He fought to help her, and suddenly both of their movements were urgent to the point of frantic, Trazen supporting himself over her on his palms, his tail lashing as she clung to him with her legs, still massaging his sex, exploring him with her hand…
He pulled her hand away, gasping.
Then he angled into her and her heart stopped.
She felt every part of him, every inch of his velvety skin inside her, and cried out for real, gripping his back, grasping him tighter in her legs.
He pulled out just enough to arch into her again, harder.
She gripped his arms, closing her eyes. Nothing had ever felt so good.
He let out a broken groan.
“Gods above… Jet…”
I understand now, she told him, caressing his face, feeling his desire wash over her, even as her heart swelled, as she felt him react to her intensity of feeling. She let him feel more, grasping him more tightly with her legs, and he groaned, his voice weak.
I understand, she thought at him. I understand about the venom, Trazen.
He stung her again… and again…
She lost track of how many times, feeling him lose control, even as her mind, her awareness, pretty much went somewhere else entirely.
She didn’t mind, though.
For the first time since she’d been stung by a Nirreth, she didn’t mind one bit.
Epilogue
The Shinkara
Jet stood on a high platform, overlooking a landscape unlike anything she’d ever seen.
She couldn’t remember anything quite like it even in the picture books she’d half-memorized as a kid in Chiyeko’s lighthouse.
Even the buildings didn’t look like those from the Green Zone, or any of the human or Nirreth structures she knew from Old North America, although they came the closest to familiar of anything she could see.
The very air smelled different here.
Wet in a way unlike the monsoon air she knew from Vancouver, it smelled like rich earth and mud mixed with a chalky, living dust, like somehow, someone had taken life and earth and packed it with water into a single smell.
That smell had texture and life and presence, and all living things wrapped up in it.
Before they landed, she glimpsed a few familiar sights, mostly from what she remembered of Anaze’s Retribution on Astet.
They’d been moving too quickly through the sky for her to know for certain, but she’d seen a lake and a high wall.
She just glimpsed them as they sped past, seeing just enough to make her wonder if either or both provided the inspiration for Trazen’s maze.
Yes, Trazen told her, wrapping his arms tightly around her where she stood and nuzzling her neck and jawline with his face.
“This was my home, Jet,” he murmured.
He pointed, aiming his finger to show her a distant part of the horizon.
Through his skin, she got more details in his mind of what he wanted to show her.
“I got that underground river from your run with the captive here, too,” he said, adding to the pictures he showed her though his skin. “And the small village there… it was a combination of human villages I’ve seen here, and some that are from a different culture that remained behind after those settlers left…”
She watched the pictures in his mind, fascinated.
She got pulled back to the present when she glanced back over the quiet valley with their empty buildings below.
“Do you really think they left?” she said, frowning.
He pulled her closer, and she softened into his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist without taking her eyes off the landscape in front of them.
“Yes,” he said, kissing her throat. “I suspected as much, truthfully. After you showed me what my old teacher said.”
Jet nodded, still looking out over the quiet landscape.
The Shinkara had left Earth.
They’d left the Green Zone they’d once inhabited filled with freed animals and humans, along with a scattering of empty buildings and parks.
Trazen had already spoken to a few of those left behind.
He found the local humans were aware of the departure. They’d been trained to run the atmosphere-cleaning machines, with the Shinkara gone. They’d been given gifts, including manuscripts and blueprints for technology.
They were some of the happiest, calmest, more peaceful humans Jet had ever met.
The landscape below them now was something she would have thought a paradise growing up. The very fact that it existed at all made her feel like she was dreaming, even apart from having Trazen wrapped around her, exuding warmth and love from his very pores.
“We can do this there,” he said, quieter. “Where you grew up, Jet. I know it is too late for you to grow up like this, but it can be done in other places.”
“Why do you think they left?” Jet pressed.
The question nagged at her. Her mind turned over possibilities, coming up with both good interpretations and bad ones.
Trazen shrugged.
She felt different layers of meaning sifting through his mind via the venom, a more complex level of thought than she’d experienced through him before now.
Feeling aspects of that joy-filled female Nirreth Jet remembered from the library, she fought with a strange twinge of jealousy.
Not sexual jealousy. Not even jealousy of the female Nirreth, per se.
More a jealousy at an understanding she could feel that Trazen and the female Nirreth shared, something that still lived just outside of Jet’s own mental reach.
He kissed her again, smiling as he pulled her against him.
“I will show you,” he promised. “You will understand.”
Jet did understand one thing, though.
One thing she hadn’t before.
“That’s why you went to them,” she said, leaning into his chest. “You made those vows because you wanted to learn from them.”
“Yes,” he said, surprise touching his voice. He wrapped his tail tighter around her. “Of course. Why else would I do it?”
She shrugged, letting herself melt into him more. “I don’t know.”
She glanced up, studying his face.
“There’s not really a human equivalent. The closest would be a monk or a shaman or something, I guess… and people did that here for all kinds of reasons. They were chosen at birth,” she said, thinking about what Chiyeko told her. “Or their parents wanted them to do it. Or they were lost, even in trouble sometimes, like it was that or jail. Women did it sometimes because they had a baby with the wrong person…”
Trazen let out an amused snort. He held her tighter.
“Why does it bother you that they left?” he asked softly.
She twisted around to look at him again.
“Why doesn’t it bother you?” she said.
He purred thoughtfully from his chest, resting his chin on her shoulder.
“Should it?” he said finally, his voice matter-of-fact. “I have no regrets, Jet. Not for what I chose in going to them. Not for what I choose now. As for the Shinkara themselves… I did not live among them for very long. I did a job for them, because I felt called to do it, and I struggled with the corruption and cruelty I saw every day. I am grateful for what they gave me, and what I learned from them… but I do not feel slighted that they left.”
Thinking about his words, she nodded, relaxing slightly.
She realized some part of her had wondered that, if he would feel left behind.
No, Jet. No. I believe they meant it as a gift. Possibly even a reward…
Jet sighed again, relaxing more as she snuggled into him.
“And the Shinkara themselves? Where do you think they will go now?”
He let out a short laugh. “I have no idea, Jet.”
“None at all?”
“None at all.”
“But why? Why would they go?” Jet frowned as she looked over the grassy plains. “Aren’t the Nirreth their
people? Will they go to some other Nirreth colony now?”
“I do not know,” he said simply.
He pressed his face against her neck.
Kissing her cheek, he added softly, “But if they do not think they are needed here, how is that anything but a compliment, Jet?”
Smiling, she let out a low snort, watching as the sky grew darker.
They’d flown so far that it was nighttime here, even as it was midmorning in the place they’d left behind. Jet had never been in a part of the world where it was night while at her home it was day.
“No,” Trazen smiled. “You’ve just been to a whole other planet entirely.”
Jet smiled at that too.
Another thing to tell Biggs and her mother.
Her eyes drifted up as she leaned her head on Trazen’s shoulder.
Staring at the stars, she realized she could see the real ones here.
The Shinkara had cleared enough of the dust and smoke from the air in this part of the world, she could see past the dense, brownish haze that kept the stars from her eyes most nights in Vancouver.
She thought about bringing her family here.
Then she realized she’d rather be able to see the real stars in the lands around her old home. For the first time in her life, that didn’t even sound like wishful thinking. It sounded like something that might really happen.
It sounded like something she might get to witness.
At the very least, she could watch progress in that direction, even if she and Biggs and her mother saw most of that from beneath a Green Zone dome’s wall.
“Maybe we don’t need them anymore,” Jet murmured, still watching the stars.
Contentment seeped off the Nirreth’s skin, even as she felt a low ripple of desire off him, right before he wrapped his tail around her waist.
“Maybe we don’t,” Trazen agreed.
Of course, Jet would still have to explain her Nirreth boyfriend to her family.
That could get ugly, in more ways than one, and not only with Uncle Draven.
Pressing his cheek against her neck, Trazen laughed.
They just stood there for a long-feeling few minutes, watching the night crawl over the remaining lines of light and color that lingered at the horizon.
It had been a long trip, just to watch a sunset in another part of the world.
Still, right then at least, it felt pretty worth it, Jet thought.
Copyright © 2016 by JC Andrijeski
Published by White Sun Press
Cover Art & Design by White Sun Press (2021)
Ebook Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official vendor for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
1
The Pens
The first time she saw him, she hoped fervently he wouldn’t notice her.
She crouched in a corner of the pens, as much behind the others as she could manage, even knowing it wouldn’t help.
Her owner, Agnon, was bragging.
He was always bragging, but she remembered thinking that time, he was really going all-out. He wanted to impress this male Nirreth, whoever he was.
She knew that probably wouldn’t bode well for her.
The hiding bought her no time at all.
“There she is!’ Agnon said loudly, his voice slurred with Nirreth wine. “That’s the one I told you about.”
She could feel him pointing at her and cringed lower.
Agnon broke out in a drunken laugh.
“She is hiding… always hiding. These mammals are so stupid. Does she think I cannot see her there? Hello! Hello, little sexy mammal!”
She bit her lip, thinking loudly in response, Do you really think I don’t understand your language, you mouth-breathing egomaniacal lizard-skin asshole?
He didn’t hear her think it, of course.
He hadn’t stung her since the night before, and anyway, the venom connection only worked when they were touching, skin to skin.
The idiot was waving at her, his long tail lashing behind his back in humor-laden flicks. He rested a jointed, four-fingered hand on the shoulder of his taller, more muscular friend. He triggered the door to the pens, and it opened, disappearing silently into the glass-like wall.
“Chloe!” Agnon said, louder. “Chloe! Come here, girl! I want you to meet someone!”
Another of his little “jokes.”
He loved to pretend like she was at a cocktail party with him, not naked in a pen filled with other naked humans he owned.
When she didn’t come out of her crouch, the cocktail party pretense dropped.
So did the indulgence in his voice. She heard nothing but the psychopath he was when he spoke to her next, using English, the human tongue.
“Chloe, come,” he said, cold. “To me. Now.”
She hesitated even then.
Exhaling in resignation, she rose stiffly to her feet.
Folding her arms in front of her––which did nothing to take away from the fact that she was stark naked––she walked over to him with her head held high.
Well, as high as she could manage.
The other humans got out of her way, a few aiming sympathetic looks in her direction. She made sure not to look at Kiji, who she knew likely watched from the other side of the pens.
They’d learned to separate––and quickly––as soon as the lights came on.
So far Chloe managed to hide the fact that her little sister was here, in the pens with her, from Agnon himself––although she didn’t know how she’d managed to hide it.
She didn’t let herself think about her sister at all while under the influence of the venom, so that was part of it. She’d gotten a lot better at controlling her thoughts while under the influence, just from practice.
Even so, she wondered how Agnon didn’t know.
However it happened, she was beyond grateful.
Kiji was too young to interest Agnon in the ways that mattered––thank goodness.
Whatever their other faults, lizard-skins avoided sexual contact with children of any race, not just their own. He still would have used Kiji to torment Chloe in other ways however, if he knew how much her sister mattered to her.
Chloe was certain of it.
He’d developed a sort of obsession with Chloe since he bought her.
Because of that obsession, Chloe didn’t expect to live a very long life.
Her only hope now was that Kiji might do better. Kiji was young enough that she still might find a way out. She might find some way to make herself useful to the Nirreth that didn’t involve sex, hopefully before something truly bad happened to her.
Not all Nirreth slaves were miserable.
Many had families, friends, a community to which they belonged. If she got a decent owner, Kiji might even have a good life.
They even had a female Rings fighter now.
The idea of a human female in the Rings had taken hold of Nirreth society of late. Chloe heard about little else for the past two months during Agnon’s lizard-skin parties. The topic had risen to a fever pitch this week, with the first live match approaching on Saturday.
They would want a female fighter to be tough and pretty, Chloe knew.
She hoped maybe Kiji could catch the eye of some Nirreth rich enough to want to groom her for that role. If Kiji learned enough fighting skills before she came of age, Chloe could maybe find a way to get the word out through Agnon’s friends.
Chloe knew that life as a Rings fighter would be difficult for Kiji.
Yet, such a life would have significant benefits attached to it, as well––benefits that might vastly outweigh those
risks.
Chloe was a realist.
Already, Kiji was far too pretty. It wouldn’t be easy for her to avoid becoming a house slave, not once she got old enough. The Rings might be one of the few options left where Kiji’s looks could be a real asset.
Rings fighters were too valuable to abuse.
From what Chloe knew of them, they were too valuable to rape, as well.
Kiji would not have this life, she promised herself.
Chloe would endure this so Kiji didn’t have to.
She reached the gate between the pen walls and the walkway where the two male Nirreth stood. Barely hesitating, she stepped carefully over the metal grid that lay over the threshold and came to a stop on the other side, waiting.
At that point she still hadn’t spared much attention for Agnon’s big-shot friend.
“I know you prefer those wiry skags, Trazen,” Agnon was saying to the other Nirreth, still leaning on him and grinning like a jackass as he spoke in that loud voice.
“…This one is Green Zone, born and bred. I don’t think she’s even been outside the dome. But look at her, will you? She’s like sex on a stick.” He let out a Nirreth chuckle, grinning at her as he lashed his tail suggestively. “Half my staff’s had her. I think they’d take her every night if I let them,” he added, laughing again.
Only then did Chloe find herself looking at Agnon’s friend.
Part of what caused her to turn was his silence.
Unlike the other Nirreth Agnon dragged down here, Agnon’s new friend didn’t cackle along with his stupidity or add any of his own. He didn’t say anything, not even to fill the silence after Agnon spoke.
When Chloe studied his face and characteristically dark Nirreth eyes, he didn’t look drunk, or bored. He stared back at her appraisingly, his gaze sharp, clear––and nearly unreadable despite that clarity.
He was handsome, she realized.
It was rare for her to see Nirreth that way, but something about this one’s features were different––not human-like in any way, but striking and harmonious nonetheless.
His black eyes were flecked and ringed with some lighter color, she noticed––what might have been amber or gold. It was difficult to tell precisely under the sickly-green tint of the flickering pen lights.
The Complete Alien Apocalypse Series (Parts I-IV Plus Bonus Novella): An Apocalyptic, Romantic, Science Fiction, Alien Invasion Adventure Page 96
