“Again?” Detective Rast gave her a disgusted look before turning to Baird. “Commander, I’m going to change back into my clothes and then I’d like to get this interview over with.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Baird rumbled.
“Thank you. And best wishes on your wedding.” Rast nodded at Sylvan.
“Thank you.” Sylvan frowned. “But Detective?”
“Yes?” Rast turned back for a moment.
“Don’t disrespect things you don’t understand.” Sylvan’s ice blue eyes glinted dangerously. “I know there are many things beyond the realm of human experience but that doesn’t excuse rudeness toward my kin. The Sight runs in my family. If Nadiah says she saw Lauren, then she did see her.”
“You can believe what you want,” Rast said shortly. Then he strode off toward the male’s changing area where, presumably, he’d left his clothing.
“Whew.” Lock shook his head. “He’s a prickly male.”
“And a rude one.” Deep frowned.
“You’re one to talk about that.” Kat elbowed the dark twin with a small smile. Deep returned her smile with one of his own but his twin brother, Lock, looked troubled.
“Nadiah,” he said, turning toward her. “Forgive me, but we know Lauren was headed for the Maw Cluster. Did you happen to see the planet she was on during your vision?”
Nadiah frowned. “I don’t think so.”
“You said she was in O’ah, wherever that is,” Olivia volunteered.
“O’ah?” Lock looked even more troubled. “That would be on Primus Six, I think. And you said she was wearing red and blue?”
Nadiah nodded. “Yes, and blue shoes with crimson red soles. They were very pretty, actually.”
Lock shook his head. “I was afraid of that.”
“Afraid? Why are you afraid?” Kat demanded.
“Yes, why?” Nadiah felt the fear threatening to close her throat again.
“Because.” Lock frowned. “I believe that on Primus Six, those are the colors of the skin trade.”
“The skin trade?” Sophie asked at the same time Olivia said, “What’s that?”
Deep answered for his brother. “Prostitution,” he said, his black eyes troubled. “If what you saw was accurate, Nadiah, somehow Lauren has been sold into sexual slavery.”
Chapter Seven
The girl with the orange skin led Lauren to the mouth of the alley and then turned right, into the marketplace. Things seemed to be winding down now at the end of the day, but there were still plenty of strange things to see.
Lauren watched wide-eyed as what looked like a walking tree with purple bark glided down the middle of the street. To her right, a tiny gnome with bulging iridescent eyes haggled with an insectile creature with two heads and broad, glittering transparent wings that buzzed angrily. Further down across the road, she saw what appeared to be a vending machine selling amputated fingers. Ugh! she thought uneasily. I hope those are just some kind of macabre candy. Like the gummy eyeballs you can buy to give out at Halloween back home.
Just as she was beginning to think her eyes were going to pop out of her head from the strangeness of it all, the orange girl stopped so abruptly Lauren almost ran into her. “What—?” she began.
“We’re here.” Her guide nodded at a small, dusty booth with a faded red awning. Behind the counter sat Blix. He was in his human form again with pale blond hair and eyebrows. When he looked up and saw Lauren, he smiled broadly.
“Well, well, my dear,” he said, rising and coming around the front of the booth to greet her. “So here you are. I had hoped you would take me up on my offer.”
“It seemed…reasonable.” Lauren nodded guardedly and crossed her arms over her chest. She wished she hadn’t let Vlanka rearrange the red scarf-like tok so that it exposed her breasts through the sheer light blue shirt.
Blix laughed. “Don’t worry about exposing your lovely breasts, my dear. It’s quite common here on O’ah. Especially with those in the trade.”
“The what?” Lauren frowned but he waved her question away.
“Unimportant. Did you bring me some cubes?”
“A few.” Lauren pulled the handful of food cubes out of the pocket of her skirt and held them out for him to examine. “Uh, fair warning though,” she said, feeling suddenly guilty. “Most of these feature live worms as their main entrée. So…” She shrugged. “I don’t know if you’re interested in that or not.”
“Worms?” Blix frowned and plucked several of the cubes out of her hand. “What kind of worms?”
“Well that’s just it—I don’t know. I mean—”
“Stop!”
Both their heads turned and Lauren felt a surge of relief so great her knees almost buckled. Xairn was striding towards them.
“Xairn!” Lauren took a step toward him… and stopped. He didn’t look nearly as happy to see her as she was to see him. In fact, he looked positively furious. His broad shoulders were tensed and his big hands were curled into fists at his side. The look in his red-on-black eyes was terrifying and that was saying something considering that his eyes looked forbidding at the best of times.
The minute he reached Lauren, he grabbed her by the upper arm and pulled her close to his side. “What in the seven hells are you doing?” he demanded, looking her up and down. “And why are you dressed like that?”
“She is dressed like that because I gave her the clothes.” Blix came forward, his pale purple eyes glittering.
Xairn turned to her, his face so fierce it was frightening. “Is that true?” he demanded. “You accepted the clothes from him?”
“Well, yes,” Lauren admitted. She could tell she’d done something completely wrong but she didn’t know what it was. “I’m sorry, Xairn but I—”
“Strip.”
“What?” Lauren stared at him, uncomprehending. Surely he didn’t mean—
“You heard me. Strip.” Xairn glared at her. “Take off every single piece of clothing the Spider gave you right now.”
“But…but I can’t just—”
“Undress now or I’ll undress you myself, Goddess damn it.” His eyes flashed and when Lauren was a little slow to obey him, he reached for her and started unknotting the long red tok himself.
“No!” Lauren tried to push his hands away. “We’re in public. I don’t want to be naked in front of all these…these people.” If walking trees and gnomes and talking insects could be considered people, anyway.
“You have a choice,” Xairn growled. “Get naked now in public or spend the rest of your very short life getting naked over and over in private.”
“What are you talking about?” Lauren protested as he unwound the tok and threw it at Blix’s blond head. He turned back and started immediately on the elaborate buttons running down the front of her pale blue blouse.
“There’s no time to explain. Here.” He stopped undressing her long enough to strip off his own shirt. “Take that off and put this on. Hurry.”
There seemed to be no point in arguing with him. Wondering what kind of alien custom she’d broken by accepting clothes from a stranger, Lauren stripped quickly out of the pale blue blouse and shrugged into Xairn’s shirt instead. It was much too large and drooped down to her knees. Which suited her fine, since the lovely cobalt skirt was the last thing to go. She was bare beneath the shirt but at least she was covered.
Xairn took each item of clothing as she handed it to him and tossed it back to Blix. The blond alien caught the blouse and skirt in turn but there was a strange little smile playing around his lips that Lauren didn’t like.
“You might as well have saved yourself the trouble, Scourge,” he said, passing the outfit to Vlanka who folded it neatly. “In return for the clothing, your little pet gave me these.” He held out the three food cubes he’d plucked from Lauren’s palm.
Xairn’s face was suddenly as impassive as stone but his deep voice sounded strangled when he talked. “That’s all? She gave you nothing more?�
��
“That’s all.” Blix was practically beaming by now. “Just three little food cubes, my friend. In exchange for clothing made from the finest Belarian silk and satin. Not to mention a tok made of one unbroken piece of skin from a rare crimson-hide gelk. Very expensive, I’m afraid, and all sales are final.”
A what? Lauren looked at the neatly folded tok in Vlanka’s orange hands. Was it really made out of some creature’s skin? It certainly hadn’t felt like any kind of leather. But from the look on Xairn’s face, she had worse things to worry about than what kind of weird alien skin she’d been wearing.
“Xairn?” she asked anxiously, tugging at his arm. “What’s wrong? What did I do?”
“You’ve sold yourself.” His voice was hoarse and his grip on her arm tightened until Lauren let out a squeak of pain. “Sold yourself into the skin trade.”
Panic gripped her by the throat. “What? What are you talking about? I swear I didn’t mean any harm. I only gave him the cubes with worms in them. I didn’t think—”
“Worms?” Xairn’s eyes widened suddenly. “Grieza worms?”
Lauren shrugged uneasily. “I don’t know what kind they are. They’re pale orange and about this long…” She held out her hands to measure. “And they come with a side dish of some weird blue-green sauce.”
“So.” Xairn turned back to Blix who was looking much less happy and smug now. “You traded your ‘very expensive’ clothes to Lauren for three helpings of Grieza worms. Which are, as you know, a rare and costly delicacy all the way from Twin Moons.”
“Not rare or costly enough,” Blix protested. “Not to pay for the fine garments I gave your pet.”
“The clothing you gave Lauren was the equivalence of slavery and death,” Xairn growled. “And you damn well know it, Spider. Do you want me to call the Judge of the Market to settle the claim?” He nodded at the purple tree being which Lauren had first seen striding up and down the center of the street. As though sensing trouble, it had stopped what it was doing and was staring fixedly at the scene playing out in front of Blix’s dusty stall. “Or will you acknowledge that what Lauren gave you was of equal value to the fucking clothes?” Xairn finished.
Blix looked sulky. “No. I’ll acknowledge.” His purple eyes flashed. “But be warned, Scourge—I’m not the only one who desires a piece of your little pet. An exotic like that will draw all kinds of interested parties. You’ll have to guard her with your life if you want to get her out of O’ah intact.”
Xairn’s eyes blazed and his voice dropped to a menacing growl. “I’d die before I’d let you take so much as a single hair from her head, you sick bastard!”
“And you may. If you don’t watch out.” With that, Blix disappeared abruptly, taking Vlanka, the clothes, and the booth he’d been sitting in when Lauren first walked up, with him. There was nothing left but a dusty, bare spot on the stone pavement.
“Xairn, I—” Lauren began…but then she stopped. There was a lot she still didn’t understand but by the look on his face, now wasn’t the time to ask.
“Come on.” Xairn pulled her roughly down the street, steering her back into the alley where the Kindred ship was parked.
“Hey! You’re hurting me!” Lauren protested when he opened the door and shoved her inside.
“You’d have been hurting a lot worse if I’d been even a parsec later getting to you,” Xairn growled, but he let her go at once.
“I don’t understand.” Lauren put her hand on her hips and glared at him. “Will you please explain what just happened out there?”
A muscle in Xairn’s jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. “What just happened was that you were about to become a splice whore for the Spider.”
“A spice whore? What the hell is that?” Lauren demanded.
“A prostitute who offers her body to prospective clients. They try you out and if they like you, they can pay an extra fee to take part of your body to a lab and clone you.”
“Part…part of my body?” Lauren could hardly believe it. Suddenly she flashed back to Vlanka’s orange, seven fingered hands. Some of her fingers had ended in sharp purple nails but some had ended in…In stumps. Oh my God! “You…you mean like fingers?” she asked in a trembling voice.
“Among other things,” Xairn said darkly. “Believe me, Lauren, it’s not a life you’d want. And as beautiful and exotic as you are, you wouldn’t have lasted a month on the streets. Blix would have sold you piece by piece until there was nothing left.”
Lauren shook her head. “But…but I don’t see how trading food cubes for clothes would make me Blix’s, uh, whore.”
“The rules of trade in O’ah state that every transaction must be of exactly equal value. That is why it’s so dangerous to barter here instead of just buying something with credits. The Spider gave you very expensive clothing and in return, you gave him nothing but a few food cubes—you owed him more. Much more. And he could have forced you to pay the difference with your body.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes tightly for a moment as though trying to hold back a headache. “Gods, if you hadn’t given him the cubes with the grieza worms…”
“What would have happened?” Lauren whispered.
“I would have fought for you to the last—please know that,” Xairn said in a low voice. “But there is no surviving a physical confrontation with the Judge of the Market. He is a Quinlow—they carry the power of life and death in their hands. So I…I would have lost you.” Suddenly he pulled Lauren to him in a crushing hug. “Gods, Lauren, I can’t lose you. I won’t.” His deep voice was raw with emotion.
Lauren was so surprised she could barely think. In the entire time they’d known each other, Xairn had hardly ever touched her willingly. In fact, he’d even gone so far as to ask her not to touch him. Which made his spontaneous display of affection all the more rare and precious.
“Oh, Xairn…” She hugged him back tightly, nuzzling her face into his neck, breathing in the warm, spicy scent of his bare skin. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered in his ear. “You were gone for so much longer than you said and I was so afraid…” She choked. “Afraid something had happened to you. And then Blix tricked his way into the ship by pretending to be Mr. Kittles—the pet rabbit I used to have. And then he seemed so nice and reasonable and he kept saying you would never come back and I…I was so scared and I missed you so much.”
“That is what thought thieves do.” Xairn’s voice was soft and fierce in her ear. “They sense the troubled thoughts of their prey and then they stalk them mercilessly using their own fears against them. Forgive me for not warning you in more detail but I did not want to frighten you.”
Lauren kissed his cheek impulsively. “That’s okay,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry I disobeyed orders. I should have known you had a good reason for me to stay inside the ship.” She shifted closer to him, happy to feel his arms around her and the comforting press of his muscular chest against her breasts. “I’m just so glad you’re safe.”
As she pressed her body against his, Xairn stiffened in her arms. Abruptly, he drew away from her, ending the hug as suddenly as it had begun. “I am pleased and relieved that you are safe as well,” he said formally. “And I have good news—I have located an Alteration house that will perform the necessary manipulation of our respective DNA.”
“That’s nice, I guess,” Lauren said doubtfully. “But Xairn…” She closed the distance he’d put between them and put a hand on his arm. “I still—”
“Please.” Xairn pulled his arm away. “Don’t. And I believe it would be best if you would give me back my shirt and go put on the other garment I bought for you before I left.”
Lauren frowned, scanning the heavy muscles of his chest and arms for chillbumps. “I’m sorry. Are you cold?”
“No.” He suddenly wouldn’t look at her. “I just think it would be best.”
“All right.” Feeling hurt by his sudden about-face, Lauren withdrew. How could he be so effusively glad t
o see her one moment and so cold the next? Try as she might, she couldn’t help wishing to be in his arms again. He was so big and warm and she felt so completely safe when she was pressed to his chest. But from the closed look on his face, she could tell that wasn’t going to happen.
Sighing, she went to the bathroom. So much for new clothes.
She was so busy removing Xairn’s shirt and replacing the silver-blue muumuu, she almost missed the fact that she was still wearing the blue slippers with crimson red soles. When she finally realized she still had the shoes on, she had an uneasy feeling. Was this going to cause problems later on? Or were the worm cubes enough to pay for the slippers as well as the clothes Blix had given her? Would Xairn be upset when he saw that she had kept them?
Deciding not to take a chance, Lauren took off the slippers and hid them in a small storage cabinet under the sink. Then, sighing, she went to return Xairn’s shirt.
* * * * *
Xairn was weak with relief—or possibly blood loss. He’d gotten into one last fight at the base of the support which held up the plasti-glass splicer tunnels. There had only been two splicers this time but one of them had jumped on his back before Xairn saw him. His knife had bitten deep—though thankfully not deep enough to wound his primary heart, which was what he’d no doubt been reaching for.
He looked down at his side, examining the wicked gash where the knife had cut him. Dark red blood was welling up from the slice but at least it wasn’t gushing out. Xairn pulled the waistband of his black flight pants a little higher and tightened his belt to put pressure on the wound. There was no time to deal with it any further at present. He had to get the ship powered up and moved to Slk’s parking accommodations before it got completely dark. And before the Spider’s spies found out where he was headed.
He walked stiffly to the front of the ship and settled himself in front of the controls, careful of the wound on his side. Though he didn’t want to admit it, his body was throbbing and it wasn’t just with pain. His secondary shaft, which for years had lain dormant between his legs, was so hard it was painful. It pressed against the front of his pants,snarling for release. Thank the gods, at least, that his primary shaft remained unaffected. But it was necessary only for bonding—the engorgement of his secondary shaft was more than adequate for other sexual purposes. Not that he would ever do such things to Lauren. Still, his body was urging him to, telling him to take her, to make her his.
Brides of the Kindred Volume One Page 132