Taken to Voraxia

by Elizabeth Stephens

  I do not need to ask how Va’Raku knows this as dawning realization slashes through my thoughts. I ignore it — everything that does not help me now — and roar, “There will be no Hunt on this day! My Rakukanna will be found. Sweep the camp.”

  I issue terse orders to my warriors, watching from several paces away. They charge towards the human settlement and immediately, those gathered disperse among cries and screams I remember.

  History… I can’t seem to escape this cycle. Nox! I will have my Rakukanna this time. I will not leave without her.

  “You won’t find Miari or Kiki,” the false Rakukanna says, pulling against me when I rise.

  “What do you know?”

  “Nothing I’d ever tell you!”

  I heave her up onto her feet, but she pulls and she yanks. I shake her once, forcefully, and the imposter swallows a scream into her mouth.

  Va’Raku advances on us and takes hold of the imposter’s shoulders in a way that makes me want to tear his head clean off. Not my Rakukanna…she is not my Rakukanna…

  “Raku,” he says, mouth turning down at the corners.

  I follow his gaze to the traitor female’s arm. Splayed at an unusual angle, I feel shock. I broke her arm. I had not even intended to break it, but these little human creatures are so fragile. Too fragile not to be protected. And I left her here. My Rakukanna could be anywhere. At the bottom of a well, broken and hurt, abused by her people for the power I placed in her.

  “Xok.” I release her arm and little one shivers.

  She is brave, I give her that. She does not scream. She only tries to clench her hand and when she fails, her fingers fall open and from them spills a small metal device, no bigger than one of the claws tipping my smallest finger.

  I swipe the object and the moment it touches my palm, the false Rakukanna releases a shuddering gasp and the red of her skin shimmers. Her hair begins to flatten against her head, molting to reveal a brown head covering, while her body begins to shrink.

  The slim, alluring tail that had sprouted from her backside becomes transparent in places and I am reminded of the monitors of ancient viewing panels aboard even more ancient ships, apt to short-circuit.

  I take the ball in my hand and crush it entirely, letting it disintegrate to the sands in clunky metallic pebbles. As I watch, the veneer hiding her true form is peeled back revealing a human woman. One that I remember.

  “Interpreter,” I snarl.

  She pins her injured arm against her chest and attempts to shift back. Va’Raku is there to block her path. With trembling lips, she looks at me. “She’ll never go with you. She’ll never go into the breeding belt.”

  Her free hand finds the link of chains around her neck, each dotted with a different symbol. She closes her eyes and seems to be muttering some form of incantation.

  I do not believe in magic so I do not brace myself for any impact, even though I should have. It is magnificent.

  My Xanaxana thunders abruptly in my chest and instinctively, I look west, towards the horizon where the hazy silhouette of low mountains are drawn in rough, dark hues.

  A low vibration comes from my chest and when I glance up, I meet Va’Raku’s gaze only to be startled when my initial suspicion is proven true. His chest vibrates too.

  “Tell me she did not venture outside of the Dome,” I whisper, fixing my attentions again to the interpreter.

  The child mewls something below me that is not possible to convert to Voraxian. She says, “Awg awd, ah laaah, yah vey.”

  My ears flex forward and I hear something…a sound like stone against metal. It’s too far, too distant. “Va’Raku, ready a glider. Bo’Raku, take this imposter to the ship. She will remain in your charge.”

  Va’Raku sprints away just as the imposter shouts, “No!”

  She looks at Bo’Raku with pure fear and in clumsy movements, attempts to flee. Bo’Raku moves to intercept her and for a moment, black and indigo cross his ridges. Bloodlust and lust. A combination I find deeply unsettling.

  He reaches for the human, but I catch his wrist midair. “Ga’Roth,” I shout and a soldier exiting the ship peels apart from his comerades. “Take this human onboard the ship.” Where she will be torn apart, either by eager or clumsy males…

  “I am happy to take her,” Bo’Raku says, voice dark and slippery.

  I owe this female nothing, but looking at Bo’Raku then, I would no sooner hand this female over to him than I would cut off my own legs at the knees.

  “I await your orders, my Raku,” Ga’Roth says, gaze focused solely on me in a way that honors him and dishonors Bo’Raku at the same time. I am pleased.

  As I open my mouth to speak, the solution arrives. “Take her to Krisxox.”

  Dra’Kesh though he may be and seemingly hardwired with the same hatred of other species Dra’Kesh share, Krisxox is still my fiercest and most savage warrior. More importantly, he is fiercely loyal to me, above all else. That he is present on this expedition today is only chance. A fortunate one, for in as many rotations as I have been alive, I could not have predicted this outcome.

  “Tell him the female is under his charge and under his care.”

  “I am more than capable, Raku,” Bo’Raku grimaces.

  I take a step closer to him, blocking all view of the human female. “You have done enough.”

  Warm air billows around us as the glider approaches. I hand the traitor female over to Ga’Roth and just before I mount the glider and take off, the female catches my arm.

  She meets my gaze with unsettling, green and brown eyes. “Thank you,” she says, and then the world rushes away from me.

  We pass over the shabby colony, across the lowered barrier of the Drolax, over endless seas of sand until finally spindly trees crop up out of pale moss before that vegetation too fades, becoming rock, as hard and black as screa without its warmth.

  A thunderous boom greets us as our glider rushes over the mountainside and on its heels, a scream. “Kiki!”

  My Xanaxana jolts and I lunge for the edge of the glider. Va’Raku spurs us on faster and when I glance at him, his face is wreathed in dangerous combinations of red and pink. A stoic male, I have never seen his ridges glow before, and wonder what he thinks when he looks at mine for I am sure they shine bright in mirrored fear and rage and agony.

  It is unbecoming for a Raku to unleash his ridges in such a display. And Va’Raku has even more control than I. Yet in this instance, none of that matters. Nothing matters except for the scene that we come upon when we clear the crest of the next blackened peak. Upon a small rocky shelf where the black stone floor is flatter, my thoughts dissolve to dust and sweep through the hollow shell of my bones.

  I have dreamed of this moment for one rotation, and imagined every possible outcome but this one. The one in which my Rakukanna is standing with her body planted firmly in front of another human, two dead and three living khrui closing in on her. She holds a spear in her hands — not even in the correct defensive position, and yet she’s holding it as if she has every intent of using such a flimsy piece of metal to stand against the khrui pod all by herself.

  The roar that rips out of me can be heard across the cosmos. I wrench my gaze away from my Rakukanna just long enough to empty the weapons panel. Withdrawing an ion sword, two black jade daggers and an ion gun, I return to the guardrail and fire an ion round into the beast nearest my Rakukanna, just as Va’Raku begins a jerky descent.

  He is the best pilot I have, but I understand the source of his agitation. Because behind my Rakukanna, the other female — the one who once wore my Rakukanna’s scent — lies supine, red liquid pooling behind the hair on her head.

  She is his Xiveri mate. The thought crosses my mind and I spare only one fraction of a heartbeat to empathize with my xub’Raku, who has been for so long one of my strongest allies. I would not know how to survive the pain that seeing my Rakukanna fallen would bring…and I do not intend to.

  The creature I tagged with my ion roun
d turns and roars up at me. Tufts of charcoal fur peel away from white flesh and gelatinous grey blood spills onto the ground below its heavy feet. I wounded the creature, but an ion round is not and will not be enough to kill it. With thick hide and claws that catch, I will need to get closer. Much closer. Closer than my Rakukanna now stands to it.

  “Move!” I roar at her, knowing she cannot understand my words, but she is determined and stands fixed in the small space separating her fellow human from the khrui.

  I climb onto the edge of the glider and roar a battle cry echoed by Va’Raku. The thrusters lurch left, avoiding a jutting spear of rock, and Va’Raku expertly tips the glider at a forty-five degree angle, giving me the advantage I need to jump and land directly on the back of the khrui.

  Its hard, fur-covered body blunts my fall and in the seconds it takes to reorient myself, a massive claw cleaves into my back. I do not betray my pain and rear up, straddling its massive body, tangled in its limbs and sink my first blade into its flesh, right where one of its many arms connects to its body.

  Knobby bones twist beneath my grasp as I hack into the beast, letting the other claws cut me as I work. Fresh wounds light up across my torso, but when the khrui beneath me lunges forward, towards my Rakukanna still holding her crude spear, I stab, cut and rip.

  I free the arm from its socket in a mess of flesh and tendons and toss it aside. The khrui shrieks as I plunge my fist, dagger-first, into the bloody hole where its phantom-limb resides and finally locate the heart.

  A shadow passes overhead and I hear Va’Raku grunt as he tackles the next khrui. A loud, wheezing screech echoes across the clearing. My gaze sharpens and my dagger plunges mercilessly as I battle my way through the thick, oily outer shell of the heart finally reaching its molten center. With one final push of my blade, the beast beneath me wastes to the side.

  I jump as it falls, spinning to keep my back to my Rakukanna and the khrui before me. A massive beast roars as it throws itself from the mouth of a cave, badly stacked with rocks. Distantly it occurs to me that khrui would not have stacked rocks in such a way, but I don’t want to imagine the possibility or contemplate why these humans would have sealed themselves inside of a khrui den. They could not be so stupid. Or could they be that naive?

  I charge. Rearing up on its hind legs, the creature descends viciously and suddenly. We grapple for what feels like eternities until I eventually gain the upper hand and as I kill it, I hear the battle behind me coming to an end.

  I pull my bloody short sword free of the khrui’s decimated body and the small quarry is silent but for my heavy breathing, Va’Raku’s, and alien words whispered frantically on the rocks behind me.

  “…oh stars…Kiki? Kiki, come on…”

  She kneels on a hard stone, the body of Va’Raku’s human draped across the wide rock before her. Red blood, slick like silk, drips from the woman’s puff of hair and from a deep wound on her stomach. The smell is stifling. Something ancient and dark.

  Va’Raku rushes forward and though my chest pangs for him, I must think first of my own Rakukanna. I toss aside the khrui heart I hold in my palm. Killing them should not have been so easy, yet even now, covered in blood — much of it my own — I could tear apart a dozen more. For her. Arriving at her side, I grab her shoulder and wrench her small body around.

  Catching her in my arms, I set her down on a flat stone and begin a nervous eager canvas of her body, checking for wounds.

  “Are you injured?” I struggle to speak. As I return my dagger to its sheathe, the words sit in my throat like daggers of their own.

  There is blood on her, even redder than her skin, but I cannot find any wounds. Blood and waste. Even through the layer that covers her, I still cling to her scent. Or rather, am struck down by it. Ranxcera. Jujji. Grain. All is as I remembered it. Just as strong. A magic I once vowed never to believe in.

  “Are you hurt!”

  I grab her wrists, hoping to steal her attention, but she continues to glance over her shoulder. She licks her mouth and puckers the soft, downy pillows lining it. Wet and glistening, I may not have her attention, but she has mine. Every last drop.

  “Don’t…don’t hurt her. Just help her. Save her, please.” She grips my forearms with her small five-fingered hands.

  I want to savage her. I want to ravage her. I want to throw her down onto the ground and punish her then and there. “You ran from me, you covered yourself in filth, you hid from me, you deceived me with your cloaking spell, and then you left the safety of your colony to try to fight khrui with a stick! What were you thinking?” I grip the sides of her face.

  She shakes her head and water wells in the pools of her eyes. “Save her, please…”

  She is still holding the flimsy staff in her hands. I take it from her easily. She does not try to stop me. She just bites her lower mouth pillow, that plush decadence, and then she lifts both hands and plants them in the center of my chest.

  For all my rage, her willing touch is the antidote. “She will be saved,” I tell her quietly, voice gravel as I cover her hands with one of my own. “And then she will be tried, for you both have betrayed me. I am your Raku.” I am your Xiveri. I touch her face, watch her strange, alien eyes widen, her mouth part…

  “Raku!” Va’Raku barks.

  I point at him and the woman currently bundled in his arms with the tip of my claw. Time. We have so little of it. “Lower the flyer. Merillian will be awaiting your Va’Rakukanna aboard the ship.”

  Momentary white — surprise — surfaces in his brow before the color is snuffed. I begin to move, but my Rakukanna grabs my wrists.

  “I’ll do anything you want,” she tells me, gaze flashing to her human. “Please.”

  Anything I want. Dark, malignant ideas begin to sprout as I sweep her feet and cradle her body against my chest, holding her as close as I can to my two hearts.

  Her breath fans my face and my Xanaxana whispers restlessly, needing, more than anything, to slake its need. I need to feel and feed her pleasure.

  But I need her to be willing first.

  With control tenuously bound, I whisper, “We will discuss my needs on the ship.”

  5

  Miari

  “You broke her arm! I can’t believe you! You disgust me!” I’m exhausting myself, beating against his chest with both fists as he pushes me into the tiny glass tube in the center of a strange room. The tube walls come up around us and I squeak as water explodes from above and below me.

  Hot water. I’ve never used hot water before and I’ve only ever had access to shallow pools to sponge off in with dirty rags. The sensation is so startling, I forget my ire for a moment as spray sluices over my skin. Blood and dung spiral as they vanish through slats in the white floor beneath my feet.

  My red feet against his blue ones. Red blue red blue. Six toes, where I only have five. Thick thighs. I try desperately to avoid looking at the thing hanging between them and focus.

  “You don’t…you don’t get to do this…” I whisper, failingly.

  He rumbles deep within his chest but doesn’t speak. It wouldn’t matter if he did. All I hear are clicks and ticks, strange gutteral growls that all speak to his anger. He’s angry with me.

  I don’t know how it will play out, but for now I’m wary of the gentle motion of his hands as he rubs small, colored pebbles over my body. Light grey, they burst over my skin in surprising colors — pale pinks, light greens and blues — and smell unlike anything I’ve scented before. Light. Almost like a plant, but sweeter.

  “I…”

  I push on his shoulders, but he bats away my hands and works his palms harder, more aggressively over my body. He turns me around and I catch myself on the side of the tube with both hands. His heat comes up behind me, lining my backside. I can feel…I can feel it jerking against my lower back and I wince each time. My breathing becomes more labored. I can’t speak anymore, not even when I try.

  His rough hands find my shoulders and knead them fir
mly in a way that sends tingles all the way to my toes. I gasp and my elbows threaten to buckle. So do my knees. My mouth is open and I’m breathing heavily.

  His palms work their way down, all six of his fingers moving in wonderful circular motions. It feels good. Too good. Good enough it hurts.

  A gasp escapes my throat as one of his great big hands fists my tail at the base. Pleasure washes over me and my whole body bucks. I pitch forward, unable to control myself or the mewl I make.

  He freezes and I look over my shoulder in time to see his eyelids blink sideways — like mine do — over his cold, black eyes and the ridges on his face melt from the blue-grey of his skin to a subtle lavender. What does it mean? I don’t know and I don’t want to. I just want him to stop. I want him to keep going.

  My tail flickers and swats his leg, curling around his calf without my telling it to. I never had much control over it, and though I always did my best to hide it, right now it feels powerful. More powerful than the rest of my limbs. It pulls against him.

  “Mhmmph,” he moans, falling forward onto his hand. That giant, six-fingered mitt braces the tube just on the outside of my own palm, while the fingers of his other hand find my tailbone, and then the tail sprouting out of it, and begin slowly massaging up and down.

  I make a soft sound. His moan deepens. His cheek comes up against my cheek and his chest comes up against my back. The hardened, bracing scratch of the thick, armor-like skin he has there grates against my much softer flesh. Not even that discomfort, however, is enough for me to tell him to stop, or push him away.

  I’m going to burst. Frightening electricity coils its way down my body as his braced hand releases and catches my right breast. His thumb — or the sixth and shortest finger of his left palm — passes over my right nipple, flicking it and I shout unintelligibly.

  He huffs out a dark, male sound and I feel his…his part bob urgently against me. My lower lips are squeeze in steady pulses and when his hand on my breast starts its decent lower, stopping dangerously below my navel, I do something I never in all my rotations thought I’d ever do.