Instead he had a feeling of dread. What if his own DNA infected Lauren somehow? What if it already had? Could that be the reason she still wanted and trusted him, even after he had revealed the vile and cruel practices of his people? Xairn could think of no other reason why she would still want to be with him after hearing the Scourge mating practices.
Well, he would just have to make even more of an effort to stay away from her, he decided. If she didn’t have enough survival instinct to stay away from him, that was. Though the gods knew how hard that was going to be. Every time he saw her he wanted her more. Wanted to make her his, to mark her as his own forever… No!
Shaking his head, Xairn took a deep breath and decided to return to the room. Lauren had been alone long enough and he couldn’t avoid being near her forever.
When he got back to the green door, he found one of Slk’s servants just leaving. It was a Bleek and it nodded its long beak genially as it left. “There are evening comestibles for you, Master Xairn. Mistress Lauren has already eaten and is resting.”
Xairn frowned. “She’s resting? You mean she’s already gone to sleep?”
“The effects of the gene alteration.” The Bleek seemed to speak a little too quickly. “It makes one tired sometimes. I bid you good evening, Master.” It took off in an awkward trot down the hallway on its long, backward bending legs.
Still frowning, Xairn pushed his way into a room and stepped around a cart laden with O’ah delicacies. Sure enough, Lauren was tucked neatly into the sleeping platform, one arm beneath the covers and the other resting at her side. She was breathing softly and evenly, her silky hair spread across the pillow like a shining river of midnight black.
So beautiful, he thought, tracing the delicate lines of her face with his eyes. So perfect and pure and sweet… Too perfect and sweet for one such as him, he was sure. No matter how much he wanted her, Lauren wasn’t for him.
Sighing, he looked down at the food cart. After years of eating only nutra-wafers, he found such fare mildly repulsive. It didn’t look like it had appealed to Lauren either—nothing appeared to have been touched. Xairn frowned. Hadn’t the Bleek said she had eaten? Well, maybe she had tasted a bite of everything to be polite. Whatever the case, Xairn didn’t want any.
He pushed the cart outside into the hallway and then went back to the bathroom, intending to take a shower before going to bed. He frowned when he saw that someone had run a glira bath and then let it go cold in the tub. Had Lauren done that? And why hadn’t she emptied the tub when she was finished? Now the glira had congealed into a solid lump which would have to be cut into chunks and removed manually rather than washing down the drain. Well, Xairn decided wearily, he would let Slk’s servants deal with it in the morning. Just now he felt incredibly tired.
He took a quick shower, noting that the wound Lauren had doctored was healing well. Drying off, he dumped his clothes into the cleaning cabinet. They took only a moment and he pulled them out fresh and clean when a low chime sounded. He bundled them under his arm and, wearing only a towel, went back into the bedroom.
Lauren was still asleep, the expression on her lovely features serene and peaceful. Xairn looked longingly at the empty side of the bed and then turned his attention to the couch. It was far too short for his long frame and the cushions looked lumpy. Still, he had told Lauren he would sleep there and he intended to keep his word.
Sighing, he settled himself on the cushions only to jump up again a moment later when something poked him sharply in the ass. Xairn pressed the cushion gingerly with his fingers and gave a muffled curse when the cushion pushed back. Flarns. The damn thing is stuffed with flarns!
The finger-long insects also known as “massage bugs” were native to this solar system and were often used in high-end furnishings. They lived just between the upholstery and the padding and poked and prodded anyone who sat on them giving a “massage” that many claimed to enjoy.
Xairn was not a flarn enthusiast. And even if he had been, he had no desire to be “massaged” all night when he was trying to sleep. Sighing heavily, he looked around the cramped room. He could take the floor, of course. It probably wasn’t much harder than the sleeping platform he’d used his entire life aboard the Fathership. The Scourge didn’t believe in luxuries and lived a Spartan existence filled with hardship and self-denial. Well, all except for the AllFather, but Xairn didn’t want to think about his father now. Some things were best left forgotten.
Instead he looked at the bed again. Lauren was resting so peacefully he was certain he wouldn’t disturb her if he just lay down on the very edge of the empty side. And he knew he could trust himself not to harm her in such a helpless state. It was only when she was awake and touching him, looking at him with those gorgeous amber eyes, that the disturbing urges rose within him.
It was late and he was bone weary. For days he’d been running, fighting, and bargaining, trying to keep Lauren safe and find a way to get her back to her planet in one piece. He was sure she wouldn’t mind letting him share her sleeping accommodations, just this once.
I’ll sleep on top of the covers, he told himself, going around to the empty side of the bed and pulling his under shorts back on. To make certain nothing can happen. Not that he thought anything would happen, but if Lauren should wake up in the middle of the night and decide to reach for him, he wanted to have some barrier, however flimsy, between them.
He settled carefully on the empty side of the gellafoam mattress, keeping an eye on Lauren as he did. She shifted slightly in her sleep and murmured something that sounded like his name, but her eyes stayed closed and she didn’t wake even when he lay all the way down.
When he was sure she wasn’t going to wake up, Xairn breathed a sigh of relief and allowed himself to relax completely. Thank all the gods that ever were the sleeping platform isn’t filled with flarns as well! With a good night’s rest, he was certain he’d be a new male in the morning. Both literally and figuratively, because in the morning he would see exactly what effect Lauren’s DNA had had on him—and his on her. Please, he thought, turning his head to study her exquisite profile. Please don’t let her be hurt by my genes. Don’t let her be polluted by the evil in my blood.
At least she looked the same so far. Still lovely. Still pure and undefiled. Xairn prayed she would stay that way, though he hardly knew who he was praying to.
“Lights, dim,” he whispered hoarsely. At once, the room was plunged into shadow. Because Scourge had excellent night vision, he could still see her, but her features were muted and indistinct. She was still beautiful, though, still Lauren.
Without thinking, Xairn reached for her hand, the one that was lying on top of the covers. Taking it in his own, he laced their fingers together just as Lauren had when she was holding his hand earlier. As he squeezed her fingers gently, he felt a tingling throughout his entire body. Was it her DNA having an effect on him, changing him forever? Xairn was too tired to care.
With a deep sigh, he closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
Chapter Thirteen
Somewhere in the dark reaches of space a pair of red-on-black eyes opened and a low, frustrated hiss filled the air.
The AllFather sat up, his skeletal frame still dripping with the nutrient slime of his personal pit. He never ingested food or drink, preferring to take physical nourishment through his tightly-stretched, paper-thin skin. It was emotional sustenance that he truly craved—that he could not live without. And now that Xairn had run and taken the human girl with him, the AllFather had none.
“Ssstupid fool.” Rising, he stepped from the pit and began to pace. The greenish slime, impregnated with the poisonous, tainted metal at the core of the Scourge home world, slid from his body and splattered on the metal flooring.
Having recovered with some difficulty from the confrontation with the damned Kindred deity, the AllFather was back aboard the Fathership and heading for the Maw Cluster. He could feel that Xairn and the girl had gone there—could sense the
m like two pinpricks of light far away on a distant horizon. Their traces were faint but he could follow them, sniffing out the familiar scents like an urlich hot on a scent.
Or he had been able to until just a few moments ago.
Closing his burning eyes, the AllFather cast his dark net again, flinging his consciousness out into the blackness of space like a poisonous spider flinging a strand of toxic silk.
But there was nothing. The lights had disappeared, the traces had vanished.
Where could they have gone? Were they dead somewhere, the flimsy little ship Xairn had stolen crashed into the side of a stray asteroid?
The AllFather felt no sorrow at the thought—only rage. Rage that his only son and best source of nourishment should have escaped him so completely.
But he didn’t truly believe that Xairn was dead, or Lauren either. His son had developed a ridiculous fascination with the human girl. Knowing him, he would go to great lengths to protect her. Just as he had tried to protect the common urlich which he had taken for a pet. The AllFather well remembered how foolishly attached the boy had become to it—how upset he had been at the dumb beast’s demise.
But why the Maw Cluster? There was nothing of interest there—nothing but the thuggish splicers, constantly carving each other up and recombining the DNA into different configurations. Always…
The AllFather stopped pacing abruptly. His long, skeletal hands squeezed into fists. Of course. Their DNA—Xairn has taken her there to get their DNA changed. And he’s succeeded—their signatures are completely different now. No wonder I have lost sight of them!
The AllFather threw back his head and let out a long, hissing howl that echoed through the entire ship. Far down the bleak, empty corridors of the Fathership, the urlich heard him in their kennels and took up the cry.
“Gone!” the AllFather screamed, as his personal guard came running to find out what was wrong. “He’sss taken her away and changed her. They are gone forever from my sssight. Gone!”
Chapter Fourteen
Lauren woke suddenly from a horrible dream about a pair of big red scissors cutting off her hand. No, not my hand—it was my finger. My pinky finger.
She raised her left hand to her face and examined it anxiously but everything looked normal. Didn’t it? On closer examination she wasn’t so sure. Her pinky finger looked…strange somehow. Lauren couldn’t put her finger on it—no pun intended—but when she touched the tip of her pinky finger to her thumb it tingled. Also, the nail on it was a lot shorter than the nails on her other fingers. Lauren wasn’t a nail biter and she didn’t remember breaking a nail, so what was going on?
Don’t be silly, she told herself uneasily, turning her hand this way and that to examine the suspect pinky. It was just a bad dream. Get over it and move on.
Feeling more awake, she looked around the room for Xairn. He’d said he was going to sleep on the couch across from the bed, but it was empty. Then she became aware that someone was in bed beside her, breathing deeply and obviously asleep.
Blinking, Lauren turned over to face him. He was lying on top of the covers but sometime during the night he’d wrapped the long trailing edge of the bedspread over his big frame and nothing was visible now except his sleek black hair. She wondered why he never took it out of the club he wore it in at the base of his neck—not even to sleep. But maybe he’d been too tired to bother last night.
Poor baby. He’s had a hard time lately and all because of me. Unable to resist the impulse, Lauren reached out and tenderly stroked his hair. He stirred a little but she didn’t move her hand. Instead, she caressed him again, letting her fingers trail down inside the cover to cup his rough cheek. Her heart yearned for the man she was touching so gently. He’s so conflicted inside. So wounded. If only he would let me love him, heal him—
“What in the seven hells do you think you’re doing?” a familiar voice demanded. And then the man beside her sat up and threw off the covers in one fluid movement.
“I was just…” The words died on Lauren’s lips. The voice sounded like Xairn’s but the man in bed with her was a complete and total stranger.
“What is it?” he said, frowning at her. “Why are you staring at me that way?”
“Oh my God.” Lauren’s voice came out in a weak whisper. “Who…who are you?”
“What do you mean, who am I? I’m Xairn.”
“No you’re not.” Although, his features did look like Xairn’s. They were still had the proud, stern cast that reminded her of a noble savage or some classical statue come to life.
But instead of the pearly gray shade she’d become used to, this man had smooth tan skin several shades lighter than her own mocha brown. And the burning red-on-black eyes, which had so frightened her at first, had been replaced by normal human eyes.
Well, not normal exactly—his irises were a pure pale shade of blue-green that reminded Lauren of the clear waters of a tropical ocean. Gorgeous, she couldn’t help thinking. He looks like a freaking model.
And as much as she was growing to love him, “gorgeous” was not a word she would have normally applied to Xairn. He was rough around the edges, with more than a little bit of the beast about him. Not this handsome Romeo sitting in bed beside her, wearing nothing but a pair of tight-fitting boxer brief looking things.
A sudden thought occurred to her. “You’re not some kind of clone are you? Something they send to replace Xairn? Because I don’t care how hot you are, you’re not him. I want him back—where is he?”
“I’m telling you, Lauren, it’s me.” He ran a hand experimentally over his face. “It must be the effects of your DNA on me. Do I really look that different?”
“The DNA exchange—of course!” Between her bad dream and the shock of waking up beside a “stranger,” Lauren had completely forgotten that they’d had their DNA altered. So it was Xairn after all. But Xairn as she’d never imagined him. “You look completely different,” she said. “Well, not completely—you’re the same size and shape and your features are the same. But your skin and eye color—”
“Let me see.” He was already out of bed and running for the bathroom. Lauren caught up to him as he was standing in front of the viewer, examining his new skin and eyes.
“I am changed,” he murmured, running his hands over his face wonderingly.
“But I’m not.” Lauren looked at her reflection beside his and frowned. “Look at me—I look exactly the same.”
“Which is at is should be,” Xairn said, looking down at her. “I asked Slk to leave your physical appearance intact and make the smallest change to your DNA possible, remember?”
“I remember.” But Lauren couldn’t help feeling disappointed. “It’s easy to see what you got from me,” she pointed out. “But what did I get from you when Slk rearranged our DNA?”
He shrugged. “It might be something so tiny as to make no difference. You may never know—pray you don’t. I have nothing you want.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Lauren said quietly.
“What?” He frowned at her. “You’re not saying you wanted red eyes or gray skin, are you? That you wanted to look like I did before this change?”
“What I want is to know that there’s a little piece of you inside me—the same way it’s obvious there’s a little piece of me inside you,” Lauren said stubbornly. “I don’t see why that’s so hard to understand.”
“What’s hard to understand is why you would wish to pollute yourself with my genes—to defile yourself with the toxins in my blood.”
“It’s not pollution or defilement,” Lauren argued. “I still don’t understand why you think that about yourself.”
“Because it’s true,” he said shortly. He frowned again as he studied himself in the viewer. “There is one thing I don’t understand—why is my skin lighter than yours?”
Lauren sighed. “Oh, well I’m half white, you know. I mean, because my mom is,” she said. “It was my dad who was African American. You know—black.”
“But my skin is not white. It’s a sort of…tan. And your skin is not black. It’s a beautiful, smooth brown.”
“Well, we say ‘black’ and ‘white’ on my planet, but what we really mean is tan and brown.” Lauren shrugged. “I know, it’s silly isn’t it? But I guess you got DNA from my mom’s side of the family.”
“Does your mother have eyes this color?” he asked, looking into his own eyes in the viewer.
Lauren shook her head. “Uh-uh, she has eyes like mine. But I do remember her saying once that my great-grandfather had eyes that color. Sea colored eyes, she called them.” Reaching up, she cupped his cheek and turned him to face her. “They’re beautiful, you know. Not that your other eyes weren’t—they were very…fierce. But now—”
“Now I conform to your human standards of beauty,” Xairn finished for her.
She nodded and let her hand drop. “You look like a model.”
“A model?” His perfect forehead wrinkled.
“Someone who sells products to others just by looking good. Like if you wanted to sell people a particular brand of clothes, you’d have someone hot, er, good-looking wear them.”
He shook his head. “Why?”
“Well…it’s psychological. It gives people the idea that if they buy and wear those particular clothes, they’ll look as hot as the model wearing them.”
“Why would they think such an illogical thing? And why do they care what their clothing looks like, anyway?” Xairn was clearly confused. “As long as it is adequately functional and keeps them warm, that is all that should matter.”
“Oh, Xairn honey…” Lauren laughed delightedly. He might look like he’d just stepped from the pages of GQ but he was obviously still the same old Xairn underneath. Honestly, it made her feel better about the change he’d undergone. With his big, muscular frame and those striking eyes, he looked like a movie-star—almost unapproachable.
So much physical perfection was hard to be around. It made her feel intimidated in a way she never had even when she’d first met him and thought he looked like a beast out of a nightmare.
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