by dark wind
Except maybe in the brawny arms of a tall, dark haired, amber-eyed man with....
Caitlin paused as she was about to crawl beneath the covers and wondered where the hell that thought had come from. She probed at it-much as one would an aching tooth-then decided she was too tired to dwell on the matter. She plumped her pillow into submission, lay down, wiggled comfortable beneath the covers then gave her Com-Link two final instructions.
“Lights out and access mainframe language translation of runic scroll, duelize, and begin downloading data as soon as I am in REM sleep. I want to know how to speak that language.”
“It will not disturb your sleep, Dearling?” the Com-Link asked in a caring tone of voice laced with just a touch of admonishment.
“Just do it, Coni,” Caitlin ground out. “And stop questioning my orders.” There was a brief pause, then: “Aye, love,” the Com-Link sighed, giving in to her wishes.
As REM sleep took over Caitlin’s tired brain, the translating of the strange language into ancient Arabic, then into Alliance language, began its transmission into the surgical implants behind Caitlin’s left ear.
Within half an hour, she had assimilated the new language-which she learned was called Rysalian High Speech-and would be able to speak it like a native.
“Rysalia,” Caitlin whispered in her sleep.
“Aye. That is my world. ”
Caitlin frowned as she slept and turned jerkily to her left side, out of the normal right-sided position in which she slept. Her heartbeat began to accelerate as she began to come out of sleep.
“Caitlin, rest .” The command was as soft as a feather across her troubled mind.
“Khiershon,” she mumbled. She turned to her back, one arm flung over her eyes and gave a hitching breath. Once more, she tried to wake, but the soft voice intervened.
“You must sleep .”
A soft, gentle fog came over her mind and she fell through it, going into a deep, soothing sleep.
She did not feel the gossamer touch upon her brow nor feel the heat of the soft green pulse of light that spread over her forehead for a moment before vanishing.
CommunicationsOfficer Helen Bryan had gone to bed about half an hour after Caitlin and was already sound asleep when the dream came. She smiled, turning to her side to draw her pillow into the harbor of her arms. Pressing her face tightly against the soft material, she sighed deeply and let the dream take her where it would.
There was a soft, pink glow on the hills overlooking her North Georgia home. The air was resonant with the smell of honeysuckle, Wisteria and gardenia. A soft rain had washed the pollutants away and clung to the grass like diamonds. Among the kudzu clinging to the old pine trees, fireflies flitted, vying with the raindrops to add sparkle to the dying day.
He was standing beneath the sweeping majesty of an ancient live oak tree as she topped the rise. The wispy beards of Spanish moss wafted behind him and a gentle breeze ruffled his dark hair. He was smiling, his teeth glowing in the advancing night.
“Helen,” he whispered and his voice was like silk running over her body.
She came to him, looking up into eyes the color of topaz and smiled shyly.
“You have come of your own desire?” he asked.
Helen could do no more than nod. She could not find her voice as she stared hungrily at his sensual lips, aching to have him kiss her, touch her, ply her body with his own.
“Do you like what you see?” His voice was low, deep, and infinitely mesmerizing.
“Aye,” she whispered.
“Do you want what you see?”
Helen’s body throbbed for a moment. “Aye, more than I have ever wanted anything!” He smiled: a knowing, ancient look as old as time. His hand came up to cup her cheek and his thumb eased over the flesh of her lips.
The need began in the very pit of her belly and spread. Moisture oozed between her legs, making her knees weak. She reached out to him, clasping his waist, and then pressed against him, her cheek to his wide chest as his hand slid from her head to the nape of her neck. She could hear his deep, rumbling voice vibrating against her ear as he spoke.
“What would you have me do, Helen?” he asked.
She pulled reluctantly away from the heat of his body and looked into his eyes, drawn deeply into the vortex of his gaze. “Take me,” she whispered. “I want you to take me.” His hands were on her shoulders, moving her gently back from him, then pushing with firm strength until she began to sink to her knees before him.
Lisa walked outinto the cooling desert of her Texas homeland to find him.
Marjorie swam through the North Atlantic’s cold waters to reach the island where he waited.
Jillian gathered heather in the English mist to take to him in a rose-draped bower.
Cathy climbed the rolling hills of her Midwestern farmland.
Shirley ran to him along the teeming banks of the Irish countryside.
Nicole danced for him in the moonlight beneath a lowering Welsh sky.
June read poetry to him as a gentle rain fell on the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean.
And the others-all the women onboard-each found him in her own way, in her own homeland, each searching in her own way for the gentle hand he held out to them.
All except Caitlin, who slept soundly for the first time in weeks.
Chapter Two
“There’s been nochange, Doc,” Lisa told Caitlin the next morning. “He’s barely breathing.” She laid a gentle hand on the patient’s leg. “Brainwaves are erratic, though.” She looked up. “That suggests he’s dreaming, doesn’t it?”
“It would appear so,” Caitlin replied as she read the EEG report. She went over her patient’s chart and shook her head. “He’s not improving at all, is he?”
“No,” Lisa sighed, unaware that her hand was moving up and down the unconscious man’s leg from knee to ankle and back again.
Caitlin drew in a long, deep breath, and then exhaled slowly. “Has Jax done the autopsy on the women, yet?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him this morning.” Lisa shrugged. “I didn’t sleep all that well last night.”
“I sure did,” Caitlin replied. “Like the dead.” Her gaze went to her patient and she reached out to stroke a lock of tumbled black hair from his face.
“We can’t seem to stop touching him, you know?” Marjorie mumbled from her workstation. “Have you noticed that?”
Caitlin looked around. “What do you mean?”
Marjorie blushed. “All of us,” she answered. “Every woman who comes in here...”
“And I don’t think there’s been a single woman on board the Orion who hasn’t had a lame-ass reason to come traipsing through here this morning,” one of the male med techs complained. He got up from his workstation and carried a wire basket of vials to the sink, a look of disgust on his florid face. “They all have to touch him,” he grated. “You’d think he was a god or something the way they’ve been carrying on.”
“We’re concerned for him,” Lisa protested.
“Yeah, right,” the med tech snorted. “I want you to tell me how bending down and kissing him helps him recover!”
“Kissing him?” Caitlin echoed, her mouth sagging open.
“Aye,” the med tech grunted. “Every last one of them has bent over and kissed his forehead like they were bestowing some kind of blessing on the bugger!”
Caitlin looked up at Marjorie. “Is that true? Has that really been happening?” Marjorie shrugged, embarrassment plain on her face. “Aye, it has been, but it probably has something to do with the fact that every last one of us dreamed about him last night. Look at him, Caitlin: doesn’t what those bitches did to him just stick in your craw? Don’t you want to, well, hell, kiss him and make him better?”
A look of pure astonishment flowed over Caitlin’s face before she snapped her gaping mouth shut and turned away. “You let those women know that sick bay is off limits to them unless they work here,” she ordered.
“Did you?” Lisa asked.
“Did I what?” Caitlin snapped, put out for no apparent reason she could understand.
“You know,” Lisa replied. “Dream about him?”
“Most certainly not!” Caitlin denied.
“Then you’re the only one,” Marjorie informed her.
Caitlin fixed her two female med techs with a scathing look. “Do you women have work to do or would you like me to make work for you to do?”
Marjorie and Lisa exchanged looks and shook their heads. “We’ve got plenty to do,” Marjorie admitted.
“Then go do it!” Caitlin commanded.
The rest of the morning, both Marjorie and Lisa walked on eggshells around Caitlin while surreptitiously darting uneasy glances toward the Healer. Neither woman could understand the dark scowl on Caitlin’s normally open and inviting face nor the nervousness that seemed to have taken hold of her. By the time their shift was over, both women were anxious to leave sickbay and the brooding woman who had not spoken to them in over three hours.
“What’s got her tail feathers all ruffled?” Lisa asked as she and Marjorie made their way down to the galley.
“Did you see the way she kept looking over at him?” Marjorie asked. “You’d think she half expected him to jump up and attack her!”
Caitlin glanced upas June de Angelo and Jenna Kyel came into the sick bay. They would be the med techs on duty through the night shift. She nodded to the women, then went back to the research she was doing on the computer.
“How’s our boy doing?” June asked. She turned at the low growl of annoyance that came from Caitlin.
Caitlin swiveled away from her computer. She seemed to be trying to hold on to her temper. “How would you two like a night off?” she asked through her teeth.
“We’re scheduled to work through Friday,” Jenna answered.
“I’ll be here all evening working on this,” Caitlin said, flinging a hand toward the computer. “There’s no need for all of us to be in here. Take the evening off. If I need you, I’ll call.” She cast a quick look toward her patient. “I don’t think he’s going to be giving me any trouble tonight.” June faced the unconscious man and her eyes became dreamy. “I’d rather stay and look after him.”
“Me, too,” Jenna agreed. “I don’t-”
“You are dismissed, ladies!” Caitlin snapped.
June backed away from the anger she saw on Caitlin’s face and held up her hands to ward off another shout. “We’re going!” The women made a hasty retreat.
For a long moment, Caitlin sat where she was and stared blindly across the sick bay at the unmoving man, wondering what had came over her.
What the hell set me off?She ran a shaky hand over her face. She could not remember ever having shouted at one of her med techs before and that concerned her. Trying to shake off the anger and the uneasiness that had gripped her, she got up and walked to the workstation where the blood and fluid samples taken from her patient had been placed. Staring down at the thick black substance that was Khiershon Cree’s blood made her shiver.
It was not the first time she had seen blood this color. As a matter of fact, blue and green blood was not uncommon among the United Space Alliance allies. But Cree’s blood was alive with strange parasites that defied analysis. Who knew what those parasites were and what harm they could do?
“I would never allow anything to harm you.”
Caitlin jumped, hearing the voice as clearly as though the lips were at her ear. Her attention flew from the blood specimens to the man lying on the table and she gasped, her eyes flaring with shock.
He was watching her, his sad amber eyes steady. There was such unspeakable loneliness, such heart-wrenching need, in that intense gaze, she moaned with pity.
“I have waited a lifetime for you,” he whispered, his cracked lips barely moving. Painfully, he lifted his hand and his trembling fingers reached out to her.
For a reason she could not explain, Caitlin backed away from the contact. She found herself breathing heavily as though having run a long way. She stared at him, watching his hand fall limply to his side when he realized she would not allow him to touch her.
“You cannot deny me, Caitlin,” he told her, his eyes closing wearily. “I have already marked you as mine.”
His head fell gently to one side and she knew he was unconscious again.
Caitlin stood where she was, her breath heaving against her ribcage. When at last she could move, she put as much distance between her and her patient as the quarters would allow. Stumbling back to her stool, she sat down heavily, keeping her eyes on Khiershon Cree.
“What the hell are you?” she asked, shuddering with her own question.
“Computer whiz of the first order, I’ve been told.”
Caitlin swung her head toward the voice and let out a long breath. “And very modest, eh, Catt Le?” she snorted at Cathy Atherton.
“Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it!’ the computer tech grinned. She held up her hand. “I thought you just might want to take a look at what’s on this disc.” She sailed the plastic disk toward Caitlin like a Chrystallusian throwing star, chuckling when Caitlin snatched it out of the air with ease.
Caitlin looked down at the pale blue plastic disk. “What’s on it?” Atherton shrugged. “The translation of that little journal that was retrieved along with Pretty Boy over there.” She turned her head and smiled. “They really did a number on him, didn’t they?”
“He woke up a few moments ago,” Caitlin said offhandedly. She swiveled around and popped the disc into her computer’s CPU.
“Did he say anything?”
Caitlin pretended she hadn’t heard. She adjusted the font size on the screen when the data came up, then leaned forward, ignoring Atherton who had walked over to the patient.
“You’ll find that fascinating reading,” Atherton remarked as she stopped at Cree’s bedside. She smiled at his sleeping face, and then reached out to push a lock of hair from his forehead.
Caitlin was so engrossed in her reading, she did not see Atherton bend over the patient and kiss him softly on the forehead. Nor did she see the light touch of the other woman’s fingers on Cree’s cheek.
Had she been a witness to the strange intimacy, she would have thrown Atherton out of sickbay. As it was, she became lost in the translation of the alien language that told the tale of Khiershon Cree.
Chapter Three
The Journal of Kaelia Kahmal
I have createdthis missive to record the events leading up to the Ritual of Alluvia that is to be carried out in the Land of the Shadows at the waning of the Lunar Phase, two days hence.
In the year now known as the Year of the Reaper, our sonar network picked up the heat signature of a ship of our Rysalian enemies. The ship was very close to our restricted air space and therefore suspect.
We learned the ship was on a training mission from Instructional Camp D-9, the home base of the Rysalian Fleet Command. (It is there that their warrior elite was trained.) The ship was hailed and it was learned the Rysalians were having navigational problems. We warned them away, but they ignored our warnings, arrogant males that they were. After crossing into Amazeen air space in violation of our repeated warnings, the ship was shot down and landed not far from the Veil of Chloe in the Asarat Valley. A patrol of nine Alpha warrioresses was dispatched to see if there were survivors.
Our patrol found nine dead and five so severely hurt, it was a blessing to them to put them out of their misery, which we did with dispatch. It would have been a blessing for us had we slain them all on the spot, for among the twelve crewmembers that were taken into captivity that day was a Ry-Chalean boy.
From the moment our Guardress saw him, she knew him for what he was and immediately rendered him unconscious, taking no chances that he might be old enough to Transition.. He was chained hand and foot and taken to the medical facility for immediate containment and experimentation.
The other prison
ers were taken to the Court of Anioch and sold into slavery to various households before the day was out. We had no problems with these males except for one. This one fought fiercely and warned us that to harm the young Ry-Chalean in any way would be dangerous beyond measure.
When he spoke the boy’s name, the Court was thrown into much turmoil for it was learned he was called Khiershon Cree, son of the Prime Reaper Kamerone.
(It must be noted here that Kamerone Cree is much feared even among the Amazeen, though he is a mere male. Until the uprising of the Resistance that began on Frontier Station Khamsin-14, he was our enemy’s greatest warrior: their Prime Reaper. Even after his escape from our Rysalian Sisters, his name is spoken in hushed whispers and with much horror on Rysalia Prime. An arrest warrant was issued for the Bloodsire. It is known far and wide that Kamerone Cree is the most wanted man in the universe. One day, we hope to have him at our mercy once again. This time, he will not be allowed to escape the fate reserved expressly for him.)
At the time of his capture, much discussion was had concerning the fate of Khiershon Cree. Fearing the Prime Reaper would learn of his blood son’s imprisonment and come for the boy, a message was sent through the Diabolusian Ministry to Rysalia Prime informing our enemies there were no survivors of the crash for the ship exploded upon impact. The Goddesses were with us for no word ever came from our enemies questioning the truth of the matter. Apparently, young dearg duls were considered expendable by the government of Rysalia at that time.
Yet what to do with the young Reaper we held captive?
Against all warnings made by the Elders of the Obelisk and our Defense Queen, the Domestic Queen decided the Ry-Chalean male could be put to better use than as a mere slave of a royal household or a drudge in the caravans of a bedouin. There were those who advocated putting him to the sword, but the Domestic Queen prevailed and it was under her own aegis she took the young male, whom we learned was of eleven Solar Passings. It was Queen Rhia’s intent to breed this demon-beast when he reached puberty to her own daughter, the Princess Raphaella, in order to produce a superior female offspring.
