ACROSS STARS AND BLOOD (The Malaki Series Book 1)

by L. A. MARIE

  Enach turned his attention to the guards. “I want my son’s arrival to be better than what you had going with these prisoners,” he was saying. “As soon as he lands, I want an audience with him.”

  They guard nodded. Enach continued talking, but I was too far away from him to hear, now.

  The fact that Thane was coming back gave me a bit of hope. If he came back, then…

  Then what? What did I think he was going to do? Thane had made life hell for me. He didn’t care about anything other than himself and he had hurt me more than anyone ever could – he had stopped me from saving my sister. Hell, that part hurt more than the damn betrayal.

  I should hate him. I should hope that his dad gave him the hell he deserved.

  But somehow, I couldn’t find it in myself to hate him. I couldn’t find it in myself to wish anything awful on him. No matter how much he deserved it.

  Because I felt something for him. Something very deep and very serious. And I couldn’t figure out what it was. It had something to do with the visions, the weird connection, the sex we’d had.

  I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to feel something for him. I wanted to hate him, I wanted to feel like he was a traitor. I should want revenge. I should want him to hurt the way I was hurting. Because of him, I had lost everything that was important to me, and he had gotten away.

  At least, I had thought he had. Now that I heard he was coming back; I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  I was moving easier, using my body as before, and the guard didn’t have to drag me along. But I didn’t even notice where we were going, I barely registered my surroundings. All I could think about was Thane, and what was going on with him. And what I felt about him and for him.

  I wanted to be angry! But I just… wasn’t.

  While we walked, I had sudden visions of him again. He was in a forest, sitting by a stream. I didn’t know what trees surrounded him – I had never seen such trees in my life. Strange, tall trunks, so thin it seemed like I could snap them with my bare hands. And large bubble-like branches that looked far too heavy for just a thin tree to uphold. But the trees were tall and proud and swayed gently in the breeze.

  I felt the sun on my face – no, Thane’s face – and I got some kind of flashback. But I knew it wasn’t mine. It was his. The flashback belonged to him.

  I was with a woman, her hair long and dark, flowing over her shoulders. Her smile was bright, her eyes gentle. And she was beautiful.

  Mother, I thought.

  “Thane, what are you doing?” she laughed. She was running after me, chasing me. I giggled and stayed just out of reach. I loved hearing her laugh. She hadn’t laughed much, lately. She was too sick, looking so serious, worried about what would become of us when she was gone. And when she worried like that, it was like her disease got worse and worse. But when she laughed, it melted away a little and she looked like she used to, when we had all been happy.

  “Thane, wait,” she said, stopping to catch her breath. She leaned on her knees before lowering herself to the grass. We were in a clearing, the grass green, the trees tall and beautiful. Tall trees, thin and with thick bubble tops. My mother used to love these trees.

  “Are you okay, Mother?” I asked, coming closer to her.

  “I’m just tired,” she said.

  She was lying to me, but I understood it. She wasn’t lying because she was being mean, she just didn’t want me to worry.

  But I worried all the time. I worried about losing her. That scared me more than anything. But I hadn’t lost her yet, and I was going to hold onto that.

  It had been Thane’s memory. I knew that the moment I had felt it. It had been through his eyes. And I had felt the love for his mother, how much he cared for her.

  So, there was something in Thane that was good. A part of him had known how to love once. He had lost her, and that had changed him.

  Or maybe it had been more than that. Maybe it had been a series of events. But it felt impossible to imagine that Thane could be such a warm, loving person. Did that mean that he could care like that about me? Did he feel the same connection to me as I felt to him? Could that mean that he would care about me at all?

  I guess it didn’t matter now. I was a slave, and that was the end of it.

  But the fact that Thane might care still made me feel a little better about the whole thing. The fact that he’d had the capacity to feel that way once upon a time made me feel like maybe, just maybe, there was a part of him that cared about me now.

  It didn’t change anything. I had lost it all, and he was coming back… hopefully to live a life that meant something, but somehow, knowing what Enach was capable, I doubted it.

  I doubted a lot of things I had thought were true before.

  By the time we reached yet another cell block, I was starting to understand what was going on. The Elder House wasn’t the sanctuary of help and freedom as the Malakus portrayed it to the humans. There were cell blocks everywhere and humans stood in captivity so they could be used as slaves. The Malakus.were trying to enslave the whole planet and take it for themselves. I had become just another one of those slaves.

  Maybe, if I had known about this before, I would have been able to do something about it. But what? I was just one human and were talking about the whole Earth.

  Still, I felt even more helpless than ever before.

  The new cell had more light, and after they locked me in, the guard brought me food. Good food. Real food.

  “Eat,” he said. “We’ll need you strong for work.”

  “You just starved me for four days.”

  “By the time you can work, it’s too late to fight back, and you can start with your new life.”

  Right, that was how it worked. Keep us trusting or keep us weak. Until it was all too late. I was staring to see the bigger picture, now.

  Did more people know about this? Enough of them to make a difference? Or was this it for our race? Was it over and we were destined to be slaves to an alien race, who had told us it wasn’t an invasion?

  I couldn’t believe that this was what our lives had become. Once upon a time, life had been perfect, the Earth had been beautiful, and all had been well with the world. But everything was fucked now.

  What were we going to do?

  There wasn’t really anything that could be done.

  This was it.

  Somehow, it seemed worse knowing what was going to happen and not being able to change it, than it was to not know anything at all.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thane

  The hyperjump went a hell of a lot smoother than it had gone when I traveled to Nolmilea with Emori. In no time, I was back in the Milky Way. It would only be two more days to get to Earth now.

  I was getting impatient. I wanted to get to Emori, I wanted to be there for her. Dammit, I had decided I was going to try to save her. Even though I had been sure I wanted to get rid of her from the start. Hell, I’d wanted to kill her at first.

  But all that had changed. We were connected now. And as much as I wanted to be a selfish son of a bitch, I couldn’t just forget about her and move on with my life.

  I had to get to her and save her, help her feel better after everything she had been through. After all, if she hadn’t lost her sister already, she might lose her soon.

  Maybe I could help with that, too. But we had to take this one step at a time. The first order of business was to find Emori and get her the hell out of there. I couldn’t figure out where she was with any kind of equipment – she didn’t have a Noether with her and if they had already implanted her with a chip, I wouldn’t know what frequency to find her information on. There were so many the Malaki used.

  But what I did have was our connection – our bond. And with that, I could find her. Which meant that I just had to focus on her, and our bond would draw me toward her.

  I did just that. I could feel it more powerfully than ever, now. It had nothing to do with distance, either. Our connect
ion stretched across space and time and that wasn’t something either of us could change. We were in this together now, no matter what.

  The pull drew me toward Earth, toward a certain part of it, and I stilled. America, which my dad had taken over as the Elder of Dacoi. Hopefully, she wasn’t anywhere near my father. But something told me that that was exactly where she was.

  As I drew closer and closer to Earth, after my two-day travel to get to her, I knew that we were both in deep shit.

  Because the bond was never wrong. And from what I could figure out, she was at the Elder House, right under my father's nose.

  Well, fuck.

  As I drew closer and closer to Earth, I picked up radio waves. I could start tuning into what the Malakus streamed. The humans’ radio stations were far too weak for this kind of thing – no wonder they hadn’t known there was life in the universe other than their measly little planet.

  The radio chatter I picked up sounded like it was just a talk show at first, a few songs playing in a style that practically drove me up the wall. Humans listened to this crap.

  But then the frequency wobbled and changed, and I was suddenly tuned into the conversations that the Malaki soldiers had with each other over their closed-circuit radios. Radios that were only picked up by the ships, and no other devices.

  That was pretty damn convenient, if you asked me.

  “…slaves mobilizing in the morning,” the chatter started. “Humans divided into groups. The first are ready for Nolmilea transport.”

  They were starting the whole damn thing, weren’t they? My dad had decided to make it happen sooner than he had said at first. What was his hurry? Why was he doing this now? The last I had heard he had said we might wait another year or two.

  Whatever the reason, the facts were that human slaves were being taken away. And Emori was down there with them. I could feel the tug toward her so strongly now, I could barely think about anything else. I flew the ship in the direction of the pull, and I already saw the dot that would become the Elder House, eventually.

  I had to figure out what I was going to do once I landed. I had to decide how I was going to take on the Malakus. The base was a lot better protected than it had been on Nolmilea. Here, they were actually worried about people escaping and prepared for shit like that happening all the time.

  Humans were fantastic escape artists, getting out of more things I had ever seen a Malakus do. It was one of the things that had surprised us the most when we invaded at first.

  When I lowered the craft closer and closer to the Earth, I could feel her. It was almost like she was next to me. And I had a desperate urge to get to her. I had a strong urge to save her. It was even more desperate than I had ever been to save myself, and that struck me as downright weird. But when it came to Emori, I had a sense of possession over her. She was mine, and no one else could have her.

  I dropped the ship to the ground slowly, carefully, a short distance away from the Elder House. From the chatter on the radio, it didn’t sound like anyone had seen me. There were crafts everywhere and no one would have blinked an eye at another flying past.

  I crept toward the Elder House and the vast grounds, covered with military buildings, cells. The house was situated on the other side of the property.

  The grounds were practically crawling with guards. They were everywhere. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get past them. And even if I managed, what was I going to do next? How was I going to save Emori? Finding her wouldn’t be too easy, I could still feel the pull toward her, stronger than ever. But if I didn’t think this through, I was going to be overthrown in no time at all, and I wasn’t going to get another chance.

  My father would make sure of that.

  I started thinking logically. The only way I was going to do this was if I blended in.

  This wasn’t something I much experience in – I liked to stand out. My whole life, I had made a point of being different. My father hadn’t been happy with who I was, anyway. So why not?

  Now, I needed to look like a soldier.

  Dressed in the casual clothes I had stashed away after breaking out of prison – I still hadn’t found a fresh change of clothes – they were going to recognize me as being out of place in no time flat.

  One of the craft hangars was close by. There were a couple of guards milling not too far off, but I could make a break for the hangar. It was still a risk, but one I had to take.

  Slowly, I crawled from the trees toward the building. I kept my eyes and ears open, making sure that no one saw me. As soon as I reached the building, I opened one of the back doors and crawled through, hoping that there was no one inside.

  As luck would have it, it was empty. And one of the crafts was still inside, the doors open. I climbed into it and searched through the cabinets that lined the walls.

  Bingo.

  I found one of the military uniforms that everyone was wearing. I didn’t know what kind of force was working on my side, but clearly, I had found favor with someone.

  That was new.

  Dressed a little better, I was more confident about leaving the building and joining the fray. Things weren’t as strict as they had been in my father’s day, and my long hair wouldn’t be a problem. Still, I pulled it back and tied it up, just in case.

  As soon as I stepped out of the building, one of the other soldiers came to me.

  “Hey! You!”

  I turned, trying not to look panicked.

  “What do you think you’re doing? We need to start rounding up the slaves, Enach’s order. Do you think this is some kind of holiday?”

  I shook my head. “I just had to take a piss.”

  “Fine,” the soldier bit out. “But get back to work. The city doesn’t pay you to fuck around.”

  Right. I nodded and he gestured toward the cell blocks where the slaves were being lined up in rows, ready for the Malaki to load them into crafts.

  Where were they taking them? From what I had heard, it sounded like they were taking them to Nolmilea. So, the planet I had escaped to, the planet I thought would forever remain untainted by this new world Earth, would become different, after all. Running away to what I thought was “home” wouldn’t have achieved anything. Well, the past didn’t wait for anyone, did it?

  Go figure.

  I had to find Emori, so I moved in the right direction. She was here, I could feel it. She was somewhere among all these humans. I just had to find her, take her away, and then everything would be okay again. We could figure the rest out, later.

  The incredible magnetic pull toward her grew stronger and stronger still, and I knew I was headed in the right direction. My eyes scanned the humans. They all looked terrible. I was shocked to see what my dad had done to them. They seemed worn out, thin and hungry, weak. Some of them looked sick.

  I knew that my father would feed them, that he would grow their strength again so that they could work. That was the point of having slaves. But he was keeping them weak so they couldn’t run away. It was logical.

  Suddenly, the link to Emori disappeared. It was as if one moment, it was strong, and the next someone had flipped a switch and it was gone. Frantically, I searched within myself to find it again. How was it possible? These connections didn’t just break.

  My blood ran cold when I realized what it meant. Was she dead? Had they killed her?

  I tried not to look as panicked as I felt. It would only draw attention. But I was freaking out, wanting to grab each and every one of the soldiers by the neck and shake them until they told me where she was. Until they showed me where her body had been taken.

  Because that was what this had to mean. My fingers started trembling. I couldn’t bear to think that I might have lost her. And that was before I had truly found her.

  What had I done? I should never have given her over to the soldiers, I shouldn’t have sold her out.

  I was here to save her, but it was all too little too late, wasn’t it?

  She was gone.
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  I worked my way through the humans, trying to find something, anything at all, that would give me a clue as to what happened to her.

  But she wasn’t here – why would she be? And the other humans all looked terrified or angry. Or both. None of them were going to answer my questions. I was a Malaki. I was the enemy, now.

  The intensity of my emotions when I thought I lost Emori caught me off guard. When my mother died, I had felt terrible. I had seen it coming, I had expected it for some time. And it had hurt like a bitch, but I had known that I would have to get through it. This was different. Firstly, I really didn’t think that I felt so seriously about her. I also hadn’t thought that I would lose her as quickly as I had found her.

  And I definitely hadn’t thought that I would care at all.

  But here I was, trembling, trying to keep myself from falling apart. Because the very thought of getting rid of her was what I’d had when I met her, and she was on my ship. But this time, everything was different. Everything had changed.

  When I had wanted her gone, she stuck to me like glue. But now that I wanted her in my life, it turned out she had slipped through my fingers.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Emori

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked, fighting the soldier who roughly grabbed me from the group of humans and pushed me in a different direction. The soldiers were different from the prison guards. The soldiers were even less caring, harsher toward the humans. They seemed to hate us all. It had seemed out of place before but now I was starting to realize the bigger picture.

  Now I was starting to see what it was all about.

  I didn’t get an answer to my question. The soldier didn’t even grace me with, “It’s none of your business,” the way the guard had done. All I could do was wait and see where they took me.