to sob—a low, heartbroken sound that seemed to tear at Lathe’s own heart.
“All right, little one,” he murmured soothingly. “I don’t know what it is but it’s going to be all right. I swear it.” Gently he rubbed Ari’s back and trembling shoulders, noticing that the boy felt a lot softer in his arms than he looked on the outside. But maybe it was just the material of his jumpsuit bunching against his chest—it really was too big for him.
This whole place is too big for him, Lathe thought ruefully. He shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what crime he committed but whatever it was, there was no call to send such an innocent to BleakHall.
Ari’s face was hot and wet against his chest but the boy managed to keep his crying to low, choked sobs that hopefully weren’t audible to anyone wandering by to see what they were doing in the corner.
Of course, Lathe knew what he hoped the other prisoners thought they were doing. This far corner of the Rec Yard was usually reserved for casual sexual encounters between inmates who couldn’t see each other anyplace else. If the other inmates saw him and Ari locked together in an embrace, they would hopefully think they were doing what was usually done in this corner—the “fuck and suck corner”—as it was called.
Lathe thought dryly that if, at any other time in his life, he’d had the idea that people thought he was having a romantic encounter with another male, he would have been concerned that he was giving the wrong impression. Now he hoped he was giving the wrong impression. It would be much safer for Ari if he was.
At last the boy’s sobs trailed off into sniffles and he looked up at Lathe.
“I’m sorry,” he said thickly. “I didn’t…didn’t mean to cry all over you.”
“Crying all over me isn’t the problem,” Lathe told him. “It’s crying where anyone can see you that makes you look weak and could get you killed. Hopefully nobody noticed before I got to you. Here…”
Seeing that Ari’s eyes were still wet, he unknotted the sleeves of his jumpsuit, which he’d tied around his waist so he wouldn’t sweat through the striped material when he worked out, and used one sleeve to dab gently at the boy’s swollen eyes.
“Thank you,” Ari whispered, his voice still rough with tears. “Why are you so good to me?” he asked. “Even after I refused to let you bite me?”
“I didn’t want to bite you for my own pleasure,” Lathe said, though to be honest, his fangs were throbbing at the thought—throbbing in the way they only did when a Blood Kindred wanted to bite and bond a female to him. Telling himself his body was simply reacting to Ari’s sweet female scent, he added, “I wanted to bite you to heal you. That’s all, little one.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore—nothing matters.” There was a calm despair in Ari’s dark eyes as he spoke. “Anyway, I want you to bite me, now.”
“You do?” Lathe frowned, confused by the boy’s sudden change of heart. “Now you’ve decided you trust me and you want to be healed?”
“No.” Ari shook his head. “I don’t want you to heal me—I want you to bite me like you bit that man, Hexer, in the Mess Hall this morning. I want you to bite me so I can die.”
“What are you talking about?” This sudden suicidal bent worried Lathe even more than the boy’s tears. “You can’t be serious,” he exclaimed, searching the boy’s eyes with his own.
“I want you to bite me,” Ari repeated stubbornly and his eyes filled again. “I’ll never see Jak again and it’s the only way…the only way I’ll ever be free of this place,” he choked. “The only way.”
Lathe didn’t know who Jak was—it was the same name Ari had called out the night before in his sleep—but he knew despair when he saw it.
“Come here, little one,” he rumbled, pulling the boy to him again. “Whatever is going on, I swear it’s not as bad as that. We’ll get through it together, you’ll see.”
Ari made no answer but his shoulders shook miserably and it was a long time before he could regain control of himself again.
Lathe held him close and found himself sending up a silent prayer.
Goddess, I don’t know his pain but let me help Ari. Let me ease this misery and despair and bring him new hope. And help me to keep him and myself safe in this pit of vipers. Please…
He heard no answer, though it was not unheard of for the Goddess to speak to her people. But he felt a sense of peace stealing over him and he stroked Ari’s tangled black almost-curls and rubbed the shaking shoulders until the boy’s sobs at last quieted again and he pressed silently against Lathe’s chest and was still.
Nineteen
Ari really wanted to die.
She knew it might sound to an outsider like her death wish was giving up but really, what choice did she have? It was either die now or a week from now, when the power source on her look/touch holo projector ran out. She remembered Lathe’s words to her that morning:
“If a female walked into BleakHall she’d be raped to death inside of fifteen minutes…most of the inmates here are misogynists who hate females.”
Ari felt a shiver run through her. I’d rather die quickly than wait for that kind of fate, she told herself. And if letting Lathe bite her was the only way to kill herself, well, then she would do it.
I’ll ask him again tonight, when it’s lights out, she told herself as she went through the rest of her day—more work in the prison laundry and then a hideous, barely-edible supper in the Mess Hall. She couldn’t imagine living like this, day after day, anyway. The sheer monotony of it would kill her. And if there was no way to see Jak and no way to get out, it was better to die now with her secret still intact.
She waited until she’d taken a cat-bath in the sink and gotten into a fresh jumpsuit for sleeping, (one benefit of working in the laundry was access to plenty of fresh clothes), before she approached the big Kindred again.
Lathe had also washed up in the small sink and he was sitting on the edge of the bunk wearing a pair of dark blue sleep trousers—as a trustee he had access to pajamas which the other prisoners were not allowed to wear. His reddish-brown hair was slicked back from his high forehead with water and his turquoise eyes were thoughtful as Ari approached him.
“Why aren’t you dressed for bed?” he asked, motioning to her jumpsuit. “You work in the laundry—didn’t you get yourself sleep clothes?”
“I, uh, thought they were only for trustees,” Ari faltered.
He shrugged, his broad, bare s
houlders rolling.
“Mostly they are but I’m sure Wheezer would turn a blind eye if you took a pair for yourself. Be a hell of a lot more comfortable than sleeping in one of those damn jumpsuits.”
“You slept in one last night,” Ari pointed out.
He nodded. “Because I didn’t want to scare you by taking off my clothes. You were already jumpy enough as it was without me adding to your fear.” He raised an eyebrow. “But seeing that we know each other a little better now, I’d rather be comfortable—if you don’t mind.”
“No, it…it’s fine with me.” Ari bit her lip, her eyes roving over his broad bare chest, thinking of how it had felt against her face when he held her close that afternoon in the Rec Yard. The hard muscle of his pecs… the heat of his big body…the rough scratch of his chest hair against her cheek…the warm, masculine scent of him…God, he smelled so good—why was that?
Stop it, she told herself angrily. Why are you thinking about that now? You’re about to ask him to kill you! You can’t seriously be getting turned on right now. That’s ridiculous!
“Here—you can wear the top to my sleep set,” Lathe said, breaking her train of thought. Picking up a dark blue shirt so big Ari could probably wear it for a dress, he tossed it to her.
She caught it reflexively. “No really—I’ll be fine in my jumpsuit,” she protested.
“But I won’t,” Lathe said firmly. “The fabric they make those things out of is damn rough. If you’re going to be rubbing against me every time one of us turns over at night I’d just as soon not feel like I’m getting scratched by sandpaper.”
Ari started to protest and then thought, what does it matter? I’m going to die tonight anyway. It would be nice to be wearing something slightly more comfortable when I do.
“All right,” she said and took the top back into the tiny bathroom to change. It felt funny not to have anything covering her legs but, as she had guessed, the garment was so big it fell to her mid thighs. She’d worn skirts shorter than this when she dressed up back home on Phobos, so it ought to be okay she told herself.
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