CARNAL (EXILED Book 1)

by Victoria Danann

  That was how she was engaged when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Carnal and the four companions she’d seen him with had pulled up on their steam-powered motorcycles. The bikes were utterly silent except for the crunch of an occasional rock under a tire. They backed the bikes into a line facing the porch, got off, and each began retrieving a stack of books from their saddlebags.

  When Rosie saw them coming her way, she opened the nearest porch door and held it open. They filed past her with armloads of books, each nodding as they went by. Carnal was last.

  “Delivery,” he said. “Where do you want them?”

  “Over here.” She hurried to the end of the bar and cleared enough space in the shelves below. “Is this everything?”

  “Serene says there’s a sample from all ten levels. If you want more when you’re done, she’ll send more.”

  “Okay,” Rosie said, attempting a small smile. “Thank you.”

  “This is my crew. Carnal waved toward the others. “Clash, Easy, Yellow, and Joy.”

  Rosie’s initial impression was that they looked rough and tumble in their boots, leathers and fur-lined vests, but sexy enough that any one of them would have attracted Hollywood’s attention in her world. Like most Exiled they wore their hair the way they wanted to without regard for conformity, which meant short, long, in between, braided, shaved, spiked, or any combination thereof.

  The one pointed out as Yellow had a three-inch blonde beard with two braids, one at each corner of his mouth.

  Rosie nodded and said hello. “You want something to drink while you’re here?”

  They all looked to Carnal. “Sure.” He shrugged. All five took a stool in front of her at the bar.

  “What’ll it be?”

  “Ciders all around,” said Carnal. Rosie thought it was rude that he didn’t let them speak for themselves, but knew it wasn’t her business.

  “You’re very cute. You know that?” said the one Carnal had identified as Easy.

  Clash laughed at him. “Like she’s never heard that one before.”

  “Don’t waste your time, boys,” said Carnal. “She’s not interested in hybrids.”

  “Oh. So you tried running the flag up that pole already.” That was Easy’s contribution to the taunt.

  Carnal took a drink of cider, looking at Rosie as he did. “Just sayin’.”

  Joy grinned at Rosie. “Maybe she’s just not interested in hybrid boys. How you feel about females, sweet thing?”

  “Well, Joy, if I did girls, you’d definitely be at the top of the list.” They all laughed as Rosie finished setting ciders in front of them. She glanced over at Carnal. Her comment had brought the twinkle back to his eyes. “I never said I wasn’t interested in hybrids.” Rosie heard herself speaking, but couldn’t believe she’d invited commentary on the subject.

  All four of Carnal’s ‘crew’ stopped and looked over at him to see how he’d respond. He continued to stare at Rosie with a blank expression, sipping his cider, but saying nothing more.

  “So, Rosie,” Clash said. “You ever been on a bike?”

  “As a matter of fact I haven’t,” she replied.

  “Well, hey. I got time to take you for a ride.”

  She didn’t have time to decipher whether or not there was innuendo there. Carnal stood so fast it startled Rosie. She jerked back, knocking over one of the ciders in the process. Whatever had gotten him going was set aside as his attention was diverted by cider spilling over the bar.

  “Criminently, Carnal. You think you might move in something less than warp speed?” she asked.

  He looked at the spilled cider and at Rosie rushing to contain it with bar rags.

  “What’s warp speed?” He sounded like he was at a loss.

  “Just… It means really, really fast.” Rosie alternated swiping at the mess and dropping soaked rags in the sink, while Carnal watched, looking like he had no idea what to do. “Never mind.”

  When she had finished cleaning up the mess, she looked at Carnal and pointed to the spot where his cider had been before it was spilled.

  “Want another?” she asked.

  Carnal looked at his ‘crew’ who looked like they couldn’t wait to see what he’d do next. “Everybody out.”

  When Rosie saw the others leaving, she started to follow them. He caught hold of her arm. “Not you.”

  “You said ‘everybody’.”

  “Not. You,” he clipped. When the door closed and they were the only two people left in the bar area, he said, “If you want a ride, I’ll be the one to give it.” She blinked slowly. He looked around. “Can you leave?”

  “No,” she said. “Dandy would have a cow.”

  Carnal stared, looking like he was trying to form an image of that and not liking what he was seeing in his head.

  “You want to go with me?” he demanded.

  Rosie hesitated, thinking she could be making one of the biggest mistakes ever, but said, “Yes.”

  Carnal’s face softened. “When?”

  “Um. I can get somebody to cover for me tomorrow afternoon.”

  He stepped toward her, rested his hands on her waist, leaned close, and spoke quietly. “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes.” She liked the fact that he smiled when she said that word, but at the same time, she was a little afraid of the kind of smile she was getting from Carnal. “I’m saying yes to a ride. Right? Nothing more.”

  Carnal nodded. “Nothing more.” He put his finger under her chin and tipped her face up. “Nothing less.” The first was an acquiescence. The latter sounded like a warning.

  She grinned. “Nothing less.”

  Abruptly he let her go and walked toward the door, but he threw another smile her way before he exited. Beyond the porch windows, she saw that the others were waiting for him while straddling their machines. She watched as he threw a leg over and started his bike. As he led them away, she was wondering what she’d just gotten herself into. One thing was certain. She’d promised nothing less than a ride and Carnal gave every appearance of being the sort who collected on promises.

  Eager to think about something else, she pulled out some of the books and began arranging them according to which ones she’d read first. Serene had marked them according to level, which made it considerably easier. An hour later she’d lined them up along the bar. Her first impression was that Kellareal had supplied books that were innocuous at best, pablum at worst. What was in front of her on the bar were the basic tools of education minus the passion, tragedy, and triumph of history and literature complete with flights of heroics and shames of failure. Or the creativity of art. Or the challenges to conventional modes of thinking of philosophy or social critique. Conspicuously absent were texts pointing to innovations in science and technology.

  Rosie suspected that Kellareal had reasons for his choices, but she was quickly coming to the conclusion that she neither understood nor agreed with them.

  She was poring over the materials, when a deep, gruff voice said, “What’s this then?”

  It was Scar. Rosie raised her head to acknowledge him, looked up and down the bar, then at the wind-up clock they kept on the middle shelf. Almost the entire bar was covered with books.

  She jumped off the stool where she’d been sitting. “Oh, sorry. I’m looking at the school books for Serene.”

  “Serene. Good woman.”

  Rosie nodded. “Uh, yeah,” and hurried to gather the books and stack them under the bar at the end nearest the porch.

  “Why does she want you to look at the books?”

  “Because I said that at least some of the books ought to be about hybrid children and not human children. For instance, a hybrid child wouldn’t relate to reading that Johnny was sad because he couldn’t jump the fence like his older brother.”

  Scar blinked twice and then laughed out loud. It was the second time that day that Rosie had been startled by a sudden movement or loud sound made by one of the Exiled. She jumped. Visibly. Which m
ade Scar laugh harder. Even so, she didn’t regret the experience. It was the first time she’d heard his laughter, which was deep and loud with an underlying rumble like a thunderstorm.

  “You slay me, Rosie,” he said when his amusement began to wane.

  “That’s a good thing. Right?”

  He shook his head. “You’re done. Go home.”

  “Home,” she repeated, looking confused. He’d meant the Extant’s house, but the image that had come to her mind was the Sonoma villa where she’d spent her developmental months with her mother and an imposter posing as her father. She missed home and wondered if it wasn’t time to go back and face real life. Newland wasn’t real life. It was real life on pause.

  “Did you get the books?” Serene asked when Rosie came down for dinner.

  It was just the three of them for dinner. No one mentioned why Charming wasn’t there and she didn’t ask.

  “Yes. Thank you. Carnal and his friends brought them. It was really helpful that you marked them according to level. I got them organized and started looking through them.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Still forming conclusions.”

  Serene looked intrigued. “I think I’m eager to hear those conclusions.”

  “There may be some, well, what I would think of as holes in the curriculum.”

  Serene’s brows came down. “Holes?”

  Rosie wiggled her head. “Things that would typically be included where I’m from, but I won’t know that for sure until I go over everything.”

  “Are those things that are important?” Free asked.

  “Well, they could be. Yes.” Rosie felt put on the spot and wanted to be careful about how she phrased things. “I don’t know what the human children are studying, but I think it’s important that you know what they know. Where I come from, that’s called a balance of power.”

  “Balance of power,” Free repeated.

  “Uh huh.”

  Free frowned. “You’re thinking about the time before Kellareal freed us. The humans could control us because…” He took a deep breath. “Because they knew how to.”

  “You don’t need me to tell you that’s true. You already know it. I don’t know what the human children are learning, but if you’re protecting them while they’re learning about science and technology…” Free looked at Serene, who knew him well enough to recognize the alarm in his eyes even if no one else would see a change in his expression. “I’m not saying that the humans who live in Fars…”

  “Farsuitwail.”

  “Right. Farsuitwail. I’m not saying they would ever attempt to imprison you. Or worse. In my world different races live side by side without incident for long periods of time. Centuries. But eventually, some greedy maniac with a small penis will decide he needs the power to control other people and their stuff.”

  “You’re saying we need to be wary of humans with small penises.”

  Rosie tucked her chin and smiled. “No. That’s just a theory, a silly way of talking about a real problem. But you have at least three reasons for needing to find out what the humans know. As I understand it, the Rautt killed everybody who was working in advanced sciences or technology when they destroyed power sources. But they may have missed some people. For your sake, I hope they did.”

  “Why do you say ‘for our sake’?”

  “Because you’d have a chance of recreating longer range weaponry and then establishing a balance of power. Eventually you might even integrate your society with the humans.”

  Free was appalled. “Live with humans?”

  Rosie blinked before softly saying, “You’re living with me.”

  He looked away and then at Serene, ashamed that he had forgotten that he was speaking to a human. But wasn’t that what Rosie was alluding to? That, under the right circumstances, differences might become so familiar as to be forgotten altogether?

  “You need to learn what there is to know about the people and culture you’re protecting, Free. The Rautt were created, just like you. Maybe it was for benign purposes. I don’t know. But it’s a mess now.”

  “And you think the way to deal with that mess is to exterminate them. That’s exactly what was going to happen to us when Kellareal brought us here.”

  “Do you feel kinship with the Rautt?”

  “No,” Free said quickly. “Not like you mean it. I might have, but then…” He didn’t need to say Crave’s name for Rosie to know what he was thinking. “Between our son, Blaze, and other incidents, they’ve made this personal in a way that can’t be undone.”

  Rosie nodded slowly.

  Free sat back, leaving his dinner unfinished, and sighed. “You’re right. We have to find out what goes on behind closed doors in Farsuitwail. We’ve been protecting them for a generation, standing between them and the Rautt, without knowing what the humans think of us.”

  “What do you mean?” Serene put in.

  “I mean it’s important to know how they see us. If we’re just trained dogs to them, then they wouldn’t think twice about taking our freedom from us. Again. But if they see us as people who want things, like they do, then maybe not.”

  “That is a consideration,” said Rosie carefully. “But trust may be a bridge too far. Right now the most important thing is making sure that you know what the humans know.” She looked between them. “Charming said something to me about being smarter than humans. Is that true?”

  Free looked at Serene. “Charming is a font of information.”

  “I’ll speak to him,” Serene said.

  “Yes,” Free turned back to Rosie, “we pieced things together listening to conversations between guards or researchers. Once they were satisfied with our enhanced physical abilities, they selectively bred us for intelligence.”

  “So you’re capable of learning anything humans can learn.”

  Free nodded. “I would think so. Yes.”

  “Rosie,” Serene interjected, “we have a sort of working relationship with the humans. If we upset that relationship, we can’t know what the outcome might be.”

  “Yes. It’s a risk, but is it riskier than not knowing what’s going on? I don’t mean to scare you, but let’s look at a hypothetical. What if the humans are just a little less afraid of you than the Rautt? What if they’ve been reconstructing their ability to build long range and rapid fire weaponry and, thinking it’s in their best interest, have a plan to wipe all hybrids out at the same time?”

  Serene paled as she sat straighter. Her eyes shot to Free. “I think I’m beginning to understand,” she whispered.

  “Humans are not as fast or strong as you. Maybe not as smart either. But humans are wily, fiercely protective of those who are like themselves, and they are capable of abominable behavior, including genocide.

  “You made a promise to Kellareal and you’ve lived up to it. But your priority has to be protecting your own people. You can’t do that living up here in the hills, hoping that everything turns out for the best.”

  Free sat back and stared at the food on the table in front of him. For a long time. At length, he said, “I believed I was the right person to lead us when we arrived in the Newland. We had to build everything from the ground up. Literally. We had to put processes in place to make things work. I don’t know if I’m the right person to lead us into what we might be facing.”

  “It’s always better to know than to not know,” Rosie said quietly.

  “She’s right about that, Free. And of course you’re the right person. No one has a truer sense about next steps than you. Maybe this is just the next step in a natural progression.”

  “And hey, I’m not omniscient. Maybe the humans are not up to anything. At all.”

  Free slanted his eyes toward her in disbelief. “But you think they are.”

  “In my world, if you put people in a position of living under threat for twenty-five years, with the only protection being non-humans who lived apart and kept to themselves, I can guarantee y
ou that someone would be coming up with a plan to alleviate that threat and restore humans to the top of the power chain. And they’d be careful to keep that plan secret until it was too late.”

  “Remember how things were before?” Serene asked her mate. It was a question that didn’t need to be either qualified or answered. “The books we have don’t tell us how to build the technology that made us and enslaved us. I knew that, but thought it’s just as well to live in a world where such things are not possible. So I didn’t question it.” Serene glanced at Rosie. “Until now.”

  Free took in a big breath and, when he was done, his expression said he was decided and resolved.

  “We’re going hunting in Farsuitwail.” He pinned Rosie with a look she hadn’t seen before. “And you’re coming with me, since you know what to look for.”

  Rosie’s lips parted, but for once, she didn’t know what to say. She was just a kid. Not an ambassador. Or a spy. But she was the one who’d opened the Pandora’s box and, according to her father’s sense of morality, which was always floating around in the mix that made up her own personality, she was obligated to see through to the end what she’d started. So she said, “Okay.”

  At two o’clock the next afternoon, Dandy threw a damp towel over her shoulder and, with one hand resting on a cocked hip said, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Rosie raised an eyebrow. “Going for a ride on a motorcycle, not getting married. Or anything else you might be thinking.” Dandy barked out a laugh then shook her head. “Thanks for the cover.”

  Dandy chuffed and waved a dismissal.

  “Dandelion. You got something against Carnal?”

  Dandy hesitated, which was a signal in itself because Dandy wasn’t a hesitator. “Got nothing against Carnal. Just not sure he’s right for you.”

  “But you like him okay.”

  “I like him okay. I mean, he’s Carnal.”