She lifted the canteen out of the river, closed it, shook off the droplets of chilly water from its exterior, and returned it to her bag. After she’d filled the other, she clipped it on her belt next to the small blaster at her front. Gathering her feet beneath her, Yuri stood and turned.
And found herself suddenly face-to-face with an alien, her eyes locking with his—one of which was vibrant magenta, the other rich cerulean.
She froze, unable to speak, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but stare. Her skin prickled, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose.
The teal-skinned male daevah in front of her stared right back. His purple hair was tousled, with a loose braid hanging down one side of his face. Short eyebrows of matching color rested over his mismatched eyes. Markings, almost like raised scars, stretched out from the corners of his mouth up to his pierced, pointed ears, with another cutting through his lips and down his chin. A final set ran from his hairline to his cheekbones, lined up perfectly with the centers of his eyes. His lean, athletic body was clad in black, form-fitting armor, which was comprised of hundreds of interlocking plates that covered him from his feet all the way up to just under his jaw.
The daevah’s gaze shifted to look past her for an instant. It was only then, during that brief break in eye contact, that she noticed the blaster in his hand.
A soft whine started in the back of Yuri’s throat.
The alien shook his head and brought a finger to his lips.
Eff. That.
Yuri spun and ran. “Thargen!”
The alien spat out a curse behind her.
“Busy,” Thargen growled.
His voice led her eyes to him; he stood in front of a tree a few meters away with his back toward her, hands positioned as though they were on his dick—but his head was turned to the side to stare at another daevah, this one holding a long, sleek rifle with the barrel aimed directly at Thargen.
Though his hair was styled differently—it was gathered in a neat ponytail, and the sides of his head were shaved—the second daevah looked exactly like the first.
Yuri halted, eyes flaring wide. Her fear shot up several notches.
“We’ve come to help you, terran,” said the daevah behind her.
“You’re not fucking touching her,” Thargen snarled, turning toward Yuri.
“I will shoot,” the second daevah said. “Hands up, vorgal.”
“No!” Yuri dropped her hand toward her blaster.
Before she could close her fingers around the grip, a strong hand clamped around her wrist and yanked her arm away, spinning her to face the first daevah. He dragged her closer, and something moved behind him—a long, thin tail, flicking either in restlessness or agitation. It swept up between their bodies and plucked Yuri’s blaster from its holster.
“Thank you for the warning, brother,” he said, though he did not look away from Yuri. His tail lifted the blaster high, dangling it by the trigger guard. “Why would a slaver allow his slave to carry a weapon?”
Yuri yanked on her arm, but she couldn’t break his hold. “I’m not a slave.”
“Release my zoani,” Thargen said with a snarl. “Now.”
She turned her head to glance back at him. He hadn’t moved from his place, and though he’d raised his empty hands into the air in surrender, his lips were peeled back, and his golden eyes held that primal fire. He was on the verge of Rage. She could almost feel the heat baking off him despite the distance separating them.
“Zoani?” the first daevah asked. “A vorgal calling his slave zoani?”
“I’m not a slave, and he’s not a slaver,” Yuri gritted through her teeth.
“Not slavers, Kier,” the second daevah said in a flat voice. “These are more smugglers.”
Kier tightened his hold on Yuri’s arm, making her cringe. “Kidnapping, transporting, or selling, it’s all one in the same, Kayl.”
“You take your fucking hand off her,” Thargen roared, lowering his hands and taking a step closer to her.
Kayl’s weapon jerked slightly and fired, producing a piercing but barely audible sound. A cloud of dirt sprayed from the ground within a few centimeters of Thargen’s foot.
Yuri’s heart leapt into her throat.
Thargen snapped his head toward Kayl, teeth bared, and snarled, jutting his hands back into the air.
“Don’t shoot him!” Yuri turned her face to the daevah holding her. “I don’t know who you are, but we’re not smugglers. We were kidnapped on Arthos and escaped when the ship crashed here. Just please don’t hurt him.”
Kier stepped back slightly without relinquishing his grip and ran his eyes over Yuri from head to toe and back again. “Rather well equipped for escapees, aren’t we?”
“Her clothes are twice her size and we don’t even have any fucking shoes,” Thargen said. “You wanna talk well equipped, how about you tell us where you got those weapons and armor? That shit isn’t cheap.”
A corner of the Kier’s mouth drew back, altering the angle of the scar-like line leading away from it. “All the others we have seen had orange markings on their clothing…” After a moment’s pause, he glanced at his companion. “Yes, I do know it is possible to change clothing. I’ve done so on a few occasions, myself.”
Kier narrowed his eyes, shifting them between Yuri and Kayl. “I’m sure terrans are capable of it, but this one? It does not seem likely.” Another second or two went by before he huffed through his nostrils, released her arm, and took a step back. “I am not taking her side!”
Yuri frowned, brow furrowing. Confusion blanketed her mind, making her fear suddenly less immediate and the situation seem more surreal. “Um…what would I be capable of?”
“Being a slaver,” Kier replied before rolling his eyes and shooting another glare at Kayl. “Smuggler. Is it really the time to correct my terminology?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” asked Thargen.
“My brother, currently. He seems to enjoy making me look foolish when I need to be intimidating.”
“Must you speak out loud?” asked Kayl, still betraying no emotion in his voice.
Kier threw up the hand holding his blaster and shook his head. “Yes! That is what people do, Kayl. They speak.”
Yuri glanced at Kayl, whose eyes matched the colors of his brother’s perfectly except for the fact that those colors were flipped—they were like mirror images of one another. His weapon was still trained on Thargen; she would’ve sworn the daevah hadn’t moved a centimeter since she’d last looked at him.
Thargen growled. “Berrok’s bare ass, am I gonna have to be the voice of reason here?”
“Are you two speaking to each other? Like, in your minds?” Yuri asked.
“Yes. But Kier prefers the sound of his own voice,” replied Kayl.
“Sounds like a friend of mine,” Thargen muttered.
Yuri looked between the two brothers, a flare of excitement brushing aside both her confusion and her lingering fear. “That…is so cool!”
“Nothing cold about it, unless you are referring to his personality,” Kier said in a low voice.
“Are you two capturing us or what?” Thargen asked. “If you need some time to punch each other until you have this figured out, we can just go. Won’t even kill you.”
“We are not letting smugglers escape,” said Kayl. “You will give us information on your camp.”
“We’re not smugglers,” Yuri and Thargen said in unison.
“Then where are your collars?” Kayl asked.
Yuri reached up—slowly—to touch her neck. “We never had collars. We weren’t part of their original…cargo.”
“Convenient story,” Kayl said flatly. “Likely a lie.”
“Call her a liar again and see what fucking happens,” Thargen said with a growl.
“You will force me to shoot you, and I will continue my work.”
“It’s not a lie,” Yuri said hurriedly, glancing at Thargen. His muscles were bulging, his sk
in was tight, and barely perceptible tremors were running through his raised arms. She had the sense that it was taking him more effort to remain still than it would have for him to launch a vicious attack.
She returned her gaze to Kier. “You mentioned the orange markings. Those were on the males that came into Starlight Trance, the nightclub I work in back on Arthos. One of them got aggressive with me, but Thargen”—Yuri pointed at her vorgal—“beat the crap out of them before they could hurt me. They got kicked out, but they were apparently waiting for us when we left because the next thing I knew, I was waking up in a cell on their ship. Their leader, Tae-something—”
“Taeraal,” Thargen interjected.
“Yes, thank you. Taeraal said they were taking us to Caldorius. But then we crashed here.”
“And you simply tossed off your collars and strolled into the wilds?” Kier asked, one of his small eyebrows quirking.
“I told you, we never had collars. We weren’t part of the original cargo. We were just...a bonus. They were pissed off that Thargen kicked their asses. All the other captives had collars on.”
“And all this equipment?” Kayl asked.
“Shit they were smuggling in the cargo hold,” said Thargen.
“I was not asking about fecal matter.”
“I think it’s an expression,” Kier offered.
“And you could have informed me of that when you sensed my confusion, brother.”
Kier snickered. “Would you also like me to hold your hand and carry your gear?”
Yuri couldn’t keep a smirk off her lips. As alien as they looked and spoke, the interactions between these daevah reminded her so much of the way her and her siblings interacted with one another.
“Anyway,” Thargen said, “we took some of this sh—stuff from the hold on our way out. Some of it was from a skeks scouting party we killed about a week ago. The rest came from those fuckers we killed yesterday.”
“That was you?” Kier smiled, and light sparked in his eyes. “Would that I’d been around to see it happen. How did two of them end up in that pit?”
Thargen chuckled; there was humor in it, but it was also laced with Rage, making it almost threatening. “First one wasn’t paying attention while he was walking. Second wasn’t fast enough to stop me when I kicked him.”
“So…I think we’ve established that we aren’t slavers or smugglers, right?” Yuri said, offering Kier a tentative smile.
Thargen grunted. “I’d say so. Now who the fuck are you two?”
“Hunters,” replied Kayl.
“Well, that’s descriptive.”
“Annnd what are you hunting?” Yuri asked.
“Slavers,” said Kier. “We’ve an official Consortium endorsement to bring them to justice by any means necessary.”
“Great, we’re on the same side,” Thargen said. “Can I put my fucking arms down now?”
Kier ran his eyes over Yuri again and frowned slightly. After a few moments, his tail drifted forward and offered her blaster to her. “Yes, I am serious, Kayl.”
Yuri lifted her hand and hesitated before carefully taking the end of the blaster’s grip between her forefinger and thumb, letting the weapon dangle as she lowered it into its holster. “Thanks.”
After giving Yuri a nod, Kier shifted his gaze to Thargen. “You may lower your hands, vorgal.”
Yuri turned to face Thargen. His hands were still raised, and his muscles still looked pumped up, full of Rage, even though his eyes were a touch clearer than before.
Thargen tipped his head toward Kayl. “He gonna lower his railgun?”
“Perhaps,” Kayl said, “after you place all your weapons on the ground.”
Thargen’s answering laughter bubbled up from his gut, making his shoulders shake. “How about you kiss my ass?”
Yuri stepped away from Kier and went to Thargen, wrapping her arms around him. He didn’t hesitate to return her embrace. His heat baked into her, as reassuring as it was concerning; he always ran hot, but this was definitely at a level he only reached through Rage.
“Kayl…” Kier warned.
“Don’t touch my zoani again, and we won’t have any problems,” Thargen said.
Kayl’s eyes—so similar to his brother’s and yet somehow so much darker and deeper—ran over Yuri and Thargen slowly. She felt more like she was being scanned by a computer than a person. Several seconds of silence passed, during which Kayl offered no sign of his thoughts or intentions, displaying not even a flicker of emotion—and during which Thargen’s hold on Yuri strengthened and he infinitesimally shifted his body as though to shield her with it.
Finally, Kayl lowered his railgun.
Thargen’s tension eased, though not by much. “Perfect. Now we’re all friends. You have a ship?”
Kayl’s tail swished from one side to the other and went still again. “We do.”
“Then let’s get off this planet already.”
“Our business here is not complete.”
“You said you hunt slavers,” Yuri said. “How did you know they were here?”
Kier moved to stand next to his brother, dropping his blaster into a holster at his hip. “We’ve been monitoring Taeraal and his branch of the Zulka gang for several months. When they left Arthos with their cargo, we followed.”
“You knew they had a hold full of slaves and let them leave?” Thargen asked.
“It is about more than just the slaves, vorgal,” said Kayl.
Just like that, the heat and tension in Thargen’s body was rising again. “Enlighten me then, daevah. We were in that cage for close to a week, at least. Who knows how the fuck long everyone else was behind bars with those fucking collars on. So what else was there to wait on if you already knew about all those other people?”
Yuri slid her hand under Thargen’s backpack and smoothed it over his heated skin.
“There were whispers that Taeraal would meet with another slaver during his journey to Caldorius,” Kier said, brows falling low. “Someone far more powerful and far more influential.”
“Someone we have been hunting for many years,” his brother added. “A tretin pirate called Vrykhan.”
“Vrykhan?” Yuri asked. “That sounds familiar. Didn’t…didn’t Taeraal mention that name?”
“I think he did,” Thargen said with a grunt. “Something about having him lined up as a buyer on Caldorius.”
The twins’ faces lit up.
“Tell us everything,” Kier said.
“Not much else to say. He was bringing the shipment to a buyer on Caldorius, said that name. That Vrykhan doesn’t like to wait and they didn’t want him pissed off or something like that.”
“That is all?” demanded Kayl. “There was nothing else?”
“That’s it,” Yuri said. “He only spoke to us that one time, and that’s all he said about Vrykhan.”
“We followed the smuggler ship for six days,” Kier said, “waiting for the Zulka to meet with Vrykhan’s ship.”
“But the information we received was incorrect,” said Kayl.
“They were meeting on Caldorius. That is rare for Vrykhan, based on what we’ve learned about him over the years. But after those six days, we were drawing too near to Caldorius, and we are not welcome there. We could not let the smugglers land. So we fired on the ship.”
“That’s why we crashed,” Yuri said.
Thargen thrust an arm forward, jabbing a finger at the daevah even as he clutched Yuri a little tighter. “You fuckers almost killed everyone!”
Kier scowled. “We sought only to disable the engines.”
“And I did not miss my mark,” said Kayl. “I never miss.”
Thargen’s voice dipped toward a growl as he said, “And yet here the fuck we are.”
At that, the corners of Kayl’s mouth dipped. The movement was infinitesimal, but it was undeniable, and it was the strongest display of emotion Yuri had seen from him thus far.
Kier sighed, tipped his head back, and sh
ook it. “If you are angry, Kayl, feel free to say something. Why must I be the one to hear it? And don’t you dare say—”
“Because I hear it every time you are angry, Kier. Is it not enough that I must feel it regardless?” Kayl said. “Do you prefer it this way? Do you prefer for our new friends to hear it?”
“Yuri, when we get home, I’m gonna need you to tell everyone I know about this. About how I was the fucking reasonable one,” Thargen said. “Can I get you two to stay on subject for a minute?”
Yuri pulled her lips into her mouth and bit them to prevent herself from smiling.
“They engaged their jump drive despite the damage to their engines,” Kayl said firmly, glaring at his brother. “That is why the ship crashed.”
Kier returned his attention to Yuri and Thargen. “It took days to track the jump path. We came as soon as we knew where the ship came down.”
Kayl also swung his eyes back to Yuri. “The outcome is regrettable.”
“We’ve never wished harm on innocents.”
“But so long as there are survivors remaining, our task is incomplete. We need to extract what information we can from Taeraal and eliminate his crew.”
“And save the captives,” Kier said from the side of his mouth.
“Is that not obvious? Must I state every detail?”
Thargen cleared his throat. “If you want to just let us know where your ship is, we’ll go wait for you there while you work out your family issues.” He leaned his head closer to Yuri’s, and in a loud whisper said, “I say we just take the ship. They’re so busy arguing they won’t even realize.”
Yuri drew back her arm and poked him in the side.
He flinched and released a soft grunt.
“I cannot say that you are giving us much reason to trust you, vorgal,” said Kier.
Thargen straightened. “Goes both ways. Anyone who can’t take a joke is worthy of suspicion.”
“It is my understanding that jokes are meant to be humorous,” said Kayl.
“Not necessarily,” Thargen countered. “So, we going to this ship or not? I’m getting my zoani home one way or another, and I’m not gonna stand here until another pack of skeks show up because they were lured over by your arguing. How the fuck did you two manage to sneak up on us without giving yourselves away?”
Savage Desire (The Infinite City Book 4) Page 33
