Her Cold-Blooded Protector

by Lea Linnett

  “Malcolm? That’s a…”

  “Human name.” Kormak blew out a long breath. “Yeah. He had… a lot of ideas. Ambition. That wasn’t something I’d seen from a lot of humans at the time. It was enough to… convince me to partner up with him.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “No,” the levekk answered after weighing it up for a moment. “He was just my boss. I think he liked having a levekk under his thumb. But at the time—I thought he was treating me like an equal. I was in charge of people, we were taking over our district. I had control over my life for the first time ever.”

  “But?”

  Kormak trailed a finger down her arm, his skin cool despite the fire. “It was all bullshit. Malcolm was real good at making you think everything was your idea. In reality? He pointed, and I attacked. I was a—” He paused, and Lena felt his heart beating faster against her back. “I’m a monster, Lena.”

  She spun around at that, turning in his arms to face him. His eyes were downcast, his body strangely deflated. She placed a hand on his cheek, tracing the line of his scar. “That’s bullshit. You’re not.”

  His eyes met hers, his pupils thin and unreadable. “You don’t know what I did. Who I hurt.”

  “I don’t care—”

  “I know how breakable your body is, Lena. I’ve broken humans before.”

  She froze, her muscles tensing, but she kept her hand firmly plastered to his cheek. “You can’t scare me.”

  “I’ve broken bones, sliced stomachs open, bled humans from the neck without a moment’s hesitation.” He leaned in, knocking his plated forehead gently against hers. “Even your head is soft.”

  Lena’s heart was hammering in her chest, but she didn’t allow the images to assault her. “What if I clawed out your eyes? You’re not invulnerable,” she said, accusingly.

  “You wanna know why I was in Kharon?”

  “Let me guess—you broke somebody.”

  His brow plate sank down into a frown, his mouth set. “I started to throw my weight around with Malcolm. I was finally—after too long—starting to realize how little power I really had with him, so I decided to push a little. He didn’t like that. So he sent me and my crew for a pickup.”

  He paused then, and Lena stroked her thumb down his cheek. His eyes closed. “There were so many of them waiting for us. All kinds. But guess what my crew was made of?”

  Lena winced. “Humans?”

  “Uh-huh. Would you believe I even liked some of them? But they were weak, Lena.” He touched her face, eyes boring into hers. “I was the only one on my side to walk out of there—covered in blood. Malcolm had arranged for the police to be waiting for me and whoever else was left—didn’t matter whether they were his people or mine.”

  “Seriously? He didn’t care?”

  “Malcolm didn’t care about anything but himself, it just took me too long to figure that out.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Gang violence. Theft. Multiple counts of murder—injuries left behind by levekk are pretty… distinctive.” He tapped her face with a claw. “Fifty years.”

  “Is this why you busted out?” Lena asked, mind racing. She was putting the pieces together, could see his anger in every line of his face. But she wasn’t scared. Kormak’s touch was still gentle, his breathing calm.

  “I’m gonna kill him.”

  “Kormak…”

  “And I probably won’t walk out of there alive.”

  “Don’t…”

  “My father came to my trial,” he added, no longer looking at her. “He didn’t bother to pull any strings—not even just to talk to me one-on-one. But you know what he managed to throw in when he passed by?”

  Lena’s heart sank. “What?”

  “’Monster’. And he was right. I watched Malcolm beat and sell and hurt his own kind for years and I did nothing. I let him take every tiny piece of my anger and turn it against people who didn’t have a hope. I can’t forgive myself for that.”

  “Kormak, it isn’t your fault. You were young. He made you think that was all you were good for.”

  “It was all I was good for. It still is…”

  Lena’s heart wrenched at the words. “Kormak, it’s okay to make mistakes—”

  He snatched up her wrist, showing off the beginnings of her bruises in the firelight. “This isn’t okay.”

  “You didn’t ‘break’ me, Kormak.” She wrenched her wrist from his hand, threading her fingers between his. “I’m stronger than that. I can handle a little surface damage,” she tried to joke.

  But that was the wrong thing to say. Kormak’s eyelids snapped shut, his expression closed. Lena’s face fell. Before she could apologize, the levekk pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled into his chest. “For saying that. For what happened to you.”

  “Sleep.”

  She felt a kiss pressed into the top of her head, and tried to squirm, but the alien wasn’t having any of it. The conversation was over. The brush of his cool—but not frozen—skin against hers did nothing to cure the hot flush of frustration that lit up her face.

  How could she get him to listen to her?

  19

  Breakfast was a quiet affair. They weren’t cold with one another, but Lena could feel a strange distance growing between them nonetheless.

  This was the beginning of a goodbye.

  Kormak had kissed the top of her head again to wake her up that morning, his fingers carding delicately through her hair. But once that was done, his attention focused intently on how far they’d have to journey today, and Lena begrudgingly forced herself to do the same.

  They dressed in silence, and talked in low tones about what the day might bring.

  According to Kormak, they were close to the city outskirts now, and could probably make it to his contact if they pushed through the night a little.

  But where the news would have made her heart leap a few days ago, she felt oddly unenthused about it now. Days ago… Their escape was so recent, really, but Lena felt so changed already.

  She pondered this as they packed her bag and set out through the last of the forest. All threat of rain had stopped now, and their progress was swift.

  She wanted to go back. That much was still true. She missed Ellie—now more than ever with Kormak disengaging. She missed the sound of her voice, the quiet humming she tended to slip into when she helped Augusta with her sewing.

  But once she collected Ellie, she’d never hear her working alongside Augusta again. She still didn’t know where to take her. Kormak had talked of space, of living off-planet away from Earth’s laws. They would never be completely safe, she knew that, but a couple of escaped fish were immediately less important when the pond became a sea.

  He’d offered the services of his contacts, and she was sure he’d help her get in touch with them before they parted ways if she asked, but…

  She’d really hoped he’d come with her.

  The realization hit her with surprising strength: she wanted to stay with him.

  She’d thought it was only a vague wish, but now, it wrenched at her. Especially since learning what he intended to do. He was going to walk to his death, and she worried that she was too late to stop him.

  She watched him as he paced ahead of her. He was so tall, so intimidating—it was hard to believe that anything could kill him. But he’d seemed certain. The worst part had been the acceptance, a confident assurance that this was his only path—that it was what he deserved.

  She opened her mouth, almost ready to spill it all: her feelings, her worry, her offer of an alternative. But then Kormak turned, eyes meeting hers.

  “You got any water left?” he asked, hanging back.

  Lena blinked, taking a few seconds too long to shake off her thoughts and remember how to speak. “Oh. Yeah, I’ve got a whole bottle left,” she said, and fished around in her bag for it.

  “Thanks.” He took
the bottle from her. His eyes were warm, but flicked away from hers too quickly, as if he could read her mind.

  She found herself unable to get the words out. He already knew what she would say and he was already telling her ‘no’ without having to speak a word.

  She’d always liked to learn how things worked, and Kormak was no exception. But now that she knew him, she recognized deep down that it was useless to argue with him. Her stomach twisted with misery, wishing there was some way to convince him.

  In the end, she said nothing, just hung her head and concentrated on following the path his feet made in the leaf litter.

  ---

  Kormak grew more and more tense as they neared the city.

  It was early afternoon, and he could see snatches of the sprawling metropolis on the horizon whenever they crested a hill. There was still some forest between them and their destination, but it was giving way to increasingly larger patches of deforested land. Every now and then, they even had to sneak around a property, rather than through it, as they caught glimpses of sub-species firing up their transports or doing chores in their gardens.

  He felt something like anticipation thudding in his breast, but it was tempered. He’d been waiting for this moment for so long now—had sat in his cell and devised all the different ways he could rip Malcolm’s head from his shoulders ad nauseam—and while the thought still sent thrills through him, something heavy lurked behind it.

  He wasn’t going to make it back alive.

  He’d always known this. Malcolm wasn’t the type to take risks, so even if Kormak used every ounce of his knowledge about the man’s hideout, the inner chambers would be full of bodyguards. This would be especially true once news of his breakout reached the man. But that was fine. He would barge through them, get his hands around Malcolm’s neck, and then it wouldn’t matter how many piled on top of him. It didn’t take long to crush a windpipe. After that, they could do their worst.

  Up to this point, the thought hadn’t scared him. He was either going to die in prison, have a crisis when he was finally released and do himself in, or he could go out fighting, with his revenge realized.

  But now, uncertainty crawled through him. He didn’t let it slow him down or turn him away, but it sent waves of queasiness straight to his stomach, which intensified whenever he glimpsed the city on the horizon.

  As he walked, a new voice whispered in his ear.

  You could give it up.

  He closed his eyes, hard.

  You don’t have to do this.

  He grit his teeth.

  You could stay with her.

  That thought made his shoulders tense, and he dared a glance in Lena’s direction. She had her eyes on the ground beneath her feet, seemingly mesmerized by the crunch of her sneakers on the grass and lost in thought.

  Kormak held back a sigh. The new voice sounded suspiciously like the little human by his side, and it said all the things that he suspected she wouldn’t allow herself to say. He’d seen her expression turn pained multiple times throughout the day, and each frown made his stomach twist into knots.

  You care about her.

  That voice was half-Malcolm, cutting through him like a razor.

  If you care about her, why hurt her?

  He would hurt her more by staying, he told himself. A life with him meant a life of crime and danger—he wasn’t capable of anything else. He couldn’t do that to her. Couldn’t do it to her sister.

  But she saved your life.

  He almost stopped short. His pace stuttered and his feet tried to trip him, but he soldiered on. She had saved his life. She’d brought him back from the brink. And the way she’d looked at him—like she was so scared of losing him…

  He shook his head. She was scared of being left alone in the wilderness. Those feelings would fade once she was with her family again. She was smart—and resourceful. If he gave her the number of his contact, Brando, she’d find a way to barter her mechanical skills for passage. Brando was a good enough guy. He’d help her.

  You’re a waste, the voice spat, vibrations circling back uncomfortably close to Lena’s voice. You wasted your father’s time, wasted yourself on Malcolm, and now you’re wasting the girl’s love.

  He shut his eyes again, clenching them tight.

  But what else can a monster do but eat up everything around it and spit it back out?

  His heart sagged, even as the rest of him stayed outwardly alert.

  He was a wasteful creature. He did destroy every home he tried to build around himself. So this was the only way.

  If he killed Malcolm, he could end the cycle. And himself.

  And if he didn’t want to hurt Lena, he realized, he’d have to start letting her go. He didn’t know if he could make her hate him—she seemed to be able to see right through him whenever she pleased already—but he could at least soften the blow.

  They would not lay together again. And if it hurt her, he could be soothed by the fact that it would hurt less the less she cared. And less than having to deal with a life on the run with a monster.

  20

  They stole clothes from the washing lines of a small county an hour or so outside of the Manufacturing District. It was dark, and Lena fumbled to find clothes that might fit, but she had an easier time of it than Kormak, whose large frame wouldn’t fit in most of them. This was obviously a predominantly human or cicarian community, if the clothes were anything to judge by. Eventually Kormak found something, and they changed silently in the shadow of a dark house, its occupants gone or sleeping.

  Lena had almost laughed at Kormak’s nonplussed expression when he first saw the washing lines. Apparently they weren’t common in the inner city. Everyone had automated dryers by default.

  But she held it back. The mood between them was slowly turning tense, and not the fun kind.

  They moved quickly through the dark fields, Lena listening attentively for the sound of Kormak’s bare feet flattening the grass. It was too dark for her to see here, and she was reminded of that first night, traipsing through the desert. Despite everything that had happened in the week since they escaped, she almost felt like they were back to square one.

  She could feel a chasm opening between them. They didn’t chat as they crossed the countryside, and the once-easy silences now felt uncomfortable. There was nothing hostile in it. In fact, when Lena tripped on an exposed root in the dark, Kormak was still there at her side, helping her to stand. But his touch was brief, clinical. There was no lingering scrape of fingers, and no spark of electricity.

  She tried not to let it bother her as they pressed on. They were each intent on their goal. It made sense that they’d be clammed up and nervous.

  It wasn’t long before they hit the first wall of civilization. The buildings were all made of the same strange mix of pre-invasion red-brick and levekk prefabbed metals, with solar panels—some makeshift, some professional—adorning almost every roof. It was crushingly familiar to Lena, even though her home was south of here, a little closer to the center of the district. After a few moments of staring around, she realized it was familiar because she’d been here before. They’d arrived in Wemple, the trade center of New Chicago’s Manufacturing District.

  They soon entered a market area, the store fronts and stalls lit up by massive strings of lights and lanterns all around them, blocking out the stars above and the small dwellings that sat on the upper levels. Lena had been here before for trading, but not often at night, and the lights dazzled her.

  The roads were mostly ancient human cement, although a few places had been patched with the updated levekk variety, creating a broken patchwork of rough and smooth, light and dark, around them. The hard ground felt strange underfoot after all the soft dirt and leaves of the forest, and for the first time, Lena noticed how Kormak’s bony toes clicked on the hard surface, occasionally leaving a tiny white scrape behind.

  She wondered if they would get worn down, should he go barefoot all the time. She wante
d to ask him about it, but he was striding out ahead of her, his gaze focused.

  She had the sudden feeling that she was an intruder again. Her heart thumped nervously. When was she supposed to stop following him? When did they say goodbye?

  A chill ran right through the core of her. Would they say goodbye?

  She had a horrific premonition then, of Kormak looking down at her as he entered a building or walked towards a transport, and asking, confused, “What are you still doing here?” It wouldn’t even have to have any malice in it. The pure dismissal would be humiliating enough.

  She reached up, digging her fingers into the exposed skin of her arm beneath her now short-sleeved top. She was being ridiculous, she knew that. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to remind him of her presence.

  “S-so. Which way are you heading?”

  Kormak paused, giving her a moment to catch up from where she’d fallen behind. “I’ve got a contact—Brando. He’ll have organized a place for us to stay for the night.”

  Lena’s heart leaped. ‘For us,’ he’d said. That calmed her somewhat, but it didn’t detract from the hurt she felt when Kormak avoided her gaze, his eyes scanning the streets around them.

  “Where are you meeting him?” she asked.

  “The Sheneth Quarter.”

  Lena’s insides wobbled. She knew the Sheneth Quarter. It was a red-light district, full of shady people and shadier dealings. She’d circled it often on her trips, but had never been inside. Like most humans her age, she preferred to avoid the drunken, grabby types that spent their time there.

  “It’s this way,” she said, gulping down her anxiety and lightly touching Kormak’s arm to get his attention.

  She walked him through the streets, which grew more and more crowded as they went. People stared, their eyes flying to Kormak despite his attempts to cover his head with his hood. He towered over most of the species that inhabited the Manufacturing District, and even with long sleeves covering him, his skin was unmistakable. People out here may not have met a levekk personally, but they sure as hell had seen them in zines.