Andret ran deep into the forest, far enough that when Ena woke, she wouldn’t be able to find her stillborn pup. He dug a small hole.
He’d never seen anything so still. Oh, he’d seen death. Accidents were not unknown in the creche. Humans were so fragile and didn’t have their own symbiotic nanites. But he’d never seen death like this—one not preceded by life.
What had gone wrong?
He shifted his vision, looking at the small body in a way no human could. The pup was small, far smaller than the others. He compared its anatomy with that of the adults. His untrained eye saw no anomalies.
There was something unspeakably wrong with not knowing the reason this one had died and the others had survived.
His chest hurt as he placed the pup into its grave and covered her up with dirt. He knelt there for a while, the hole made in his soul by the loss of Calyce widening just a bit.
Humanity no longer seemed like something to hold on to.
It hurt too much.
* * *
—
They could not travel until Ena was ready. She wouldn’t let Andret take her pups and carry them. Not after he’d taken the dead one. She growled and snapped and looked at him with distrust.
He should leave her to her pack. It was the logical thing to do. It was the right thing to do. He had forty donai lives to protect.
Every day he told himself that Thunder and Raven would take care of Ena. They hunted and fed her so she could feed her pups. But he couldn’t leave. He’d made it as far as an hour’s run and turned back. Along the way, he hunted and brought back anything he’d come across. But he’d always return.
“I don’t suppose you can tell me how long this is going to take?” he asked as he reached to pet one of the milk-drunk pups that had dozed off and slipped off her nipple.
She answered with a growl.
Either he or Raven or Thunder would stay with Ena while the other two hunted. At night, he’d watch the sky. He knew exactly where the system’s phase-points were. Some were close enough to shimmer if he shifted his vision to the right part of the spectrum. But he never saw any signs.
He was growing. He could tell by how tight his clothes were getting. The boots were the first to go into the backpack. The shirt and jacket second. He made slits in his trousers, all the way up to his thighs.
Thirteen days later, Ena’s pups opened their eyes. A few days after that, they started to walk. One wandered close, and he picked it up and Ena didn’t growl or come take it away from him.
In another week they were playing, barking, and bringing the wolves so much joy that sometimes Andret’s heart ached with a different kind of hurt. He’d look away.
Still too human.
A week later, the pups nipped at his heels and Ena came up to cuddle with him. She licked the hand she’d bitten.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I heal fast.”
She kept licking.
“All right, all right, apology accepted.”
She huffed and nuzzled into his neck.
An odd kind of peace, of contentment, flowed through him.
“We have to keep moving, you know.”
Ena’s gaze settled on the mountains ahead of them as if she’d understood him.
The next night, he made a sling out of his jacket, and she let him place her pups in it. They headed toward the mountains.
* * *
—
Andret knelt on the shore of a still mountain lake, washing his face. Two winters had come and gone. The points of his ears had come in. He sported a dark beard and long, black hair. An animal pelt hugged his hips. He’d torn the straps off his backpack and made a belt to keep it in place.
The change wasn’t quite complete—he would be larger by the time it was over—but it had gone far enough that no one would mistake him for human.
Ena’s reflection joined his in the water’s surface. She leaned into him like she always did when given the opportunity.
Happy yips and growls in the distance told him that their pack was playing. They’d encountered no other wolves here. There was not enough game. But his pack had him, and he was a far better hunter. With him, the wolves took down larger prey than they could otherwise.
That night, lying under the stars, hands laced behind his head, he saw it—the shimmer of an activated phase-point. His layered irises had matured and extended far beyond a human’s visual spectrum. They allowed him to clearly see not only the phase-point but the small dot that came out of it—a ship. It was accelerating at speeds no human could survive, and it was headed for his planet, not merely passing through. It made several course corrections for a reentry that would take it to the site where he and Calyce had crashed. It might still have been a probe.
There was only one way to find out.
Ena, who’d been cuddling up against him and snoring, picked her head up, attuned as ever to his mood.
The time had come. He’d thought the hole in his soul, in his humanity, healed, or at least well scarred over. But now it tore anew.
He’d had two years to discover who and what he was. Two years to understand where the change was taking him. He was more predator than soldier. That part was still to come. And he yearned for it, dreamt about it. When the adult donai had come to the creche to take custody of the children, he’d seen what he would become, where he belonged. He still wanted to be with his own kind.
The creche staff, including the armored combat instructors who trained the children to fight and fly, feared the adult donai the most. Calyce had been the only human that didn’t fear them. He had to go to his own kind, to honor her last wish and sacrifice, to save the lives with which he’d been entrusted.
He petted Ena’s head. She whimpered, pushing into it.
“It’s all right, little sister.”
He would miss her. He would miss them all. They had been his family, his pack, the bonds of love that had kept him sane.
He knelt in front of Ena, and the pack surrounded him. He petted them in turn, the aging males, the young pups.
“My word as donai, I will return.”
He didn’t realize there were tears on his face until Ena licked them off. How strange. Grown donai did not cry. Humans cried. Perhaps those tears were the last vestiges of his humanity.
* * *
—
When Andret had first chosen this meadow as their home, he’d done so because of the nearby cave. He’d placed the containers deep within, where the metal of the mountain would shield them from most sensors.
Accompanied by the wolves, he returned to the cave and emerged with the container marked “male.”
Save the container marked “female,” Calyce had told him.
Even without weapons, his speed, his strength, had defeated the strongest, best-armed humans at the creche. But he could not defeat other donai. Mature, trained, and armed, they would be wary of a solitary donai coming out of the forest. The container would be his bargaining chip, the proof that he was still sane. They must see him as a young donai who’d been given a mission and was still worthy of trust and respect.
The pack ran with him, following him until their strength gave out. Their howls trailed behind him as he outran them. They were a strong, intelligent pack. If he didn’t return, they’d descend to richer hunting grounds. They’d survive. He was certain of it. He needed to be.
For the second time in his short life, he left his family.
First, a family of one named Calyce, a woman who had been his mother, a child of her heart if not her body. How different were they, as a species, if a donai could think of a human as his mother? If he could love her in that way? If she had loved him as a son? If she’d trusted him with the lives of forty others?
Second, a family of wolves. Ena was as much a sister to him as any of the donai at the creche.
How different could they be if they could bond like they had, if they could adopt him and accept him as their leader?
He hurt. Not from the burn of muscles taxed to their limits, not from loss. Joy had done this to him, let him feel loss as intensely as he had love.
If he could hold on to it no matter what was to come, he could become the best of both—human and donai.
* * *
—
Andret crouched on a branch, high up in the trees overlooking the crash site. Rain and wind had swept Tante’s funeral pyre away years ago. The damaged fighter shone in the sunlight, impervious to the planet’s vegetation.
He didn’t recognize the markings on the ship dwarfing his own. The design was definitely Ryhman; the markings were not.
Three donai, two males and one female, emerged from the ship. They were all at least a head taller. The larger male was twice as wide as any donai Andret had ever seen. They wore uniforms opaque to his enhanced vision. Sidearms and short blades rode their hips. They wore their hair in the short, cropped style of donai troops. The large male’s was black like his own, the female’s blond. The smaller male’s was white, but not with age.
“Come down,” the female said, her contralto voice strong and clear as she looked straight at him.
He stilled, patting the container strapped to his chest.
“Come down, or we’ll come for you.”
The males sprinted, racing to his position.
Before he had a chance to leap, the tree he’d used for concealment fell to the ground. He rolled away, arms crossed over his chest, protecting the container.
It cost him, kept him from escaping. The males pinioned his arms back and dragged him out of the forest. He struggled, yelling at them to let him go.
When they did, it was at the female’s feet.
Cruel hands grabbed at his hair, yanked his head back. The sharp edge of a blade cut into his neck, forcing him to stillness.
His gaze locked with the female’s.
“Your designation?” she asked.
The blade was too deep in his flesh to let him speak, although he tried.
A quick flick of her hand, and the donai holding the blade eased up on the pressure.
Andret coughed up blood.
“She asked you a question,” the dark-haired donai with the blade said.
“My name is Andret.”
She smirked. “Is it now?”
“Yes,” he said, making another attempt to free himself. The hands holding his arms tightened, digging in deep, making him wince.
The female tore the container off his chest, her nails leaving trails of blood as they ripped through his skin.
Andret’s face hit the ground. A knee pressed into his back. He arched his back enough to get his face out of the dirt before his head was pushed down again.
“Strong for his age,” the donai holding him down said.
The female’s eyes widened as she examined the container. She lowered herself to the ground. Her layered irises swirled, contracting and expanding as she looked him over.
“What are you doing here, Andret?” There was a note of amusement at his name.
“Protecting my donai brothers.” And sisters. But they didn’t need to know that. Not yet.
She ran her hands reverently over the container as a predatory smile revealed her cuspids.
“Let him up,” she said, rising. She handed the container to the white-haired male.
The knee on Andret’s back pushed him down as he made to rise.
“We don’t need him,” the deep, harsh voice above him said.
“I said, let him up.” Her voice harmonized with something inside Andret. The compulsion to rise, despite the pain in his pinioned arms, the weight on his back and head, became unbearable.
The donai above him let him go, releasing his hands, easing off his back and head. Andret pushed up, pivoted, and struck with all his strength. Four bones in his hand broke, but his target staggered back, blinking in surprise.
“Stand down,” she said.
The dark-haired donai obeyed, hands clenched, body positioned to strike, but still nonetheless. The look on his face was not one of obedience though. Bared teeth and a pulsing jaw muscle promised retribution.
The white-haired male looked on, amusement on his face. “Oh, he is young,” he said, tightening his grip on the container.
“Turn around, Andret,” she said.
He did. His body didn’t give him a choice. Chills ran through him, different from the ones that had given him calm efficiency before. Tremors pursued the chill, chasing it through his skin, down into his muscles and bones, creating a resonance of pleasure mixed with an eagerness to please.
She ran her hand over his chest, along the healing furrows she’d left behind, baring her teeth as she did so. A deep breath at his neck pulled at his scent. She closed her eyes, a lioness savoring the aromas of her prey.
She twisted her hand into his hair, giving it a tug. “Why are you protecting your brothers?”
“I gave my word as donai.”
She leaned closer, her scent wrapping around him, sweeter than anything he’d smelled before. Better than a kill. Better than anything. For an instant there was no forest, no other males, nothing but her and a sense of purpose mixed with the joy of being with his own kind.
“He’ll do,” she said, letting him go and spinning on her heel. “Bring him.”
“Do what?” Andret asked, unsteady as he followed, his head slowly clearing.
“Fight for our freedom. What else?”
* * *
—
On the planet now called Serigala, a slab of white marble stabs into the sky like a sword with its hilt buried in the soil beneath. Light from two moons shines down on a wolf’s head carved into the monument, along with an inscription:
This is the final resting place of Calyce, the only mother I ever knew. Let it be known that every donai—male and female—who bears the name Dobromil owes their life to the love and bravery of a human woman.
—ANDRET, FOUNDER OF HOUSE DOBROMIL
ZOMBIE DEAREST
AN ANITA BLAKE, VAMPIRE HUNTER STORY
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
“You got my daughter pregnant,” the woman said.
I settled a little more comfortably in my office chair in my business skirt outfit. I wasn’t a cross-dresser, or trans-anything, so being a woman with only girl parts I couldn’t have gotten anyone pregnant, which meant she was crazy, but like a lot of delusional people she looked sane. In fact, Mrs. Herman Henderson looked like she should be sitting on the PTA board of a nice school where they still had bake sales to raise money for band uniforms.
The man sitting beside her looked like the male version of her, someone who still read the paper for his news, maybe smoked a pipe, hunted once a year, or maybe went fly-fishing with the same group of men he’d gone to college with, but they still kept in touch. They looked like churchgoers, the conservative wet dream that people would assume voted Republican but actually voted Democrat because of certain issues not to be discussed at church. Too bad they were crazy.
“Mrs. Henderson, I assure you that I had nothing to do with your daughter being pregnant.”
“You had everything to do with it,” she said, voice getting a little shrill.
I debated pressing the button on the complicated phone on my desk that let the office assistants know to interrupt me. It was meant to be an intercom system, but hitting the button so the office staff could hear crazy talk or screaming usually got reinforcements pretty quick.
Mr. Henderson tried to pat his wife’s arm, but she jerked away from him. “Julie, I don’t think Miss Blake has any idea what you’re talking about.”
Normally I’d have corrected him to Ms. Blake, or Marshal Blake, but he seemed to be the sane half
of the couple and I didn’t want to insult him. Miss was okay if he helped get his crazy wife out of my office.
“She should know, she should know what her black magic does to people.”
“Now, dear.”
“Don’t you ‘now, dear’ me, Herman Henderson.”
“I don’t know what you think I do here, Mrs. Henderson, but I don’t do black magic.”
She looked at me then with brown eyes so angry they were almost black, the way mine could get sometimes. Her hands clutched the handbag in her lap so tightly the skin was mottled. If she opened her purse and reached inside it, I was going to draw my gun just in case.
“You raise zombies, that’s black magic.”
“No, as a matter of fact, it’s not.”
“You sacrifice animals to raise the dead. That’s evil.” Her purse began to shake, and I had a moment of wondering if bombs shook like that, then realized it was just her hands shaking. I really had to stop jumping to the worst possible conclusion all the time. If there was anything in the purse, it would be a gun. See, not the worst possible thing.
“So you’re a vegetarian?” I was betting money she wasn’t.
The question caught her off guard enough that she frowned and forgot to be furious with me for a second. “No, no, I’m not a vegetarian. What has that got to do with anything?”
“You eat meat then.”
She nodded, her hands relaxing a little around her purse. “I just said that.”
“Does it make you evil to eat meat?”
“Are you making fun of me?” she asked, and the anger started to climb back into her hands and eyes.
“No, just pointing out that the fact that I kill a few chickens or the occasional goat to raise the long dead isn’t any worse than slaughtering animals for food. If one doesn’t make you evil, then neither does the other one.”
“Eating a good steak or baked chicken isn’t the same thing as slitting their throats to call the dead from the grave.” Her hands were starting to mottle again.
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