Silent Lucidity

by Tiffany Roberts

  With a smooth motion, Tenthil pulled himself onto the roof. He drew a knife as he padded toward the guard—another vorgal. Apparently, Cullion preferred the tall, muscular, savage-looking beings for his personal security team. Many species considered vorgals intimidating, especially in hand-to-hand combat.

  Just another obstacle in my path.

  Tenthil crept up behind the vorgal, reversed his grip on the knife, and reached up, wrapping an arm around the guard’s head to wrench it backward. Before the vorgal could make a sound, Tenthil extended his other arm past the vorgal’s shoulder and jabbed the knife inward. The blade plunged into the center of the vorgal’s throat; the species was particularly resistant to having their throats slit due to flexible-but-tough bone-like fibers on the sides of their trachea, believed to be an evolutionary remnant from a time when they would battle one another with tusks, seeking to bite any vulnerable body parts.

  Keeping hold of the vorgal, who was choking on his own blood, Tenthil glanced at the rooftop door. The scanner on the doorframe was a familiar sort—it read the Consortium-issued ID chips that were meant to be installed in every being in Arthos. Tenthil didn’t have one, and even if he did, it would only trip the alarm if he used it on this scanner.

  All he needed was a chip with the proper clearance—inside a living body.

  The vorgal struggled when Tenthil tugged him toward the door; even were he not dying, the vorgal wouldn’t have been able to overcome Tenthil’s strength. The vorgal’s feet dragged over the roofing, occasionally kicking or stomping, until Tenthil reached the door and swung his captive around to face the reader. Several thin, indistinct beams of light projected from the reader and swept over the Vorgal’s body; ID chips were usually installed in an individual’s left arm, but the radically different anatomies between some species often necessitated full-body detectors to ensure the chip was located and scanned.

  With a beep and a click, the magnetic locks disengaged, and the door swung open. Tenthil shoved the vorgal aside and released his hold, simultaneously twisting the knife and tearing it free. Tenthil caught the door with his boot before it closed, bent to wipe his blade clean on the vorgal’s pants, and slipped into the manor. Knife in hand, he walked down the tristeel-grating steps and stopped at the blast door at the base of the landing.

  Tenthil pressed his ear against the wall beside the door. He couldn’t hear any alarms or panicked voices within—a good sign, but it didn’t mean he was clear of danger. Even if his entry hadn’t been detected yet, it was only a matter of time before the other guards realized one of their own was down. Things would move quickly once that happened.

  He tapped a knuckle against the control panel. The door receded into the right side of its frame, opening on a hallway adorned with stone sculptures, columns inlaid with gold, and dark, patterned carpeting. Tenthil stalked forward, shifting the knife into his left hand to drop his right hand to the grip of his blaster. His ears twitched and his nostrils flared. The place was quiet, but a variety of smells filled the air. One of them, though faint, belonged to the terran female—he had no doubt of it. His blood heated as he drew in a deep breath and focused on her scent.

  She’d been here. She was here; he knew it instinctively, though logic dictated he couldn’t possibly be sure.

  When he reached a smaller hallway branching off the main one, he paused and sniffed the air again. The scent was stronger there, if only subtly so; he turned and followed the new path. He had a vague idea of the corridor’s purpose—its more modest décor suggested it was meant to keep servants out of sight—but his focus on the scent left room for little else in his mind. Increasingly, conscious thought retreated to the back of his mind, leaving only his immediate sensory perceptions and the driving need to locate his female.

  Tenthil passed several closed doors; he knew none of them were the right ones by smell alone. She was somewhere deeper inside the manor, caged like an animal, held as a possession by this arrogant ertraxxan, a trophy for him to show off as he chose. The flames already raging in Tenthil’s chest intensified, spreading their heat through his body.

  He rounded a corner and nearly collided with another vorgal guard, this one stationed in front of an elevator.

  The surprised vorgal turned toward Tenthil, his gaping mouth displaying his jutting tusks. Tenthil acted before the guard had completed his turn; he lunged forward and pushed up off the floor, throwing his weight behind his elbow as he slammed it into the guard’s chin. The vorgal’s head snapped back and struck the wall. Tenthil grasped the back of the vorgal’s skull, holding it steady, and thrust his knife into the underside of his foe’s jaw. Dark green blood flowed over Tenthil’s gloved hand and dripped onto the floor. He tugged the weapon free just as a door a few paces down the hall opened.

  Two more guards hurried into the hallway—a broad-shouldered, scaled ilthurii and a dark-skinned volturian with glowing silver face markings.

  The volturian tapped the comm unit on his chest. “Intruder on the upper—”

  Tenthil drew his blaster and fired before the volturian could speak another word. The plasma bolt zipped through the volturian’s throat and disappeared into the wall behind him, leaving a hole ringed in glowing orange. The dead vorgal, who Tenthil released to draw his gun, collapsed to the floor.

  He angled the blaster toward the ilthurii, but the scaled warrior was quick, leaping at Tenthil before a second shot could be fired. Tenthil swayed aside, flattening himself against the wall to his left.

  The ilthurii’s feet caught on the vorgal’s corpse. He twisted and fell, raking his claws across the belly of Tenthil’s armor as he passed. Relying upon speed and reflexes, the ilthurii angled his shoulder downward, throwing himself into a roll.

  Tenthil fired three plasma bolts into the ilthurii before it completed its somersault. The scaled warrior tumbled into the wall and went still.

  The smells of freshly-spilled blood and sizzling flesh filled the air, but the odors were not enough to mask the terran’s scent, which was only more pronounced to Tenthil now that combat had amplified his senses into a state of heightened awareness.

  Raising his blaster, he checked the room from which the guards had emerged. It was full of screens and holographic projections displaying surveillance feeds from all around the manor and its grounds. Each feed was designated by source location. Tenthil swept his gaze over all of them, pausing only when he saw her. Second floor, zoo chamber one. She wasn’t alone—three females of other species were also in her room.

  More guards moved through the other feeds; at least four were coming up the rear staircase with rifles at the ready. It would be difficult to avoid their fire in these narrow halls. Several more were entering what appeared to be Cullion’s study, where the ertraxxan—looking even more agitated than usual—was seated behind a large wooden desk.

  Tenthil leaned forward and manipulated the control console, changing the nearest holo to a three-dimensional map of the manor. A flashing yellow beacon pulsed in the third-floor hallway just outside the surveillance room, where he’d killed the guards. The security alert warned INTRUDER, SHOTS FIRED, but it seemed no external alarm had been sounded—the Starforge guards intended to deal with the problem themselves.

  Within a few moments, Tenthil had committed his course to memory. He had only one goal here. All this was pointless if he didn’t find the terran.

  He fired his blaster into the control consoles; the equipment sparked and smoked as it shorted out, and all the screens and holograms flickered off. Without wasting another second, he darted into the hallway and hurried toward the front staircase, well away from the ascending guards.

  Several male voices sounded from somewhere behind him, muted too much for it to have merely been the result of distance—there were likely sound dampeners positioned throughout the manor to maintain what Cullion likely thought of as dignified silence.

  It was only a matter of moments before the bodies in the hallway were discovered.

  Te
nthil opened the stairwell door and slipped inside, keeping his blaster up as he walked down the stairs. When he reached the next landing, he opened the second-floor door, checked his angles in both directions along the hallway beyond, and stepped through. He moved cautiously despite his impatience; the sound dampeners would mask the sounds of his enemies’ movements as much as they would his own.

  He inhaled. The female’s scent was stronger here than it had been upstairs.

  She was close.

  Summoning the manor’s layout in his mind’s eye, Tenthil hurried through the corridors, heading back toward the rear of the building. Somehow, he’d encountered no one by the time he turned into a wide hallway with plush carpeting and colorful cloths and tapestries on the walls. Sculptures of naked females from half a dozen species stood along the walls. Each statue was somehow majestic and meek at the same time, simultaneously powerful and subservient. Perhaps it was the commonality in their stances—though each exhibited a certain confidence in their body postures, all had their chins downturned and eyes averted.

  They reminded Tenthil of the way his terran had carried herself at Twisted Nethers.

  The terran’s scent strengthened with each of Tenthil’s steps, drawing him along steadily faster. The hallway ended in a large, circular antechamber ringed by wooden doors decorated with elaborate carvings and with several long, low couches standing at its center. The zoo—where Cullion kept his pets.

  Striding forward, Tenthil approached the central door. It was larger than the rest, its gold-accented white in sharp contrast to the blacks, browns and dark reds of the other doors. This was the chamber housing Cullion’s favorite pet. Too bad for Cullion that his claim of ownership was invalid; Tenthil had the only legitimate claim on the terran.

  He glanced behind him; there was no movement down the hallway, no muffled voices. Whatever time remained before the guards discovered his current location needed to be used as efficiently as possible.

  Settling his hand on the door handle, he opened her door. Her intoxicating scent enveloped him. For a few seconds, all he could do was close his eyes and breathe, relishing the dizzying power of her fragrance. The brief delay was nearly too much to bear; his cock strained within the confines of his pants, and a ravenous, maddened growl threatened to rise from his chest.

  Clenching his jaw, he shook off the spell. He could lose himself in it later.

  He opened the door wider and slipped into her room.

  Tenthil studied the room as he eased the door shut behind him. Given the décor in the antechamber, the furnishings here weren’t a surprise. Gauzy, shimmering panels of colored cloth hung from ceiling to floor, warping the perceived shape and size of the room. Several sets of holographic orbs provided the room’s light, revolving and twirling overhead in a ceaseless dance that made the metallic accents and billowing cloths all around sparkle.

  Several couches and seats, covered with pillows of varying colors, sat in the open space between Tenthil and the far wall, upon which stood two doors. A glance was all it took to tell this was a place of luxury, a place for a pampered pet.

  The females were seated on one of the couches—three of them gathered around the terran, whose back was turned toward Tenthil. His female was fully clothed now, baring little of her pale skin. The females chatted quietly as they tended to the terran—her cosmetics, nails, and hair—but her voice did not join the conversation.

  One of the females—a volturian—glanced toward him, and her eyes widened. She released a high-pitched shriek, yanking the brush through the terran’s hair as she scrambled up and over the back of the couch upon which she’d been seated.

  “Ouch! What the hell?” The terran’s—his terran’s—hands flew up to grasp her scalp.

  The other two females turned their heads toward him and reacted the same as the first. Fear shone in their eyes as they retreated to the farthest wall, huddling together.

  The terran stiffened. She slowly slid her hand down her hair until her fingers touched the brush tangled in the strands. Curling her fingers around the handle, she tugged the brush out of her hair and spun to face him, brandishing the object as though it were a deadly weapon. The gesture, though futile, was oddly endearing to him—she had a brave heart. He admired her courage.

  Despite her body being covered by her clothing, he immediately recognized the difference in her—she was thinner than before, her skin paler.

  Returning his knife to its sheath, Tenthil stepped farther into the room, his boots silent on the soft carpet.

  Pressing her lips into a tight line, she swept her gaze over him as he approached. When her eyes met his, they rounded and lit up with sudden recognition.

  “You,” she breathed.

  Four

  The world around Abella fell away; her reality unraveled, thread after thread. It was him—the scarred stranger—here in this room, right in front of her.

  And that wasn’t possible.

  She’d dreamed of him every night and imagined him every day since their dance at the club. Recalling those moments with the stranger had been her only solace during her punishment and her following isolation, and now he was here. But there was something different about him, something…primal.

  His features seemed sharper, the scars on his cheeks stood out in stronger contrast to his pale gray skin, and his eyes, formerly bright silver, were now black pools, twin abysses that would devour her if she stared too long.

  She lowered her gaze, trailing it over his dark armor and the knives strapped to his chest and belt.

  He was covered in blood. She found that more unsettling than the gun in his hand or his arsenal of blades—the blood meant he’d used those weapons, perhaps only seconds before entering her room.

  That realization paired with the intensity of his stare sent a shiver up Abella’s spine.

  She took several unsteady steps backward, stopping only when her calves hit the couch behind her. “What do you want?”

  The stranger lifted his empty hand and pointed his index finger at her.

  “Me?” Her eyes widened as she glanced at his gun. “Look, I don’t know what I did… If…If you got into some trouble back at Twisted Nethers, I’m sorry, but I really don’t think you should use that on me. It won’t fix anything.”

  From her peripheral vision, she saw Belanna, Moya, and Tenel—the females Cullion tasked with her care, as though she were incapable of bathing or brushing her hair on her own—huddled in a trembling group as they inched along the wall toward the exit.

  The stranger raised the gun slightly. Abella’s heart leapt into her throat, and she might have released a strained whimper. His eyes flicked to the weapon, and when they returned to hers, he shook his head. Continuing his slow advance, he slid the gun into the holster on his hip and held his hand out as though he expected her to run forward and take it.

  The serving girls raced to the door. The stranger was either oblivious to them or simply didn’t care. The door clicked open, and they disappeared into the chamber beyond.

  Abella was alone with the stranger.

  Her brows lowered. “You…you want me to go with you?”

  He offered a single nod in response.

  Abella’s breath left her in a rush. She swept her gaze over him again; he towered over her, the blood on his armor and gloves glistening in the light, and a thrill swept through her. She lowered her trembling arm and her pathetic weapon. After her time in the isolation chamber—a small, cramped space shrouded in total darkness—with little food, even holding up a hairbrush for more than a few seconds was too much exertion. Her battered back ached, her muscles were stiff, and her skin felt stretched thin over her narrow frame.

  She’d forgotten her discomfort amidst her fear, but it all came back to her now. She was tired—but she wasn’t so tired that she’d pass up an opportunity to seize her freedom.

  “You’re going to help me escape? You’re going to free me?” she asked.

  Another nod. The black in his e
yes receded, revealing slivers of his irises. He stepped closer, leaving barely half a meter between them, and raised his hand toward her face as though he meant to touch her. He stopped it abruptly, turning his palm to stare down at it. Dark blood clung to his glove and the tips of his claws, which protruded through the material. The corners of his mouth dipped in a slight frown.

  Abella swallowed thickly. “You’re not going to…hurt me, right?”

  She knew she couldn’t stop him if he wanted to, but she’d endured enough pain; and she wasn’t interested in experiencing any more.

  His brow furrowed, and he curled his bloody fingers into a loose fist and shook his head. Something in his face—perhaps the light in his eyes—made Abella believe him. He wouldn’t harm her.

  “Are you going to help get me home?” she asked, her stomach clenching with a foolish flare of hope like she’d not felt in years.

  His pointed ears twitched, and he snapped his head to the side. A few more seconds passed before she heard what had caught his attention—voices from the hallway beyond her door, Cullion’s the loudest amongst them. And they were increasing in volume.

  “You need to hide!” she said, moving around him and advancing a few steps.

  He turned to face her, his eyes once again black voids. His nostrils flared, and his upper lip curled; though the expression was not enough to reveal his teeth, there was something fierce, something almost bestial, about it.

  “Really, you need to hide. They’ll kill you if they find you in here.” She pointed behind him, toward the left door—her bedchamber. “Go in there. I’ll let you know once it’s clear.”

  For a moment, she swore he’d advance on her again. Her body strained toward him, toward the memory of his touch, of his warmth. But he turned away and darted to her bedroom door instead, opening it and slipping through without making a sound.

  She inhaled shakily and planted her feet firmly beneath her. This was the opportunity she’d sought for four years—and this time, it could work. This time, she stood a chance of reclaiming her freedom. She wouldn’t spoil that chance by succumbing to lust.