Forced To Kill The Prince

by Hollie Hutchins

  After those sounds came the voices: Ronan and Benno’s voices, shouting out in alarm, in shock and anger: “What in the name of—?” “Who in the hell are you?” “What are you doing here?” What is the meaning of this?” And in the midst of the enraged and outraged voices of the Princes Cassie could hear the sound of other voices, not speaking coherent words, but screeching. Screeching? Yes, high-pitched screeches, the sounds of something either not human—or not fully human. She felt as if she should recognize the sounds. But it was all happening too fast; the only way to understand what was really happening would be to step to the threshold and look.

  She crept forward to the frame of the doorway, put one hand on the frame, and peered around it to peer back into the bedroom. There she saw them: Ronan and Benno crouching naked and furious on the bed, faces livid, bodies ready to morph. And standing in a shambles of broken glass and the parts of the skylight caning, three figures already transformed from human to something else had laser assault guns trained on the Princes. The intruders were wearing harnesses, leggings, and boots; what was exposed of their bodies was covered with fine, dark fur. Their animal faces had large ears that would have looked comically out of proportion if the snouts beneath the stubby and flaring noses on their faces were not filled with fangs. Under their arms and connecting with their ribs and sides were stretchable, veined membranes of flesh. Cassie was horrified now to recognize who and what had invaded Ronan’s mansion.

  Werebats!

  Of all the shape-changing breeds, werebats had the worst reputation, whether it was earned or not. The other breeds, including the werewolves, weretigers, werebears, and weredragons, were all known for ferocity and cunning. But the werebats had long been associated, however unfairly, with treachery and crime. For some reason it was the werebat breed that produced more thieves, marauders, smugglers, and pirates than any other, and they were widely despised across human-occupied space.

  The three who had just crashed through the skylight of Ronan’s bedroom did everything to validate and affirm their people’s reputation.

  “What do you want here, you wretched thieves?” Ronan demanded.

  The werebat raider nearest the bed sneered, “Have we come at an inopportune time? We knew that you were arrogant, righteous, and full of yourself, Prince Benno. We didn’t know you were given to lying with other males. We seem to have interrupted a tryst.”

  At this, Benno flew into a rage and everything happened at once. He lunged forward on the bed and shifted to bear form at the same time, his claws ripping at the fabric of the bedspread. He roared in a voice to shake the walls of the bedroom, “For that I’ll KILL you!” His hulking ursine form leapt at the leader of the werebat raiders.

  Ronan shouted, “Benno—no!” The werebats raised their weapons as one, the barrels of their guns all trained on Benno. The shocking sound of laser discharges ripped into the air once, twice, three times, even as Benno loomed over the werebat leader with fangs bared and foreclaws outstretched and ready to tear the bat raider to shreds. Struck by laser fire, Benno reared back, roaring again, and sprawled to the floor on one side with a horrible, crashing thud.

  Seized by horror and wrath, Ronan himself stood up on the bed, his skin turning scaly, his head sprouting horns and his tail unfurling behind him. “Bastards! Filth! You’ve invaded my home, injured Benno! For harming a bear Prince you’ll all go to the disintegrator—assuming you’re alive when I’m done with you! And where is Cassie? What have you done with her?”

  Standing over the fallen Benno, the man-bat said in an ugly, rasping voice, “And you’ve sent our brothers to prison already, you and your testimony. Had you accepted our family’s offer of a share of our profits in exchange for silence about our operations, you wouldn’t be about to die now. And we know nothing of anyone else in this house. Have you some other lover we’ve yet to find?”

  Cassie’s blood turned to ice at that last part. If the werebats were to search for her, they would not have far to look. They’d be upon her in only a few steps. What was she to do now?

  “You’ll never live to find out!” Ronan hissed. In a heartbeat he morphed to semi-dragon form, becoming a two-legged, winged reptile, and bolted from the bed with the speed of a striking python. He moved too fast for the werebats to follow with their rifles. With a slash of his tail he sent one werebat flying. With a slash of his claw he knocked the weapon from the hand of another. And with a lunge he was upon the leader and seized the wrist of the bat-being’s hand that held the rifle.

  The weredragon and the werebat struggled for control of the weapon, lurching and thrashing their way back and forth and from side to side, filling the air with the sounds of roars and screeches. The bat raider who had lost his weapon tried to make a dive and grab it from the floor, only to meet with Ronan’s flailing tail that knocked him back into a wall.

  From her vantage where she had yet to be spotted, Cassie watched the battle unfold and her heart sank knowing that Ronan was outnumbered and at any moment would have at least two rifles trained on him. Her heart pumped and her adrenaline surged, and her mind emptied of thought. Perhaps it was purely in the absence of thinking that she did what she did next. The werebat with whom Ronan’s tail had connected first was on the floor, momentarily dazed but quickly recovering his senses. He would be quick to spring to his feet and take aim at Ronan, perhaps cutting him down in mid-struggle. In a mind-searing instant, Cassie, still clad in nothing but her open shirt, leapt from the threshold of the bath, whirled about looking for anything to use as a weapon, and found a large and no doubt precious ceramic urn on a table near her. She grabbed it just as that one werebat returned to his feet and spotted her. With a snarl like a big cat on the attack, Cassie charged forward and feinted to one side. The dagger of laser energy from the man-bat’s weapon singed through her hair and burned just the surface of her cheek; had her head been a few centimeters to the left, it would have caught her square in the face. She came within striking range, lifted the urn, and slammed it against the man-bat’s head, shattering the urn and dropping her foe senseless to the floor.

  Still grappling with the leader of the bats in an arm wrestling match for his rifle, Ronan called to her, “Cassie, get out of here! Run and hide! Go!”

  Just then, the struggling leader of the bat raiders, with a vicious screech and a heaving strain of his arm muscles, lurched the barrel of his weapon down at an angle and fired off a shot. The dreadful sound of the shot pierced the air—and the laser beam punched its way hotly through Ronan’s right wing.

  Sudden, searing pain sent Ronan’s dragon head rearing back with a blood-curdling bellow. He released his grip on the bat leader and toppled backwards onto the floor, hissing and panting, wings and tail twitching. The man-bat, freed from the dragon’s grasp, recovered his balance with a stagger and aimed his weapon downward, this time directly at Ronan’s chest. “Now, Your Highness,” he rasped, “we take payment in full for your crimes against our family.”

  The moment hung suspended in time for Cassie, like a static hologram. In a moment that seemed to last forever, she watched the man-bat take aim at the wounded dragon Prince on the floor. She watched his finger twitching on the trigger and Ronan seeming to tense his entire body to make one last, desperate leap which would very likely be the last thing he would ever do in his life…

  …and, barely even aware that she was doing it, Cassie dove down to the floor where she had just dropped the other bat raider with the broken urn. She grabbed up his laser, spun around and went into a crouch on one knee, took aim at the leader of the bats, and squeezed off a shot. The laser beam sliced the air and connected instantaneously with the man-bat’s shoulder. There was a terrible popping sound and a burst of light and sparks where the beam hit. The leader of the bats staggered back with an ear-splitting screech, and turned in Cassie’s direction, ready to fire off a return shot at her. But the pain in his shoulder slowed him down just a fraction, and Cassie was too fast for him. She fired again, this time hitt
ing him right between ribs and stomach. The shot made another pop and burst, this one perhaps worse than the last. The bat leader’s body shook, he gave a screech that turned to a choke, and he crumpled and fell over, to lie unmoving.

  The remaining man-bat who had been knocked into the wall opposite Cassie recovered his senses and scrambled to his feet. He brandished his weapon, his bat eyes darting from Ronan on the floor near him to Cassie getting up from the floor across the room—but Cassie already had her weapon aimed, giving her the advantage. “Don’t move,” she said. “I got your brother and I’ll get you too.”

  The last of the attackers froze, not daring to test Cassie’s reflexes after seeing the fate of his brother. That gave Ronan all the chance he needed to lash out with his tail and catch him in the ankle, knocking him off his feet and spilling him onto the floor. Before he could react, Ronan was on his feet again and his tail was whipping through the air at him. The tail struck hard with jarring blows that Cassie could swear she felt herself all the way over where she stood. Her teeth clenched, she watched Ronan slam his tail again and again on the man-bat’s face and stomach, not even able to count the blows that fell so fast and so cruelly. Ronan, she could tell, was taking out his full fury at this attack on his home and his person against this one pitiful would-be assassin. By the time he was finally done, the last man-bat was unconscious and Cassie expected him to remain so for a week.

  Dead silence fell on the bedroom. Ronan stood over the last of his foes, still hissing and panting away, and now Cassie could once again hear her own heavy breaths over the pounding of her blood in her ears. At last Ronan turned in Cassie’s direction. “Are you all right?”

  Suddenly, Cassie felt a stabbing pain in the sole of her left foot and realized that in the heat of terror and the rush of her own adrenaline she had been blocking it. She cried out and dropped back to one knee. Looking down, she could see the blood she was tracking onto the floor. At once, Ronan came bounding over to her, scooped her up, and put her down on the edge of the bed. He lifted her leg while she winced from the pain, and saw a bleeding gash in the sole of her foot. “You must have stepped on a piece of broken glass from the skylight,” he said. He morphed back to human and looked up at her, brushing his hand against her face and making her wince again as his fingernails grazed the place on her cheek that her opponent’s laser had singed. “And you’re very fortunate you didn’t take a hole right through your head.”

  Cassie breathed out hard, her breath turning ragged with everything that just happened now suddenly hitting her. Ronan leaned down to the floor and grabbed up his shirt and handed it to her. “Use this on your foot,” he said. “Keep pressure on it; stop the blood.”

  Cassie did, pressing the garment to her foot and gritting her teeth against the pain. In the midst she managed to ask, “Who are these…people? And what about Benno?”

  They both looked at Benno lying naked and still on the floor with the dead bat leader and his unconscious brother. The bear man had morphed back to human in the commotion. Ronan left Cassie’s side long enough to check on his fallen friend. He found a pulse, weak and thready, and saw on Benno’s back the exit wounds of the laser beams that had struck him, with reddened flesh around them. He rolled Benno over and saw the entrance wounds, one near his sternum and one right below the ribs. “Benno is alive—barely,” said Ronan. “I don’t think he’s bleeding internally; lasers cauterize the wounds when they pass through. But he needs attention, just as you do.”

  “He needs it more,” said Cassie. “But Ronan…who are they?”

  Staying at Benno’s side, Ronan replied, “Brothers of the Ixari crime family. They’ve had secret deals with the importers and exporters that my family works with, going back for years before I was born. Not long ago I exposed them and they tried to pay me off by cutting me in on their deals. I turned them down and turned them in. This was about payback. They just didn’t expect the payback would be on them. Now they’ll be going the way of their cousins.” He glanced over at the one that Cassie shot. “Well, except for their big brother over here. He’ll be going to the prison morgue.”

  “How did they even get in here?” Cassie asked. “I didn’t see any security guards or drones, but you must at least have alarms.”

  Ronan reached for the harness of the dead bat leader and pulled part of it away, exposing patterns of circuitry on the underside. “This is how. Their gear contains stealth field emitters to make surveillance systems ‘blind’ to them. It lets them pass by drones and sensors, go into secure places without tripping alarms. It’s banned and highly illegal technology, as you can guess. It will add some years to the sentences of the other two.” He faced Cassie. “That was very impressive shooting on your part.”

  “That was all reflex,” Cassie said. “I’ve been in a few rough situations as a transport pilot, going through some sketchy sectors of space. But never anything like that.”

  “It seems to have prepared you more than you thought it did,” said Ronan. “You saved me and Benno. And very possibly…you’ve saved yourself.”

  Cassie blinked, suddenly feeling dizzy at Ronan’s words after this whole ordeal. “What…what do you mean?”

  _______________

  Ronan secured expert medical care for both Cassie and Benno. Cassie’s foot and face were healed in a day’s time and Benno was kept in hospital to recover after emergency resuscitation that just barely pulled him through. Ronan arranged for Cassie, after treatment, to be placed in his personal custody.

  For a couple of days Cassie began to feel almost more like a guest in Ronan’s mansion than an indentured servant and a prisoner. He assigned her to her own luxurious guest bedroom and had her waited on and pampered. She was allowed to take walks, using a cane, on the grounds of his estate. She saw little of him during those couple of days, and when she did he treated her with concerned attention—but did not command her to give herself up for sex. Cassie began to see this time as a reprieve, expecting that before very long he would have her naked on her back again, and eventually so would Benno.

  Which made it all the more surprising when Ronan approached her on the third day as she climbed the wide stone staircase just off the gardens, leading up to the back of the mansion. When Ronan called out her name and came bounding quickly up to her, she could not read the expression on his face, which worried her. What could he want? Was her reprieve over?

  Reaching her side, Ronan said, “I have news, Cassie. Very important news for you.”

  Anxiously, Cassie asked, “Is it the Magistrates? Did the court say something new about my sentence?”

  “Yes, I just came from the court and they did have something to say. I’ve been instructed to return you to prison immediately.”

  Cassie shut her eyes against the despair that welled up inside her. “Oh no. For what? For killing that Ixari? I’m being taken out of your custody and put back in prison for that?”

  Ronan put a hand on her arm, gently, with a surprising softness. “Cassie…look at me,” he said. She did, and he continued, “You’re to return to prison…to have your tracker removed. You’re not to be incarcerated again, certainly not after you protected my home and saved my life and Benno’s. Your sentence has been commuted. This time tomorrow you’ll be a free woman. Your ship will be released from impound and you’ll be free.”

  She almost burst into tears to hear it. At first she clasped a hand to her mouth to stop herself sobbing. Then she took down her hand and said in a choking voice, “Ronan, do you mean it? They actually commuted my sentence?”

  “They did,” he replied, openly smiling now. “And there’s something else you should know.”

  “What?”

  “The surviving two Ixari brothers struck a bargain with the court to have the charges of using stealth technology waived—in exchange for testifying about their families’ raiding and pirate activities in this sector. It seems the Ixaris and their associates have been responsible for attacking ships and stealing cargos—
and one ship they attacked was yours. So not only did you save Benno and me and protect my home, you caught the ones responsible for you being unjustly imprisoned. By protecting me, you exonerated yourself.”

  Now Cassie’s tears did flow, as freely as they did in Ronan’s bath after lying with him and Benno. She wept openly, her mind and heart excited to know that soon she would be back aboard the Lightbend with every port of call in known space awaiting her. Without even thinking, she flung her arms around Ronan. He held her close and was more than glad to do it.

  At length Cassie’s composure returned enough to part the hug. Still keeping her close, Ronan continued, “With your sentence commuted, the court has returned my money and Benno’s and voided your indenture. We—I—have no more claim on you, Cassie. You’re under no obligation to stay with me. But let me ask you this. Having a choice to stay, would you consider it?”

  Taken aback by the question, wiping away her tears, Cassie half-stammered, “Stay? With you?”

  “Yes, Cassie,” said Ronan. “When I learned Benno had purchased your sentence and laid a claim on you, and I looked at your record, I learned about a woman who had declared her independence from everything and everyone and made a life for herself in the galaxy on her own terms, a woman who I might add I knew was as strong as she was beautiful. I optioned you jointly because I knew that you deserved better than to face years of my friend Benno’s dubious tenderness. I thought, in some small way, I could make things better for you. I ask you now, Cassie, would you consider staying with me? Stay for as long as you like: a week, a year—forever. Share my home. Be the female in my bed. Let me take you in bed alone, just the two of us, and let me make up for everything that’s been done to you. Would you consider this? Please?”