Cursed

by Keri Arthur

  I immediately fired both blasters. The creature’s body shuddered and twitched as it was hit multiple times, but it didn’t seem to care. It certainly didn’t stop. I kept the triggers pressed but switched aim to its head. The bullets ripped into flesh and bone, tearing the left side of the Skaran’s face apart. Blood and brain matter flew, but the damn thing refused to drop. Even though it should have been dead, it kept coming at me.

  I swore and dove to one side, hitting the ground hard enough to drive a grunt of pain from my lips. Metal claws grabbed at me—claws that should have had no force behind them—snagging the skin just under my metal-threaded leather protection vest and digging deep. I twisted around and fired again, demolishing the rest of the Skaran’s head and scattering its remaining brains across the nearby earth. And then fired several more shots, just to ensure it really was dead.

  When the blaster clicked over to empty, I scrambled up and away from the thing. Rennie swung around as I did so, his blaster centered on my torso, but relaxed when he saw me. “Balcor and Caracal units, report.”

  Answers came in. No one lost, all Skaran dead. Relief surged and, just for an instant, my legs felt like water. I took a deep breath in an effort to calm my racing heart, then reloaded the blasters and walked over to Rennie.

  A second Skaran lay at his feet, a cavity where its chest and heart had once been. They were humanoid in form and had to be at least ten feet tall, with two yellow tusks that curled upwards from either side of their wide mouths and eyes that were as pale as the moon above. Downy brown hair covered its flat face and nose, but the hair on the rest of its body was thick, coarse, and at least a foot long—and even longer around its genital region, which indicated it was a he, not a she. His feet, like his hands, ended in metal claws; they weren’t natural but something akin to metal gauntlets.

  This close, their body aroma was even more horrendous.

  Rennie drew a knife, cut the two six-inch tusks away from its mouth, and then clipped the bloody items to his utility belt.

  I frowned. “Why did you do that?”

  “Two reasons. The first and most important is the fact that the Skaran apparently believe a soul cannot move on if the body is defiled in such a way.” His expression was grim as it met mine. “And trust me, they do far worse to our fallen.”

  Not something I wanted to think about. “And the second reason?”

  “The tusks fetch a good price in Rodestat—they use them to make jewelry and the like.” He shrugged. “We might as well profit from the bastards given the toll they take on our people.”

  I didn’t like the idea of anyone profiting from death, but maybe that was an opinion born out of ignorance.

  He glanced down at my bloody shirt and frowned. “How bad is that wound?”

  “It sliced me but not too deep. I’ll heal.” I’d certainly had far worse over the years of fighting against my brother.

  “It’s still best to grab the medikit and spray it with antiseptic sealer,” he said. “They aren’t the cleanest creatures, and even their metal claws carry a multitude of germs.”

  I immediately swung off my pack, grabbed the kit, and treated the wound. It was deeper than I’d initially thought, and though my Sifft heritage would have healed it, it was better not to take chances.

  Once I was done, he pressed the halo again and ordered everyone to move on. The rest of the night passed slowly and without further problem.

  By the time we made it back to the garrison, flags of yellow and orange were streaming across the sky, and my body felt like lead. All I wanted to do was fall into bed and sleep away the pain of my aching legs, but we had to report to the captain first

  Over stews laden with meat and vegetables—not exactly breakfast food, but appreciated by my stomach nonetheless—we learned that we were the only team attacked. Donal’s unit—which had also included the relief team, who had to learn both territories as the watch worked on a two days on, one off basis—had seen no trace of them. From Marx’s expression, I gathered this was unusual, and it made me wonder if it had anything to do with the odd behavior of the drift that had attacked us.

  With the reports done and breakfast eaten, I grabbed a shower, collapsed into bed, and fell into the sleep of the truly exhausted.

  I was woken by someone lightly kicking my foot. I muttered something unintelligible even to my ears and received a chuckle in response.

  Donal. And he sounded far too cheery after such a long damn night.

  “Up, Princess. Otherwise you’re going to miss target practice.”

  “I did additional target practice last night. I’d rather sleep.”

  He tsked. “And here I was thinking you wanted to be treated like everyone else and not like a princess.”

  I opened an eye and glared at him. He was leaning against the outer wall, his crossed arms testing the strength of his shirt’s stitching. He’d obviously taken a shower, because his dark hair was damp and, rather amusingly, still held away from his face by my silver clasp. “What’s the time?”

  “Four thirty.”

  I groaned. “I could have had another twenty minutes sleep.”

  “Up, lazy bones, or I will personally drag you out from under those covers.”

  “Take one step toward me and you’ll find yourself encased in stone.” I scrubbed a hand across my eyes, then threw my feet over the side of the bed and sat up. Everything protested. Everything ached.

  “I’m not looking forward to tonight,” I muttered, gingerly rubbing my calves. It didn’t do a lot to help.

  “The first couple of weeks are the worst. After that, you’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll have worn out my feet and legs by then.” I pushed upright with a groan. “Why are you in such a jovial mood? Has the wind been whispering good news rather than bad for a change?”

  “Indeed she has.” His blue eyes glowed and his expression was filled with delight. “My sister had her baby last night—a bonny boy.”

  “Congrats.” I reached for my clothes and began to dress. “Is this the first time you’ve become an uncle?”

  “No, but it is the first boy born. My sister has had five girls to date.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “And is this a problem?”

  He laughed. “Of course not—girls are the key to our future, after all. But it is the boys who carry the name into the next generation.”

  I sat back down and dragged my boots closer. “And you? How many little highlanders have got running around at home?”

  “You’d think such a magnificent specimen such as myself would have a handful by now, wouldn’t you?” His serious expression was somewhat destroyed by the amusement creasing the corners of his eyes. “But in truth, I’ve yet to find a woman worthy of bearing a child of mine.”

  I grinned, even as an odd sense of relief stirred. “Meaning you’ve yet to find a woman willing to put up with your lofty opinion of yourself, not to mention your tendency to shed your kilt at the slightest provocation.”

  “Despite events at Divona,” he said gravely, but with increasing amusement, “I can assure you that I do not shuck my kilt for all and sundry.”

  “For which,” a female voice said from the other side of the cubicle, “we are all eternally grateful.”

  “Merlyn, of course, makes this statement without having seen me sans kilt.”

  Merlyn’s pale face appeared over the top of the cubicle. Given she was no taller than me, she had to be standing on the bed. “He does have an inflated opinion of himself, doesn’t he?”

  “Indeed.” I finished tying up my boots and then rose again. Various bits still complained, but moving about did seem to be helping. “But then, that can be said of all men when it comes that part of their anatomy.”

  “I’ve found the ones who boast usually have less reason to do so. It’s often such a disappointment that I’ve given up men entirely.”

  “Perhaps you would have been better choosing a higher class of manhood,” he commented.

&n
bsp; “They’re uncommonly difficult to find where I come from,” she said. “But then, Reighton has double the number of women to men. The good ones are usually snapped up pretty early.”

  Reighton wasn’t a place I’d ever heard of, but her thick accent suggested she was from the Seilia region. Faloria was the capital, and the lord who ruled it a weed of a man with icy fingers.

  I shivered and shoved the memory as far back into the memory banks as I could. As I walked toward the cubicle exit, Donal pushed away from the wall and stepped back into the walkway. “Shall we move this discussion on to the shooting range, ladies?”

  “As long as we’re talking about guns,” Merlyn said. “I’m all for it.”

  Donal opened the door and ushered us both through. I flashed him a smile of thanks and then said, “I don’t think I want to ask what other type of range there could be.”

  “It involves man parts,” she said, as she fell in step beside Donal and me, “and lots—and lots—of booze before the contest can begin. I witnessed it once in a Falorian alehouse.”

  “The Falorians are very easily amused,” Donal commented. “And quite easily beaten.”

  My gaze shot to his. “You’ve participated in such an event?”

  “I might or might not have had a drunken moment or two in a Falorian alehouse when I was younger,” he said. “Only the wind knows for sure, and neither of you can hear her whispers.”

  “The Wildman is wilder than I imagined,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow. “And do you often waste time imagining things about me?”

  “Having seen you sans kilt, no, I do not.”

  “Oh, that is very wounding, Princess.”

  I grinned. “Yeah, I can see the tears forming as I speak. Shall we change the subject before you embarrass yourself with emotion?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Emotion is never something to be embarrassed about.”

  “Depends on the emotion,” I said. “And the reason. There are definitely some that are better well leashed.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but the fading amusement in his eyes told me he understood. And, rather oddly, that understanding was accompanied by a wave of anger so fierce it made my breath momentarily catch.

  He barely knew me, but he was angry for me.

  Which was strange—and certainly not something I was used to, let alone knew how to handle.

  Thankfully, the conversation moved on to safer subjects, and our banter continued through our practice session. Even so, I had an uneasy awareness of being watched. I glanced down the range a couple of times, but no one seemed unduly interested in me. Not even Dravan, who was sharing a firing cube with Sage.

  Dinner and the daily debriefing followed, and then we were once again on our way. This time, Rennie had me lead the two teams and the relief team—a tough ask given I’d only walked our patrol route once, and an order I suspected might have come from Gallego. I had no doubt he was testing me—or rather, testing my memory. He might have accepted that I wasn’t useless—that I could protect myself—but he still doubted my leadership skills.

  But with the earth guiding my steps when my memory failed, I reached the location where last night’s attack had happened—only to discover the Skaran bodies were gone.

  “Are there scavengers in the area?” I said.

  Because if there were, they were the tidiest scavengers ever. Nothing remained of the Skaran—not a scrape of hair or piece of bone.

  “There’s little life in these lands beyond birds, who can fly above the Skaran’s capacity to climb and leap at them.”

  “So the Skaran retrieve their dead?”

  “Always. They share some type of telepathic link and know the instant one of them dies.” He grimaced. “It’s part of the reason why they consume the brains of their victims—they believe it enhances the ability of their own minds.”

  “The more I learn about them, the less I like them,” I muttered.

  He shrugged. “All creatures do what they must to survive, and there isn’t much in the way of protein out in the Skaran grasslands. The dead provide that.”

  I stared at him for a moment, not wanting to believe what his words implied. “They eat their own dead?”

  I was all for doing what you had to for survival—it had been my methodology for the last twelve years, after all—but eating your kin really was a step too far.

  “They use everyone and everything,” Rennie replied. “What isn’t immediately consumed is either smoked or pickled for leaner times.”

  “Meaning they’re far more intelligent than I’d given them credit for.”

  “That’s a trap most new recruits fall into,” Rennie said. “It’s easy to view them as animals given their looks, but I’ve heard it said they’re simply a branch of humanity that took a very different development path.”

  “Do they live in communities like we do?”

  He nodded. “There are five neighborhoods within the Skaran lands, and two are within striking distance of Rodestat.”

  I skirted the edge of a small but deep crevice—one that had the trickle of water at its base, even though there were no streams in the immediate area. “Has the garrison ever mounted an attack against them?”

  “Yeah, and it didn’t go well for us.”

  “Was that because the terrain doesn’t allow the use of vehicles, or because the Skaran can move far faster than we can?”

  “Both.” He shrugged. “For the most part, the commander and the queen are content to simply keep them out of the Wild Lands as much as possible.”

  “It’s done at a pretty heavy cost, though, especially given the Skaran haven’t the capacity to do major damage to either the garrison or Rodestat.”

  “Just because they currently haven’t doesn’t mean they won’t,” he said. “These encounters do at least give us some idea of any advancement they might have made.”

  “I guess it’s not like they’re using either Rodestat’s or Divona’s finest in those encounters.”

  He smiled. “Until you and Lord Donal came along, that was certainly true.”

  The rest of night passed uneventfully, and we arrived back at the garrison not only half an hour earlier than the previous night but to the news that Donal’s team had been attacked and was still making its way back. They had three casualties, though apparently there was nothing serious and Donal wasn’t one of the injured. Which was a relief.

  Once we’d checked weapons and ammo back into the armory, I dismissed my team and then glanced at the clock tower. Thankfully there was still plenty of time for a long, hot shower before breakfast. Of course, a bath would have been even better for easing the aches, but they weren’t exactly thick on the ground in the garrison.

  None of the day unit leaders was in the bunkroom, although the steam that still floated in the air suggested I’d only just missed them.

  I grabbed a couple of towels from the rack and headed into the stalls. The water was hot and, for several minutes, I did nothing more than simply raise my face and let it sluice down my body in an effort to wash away the aches. Then I picked up the soap and cleaned away the sweat and grime. But as I switched the water off, an odd sound caught my attention. A heartbeat later, the earth whispered a warning of ill intent.

  Dravan was in the bunkhouse.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  The earth couldn’t tell me who accompanied him, but the weight of their footsteps made me suspect it was Kaid, as Nash walked lightly while Sage was somewhere between them both.

  I flexed my fingers to keep a lid on the surge of annoyance, and then grabbed my grubby shirt and tugged it on. It clung to my damp skin, but I didn’t really care. Once I’d quietly pulled on my pants, I tucked the knife into the waistband near my spine, and then strode barefoot out of the bathroom.

  Dravan was halfway down the room but came to an abrupt halt when I appeared. Kaid was near the door, no doubt acting as lookout.

  I stopped just out of the Dravan’s reac
h and said, my voice scathing, “I expected this sort of stupidity from Dravan, but not from you, Kaid.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Why? I’m in the garrison for a good reason—and it’s not because I’m good.”

  “And also not too intelligent, given that being caught in this room without a legitimate reason is a chargeable offense.”

  Dravan sneered. “Charge away. I’d rather sit in a cell than fight those Skaran bastards any day.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “So the man who thinks he’s stronger and faster than me is now afraid to fight? Interesting.”

  He scowled. “That’s not what—”

  “I don’t care what you fucking meant,” I cut in. “If you want to test your strength against mine, then have some goddamn honor and issue a formal challenge.”

  “We both know you wouldn’t accept—”

  “If, however,” I continued flatly, barely controlling the cold rage that stirred through me and echoed through the concrete under my feet, “you were hired by my brother to kill me, then you sure as hell had better succeed the first time. If you don’t, I will gut you and dance barefoot in the warm flow of your blood.”

  Anger flared in his eyes, but it came with a touch of confusion. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned your brother, and I still have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  I snorted. “If you’re as clueless as you claim, why call me trull? That’s a slur only my brother would use.”

  My brother, and half the court.

  Dravan waved a hand. “Maybe I heard a whisper or two. Can’t remember where.”

  That last bit was a lie, but I didn’t think the rest of it was, and confusion stirred. Vin had certainly ordered Dravan placed into my unit, but maybe he’d simply hoped the thug’s natural dislike of female authority figures would achieve what he couldn’t.

  But the fact that Dravan knew the slur meant he’d been speaking to someone who hadn’t yet shown their hand. Which at least made tactical sense—my brother knew just how well I could fight, and it was unlikely he’d leave my destruction to someone as volatile and stupid as Dravan.

  I flexed my fingers and said, “So why are you in this room, Dravan, if not at my brother’s bidding?”