Undying (Valos of Sonhadra Book 7)

by Tiffany Roberts

  “I have a hard time believing a little thing like you found anything in that forest without being eaten by something.”

  “I’ve been lucky.” Quinn glanced at the bowl. “The berries grow on clusters of bushes with small leaves. There are also big melon-like things that grow from the trees along the river. That’s what I’ve been living on since the crash.”

  “Anyone else freaking out?” asked Johnson, rubbing his upper arm. “I mean, we’re standing in an alien city, and there’s all these creepy-ass statues everywhere...”

  “Stop being such a pussy,” Vega snapped. He stalked toward the nearest valo. “They’re just fucking statues.” He lifted his foot and kicked it.

  “No!” Quinn ran forward, but skidded to a halt as Max stepped into her path, pistol raised. She watched helplessly as the valo toppled, shattering as it hit the ground. All she could think of was the grief Orishok would feel when he saw it.

  “You’d better start talking,” Max said, voice low, “’cause I don’t have much left in the way of patience.”

  Quinn glared at him. “I told you. There is nothing else here! Take your lazy asses out and find your own damn food.”

  “Lazy? You have someone taking care of you with your fancy clothes and full belly. So, where are they?” Lysa demanded.

  Quinn didn’t look away from Max. His expression was almost blank, and didn’t change at all when his empty hand darted up and grabbed a fistful of her hair. He forced her head back. She hissed, clasping his wrist.

  Max pressed the barrel of the pistol to Quinn’s nose. “Told you I don’t have patience for this shit,” he muttered, forcing her backward.

  Her legs hit the edge of the platform. Max kicked her down without releasing her hair, and pain flared across her scalp. He leaned over her, moving the gun away to prop himself up with that hand, his face nearly touching hers. Quinn dropped her own hand to the platform to keep herself balanced. Her fingers brushed the blade of the knife.

  “You’re going to fucking tell us where the rest of the food is and who’s been helping you, or I’m going to start shooting pieces off of you, do you fucking understand me?” he shouted. His spittle sprayed her face.

  Quinn winced as his grip on her hair tightened. Carefully, she moved her hand closer to the knife and wrapped her fingers around the grip. “I already told you,” she said as calmly as she could, “all the food I had left was in that bowl. I planned to go out and get more later.”

  “Bullshit!” Lysa called. “Just shoot her. Her stash can’t be far from here. We’ll find it on our own.”

  “Maybe she’s telling the truth,” Johnson said. “And, she’s pretty anyway. We ought to keep her.”

  “Wanna make somebody your bitch, for a change?” Vega laughed.

  “Fuck you, Vega.”

  Max twisted to look behind him. “All of you shut the fuck up!”

  Quinn raised the knife and stabbed it down into the forearm Max was leaning on. He yanked his arm back, screaming, but she held firm. Blood splattered her as the blade tore a chunk of meat from him. The gun clattered onto the stone. Placing a hand on his chest, she shoved him away, scrambled to her feet, and ran.

  “Orishok!” she screamed as the others shouted behind her, their footsteps closing in.

  A body slammed into her back. Her feet left the ground as she fell forward, eyes wide. A large, black chunk of Kelsharn’s statue lay on the ground before her, nearer with each millisecond. One of the broken edges hit her temple. Everything went black. There was an instant of pain and a gush of warmth, and Quinn knew no more.

  ORISHOK STRAIGHTENED when he heard a scream, turning away from the body of his tribesman, Kubrak. Though the sound had been distorted by the buildings and the mountain air, he knew Bahmet well; he knew the way it altered sounds. Just as he knew that scream had not come from Quinn’s throat.

  He rushed toward the square, the streets blurring as his instinct led him along the fastest route.

  Quinn shouted his name. The fear in her voice sped him further, and energy crackled like lightning from his heartstone. He entered the square from the palace road.

  He saw Quinn running beside Kelsharn’s broken statue. Saw another hoomin, a male, leap at her from behind, saw her fall and hit her head. Saw the blood flow freely over the dark stone to pool beneath her.

  Orishok’s heartstone was suddenly still, suddenly quiet. He’d seen death too often — had been death for too long — not to know.

  The male stood up and grabbed Quinn’s hair, pulling her head up.

  “Bitch is dead,” he said. Three other hoomins — a female and two men, one with a bleeding arm — joined him.

  The sound began as a vibration deep within Orishok’s heartstone, a pulse in the same stuttered, one-two rhythm with which Quinn’s heart had once beat. She was his tribe — the last of his tribe, his mate, his life — and now she was dead. After all the dangers she’d survived, after everything she’d faced, it was one of her own kind who had killed her.

  A wave of fire burst from his heartstone, blazing across his chest and spreading to his limbs, shaping his surface into the terrible armor Kelsharn had so enjoyed. Spikes erupted from his shoulders, his arms, his head, and he roared with the voices of a thousand fallen tribesmen, with the fury of a thousand lost years, with the sorrow of a single shattered heart.

  The roar echoed off the walls and shook the foundations of Bahmet. Four humans turned to stare at Orishok, their faces pale and their eyes gleaming with fear.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Orishok ignored the question, and charged.

  He was upon them before they could fully react. Extending a blade from his forearm, he jabbed it into the gut of the male who’d tackled Quinn, lifting him off the ground. Orishok caught the nearby female by the throat. The thrumming, dark energy of death flowed from him, and all the color drained from her face. She gasped as the flesh wasted away from her bones, turning gray before it cracked and dried out. The male impaled on the blade groaned as he underwent the same process.

  Orishok tossed their desiccated husks aside. One of the males — the tallest — fled outright. The wounded hoomin retreated, but did not turn away from Orishok.

  “What the fu—”

  Lunging forward, Orishok slammed his fist down atop the male’s head. His neck collapsed, bones cracking, and blood trickled down his face. He sagged to the ground. Orishok continued his advance.

  The remaining hoomin scrambled over the platform, knocking over the blanket-draped stone, dropped to his knees. He picked something up from atop it. With trembling arms, he turned and pointed the device at Orishok. The object made a short, high-pitched sound. Something darted from it — a bolt of light, it seemed.

  Orishok felt the impact distantly, felt the chunk blown out of his arm, but he did not slow. Using his momentum, he leapt. The hoomin fell onto his rear and kicked wildly to scramble backward. His eyes were wide and his jaw agape when Orishok’s knee landed on his chest.

  The hoomin’s last breath burst out of him, spraying blood and viscous fluids, and then he was still. Standing up, Orishok staggered. What rage remained within him was fading; soon there’d be only sorrow, and eventually he would be empty, as though his heartstone had never been replaced. He turned toward the fallen monument — toward his fallen mate — and stepped down from the platform.

  His body reverted to its old form as he walked, taking the shape of the Orishok that was. He fell to his knees beside Quinn and gathered her in his arms. Her hair was matted with blood, her clothing soaked with it, and she was too pale.

  “Heart of my heart,” he rasped, smoothing back her hair. Her head lolled. “Come back to me.”

  She did not respond. He gently touched her neck, her wrist, her chest, smearing blood over her skin. There was no life-pulse within her. No warmth.

  “No,” he growled, holding her tight. “No! You have taken everything else, you cannot have her!”

  Kelsharn did not respond
, nor did Sonhadra.

  He buried his face in her hair as pressure built in his heartstone, terrible and overwhelming. Pressure that would never find a release; it would destroy him. “She is all I have.”

  Wind flowed through Bahmet’s streets, sighing mournfully between empty buildings. Whatever life the city had possessed was gone. Orishok rose, clutching Quinn’s limp form, and left the square. He went to the place of making first, and reluctantly set her down to gather what he needed. Then he brought her to the bathhouse, failing to hold back the flood of memories it brought — the happiness they’d shared had been immense, though their time together had been fleeting.

  Orishok removed her bloody dress and carried her into the water. He used her soaps to gently wash away the dirt, clay, and blood from her skin, to rinse out her hair until he could easily comb his fingers through it. All the while, the pressure in his heartstone increased. His hands trembled as he worked.

  He could not find the damage on her head, but that offered him no comfort. She did not breath, and her heart was still.

  “Quinn,” he whispered, and leaned down to kiss her. Her lips were soft, but they did not mold to his, did not match his ministrations.

  Rearing back, he roared again; raw, agonized, and unrestrained, it was the death cry he’d never released when his life had been taken. The walls shook with it, and the water rippled around him.

  As he lifted her from the pool, he looked over her face. Her mouth would never turn up in a smile again, would never open to release her high, joyous laughter. Her eyes would never sparkle with the life that had shined so bright within her soul.

  He dried her and rubbed oil into her skin, helpless but to remember how her body had felt when it was warm and responsive, when it was alive. Finally, he wrapped her in the cloth he’d taken from the place of making — using fabric of her favorite green and binding it with strips of blue to match her natural eye. Though it defied the old ways, he could not yet bring himself to cover her face.

  Of all the places in Bahmet he’d wanted to show her, there was only one to which he hadn’t taken her. To him, it was perhaps the most sorrowful location, and had only emphasized the losses his people had suffered.

  He and Quinn had passed it so many times on their way to and from the bathhouse; he crossed the street and entered the gardens. He’d wanted her to see them because he knew she would be able to envision what they might have looked like. Once, the land within the high garden walls had been vibrant, filled with countless plants from all over Sonhadra.

  He walked along the main stone path. When everything was alive, it had been impossible to see more than ten paces in any direction. Now the entirety of the gardens was visible — barren ground sectioned off by stone walls of varying heights, some parts set higher or lower than the others. Stone pathways wound through all of it, rising and falling to enhance the view.

  Orishok brought Quinn to a rectangular section near the center of the garden. The wall around it was only as high as his shin; he stepped over it and onto the dirt. He laid her in the center.

  “This spot was once filled with flowers, Quinn,” he said. “I do not know your word for them, but they were beautiful. I hope this place suits you. I think you would have liked it, as it once was...”

  Stepping back from her, he knelt in the dirt, placing his hands on his thighs.

  “I will hold vigil over you, that Sonhadra may take you and grant you life anew. But you will remain mine, until Sonhadra claims me.”

  The sun completed its trek across the sky, giving way to the moons. The night mists rolled in, obscuring the garden and diffusing the moonlight. Somewhere in the distant forests and hills, shriekers released their high, piercing calls as they prowled the night. Orishok did not look away from Quinn. She was the last of his tribe.

  He would hold vigil.

  Something sparked in his chest — a flutter of warmth. He pushed it aside. Any more emotion would shatter his heartstone and break him, and he could not allow that to happen until he knew Quinn had been taken. Until he knew she would move on.

  The sensation strengthened, crackling through his heartstone and spreading, faint but impossible to ignore. Was this what the others had felt, when their ends had come? This mounting pressure, the sudden weight of so many years of loss and pain?

  “No,” he said, “you will not yet have me.”

  As though in response, fire flared inside of him. The pain was immense, unlike anything he’d felt since his change, and he sagged forward, digging his fingers into the ground. He clenched his jaw as the energy pulsed through him. Tremors flowed through his limbs, and it felt as though his body would crack and come undone.

  He heard someone draw in a sudden, desperate breath.

  Orishok lifted his head, and all the feeling inside of him ceased.

  Quinn arched her back and sucked in another ragged breath as her limbs writhed with the cloth wraps.

  He crawled forward, clawing through the dirt, to kneel over her and cut the ties. With his help, she thrashed free. She clenched fistfuls of the fabric and dug her heels into the ground. Abruptly, she rolled onto her side, pushing up on an elbow, and vomited.

  Orishok moved a hesitant, shaking hand toward her shoulder. When his fingertips brushed her bare flesh, she started, scrambling away from him. Her back hit the low wall, and she wrapped her arms around her legs, hugging them to her chest. She stared at him with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Quinn,” he whispered. Feeling returned to him; heat radiated from his heartstone.

  Awareness cleared the wild gleam in her eyes. “Orishok?”

  “You are safe now, Quinn. You are...you came back to me.”

  Her face crumpled, and a harsh sob escaped her. She leapt to her feet and threw herself into his open arms.

  He embraced her, smoothing her hair back as she cried, and she clung to him. Her body shook, her tears hot against his skin. He let her cry until she had nothing left and her sobs gave way to deep, shuddering breaths.

  “Are they gone?” she asked.

  “Forever, heart of my heart,” he replied.

  A hand slid over his shoulder to wrap around the back of his neck. “Take me home.”

  She only held him tighter as he stood and carried her from the gardens. He avoided the square on the way home.

  When they arrived, he laid her atop the bed. “What do you need, my Quinn?”

  “Just lie with me. Hold me. Please.”

  Orishok climbed onto the bed beside her and took her into his arms. She was warm, but not as much as usual, so he drew a blanket over them. Quinn turned to face him, resting her head on his shoulder and pressing her body against him. Her hand slid over his chest until her palm lay over his heartstone.

  “Heart of my heart,” she whispered, “you are mine until Sonhadra claims me.”

  He tightened his hold on her. “Sonhadra can never have you, Quinn.”

  Chapter Twelve

  QUINN WAS OUT OF BED the next day despite Orishok’s protests. He was clearly shaken by what had happened, and couldn’t stop touching her, as though he were reassuring himself she was truly there. Though his voice was not human, it had been thick with emotion when he told her what he’d done after she died. She knew without him saying so that he would have kept vigil over her until Sonhadra claimed her completely, and well beyond.

  “I’m starving, Orishok.”

  “There is still meat.”

  “Yeah, but humans need variety. And honestly, the thought of meat...it turns my stomach right now.” Between the memories of her last visit to her sister’s apartment and her experience at the hands of Max and his friends, even the smell of meat threatened to make her vomit. “I need to get outside for a bit, anyway.”

  “You are sure you are well enough?”

  “Other than this gnawing hunger, I’ve never felt better.” She cupped her hands under the fountain and took a drink of water. “It was like this the last time, too. It’s like...like my body burns
every bit of energy it has to heal.”

  He stared at her for a few moments, and finally nodded. “Okay, Quinn. I will take you to find food and be out.”

  “Is this a date?” she asked with a grin.

  Orishok tilted his head. “I do not know that word.”

  “A date—” she moved to his side and took his hand, lacing their fingers together “—is when two people do stuff together. They get to know one another, and if they like each other, they’ll go on another day. Eventually, they’ll fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after.”

  At least in the stories. That hadn’t been the case for Clara and Brock...

  “Is that not what we have been doing since we met?” he asked, not masking the confusion in his tone.

  Quinn stepped in front of him, grasped him behind his neck, and tugged. He dipped down into her kiss. Placing a hand over his chest, she smiled. “We already got married. We just need to live happily ever after.”

  “If we have already done those things, why would this be a date?”

  “Just because two people marry, doesn’t mean the dating stops.”

  “Your people have many words for things that make no sense, Quinn.”

  “It makes perfect sense. Besides...” She trailed a finger down his chest, toward his loincloth. He bowed lower, pressing his forehead to hers, and closed his eyes. “Sometimes dates end in sex.”

  “Hmm.” The sound wasn’t quite a hum, but it was close, and she knew it was another thing he’d learned from her. “I would like to have you under the open sky, surrounded by the smell of earth and leaf.”

  Quinn bit her lip and closed her eyes, body immediately reacting to his words. “I would like that, too.” She kissed him again. “So long as you promise to keep away the beasties.”

  He brushed his fingertips down her sides and settled his hands on her hips, drawing her closer. His erection pressed against her soft belly. “No beast will harm you while I am near.”