Marked By Fire (Dragons Of The Darkblood Secret Society Book 2)

by Meg Ripley

  “All I know,” Lenth said, shaking his head in frustration, “is that if we don’t find a subject to experiment on, we’ll be in trouble.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a human woman; she was short, even by human standards, with brilliant purple-colored hair cut short around a sharp-featured face. Dressed in a pair of shorts that revealed the indelible ink markings Lenth knew were called tattoos—designs that looked similar to human artwork in a floral motif—and a tight, black shirt, she looked to Lenth’s gaze like the human mythological creature called a pixie.

  “Can I get you something?” she said, and Lenth felt a shiver cascade through his nervous system at the pleasing, soft sound of her voice. The woman’s large, dark eyes took him in.

  “I’ll have what my friend is having,” Lenth told her, gesturing to the beer. The woman smiled, nodding quickly.

  “Coming right up!” she scribbled something on the pad of paper and moved away from the table, and Lenth watched her move towards the bar.

  “What do you think?” Bronn asked. Lenth smiled slowly.

  “I think we should approach her,” Lenth replied. “She’s an excellent candidate.”

  Bronn watched the woman that he and Lenth had identified as a potential recruit for their now-combined study, tracking her around the room as she went about her work. “Why do you think she’s an excellent candidate?” Bronn asked his colleague, turning his attention back onto Lenth.

  “She’s obviously fertile,” Lenth said, his glance moving to watch her as well. “I find her interesting.”

  “Interesting?” Bronn asked doubtfully. He had had no success in finding a recruit to study; as of yet he had never found a human woman to be specifically interesting. He had found them intriguing as study participants—but his opinion about human intelligence was fairly dim.

  “Did you hear her voice?” Lenth asked him.

  Bronn raised his shoulders in an approximation of a shrug. “She has a very nice voice; how does that make her interesting?”

  “She has that—tattooing,” Lenth pointed out, still speaking in their native language.

  “Many human women have that,” Bronn pointed out. When the human woman approached the table once more, Bronn looked at her artwork in more detail. The shorts the woman was wearing made it easy to view the whorls and swirls of ink forming flowers on her upper thighs.

  “Here you are: one mug of Samuel Adams,” the woman said, smiling. Listening to her voice, Bronn had to admit to himself that it was beautiful. The woman hesitated; instead of turning away quickly, the way she had before, she lingered, looking from Bronn to Lenth. “Do you mind if I ask where you gentlemen come from?” she asked quickly. “Jeez! I apologize if that’s offensive.”

  “We’re from far away,” Lenth said, falling back on the explanation that the other Khateen had used—the explanation that both Lenth and Bronn had used in speaking with women previously. Lenth glanced at Bronn, giving him a significant look.

  “May I ask your name?” Bronn asked, falling into the English language with slight difficulty. Even after weeks of speaking the language, it still felt stilted and strange to him.

  “Giselle,” the woman said, her lips curving in a smile. In that moment, Bronn’s confusion at Lenth’s choice—his decision to attempt to recruit the woman—evaporated. Bronn had seen a dozen women smile; but there was something about the way Giselle’s dark eyes lit up when her lips curved that sent a jolt through him.

  “Let us know when you’re on your break, Giselle, and we can tell you all about where we come from,” Lenth suggested.

  “I’m actually off in twenty minutes,” she said, glancing at them both. “I wasn’t planning to hang around, but your language sounds very interesting; I study cultures, I’d love to hear more.”

  Bronn nodded, smiling at the woman. “We’ll be happy to share everything you want to hear about our culture,” Bronn told her. “Let me pay for my friend so that we don’t hold you up.” He offered one of the strange pieces of paper that humans used as currency; Giselle glanced at it and then smiled again, extending it towards him.

  “Actually, this one’s on me; I’ll get you a refill as well. I didn’t catch your names.” She frowned slightly, and there was something about the expression that intrigued Bronn even more than her smile.

  “I’m called Bronn,” he said, before gesturing to his colleague. “My friend is Lenth.” Giselle smiled again.

  “Well, Bronn and Lenth, I’ll be right back.”

  Bronn glanced at his colleague as Giselle walked briskly away. “She is fertile, and she seems interested.” Lenth’s lips tugged upward at the corners in a human-like smile.

  “I believe she’s at the phase of reproductive viability—the part of her monthly cycle called ovulation.” Bronn considered it, thinking of the woman’s body language, the way she had looked at both of them, her dark eyes flashing. He nodded.

  “How much do we tell her?” he asked his fellow researcher, glancing the way that Giselle had come. The slight sway in her hips as she walked towards the bar suggested to him that Giselle was almost certainly fertile at the moment—not just in the general sense, but imminently so.

  “As little as possible,” Lenth suggested. “At least until we can get her to a private location.”

  “Should we convince her to consume alcohol while we talk?” Bronn asked; the Khateen metabolism was unaffected by alcohol—they could consume endless quantities without becoming intoxicated. Other researchers had discovered that drinking alcohol with their subjects loosened the subjects’ inhibitions—though there were ethical considerations in consent taken from a woman who was intoxicated.

  “Yes,” Lenth said, nodding slowly. “But we should allow her to become sober before any experimentation takes place.”

  “Particularly in light of the fact that we will both be experimenting on her,” Bronn agreed. “Yes, that would make sense. We want to be careful not to injure her.” Others of their race had run into problems; even though care had been taken, human women were smaller than Khateen women, particularly their sex organs. More than one researcher had discovered that this could present problems in experiments. Though the Khateen had ample technology for dealing with such injuries, the incidents made the human recruits more reticent, and the empathic response that formed part of the Khateen personality made it difficult to remain objective, knowing that the subject was in pain, even for a short period of time.

  “We’ll be very careful; she seems smaller than many of the human women I have encountered—she’s probably smaller everywhere.” Bronn nodded.

  “She’ll be sober, and we’ll make sure that she’s fully apprised of the risks and the benefits before we persuade her to participate.” Lenth laughed the Khateen way, startling one of the nearby human patrons.

  “We haven’t been able to persuade any human women on our own,” Lenth pointed out. “It will only be more difficult for us to persuade one together.”

  “I don’t believe so,” Bronn said to his colleague as Giselle approached their table once more, armed with another mug of beer.

  ****

  Giselle tugged a chair into place at the edge of the table occupied by the two strange men, Bronn and Lenth. “Okay,” she said, smiling at both, “I’m officially off the clock.”

  Lenth favored her with a toothy smile, raising his glass to her. “What would you like to know about us?” he asked.

  Giselle considered the question. She had been drawn to the two men as soon as the second had sat down; their strange coloring and the sounds of their language had appealed to the researcher in her right away. A student of anthropology, Giselle was in the process of finding a topic for her Ph.D., and the possibility of writing an ethnography on a culture as rare as the one these two men must belong to lit her mind with voracious curiosity.

  “If you’ll forgive me,” she said, glancing from Lenth to Bronn, “I noticed that the two of you are…different.” She felt her c
heeks warming with a blush. They had to know that they looked different from any of the other patrons at the bar; she had never seen a person with such strange coloring—let alone two. “Where are you from?”

  “We’re from a place called Khatanar,” Bronn said. “It’s very remote.”

  “How did you find your way here?” Giselle asked.

  “We’re researchers,” Lenth told her. “Our people are scientists, interested in genetics.” Giselle frowned. Two men from a remote, isolated culture; one that apparently studied genetics. And yet the place that they had told her they came from was not one that she’d ever heard of—not on the news, and not in any textbook she had read.

  “Your whole culture is scientists?” Giselle asked, frowning more deeply.

  “Ah—no,” Bronn said. “Those of us who are here are scientists.” Giselle nodded slowly, still trying to understand, but slightly less confused.

  “How many of you are here?” she assumed that she meant the country; it would make sense that if they were studying genetics, they would come to a first-world nation—and yet, if they were scientists who were already studying genetics, wouldn’t their own city or country have adequate facilities?

  “There are…” Bronn’s lips moved as he hesitated, and Giselle recognized the signs of someone translating. “Twenty of us.”

  “Twenty scientists studying genetics here,” Giselle said, nodding slowly. “What do you hope to discover?” she glanced at Lenth.

  “Could we buy you a drink?” Lenth asked her. Giselle smiled.

  “Well, you could—but they’ll give me a couple of drinks on the house, so it would be a waste of money.”

  “The bartender could take the money as a tip,” Bronn pointed out. Giselle smiled again, looking from one man to the other.

  “That she could. Okay. I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ll come with you,” Lenth suggested. “So we can continue talking.”

  ****

  Time seemed to stand still as Giselle found herself increasingly absorbed in the information that Lenth and Bronn provided her about their culture. She found herself having a drink—then two, then three—while the two men told her about the research they were interested in, looking into female genetics and sexuality. She knew that she was ovulating; when she’d approached the table, her reaction to the two men had been as much due to some subtlety of their height, build, coloring, and facial features, along with their unusual, brightly colored eyes, as their potential as subjects for her possible ethnography.

  Somehow, over the course of the conversation, she’d found herself divulging more about her life than she’d expected to. Bronn and Lenth asked her about her age, about her studies—they were complimentary about her subject matter. “That is a wonderful thing to study!” Bronn told her brightly when she explained the scope of cultural anthropology. “Humans need to discover as much about themselves as possible if they desire to advance.”

  There was something—Giselle’s increasingly fuzzy mind couldn’t identify it—about the way that the two men referred to the human race. She caught the fact that Bronn and Lenth occasionally said “you” when talking about people instead of “we,” but dismissed it as the kind of error that people who spoke English as a second language would make. But still something stirred in the back of her mind, something that was unsettling and intriguing all at once.

  “Would you like to come home with us?” Bronn said at one point. Giselle startled at the question; looking around, she realized it was much later than she thought. Go home with two guys? Giselle worried at her bottom lip, trying to decide. She couldn’t deny that she was attracted to the two men. But she’d never gone home with two men at the same time; she’d never been interested in a threesome—and yet she found herself wanting to say yes, even though the obvious strength and height of the two men worried her.

  “I promise you, we won’t take advantage of you,” Lenth said quietly. “Our culture is strongly—strongly—against taking women unwillingly. But we want to continue to speak with you, and it’s becoming crowded here.” Giselle glanced around the busy bar once more and had to agree.

  “If you try and hurt me,” she said, looking at each of the two men. “I’ll kill you both…or try my best to, anyway.”

  Bronn smiled. “I would expect no less; have no fear, you won’t have to resort to that.”

  Giselle gathered up her purse and stood, unsteady on her feet. “Then lead the way,” she said.

  ****

  “She’s waking up,” Lenth heard Bronn say from the other side of the room. Their subject had come with them willingly to what Bronn told her was his home; in fact, it was laboratory space that Bronn had set up at the beginning of the mission. Bronn had chosen a different tactic from many of their colleagues in his attempts to make potential human subjects comfortable with agreeing to be experimented on: his laboratory was a mock-up of a human dwelling, with the specialized equipment recommended by their research overseers tucked away in what would be considered a human’s bedroom.

  When they had arrived at Bronn’s space, Lenth had quietly prepared a concoction that the Khateen knew would assist humans in metabolizing alcohol more quickly, without the lingering harmful effects that humans called a hangover. The substances in the concoction neutralized the alcohol in the stomach, so that there was less for the human liver to process, converting the alcohol into simple glucose and water. Before Giselle had fallen asleep on Bronn’s couch, Lenth had convinced her to drink it—though he had not told her what it was.

  It was nearly dawn when their potential subject awakened, blinking blearily. Lenth could sense her confusion and the brief flicker of alarm in her body language as she started to remember what had happened. “I’m fully dressed,” Giselle said quietly.

  “We told you,” Bronn said, smiling slightly. “Our culture considers taking advantage of females to be absolutely anathema. We would never harm you.”

  “What did you give me?” Giselle asked with a frown.

  “It was a substance that neutralizes alcohol. Are you feeling ill?” Giselle shook her head.

  “I feel great… it’s just weird to not have a hangover after drinking so much. How much did I drink?” she shook her head, sitting up.

  “You had several alcohol drinks,” Bronn said with a grin. Giselle chuckled, stretching and twisting, and Lenth couldn’t help but stare. The sight of their subject sleeping on Bronn’s couch had been tempting—alluring. The movements of her stretching revealed more of her pale skin, a slice of her stomach and the curve of her hip showing.

  “So,” Giselle said, glancing from Lenth to Bronn, and Lenth saw that the alarm—muted, just a flicker of the emotion as she had awakened—had come back, slightly stronger. “What’s the plan now?” Bronn glanced at Lenth and Lenth considered. They had not decided just how they were going to proposition this potential subject.

  “You are curious about our culture,” Lenth said. “There are some things that we wanted to share with you in private about our culture.”

  “Oh—oh, yes, that’s right,” Giselle said, her dark eyes widening. Lenth felt the stirrings of lust in his body once more, the flicker of heat. It was a sensation not unlike the dance between potential mates. She scrubbed at her face. “Do you happen to have coffee? It’s—really, really early.” Bronn chuckled and Lenth shrugged, not knowing the answer to the question.

  “I do have coffee,” Bronn said. “But I am uncertain about how to make it. It is not a common drink where we come from.” Giselle chuckled and Lenth smiled at the understatement.

  “If you have coffee and a coffee brewer, I can make it myself.” Lenth watched as the woman stood quickly, looking around before she went into the kitchen area. He turned to his colleague.

  “We need to explain things to her,” Lenth whispered to Bronn. “We got her here, we need to explain and persuade her to participate.” Lenth watched his colleague closely as Bronn considered the situation.

  “We could
propose that we exchange information,” Bronn suggested. “We’ll tell her about our culture if she lets us perform the experiments.” Bronn smiled.

  “How much will we tell her, though?” Lenth asked. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where Giselle was singing softly as she made coffee. Lenth could smell the sharp scent of the roasted beans.

  “As much as she wants, once she agrees to participate,” Bronn suggested.

  “And then she’ll go to the press, or the government.”

  “With what?” Bronn shrugged. “She can’t tell them that she’s being subjected to alien experiments—have you seen the way that people are treated who make those accusations?”

  Lenth laughed, “That’s an excellent point.”

  Giselle came back into the living room, looking from Lenth to Bronn. “What have you two been discussing?” They had lapsed into their native language out of necessity.

  “We want to make a… proposition to you,” Bronn said, glancing at Lenth. “We understand your interest in our culture. You know that we are scientists.”

  “I know that you told me you’re scientists,” Giselle pointed out. “That doesn’t mean that you are.” Lenth laughed.

  “What proof would you need?” Lenth asked.

  “A lab? Examples of previous research…” Giselle shrugged. “I’ve never heard of the place you told me you come from. It seems…strange to me that people from a remote country I’ve never heard of are doing genetic research.” Lenth glanced at Bronn.

  “Well, there’s something we must tell you,” Bronn said. “But first we need your consent to the experiments we’re interested in recruiting you for.”

  “Okay, well, what is it?” Giselle asked after a moment. “What’s the study?”