by Unknown
“How does it feel to be home?” she asked.
He had recognized the cell into which he’d been placed. After all, he’d spent close to twenty lonely, miserable years there.
“You are looking well, Mother,” he said, his voice weak.
“No thanks to you,” she replied.
“It isn’t one of my fledglings squirming around inside you?” he asked.
Elspeth Harmattan-Jost ignored his question and instead reached out to gently tug on the light blanket that covered him from waist to foot. “Are you warm enough?” she asked.
If anything, he was too warm. The venom was still lurking in his body but he was no longer ill from the effects. His head hurt brutally but that was because he hadn’t been given adequate dosages of either tenerse or Sustenance. He knew they wanted to keep him weak and as biddable as possible.
“Where’s Jost?” he inquired.
“Dead as a doornail and rotting if there is any justice in the world,” she told him. “Your brother took care of the good vice-counselor before we were forced to vacate Riezell.” Her gaze narrowed into a pinpoint dart of anger. “Thanks to you.”
“Did Felix know you were an Alliance spy?”
His mother made a rude sound with her lips. “No and that is something else I have you to thank for, Ailyn,” she snapped. “Is there no end to the trouble you are capable of causing?”
He watched her pace across the room, her spine as rigidly straight as he had remembered it from the few occasions he’d spent time with her as a child. Her shoulders were back, her head high, her posture that of an important woman who expected her every wish to be fulfilled. She was lovely with wavy brown hair tastefully streak with gray, her tresses immaculately coiffed. Though she was in her late fifties, she looked ten years younger now that her illness had been eradicated by the hellion within her. Since he had not seen her during her battle with the disease, he did not know the haggard wrinkles that had made her look far older than her years had smoothed out. All he saw was a youthful glow to her skin with almost wrinkle-free features.
“Do you find me attractive, Ailyn?” she asked.
“I said you looked well,” he replied.
She smiled to reveal white, even teeth of which she had always been proud. “I was told not to expect the revenant worm to do anything other than cure me of my infirmity but She granted me a rejuvenation that was a very welcome surprise.”
“Then it was worth the pain of the Transference and Transition,” he said softly.
“Aye, it was,” she said dreamily. “It was a price I would gladly pay again for these stunning results.” She ran a hand down her shapely figure. “You have no idea how terribly I suffered with that sickness.”
“So what now, Mother?” he asked. “Has Felix been given a parasite too?”
“Of course not!” she stated. “I would never allow that and he does not want it anyway.”
“Just the money.”
She gave him a look that answered any question he might have had. Her full lips spread into a taunting grin. “We stand to make a fortune off those fledglings of yours,” she said. “Of course after you sign over your inheritance to Felix, we’ll have even more capital with which to work. We will be leaving here within the next day or so to accompany Dr. Cean to her homeworld.”
Ailyn’s black blood ran cold. “Cean is here?”
“Well of course she is,” his mother replied with a careless wave of her hand. “Who do you think performed the Transference? Do you think I would have allowed just anyone to cut open my flesh, Ailyn? I wanted the best and she was sent to me.”
Despite being secured tightly to the stainless steel table, Ailyn shuddered. He had not considered Cean returning to the scene of her crimes and knowing she was nearby—her cold, scaly hands where they could touch him—sent tremors of fear down his spine.
His mother did not notice the pallor that had overtaken his face. She began telling him that Cean and she would be setting up shop on Cean’s homeworld of Chiaroscuro where they would begin a full-scale hatchery.
“Hatchery?” he repeated, the word sending ice through his veins.
“We plan on creating what Perse calls balgairs,” his mother said.
“Reaper rogues,” he said. The thought of hundreds—if not thousands—of Reapers being created by Cean and her assistants made him sick.
“Don’t worry, Ailyn. We have plans that reach far past this part of the megaverse,” she said, her eyes glowing with reddish sparks. “We plan to take our balgairs to Terra where we will become rulers of our kingdom.”
That was worse yet, he thought, staring with horror at her. The innocents of Terra had no idea what would be heading their way and they had no way to protect themselves against the threat. His mother and Cean had to be stopped at any cost but at the moment he was in no position to help humankind.
“Where do I fit into your plans?” he asked.
She looked surprised at his question. “You?” she questioned. “What possible purpose could you serve after we’ve harvested as many fledglings as we need to begin?” She shook her head. “No, Ailyn. You will remain here.”
“Alone,” he said, unable to keep the hurt and hopelessness from his voice.
“Well, yes,” she answered. “Though we will leave you sufficient tenerse and Sustenance to last until you are rescued.”
He doubted that since they’d given him precious little of either since this whole ordeal had begun but made no comment to her words.
“I believe there will be one more harvesting later today,” she said, and came back to stand at the table. “After that, I’m afraid we won’t be seeing one another again.”
“C’est la vie,” he said in Francach.
She bent over him and placed a dry-as-dust kiss on his temple. “Cean will be in to see you in a moment. She tells me you were her favorite Reaper.”
Ailyn’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest and his scrotum contracted with that news. He remembered all too well those ice-cold hands of the scientist on him and knowing she would touch him again and—as it had been before—he could do nothing about it—brought bile to his throat.
He watched her leave the room and shut the heavy portal behind her. There were no feelings left for the woman who had given him life. Those feelings had long ago died. He doubted there ever had been any for him on her part. But still, she was his mother. He ached for the love and the relationship that should have been yet never would be. When the door opened again and his living, walking nightmare entered, he had to force himself not to scream.
* * * * *
“She is in with him now,” Elspeth told her younger son. “Are the beakers being loaded on the ship?”
“Did you not give me that job to do, Mother?” Felix inquired.
Elspeth frowned at him. “Have you prepared your brother’s Sustenance?”
Felix smiled. “There are two weeks’ worth of it stored in the main lab’s refrigeration unit. If Command Central takes longer than that to find him, he’ll Transition and stay that way until they do find him.” He shrugged. “Of course without tenerse he might well be a raving beast by the time they think to look here for him.”
“Aye, well, that’s better than him dying, I suppose,” she said absently.
“What do you care?” Felix asked.
She gave him a withering look. “I may not like him but he is still of my flesh and blood, Felix Andres. Do not be insolent.”
“Forgive me, Mother,” he said. “I meant no disrespect.”
“I know,” she said. “You are a good son.”
“Better than Ailyn ever was,” he said.
She nodded. “Too true.”
“Will he sign the inheritance over to me?” Felix asked. “Will I be duke of Kentsington now?”
“I imagine when Cean is finished with him, your brother will have signed whatever she puts before him,” she answered. “And aye, you will be the new duke when he abdicates.”
; * * * * *
Perse Cean’s black-as-pitch pupils seemed larger than he remembered as she stood staring down at him. Two of her larger cybot constructs had accompanied her into his cell and they had unshackled him and turned him over so he lay spread-eagled on the cold steel table, the thin blanket removed so he lay naked before the scientist.
“You have always been such a magnificent specimen, Ailyn,” Cean said. Her large teardrop-shaped head tilted to one side as she observed him. “I believe your muscle tone is even better now than it was when I left you.”
He could not stop the whimper from escaping as she laid her warty hand upon his chest. The sharp scales on her slender palm disgusted him as it dragged over his flesh, the barbs on the scales sending shivers down his sides.
“It is at times such as these that I miss having a sheath into which I could place your staff.” She slid her hand over his abdomen—leaving shallow bloody furrows where her scales passed—to wrap her fingers around his cock. “It is unfortunate Acklard didn’t come with us this trip. He will miss out on this.”
Ailyn knew it would do him no good to beg her. He knew she expected it, wanted it, craved it, so he clamped his lips shut and tried not to look at her sharply pointed face, her slit of a mouth, the dagger-like teeth that hid within the red pulp of her mouth.
“You know what I want, Ailyn,” she said, and her prickly fingers began moving upon his flesh.
He dug his fingernails brutally into his palms until black blood began to ooze from the half-moon cuts. His body was tense—as taut as a bowstring—as she maneuvered his flesh, and not for the first time. Many times he had endured her loathsome touch as she milked him of his sperm, sperm she needed to help make her new generation of balgairs.
“I had to leave all those delightful little gametes behind when I fled the facility,” she cooed to him as she increased the rhythm of her grip. “Now I can get them back and take them with me where they will be lovingly cared for until they are used on Chiaroscuro.”
Tears were creeping from the corners of his eyes and easing down his temples as he tried to keep his treacherous body from reacting to her masturbation.
One of her cybots was standing across from her, a beaker in its metal hand as Cean manipulated Ailyn’s cock. Its faceless head was lowered over him, its long, thick digits curled around the beaker.
“Release your sperm, Ailyn,” Cean said in her soft, alien voice that sounded like one long velvet hiss. “Let me have your progeny.”
Though he tried so hard he was trembling with the force of it, he could not keep his body from betraying him. Sweat broke out all over him, his shaft leapt and spurted then he cried out, mortally ashamed—as he always was—by the evil thing she did to him. He could feel his blood mixing with the cum slick from his cock where her barbed flesh had burred into him.
“That’s my sweet little Reaper,” she said as the cybot stepped back with the beaker. She took her hand away. “You’ve known a human cunt, haven’t you, my dear one?”
His hands were clenched as tight as he could squeeze them and blood pooled around them. He had turned his face away from her but she reached out and took his chin, forcing his eyes back to hers.
“Now, unless you wish for me to turn the ’bot loose on you, you will sign the papers your mother wants you to.” She increased her hold on his chin. “Do you understand me, Ailyn?”
Mortal fear raged through him at what she had trained her ’bots to do to him. “Aye,” he said.
“Unclench your hands,” she said. When he didn’t immediately obey, she leaned over him, her dark, pupiless eyes merciless. “Unclench your hands, Ailyn!”
He slowly relaxed his grip and the paper and pen appeared out of thin air. His right hand was unshackled and the paper held for him to scrawl his signature across the bottom.
“That’s a good boy. You know better than to clench your hands,” Cean said. “Now give me the password.”
Ailyn almost smiled. He could give her the true password but he had no intention of doing that. He gave her the one that would ensure the account could never be accessed. By using it, the bankers on an Éilvéiseach would seal the account forever. “Portcullis,” he whispered.
Cean smiled. “Good. That’s all we need from you, Ailyn. Now, let me tell you what you will need to know to survive until you are found…”
Afterward, she had left him there with the lights out to help alleviate the massive headache throbbing at his temples—mercifully taking the lumbering cybots with her. The room was cold but his body was shot with fever still. Thankfully she had ordered the ’bots to unshackle him and now he lay on the table in a fetal position, shivering.
* * * * *
Rory Quinn was just as cocky as ever as he greeted Shanee on the bridge of the Raptor. The Scaan known far and wide as the Phantom had once been her lover but was married now to the Healer Kendall Byrne.
“Pirated any ships lately, Quinn?” Leveche asked as he took the reformed thief’s hand.
“Just yours,” Quinn joked. “Oops. Guess I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” His smile slipped away. “Did Ryden tell you those bitches on R-9 managed to pilfer Storian technology?”
“Aye, he told me,” Leveche snarled. “That’s how they got the ghoret into Shanee’s quarters. Makes me mad as hell that one of my people helped Cean and when I find out who it was, I’ll drain him dry.”
“Makes my gods-be-damned blood boil,” Quinn commented. “If they ever got their hands on the Maze, I’d be a freaking basket case!”
Shanee shook her head. Though the Phantom was a very handsome man, he could not hold a candle to her Ailyn. He was more boyish and filled with irreverent humor, though in a crisis, he was all warrior.
“How’ve you been, Shanee?” he asked.
“I have been great, Phantom,” she replied.
“We’ll get him back for you. I promise.”
She nodded. “Just do your job. That’s all I can ask.” She glanced at Ryden Bakari and saw her mother dogging his every step. “I think an intervention is needed.”
“Burgon?”
Bakari turned to see Shanee coming toward him as she hailed him. “Aye?”
“May I speak privately with you?” she asked. “In your office?”
Polemusa shot her daughter an annoyed look. “The Burgon and I were having a discussion, Shanee.”
“It will have to wait, dearling,” Bakari told the defense queen. He reached out and took Shanee’s upper arm in a tight grip and began walking at a fast clip. “This way, Colonel.”
Leveche fell into step behind them. When Shanee glanced back at him, he smiled. “I think I know what you want.”
“I’m sure you do,” she said.
Once they were in Bakari’s office, the two men turned to face Shanee.
“It will have to come from me, not Ryden,” Leveche said. “He hasn’t had his hellion that long and his nestlings aren’t mature enough for what you’ll need.”
“And his fledgling will be more powerful than the one now inside Ailyn’s mother since Gabe’s parasite is a direct descendant from Morrigunia.”
“Well, from Morrigunia’s hand at any rate,” Gabe corrected. “The gods only know whose parasite I was given. The reason mine is more potent is because it will be third generation. Since Ry’s fledgling came from me, it would be fourth generation. The closer the nestling is to the original, the more powerful it is at Transference. Ailyn’s is second generation from Tariq so his mother’s is third. Do you follow?”
“Aye,” Shanee said. She swallowed. “Can we do it now?”
“We’ll have to go down to the containment cell because as soon as the hellion is inside you, you’ll begin to change,” Leveche said. “Ry can escort you and I’ll stop off in the lab to have my blood drawn for your initial intake and for the subsequent first Sustenance you’ll need.”
Though her stomach rebelled at the mention of consuming blood, Shanee didn’t let on. She knew Bakari—at least—knew ho
w she must feel.
“You are sure now that this is what you want?” Leveche asked. “Ailyn is going to be royally pissed.”
“Were you pissed when your lady became a Reaper?” she asked.
“It was the only way my lady could lead a normal life,” Leveche replied. “She would have been left without sight or hearing had I not intervened. Ardor is a warrioress and she would not have wanted to live as a helpless invalid.” He shrugged. “And she has never truly regretted what I was forced to do.”
“There is that other thing though,” Bakari said, his cheeks blazing with color.
“She doesn’t need to know that,” Leveche snapped. “It’s a moot point.”
“Know what?” Shanee asked.
The two men glared at one another. It was Bakari who explained. “His lady was unconscious when they did the Transference so she didn’t have any of his blood before the procedure was done.”
“Is this really necessary?” Leveche growled.
“She should know,” the ex-Burgon said.
Leveche threw his arms into the air. “I don’t want to hear this. I’m going to the lab.”
Shanee watched the Storian stomp out of the office then gave Bakari her attention. “He’s angry.”
“He’ll get over it,” Bakari said. “He just learned the hard way what happens when you don’t prime the pump—so to speak—when a man Transfers a parasite to a woman.” He spiked his hand through his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “As he says it’s a moot point since you are already mated to Ailyn but I firmly believe you should know everything you can about what you’re about to undergo.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “Go on.”
“Well, without having partaken of Gabe’s blood before she had her first Transition, when she drank it afterwards Ardor was a bit…well, she sort of…” His cheeks went darker. “She kind of…”
“What?” Shanee asked, irritated.
