Tempest (Valos of Sonhadra Book 2)

by Poppy Rhys

  “Trouble,” I mumbled under my breath.

  “What?” Lonan’s gaze flickered to Kahn and back to me.

  “Uh, nothing.” I wiggled, and he set me back on my feet.

  “Zaid needs your help,” Kahn said to Lonan while he continued to stare at me. I imagined he’d eat me whole if given the chance; that was the kind of consuming focus he had. “I’ll take over here.”

  Lonan headed down the row without even asking any questions. I started to follow him, but Kahn held out an arm, blocking my path.

  “Ah, ah,” he tsked. “You’re staying with me.”

  Lonan turned, walking backward for a few steps as he grinned at me, like he was laughing that I was stuck here with Kahn!

  “Asshole,” I grumbled.

  “What?” Kahn’s silver brow arched in question.

  “Awesome!” I chimed, forcing a smile. I could tell he didn’t believe me by the smirk twisting his wide mouth, but he didn’t call me on it.

  He moved down the row, picking up where Lonan left off. Rezz stood, bumping his big old head into the small of my back as if to say, ‘get moving!’

  I’m surrounded by assholes.

  Minutes ticked by as I watched Kahn charge the batteries, but the whole Ghishwy thing still gnawed at my insides.

  “What were you like before Ghishwy?” I finally asked, lifting my thumb to my mouth to bite at a hangnail.

  He didn’t miss a beat, like the question didn’t faze him. “I was young when we were remade,” he rolled a bare shoulder. “I don’t remember much about how things used to be, just that we were primitive. I don’t think we had a spoken language yet.”

  Kahn’s brow furrowed, as if he was digging deep to try to remember if that was true.

  “Why do you think the Creators came here?” Lonan’s explanation of what others debated about was still on my mind.

  “Slave labor.” Despite the serious accusation, he grinned at me. “They needed someone to build their cities, their markets, and play in their battle games.”

  I followed him, entertained that he thought more like me. Why would a bunch of ‘deities’ enlighten the natives of Sonhadra? I didn’t think it was out of the goodness of their hearts, and Kahn blatantly thought the same thing.

  “Why did they leave?”

  Lonan stated some valos were waiting for Ghishwy to return. Seemed questionable that they’d come here, smarten the natives up, instruct them to build cities and fight in battles, then just up and leave.

  “No one knows,” his face darkened. “Maybe she got bored with us.”

  Okay, so I didn’t specifically ask about Ghishwy, but it was clear she was the only Creator Kahn was thinking about. I filed that away.

  “She once told us we were one of her favorite creations.” There was a scowl lodged between his silver brows as he charged the next block with a little more gusto. He glanced above toward the surface, the barracuda-sharks—ero’has—lazily moving along. “She probably went on to do what she does best: create.”

  Charged silence followed us the rest of the row, and I started to think there was more between Kahn and his Creator than he was letting on.

  I didn’t believe her intentions were noble at all while she was here, and obviously she was selfish, leaving all these people behind with no closure as they were left wondering if she’d ever come back.

  It left a sour taste in my mouth, and even though I’d never met her, I already disliked Ghishwy.

  TWELVE

  LONAN

  I held her.

  My hands flexed repeatedly—clenching, unclenching—still prickling with sensation I hadn’t felt in many cycles—hundreds of cycles.

  I focused on putting one foot in front of the other on my route home, Zaid walking at my side.

  Charlie.

  Strange name.

  Her pleasant weight in my arms, her interesting scents, and humorous reaction to Rezz stimulated various senses, and evoked long forgotten desires.

  “Dason won’t want to give her up.” Zaid stated what we both already knew. Even in our primitive forms, before Ghishwy, Dason had been a collector of whatever items caught his eye. Pretty rocks and animals mostly.

  Base native desires. We didn’t yet have a spoken language, after all.

  “He won’t have a choice.” The little human staying here would only bring unneeded chaos. Already our brethren were divided. Half wanted Ghishwy to come back, the other half—the mob that wanted to put Charlie to death—didn’t want her returning to rule over them.

  Our Creator was kinder than some of the others, but vain and demanding. I’d once respected and admired that about her.

  After so long though, the four of us were contemplating removing our heartstones and giving up, just as our fallen brothers had done before us.

  Why we were restoring a city that would never be filled again, I didn’t know. I supposed none of us were ready to give up. Nearing, but not yet there.

  “This is bad for all of us,” Zaid grumbled.

  I knew what he meant, and my lips twitched. He felt it too, the curiosity, after the ordinary repetition of day to day existence.

  Charlie’s arrival—despite how she got here—brought an excitement we’d been lacking for endless cycles.

  Ghishwy may have left us with our heartstones intact, granting us the ability to feel and experience emotion and free will, but the disconnect she created between the four of us and our brethren left much to be desired.

  A human female dropping into our lives, well... things just got interesting.

  BY THE TIME I FOLLOWED Kahn back to their home, I was nearly dragging ass. Half the way, Rezz was pushing me along, butting me in the back to make sure I kept up.

  I slogged up the stairs, my hand resting on his large furry head like he was my guide, careful not to touch the gills on his neck. His feather mane tickled the back of my arm, but I ignored it.

  This amount of exhaustion was unnatural for me. On Earth, I had a routine. I went to bed around eleven, slept six hours, went for a run, ate some breakfast, and then went about my day. Even on the days I went in for the mandatory yearly physical tests, I wasn’t this tired.

  My time on the Concord was following me like a level one pickpocket that wouldn’t get lost.

  When I walked through the open door, Lonan and Zaid were sitting at the stone table in their small dining room. Dason rushed in behind me, holding up a large, knotted net with critters that were still moving.

  I backed up, bumping into Kahn.

  “Food.” Dason grinned, making his way to the table and dropping the sack with a loud clack.

  Lonan and Zaid didn’t look happy as they glared at Dason who immediately sighed, sinking down onto the bench.

  “Did you trade for these?” Zaid jabbed a thick finger at the moving sack. I was suddenly reminded that he could crush my head with one hand, and I had yet to apologize for punching him.

  Even though I could’ve broken my wrist... But that was beside the point.

  “There’s plenty more where that came from,” Dason muttered, stepping around the question. “Nio won’t miss one bag.”

  Lonan and Zaid eyeballed the creatures that reminded me of mutant-sized purple shrimp. Beady black eyes pointed at various angles, and long antennae swiveled in every direction as they tried to escape the bag.

  One did, falling to the floor, its hard shell clicking against the stone before Rezz pounced.

  “Rezz!” Dason stood, but the lion-bird was too quick, running to Kahn’s bed where he made quick work of the critter, crunching sounds filling the silence.

  I couldn’t help but snicker. It abruptly ended when all eyes turned to me. “What?” I shrugged. “Rezz has to eat too.”

  Kahn shut the door, joining the others at the table, and I followed, plopping down on the bench next to Dason.

  Kahn reached for a critter, but Zaid grabbed his wrist, stopping him, and grumbling, “If we eat it, we’re only encouraging his habits.” />
  Zaid let go, but instead of Kahn sitting back down, he fished an alien shrimp out of the net and pointedly bit the spot behind the shrimp’s head. A gross crack filled the air, and I watched as Kahn went about peeling open the shell and digging out the raw meat.

  Zaid and Lonan almost sighed in unison before they, too, grabbed a shrimp and started eating.

  From the tension in the air, and what I heard, it seemed Dason had kleptomaniac tendencies. I believed it, considering he stole me straight from the bank I’d been kneeling at.

  “Smile, Zaid.” Dason dug in, a playful smirk lifting a corner of his mouth. “It’s your favorite.”

  Zaid grunted, looking nonplussed as he fished more meat out of the shell and into his mouth. “Tastes better when it’s a fair trade.”

  “Tastes fine to me.” Kahn grinned, tearing into his second.

  From across the table, Lonan slid two giant squirming shrimps my way, their glassy eyes pinning me as they tried to scoot away.

  What was it with these guys? Kahn tossed a live fish at me the first day I got here, and now Lonan was giving me alien shrimp like it was a plate of medium rare filet mignon.

  My mouth watered at the thought of steak.

  I eyed the alien men around me who seemed to be in foodie heaven. I gulped, trying not to gag. Kahn moved quickly, catching one of my shrimp that nearly freed itself off the edge of the table and straight into Rezz’s waiting jaws.

  “Not hungry?” Lonan asked, his sharp fangs crunching into the neck of a critter before he tore off the head and started working on the shell.

  My stomach gurgled. I was plenty hungry. I could eat an entire oinker. Cooked.

  “Uh, I think we just eat food differently,” I scratched at my chest. “You know, you guys eat it while it’s still flinching, and I like mine dead and thoroughly cooked.”

  “Is this healthy for you?” Lonan paused his feasting. “Everything you eat must be cooked?”

  “Unless I want to die, yeah.”

  They all froze, as if I’d said something blasphemous.

  “What?” I croaked.

  “You would die?” Dason asked beside me, his expression horrified.

  “Okay, maybe not literally.” I tilted my head. “Well, maybe literally. Humans are sensitive to bacteria, and heat kills the bad kind.”

  Before I could explain further, Lonan leaned over the table, scooping my shrimp, biting their necks, and then setting them down in front of me. His hand hovered over their purple bodies and he broiled the critters in record time.

  They shriveled just a little, curling and turning a vibrant violet, and I suddenly wished I had some cocktail sauce to dip them in.

  “Thanks,” I told Lonan as he sat back down, resuming his meal.

  “You’re welcome, Charlie.”

  The others slowed their movements when Lonan said my name, and I scratched at the back of my neck. His self-assured voice made my skin prickle pleasantly.

  Peeling off the shell like I remembered doing when I was younger—back when my dad would pick up a bushel from the local market when he was stationed on the US east coast—I bit into the flesh.

  I could feel their stares as I chewed the strangely textured alien shrimp. It had a bit of a rubbery crunch. Wasn’t as good as the oysters, and I think I liked the fish I had on the first day the most.

  They chatted and I zoned out, my mind wandering to what Preta was doing at that moment. Was she scared? Hungry? Taking down some monster like a badass and feasting on the flesh of her enemy?

  I grinned.

  My eyelids grew heavy when I finished one of the shrimps. Words from this morning entered my thoughts, and I wondered what I said in my sleep to allow these guys to learn English.

  I wasn’t aware of any human that could learn a language in a couple days. A week, maybe, but not a couple days. Not enough to understand it.

  It made me wonder just how quickly their alien brains worked.

  I tried to remember any dreams I had that would make me scream, but nothing came to me. After my short stint in Concord, I speculated if their experiments fucked with my head in a way I didn’t even realize, which would’ve been a feat, considering all the shit I’d seen with my now ex-career.

  Project Nomad was a team specifically for the “behind the scenes” world issues with a network of operatives—only a few I’d ever met—and the project had been my entire life.

  Being recruited right out of high school, thanks to the strings my dad pulled and the surprising numbers on my aptitude tests—no really, surprising, because I was sure I had no idea what the hell I was doing—I’d had no life experience sans the mundane life of a student and army brat.

  I went with it, because the idea behind the project—saving some innocents by snuffing out a few monsters—sounded like a noble idea. That, and what the hell else was I going to do? It was either work for the US government or get a degree that would eventually be useless once they found a way to hand it over to AI.

  I may not have loved my career but at least I had one. I got to travel, it paid well, it made my dad proud, and yes, every once in a while, I’d felt taking down one of my targets actually made a dent in the cesspool.

  It wasn’t all peaches and cream—which I’d never tried, and probably never would now unless there was some equivalent of an alien cow and peach trees around here—because the truth was, I killed people.

  Unsavory people. No, monsters. I had to dehumanize them in my mind.

  The first assignment I ever had, I nearly botched because I was so afraid. Every training simulation under the sun couldn’t have prepared me for my first kill.

  I’d been so nervous—being in close proximity to someone whose heinous crimes I’d read about, and who had a scarily impressive murder count—that I puked in the bathroom beforehand. When my cover got blown, and my target attacked, I’d emptied my entire clip into his chest. My finger didn’t get the memo that my target was dead; it just kept squeezing the trigger.

  Ever stepped on a spider, and the creeper was definitely dead, but its leg kept twitching?

  That was my trigger finger.

  The guy bled like a squashed tomato but the tinny clink-clink-clink of my modified firearm, once the clip was empty, echoed in the silence until I snapped out of it.

  Since then, I never used guns. Not until my very last assignment that got me sent to the Concord. Truth was, I just didn’t have the stomach for blood. Silly, right? Unless someone threatened my person, or naturally, my family, violence wasn’t my first instinct.

  My actions on the Concord, and the scuffle with Handsy after the crash, may point to a different theory, but again, they threatened my person and my family.

  My first instinct may not be violence, but I certainly didn’t shy away from it. And frankly, given the chance, I’d rip Handsy and Dr. Hale apart, just as soon as I finished playing with Dr. Friedrich’s entrails.

  Truthfully, when I thought about it, I was... relieved my career was over. I’d found myself, in those last couple weeks leading up to the big bang, paying closer attention to the people around me—their lives, their normal, boring jobs, how they argued or laughed with their significant other.

  It was weird to think I was trying to pick up cues on how normal people operated in their everyday lives, that it would soon be me and Preta acting like those people. Just trying to get to work on time, worrying about affording groceries, and daydreaming about the hot guy in accounting.

  The whole idea made me inner laugh. And sigh. A huge sigh, because I wanted to try it. Maybe I would’ve been great at living like a civilian, contributing to society like a good citizen.

  Pulling myself up, I gave a short wave. “Night guys,” was all I said as I made my way to the couch and sank into its soft cushions.

  I hoped willing myself to not talk in my sleep worked. It was the last conscious thought I had.

  SOMETIMES I’D HAVE these dreams, vivid dreams—you know the ones—and like any red-blooded femal
e with natural physical desires, I’d shove a hand down there and take care of business before fully waking.

  Somewhere in that limbo state where I was sort of conscious of my surroundings, but still half dreaming, I was determined to ride out that erotic encounter with the apartment butler who miraculously had a smokin’ body and wasn’t just a sexy British voice anymore...

  I think I dreamt about Ben—the AI butler—way more than any one person should.

  At least, I used to. My dream, this time around, took place in the dark. I was half conscious, half in that dream state while someone’s big hands were running up and down my back.

  I could feel their huge, warm body beneath me, their muscles jumping under my kneading fingers.

  A stretch of moans rolled from my throat, vibrating through me, and I wasn’t sure if it was the dream me, or the real me. Did it matter?

  I could hear—and feel—him groan, that low timbre resonating through the skin of my palms as I sat up, straddling his torso, my hips grinding down on him when his hands gripped my ass.

  The story of Red Riding Hood flashed through my mind and I giggled.

  “Oh my,” I thought, “what big hands you have, Grandpa.”

  Okay, so I changed it up a bit. Dream me did that sometimes. I didn’t even care that the guy concealed by darkness below me didn’t quip, ‘all the better to grope you with, my dear,’ because he was already groping with a gusto that didn’t require words.

  I rolled my hips against his torso, my body trying to guide me lower for something to impale myself on, but his strong hands kept me in place.

  This dark stranger was a tease.

  I mewled my dissatisfaction, but I wasn’t disappointed for long. One of his kneading hands traveled over the cheek of my ass, his thick fingers tracing the seam of my wet pussy. Excitement shot through me. My body was completely ready for something, anything!

  “Yessss,” I hissed, rocking back when his finger prodded my entrance, as if he were testing me, unsure of how I would react.

  The tip pushed through, slowly, up to the first knuckle.