by HC Playa
He almost wished for blessed oblivion. Every part of him ached. The remnants of sedatives made it difficult to determine how long since his capture. As the fog in his mind cleared, he tested his limbs. Nothing was broken, and his arms and legs were free for a change, but weakness pervaded his body. He blinked in the bright glare of halogen lights. Accustomed to dark closets with little or no light, his eyes watered and squinted as they attempted to adjust.
He pushed against the floor with his palms and rose to a sitting position. Seamless walls surrounded him on all sides except for the high-energy force field a few paces in front of him. No furniture of any kind decorated the cell. He spotted a sensor-controlled covered compartment for relieving himself, but the sliding door could not be removed from inside the cell. One look at the emitters mounted on the door frame outside the opening told him that touching the field would injure, perhaps even kill. The one avenue of escape meant taking out whoever came into the cell, if someone ever did.
He smelled a foul odor, and it took a few seconds to realize it came from him. He grimaced at the stains on his clothes. It would take more than a three minute shower to get him clean. A scraggly beard hung past his larynx, so he calculated that a minimum of a month had passed. Hair growth repressor lasted about a month for him, and after that his beard grew at about six times the rate of the average human male. Zane started to stand, but his head spun with dizziness and his muscles cramped and rebelled at the exertion. He let his body fall back to the ground. Zane covered his face with shaking hands.
Dread filled him at the thought of dying in this hole and never seeing Katarina again. He would give his soul to hold her one more time. Zane pulled his hands away from his face and waited for his fate. Whatever the Goloths had in store for him, he refused to give them the satisfaction of breaking his spirit.
Chapter 10
Champagne corks popped. Music played at a low volume while people laughed and spoke in animated voices. They celebrated the spectacular results of her clinical trials and FDA approval went through just last week. Even without licensing the patent to big pharma, generous alumni sent in donations to support the program. The gene therapy she tweaked worked even better than the statistics in Zane's files reported. If treated before the disease began compromising organ functions, so far it showed a ninety-two percent cure rate. Reaper was no longer a death sentence. Instead of excitement, Katarina felt adrift. Her disgust with administration prompted her to draft a resignation letter. She dropped it off at the Dean's office on her way to this stupid shindig. With Zane's assistance, she accomplished what she set out to do, and felt no desire to continue working where profits meant more than saving lives.
Her conscious bugged her for taking credit for essentially some alien scientist's work. She adapted it, but accepting all the praise being given felt wrong. At the moment she didn't even know if she wanted to remain a scientist.
To add to her frustration, her search for her biological father seemed at a dead end. She poured through her mother's records, which Naia had stored. She combed through old letters, printouts of emails, and even the boxes of memorabilia her mother kept. Nada. If she ever kept anything, it got lost or her mother destroyed it.
A couple strolled by and their lovey-dovey display forced her to turn away after returning their greeting. Six long months and she missed Zane more with each passing day. For the last month their link remained quiet. Once or twice she swore she felt a twinge, anger maybe, but couldn't she couldn't be sure.
Katarina sipped fruit punch and calculated whether she could slip out without anyone noticing. She wanted nothing more than to go home, lie down, and rest her aching back. She only bothered showing because she was guest of honor, and she couldn't be that rude.
People kept waving at her or offering congratulations as they passed. Still, she eyed the crowd, intent on escaping as soon as possible. She nodded to one of the department’s financial backers as he walked by telling the dean a joke involving three nuns in a car.
She grimaced into her fruit punch. Granted she understood test tubes and nitrogen freezers didn’t grow on trees, and the days of government funding and grants disappeared with decades of recessions, but that didn't make the schmoozing any more palatable. She headed toward the buffet, planning to mollify her mood with something sweet.
Katarina’s eyes narrowed as she spotted across the room a tall blond man chatting with the dean of graduate students. It can't be. She circled the periphery of the crowd so she could see the man's face. The minute she saw enough to confirm her suspicion, he looked directly at her. Glasses hid his eyes, but she felt them, and his undisguised power, focus on her. He said something to the dean and then headed straight in her direction.
He walked around the linen cloaked tables and servers carrying liquor and sodas with the grace of a dancer. His aura of power rippled through the room, drawing the gaze for an instant of every human he passed. The dazed looks that followed suggested he wore a glamour of forgetting, which meant once he passed the humans forgot they spoke to him or saw him. Such trivial magic did not work on her and the fact he allowed humans to see him at all spoke to his vanity. A song lyric that was an oldie even for her mother ran through her head. You're so vain. I bet you think this song is about you. She snickered, but managed to compose herself before he reached her.
"Kat," he spoke her name with warmth, as if they were the best of friends.
"Sidhe," she responded in a clipped tone that bordered on rude. His departure on the California beach still irked her.
"My name is Torin. I give you leave to address me thusly."
This guy needs to join the twenty-first century. "What do you want, Sidhe?" When he narrowed his eyes, she hid her smile in her punch. Damn, he's easy to ruffle. It was all kinds of insane to annoy the faerie, but it sent a thrill of edgy excitement through her, made her feel alive when most days she felt half dead, just going through the motions of life. Her powers surged to the surface, humming inside her, ready for her to tap into them.
Torin blew out a breath and muttered, "And to think I thought Finn difficult." He took a second before addressing her again. "I give you my word, Kat, I mean you no harm. I came to congratulate you on your accomplishments and to deliver a small bit of advice."
"You mean you have more cryptic bullshit for me? Oh, goody. I think I'll pass, thanks. I've enough on my mind without your riddles rolling around in my head."
Quick as lightening, Torin's hand snaked out and snatched a tumbler of liquor from a passing server. He downed the glass in one gulp, coughed once, and then the glass disappeared from his hand. "Damn it, Kat. I am one who is well used to having all his way, and yet I am bound on all sides by oaths and rules. You aren't stupid. Think, child--"
"Excuse me," she interrupted him. "I may be a fraction of your age, but I'm not a child. I have a damn good idea what I am and even have a lead on who my father is. So instead of coming here insulting my intelligence, perhaps you could be of actual assistance."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Torin held up one hand and all movement in the room ceased; frozen in that moment at his will.
Katarina pushed down her initial panic. It would take too much energy to actually freeze everyone in place. Someone from outside might come in. He's trying to rattle me. She recalled her undergrad physics and took a guess. "You took us a fraction of a dimension beyond the room. Out of time or maybe time travels different here?"
He narrowed his eyes at her. "You're a quick study." He walked a circle around her. "Are you not human?"
"Of course, but only half."
"Do tell."
"Is it forbidden for a faerie to say, oh, have a child by a human woman?"
"No. Most humans aren't compatible." He helped himself to a glass of wine on a frozen waiter's tray. "Say it."
"I have reason to believe I may be half Fae."
Torin stared into the wine that he swirled in its goblet. "Not enough. You know. Say it."<
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Her training in science demanded she not draw conclusions with inconclusive data, but this wasn't an experiment. She squared her shoulders and looked the faerie in the eye. "I'm half Fae."
"Finally! It took you bloody long enough." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You still have to guess who your father is though. Argh, I could kill him myself for agreeing to that blasted oath."
"I met him once, in Ireland. I don't know his name, but in here," she pointed to her chest, "I know. I didn't understand the connection I felt back then. Now I do."
"Okay, I can work with that." Out of thin air he materialized a piece of paper with an address scrawled across it. "He goes here a lot." Torin curled his lips in a faint sneer. "I have no idea why he spends so much time with humans."
Katarina accepted the paper, handling it with care. Good lord, I haven't seen actual paper in years. She glanced down at the writing. "Ireland? I can't just drop everything and go to Ireland. Hell, I'm not sure they'll let me on a plane in this condition." She pointed to her distended abdomen.
Torin sighed. "That is a complication I hadn't foreseen. Well, I can't send your father here, as much as I'd love to get him out of my hair. The oath plainly stated that you had to be the one to seek him out. Oaths aren't to be trifled with."
Katarina scowled. "Out of your hair? He seemed rather nice the one time I met him."
"Nice? I'm not sure I'd use that word in reference to your father. Moody, obstinate, pig-headed, a bloody pain in my ass, but don't let that stop you. You and he are quite a lot alike." He tilted his head to the side like a dog listening to a sound beyond human hearing. "Sorry, must run. Slan!"
She reached out her hand in a futile attempt to keep him from disappearing. "Annoying bastard!" she blurted before realizing the room had returned to normal.
The waiter turned and gawked at her.
"Sorry, not you." She turned, hoping her cheeks didn't showcase her embarrassment. God I hope my father isn't that annoying.
Chapter 11
Zane paced his cell to loosen his stiff muscles and ignored the shakiness in his limbs. A Goloth appeared outside the force field that enclosed the cell. Reptilian in appearance, smooth scales acted as natural armor in addition to the black flex-armor he wore. Large black eyes narrowed to slits as the alien stared at him. Zane stopped in his tracks. The Goloth spoke in an unfamiliar dialect. Having studied Goloths for years, he knew some but not all of the Gol dialects. Hate rolled off the alien, causing Zane's stomach to churn with nausea. Unlike most species, Goloths possessed a natural mental barrier which prevented him from reading their thoughts. Zane shuttered his mind so he no longer felt the Goloth's hate. He couldn't afford to vomit. The Goloth might take advantage of the display of weakness.
Footsteps echoed on the metal floor, ringing in his aching head. He smoothed his face into an unreadable mask when two more Goloths passed by his cell. They dragged a semi-conscious male between them. The prisoner groaned and raised his head as he was hauled past Zane's cell. At first, Zane thought it was another human but something about the proportion of the limbs seemed wrong. Large dark orbs with no whites attempted to blink him into focus. Blood matted tangled silver hair that hung just past his chin, framing a face more feline in shape than human. Of all the species, this one never entered his mind. Everyone thought the Dédanann extinct.
He disappeared from Zane's line of sight. A solid thud sounded, followed by a hum of power emitters activating. Another Goloth entered the outer room. Clothed in finer materials, he sported an ornamented knife in a gold sheath belted around his waist. His ostentatious display of wealth contrasted with the worn and inferior materials which the other soldiers wore.
Zane focused his attention on the serpentine face that stopped in front of his cell. A forked tongue darted out, scenting the air. The bright lights glared off the Goloth's shiny black scales. He rested one hand on his dagger and sneered at Zane and took a couple of steps toward the force field. He smiled and a chill went straight to Zane's marrow. He spoke Standard in a heavy guttural accent. "I am Karglock, Emperor of the Goloth people. My father died in battle against you. Your life is mine."
Zane furrowed his brow, as if thinking hard, and then replied, "I don’t recall ever commanding in a battle against an emperor. I’m sure I would remember that. The only people I’ve killed were criminals and terrorists." He paused to watch Karglock's face mottle greenish-black and his eyes gleam with hate. "Oh, you mean Goptemock. That puny old man was a coward. He blew himself up rather than fight us like the warrior he claimed to be."
Karglock hissed. "You, a human, dare defame my father’s memory?"
"What memory? He was a self-proclaimed ruler of a shattered empire. His death didn't even make the interstellar news briefs."
"You lie! He chose martyrdom for the sake of our people. Were it not for human duplicity, you and your kind would still be under our rule. It is time we regained our empire. Before you die you might prove useful, but if not, your pain and death will avenge my father."
Karglock gave an order to the guard in that unintelligible dialect as he left the room.
Zane’s heart raced as the guard with the feral gleam in his eyes went to an instrument panel set in the wall and stabbed at a control button. A bolt of energy shot from one of the force field emitters toward Zane. The beam hit him full in the chest. A scream ripped from his lips as his body convulsed. Every nerve ignited, and then, darkness.
***
Naia glanced sideways at Katarina as she unlocked her front door. For the sixth time Katarina toyed with something in her pocket. Instead of her usual distant expression, Katarina scowled. Naia opened the front door and her heels clicked on the hardwood floor, announcing her arrival.
"That you, baby?"
Naia shed her jacket, hanging it on the rod iron coat tree, and then kicked off her heels. "Yeah. Kat and I ditched the party. It was beyond boring. Dr. Riley cornered me and told me so many bad jokes I thought I might have to beat him upside the head to escape."
Robert's laughter echoed from his office. "I'll be out in a few. I'm almost done uploading the code into my prototype."
Naia's smile faded when her eyes landed on Katarina. She sat on the large mocha colored sofa in the living room. She still wore her jacket and her unfocused stare gazed at nothing in particular. Ever since Zane left, it seemed she spent half her time somewhere in her head rather than focused on the world around her.
Naia walked over sat down beside her. "Penny for your thoughts?"
"Got a million of them?"
Naia smiled. "Okay, how about a top ten list?"
"I don't think Zane's coming back. He's been blocking me for over a month."
"How do you know? Maybe stuff came up. If their military is anything like ours, there's always tons of paperwork before you can leave. Then there are his preparations to consider. You told me it was a risky trip. How about not borrowing trouble? Focus on your pregnancy, on the future, and try to be happy. Don't hang your happiness on whether or not Zane can come back."
Katarina leaned back against the couch cushion. "It isn't that easy, Naia. I wish it were. I want to think he simply ran into delays, but then the old doubts creep in. I wonder if maybe he decided I wasn't worth the risk or that he didn't love me after all. It's just so hard to believe that he saw everything and still loved me."
Naia frowned. "What do you mean? Why is that so hard to believe?"
Katarina looked down at her hands, which she folded and unfolded in her lap. "If my own mother and father couldn't, it isn't a stretch to see how he might change his mind."
"What?"
Katarina leaned forward, propped her elbows on her knees, and cradled her head in her hands. "I lost them long before they died, Naia."
Naia held her breath, afraid speaking would push Katarina back into reticence.
"I know you skulked around Dad long enough to figure out he was a Mage. I'm not a Mage and while I did get my talents from my father, I didn't get
them from Dad.
"The night Brandon attacked you, I walked in on Mom and Dad having a very informative argument. Turns out, someone else got Mom pregnant. They were both livid that I used magic to stop Brandon, but Dad more so. Mom was afraid of me from then on and Dad told me I was no longer his daughter. Add in that I have no fucking clue why my biological father abandoned me, and you can see why I have trust issues."
Katarina got up and paced the living room. Naia stared in shock and dawning comprehension "You're my sister and I love you no matter what."
Katarina turned and faced her. "I'm sorry I didn't say anything before now. I didn't think it would do any good for you to share my anger at them. I didn't want to ruin your happiness."
Naia stood up. "Bullshit. You were scared and thought I'd freak out. I've been a big girl for quite some time now, so you can get off your cross."
"I am not playing at being a damn martyr!"
"Did you even give Mom and Dad a chance to come around? No, you didn't. I was there. I saw the calls from Mom you ignored and the unanswered messages. Maybe if you'd talked to her you could have worked out your issues. How do you know Dad wouldn't have come around too?"
"You weren't there. They both looked at me like I was a monster."
"No one is perfect Kat; not me, not even you. In case you don't remember, I saw what you did. Yeah, it freaked me out, but you saved my life. That isn't something I'll ever forget. Even if I agree that Mom and Dad would never have accepted all your talents, you had me. You've always had me to confide in. So stop with the pity party. It isn't becoming." Naia fought the urge to tromp from the room and nurse her anger. She wasn't a needy, traumatized, and insecure child anymore. Naia folded her arms across and waited for Katarina to stop being stupid.
Katarina stared at her in silence for a minute and then heaved out a sigh. "You're right. Even Zane said I should tell you everything. To be totally honest, I ignored them not just because of what they said to me, but because they dismissed what you went through. Somehow, my using magic was far worse than what you being raped."