“Take it down a notch!” She tried plucking the blue fabric away from her chest but it only clung tighter.
“You must be a male tharp,” Kara told it through gritted teeth. “You really have to stop this!”
Just then, there was a knock on her door and Uncle Grennly stuck his head in.
“Your Aunt Zeelah asked me to get you for last meal, my dear. You uh…look lovely,” he added, his eyes crawling greedily over her body and taking in the way the royal blue fabric was molded to her curves.
“Oh, uh—thank you. I’ll be right out.” Kara crossed her arms over her chest, hiding her breasts as well as she could, feeling horribly uncomfortable. Uncle Grennly had seemed so nice before but the way he was looking at her gave her the creeps.
“Very well—our dining area is just down the hallway and to the left of the heat stream.” With a final lingering look, Uncle Grennly withdrew.
“Behave yourself!” Kara hissed to the tharp under her breath as the living fabric squeezed her nipples until they stood out like hard little buds. “If you think I won’t take you off and put back on my other clothes—the ones that don’t molest me—you’re wrong!”
The tharp responded by loosening a little around the breasts and thighs which made her breathe a sigh of relief. Good, maybe she just had to show it who was boss.
“That’s better,” she told it as she finally exited Nadiah’s room and made her way to the dining area. “Now be good at dinner, all right? I’m trying to make a good impression.”
When she got to the large dining table her great aunt and uncle were already seated. The table was heavy, elaborately carved stone and looked like it could seat twenty if need be but there were only three spaces set. Her aunt and uncle were seated on either end and there was a spot directly in the middle just for her.
Somewhat awkwardly, Kara took her seat. It seemed strange that the three of them were so far apart but maybe Aunt Zeelah and Uncle Grennly liked Last Meal to be a formal occasion.
“Ah, we’re so glad you could join us, Kara,” her aunt said. “I hope you enjoy gumby stew.”
“I’ve never had it before but I’m sure it will be delicious,” Kara said politely. She hoped she liked the stew—she had a full bowl of it in front of her. Picking up a spoon with a square-shaped bowl and a long handle, she poked at the strange mixture. It was full of dark green meat-like chunks swimming in pale green broth and the smell of it was slightly spicy, like the Tex-Mex food her Aunt Kat loved.
“Well, go on—eat up,” Aunt Zeelah commanded, taking a bite of her own stew.
“Oh yes, of course.” Kara took a spoonful of the mixture and began eating.
She had heard horror stories from her mother about the food on Tranq Prime but to her relief, the gumby stew wasn’t that bad. It was spicy and tangy with a slightly metallic aftertaste but it wasn’t horrible. Kara was able to finish the entire bowl which seemed to satisfy her elderly relatives.
There was bright blue woo to drink but it burned Kara’s throat and she stuck to the water, which was in her other goblet. It was rather awkward trying to make small talk across such a large expanse of the long table, but her aunt and uncle seemed more interested in eating anyway. At last, they were all finished.
“Did you save room for dessert or are you too tired, my dear?” Aunt Zeelah asked when the last mouthful of green stew had been swallowed.
Kara had to suppress another yawn. It really had been an incredibly long day. She couldn’t believe that only that morning she had been offending the Fr’Ensons and climbing Rainbow Mountain with Raak and now, tonight, she was on a whole different planet. But she didn’t want to offend her relatives by refusing dessert outright.
“Well, if you made something special—” she began.
“Oh no.” Aunt Zeelah waved one perfectly manicured hand negligently. “Nothing special. I just know we have some frozen sweetened xarna mucus in the icehole.”
“Oh, uh…that sounds delicious but if you don’t mind, I’d rather get some rest,” Kara said carefully. Growing up on the Mother Ship, she had tasted all kinds of foods from many different cultures but she had no desire to eat any kind of mucus.
To her relief, Aunt Zeelah nodded approvingly.
“That’s a good idea dear—get some rest. We’ve booked quite an early appointment for you with Dr. ThrobGood and you want to be at your best for the, uh, procedure.”
Kara wanted to ask again about the procedure but having a full stomach was suddenly making her horribly sleepy. She put a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn.
“Thank you, Aunt Zeelah, Uncle Grennly,” she said, nodding to each of them. “May I please be excused?”
“Such lovely manners.” Aunt Zeelah beamed at her. “Of course you may. Have a good night’s sleep, my dear. And if you need anything, please let me know.”
“Thank you so much.” Kara smiled at them both, being careful to keep her fangs covered, and then made her way back to Nadiah’s room.
“Time to go to bed,” she told her tharp, which had behaved nicely during dinner, much to her relief. “I wonder if I should wear you to sleep in too. Or if I should put on the pajamas I packed in my carryall cube?”
The tharp responded with a gentle, non-sexual caress—a soft brushing of its velvet surface against her skin—which felt like a plea. Remembering that the living fabric drew nourishment from being next to her skin, Kara relented.
“All right, you were very good at dinner,” she told her new dress/pet. “I guess I can wear you to bed too as long as you promise to behave.”
There was no answer except another soft, pleading caress, but that was enough to decide her. Taking off her boots, Kara slipped under the purple coverlet and snuggled into Nadiah’s bed. The last thing she saw as the wall glows faded to dim was the holo-picture of her Aunt Nadiah waving and smiling. The image followed her down into sleep, making her feel safe and secure.
Nine
“Wake up. My Child, you must wake up.”
Kara was having the strangest dream. The picture of Aunt Nadiah was speaking to her. But the voice wasn’t light and bubbly like Nadiah’s voice. Instead it was a warm, resonant, feminine tone filled with authority and power.
It doesn’t sound like Aunt Nadiah, she thought in her dream. But then who is it? Who’s talking to me?
“Wake up,” the holo-picture said again and now Kara saw that it had changed. Aunt Nadiah was no longer smiling and waving. Instead she had a worried look on her pretty face and she was motioning urgently at Kara. Also, her eyes had gone the strange green-within-green that Kara associated with priestesses of the Goddess.
The Goddess, she thought sleepily. It couldn’t be her talking to me, could it?
The thought brought her fully awake and she opened her eyes in the strange bed, feeling disoriented for a moment. Then she became aware that there were low voices coming from somewhere outside her room. She was tempted to roll back over and go to sleep but then she caught her name in the low murmuring and realized that her aunt and uncle must be talking about her.
Need to check this out, she thought and stumbled out of bed, straightening her new tharp, which had somehow gotten twisted around her breasts and between her legs as she slept.
Feeling a sense of déjà vu, Kara crept out the door and down the hallway, listening as she went. She could hear her Aunt Zeelah and Uncle Grennly talking but there was someone else as well—a well modulated, slightly fruity male voice.
Peeking carefully around the corner, Kara saw her older relatives sitting on a stiff, rather uncomfortably looking brown-spotted sofa. Sitting across from them in an equally uncomfortable looking high-backed chair was an older male.
He was a Prime, like Aunt Zeelah and Uncle Grennly, since he had no fangs and his bony shoulders were narrow, unlike a Kindred males would be. He was dressed like Uncle Grennly in a furry orange tharp-kilt and boots but he pulled off the look much better. Maybe because he had a full head of silver-gray hair and an important
air about him. He was also carrying a small black bag which looked made to hold medical instruments.
Dr. ThrobGood—that must be him, Kara thought. But what is he doing here so late? Or is it early?
She frowned. Aunt Zeelah had told her that they had made her an early appointment with the doctor. Had she overslept? Or was it still the middle of the night?
Kara checked the chronometer on her arm, which she had set to Tranq Prime time when she got to the planet’s surface. Sure enough, it was three o’clock in the morning, which meant she had been sleeping only about five hours. What was going on?
She started to go out and ask—maybe announce her presence and explain that their talking had woken her and she had decided to introduce herself to the doctor. But something stopped her. Maybe it was the lingering effects of her strange dream but she decided to hang back a bit and listen to what was being said.
“I’ve never performed the procedure on a female before,” Dr. ThrobGood was saying to her aunt and uncle. “I never dreamed I’d be called to do it. A female with fangs—Gods, what an abomination!”
“Yes, Doctor, we quite agree. So you can imagine how desperately we need your help.” Her Aunt Zeelah leaned forward, clasping her hands pleadingly.
“And how much we are relying on your discretion,” Uncle Grennly added grimly. “If anyone found out the girl is related to us…”
“Social suicide.” Aunt Zeelah threw up her hands dramatically. “That’s what it would be—social suicide!”
“Of course you can trust me to be discrete.” The doctor nodded his distinguished looking silver-gray head. He hesitated for a moment. “You do realize there may be…side effects, though?”
Side effects? Kara’s heart began to pound. What was he talking about?
“Side effects?” Uncle Greenly said, echoing her thought. “What do you mean?”
“Well, when we do this procedure on a Kindred male it tends to neuter them sexually. The fangs are inextricably tied to the sex drive in a Blood Kindred.”
They are? Kara thought wildly. But when she considered it, the doctor’s statement made sense. Wasn’t biting seen as a sexual act? And when her fangs throbbed and ached to bite a male, didn’t her pussy also throb and her nipples get tight? Yes, her fangs were definitely a sexual part of her.
“It’s very possible that extraction of the fangs may have the same effect on your niece,” Doctor ThrobGood continued. “She may be unable to experience sexual desire after the fangs are taken out.”
Extraction? Fangs taken out? Kara felt sick. All her nice daydreams of a kindly old doctor giving her cream to rub on her fangs to make them shrink were rapidly imploding. As much as she hated the effect her fangs had on the people around her, they were still a part of her. She didn’t want them removed—she just wanted them to be less noticeable.
What the doctor was talking about sounded drastic…not to mention painful. She’d had a tooth pulled once when she was younger and it had not been a pleasant experience. And her fangs were different from the rest of her teeth—they were so much more sensitive, so much more important somehow.
Kara put a hand to her mouth protectively. She felt as though she’d come out in the middle of the night and heard her relatives talking about giving her a clitorectomy—a female circumcision—as some of the primitive tribes down on Earth used to do, or something awful like that. How could they seriously be thinking about killing her sex drive without even asking her first?
But then it got worse.
“She may even be unable to conceive children,” Doctor ThrobGood continued. “I have no way of knowing but I would surmise that the extraction of her fangs might seriously jeopardize your niece’s chances of reproducing.”
“Well, that’s no great loss.” Aunt Zeelah waved a hand as though shooing away an annoying fly. “After all, who wants more fanged females running around? Really, we’d be doing her and the entire universe a service.”
Kara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Were they serious? She’d thought her aunt and uncle liked her. How could they feel this way? That she was an abomination that ought to be neutered for her own good? What was wrong with them?
“Personally, I feel the same way—it’s irresponsible to allow such a person to breed and possibly pass on her mutation. So if you’re willing to sign the papers of consent on her behalf, then I’ll be more than happy to perform the extraction,” Doctor ThrobGood said. He reached into his bag and pulled out a roll of parchment and a writing instrument.
“Of course we’re willing. Here.” Aunt Zeelah took the paperwork and, without even bothering to read the scroll, simply signed her name on the bottom. She was passing it to Uncle Grennly when Kara’s paralysis broke and she stumbled out from the hallway.
“You can’t be serious,” she said, looking from her aunt to her uncle. “I can’t believe this—I mean, I heard all the stories about how you tried to make Aunt Nadiah marry a male she didn’t love but I never dreamed you’d do something like this. How can you be so heartless and cruel?”
Uncle Greenly’s eyes opened wide and Aunt Zeelah’s mouth made a perfect O of surprise but Dr. ThrobGood kept his cool.
“Hello, my dear—you must be Kara.” He rose smoothly, black case still in one hand as he approached her.
“Yes, I am.” Kara took a step back from him. “And I’m also not interested in being neutered like an animal against my will. I thought you could give me something to shrink my fangs or make them less noticeable—not yank them out of my head and ruin my sex drive and my ability to have kids!”’
The doctor laughed—a soft, kindly chuckle that belied his earlier sinister words.
“Now, now my dear—I’m not a miracle worker or a Kaji from Xephron Five!” he exclaimed. “I’m afraid the only way we have to deal with your…deformity is to remove what’s causing you to be deformed.”
“I’m not deformed—just different,” Kara protested. “And what if I want a family some day?”
“Come now, Kara—you don’t want to bring more children into the world with your problems, do you?” Aunt Zeelah asked coaxingly, coming towards her. “Really, this is best for everyone.”
“You mean it’s best for you and Uncle Grennly so nobody knows you have a niece with fangs,” Kara exclaimed. “I’m sorry you feel that way but I don’t.”
“Your Aunt Zeelah is right, Kara,” Uncle Grennly was also closing in on her now, forcing Kara to take a step back. “It’s better not to pass on such mutations to the next generation.”
Kara took another wary step back.
“If you would rather I leave, I’ll be happy to go,” she said nervously. “Nobody even has to know I’m here. I’ll just slip back to my ship and fly home.”
“But I’m afraid I already told a number of my friends that our great niece was going to be appearing at the Snowdrop Festival with us,” Aunt Zeelah objected. “You can’t get out of going now, my dear. It’s a social obligation.”
“And in order to appear in public, you must get those fangs pulled,” Uncle Grennly said. “There’s no other way it would be socially acceptable.”
“So I have to get my fangs pulled out just so I can go to a fancy party with you? I don’t think so!” Kara exclaimed. “Do you hear yourselves? That’s crazy!”
Aunt Zeelah looked miffed.
“It most certainly is not crazy,” she snapped. “We are sticking our necks out for you, introducing you to the crème de la crème of our society, Kara dear. The least you can do is make yourself presentable before the festival!”
“You’re talking like I’m refusing to wear the right dress but this is permanent damage—pulling my fangs would change me forever in a way I don’t want to be changed!” Kara objected.
“It’s not just social standing at the Snowdrop Festival at stake, my dear,” Dr. ThrobGood said. “I happen to agree with your aunt and uncle—it’s our moral obligation to be certain someone with such an obvious deformity doesn’t procreate. And since t
he paperwork has already been signed, I feel I must perform the procedure.”
“What? No! Don’t I get any say in this?” Kara demanded.
“Of course you do—you’ll get to choose the prosthetic teeth I insert into the empty cavities left by your fangs. I promise you, I have some very nice ones,” the doctor assured her. “Nice and white and normal looking.”
“No!” Kara yelled. “You know that’s not what I meant! What’s wrong with you?”
“Not a thing, Kara—it’s what’s wrong with you that we want to fix. This is all for your own good,” Aunt Zeelah said, smiling sweetly. “Now be a good girl and come along…”
The three of them were still advancing on Kara and she was beginning to feel cornered. Her great aunt and uncle and the doctor were getting closer and closer—in a moment there would be no way out!
Breaking away, she ran towards the front of the domicile, trying to keep to one side of the heating stream so she didn’t fall into it and twist her ankle.
Have to get away from here—get out now! she thought, her heart drumming so hard she could barely breathe.
She got to the door but found to her horror that it wouldn’t open.
“Hey, what’s wrong with this? Let me out!” she cried, tugging at the handle but the thick door was shut tight.
Suddenly Dr. ThrobGood was right behind her.
“Take it easy now, my dear,” he murmured. “Let me just give you something to relax you and then we’ll continue this at my office.”
Something sharp bit the side of Kara’s neck and she gasped, feeling like she’d been stung by a wasp. She raised her hand to push whatever was hurting her away but noticed almost at once that her arm didn’t want to work right.
“Hey!” She turned to Dr. ThrobGood and nearly fell as her legs started to give way. “Hey…wha…what did you give me? Whas wrong with…with my body?”
Unbondable: Book 1 of the Kindred Birthright Series (Brides of the Kindred) Page 7