by V. K. Ludwig
I sunk myself into the armchair across, soaking the cushion underneath me. None of them looked at me, but the inevitable question pushed from a lowered head anyway.
“And?” Katie asked.
A deep sigh pushed from my lungs, and yet it held nothing of that frustration contained there. “Nothing.”
“How about I grab blood units from the infirmary,” Takel said. “Bleed her out. It might create enough confusion for her to give at least some sort of information.”
“We’ve tried that already with one of the old field SBTs from the war. Whatever near-death experience you might possibly think of, trust me, we’ve done it. Jal’zar are tough. This one even more so.”
“Can I talk to her?” Katie asked, slipping off the couch and kneeling in front of me. “Maybe if I explained things…”
I reached my hands out for her face. Not touching her with filth and cruelty clinging to my pores but hovering there. Letting her know that I wanted to. That I did this for us.
“It was the first thing I tried,” I said. “There are two issues here. First, she knows full well she’ll be dead within a sun if she talks. She’s got no family. No protection. Would be an outcast on her own planet. Second, Jal’zar are not generally inclined to help Vetusians.”
Grace poked her head out from underneath Takel’s palm. “Why do they hate you so much?”
“You know why.” I leaned back and folded my feet on the low table across, water dripping onto the surface. “We fought with them for three sun cycles when they tried to invade Earth, so they wouldn’t gain access to nanite technology. Then we enslaved a quarter of their female population and forced them into prostitution. Or perhaps it’s because Garrison Earth put them out of work? It’s hard to tell which one of those reasons makes her hate me the most.”
“We couldn’t let them access nanites,” Takel said.
Katie got up and leaned her forehead against mine, letting me recharge on her warmth, her closeness, and the belief that I was the good guy here.
“Nope,” I said. “Imagine a species with horns, fangs, and claws, all wrapped up in an almost impenetrable armor. Not something the cosmos needs.”
“Do you have them?” Grace asked. “If you’re a combat healer, didn’t they give you a nano armor?”
“I used to have one, but I had the nanites extracted and sold them on the black market to finance my addiction back then. My DNA still carries a few, but it makes me look like a quilled animal shit on me whenever they pop up on my skin.”
K’terra walked up beside me. “She’s conscious if you’d like to try again.”
Katie stepped away, hands wrapped around her body, the way she avoided eye contact with me tearing me to shreds. I had no trouble doing what needed to be done, but I would have preferred her to be downstairs while I did. However, that was a freedom we no longer possessed, and wouldn’t ever again if K’nema wouldn’t talk.
I got up and walked back to the bathroom, the wet fabric of my pants clinging cold to my legs. The air hung moist with a hint of iron. Before me, the Jal’zar lay stretched out on her side. Pale lips heaved bubbles into the water pooling around her head, while soft sounds broke against the hard tile. A Jal’zar cradle song?
The female looked every bit like someone I wanted to pick up and carry over to my office. Strip her naked and heal those wounds I’d inflicted; nourish that body the Empire had sucked empty. Instead, I ground the sole of my boots over her fingers, letting them crunch and crack underneath my weight.
She flinched, but only for a moment before she replaced her song with a brittle laugh. “There’s no pain you can wreak on me that hurts worse than my memories of your kind, Vetusian.”
“Unless I add more of them.”
“My kin are dead,” she said, her purple irises reflecting on the surface of the wet floor. “The Vetusians killed my mate in battle, raped my daughter bloody, burnt my son underneath our star. Memories and pain are what flows in my veins.”
My chest constricted at her words. No doubt, I hated myself more after that, but my love for Katie remained unchanged. My determination to protect her and Grace from the same fate resolute.
“Why cover him then, hmm? He’s no less Vetusian than I am. Why protect him?”
A chuckle wormed through her chest, her ribs protruding through wet rags whenever she sucked in air. “Protecting him keeps the chainsmith in shackles.”
Great, she’d gone insane, pushing useful information farther from my reach once more. I followed the sinking sensation in my stomach and sat down beside her, letting it spread, letting it swell. Earth might just as well have been eons away.
“What if the Empire offered you some sort of amnesty?” I asked. “Your DNA-coded statement might help us break through a crime ring. I know people. Important people.”
“You’re in over your head, healer.”
“And I want out,” I snarled. “I’ve got two human females here. You and I both know what will happen to them the moment one of the traffickers catch them. I need to protect them.”
She rolled onto her back, but her face tilted toward me. “Vetusians are like a virus. You spread across the universe with roots poisoned by the greed of your past, sucking whatever you need from your hosts. Then you leave them behind to die when they no longer serve a purpose.”
Her words contained so much truth I didn’t dare argue it. I got up and left the room once more, desperation choking my throat, tears burning my eyes.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said when I stomped back into the living area.
Everyone jumped in panic, then again once I grabbed my cape from the couch. I swung it around me and draped the hood over my head, ignoring everyone’s pleas not to step outside. I needed space. I needed air. But most of all, I needed another plan.
When steps hurried behind me along the hallway, I glanced over my shoulder. Katie followed me, everything I wanted to present the world as mine hiding underneath that ugly, scratchy, heavy rag. K’terra stomped along right beside her.
I picked up the pace and made my way out the backdoor, my chest stuffed with a sense of failure. Here I was once more, inadequate just like those smarter than I had said, failing Katie. Again.
Numb hands leaned against a stone wall I remembered would be brittle against my fingertips. I stared down at the street and sucked in a deep breath, nothing about it fresh, everything about it foul.
Arms wrapped around my middle from behind. “Melek.”
Her soft voice punched my heart more than any shout could have. Katie pressed her head against my back, holding on to me as if I could keep us from drowning in the dark depth of Odheim, as if I could actually save us.
Yeah, right.
I shifted in her arms, tried to breathe against that constraint of her hug. My lungs convulsed from lack of oxygen, but no matter how much I writhed, she wouldn’t let go. Why did she hold on to me? And why by the Three Suns did those spheres drag so heavy in my damp pockets?
Shit… that itch on the back of my hand.
I rubbed it.
Scratched it.
I dragged my teeth over it.
Nothing soothed it, so I dragged it over the rough stone, the pain distracting from the nerve-wracking tingle. If I would have left her alone, perhaps she would have found happiness with Kidan. Any life, even with a fake mate, would have been better than this. We merely survived, wondering day by day how long it would last. Perhaps I should confess to the murder—
“Anam ghail.”
Katie’s voice ripped me out of my thoughts, her tone so fucking soft now I couldn’t help but pull myself away from her. From her sweetness and that misplaced trust and belief she had in me.
“What did she say that has you so upset now?” K’terra asked.
“Nothing,” I snarled. “She’s talking complete nonsense. Shit about viruses and chainsmith and… whatever fucking shit.”
“Did you say chainsmith?”
I swung around, my chest heavi
ng. “Am I mumbling?”
Where I expected a smack against my head, K’terra stood motionless, arms pressed tightly against her sides. Her eyes flicked over the stones on the ground, and Katie walked over to her.
“Does that mean something?” Katie asked. “Chainsmith?”
K’terra nodded, her answer nothing but a mumble. “Jal’zar sometimes call Zavis da taigh Broknar the chainsmith, since he caused our enslavement.” Her eyes came up and pinned me against the wall. “What exactly did she say?”
“Ehh…” I rubbed my filthy hand over my face, the scent of blood turning me nauseous. “That, um, she’s protecting the hacker because it keeps the chainsmith in shackles.”
“You’re in over your head, Melek.”
My scoff carried as much amusement as anguish. “Yeah, she said that too.”
“It’s not that she doesn’t want to help you. But whatever this hacker did or knows has something to do with keeping Zavis under confinement until they finally execute him. She wants him executed. We all do.”
“Nothing about this is helpful,” I said, pushing myself away from the wall. “I was at the Imperial Assembly when they arrested him. And let me tell you, I want nothing to do with that because it’s shadier than the market square.”
I stepped away from them and paced the yard, none of us saying another word. Each of us lost ourselves in thought, trying to figure out how to get out of this mess that had just gotten deeper, muckier. Silence settled over the early morning, only interrupted by the first hollers of merchants, gravel bouncing over the stone, and… footsteps?
I swung around.
A Kokkonian sent a kick toward my thigh. I dodged it my hands clenched into fists. I threw a punch toward his scaled face, but he shifted his torso back just in time, and my fingers grazed air.
“K’terra!”
My gaze flicked back and forth between three bounty hunters and the Jal’zar. She wrapped her tail around Katie and guided her back toward the door.
“No!” my mate shouted, reaching her hand out, which K’terra quickly constrained.
My hood disappeared from around me.
A voice rang bright around me. “You, my friend, are booked on a cruise to Earth.”
Cold and sticky, something that could only have been a tranq pad seared against the back of my neck. My feet pulled out from underneath me, and my face hit the ground, a taste of iron seasoning my lips.
“Get her inside!” I shouted.
Weight settled hard and heavy between my shoulder blades. I stretched my neck, gazed up. As much as I wanted to look at Katie, tell her that I loved her, my eyes went to K’terra instead.
I stared at K’terra, wordlessly reminding her of the promise she’d given me. The hint of a nod rolled from her head.
She opened the door and pushed Katie inside, then called the other Jal’zar together with that distinct hissing sound of hers.
“I’m not fighting an intact Jal’zar,” one of them said.
The guy who held me down with his boot clicked his throat. “Another time.”
My anam ghail was safe, for now, and I let my cheek sink against the cold stone.
It was over.
This was it.
And as the realization of it settled in, I found myself on the wrong end of a command I’d used so many times before.
“Si’ dat.”
Twenty-Five
Melek
* * *
The Kokkonian squeezed my face against the window of his cruiser until the cartilage on my nose crackled. “Would you look at that. All those Vetusians came together to watch your brain sizzle inside your skull.”
As if I cared.
Katie wasn’t on this ship, so all was well in my sad world.
Beneath the cruiser, chaos, and turmoil brewed in front of the Imperial Assembly Earth One. A place I’d once been to right before I lost Katie. A place I now returned to, only to lose her again. This time for good.
He pulled me away from the window and tossed me onto the ground. Sharp metal wires seared against my arms, much to the amusement of his crew who laughed and chortled. Another Kokkonian sat in a chair by the cockpit, his feet crossed over an outdated control panel. Two Toroxian males rummaged through the squeaky overhead compartments of this rust bucket.
“Too bad the credits on my head won’t buy you a new ship,” I snarled. “You’re lucky if this piece of junk will get you off-planet.”
“What’s that? The humor of a dead Vetusian?”
And just as I gave an internal chuckle, the guy who had tossed me around grew a dark smirk. “Yeah, she’s old and rusty. But that’ll change once we grabbed the two human females you kept all to yourself for so long.”
“You’ll never get to them.”
He shrugged, threw himself into the hoverchair across, and draped his legs over the armrest. “The four of us against an intact Jal’zar female? Not worth the trouble. Good thing two other bounty crews agreed to take the entire damn whorehouse apart. Two human females? The profit split between three ships? Now, that will put this old lady here out of commission.”
My heart clutched inside my chest, sending a wave of stomach acid up my throat. Instead of protecting Katie and Grace, I had put them in even greater danger. And with no way of warning them.
The vibrations of the cruiser touching down shook that dread at my core, making it rumble and toss against convulsing organs. A set of scaled arms brought my feet back underneath me, followed by a shove toward the ramp.
“Move it,” the Kokkonian said, then jutted toward his crew to follow behind us.
Guards parted the mass of Vetusians, creating a path lined with angry faces to my left, and somber ones to my right. As much as they kept them from tearing me apart alive, it was clear they also kept them away from each other’s throats. My link to Katie had never been divided. The Empire, however, was.
“You killed a brother in bad blood!” the left side screamed.
Phwt!
Warm and thick, a blob of spit hit me right in the neck, from where it trickled down and collected above my collarbone. And just like that, I was nothing but a Vetusian fallen from the Empire’s graces again.
“Investigation!” the right side shouted. “Where is the proof?”
Shouts and screams escalated into Vetusians shoving against the wall of guards, their faces carrying the rage and frustration I hid beneath my ribs.
“Sgu’dal’s have no place on Earth!”
Phwt… phwt… phwt…
Each step brought a bombardment of saliva and snot, soon covering my entire left side. It clung to my hair. Dangled from my nostril. Pushed me to the lowest low — even a comedown from souldust had nothing on it.
You’ve got pretty eyes.
I clung to the memory of Katie’s words as if they were my final breath.
I hung my head and tilted my face to the right, letting black boots bracing against the chaos guide my way up the steps. Leaving the mob behind, I stepped inside the building, the draft of the door prickling my wet face.
Kael leaned against the wall with his arms crossed in front of his chest. He shook his head and let out his oh-Melek-sigh, then handed me his uniform jacket so I could wipe myself down.
“I can confirm this is healer Melek, wanted for the murder of warrior Kidan,” he said to the bounty hunters behind me. “Captain Enduan, the wardens are expecting you at the center vault for payment.”
Just as I wanted to walk off with them, Kael’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Uh-uh. You’re coming with me.”
I followed him along the outer ring, passing several doors before he led me through one of them. Inside, a table waited at the center, two chairs on each side.
“I was hoping you’d hold up a little longer,” he said and sat down, then pointed at the chair across for me to do the same. “Please tell me you found her.”
I threw his jacket onto the table between us and I flung myself into the chair, the legs screeching from the ba
re white walls. “I did.”
“But she won’t talk.”
“Oh, she talked alright,” I said with a scoff. “Said she won’t give up the hacker since he’s the one keeping Zavis imprisoned.”
At that, his eyes caught with mine, his nostrils flaring. “What does the warden have to do with all this?”
“As if I know.”
The moment the door opened, Kael jumped up from his chair and bowed. Eden stepped into the room, her face scrunching up the moment her eyes found me.
She hurried over, throwing her arms around my shoulders when I was only half standing. “What the hell did you get yourself into?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “The more important question here is, why by the Three Suns are you walking so funny?”
She shifted back and placed her hands onto her hips, her feet spread wide, her stomach swollen. “It’s called waddling.”
“Sounds like someone got chipped.”
She brushed her hair aside and tapped above her temple. “I couldn’t accompany Torin to his functions without one, and I just didn’t progress quickly enough with Vetusian.”
“Torin isn’t coming?” Kael asked.
“He’s trying to keep the other Wardens distracted since I’m not supposed to be here,” she said and sat down across from me. “Which means I don’t have much time.”
We all sat down, and Kael grabbed his jacket from the table, which had Eden reach across for my hands.
“Tell me what to do,” she said, tears glistening behind her eyes. “How can I help you?”
Kael and I exchanged a glance, an unspoken understanding floating between us that her and the commander’s hands were bound. The public demanded answers. Since we had none, they’d make do with an execution. Case closed. Move on with Garrison Earth.
Where Eden’s fingers had scratched me up a few lunar cycles ago, they now offered comfort as they rested on the back of my hands. “What about Katie and Grace?”
“They’re still at Brot Adnak,” I said. “But the bounty hunters mentioned they’d return for them. With several crews combined.”
