After about a quarter hour, we reached a low, semicircular doorway, too low to walk through upright. Perhaps it was a cycling system, meant to keep the swamp we were slogging through at some optimal consistency. Either way, it seemed to be our way out of here, so we crouched low and squeezed into the tunnel. It was cramped, and it was an effort just for me to keep my lantern above the filthy water. It had worked even after I had fallen into the pool, but I didn't trust the jury-rigged circuits to function properly if they were immersed. I had to keep my head tilted up and to the side to breathe, because the crouch I was forced into, pushed my head down close to the waterline. My heart was thunder in my ears, and all I could think about was the horde of ravening larvae piling into the tunnel behind us. Could we fight something like that? Surely not in this space.
I could feel the little wriggling bodies bumping into me again, and I had to suppress the urge to scream. Unthinking, I swatted at a particularly inquisitive one with the back of my free hand, and it sunk tiny sharp mandibles into my flesh. I hissed and tried to draw back, but the little bastard had a firm grip on me. “Volistad! I’ve been bitten!”
He whirled, quickly shoving me past him, a growl already gathering in the base of his throat. The waters before him were already churning as the larvae there sensed my blood. Furious, I slammed the little burug clinging to my arm into the wall until it let go of me and dropped senseless into the mire. I thought about the sword at my waist, immersed in the muck. I would have to clean it later. There was no use in drawing it; I would probably just cut myself or Volistad and make the whole situation worse. Instead, I put out my free hand and took hold of his sodden cloak, then turned continued forward down the tunnel, leading the ranger with me, backward. Behind me, past the reassuring form of Volistad, I could hear the larvae churning up into a frenzy. A strange, whistling cry went up from the roiling mass, taken up in wild, dissonant chorus a moment later. Volistad answered with a bestial roar that tore its way out of his chest and filled the tunnel with the sound of his battle-rage. I felt the ranger moving through my grip on his cloak, and I glanced over my shoulder to see him wielding an ax in each of his hands. He timed each of his swings to a step backward, and we moved on like that, me in the lead, Volistad slashing in great arcs and spattering the walls of the tunnel with black ichor.
We moved that way for what seemed like an age. I could sense Volistad beginning to tire. He still swung in rhythm with his careful backward steps, but I could hear him panting. Fighting for even a minute was exhausting. I wondered how long we had been doing this. Five minutes? An hour? Ahead of me, the light of my lantern fell on a fine lattice of steel bars, and I cursed vehemently. Volistad grunted a question at me, and I seethed back, "Blocked! There are bars in the way!" Water was coming in through the bars, and it seemed cleaner than the muck we had been wading through. Water could get in, but the burug larvae couldn’t get out. And neither could we.
Volistad cursed, redoubling his efforts against the ravening swarm, but he was already grunting in pain as bites got through and found the soft places between the crystalline plates of his armor. We didn’t have long. We would soon be overwhelmed, and I would soon get to live out my fantasy of being devoured by piranha in a dark alien sewer, so at least I had that plus. I cast about with the lantern for any sign of something I could use to bend the lattice, maybe force it aside so we could get past it, but nothing presented itself. Volistad roared again, but this time, the sound was filled more with desperation than rage. He wasn't swinging the axes anymore. The larvae were piling onto him, snapping at his unarmored face and bearing him over backwards into the water. I screamed and tried to drag him back upright, but the boiling swarm of hateful little bodies took me from my feet as well, and I plunged into the water in a cloud of wildly chomping mandibles. This was it. We were going to die in the darkness and it would all be for nothing. Maybe Ravanur could turn Nissikul into a god. She would be a better choice anyway; she knew this planet, knew the Erin-Vulur. She might not know Barbas, but she didn't have to know him to kill him. Why had the dead god of this place thought that I could do this?
Pain blasted through me, suddenly, beginning at my closed fist and shooting out in a burning network through my entire nervous system. Someone was screaming, so loud, deafeningly loud, and for a moment I thought it was me. Then I realized that my jaws were clenched shut from the angry current searing through my bones, and the sound was coming from all around me. It came to me in an instant, as a spasm rippled its way up my spine and made my body into a bow. I was being electrocuted. Electrocuted!
As suddenly as the pain had come, it ended, and I found myself floating on my back on the surface of the muck, bumping up against the steel lattice with the movement of the disturbed water. There were no burug clinging to me. Holy hell, there were no burug attacking me! A stone dropped into my stomach as I remembered. "Volistad!" I thrashed my way back towards where he had fallen, searching the water frantically. He was lying there, unconscious, and I was terrified to note that he was not breathing. I couldn't feel his pulse, but my hands were shaking, so I couldn't be sure. Was he dead? It didn't matter; I had to get him out of here. I got my shoulder under him, and half carried, half pushed him down the tunnel towards the grate. It was completely dark. My light had gone. Come to think of it, it had probably electrocuted us. "Fuck!"
I stumbled in the dark and smacked my hand against the stone to steady myself. But I didn't touch rock. Instead, I slapped awkwardly at a solid bar of metal. I gripped it, then fumbled up the wall, not daring to hope. Sure enough, there was another. Above that? Solid metal. A hatch set into the ceiling of the tunnel. I pushed. It wasn't latched, apparently trusting to its own weight to keep juvenile burug out of whatever lay above. Straining, with my one free arm, I pushed the hatch up until it reached its tipping point and fell open with a crash. It was just as dark above me as it was in this passage, but I wasn’t staying where I was. Awkwardly, I stepped up onto the metal rung, manhandling Volistad up with me. He was very heavy, especially in his armor, but I couldn’t afford to stop. Already, I could hear movement in the water below us. Some of the larvae had not been killed, just stunned, and they were starting to come around. I doubted they would be happy when they fully woke up. So I struggled up the rungs, one at a time, until I could get my feet onto something like solid ground. I carefully felt out a safe place to set Volistad, then turned to the hatch and lifted the heavy metal portal so that it swung back down into place. I felt at it for a moment, and I was relieved to find a locking bar set into it. We were very lucky that hadn’t been in place before. Nonetheless, I slid the bar into place. We were safe from the larvae. All I had to do now was keep Volistad alive.
I fumbled my way in the darkness back over to him. We weren’t in a very large space, little more than a wider tunnel than before, though this one went straight up. I could, with a little strain, stretch out and touch both walls. It would have to do. I stretched Volistad out on the ground, then settled my nerves and felt for his throat. My heart thundered in my own ears, making it hard to focus. What if Erinye physiology was different? What if he didn’t usually have a pulse there? What if- I hissed out another breath of relief. He was alive. His pulse was hard and strong, if a little slower than I had expected. Good. Now the breathing. I would need to get him out of his armor to do proper lifesaving techniques, but perhaps first… I leaned up off of him and then dropped my weight down hard just below his chest, aiming for where the diaphragm would be on a human. He surged up, suddenly, and I scrambled off of him, struggling to roll him onto his side as he spewed foul water. He heaved several times, vomiting and coughing water. I knelt beside him and patted his back awkwardly, knowing that the gesture probably meant little through a solid plate of armor.
After a while, Volistad seemed to be breathing normally, and he pushed himself up into a sitting position beside me. “What happened?” His voice was little more than a croak, but he seemed fully back in control of his body. “We were-” He coughe
d and trailed off. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know the words in his language. Instead, I just sat beside him. We sat there for a while in companionable silence, just breathing clean air and letting our heart rates fall back down to a more reasonable rate. After a while, Volistad murmured. “Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Only after you saved mine,” I replied. “I could not have fought so many. They would have torn me to pieces.”
Volistad was silent. I knew what he was thinking, that he had failed anyway. In his eyes, he hadn’t fought hard enough, hadn’t kept them at bay, and as a result, they had gotten past him and to me. I didn’t have the words to explain to him why he was wrong, so I just slapped him about the head. “Don’t be silly, Volistad,” I said. “Now let’s go. The way out is up.”
I fumbled my way over to the spike ladder and put a foot up on the nearest metal bar, then hopped up and seized one a little way above my head. Volistad followed my lead, making much less noise in the dark. We climbed in silence in the crushing dark, our already tired muscles straining against the weight of our waterlogged clothes. After a long time, I felt my head bump gently against something solid. Nervously, I lifted one hand up to feel for another hatch. Sure enough, there was one just above me. Carefully, not wanting to fall off of the crude, narrow ladder-spikes, I lifted my hand and pressed it against the hatch, giving it an experimental push. It moved, just a little, but it was just as heavy as the one below us. I took a deep breath, climbed to press my shoulder against the metal portal, and heaved with my legs and back. The hatch lifted open, swinging away on its hinges. I didn't dare push hard enough to fling it open. Instead I flopped over the edge of the hole into the space above while keeping the hatch lifted with one hand. Volistad quickly came up and helped me hold it up while I got to my feet, wary of the edge of the shaft we had just climbed. I held the heavy door in place as he scrambled up in a clatter of weapons, and then, when he was clear, I let the hatch slam shut with a hollow BOOM that raised dust from the ground all around us.
I stopped. I could see the dust. Which meant… I looked around and found the source of the light. We were standing in a great circular chamber, which had not been shaped to the same precise smoothness as the rest of the temple. Ringing the rough, craggy walls there were clusters of aquamarine crystals, glowing with a soft radiance that cast a soothing, relaxing light across everything in the cave-like chamber. The ceiling was high and scattered with stalactites, from which grew shaggy, highly reflective moss. The floor was uneven, though paths had been carefully shaped to crisscross through the space. All around us, I could see what looked like overgrown garden plots, full of plants I had never seen, and fungi larger than anything I had heard of before. It was a god's garden. A literal Garden of Eden, though it seemed to be meant for a different purpose than the one in the ancient Christian holy text. I could smell a hundred commingling, fascinating scents, and I wished I knew what Volistad was experiencing. His own sense of smell was so powerful, I was sure he was breathing in the olfactory equivalent of a vibrant tapestry. If only…
Volistad suddenly retched. "Palamun above," he grumbled. "We stink." He pointed off in a direction with somewhat frantic motions; his face wrinkled up against his own foul aura. "Flowing water," he muttered, clearly trying to breathe as little as possible. "That way." He led the way through the garden, and I tried to suppress my laughter at his reaction. I guessed that he had suddenly been hit with how rank we smelled because of the sharp contrast with the inviting smell of the garden.
I heard splashing and stopped staring around at the garden to see where we were going. Sure enough, a waterfall fell from somewhere high up on the cavern wall, splashing crystal clear liquid into a deep pool, clearly shaped for easy bathing. I didn't wait for an invitation. I dropped my sodden pack and my sword belt and began stripping out of my soaked furs as quickly as I could. Volistad wouldn't be beaten, however, and as I was shaking my one entangled foot out of my twisted hide pants, he took a few quick steps past me and dove into the pool with smooth precision. He surfaced a moment later in the middle of the water, all of the dirt and grime and filth of our journey coming off of him in the wonderful water. I finally kicked free of my pants and splashed my way in after him, doing so in a considerably less dignified manner.
Even without soap, the bath was one of the most relaxing things I had ever felt. It was cold and crisp, but not so much that it bothered me. I wasn't sure if that was the blessing's work or not, but I felt like I was bathing in a mountain spring- which, I guessed, I was. I submerged and just hung there, suspended in the cool, comforting dark, finally safe, finally clean. I hadn't realized how tense I had been since… since the foul power below had invaded my dream with Barbas. Had it been so long since that disastrous night? I had been traveling with Volistad and the others for only a fortnight, but it felt like a lifetime ago. I felt like a different woman.
My lungs began to burn, so I surfaced, letting the water run down off of my body. I put a hand to my smooth, hairless scalp. I missed my hair. I understood why it had been taken, but those beautiful raven locks… that was the part of being Joanna Angeles that I had actually liked. Clean, well-kept hair, smooth skin, enough food to eat. I thought about where I was and laughed out loud. I was in a god’s garden, swimming in a pool of the clearest water I had ever seen. I had two of those three things, so what if I didn’t have the hair. I looked over at Volistad, and to my surprise, I found him watching me.
He wasn’t doing or saying anything untoward, but the way he looked at me abruptly reminded me that I was standing naked as the day I was born in a secluded, secret pool with a naked man. A beautiful naked man. A black cloud of shame feathered its way over my brain as I remembered my last moments with Barbas before… before he had… I turned away, trying not to do so in a way that would hurt Volistad, but knowing that it would anyway.
“It is all right,” the ranger said, gently, in my own language. “It is not time for those things right now. I was simply… what is the word… admiring your beauty.”
Despite myself, I felt the edges of a grin tugging at the corners of my mouth. “You’re not so bad yourself,” I replied coyly, giving him a very obvious once-over with my eyes.
Volistad cocked his head to the side, unsure, and I realized I had thrown him off a little with my use of slang. He probably wasn't sure if I was complimenting or insulting him when I said, "not so bad." I turned back around, feeling his eyes travel up and down my body. "It's just a saying. It's a way of saying that you're quite pretty yourself by deliberately understating it."
Volistad blinked. “I only understood half of that.”
I laughed again. “Just know that it means you look good.” I blushed, embarrassed, but I wasn’t sure he could actually see that with the odd quality of the light. Besides, he seemed a little too distracted to notice something like blushing.
Volistad smiled then, both with his eyes and his mouth. It was a good look on him, even if his fangs lent the expression a savage aspect. “Joanna, are you sure you aren’t a goddess? Because right now…” He trailed off, self-conscious.
I felt a cold spike of anxiety go through my stomach, and my own smile faltered. I looked away, the heat of the moment suddenly gone. The water felt uncomfortably cold, no longer the refreshing pleasure it had been just a moment before. "I- I guess I'll be one soon, whatever that means." I got out of the water and shivered my way over to my clothes. They were soaked and filthy, and I didn't want to put them back on. "Fuck," I said under my breath. Then I sighed and started dragging the lump of sodden furs over to the pool to wash them.
Volistad got out of the pool as well, and I carefully avoided looking at him. Still, I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and the fact that he was as perfectly muscled as the mythical Adonis did not make the situation easier. Before meeting him, I would not have thought extreme paleness would be attractive in a man, but this was a little different. He looked like Michelangelo had carved him straight from the purest
marble. As he walked past me, I looked up, and I was surprised to see that the skin of his back, as well as the outside of his arms and the front of his legs, were mottled with subtle patches of gray that covered him in a pattern of small spots like those of a leopard. I was surprised that I hadn’t noticed it before, but it made sense. He was usually fully clothed, and his face was unmarked by these spots. I supposed it must have been some kind of vestigial camouflage, though I couldn’t imagine Volistad’s people running around on Chalice unclothed and unprotected to utilize this natural advantage. I wondered if that meant that the Erinye were somehow not native to this world. It would fit with what I knew of them. No one could have evolved in this kind of climate, could they? It was warmer down here, underground, but there were too many things that would make life all but impossible here. In any case, though I could not possibly have guessed his origin, I marveled in Volistad’s beauty. He was an intriguing vision of a man, walking the line between a comfortable familiarity and a fascinating strangeness. I knew that I was very attracted to him, and he had made it clear how he saw me.
But the throwaway comment about me being a goddess was frightening, on a base level. I couldn’t even consider sex- I was going to change, very soon. I was going to be changed permanently and intimately. What would that entail? What would it cost me? Would I even be myself anymore? I wanted to sit and discuss it with Barbas, in our cabin by the lake in the midst of the peaceful, green wood. But he was forever lost to me. He had- or at least something that looked and sounded like him had- tried to kill me. He had damn nearly succeeded. It hurt, now that I had a moment to think about it. I had trusted him, even after our short time together, and that security had been shattered. I hadn't trusted someone like that in a very long time, and the one I had trusted had broken me and left me to die. And I was seeking an ancient, frightening power, so that I could change into someone capable of killing the man I had trusted. Even though he was an AI, I had begun to love him. All of that was rushing through my head, now, and all the sexual chemistry in the world could do nothing before the scourging heat of that pain.
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 56
