1
Kira
“No! Noooooo! Don’t take my baby! Please…I’ll do anything!”
The anguish in the young mother’s voice tears at my soul. It’s not the first time I’ve heard a girl screaming and begging during the Xalthurians’ annual Breed and Reap. I can’t remember a time before the screams, though I’m told it exists…existed.
But this scream is different.
This time the voice belongs to my sister, Elle. With my poor eyesight and a wall of Xalthurian soldiers between us, I can’t see her. But I can clearly hear her, begging the reaping force for mercy.
We’d been working in the community potato field when the Xalthurians appeared in the sky with one short electronic blast of sound. Their way of ringing our planet’s doorbell, before landing their bright silver ship in one of our settlement’s many barren red clay fields.
The Xalthurians always came in the same way, and at the same time of year, during the month of what the New Terrhans called May, even though a year in this solar system was made up of fourteen months, not twelve like on the old planet. But they almost never come on the same day or even the same time of day for that matter. Last year, when Elle was twenty-one they came in the very early morning. But this year it was late in the afternoon.
Before the ship appeared, Elle and I had been debating about whether to keep pushing in the community fields until sunset or take a break. Elle was tired after working the fields all morning with the red and ebony swirled hybrid infant she hadn’t been allowed to name perched on her back in a sling. She’d wanted us to go home to curl up for a nap with the baby tucked between us. I was bone tired, too, not to mention hot—that afternoon, the sun seemed really eager to remind us that scorching season was right around the corner. But I wasn’t on full rations like her, and I worried we’d both get punished with an even smaller share tonight if any of the leaders saw us cutting out early.
To nap or not to nap, that had been the question. Until the Xalthurians showed up, dressed in three distinct ways, as they came bounding out of the ship.
From experience, I knew those dressed in leather loin cloths were here to grab the twenty-one year-old females and drag them back to the ship for the Breeding Ceremony. While the ones wearing silver uniforms with a diamond-eyed insignia stamped into the back were here for last year’s crop of babies.
Breeders and Reapers, that’s what we called them. And as always, they were accompanied by a few green Xals, dressed in flowing white robes. From what I could tell, these green guys were the only Xals who could actually understand and speak our language. That’s why we called them Diplomats, even though they rarely try to negotiate anything with our settlement, just instruct us in what the other Xalthurians wanted us to do.
I had given my sister a sympathetic look. Though she hadn’t named the little hybrid boy, I knew it wouldn’t be easy for her to let him go. Most of the mothers with baby boys went directly to their red clay houses, so that they could grab a few things to send back in the blankets of the babies they’d never see again: drawings and trinkets and sometimes little notes written in the New Terrhan language, even though they knew the babies would most likely never be able to understand it.
It’s always been like this. For as long as I can remember, and maybe for as long as Elle can remember, too.
But Elle hadn’t gone back to the house like the other mothers of hybrids boys when the Xalthurians set down. Instead she’d stood there frozen, her short curly black hair almost seeming to stand on end as her dark eyes darted back and forth.
At first I thought she was afraid of encountering another Xalthurian. She was still pretty traumatized by the Breeding Ceremony. However, when a group of Xalthurians in silver uniforms had approached her, she’d taken the baby out of the sling she’d made for it, and instead of handing the squalling child over, she’d hugged it close and ran. Ran and ran until she reached a cliff and couldn’t run any more.
And now here she stood, surrounded by Xalthurian Reapers at the precipice of a cliff with a fifty foot drop down to a dry red clay bed that might have been a river a few millennia ago. On the other side of the Reaper wall, my parents and just about every human not getting bred or reaped has gathered to watch the scene unfold.
I still can’t make out much, but I hear Elle and her half-Xal baby sobbing wildly as she begs the Reapers not to tear them apart. And I can tell they’re ignoring her pleas, when all but two of the Xalthurians start advancing on her in a precise arc.
“Elle!” I scream, squinting into the blur of Xalthurian uniforms. My gut cramps in fear. I’ve seen a few last minute tug of wars over baby boys before. But no one, and I mean no one has ever defied the Reapers this badly, not just by running but refusing to hand the baby over. I can’t imagine what they’ll do to my sister. Maybe shoot her dead, like the hot-headed young men who futilely try to save their girlfriends from the Breeding Ceremony. I’ve got to help her—that’s all I know. It doesn’t matter if they punish me, too.
I lunge forward, but my parents grab onto my arms, holding me back with all their might. “Don’t,” my mother whispers on the right side of me. “I told her not to get attached to that thing.”
I recoil at her dismissive tone. “It’s not a thing, Mama. It’s her baby! How can you be so callous?”
Mama stares back at me with a bitter expression on her haggard face, a used-to-be-pretty version of my sister’s. “A baby she knew from the start she wasn’t ever going to be able to keep. It’s like the leaders keep telling you girls. You can’t treat the boys like real babies. She knew that. We all know that!”
Then Mama yells out, “Elizabeth, just give them the baby! Don’t make it any harder than it has to be, girl.” Her voice is aggrieved, as if the only one responsible for this precipice stand-off is my sister.
My throat clogs with tears. I, too, hadn’t been able to harden my heart against the unnamed swirled baby. This very morning while Elle warmed up water to give him a bucket bath, I’d cooed at him and marveled at how his little clawed hand folded around my index finger with a stronger grip than any human baby I’d ever encountered.
They were really going to take him and never let us see him again. No, I had to help her. But my parents held strong, my father insisting in a hard voice, “If you interfere, they’ll snap your neck. Without even thinking about it. I saw them do it to folks plenty of times during the first few breedings and reapings before we learned to stay back. You can’t help her, Kira. They’ll kill you before you even get close. Look at them!”
I do … I do look at them. And he’s right. Even in blurry vision, the Reaping Force soldiers are huger than huge. The tallest full human in our village stands a little over six feet, but I’ve never encountered a Reaper who stood shorter than seven.
I’m standing close enough to the wall of soldiers surrounding my sister to tell this multi-colored Reaping Force is heavily muscled on top of being tall, without even an ounce of fat that I can see underneath the sleeveless silver jumpsuits they wore.
Their uniforms gleam underneath the sun, like they’re made of some kind of metal. But unlike the few metals we’d managed to make down here on our scraggly planet, the uniform material molds over their thick bodies like a second skin.
At least, most of them wear silver uniforms. One of the Xalthurians who hadn’t advanced with the rest of the Reaping Force wears a gold jumpsuit. He has deep dark blue skin, white hair tied back in a top knot, and a commanding air. I sense his importance, even before he turns his head with a predatory grace to address one of the jade green diplomats in those strange clicking, back-of-throat scratching sounds that the Xalthurians called their language. Maybe he has some kind of authority here?
As if confirming my guess, the jade Xalthurian calls out to Elle in a smoky accent, “Hand over the Xalling. Hand him over now and our Tel promises, you will not be made to suffer for what you have done here today.”
My blood boils with rage. Once they take away Elle’s
baby, that would be punishment. A lifetime punishment that my sensitive sister will most likely never get over.
I can hear Elle weeping uncontrollably on the cliff’s edge, and I easily imagine her holding her baby close, as if her dark brown arms could possibly provide any kind of defense against eight huge Xalthurians.
“Somebody help me, please!” she cries out to her fellow humans. “Please don’t let them do this. Please don’t let them take my baby!”
A few of the humans answer her like our mother did. Reminding her that she knew this day would come. That she shouldn’t be upset and should hand the hybrid over before the Xals shoot her or worse.
But I strain against my parents hold, wanting to help her. Needing to go to her, even if that means my own death. The Xalthurians are closing in, and any second now they’ll—
It happens so fast, it takes me many, many moments to process what has occured.
Elle is screaming and sobbing and then suddenly…she’s not. Her voice and the baby’s crying cut off without warning.
Then the next thing I hear is my mother screaming and wailing, “Elle, no, nooooo! My girl, nooo!!!!” And my father saying, “She’s gone. She’s gone.” His voice grim and shocked as his hands fall away from my arm.
She’s gone … Elle took another step back and now she’s gone. I can’t even be sure if she did it on purpose or if she didn’t know … didn’t know she had nothing left to step back to, except air. Either way, the result is the same.
A moment ago she was there, begging the Xalthurian Reapers not to take her baby, and now, she’s just…not.
The pain.
It’s like the time I broke my wrist. How I felt the snap, but somehow didn’t get it. Didn’t feel the pain until I raised my arm and saw the way my hand was hanging at a funny angle. Only then did I understand. Only then did I rush over to my older sister, crying out, “Libeth! Libeth! It’s broken! It’s broken!”
It’s broken.
Libeth … Elizabeth … Elle … my sister. She’s gone. She’s gone. And so is her baby. Because of the Xalthurians. Because of the Reapers who kept on advancing on a mother who didn’t want to lose her baby.
The world becomes a scream.
And I can no longer be held back.
I fly forward and shove the Xalthurian in the gold uniform—the Tel who made her such a magnanimous offer. Up close I see that he’s got to be at least seven-five. So tall, it feels like he could step on me. I don’t care. I want to fight him. I have to fight him. For Elle, who never had a chance.
When he turns around to see who’s shoved him, I swing on him, morphing into a hitting and slapping fury, until he pushes me back, the tips of his dark blue fingers pressing into my chest. It’s just his fingers, just the tip of his fingers, but I go flying backwards and land butt first in the red clay dirt.
I don’t stay down for long. Not because I quickly leap back up. I wish. But jumping to your feet is kind of hard to do when you’re wheezing because all the breath’s been finger shoved out of you.
No, I get back up, because the overlarge Xalthurian helps me back up…with a huge hand wrapped around my neck.
My inner rage scream cuts off abruptly and the sound of the real world comes back in. Suddenly, I can hear the crowd murmuring and my parents yelling in the background. Begging the Xalthurian with his hand around my neck for mercy on my behalf.
“Please, please…” my mother says. “Don’t make me lose two daughters today!”
The dark blue Xalthurian ignores her, his gaze lasering in on me. His eyes are red where mine are white, with a pair of black diamonds where a human’s pupils would be. He glares at me, the ridges bristling above his nose, but other than that…nothing. After a few moments of being almost but not quite choked, I realize he’s waiting, probably expecting me to beg for my life like my mother did.
But I don’t beg. I stare the huge alien in his red diamond shaped eyes. And I refuse to flinch. “She was my sister,” I tell him. “She wasn’t just a womb.”
Then, I spit at him.
Because if I’m going to die today. Hell if I’ll go out begging this Xal for anything.
When my spitball lands square in the alien’s face, the human crowd goes deathly silent. And so do the Xalthurians.
But only for a moment. Then an enormous golden yellow Xalthurian with a long black braid, click roars and comes charging forward with the rest of the reapers right behind him.
They advance on me, the way they advanced on my sister.
Still, I’m not scared. The pain and hollowness of loss dominates my spirit. There is no room for fear. I refuse to look away from the blue alien, who still has his clawed hand wrapped around my extremely fragile neck. As it turns out, my father was pretty damned right about how easy it would be for one of the Xals to snap it. Only a matter of flicking his wrist, I suspect for a Xal as large as this blue one.
But then, instead of flicking his wrist, the Xal brings his free hand up, holding it in the air. This one action stops the yellow Xal and the rest of the advancing force cold, as if they’re machines who’ve been powered down with the motion of a hand.
Then, to my total surprise, instead of snapping the fragile column that connects my head to the rest of my body, he tilts my head to the right, baring the left side of my neck, like a vampire in one of the old entertainments we still watch on our wrecked colony ship.
I only know what he’s doing because of what happened during last year’s Breeding Ceremony, when one of the loin cloth Xalthurians burst into our house, looking for eligible 21-year-olds to drag onto their circular ship. In accord with the agreement between our two species, each New Terrhan girl must be given a birth year stamp in the weird Xalthurian number system of dots and lines. It can only be seen under UV lights by human eyes.
But the Xals don’t have human eyes. The loin cloth Xal easily checked my age before moving on to assessing Elle and dragging her out of the house. And now I can feel the golden uniformed Xal’s red eyes on the side of my neck. I’m nineteen now, not eighteen like I was when they took Elle. Still not twenty-one.
However, that fact brings no relief. Looking at the huge blue alien, I have to wonder if my too young age even matters. This Xal stopped those Silver Uniforms with just a raise of one hand. He could probably do anything he wanted to me. Right now. Right here. Including breeding me before I reached the contracted age.
His minions wouldn’t stop him. And though I love my fellow New Terrhans, I had a bad feeling they wouldn’t either.
We’ve been living on severe rations for months now. Would any of the nearly starved humans really risk the huge shipment of meat, seedstock, and supplies the Xalthurians always brought with them as a “gift” for allowing them to enact the Breeding Ceremony on one girl who dared to spit in an alien overlord’s face?
His eyes still locked on mine, the Xal’s other hand goes up again, this time with a beckoning motion.
A green alien comes forward. His eyes carefully lowered.
The Xal in the golden uniform says something to him, throat clicking and scratching.
The green Xal’s diamond-shaped eyes raise to meet mine, his expression almost carefully neutral. “Tel D’Rek wishes for me to translate what he’s saying to you. Word for word.”
“Just kill me already, no speech needed,” I answer hotly.
But Tel D’Rek starts speaking anyway, the jade Diplomat translating during his pauses. “I will be back … I will make it a special point to come back for you, little human … in two solars.”
My eyes shift from the Diplomat to the alien who’d been addressed as Tel D’Rek. He stares back at me, his eyes burning. Then he leans his head forward and before I can even think to jerk back, I feel his tongue on my neck, licking up my birth code in one intense swipe.
My entire body shivers with a sensation unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Not disgust though. Dear moons, it’s definitely not disgust. A strange heat appears between my legs, burning as red as his e
yes. Overshadowing the anguish seething through my bones.
But before I can even process what’s happening to me…to my body…he sets me down. Then with a deliberate turn, he walks back to the ship, the rest of the uniformed Xalthurians falling in behind him. Leaving me to stand there with my heart thundering in my chest and wondering if he was serious about coming back after I turned twenty-one. Oh moons…
Even as my parents fall all over me, hugging me and crying, I continue to wonder this.
And fail to convince myself the answer to that question is anything but yes.
2
Kira
“Explain to me exactly why we’ve literally dug our own graves again?” my best friend asks, as we use two buckets to scoop water out of the shallow holes we made a week ago—holes not graves.
I refuse to call them graves even if they had been dug to measurements that would allow us to lay prone inside of them.
“It’s the only way to escape the Breeding Ceremony,” I insist. “Believe me this isn’t fun for me either, Zin.”
That was the understatement of the year—or as that jade Xalthurian had called it, the solar. I curse the last two days of rain storms that had made this action necessary. Yes, yes, our crops sorely needed the liquid blessing. In the first days of May, our people are already down to the very last of our rations and many of the elders who still pray to the old planet gods had been sending up supplications for rain.
But guess what? Bailing muddy water out of a hole big enough to fit a human is crazy hard work with only pigeon jerky in your stomach.
Funny but true, of all the animals they’d Noah’s Arked in the colony ship from Earth, pigeons were the only ones who’d somehow managed to thrive on this harsh red planet. So now when the crops ran low and there weren’t enough of the light purple egg-laying creatures we called Xalthurian chickens left to feed the town, pigeon jerky it was. Until the Xalthurians “blessed us” with a new shipment of food supplies when they arrived for the Breeding Ceremony.
The Brothers Nightwolf Complete Trilogy: A Sci-Fi Shifter Paranormal Romance Box Set Page 74
