Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 48 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

Kane swung around, still grinning, and sheared the human’s throat open. Sue-Eye leapt away—a blur of wild eyes and open mouth—and Kane snapped the skull, all his senses still scorched by desire.

Raven was waiting when he turned around. She had leaned herself against a straight-backed tree with her shirt off and skirt slyly raised to show the gleam of sunlight on her pink folds. “Tiyavek sa sen channan,” she said in a mocking sing-song. “D’shorr, sildurra Kane. Oh, d’shorr!”

Kane growled appreciatively, and then cut his eyes at his watchful ichuta’a. He tossed her his harvester; she clapped it out of the air, and then stared at it and him uncertainly. “Take care of this for me,” he told her, “and then stay close until I tell you different.” He waited until she had bent over the twitching corpse before turning away. It was time to school his Raven.

“Of course,” he said, seizing her hands and pressing them to his groin, “I can’t teach you everything. I’m supposed to be working.”

“You are,” she assured him, running her fingers over his bulging pant front and pressing her bared breasts to his chest. “Hard at work.” She swayed against him, dancing in place, their mingling sweat oiling the action. He could feel her metal ornaments rubbing hard at him in stark contrast to her softness and the effect was not in the least disagreeable.

Kane’s hands rose and settled on her back, pulling her fully against him, helping her to slide across the plane of his chest. Heat was in him, Heat like a knife, gutting him, robbing him of real pleasure, but this pain-wracked imitation still could not be all bad. It was still Raven undoing his fastens, Raven’s hands sealing themselves around his throbbing erection, and Raven was a female of unassailable talents. Even Heat could be a damned good thing with Raven.

She began to lower herself in slow, waving undulations. The metal stiffening her nipples dug pleasantly at him as they scored a twin path down his body and he arched forward to meet her. And would he like to feel that easy journey continue? Ah gods, yes. He would like to take Raven’s blunt teeth in human bites on his stomach as her breasts gripped and slid along his cock. He would like her mouth on him, sucking and teasing and surrounding him as she swallowed. All these things he’d like. But Heat was about need, not like, and anyway, she had an education coming.

Kane growled at her in mock ferocity, pulling her brusquely to her feet as her knees touched the earth. He snapped at her, relishing the surprise she showed him, and then spun her around. He captured her wrists, slapped her hands into the chapped side of the tree, and took a blood-bite from her naked shoulder. “Lesson one,” he snarled, bumping his hips hard against her backside. “Never tease me when I’m in Heat.”

One arm ensnared her waist and yanked her towards him, positioning her roughly to be ridden. Proving out the winsome nature that had so appealed to him back in the very beginning, she kept her palms flat on the tree, although her little claws dug apprehensively at the bark. That she was so openly nervous was deeply arousing to him; her obedience, even more so. He planted one leg between hers and kicked her feet apart, flipping her skirt up and shoving the loose ends of it into the belted waist. A short, sharp tug to a handful of her hair brought her head up high and Kane stepped away to admire the effect.

It was so amazing, still, to see the secret sex of a female exposed even when her back was turned. Bent as Raven was, hips out-thrust and legs apart, Kane could see even the gleam of metal, the musk-damp pink of her inner folds.

No, Heat was not about what a man might want, but certain things were impossible to resist. Kane moved against her, sliding his knee between her thighs and cupping her breasts from behind, not to please her, but just to feel the reality of the body he owned. The feel of metal rings and rods beneath his open palms was a searing bite to his very soul. His thigh ground up at her lazily, bringing her up onto her toes, and then back to earth in slow rotation. The scent of musk came to him. He shuddered, torturing himself with restraint as he felt her dampening his half-undone clothing.

Raven groaned, pushing back at him. It was music to his heightened senses, but he gave her a punishing snarl anyway. “Lesson two,” he told her curtly, giving her claws where his caresses had so recently lingered. “Heat hurts.”

He gave her no time after that to prepare herself, but stepped up and mounted like an animal, his chest to her bent back. That first golden thrust met with the instinctive hindrance of anxious flesh. Primed as she might be for mating, Raven’s tight sheath closed on him, making it necessary to bend her further, shove harder. Her oils coated him, bringing quick-cum in seconds, and with the slackening of that hellish itch and swelling came renewed awareness of her—ah, his tight Raven, his wanton Raven!

He fucked her for the first time in a true Jotan frenzy, hard and fast and greedy. He had no doubt that it hurt her, but Jotan had known since the dawn of Time that a little pain could be a pleasant spice, and rough though he might be, Kane kept the limits of human flesh full in mind. He teased them out, letting her know that this was Heat, that she was for his pleasure, his release. She shook out a cry just once, and after that, only moans and whimpers that let him hear her own eagerness, her far-thinking recognition of the need for quiet. She rocked back at him as he rode, moving her hips in faltering bumps that he knew were struggles as much as they were mating. He could feel her cumming, he knew she was enjoying at least some of this, but not all, not by a damn stretch. She wanted him to finish with her.

He laughed raggedly in her ear. “Lesson three,” he growled. “Heat can take a long time!” He reared back and fucked harder, making her hocks shudder with the intensity of his thrusts.

“Lesson four!” Raven gasped. “Humans don’t have Heat!”

And with that, she brought her legs suddenly tight together and locked all her body up in a crushing grip.

Instantly, the sheath enclosing him became one great sucking mouth. Caught mid-breath, Kane came eruptively, choking on howls, and then the second hammer of this revenge struck him. His true-cum was freed for release, but his body’s stored quick-cum was still swelling through his cock, constricted by the battle-grip his Raven had on him. The stimulant rush of orgasm was still savaging his senses; he fought to free himself, to piss out his quick-cum on the ground if he had to, so that the acid churning in him could be spent, and Raven locked up even tighter, making even his withdrawal into another spastic cumming.

“Let go, let go! Oh fuck, don’t let go!” he groaned, simultaneously slapping at her and pulling her even tighter to him. The entire length of his cock was being set slowly on fire as true-cum crawled up his constricted shaft, but the storm of continued orgasm that raged in him made it almost bearable. When at last his tsesac released, he was lost so deeply that he could not recognize it until he felt the burn of his seed spattering back onto his thighs.

He slumped then, still fastened to her, breathing heavily against her neck and feeling her body shake with her triumphant laughter.

“Say it, Kane,” she said, and butted her head playfully back at him.

He looked down at her, panting.

“It’s only fair.” She rolled her hips deliberately, sending a skillful current of friction all along his engloved cock. “Say it.”

“Tiyavek sa sen channan, Raven,” he breathed, and nuzzled fondly at her shoulder. “D’shorr.”

She laughed again, a sound of high, human victory, bringing Kane a pang of real regret as he removed himself from her. Raven pushed herself off the tree and shook down the fold of her skirt, smirking over her round shoulder at him. “Unfortunately,” she said, feigning disappointment, “Lesson one is, there’s a time and a place, and this is neither.”

True. Very true. Kane turned around, fastening himself into his clothing, and finally put out his hand. Sue-Eye came to lay his harvester back in his grip and, still warm in the glow of good sex, Kane bent and nipped at her jaw. Her smile spread out like sunlight and he chuckled and nipped again before giving her a push back toward the roar of the fair.

“Back to work for you, ichuta’a,” he said. “But you keep those mating thoughts in mind. I want good males to harvest.”

“Yes, Kane.”

Off she went. Kane held out his arm, watching her go, and Raven stepped into his half-embrace. “I told you I could be forgiving,” he remarked.

“I, on the other hand, hold a grudge. You’re going to pay mightily when I get around to giving you my lessons.”

He tried for an ominous sidelong glance, but was afraid his broad smile may have ruined the effect. “We’ll see,” he said simply. “But it’s going to have to wait until we’re in the open black. No more distractions. We finish this hunt and we get the fuck off this rock.”

She nodded obedience, her hand playing at his stomach.

“Back to the mountains,” Kane muttered, his eyes piercing the tangled bushes ahead for Sue-Eye’s return. “Back to the ship.”

“Will you let me fly it a little?”

“Why not?” He tickled playfully at her sides. “It’s a nice, long stretch of nothing between Earth and where we’re going. We’ve got to pass the time somehow.”

She gave him a good scratching on his bare stomach for that, but he let it go unanswered. Sue-Eye was coming back with her chosen male. Kane took his arm from Raven’s shoulders and dismissed her with a flick of his claws, flexing his grip on his harvester. Time to finish this hunt, now, while his misgivings were still faded out and Heat was at bay. He’d have the rest of his life to play with Raven, but by the time the sun set on this world, Kane meant to be leaving it behind.

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Chapter Thirty-Seven

Kane straightened up, snapped his hands out twice to knock the blood from them, and then braced them against his back and stretched until his bones creaked. He was soaked. He’d stripped off the hat and coat long ago, but it wasn’t enough. His pants were clinging to him unpleasantly, his footcovers squished when he walked, and his hair crawled with sweat to the point that he felt like his head was infested with bugs. But the end was in sight.

He glanced down at the corpse at his feet, still massaging at his aching back, and then turned away and trudged back into his clearing where his females waited for him. Sue-Eye held out his harvester and he gave her a critical once-over before taking it. She was starting to flag, his ichuta’a. As if getting groped at was such hard work.

His eyes went to Raven right on the heels of that thought. There was a woman who’d done some hard work. She was sleeping now, looking flushed and uncomfortable in the heat, with one hand tucked up under her skirt. He hadn’t been here that long, but he’d used her three times already (and never with quite the same sense of play or pleasure as the first, unfortunately), but there was going to be a fourth before too long if he didn’t get done here in a hurry.

Maybe he’d use Sue-Eye if it came to that. She might even see it as some kind of reward, although personally, Kane’d had his fill of even good fucking by now and was in no mood to indulge her.

There was no point in pursuing what-ifs. There was still work to be done. Kane held his harvester up to the light and gave it a shake as he gauged the volume of its contents. “One more, I think,” he said.

Sue-Eye nodded listlessly and turned around.

“Try to show some enthusiasm, damn it,” he snapped. “I’m starting to think you haven’t got it in you to do the fucking I want when we leave Earth.”

She swung back, stricken. “I can!”

“Really.” He gave her a cold eye. “You told me you’d fuck a thousand men for me. You’ve brought me less then twenty and you haven’t had to fuck any. And look at you.”

She dropped her eyes, her hands smoothing at her skirt. “I’m hot,” she said.

“So am I.” He tucked the harvester into the waistband of his pants and folded his arms, glaring at her. “Which is why I’m not inclined to let you give me shit over this.”

“I’m sorry.” She pulled her shirt out and retied it, looking at him hopefully. “I’ll do better.”

Heat was really scratching at him. His eye lingered on the swelling of her newly-emphasized breasts. “Go on then,” he said shortly, shaking it off. “One more. And smile, for fuck’s sake.”

Sue-Eye moved off and Kane retreated to lean against the tree that Raven slept beneath. She didn’t wake up, but she did moan a little, the hand between her thighs rubbing briefly. She resettled, her features twisted into a sleeping wince and her hair falling over her face. It made her look so cute, so little and helpless. Heat scratched at him again, and again, he fought it down. He wouldn’t mind a wrestle with his Raven, but he was tired of Heat bullying him into it.

Well, at least this would be the last time. One more male to pull dopamine from and this hunt was done. They’d leave—no, they’d eat first. He was starving and he was sure both his females were as well, seeing as he’d herded them out this morning with no food. The smells emanating from the fair weren’t very appetizing but then, it couldn’t be any worse than some other things he’d eaten. Old Urak had prodigious talents in a lot of fields, but cooking had never been one of them.

Once they’d fed, they could leave. Out to the car and its climate controls. Raven would take them back to where he’d found her. His locator would lead them the rest of the way to his ship, by road as far as possible, on foot after that, and if he was lucky, it’d be late enough to avoid Heat. Earth’s sun would set, and Kane would never have to see it rise again. Not on this trip, anyway. It was almost done.

‘And done damned well,’ he told himself in his father’s voice. He’d have a few empty vials once these nine had refined down, but that was all right. He’d reached the point where the difference of a few thousand crona didn’t matter to him. He was tired and it was time to go home.

Sue-Eye was coming back already. Laughing with her prey, no less. She must have taken his words to heart.

Kane heaved a sigh and pushed himself off the tree, pulling his harvester into his hand again. He got low and crept silently to the bushes separating his clearing from hers. Through the screen of foliage, he watched his ichuta’a at work.

The male, perversely enough, didn’t seem to want to get started. Its eyes kept moving over the trees, not as though it feared discovery but just as though it wanted to be sure it was alone. Something in the way it did that put an edge up in Kane and he flexed the claws of his killing hand, watching.

The male’s attention finally wandered back to Sue-Eye, who was busily trying to unlock the male’s belt and clothing. “You here alone, baby?” it asked.

Kane covered his eyes, his teeth bared in silent exasperation. ‘You don’t need to talk to her,’ he thought furiously. ‘Just fuck her, for hell’s sake!’

“Of course I am,” Sue-Eye said, laughing. “Nobody here but us chickens. Now come on, let’s see that—”

CRACK!

Kane’s head came up fast just as Sue-Eye struck the ground on her stomach just in front of him.

“The thing is,” the male continued, searching the woods surrounding them again. “I don’t feel much like paying.”

Sue-Eye groaned, rubbing at her cheek, and her eyes went confusedly to Kane’s through the bushes. He made a lie-still gesture, watching the male above her as it paced around its clearing, and she obediently shut her eyes and feigned unconsciousness.

Gods damn it all, the little shit wasn’t even hard yet. Kane was going to have to send his ichuta’a back out again.

The male finally returned to Sue-Eye and rolled her roughly onto her back, then knelt between her splayed legs. It pulled her skirt up and its lips curled back from its teeth in an expression of disgust. “Whore,” it said.

Well, what else had the numb shit been expecting, having followed her into the fucking woods? Kane rubbed at his eyes, fighting his temper. What to do? Kill it now, or wait and see if it was ever going to get in the fucking mood despite the risk to his ichuta’a?

“Wake up, whore!” A slap, and Sue-Eye sputtered. “And don’t you make a sound.”

Dutiful silence.

“Aren’t you going to beg?” the male demanded.

“Make up your fucking mind,” Sue-Eye said irritably, exactly at the same time as Kane thought it.

The male slapped her. Sue-Eye looked back at Kane, her mouth tight, seeking orders.

Kane thought about it. He shrugged and made a fist.

Sue-Eye looked back up at the male who was now beginning to look seriously pissed. She balled up her hand and punched him.

That did it. The male slapped Sue-Eye some more, then seized her throat and squeezed as it yanked her shirt up. “You make a sound and I’ll kill you, bitch!” it hissed.

Sue-Eye nodded. Kane takked his claws soundlessly on the forest floor and waited.

The male captured Sue-Eye’s wrists and pinned them above her head with one hand so that it could mangle her breasts with the other. Kane watched, his fingers flexing on his harvester, as the male aroused itself with readying his ichuta’a for rape. It occurred to him that if Sue-Eye really wanted to get free, she might actually be able to do it. The male was careless and Kane’s ichuta’a had a real affinity for killing. If she wasn’t trying so hard right now to please him, she might have this fucker’s tsesac off and stuffed in its mouth by now.

The male was ready. Finally. It went to finish unfastening its clothing, its breath coming hard and its color high.

It was good enough for Kane. He sprang, tracheated the male in one instant and then, for his ichuta’a’s sake, castrated it in the next.

“Thank you, Kane,” she said as he was spinning the male around and digging into bone.

“Ah, you’ve been good.” The skull cracked off in his hand and the male’s struggles turned to torpid writhing. Kane harvested the gland, watching with satisfaction as the last vial filled completely. “Very good. Go wake Raven.”

“I’m awake.” Raven stumbled to his side to prove it, rubbing at her sleep-puffed eyes. “Is that it? Are we leaving now?”

“We’re eating first.”

“Oh, great!” Sue-Eye sighed, and immediately started picking through the dying male’s pockets for money. “I’m so thirsty I could spit sand.”

“I’m sure if you’d asked nicely, Kane would have let you suck off a few cocks before he killed them.”

“Easy, Raven,” Kane said, smiling. Sue-Eye was not as amused. He gave her a pat as he put the last vial into the preserver and sealed up his pack. “We’re all hot and sore here.”

Raven muttered something and stood down.

Kane shouldered the thick strap, feeling out the weight of a full pack with real pleasure. “Let’s go,” he said.

Sue-Eye started moving; Raven stayed where she was.

“Can’t we just leave and get something on the road?” she asked. “Air conditioning, Kane!”

“Obedience, Raven,” he retaliated, and she sighed and showed her teeth at the ground. “Let’s go,” he said again, and this time there was no argument. They moved out of the woods together and went to be swallowed up by the fair.

*

Inquiries at the entrance had been fruitless, but that was neither surprising nor discouraging. There were thousands of humans here and only two persons at the gate. Upon first passing into the jumbled city of teeming pathways and crowded booths, his perception of it as hunting grounds for Vahst only increased. If E’Var was not here yet, then surely he would come here soon. It was not impossible to imagine that this fair was the reason for the disturbing quiet of the previous day; perhaps E’Var had made his camp nearby, preparing for a full day of hunting in these choice environs. His humans, who had taught E’Var so effectively of movie theaters and motels, would have been quick to guide him here.

Knowing that, it was easy to be patient as he patrolled the outer walks nearest to the gate, but slightly more difficult to be nonchalant. Tagen walked at Daria’s side, his hands curled at his sides and Daria’s socks upon his feet, searching the crowd around him for sign of his prisoner and doing his best to ignore the curious looks the humans had for his uniform.

Under other circumstances, Tagen thought he might enjoy ‘fair’. Circumstances involving, for example, a day of heavy drinking and temperatures perhaps half what they were now. Ah, no, in all honesty, he supposed all he’d truly need was to be a boy again. This had to be a child’s idea of heaven. All the bright colors, flashing lights, loud music, unhealthy food, gaming shops with toys as tall as Tagen for prizes, the rides…great merciful gods, the rides…and of course, the throngs of other children to provide camouflage so that one could freely indulge in the most deviant behaviors.

When he’d been a boy, he probably would have given the teeth out of his head for a day in a place like this. Looking around now, however, he could not help but see it as a place of near and inevitable danger, even without the threat of E’Var’s possible presence. He wondered if that was a soldier’s perspective or, with the healthy female of the past many days’ matings at his side and in his thoughts, a father’s.

“Do you have fairs on your planet?” Daria asked suddenly, distracting him from the wistfulness that futile thought evoked. Her hand twined with his and lightly squeezed.

“More or less,” he said. He was intensely aware of her thumb. She was rubbing it back and forth along his wrist, seemingly without being aware of it as she swept her gaze across the other humans. “Less crowding. Less screaming.” He glanced up at the capricious trackline of one of the open-car rides. “Less imminent death.”

“And more what?”

He found it a little disturbing that she hadn’t argued with his assessment of the rides. But he considered the question carefully, thinking back to the few public celebrations he had attended in his life. The Child-Hall where he had spent his youngest years sponsored several, and although he could not recall them clearly beyond a general sense of frenzied fun, he knew they hadn’t been much like this. After he’d been sent to live with Kolya Pahnee, there had been very little in the way of revelry of any kind. Public observances were limited to those at which his father were receiving honors of some kind—Veteran’s March, High Tribute, Fleet Academy Commencement, that sort of thing.

“More to do,” he said at length. “There were things to make. There were musicians and entertainments. There were games. Not games of this sort,” he added, waving at a booth where several humans were attempting to thread a rotating wire maze. “Fields of games. Contests.”

“Did you ever win any?”

“Oh yes.” Considering Kolya Pahnee’s ruthless training techniques, it was a wonder Tagen hadn’t won all of them. “The rewards were much the same, I think. In principle if not in form.”

“You sound like you’ve been to a few.”

Tagen grunted noncommittally, eyeing a booth of moving targets and the pellet projectile weapon that was meant to be used against them. Were it not for his hands and the need to keep them hidden, he would be sorely tempted to try his skill.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to one of these.” Daria plucked at his sleeve as she set off in a new direction, moving towards the inner fair, toward the smell of food. Her eyes, too, were scanning the masses, but there was a smile on her lips to suggest not all her attention was in the here and now. “Ten years, at least. It just figures I’d have to come now, for this.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I am. I’d love to kick it around here for a few hours without having to worry about killer aliens harvesting brain stems.”

He gave her a long, dubious look. She didn’t seem at all nervous. “How is it,” he began tactfully, “that you have such difficulty approaching those we meet at your hotels—”

She laughed. “And not here, when I’m literally drowning in total strangers?” she finished for him. “Look around, Tagen. No one sees me. If I fell down, they’d step right on me and keep going. It’s as good as being here by myself.”

Tagen frowned and stared out at the crowd again.

“For crying out loud, you’re a seven-foot-tall guy with visible fangs, yellow eyes, three fingers and claws, walking around in socks, wearing a shiny military uniform and an empty gunbelt and no one’s even stopped to ask if you’re performing here or anything.”

His frown deepened.

“I could stand on your shoulders and shout out that you’re an alien and I don’t think most of these people would even stop to stare.”

“You have made your point,” he told her. The sense of this place as a chemist’s killing grounds was now overwhelming. To distract himself as much as her, he said, “Why have you not recently been to fair if you enjoy them and are not frightened?”

She shrugged. “No one to go with, I guess. It’s no fun being at the fair by yourself.” She looked wistfully around her. “And this one looks like a really cool one. They’ve even got roller coasters.”

Tagen glanced at the nearest loop of unstable track just an open car came thundering through it with a full load of shrieking, unharnessed passengers. “Which I would never allow you to ride,” he said.

“And I’d eat. You can’t get food like this anywhere but at the fair.”

Tagen watched a cook pull a dripping battercake from a vat of boiling grease and coat it with pure sugar until it had a solid crust. “Have you never wondered why?”

“You know, I bet you were just mountains of fun when you were a kid,” she said wryly.

“You would lose that bet.”

“Yeah, that’s why I…oh never mind.”

He smiled, and then knuckled sweat from his eyes. “If you insist on poisoning us both, you had best do it swiftly. I am losing to Heat, and much as I dislike the thought of scandalizing your cat, there are some things I have no doubt will draw attention even in this crowd.”

Pink rose high in her cheeks and she giggled. “Well, okay. I have to do my part for Jota’s boys in blue. Or black, as the case may be. I see barbeque chicken on some of these people’s plates, you ought to be able to choke that—Oh God!”

He looked sharply around, and then down at her again. “What is it?”

“Tagen, look!”

There were too many people, too much to see. Tagen gripped her hand a little tighter, aiming his eyes in the direction of her stare, and tried to see what she saw.

He saw the purple hair first. Purple hair, just as the lawman had described, a color so astounding that for a moment, it was all Tagen could see. And then he saw the man walking beside her, a man that stood head and shoulders above her. A man in a long coat and head-cover, the only man so attired on such a hot day.

“Is it him?” Daria asked. She clutched at his arm, her little claws digging painfully at him. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

Big man and two women, one of them with purple hair, the other blonde.

“Cover your ears,” Tagen said. He had no idea what the range for his neural stunner might be in the open like this, and there were hundreds of humans all around him, but he could not open fire with a plasma gun into this crowd. Likewise, he could not follow along behind the three forever, and if E’Var turned and saw him, there would be carnage. Tagen had one chance, one alone, to catch his prisoner by surprise.

He reached into his jacket and took his neural stunner in one hand, his plasma gun in the other.

Daria paled, her eyes flashing wildly around at the crowd. “You can’t mean it!” she hissed. “There’s people everywhere!”

“Cover your ears,” he told her again.

“Tagen!”

His temper slipped and he bent close to her ear and snarled, “I have no time, woman, obey me!”

Clap went her hands on her ears. Her eyes were pleading.

Tagen raised the stunner over the crowd and pushed the trigger. He saw the pulse belch out from the device, a colorless distortion of sound that struck like a hammer inside his head and left a nauseating echo, but he was Jotan and it passed. The humans, for which the device had been developed, dropped in waves all around him, leaving a sea of prone bodies in a perfect ring. He heard Daria cry out, the sound rapidly eclipsed by screaming as the surrounding humans reacted to the sudden incapacitation of so many of their kind.

The two humans walking aside of the coated man fell with the rest of them, but the man merely staggered, and that was it, that was E’Var. Tagen had just time enough to register this, not even time to raise his plasma gun, and then E’Var was gone, darting around the side of the nearest booth in a snap of black coat without even glancing to see where the attack had come from.

But the booth was isolated from the bank of them. E’Var could not flee unseen, he could only hide. A live capture was not out of the realm of possibility.

“Prisoner!” Tagen shouted in Jotan. He had to shout to be heard. The humans were running, streaming past him in a blind panic, even trampling their own fallen in their desperation to escape. “I arrest you, Kanetus E’Var. Surrender yourself!”

His words seemed to be the catalyst that freed Daria from her shocked paralysis. She uncovered her ears and shot forward in a blur, dropping to her knees and touching her hand to exposed throats. “What did you do to them?” she asked shrilly.

E’Var glanced around the side of the booth, giving Tagen a glimpse of shoulder, a plane of cheek, and a lock of dark blonde hair. He was gone again before Tagen could get off a shot.

“Is that one yours?” E’Var’s voice was untouched by tension. He sounded as easy as if they were talking over bottles of ul. And he spoke in N’Glish, bringing Daria’s head up in a quick jerk.

Tagen grit his teeth, his arm steady and his finger heavy on the trigger of his plasma gun. He hated even that E’Var was thinking about Daria. “Surrender!” he shouted again, stubbornly speaking Jotan.

“She’s cute,” E’Var continued. “I could fuck that all day, I think.”

Daria blanched and crawled back to Tagen’s side. He stepped in front of her instinctively.