“You chose the Ensin hovercycle,” Kyon says from across the room, by the entrance to the hangar. I refuse to look at him.
“No, I didn’t. I chose the blue one.”
He comes closer to me, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous room. “They’re each made from the best manufacturers from the five houses of Ethar. This one is from a company I own in Alameeda.”
It’s hard not to be impressed, but I try anyway. “You design hoverbikes?”
“No. I pay people to design hoverbikes.”
“Oh. What’s this one called?”
“The Empress.” There’s something in his tone that makes me look up at him.
“I had no idea it was female,” I murmur.
“Would you like to pilot her?” he asks.
“You’ll teach me?” I ask breathlessly. I want so badly to learn to drive this. It can get me out of here—be the thing that helps me escape.
“Only if you don’t waste my time. You want to learn, correct?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” I ask rhetorically, running my hands reverently over the curves of the bike.
“No,” he frowns at me. “Especially not priestesses.”
“Why not?” I ask. They’d have to be out of their minds not to want to learn how to do this.
“It’s not seen as feminine,” he says. “It’s beneath them. And dangerous.”
“That’s silly,” I snort. “I want to learn how to pilot every single vehicle in your garage.”
“Hangar.” He moves past me to the hoverbike I just vacated. I go to Kyon. He sits on the hovercycle and lifts his arm, indicating that I should sit in front of him. I hesitate for a second. I should’ve picked a different kind of vehicle, but it’s too late, and I want to learn how to fly this one. I climb onto the seat in front of him.
Being this close to Kyon always scares me. I expect him to hurt me. It’s like being near an exotic animal, like a lion. Even if the lion has been somewhat domesticated, in the end, it’s a ferocious beast and it’ll probably wind up tearing your head off.
Kyon’s thighs nuzzle mine as he leans forward. He adjusts the deck where our feet rest. “You’re so little,” he says close to my ear. “I have to bring the pedals forward.” He does, and my feet finally fit into the slots on either side. He rests his hand on my left thigh. “This foot controls altitude. Press down on the pedal, the bike rises—ease up on the pedal, the bike will drop.”
“Got it,” I say, pressing down to feel the resistance. The hoverbike doesn’t move, because he hasn’t started the engine yet.
Kyon places his hand on my right thigh. “This foot controls your acceleration. Steering is on the handles. When you twist the left handle, you turn in that direction. Same goes for the right side.” His hands are heavy on me. The heat of them permeates my clothing.
“Is that it?” I ask.
“Squeeze the handsets hard and the hoverbike will brake.” His hands squeeze my thighs lightly.
“Like this?” I grip the handsets, leaning forward.
“Yes,” Kyon replies. He speaks to the hoverbike: “Lace compartment. Ignite engine.”
The hood of the hovercycle closes, securing us inside. The engine revs up; it vibrates beneath me just enough to let me know it’s on.
“Press the white button on the control panel to open the ceiling access,” Kyon murmurs in my ear. I do. Above us, a spiral opening forms in the ceiling as pieces of it retract, leaving a hole.
“Let me put my feet beneath yours on the pedals so that you can feel what I’m doing,” Kyon says. He moves his feet under mine. He leans forward so that he blankets my back with his chest as he places his hands over mine on the handlebars. The contact is extremely intimate. He makes me feel afraid and at the same time alive in ways that I feel only when I’m with him. He’s like waking up to fire. I know I can’t stay too long or he’ll burn me.
Gently, he maneuvers the hoverbike so that we rise up. Glancing down at the tops of his other aircraft as they grow smaller beneath us is another kind of awakening to life—it makes me somehow larger. As we emerge outside, the sun blinds me for a moment, until Kyon says, “Deepen tint.” The lid of the hoverbike darkens and the glare is cut. “Do you want to see the island?” Kyon asks.
“Yes.”
His cheek brushes against mine as he says, “Hold on.” Diving down, he drives the hovercycle in a death spiral toward the ground. I have the sensation of losing my stomach, but I resist the urge to close my eyes. He levels off the hoverbike just before we crash into a bed of wildflowers. We take the grass path that led me up to the hangar. At face-melting speed we move through the trees, twisting on the shell-lined path. My blood is violent in my veins.
When we reach the beach, he flies us on a cushion of air above the sand and out over the water. The sea beneath us is fire blue and siltless. Kyon makes a sharp turn; the hoverbike rears up like a nervous stallion. I suck in air. My rigid arms force me against Kyon’s chest. The back end of the bike drops into the water and causes a rooster tail arc to splash out of it until he brings the front of the vehicle down to level us off again. I breathe heavy in fear; my heart thumps in fleeing-rabbit beats.
“I like you like this,” Kyon says softly in my ear, as he drives at breakneck speed over the water.
“Like what,” I whisper breathlessly.
“At my mercy.” Nuzzling my neck with his firm lips, his left hand relinquishes mine on the handset. He wraps his arm around my waist.
My flesh tingles where the bristles of his skin touch me. An assault of shivers racks my body, not all of them unpleasant. “If you don’t stop kissing me, I’m gone and I won’t come back.”
With a frustrated growl, he continues to caress my neck with his lips. “You’re forever running away from me, Kricket. Don’t you wonder what it would be like if you were brave enough to face me?”
“No,” I reply.
His foot beneath mine lifts up a little on the accelerator. We slow. “Do you want to try it now?” he asks as he eases away from me a bit.
“Yes,” I reply. Anything would be better than his driving. We’ve traveled around one side of the island, but I hardly saw any of it because he was going so fast. He allows me to take control of the hovercycle by moving his hands from mine to my waist.
For the next few hours we cruise at a much slower pace around the perimeter of the island. Kyon shows me all the basics to piloting the vehicle. I almost can’t help myself when I begin daydreaming ways in which I can use this hovercycle to escape from Ethar. Kyon leans near my ear and says. “Take us to the house.”
I nod, continuing to assess the approximate distance of every point on the island. I’ll need to map out how far it is from the main house to the hangar—know to the second how long it will take on foot to get there and retrieve the hoverbike.
Rounding the large cliffs on the side of the island, the cove where the main house rests comes into view. It resembles an elegant pirate ship that only awaits the tide to take it back out to sea. I maneuver the hovercycle to the shore, bringing it to rest on the sand by the wide stone patio. From behind me, Kyon says, “Unlace compartment.” The lid of the hovercycle opens. Kyon rises and extends his hand to me. I ignore it and stand on my own. My legs are stiff from riding for so long.
“I need to go over the security sensors. I will be in my office, should you need me. We’ll dine on the beach in two parts.”
“Do you want me to take the hoverbike back to the hangar?” I ask, trying to hide my surprise at the freedom he’s allowing me. I may just have to seize the moment and leave now, even if I don’t know where I am or how to get to where I need to be.
“No. I’ll send it back.” He lifts his wrist, displaying a silver watchlike band. Tapping it with his finger, a lighted grid projects from his wrist. He touches the light on his skin, scrolling through menus before entering a coded sequence of lighted numbers. Next to me, the hood to the hovercycle closes. It lifts from the ground and travels unpiloted in
the direction of the hangar.
I must have a look of despair in my eyes, because Kyon says, “If your plan is to use one of my vehicles to escape, you should truly rethink that strategy. I can easily override the manual controls and call any of them back without much effort.”
“It’s kind of you to point that out,” I mutter.
“The shield is up as well. You’d have a problem getting through it.”
“Noted,” I say, nodding.
“And the defensive systems would activate to alert me the moment you’re no longer detected by them.”
My smile is grim. “I’m not leaving, am I?”
“Not without me,” he replies. “I will meet you here in two parts. Don’t make me come look for you.”
CHAPTER 8
FUTURE TRIP AND VIKING SHIP
The fire is hypnotic. I lean back in one of the large chairs Kyon had dragged out here to the beach. The campfire wavers beneath a metal grill placed over it. Smoke curls around the crustaceans Kyon is cooking for our dinner. After Kyon checked on the sensors today, we collected shellfish from traps in the sea. First he showed me how to set the snares, then showed me the best spots to catch the ugly creatures. They look a little bit like lobsters, but their shells are bright pink and they each have three heads and two tails. I, quite frankly, find them disgusting to look at, but my stomach growls every time their aroma floats in my direction.
The seawater is continually exhaled onto the shore nearby. It breathes something into me with every wave that crashes onto shore. I had no idea that water could make me feel this way: small and vast, and ancient and new, all at the same time.
The sun has almost disappeared into the horizon, and the breeze has turned cool. I shiver and rub my hands over my arms. Kyon walks up with an armload of firewood. He stacks the wood in the sand. Straightening, he glances in my direction and frowns. “Are you cold?” he asks.
“A little,” I admit, “but I don’t feel like moving right now to get a jacket.”
He dusts the stray pieces of bark from his dark, long-sleeved shirt before he pulls it off over his head and hands it to me. “Here, this is warm.” He straightens the short-sleeved shirt he still has on before flopping down in the sand at my feet and using a long stick to stir the fire. He leans back against the leg of my chair.
I hold his shirt in my hands for a moment before I straighten it out and pull it over my head. As it falls over my shoulders, I’m hit again by how much bigger he is than me. He’s a freaking giant. I’m swimming in his shirt. His scent is all over it too. It’s the scent that I’ve associated with fear. It’s at war with the warmth enveloping me.
Kyon cooks our dinner on the grill over the fire. I watch him in fascination, since I never expected any of this from him. From his seat on the ground in front of me, he hands me a plate over his shoulder. He glances back and asks, “Do you need me to taste it for you?”
I hold the plate in my lap and shake my head. “No,” I reply. “I think we’re past that now.”
We eat using our hands. It’s so good I find myself licking my fingertips. “Where did you learn to cook like this?” I ask.
Kyon smiles. “I was a soldier. I learned basic survival: hunting fishing, trapping. Part of that entails preparing food.”
“I think this is my favorite thing about you,” I say, eating another delicious morsel from my plate.
He laughs. “You’re so easily bribed. I had no idea I could score points with food.”
I laugh too. “Food has always been a priority. There were days when I was younger that I made a meal by just smelling something like this.”
Kyon sobers. “What do you mean?”
I shrug as I continue to eat. “Oh, you know—I just know what it’s like to be hungry. Sometimes I didn’t have any money, so I used to sit in this alley outside my favorite pizza place in Chicago and inhale the aroma coming from the oven vents. I got really good at pretending to eat.”
“How often did you do that?” he asks. I glance up from my plate to see that he has stopped eating.
I try to minimize what I just said. I don’t even know why I told him that. I shrug again, “Not that often.” No one really wants to know things like this. They think they do, but poverty is seen as a failing—a weakness. He turns to me and puts more food on my plate. “I’m good!” I laugh. “I can’t possibly eat all this!”
“You’ll tell me when you’re hungry,” he orders sternly.
“Okay,” I reply, bewildered.
He rises from the ground and brushes the sand from his clothing. When I’m finished, he takes my plate. I let him. He walks away with it to the house and disappears inside. Absently rubbing my hands on my napkin, I watch the fire and wonder at Kyon’s demeanor. I don’t know what to make of any of it. He’s being decent, for a psychopathic kidnapper. Friendly. I don’t like it. It’s confusing.
Returning to the beach, Kyon carries with him a silver salver and a couple of long skewer sticks. He sets down the silver tray on the low table by the fire; it has a short, fat porcelain carafe with two porcelain shot glasses. Pouring a splash of the white liquid into them, Kyon looks over the rim of one at me as he takes a sip. He extends the other cup for me to take. I stand and walk to where he is by the fire. Taking the cup from him, I’m not at all sure that I’ll drink it. “What is this?” I ask. I sniff it. It smells like pears.
“It’s a mild alcohol.” I try to hand it back to him, but he puts up his hand and says, “It won’t hurt you. It goes with this.” He bends and picks up a little red bead of goo from the silver tray. Taking one of the skewer sticks, he impales the red bead on it and hands the stick to me. Holding the implement in one hand and the cup in the other, I watch him pick up another bead of goo from the tray and impale it on the other stick. “You’ll need both hands for this,” he remarks, eyeing the cup in my hand.
Reluctantly, I drink the pear alcohol; it burns my throat. I try not to cough as I set the porcelain cup back on the silver tray. “Mild,” I gasp ruefully.
Kyon chuckles. “You don’t really think that was strong, do you?” he teases.
“You see my eyes watering?” I reply as I wipe the mist from my eyes.
“You’re small—maybe you can’t tolerate it like I can.”
“I’m not small,” I sigh.
He snorts. “One only needs to see you in my shirt to see the truth in my statement.”
I shake my head. “Just because you’re all giant freaks does not make me small.”
He grins. “Perspective is everything. Now, do you want to see this or not?” he asks.
I shrug. “See what?”
“Dessert.”
He walks closer to the fire and places the end of the skewer with the red bead on it in the flames. He rolls the skewer between his palms. The sugar paste activates with a sizzling sound and begins to puff out like cotton candy does. Whirling it around the stick, it hisses as Kyon creates a lovely red flower within the flames. He pulls it out, and the delicate petals open and bloom before my eyes. Plucking a petal, he extends it to me. I try to take it from him, but he pulls it back. Instead, he dangles the petal near my lips. I relent, allowing him to place the dessert on my tongue. The warm sugar melts in my mouth.
“Mmm.” I savor the taste. When I glance at Kyon, he’s watching me with fascination. It unnerves me enough to turn away from him.
I push my long sleeves up to my elbows and thrust the cherry-red sugar bead on the end of my stick into the fire. Trying to copy what Kyon had done, I roll the skewer between my palms, but I lack his technique. Mine quickly becomes a lopsided cobra weaving chaos on the end of the stick, and then all of a sudden, it explodes with a loud pop and falls into the fire. I laugh as I make a face. I pull the empty stick from the flames. Smoke wafts up, spreading the odor of burning sugar. “Aww! I’m so bad at this! I broke mine!” I feign a forlorn expression, and then laugh.
“Do you want to try again?” Kyon asks.
I nod vigorously and
hold my stick out to him. He expertly impales another cherry-colored sugar bead to the end of it and then helps me with my technique as we cook it together. When we pull the stick out of the flames, the corners of some of the petals are a little singed, but it’s not too bad. “You did well,” Kyon says as he bends his face nearer to mine.
“Thanks,” I say breathlessly. Turning away from him, I take it back to my seat and pull it apart slowly, eating it as I watch the fire flicker. Kyon sits by my feet, eating the other sugar flower.
When we’re finished, I help Kyon clean up. Then we sit again in front of the fire and Kyon feeds it huge logs, making it leap and dance. It feels good, staving off the chill of the night air. Kyon sits in the large seat next to mine. He lifts a guitarlike instrument from where it was propped against his chair.
“Do you know how to play that?” I ask as he tightens some of the steely strings. He doesn’t answer, but begins to run his fingers over the instrument. The sound is poignant and sweet. Strings of paper hearts are cut from the sound to float up to the stars. Shivers move down my shoulders. It doesn’t take long for the hypnotic strains of the music, the haze from the alcohol, and the dancing heat of the fire to conspire and make me drowsy.
My breathing slows. I exhale a curl of cold air from my lungs as my fingers turn arctic and clutch the arms of the chair. Unwillingly, my consciousness leaves my body.
I don’t know where I am when I come to rest from my flash-forward through time. I don’t even know what I’m seeing right away. Looking around, I’m in the middle of a beautiful park at dusk. A wild group of unaccompanied young boys about twelve or thirteen floans old fly by me on boards that resemble snowboards. The decks of these devices hover above the walkway while flame-blue light shines beneath them. Rounding a tall lamppost at the end of the path, they shoot back around, as if they’ve turned on a berm. It’s really the force of air beneath the board that flips them back in my direction.
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