Still, the fire lessened, as if a lot less people were shooting. Then there was a wild volley of it, coming closer. Darkness abruptly streaked towards Krijero, bringing the terrible sound of shooting right to him. Then the blasting stopped and Benor stood over him, the muzzle of his weapon pointed right at Krijero’s head.
Benor looked to Krijero’s right, where the stock shelving was and where Gelan had been hiding. “I’ll kill him, you gurlucks! Right now!”
All the firing had stopped, leaving a high, keening whine in Krijero’s ears. He didn’t have long to think about it or the weapon aimed at his face, though. Benor reached down and grabbed a handful of his hair to jerk him up to a sitting position.
Krijero screamed as broken bones ground together with the movement. In that horrific thunder of pain, he didn’t even care that the blaster now touched right between his eyes. He barely noticed Benor kneel on one knee, getting lower and using Krijero’s body as a shield.
He did see the grin spreading over Benor’s lips. A smirking, taunting smile that Krijero would have given anything to slap off.
Benor invited Gelan and Wynhod, “Come out. Come out now or he’s dead!”
Krijero was afraid they would. To his relief, Gelan answered, “If we come out he’s dead anyway.”
“Fine. Say goodbye to his once-pretty face then.”
Benor’s finger on the blaster’s button-trigger tensed. Krijero waited for the end to come at last.
Gelan’s shout sent terror through his veins. “All right! I’m coming out.”
Krijero cried, “No, Gelan, don’t! Don’t let him, Wynhod!”
Benor ignored him. “Both of you, get out here where I can see you. Now!”
Gelan and Wynhod emerged from opposite ends of the room, coming out from behind the shelves. They stared at Benor with raw hatred, their blasters pointed at him. Krijero thought if anyone looked at him like that, he’d give himself up for dead. Benor wasn’t that smart.
The Frenzy mastermind snarled. “Drop your blasters. Drop them!” In his extreme state, Benor’s hand shook violently. It would be easy for him to trigger the blaster simply by accident the way his fingers jerked and skittered over the piece.
Wynhod and Gelan looked at each other, sharing one of those moments of perfect nonverbal communication. Krijero moaned, wanting to beg them not to do it but afraid Benor would choose to open fire on them just to torture him some more.
A sob escaped his throat when both men carefully laid their blasters on the ground.
Benor laughed and shook his head. “I knew it. I knew you’d do anything to save one of your own. I told them, but they didn’t believe me.”
In contrast to the almost childlike merriment displayed by Benor, Gelan’s fangs were down, his pupils slitted in naked rage. His words were nearly indecipherable through the growling texture of his voice. “Let him go. You can have me instead.”
Benor’s chuckles ceased and he looked Gelan over. “You? Yeah, you. I do want you. Dead.”
The moment Krijero dreaded arrived. Benor’s blaster muzzle left where it pressed against the Imdiko’s forehead, moving up and around, on its way to sight on Gelan. He was going to kill Krijero’s lover. Maybe both of them.
Krijero shrieked. At the same time he made his broken body move, fighting off the torrential pain of his injuries with the oncoming pain of his heart and soul. He couldn’t even wiggle the crooked stems of his fingers, so he grabbed Benor’s blaster arm with his badly bent forearms, shoving it down. He darted his head forward and used his fangs to bite into Benor’s wrist.
Benor screamed and jerked. He let go of Krijero’s hair and punched him in the side of the head, dislodging the Imdiko’s desperate clutch. As Krijero fell back towards the floor he saw the blurred bodies of Wynhod and Gelan streaking towards them and Benor’s shaking blaster turning once more to sight on his face.
The blaster went off and Krijero knew no more.
* * * *
Wynhod leapt an instant before the shot went off – a kill shot, one at pointblank range that could only have one result: the disintegration of Krijero’s head.
The split-second realization that he’d gotten there too late was all that saved the Nobek from looking and seeing the horror that had befallen his Imdiko. He collided with Benor, the man who had killed his lover, his lifemate, his Krijero.
The blaster spun from the murderer’s grip, leaving Benor no defense against the roaring Nobek that bore him down to the ground. Wynhod smashed the body beneath his with pounding fists, feeling the bones break and smashing them again to reduce them to powder. He tore at the flesh of his enemy with his fangs just as fury and grief tore at his heart. Yet no matter how hard he hit, how deeply he bit, the relentless tattoo played in his head: Krijero’s dead, Krijero’s dead, Krijero’s dead…
He had failed his Imdiko. He had let this piece of shit take the life of one of the men he loved.
Head Investigator Utta’s voice was far away and unimportant as Wynhod sought to turn the screaming creature beneath him into pieces. “Enforcer, stand down! You’re killing him!”
Yes. Kill him. Kill him as Krijero had been killed.
Krijero was dead. Not just dead. This asshole had tortured him. Shredding Benor was the least Wynhod could do at this point.
“Gelan, deal with your Nobek!”
“Let him kill the bastard! If he doesn’t, I will!”
“You know I can’t let – damn it, take him down, men.”
An unknown voice said, “Sorry about this, Wynhod.”
Men attacked him, uniformed enforcers with grimly sympathetic expressions. They fought him, driving him away from Benor with punches and kicks. Wynhod raged against the impossible numbers, fighting to get back to the still body he hadn’t finished with, determined to not stop until nothing of Benor was left but small, unidentifiable scraps.
Gelan was suddenly there, yelling and shoving the enforcers aside. “Fine, I’ll stop him! Get off him. Wynhod, Krijero’s alive. He’s alive!”
The words pierced Wynhod’s blinding blood rage. He grabbed Gelan by the collar, pulling him so close their noses bumped. “He shot – the bastard shot him point blank—”
“He missed. He rushed the shot. The damned thing went off right by Krijero’s head, knocked him out, but he’s still breathing. I swear it, Wynhod. He’s alive.”
Wynhod stared into his clanmate’s eyes. Gelan wouldn’t tell him a lie, would he? No, they weren’t capable of lying to each other. Besides, if Krijero was dead, Gelan would be fighting to kill Benor too, not trying to make Wynhod stop. So that could only mean—
Hardly daring to breathe, Wynhod staggered to one side, dragging Gelan with him. Lurching to a place where he could see past the emergency techs crowded around the bent, twisted body of the Imdiko. They were feeding an oxygen tube into his mouth and down his throat.
Krijero still had a mouth. He still had a face and head. It was all bloodied, bruised, and swollen beyond recognition, but everything was there.
Krijero was alive.
For the first time in his life, Wynhod’s knees wobbled. The weakness lasted only an instant, and he didn’t know if anyone noticed. He didn’t care if anyone noticed, nor if they heard the catch in his voice. “My Imdiko.”
“He’s still with us.” Gelan’s tone had a suspiciously choked sound too.
Wynhod gathered his strength. The one thing he couldn’t do was look away from Krijero. He told Gelan, “He saved your life. If he hadn’t fought at that moment, Benor would have shot you.”
“I know. And we’re going to repay him by clanning him and taking care of him the rest of our days.”
Still not taking his eyes off Krijero, Wynhod grabbed Gelan in a brutal hug. The Dramok returned it. From the corner of his eye, Wynhod noted Gelan also looked at their Imdiko and nowhere else.
The pair walked over to remain as close to their fallen lover as the medics would allow. When the hover stretcher took him out, Utta wisely said not on
e word to call them back as they followed him. No one demurred when they boarded the emergency shuttle taking Krijero to the hospital either, though they were not his official clanmates. It could have been no one felt foolish enough to challenge the pair covered in the blood of their enemies. It could be Wynhod and Gelan were simply too savage looking following the heinous event they’d just been through.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t ferocity that filled Wynhod as they took the ride to the hospital, sitting where he could see the medics working on the battered Imdiko inside the clear-paneled isolation chamber. For someone of his breed, nearly losing not one, but both his lifemates should be making him crazy with anger. Yet neither Gelan nor Krijero had been killed. He still had them both.
After coming so close to losing everything that mattered and now knowing they would all go home in the end, it was almost enough to make even a Nobek cry.
Chapter 16
Krijero’s road to recovery was excruciating in its slow progress. He’d been smashed from head to toe, sliced, stabbed, and cut to the point that the doctors agreed another hour would have seen him bleed to death even with no further trauma. Internal injuries were numerous. He required a kidney transplant, along with cellular regeneration on many other organs.
He was so demolished that the medical team kept him in recovery stasis for the first two months. Finally, they thought he’d reached the point where he wouldn’t require such heavy pain inhibition as to make him insensible. At that point they took him out of the stasis chamber and placed him in a medi-bed. Medications continued to feed directly into his body but he would finally be able to interact with others.
However, Krijero didn’t wake. He sank into a coma for no reason any medical professional could diagnose. Gelan, Wynhod, and the parent clans of all three men gathered around his bed, waiting for his eyes to open. He lay still and unresponsive, the steady movement of his chest as he breathed the only outward sign that he still lived.
“It can take a few days,” they were reassured. “He just needs some time.”
Days slipped by and became a week. Another week went by, and Krijero’s mother, as self-effacing and sweet as her son, suddenly became as demanding as an angry Dramok.
“Why is he not waking? Why is he still not talking to us? What’s wrong with him?” Matara Dir cornered the doctor, turning an alarming shade of near purple in her upset.
The doctor in charge of Krijero’s case could only answer unhappily, “Sometimes the body determines it needs more time to get over the shock it’s been through. I assure you, we’re doing everything to get him well. We simply can’t rush whatever internal timetable he’s on.”
Krijero’s parents, with the support of Gelan and Wynhod, fired Krijero’s medical team and hired another. After another month passed with still no sign of the Imdiko recovering consciousness, they fired that team too.
The doctors and specialists came and went. Krijero slept on. The ravages of the torture he’d taken faded from his face and body, leaving him as he was before, though a little thinner.
They were a week into the third month after he’d been taken out of stasis when his eyes finally opened. No one was looking at him at the moment he woke, and he blinked to see so many people surrounding him, people he loved and the people they loved. His eyes moved about the unfamiliar room he lay in, taking them all in. His parent clan. Gelan’s parent clan. Wynhod’s two surviving fathers. Some had their heads together, muttering quiet conversation. Some stared into space. Some watched the vid of the latest news report playing, like his mother who sat next to the strange bed he lay in, holding his hand in hers.
His gaze slid over to the other side of his bed. A smile touched his lips to see Gelan and Wynhod standing so close that they practically loomed over him. They were also watching the vid, but as he looked at them, it was as if they felt the weight of his gaze. Both heads turned in his direction. Two pairs of eyes caught his. They widened. Lips parted and curled in hopeful smiles.
“Krijero?” It was Gelan who spoke.
The Imdiko’s voice creaked, sounding old and disused. “Hey.”
His mother cried out, and his fathers rushed forward in a wave. The sobbing and words that came afterward were confusing to Krijero. He didn’t understand much of what was happening or had happened. At first only Gelan and Wynhod seemed to get that he wasn’t quite himself. They stood there, solid, quiet, and comforting in their mere presence. When the Imdiko felt overwhelmed from the noise, he only had to look at them to know everything was all right.
A little at a time, his parents also comprehended he was a bit lost. Things were explained to him, but most of it didn’t make sense. Even the few things he understood, he forgot much of minutes later. He could see joy mixing freely with worry on the faces of everyone except Gelan and Wynhod. They kept their gazes firm, their demeanors confident.
At one point Wynhod said in a very quiet tone, “You’re going to be okay.” And smiled.
Krijero thought he could believe that.
Days passed. With each one, Krijero’s memory and awareness of the events that had happened grew. The dazed fog that had eclipsed so much slowly dissipated. In its wake came nightmares, horrible fantasies in which he was held down helpless while Gelan and Wynhod were tortured and killed. He woke gasping, tears streaming down his face only to see them both very much alive, standing over his bed and whispering comforting words to calm him.
The pair rarely left the hospital the entire time Krijero recuperated there. Wynhod had been given an administrative leave of absence from work. The unpaid leave served as punishment for his overbearing brutality to Dramok Benor, who took several weeks to recover from his injuries. It was the first black mark on the Nobek’s outstanding record. That the precinct didn’t bring him up on actual charges showed its understanding of the situation. Gelan had been granted voluntary leave under the Empire’s Emergency Clanmate Care Policy, though Krijero was not officially his Imdiko. Many concessions were made for the trio in the aftermath of Krijero’s abduction and torture.
Benor finally healed sufficiently to stand trial for heading up the Delir and Frenzy drug rings. The Empire also indicted him on a list of murders and disappearances that took the court nearly an hour to recite. The three-week-long case was broadcast over the news vids. Gelan and Wynhod were the first two witnesses for the Empire, which parted them from Krijero for the first time since he’d been hospitalized. As soon as their testimonies were completed, they returned to be with him. They, Krijero, and their parent clans watched the rest from his hospital room.
Nothing had swayed Benor’s astounding ego or the firmly held belief he was untouchable. Even the earlier conviction of his chemist brother who had created Delir and Frenzy, along with others in connection to the drug ring, couldn’t sway Benor from believing he wouldn’t be found guilty of his crimes. He represented himself in court, alternating between laughing and sneering at testimony against him.
In the end he told the judges, “You know who I am. Everyone does. All the service I’ve done, all the businesses I own and run for the good of the Empire. No one here wields more power than I. Kalquor needs me. That’s why we can push aside all this nonsense about deaths of those who did nothing for anyone. Who cares about those who took up space and contributed only pain?”
The head judge called for an immediate vote at the end of the trial. Without deliberations or arguments, the verdict of guilty passed unanimously. The execution date was set for two months later. Benor seemed unimpressed.
A month after emerging from his coma, the doctors sent Krijero to a rehab center to continue his recovery. Gelan and Wynhod returned to work, and their parents went home. Gelan’s mother commed Krijero several times a week to encourage him, and the rest kept in touch as well. Krijero’s parents took a temporary place near the rehab facility and spent much of their time with their son, as did Gelan and Wynhod when they were off duty.
Krijero’s rehab went slowly. His body still struggled to adjust
to the repairs and the long time he’d been physically inactive. His balance disorder and overall clumsiness plagued him as he worked to build endurance and strength. The only part of rehab he found any pleasure in was swimming in the facility’s pool, where he found some measure of grace. Yet he didn’t complain about his sluggish progress or the exhaustion and pain that accompanied most of his treatments. He didn’t talk much at all.
He overheard his mother Dir worrying over his state of mind with his fathers and Gelan and Wynhod. They stood just outside his door in the rehab center’s hallway, talking in low tones.
Dir fretted. “Krijero has never been this quiet around me. He stares into space half the time, looking like he’s contemplating the problems of the entire Empire. Something is not right.”
Krijero’s Dramok father Tasja told her, “The psychologist says that’s to be expected after what happened to him. We know Krijero’s particularly sensitive, even more so than most of his breed. We have to allow for extra adjustment time.”
Gelan added, “I made some subtle inquiries, Matara. The truth is, he’s doing better mentally than they anticipated he would at this stage. He’s testing stable across the board.”
Imdiko Oyal’s voice brightened to hear that. “That’s something, at least. I confess, his lack of engagement had me worried as well.”
Dir sighed. “It sets my mind at ease a little. Thank you, Gelan, for everything you’ve done for Krijero. You too, Wynhod.” Then, hesitantly she asked, “Do you still hope to clan him?”
A long silence spun out, one Krijero feared to hear end. At last Gelan answered, “It doesn’t matter if it ever becomes something I can put on an official document. Your son is our Imdiko. He has been for some time now.”
“I’m glad. Much better you and Wynhod than that crack-skulled fool Pertak and whatever excuse of a Nobek he picked up.”
Clan and Conviction (Clan Beginnings) Page 35