by Kate Rudolph
Her brows drew together and she stared at his hand. No, at his claws. Arest kept completely still. They were as much a part of him as his skin, and he could not hide them from her, even if he tried.
She licked her lips. “I’m Stella. Stella McDonald. From Earth. What about you?” Her eyes flicked towards the foul smelling door at his back and she pushed herself back against the wall as if she could phase through it to safety.
His mind ticked off the information. McDonald, family name. Earth, planet. And she wanted the same from him. Arest sorted through the scant memory he’d recovered, but there was nothing there. Nothing but his own name. “Arest,” he said again. “Safe.” He had no history to give her, only protection.
“Ooookay. Arest safe. Got it.” He couldn’t tell whether she believed him, but so long as she didn’t run he didn’t care.
He pointed back at the door. “Bad,” and then back down the hallway, “safe.” Then he held out his hand, claws and all. Even with her little light stick, the tunnels were dark and full of tricks, and he needed her close.
He needed to touch her.
Stella eyed his claws, and then her eyes crawled up the rest of his arm, pausing on the letters embedded in his skin. She snapped her gaze up to him and then back down to his arm. Suddenly self-conscious, Arest pulled back and gave her his other arm, the one covered in mud and gore from his scuffle with the creature. But Stella didn’t seem to mind that.
She stepped closer and touched his claws, rooting him in place as effectively as a chain. “What’s this?” she asked, rubbing his forearm. Mud and blood and dirt came away and revealed raised dots that Arest hadn’t noticed before. They weren’t as clear as the name tattoo, but he could trace his claw over it and spell out the word.
BEAST.
Was that what he was?
“Someone did something to you, didn’t they?” Stella asked, running her finger over the bumps. “Something very bad.”
Did they? Arest couldn’t remember. He covered her hand with his own and almost groaned when her fingers flattened against his forearm. Her skin was a little cool against his own and even though she wore more clothing than him, he was certain that he was the warmer of the two.
She needed shelter, he needed to provide it.
He wrapped his fingers around hers and tugged, even though he’d have loved nothing more than to let her touch him all day. “Safe,” he said, pulling her toward the hallway they’d come from.
Stella stared at him and then down at their joined hands. “Safe,” she agreed.
He led her back the way they’d come, his first thought to return to the chamber where she’d slept. If the doors were to open again, then they could both escape. But something in his gut warned him he was on the wrong path. Those doors had closed for a reason and Arest doubted they’d open any time soon.
Something about this seemed eerily familiar, as if he’d been here before. And that same familiarity told him that they’d only find more trouble if they waited by their entrance.
So Arest turned away, thankful at least that he would not need to follow the stench of the rotten creature that he’d killed earlier. The smell would have only gotten worse. The caverns weren’t cold enough to halt the decay.
They walked for a long time, but Arest noted every turn, drawing a map in his mind. These tunnels were a maze, and without his keen senses, they would have long ago been lost.
Stella remained silent beside him, gripping her light stick tight with one hand and holding loosely onto his palm with the other. Arest knew he’d be able to fight better if she let go, but he would not trade the contact with her for the world. For any world.
He passed two more doors, the scents emanating from them even fouler than the one he’d stopped Stella from opening. The second door was by far the worst. Not only did it stink, the air around it moved like something hungry lived within it, just waiting for the unwary to get too close.
There was something unnatural about these halls.
He turned a corner and stopped, but Stella took another step, crossing the threshold. Arest pulled her back, hugging her close to his chest, the press of her body soft against his naked skin. Her scent washed into his nostrils, hitting him low and setting a fire of desire burning bright.
As he was distracted by skin and scent, something growled loudly and sprang onto his back.
CHAPTER FOUR
STELLA STUMBLED FORWARD, suddenly pushed out of Arest’s too warm and too hungry embrace. Though she couldn’t tell if it was his hunger or her own. She should have let go of him a long time ago, but as they’d walked the tunnels for hours, she couldn’t step away. He was warm and safe and there and she needed another human—well, person—who was something approaching safe.
When Arest fell forward after her, she thought he’d tripped, but the soul curdling growl that came from behind him told her otherwise.
They weren’t alone. Again.
The last fight had been interminable, with her huddled in the corner, trying not to draw any attention to herself. This time, it was already over by the time she even thought about getting out of the way. Arest crouched over another monster, its throat slashed and gushing putrid blood into the hallway around them.
He glanced over his shoulder at her and jerked his head back, telling her to get out of the room that she’d stumbled into. She was half over the threshold and stepped back, edging around the corner of the wall and trying to stay out of his way.
What if he went crazy on her? What if he tried to attack? He’d taken out the creature on the ground in seconds and it seemed to know how to attack. The most she’d ever done was taken a self-defense class offered for free through her civilian fleet training program.
But Arest wasn’t paying much attention to her. He hefted the creature up over his head and tossed it through the doorway into the room she’d almost been sitting in. All she saw of the monster was something vaguely humanoid with too much hair and rat-like claws tipping dirty fingers.
Arest seemed to be waiting for something. He held up a hand, but was too far away to hold her back. For that, Stella was thankful. His hand was black with nasty blood that she could smell from a few meters away.
He crouched low and she found herself mimicking his motion, bending her knees and placing a hand against the wall to steady herself. Arest looked around and Stella couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was like a machine, or one of those cyborgs she’d seen doing patrols of a space station far away from here. Of course, everyone said cyborgs were mostly human, or mostly whatever they were made from—Oscavian, Keie, or some other race. But she didn’t know what Arest was, and she was pretty sure he didn’t know either.
He walked like a human, but with a dancer’s—or fighter’s—grace. The gestures he gave her were human: nods, waves, hand holds. But space was a mixed up mass of people and so many gestures crossed cultures with ease. Despite the purple skin and claws, Stella couldn’t help but see something human about him. She’d met many aliens in her life, and none of them had acted like Arest.
No one she’d ever met had acted like Arest.
After a moment, he stood and she did as well. He took a deep breath and looked over at her, meeting her eyes while he flexed his fingers out, telling her to stay put. She nodded.
And then he walked into the room with the creature’s corpse.
It was on the tip of her tongue to call him back, to tell him to wait or to urge him down the road and away from that thing. But she bit her lip to keep from making a peep and watched him go. He’d made this decision, and she wasn’t his keeper.
But she took a step back, making sure she was completely clear of the entrance to the room in case the door closed. A moment later she scuttled back further and ducked as something came flying towards her. She thought they were under attack again, but as the thing landed with a meaty crash, she saw it was the body of the thing that Arest had defeated.
What the hell?
She looked between it and th
e shadowy door. The room beyond was too dark to make out, though she thought she saw Arest’s outline stalking around.
They needed to work on their communication. Maybe the guy couldn’t really talk, but there had to be some way to tell her that he was about to chuck a dead body her way. Just yell out ‘bad’! He could handle that, couldn’t he?
She was about to stalk into the room and give him a piece of her mind. Clearly there weren’t any other monsters in there. She’d hear him fighting. Or something. Adrenaline surged through her and she needed to move, to run. Who just threw a body? She took back all she’d thought about his humanity. Clearly he wasn’t from Earth or anywhere that humans lived. Not unless he’d been plucked out of some cave tens of thousands of years ago. And since time travel was impossible, she knew he had to be an alien. At least that made sense.
Arest’s outline got closer as he approached the door, and Stella stepped up to meet him, ready to go off on him. But before she could cross the threshold, the door slammed shut, cutting her off from him and leaving her next to the rotting corpse of some tunnel monster.
She didn’t scream. She couldn’t scream. When she opened her mouth to cry out, it was like something grabbed onto her throat and squeezed, cutting off the sound before she could make it. Stella clutched at her neck, but nothing was there except the choking feeling of terror soaking into her.
Stella stumbled forward and dug at the metal, looking for a place she could try to pry the door open. She had no idea what the inside of that chamber looked like. What if Arest was trapped? Was there air? Were there more monsters? What if it filled up with water or something and he ended up drowning?
When nothing on the door itself seemed to work, she scrambled to the side and looked for a panel or a sensor, anything that would open the door for her. The stone was totally smooth on her end and the one crack she found couldn’t be budged. There was nothing but wall, no way to lift the door.
It opened back up.
At first she didn’t realize what she was looking at. But Arest stood right there, a bright smile on his face. He reached over to his left and the door slid shut again and then just as quickly, it was back open. Her heart hadn’t stopped racing from the first instance and sweat poured off her from the panic.
He’d found a control?
Arest was still grinning and he waved her inside. “Safe,” he said. “See.”
She absently noted that he’d added a third word to his vocabulary, but she was scared to step over the threshold. What if this was a trap? What if there was another monster just biding his time? Well, she looked over her shoulder at the one that Arest had already killed. If there was another monster, she was safer with her beastly alien than without.
She stepped over the threshold and Arest reached over and pushed a button on a brightly lit panel, closing the door behind her.
Her personal space evaporated and Arest didn’t step back. She was caught between him and the door, between cold metal and hot, hard, naked muscle that she wanted to reach out and lay her fingers over.
She knew she shouldn’t. She knew it was wrong. Arest wasn’t human, and he didn’t seem to be all there. But his blue eyes pinned her in place and the heat coming off his body enveloped her like a blanket. Without consciously making the decision, Stella reached out and flattened her palm against the heat of his pecs. The short, almost invisible hair surprised her and her fingers curled, digging in further.
Arest groaned and planted a hand on the door, trapping her on three sides. So why didn’t she feel trapped?
When the door closed, faint lights illuminated, buried in the floor along the walls. She could see her beast perfectly, even more clearly than when they’d been in the halls. His eyes drooped half closed and one half of his mouth tugged up in an absent smile. He was so damn big that she might as well have been in a tiny hole rather than a cavernous room.
But she didn’t want to move.
She flexed her hand out, taking in the feel of hard muscle and the pulse of his heart, right where a human’s would be. Arest’s free hand came up and covered hers, holding it in place, and she was caught in the inferno of his heat. If he hadn’t been walking around and fighting at top form, she’d have thought him feverish. But there was nothing sick about this man.
Stella tore her gaze from their joined hands and looked up to see him studying her like some lazy jungle cat. He could pounce and end her at any moment, but for now he seemed to want to play. To want to protect.
“Safe?” she asked. She had no idea if she was talking about the room or him.
Arest leaned in close and brushed his lips against her forehead, sending her heart back into that racing rhythm that had just settled. “Safe,” he promised.
He pulled her away from the door, cradling her shoulders and not letting go of her hand. When he bent to his knees along one of the walls, he took her with him, and Stella’s mind went wild with where this might go.
But he simply laid down and wedged her to his side, placing her close to the wall and protected from the room and the door behind them. His bag acted as his own pillow and he acted as hers. His breathing evened and he fell into sleep, leaving her confused and on the verge of frustration, wondering what the hell she was going to do with him.
AREST DREAMED OF BLOOD and grit. He looked through a cloudy haze of mist and darkness and struggled against the bonds that chained him to the hot metal at his back.
He wasn’t alone in the darkness. At the edge of his vision the whip snaked along on the ground, drawing designs in the dirt and sending up dust with every flick of the end. The man holding the handle was a mystery of leather and shadow. A mask covered his face, the nose a harsh point and a swath of red where his eyes should have been.
When he caught Arest staring, he jerked the whip back and flicked it toward him, coming within a hand span of Arest’s eyes and making him flinch.
The trainers didn’t always miss. If they did, there would be no reason to fear.
Somewhere beyond, outside the dark misery of this putrid room, a crowd roared. He was under the arena, a pawn waiting to be placed into the game of blood that these hostile aliens played.
This was never the life that Arest wanted, but a man had to pay his debts.
Blood and ash and lasers.
The memory flashed before him, deeper than this one. Something from long before. He stepped into the cold stone of this arena and submitted himself to the whims of the rich.
He had a mission.
BEAST
The whip snapped again, and this time Arest didn’t flinch. He jerked against his chains and snapped his teeth at the trainer, growling out something guttural and ancient, something no translator could decipher because there was no need. Some language was universal.
Words came through the space beyond the trainer, though the shadows obstructed any view. Arest didn’t know whether he sat in a room or a hallway or a hole. “The ambassador cannot use these tunnels,” came a gruff, tired voice.
A lofty man replied with scorn. “The other paths are blocked. I’m certain your trainers can do their jobs.”
Awareness flickered to life in the back of Arest’s mind. He strained once more, but as footsteps grew closer, he slumped, letting his body go completely limp and releasing a pained moan.
The whip struck him on the arm and he didn’t flinch, he couldn’t. This trainer was nothing compared to the ones who owned him.
With a curse, the trainer threw down his whip and approached with caution. He checked for a pulse with a jab of green fingers, but he missed the right spot and pressed the column of Arest’s throat instead of finding the vein. The trainer cursed again and muttered something about cost if the prized fighter died.
He flicked his hand up and Arest’s arms sagged down, suddenly free.
That one move sealed the man’s fate. And that of the ambassador.
A sharp pinch on his arm brought him out of the fog and into the cavern that he’d claimed for the night. The s
oft press of flesh against his chest anchored him to the present and the heat of her thigh against his cock made him want to stay.
But Stella looked at him with worry, not desire. “You stopped breathing,” she said. “One second you were fine, then you went totally limp.” Her eyes raked over him, searching his exposed flesh for any hint of injury. “Did the monster get you?”
His trainers? The ambassador? No, she knew nothing of the dream. She spoke of the monster from before. “I... am...” he cleared his throat, croaking out the words through tight vocal chords, “well.”
Her eyes widened. “You can talk? More than two words?”
The dream jarred something loose, or perhaps it was the hours and hours away from the BEAST trainers. They kept tight control on him, ensuring he was never a threat to those who kept him. His head and body ached and he realized that he’d not been given whatever drugs he normally took to dull his senses.
In answer to Stella’s question, he nodded, his voice still rusty. They rarely required him to talk and he knew that it had been some time, perhaps years, since he’d spoken in full sentences.
She pulled away from him. Tried to pull away from him. But Arest held onto her arm and wrapped himself around her. For a moment, Stella stiffened, but then she relaxed when he did nothing more than hold tight.
Her skin was chilled and she shivered, even in his embrace. He wished that he had something to give her, but she wore more than he did, and he barely felt the cold. That was another thing they’d done to him.
“Who are you?” she whispered against him, burrowing closer and turning herself so they were chest to chest, her head nestled into the crook of his neck.
Arest breathed deep of her scent. This chamber reminded him of the place beneath the arena where the trainers and the whips did their tortures, but this time he was safe. They were safe. For now. He knew that something was wrong with these tunnels and that he’d been sent on a mission for a reason, but that was all trapped below the cobwebs and chaos that had only started to abate.