Atrocity

by C F Rabbiosi

  “You have sent one of your own through a rip in time,” Eladia says, “and Brekter lies in ill repair. You will not harm another of your fellow Koridons, Kassien. Not even I will be able to save you.”

  I still want him to kill the bastard, against all logic. I fight past the pain from Brekter’s fists and drop down, trying to break his grip. Drakon’s steel arms hold firm, and the ache of wrenching downward flares up.

  “Drakon, release her,” Eladia demands, but he constricts my waist tighter.

  “You won’t hurt her.” My mother moves in front of us, and the weapons at her back send fear rippling through me. I shake my head furiously at Kassien and he lowers them.

  “Woman,” says Kassien. “Get out of the way!”

  “Hush Kassien,” she says. “I have something important that needs to be said.”

  “Persephone, what could you possibly—”

  “Shh!” She turns around, and I sense the threatening face she gives him as I’ve seen it many times.

  “Drakon, do you remember me?” She removes her cloak and lets her hair down to fall past her waist.

  His grip wavers.

  “Many years ago I lost my grandmother, my only living relative, and was being transported from the village in the east to a new one. A Koridon found me one of those nights as I slept and pulled me from my bed.”

  “You?” His voice falters. “And she is—”

  Her long, auburn hair gleams and matches the fire in her eyes. “Now let go of your daughter and the heir that grows in her belly.” Shock pulses through me and I retch upon her words. “My name’s Persephone, if you didn’t catch that. And it’s time we talked.”

  His grip falls away and I break free, blinded by tears. “No,” I say to her, touching a regretful hand to my stomach. “He can’t be.” Since I learned the truth about what happened to my mother out in the woods, I had envisioned my Koridon father as being someone from the east shores or somewhere remote, a bastard I’d never have to meet. I despise him and hate that I share his genes, but he has position, so I wipe away my tears and let it empower me.

  “I knew it the moment I saw him tonight,” Mother says, “and he knows I speak the truth.”

  Drakon’s lips tighten into a thin line. His mate, along with several others, watch from behind him at the broken door. “Give the flesh obliterator and dark matter transcender to Eladia,” he says. “Then we will negotiate.”

  She nods at Kassien. “I see no other choice but to come to an agreement.” Her form crackles as though it’s immaterial, and I blink hard, trying to make sense of what I just saw. “And my time here is running out.”

  Drakon and the others move past us, giants towering with graceful movements, and we follow them to the banquet table. “I would ask that only myself and my mate discuss this matter with Kassien and the royal sovereign. The rest of you are excused to your quarters.”

  “No.” Finn tightens his hold around Glenda’s shoulders. “You won’t discuss my sister’s fate without me present.”

  Vaerynn steps in front of him and they’re head to head. “You have no choice, human. Do as you are told or—”

  “Or what?” He moves his forehead threateningly against hers. She shoves him, but even as the force knocks him back, he grabs her wrist. Flinging her around, he holds her back against him. “We stay,” he whispers. His fingers trail down the middle of her chest and Vaerynn turns her face to the side, nearly touching his. Her skin flushes and she shakes her head, trying to clear her mind. He pushes her away and she stumbles. Looking up with humiliation from her hands and knees, she gets up and runs from the room.

  Arek moves toward Finn and Glenda but Kraetorr jumps in front of him. “She stays.” He takes Glenda into his arms. “She will be with me always from now on.”

  Finn’s mouth falls open to protest, but the devotion in Kraetorr’s embrace toward his sister quiets him suddenly.

  Kraetorr and the brute Kjartonn are my brothers. It finally hits me. And Efaelty—she’s my sibling also. All I can think of is being an only child and wishing I had a father and brothers and sisters. Never would I have suspected that creatures from another planet were my blood!

  “Now we have an accord,” says Finn, heading to the banquet table to take the first seat.

  “The women and their,” Kassien motions toward my mother, “family will be a part of this meeting if they wish. Too long have both our races suffered on this planet, so tonight we change everything.” I take the seat next to Kassien, and my mother beside me. He may never be mine again, but by his side is the only place I feel safe right now. Under the table, his fingers brush against mine and I startle. He feels so right and so safe after all this time being in the enemy’s grip, and I hold his hand, warmth washing over me.

  “We weren’t suffering before you came,” says Finn and noisily scrapes his chair across the floor to be closer to the leaders at the head of the table. He plops down and throws a dirty boot up on the table top. “We’ve had to hide, scrape, and die in fear in our own world.”

  “They had come for help, Finn,” I say. “We thought they came here to destroy us and take everything, but that’s not how it happened.”

  “Oh really? And which one of these lying aliens told you that?” Finn asks with a scoff. I hide a grin at his audacity in a room full of lying aliens.

  “My sister told me that,” I reply to my old friend and once fiancé, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. Efaelty limps into view and Kassien takes her in for a moment, happiness overwhelming his face that she lives.

  “It’s the truth,” she says. “We had grown weak trying to live in space, and before that the depths of the ocean. We found this planet at the last moment, it seemed.” A pang of jealousy hits me as I wonder if she and Kassien will be together again now that Brekter has a claim on me. Two of the females tend to his twitching body, preparing to take him to the med bay on their ship.

  Eladia swipes her finger through the air and strange symbols materialize. She selects the floating buttons, and the transparent screen changes. “I will document our agreements this night and press for authentication in your favor if this is truly the path you wish to take,” she says. “If you create a new species here, you will be left here as your own people, even as the rest of us move on.”

  Drakon’s servant girl appears behind him, the chandelier casting an eerie glow, and he shudders, feeling her. His mate stiffens. “My eyes have been opened,” the commander says. “I press that we make marriages between human and Koridon legal, even required, immediately.”

  “Required?” I say. “That’s slavery. We should be free to marry who we choose. Including other humans.”

  “We do not have time for this to naturally play out,” Drakon says, fist to the table.

  Gerakon removes his hand from his temples. “We have been sending you word that our numbers were dwindling, our plants and creatures growing weak and sickly, Entra Sovian.”

  Eladia reflects a moment before speaking. “We have traveled so far to find an optimal planet that even at warp speeds it can take months to reach this place. For those of you unfamiliar with interstellar travel,” she addresses us humans, “our ships travel faster than the speed of light by antigravity propulsion, powered by elements that do not occur naturally on Earth. This explains why even at the peak of your society you had not made it deep into space yet. Without the element, the contents inside a craft would be obliterated at such speeds. However, the universe is the size of infinity, and no amount of super speed is instant. It is why I am here now in alternate form with only my consciousness downloaded into this shadow body.”

  “You aren’t here?” I blurt out.

  She shakes her head, and her shadow form fades in and out. The connection to her mind grows unstable. I would worry that something could go wrong and I’d lose myself forever.

  “But the weapons—” says Finn.

  The rip in the world that sucked the female through wasn’t a trick, and Brekter’s
floating pieces that reconstructed upon the press of a button put tremors through the world, but it was the real world.

  “They were here already, says Eladia. “Kept in a hidden, indestructible box, and that is where they will be returned when I leave.”

  I can see that Finn’s impressed: it’s every science fiction novel he’s ever read brought to life. As advanced as they are, as many other societies must be, I still never want to be like them. If they are what we are striving to become, I hope we never make it. They have weapons that do interesting and terrible things, as well as ships that can travel to different worlds, but they’ve lost the joy of life. Intelligence and always striving scientifically could leave us one day the gray-bodied, frightening-looking aliens described in books. They don’t feel the rush of singing their hearts out, or the thrill of the kiss. They don’t read their children stories before bed or laugh and play. Advanced is a relative term, a perspective, and that is all.

  “I say if the humans want to exist in harmony, they surrender their women to us for breeding and that is the end,” says Kjartonn, running his fingers through blond Alice’s light tresses. She yanks away as Drakon adamantly agrees.

  Kassien puts an arm around me and says, “We assume it is our right to exist. But we live on borrowed time, jumping from our world to others. I say we do this fairly and let fate decide if we are worthy to go on existing.”

  “That is not good enough for me,” says Drakon. “You think of yourself and your ruined bride there, and not of the future of our great race.”

  He smiles toward the convulsing heap of Brekter. “I think of her, yes. But also of the ones she loves. We all want children, some of us have even had them, if only for a moment.” His steady voice wavers with a note of sorrow. That and the look on Efaelty’s face weave a story that he hasn’t told me yet.

  Vaerynn says, “It will not do just to make these girls mates. They must be conditioned to bear such a child and such an honor. They must overcome tests of strength, strong bodies, strong minds, better chances of bearing a healthy child.”

  “You have no idea of our strength, woman,” says Finn. He pulls at the collar of his stained button-down shirt then intertwines his fingers in front of him. “For instance, Glenda was only six during the harshest winter we’d ever experienced. We were starving and she fell ill with one of her lung conditions. She could barely walk to the bathroom and yet, when Mother collapsed from starvation while the men were away hunting, she kept the fire going. Our mother gave every bit of food to Glenda, you see. A snow storm hit us while we were out there, but Glenda went out in it and found someone to help though the storm was blinding and she was so small, and so sick.”

  I remember that. She’d fallen several times, her clothes frozen to her body when she made it to Scarlet’s door. They went and forced broth into Glenda’s mother and she recovered.

  “That’s strength,” says Finn, and Glenda lifts her chin proudly.

  “I have seen their strength.” Vaerynn admits. “Many of my beliefs are being tested.” Her long lashes blink up at Finn, and she grows strangely quiet.

  “Do we then give them the choice to undergo the training as well?” asks Drakon. “There are many things that will have to be considered in order to make this work.”

  “Setting loose a rabid beast upon us, then burning our flesh horribly teaches nothing but cruelty,” I say. “But if a woman chooses a Koridon male as her mate, the conditioning in Koridon strength and culture should be part of the vow.”

  Kassien’s fingers intertwine with mine. He squeezes as he peers into my eyes. “You would take a brand into your skin and avow yourself to incredible pain?”

  My chest crushes with the realization. “For you, I would.” Distrust flows through my better senses, yet his presence and touch envelop me in a mesmerizing sea I want to drift away in forever.

  The arguments continue hour after hour, everyone with a new, enlightening thought that just confuses things and makes it more difficult to come to an agreement. But this is what I know: the Koridons have our scent swimming through their blood and the softness of our skin tattooed upon their nerve endings and will never let us walk away. Even as Kraetorr stroked Glenda’s back as she nodded off and Arek’s gaze continued to land upon blond Alice who he proclaimed to be disgusted with, I knew our two species’ paths were eternal.

  We’d fight until our bones were broken, hate each other until we’d collapse from denying our love, but we were theirs and they were ours.

  17

  Eladia draws complex symbols into the air and they glow bright orange before fading away like a Koridon document written in permanence in some invisible interstellar file. “This is what I am proposing,” she says. “The human females will go forth with their current betrothals to the Koridon males at this time. The training will be revised to strength and skill appropriate to the women’s current condition and will only be used to strengthen the outcome of the challenging birthing process. If the women or Koridons wish to part ways, it will be only after the child reaches three years of age. The mating can then be terminated at which point both are allowed to be with whomever they choose. Currently-mated beings are no more, and all males, especially those of monarchal descent, must be mated immediately to ensure their genetically superior bloodlines. In return for these women’s sacrifice, no human will be enslaved any longer, no human will be harmed, and all are free to roam the land from this moment forward.” Eladia peers around the room. “Are these acceptable terms?”

  I nod my head immediately, consumed with relief for my mother and all of our villages who have lived in constant hiding. If this works, the Koridons will have new laws and will no longer be able to oppress our people. Only the few will suffer, us, and it’s what I wanted the moment Kassien chose to take me as his mate. Without thinking, I look at him, and it’s a grave mistake. My happiness floods away as the unnatural beauty of his face twists into a mask of despair.

  “Will my Koridons unite once more under these new laws and cease the killing of one another?” the sovereign asks.

  The Koridons nod collectively as Kassien stares straight ahead.

  “And Calypso?” he seethes. “What of her?” His molten eyes flick up and the air around him grows hot.

  Eladia purses her lips. “The child within her dictates she be with the father. But after three years, she will be free again.”

  “If I want to end it after the baby’s born, what will happen to him?” I ask, thinking about the preciousness of a little three-year-old: their little hands and round tummies

  Kassien jerks his head toward me at the revealing of the baby’s sex.

  “Three years with your child, and if you choose another at that point, he will be given over to the father and trusted elders to be raised from that day on.”

  My heart sinks. “Tearing a child from his mother at that age is cruel.”

  “The mother leaving the child is cruel,” Vaerynn interjects.

  No matter what now, Brekter has me forever unless I find the courage to walk away from both him and my son. I feel the squeeze of my mother’s hand, and in that moment know I will never leave my child. “We can’t agree to this,” my mother says, sending murmurs, protests, and sighs of relief through the room.

  “You will if you don’t want all of your miserable people hunted down and enslaved,” says Kjartonn, who saunters up behind. His shadow reaches across the room and chills engulf me.

  “Get away from her,” Kassien growls. He jumps to his feet, and his massive form fights back Kjartonn’s cold shadow. “As long as she is in danger, I will never stop killing. I’m incapable.” His fist slams forward, stopping an inch from Kjartonn’s face. “My life be damned.”

  The royal sovereign puts a hand up in warning, but I interrupt before she has to intervene further. I can’t let everything we’ve just achieved be shattered to pieces.

  “We will not agree to it unless something in your law protects us during the marriage.” I lift my b
ruised arms and spit venom at the unconscious Brekter.

  Eladia touches the discoloration softly. “I will write protection into the orders now. The binding will be dissolved if the woman is coerced into mating by violence or if she is brutalized by the one who is supposed to protect her.” She creates more symbols in the air and Kassien reads them to us aloud.

  I’m tired and broken but satisfied. Kassien called down the thunder and has saved us all.

  * * *

  Morning light seeps in through the curtains and Vaerynn, along with two other females prepare rooms for us in the mansion. No longer would we be chained to our beds at night. We’d have our own space, sharing with just one other girl, and I’ll have my mother with me as well.

  Brekter is scooped off the floor and taken to the ship’s med bay. He’ll never stop coming for me, and no law will keep his tormenting at bay. He likes my quivering, frightened flesh, and is aroused by my pain. I will pay every day for what Maria did to him all those years ago, and for how his heart beats for me. When I asked the sovereign to make the law, I knew it wouldn’t benefit me. But it will help the others.

  Blond Alice pulls the covers up to her tear-streaked face and turns over, sobs making her shudder in silence. Kjartonn shows the same cruelty his father does. Our father does. I replay the poisoned word. The others are harsh and violent natured, but their woman brings them to their knees. Especially with Kraetorr. But blond Alice’s betrothed is driven by that crazed lust, under a black spell that leads to unnatural desire and violence to achieve sexual heights of a red maddened mind. I don’t see her surviving this for long.

  The beautiful warmth from my mother beside me comforts, and my tumbling thoughts subside enough for me to drift off.

  A knock at the door startles me from my partial slumber and I sit up. Kassien peeks in through the cracked door and I quickly get out of bed, my blanket slipping to the floor. “I don’t want to wake blond Alice,” I say, closing the door. The hallway stands empty, though muffled voices float up from below.