She was so distressed over those thoughts that she wasn’t even aware of her surroundings. It wasn’t until they reached a door that led into a building that she switched focus long enough to note the details of the structure she was entering. A jolt went through her the moment she didn’t recognize it. She jerked against the hands holding her arms instinctively then. “Where are you taking me?” she demanded when the two men merely tightened their hold and jerked her across the threshold.
Neither man responded, but she didn’t know whether it was because they couldn’t understand her or if they intentionally ignored her. She struggled against them, trying to brace her feet against the floor. She gave up on that tactic very quickly, tried to make them think she’d completely given up and then abruptly dropped her entire weight against their holds. She almost succeeded in breaking both men’s grip on her and for a moment they tussled on the floor. She managed to kick both of them, but it wasn’t solid strikes that might actually have helped. The glancing blows just thoroughly pissed both of them off and they were far rougher when they got her on her feet again, bruising her arms and jerking at her until she began to feel like a ragdoll. They dragged her down a flight of stone stairs, scraping and bruising her shins across three or four steps before she managed to get her feet under her.
When they reached the lower level, they marched her down a narrow corridor and finally stopped and unlocked a door, shoved her inside hard enough she lost her balance and sprawled out, and slammed the door behind her, locking it again. She lay where she’d landed for several moments, assessing the damage. Finally, grunting from the pain, she levered herself up and looked around the dim room.
It was clearly a jail cell as opposed to the jail-like cells she’d been in from the time she’d been captured. There was a narrow cot pretty much like the ones she’d had before and nothing else except a crude toilet and a miniscule water bowl and faucet. The room was filthy, but more in the sense of disuse, with layers of dust that had mixed with the dampness to make slime, than from a lot of use and no cleaning between occupants.
She hadn’t noticed any sounds to indicate there was anyone else in the other cells.
At first, it relieved her a little. She thought it meant that the other women must not have ended up in jail as she had. As the hours crept by, however, she began to realize that she hadn’t been thrown into a prison—she wouldn’t have been completely alone if that was the case. There would’ve been other prisoners, she was sure, and she began to wonder if she hadn’t been buried alive, thrown into a place where no one would ever find her or hear her screams for help.
She’d passed from hunger to a headache from lack of food before she heard any sound at all that wasn’t the scurrying of some sort of rodents or insects. She didn’t know whether to acknowledge the surge of hope that shot through her or brace herself for something worse, but she listened intently as the footsteps drew closer and closer until they paused just outside her cell. There was a scrape along the floor, like something sliding, and then the footsteps retreated.
She bounded off of the cot when she saw the plate on the floor and raced to the door. “Wait! Where am I? How long will I be here? Hello?”
Only her own voice echoed back to her. Her shoulders slumped and she turned away from the door in time to see a rodent racing toward her food. She screamed.
Startled, the animal bounced off the floor, whirled, and ran the other way. Surging toward the plate, she snatched it up and raced to the bunk, bounding on top of the mattress and wedging herself into the corner. For a few moments, despite her hunger, she couldn’t focus on anything but watching for the monster that was sharing her cell, but finally, when it didn’t come out again, she ate.
The food was cold and worse than anything she’d had before, but she ate as much as she could. She set the plate on the edge of her bunk when she couldn’t force any more down without puking. She didn’t want to get off of the bunk, but when it occurred to her that the food she’d left might draw the animal out, might encourage it to try to climb onto the bunk with her, she leapt off the bunk with it. She was on the point of shoving it back through the same hole that had been used to deliver it when she thought about the hours she’d waited to be fed. On second thought, she scurried over to the tiny water bowl, used her palm to catch water and drank a few handfuls, and then set the plate on top and raced back to the bunk.
She began to wish she’d blown that bastard’s head off after all as she huddled on the bunk, staring around the floor in a constant vigil for any sign of the beast. She knew he was behind her imprisonment.
Did Camryn know, she wondered? And if he did, could he do anything about it?
Would he?
She frowned, trying to decide whether she knew him well enough to understand how he might react, what he might do. She’d never managed to pick up more than a few words of their language, but she’d studied the interaction between him and Kael and Ean.
Oddly enough, she hadn’t seen that they were very different from their human counterparts. They argued—mostly about her, she suspected—but she’d seen them joke with one another. Usually, it was Ean who said something that brought a lightening of their harsh expressions, a gleam of amusement to their eyes, but sometimes it was Camryn, sometimes Kael.
In a way, she thought she knew him better than any man she’d ever known. She knew their culture. She had a very firm idea of what his childhood had been like and everything he’d done since, which, she thought, gave her a clearer picture of his molding into an adult and hinted at his motivations, the driving force behind the way he behaved.
She’d often heard them speak of someone they called Lielani and had finally concluded that she was the woman in their lives, although she wasn’t certain what role she played in their lives. As far as she knew the draks only allowed the infants to stay with the mothers until they no longer needed their mother’s milk—unless it was just them that the draks had an aversion to leaving their sons with.
Was she a lover they shared?
The jealousy she’d felt before when she’d concluded that was probably the case became more pronounced. She just hadn’t recognized her anger about it as jealousy before. And how ludicrous was it to feel such a thing? Lielani had undoubtedly been with them a very long time before she had come into the picture—and she never really had. She felt attached to them because she was carrying their babies, she supposed, felt as if the joining of their DNA in the baby they’d made together had somehow linked them, but they didn’t necessarily feel that way. In fact, it occurred to her that they’d have no reason to feel anything at all considering their society and their own upbringing.
The exercise pushed her into a deeper depression. None of them had ever handled her as roughly as the guards that had brought her to her prison even though she thought she’d provoked them more. She knew that was probably more because of the babies than her and yet, against all reason, she’d still felt like she mattered to them. That misconception, or self-deception, had led her down the road to bonding as surely as the knowledge that they’d fathered her babies. How she felt didn’t really matter, though. It was their feelings toward her that might or might not make a difference to her well being and, unfortunately, she couldn’t convince herself that they gave a damn about her.
She still didn’t believe they’d had a hand in her imprisonment and she still believed they would do everything in their power to free her, but she also knew she’d made a mortal enemy of Camryn’s and Ean’s father. He might’ve been willing to dismiss her before, but she’d seen the look in his eyes when she’d made it clear she wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him if she’d thought it would change things for the better. She shouldn’t have shown her hand. She should’ve worked harder to present herself as a weak minded and cowardly female. She’d made so many absolutely stupid mistakes because she was too emotional, too cocky because she’d grown up believing she was an equal and that being an American protected her like a magical talisman
.
Maybe it would have on Earth—she was no longer as certain of that as she’d once been—but it was nothing to these people and she’d been stupid, stupid, stupid to let that cloud her judgment! They all had. They’d been so sure their little march would just be dismissed as nothing more than a bunch of silly women misbehaving. She just hoped to god their little march of independence wasn’t going to get them all killed.
Chapter Twelve
“Get out of the way, woman!” Kael ground out in a voice that brooked no argument.
Jolted when Kael had never looked at her that way, never used such a tone with her, Lielani moved away from the door she’d been physically barring and bowed her head respectfully.
Kael hesitated, as if he might say something to her and then pushed past her without a word. Camryn was sleeping, but he felt no compunction about shaking him awake. Impatience and fear flooded him, however, when Camryn opened his eyes and looked at him without recognition.
“We cannot find her, Camryn!”
Camryn’s gaze sharpened abruptly and he surged upward, letting out a hiss of pain as he did. “Simone?”
“Yes, Simone!” Kael said impatiently. “She has vanished. The prince, your father, insists that the breeder is well cared for and we need have no anxiety for our sons.”
Camryn swallowed audibly, searching his mind for some clue of how long she might have been missing. When he failed to summon the information, he focused on Kael again. “How long?”
“Since the trial—a week!”
“Gods damn it, Kael!”
Kael winced. “You collapsed when you returned to the palace! You were unconscious for half that time, drugged insensible. We did not even learn that she had been taken to the prince’s chambers until yesterday! That fucking bastard had the city guard around the breeder barracks to make everyone believe they were there as he had commanded. No one knew that he had disposed of them until Ean managed to slip inside last eve and discovered that none of the women were there. The gods only know when or how he did it—unless he used the particle transporter and I can not believe he had the sanction of the physicians for that! It unnerves me more to think he might have ignored their health and the babes’ health to that extent, though. If it is true, it is a clear indication that he has no compunction about endangering them and our sons, that he is completely focused on ‘winning’ what he perceives as a battle of wills and wits!”
Camryn paled. “You do not think he …?” He swallowed convulsively, unable to bring himself to finish.
Kael turned pale, as well. “I cannot believe he would be that stupid! The warriors are already near to rioting. Those with sons and those who had hoped to breed upon them in the next breeding season had gathered at the barracks as soon as they heard they’d been confined. When we discovered we’d been lied to, that the women weren’t even there, I thought they would tear the High Council apart!
“The wily old bastard was ready for us, though. He’d barricaded the council chambers three deep with city guards heavily armed against us. We have been taking the city apart ever since searching for them.”
“Help me up,” Camryn demanded, struggling to remove the monitoring probes from his arms.
Kael planted a hand on his chest instead. “Lielani will have my hide if you climb out of bed and collapse again—and you cannot do Simone any good if you are dead!”
Camryn’s face hardened. “I am not likely to die! If I have been here a week, then it is by father’s design—to keep me insensible and give him time to do what he had no doubt planned to do all along without interference from me!”
“You are certain?” Kael asked doubtfully.
“I was recovered well enough to stand on my feet for the trial,” Camryn growled.
“Because you are a stubborn bastard and was too proud to face your accusers from a chair! You will not convince me that way!”
Camryn lapsed back against his pillows. “I had a touch of fever and the wounds were burning from the strain, but no more than that. Gods damn it! I am so weak! This is no way for a warrior to recover!”
“I will help you to your quarters,” Kael said after a moment, “but no further.
They cannot drug you there if you bar them from the room. You can help us best by thinking where he might have had the women moved. You know him and the way his mind works better than anyone.”
Camryn ground his teeth when Kale helped him to his feet, tightening his hold on Kael until the darkness that had swarmed over him retreated. “He is not in this alone,” he said a little breathlessly. “The council did not want to bring them here at all. You can be certain that they resented the pressure we put upon them to allow it and that they were all waiting and hoping for an excuse to do what they have done.
“Gods damn it! If Simone had only tried to behave with a little more circumspection!”
“You are a fool if you thought she would behave any differently than she did, Camryn! You willfully chose her knowing that she was nothing at all like our women! It was her confidence and her ability and willingness to defend herself that drew you to her to start with—as it did Ean and me! You cannot blame her for being what she is when you chose her for that reason!”
Camryn didn’t respond. In truth, it took his entire focus to negotiate the steps between the infirmary and his quarters. He was too exhausted once they’d made it even to argue when Kael helped him to his bed.
“You are right,” he muttered dizzily when he’d settled. “It is my fault if anything has happened to her. I should have left her there … where she belonged.”
“You cannot take the entire blame for yourself,” Kael snapped. “She had already been marked for selection. If you and I and Ean had not chosen to breed her, she still
would have been taken. The only difference would have been that she would not be ours and I would not have accepted that. Ean would not. You will no doubt want to meet me in the training yard when you are able, but I confess I meant to have her. I was only trying to convince you and Ean to choose another.”
Camryn managed to glare at him. “You must have learned that nasty trick from your father!”
Kael shrugged but his face hardened. “And he learned from your father.”
Camryn closed his eyes. “I bear no love for the man,” he said angrily. “I do not even respect him any longer. You will not insult me by saying you despise him as much as I do. And I am as big a fool as he! I should have tried to reason with her instead of behaving like my father and trying to cow her into submission, instead of treating her as if she was a silly, willful child who did not know better!
“It will do her no good, or us, to rail about what we should have done now!
Where do you think he would have put her?”
Camryn struggled to collect his thoughts. “Where have you not looked?” he asked finally.
Frustration filled Kael. It had been riding him, and the fear that Arrek had had the women killed and disposed of them, until he knew his mind was of little use to him. “I do not know! We have searched almost the entire city!”
“Then go and see if you can discover if he had them transported to one of the other cities.”
Kael felt as if he might throw up. Had they wasted precious time taking Cryssis apart when she was in one of the other cities? And how much time more would it take to search the others? Could they even count on finding them at all when Arrek could simply order them moved any time they came close to discovering them?
Nodding jerkily, he left Camryn, taking care to lock the door behind him. No one, save him and Ean knew the code—not even the servants. Mayhap Camryn would recover both his strength and his wits without interference and join the search.
* * * *
Simone had stopped rushing to the door when her caretaker brought food—once a day—she thought. There was no window in her prison, no way to be certain other than the fact that hunger was always gnawing at her stomach long before she saw food and it felt as if many ho
urs passed between time. By her reckoning, she’d been in the cell a week when the caretaker didn’t merely shove the food through the slot and disappear again. She heard a key rattle in the lock.
It sent a jolt of fear through her.
“Simone?”
Relief flooded her when she recognized Zev’s voice. “Zev?”
“It is I,” he said, pushing the door open cautiously.
Simone bounded off of the bunk and flew across the room to hug him impulsively. He wrapped his arms around her a little awkwardly in return, but she felt his discomfort when she burst into tears. Struggling to contain them, sniffing, she pulled away and looked at him.
“I have dropped most of the food I brought,” he said in a chiding voice.
Simone felt it on her back, saw it on the floor, and burst into tears again.
Snatching the plate from his hand, she moved to the bunk and scooped what was left from the plate with her fingers. She’d gulped most of it down before she realized it had taste—that it was far better than what she’d had since she’d been there. She felt like crying all over again for the food she’d lost in her impulsive need to feel the touch of another being.
Zev, she discovered, had followed her. He stood by the bunk, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. The look he sent her when she licked the plate embarrassed her. She handed it back to him. He stared at it a long moment and set it down on the edge of her bunk. “I would have come sooner,” he said apologetically, “but it took a while to discover where you were and then longer to convince them to allow me to serve you.”
Simone stared at him with a touch of wonder. “You’ve learned English so well!”
He grinned, blushing. “I sneaked into the learning center and used the teaching machines.”
She had to wonder what sort of teaching machines they had for him to have learned so well so quickly, but she doubted there was much point in asking. “How long have I been here?”
“It is one week by your way of counting.”
Alien Penetration Page 18
