Kazan

by Starr Huntress

  Was it fear? Maybe. In spite of the ground rules Elle and I had laid out when we decided to make the most of this time, I couldn’t keep myself from thinking about the future.

  Even with all the bullshit they kept us busy with, or maybe even because of it, I was feeling more connected to Elle than ever. Which was very dangerous. We were nearly halfway through the thirty-day trial period, and all I could think was that I would be happy to start the clock over. I wasn’t ready for it to end. And so there I was, lying awake in bed while Elle slept next to me.

  “Put it on my desk,” she mumbled in her sleep.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I whispered.

  “Good.” She made a short series of noises, then settled back down. I grinned in the darkness of the room, but the smile faded.

  That was the problem. There we were, curled up naked together after tearing into each other at the end of a romp of a day, and she was dreaming about work. The thought of it settled heavily into my chest.

  This woman was completely devoted to her career. It may even have been the thing that defined her, the same way being a soldier was central to how I thought of myself. We both had our heels firmly dug into our own corners.

  I wondered if she would be able to let go of her life as a lawyer if it meant being with me. Before I could even ask myself the same question—whether I would be able to give up being a soldier for her—I had to admit that it was impossible. The whole point of the Earth-Jorkan Protocols was to keep my species firmly in place.

  No, if there was a future for us, she was going to have to come to me. It would be a lot to ask of her, and I felt foolish letting myself think that she even wanted to be with me. These were some pretty big presumptions I was letting myself make in the small hours.

  Still, I felt sure that she must be battling the same things I was. The way she looked at me, and the way we clicked so well together couldn’t all be one sided. Could it?

  We may have made what amounted to a blood-pact to keep feelings out of all this, but I had to admit to myself that I was doing a pretty terrible job of it. It had never been a problem for me to keep sex and feelings separate, but this was different. I was in very great danger of feeling like we were pretty perfectly matched.

  With that unsettling thought, I drifted off to sleep.

  When I awoke, the sun was just beginning to peek through the windows. My first instinct was to wake Elle up and see if she was up for a morning workout…a naked workout. But when I saw how peaceful she looked, and that little trickle of drool pooling on her pillow, I figured it was best to let her sleep.

  There would be plenty of time for sex later. Let her be a lawyer for a little while longer.

  “What about the Clarke file?” she murmured as I slipped out of bed. Yeah, she was still at it, alright. Half of me thought it was adorable, and the other half was unsettled. That part of her life was entrenched.

  I dressed and set out to the beach to see if I could still catch a bit of the sunrise. The air was crisp out, and I was ready to get a bit of sand between my toes. After two weeks of resort living, I found myself wondering if the bar was open.

  As I got closer to the water, I could hear voices over the sound of the surf. These weren’t the sounds of people chatting, or even an early morning yoga session. I was familiar enough with giving orders to know what they sounded like, even before I could make out the words.

  “Stop fucking around and get it unloaded. We don’t have time for that kind of crap.”

  I recognized that voice. It took me a second, but I was able to place it as Alzon before I rounded the corner and saw him. He was standing on the loading end of an air truck which was parked haphazardly by the water.

  A boat was bobbing just offshore, laden with substantial wooden packing crates. Several resort employees were heaving those boxes onto the beach, then loading them into the truck. All those cheesy smiles were gone now—these guys were working. Standing guard mere feet away from them were two gray-skinned Jorkan carrying handguns.

  “We’ve got exactly three minutes before we need to get all the sand cleaned up, you assholes, so move it!”

  Something about all of this felt wildly illegal. I’d seen enough smuggling in my time to smell it in the air. It hit me that whatever nasty feelings I had carried about Alzon were right on the money.

  Hunkering down seemed like the best option, so I crouched behind a cluster of sun chairs to watch. Just then, two of the flunkies lost their grip on a crate, and it thudded down into the sand, splitting open in the process. A whole clutch of high-powered assault weapons clattered onto the beach, and my stomach dropped right along with them.

  “You stupid fucking bastards!” Alzon jumped down from his perch and looked for all the world like he was about to start raining hell down on the two goons stupid enough to drop the cargo. Two others came rushing over from the boat.

  “Keep loading those guns onto the truck,” he yelled at them. “We’ll handle this.”

  As I watched them stuff the weapons back into the broken box, I kept thinking one thing: This is bad. This is really, really bad. My military training was kicking into high gear and screaming at me to run down there while they were distracted. They would be too busy fumbling over the guns to see me coming, and I could start breaking heads before they knew what hit them.

  Calm down, I told myself, gripping the pile of chairs I was hiding behind. Don’t be a hero. There were maybe six or seven people down there. Even with three occupied, that would still leave four on their feet and at the ready. I was a big guy, but those odds still stank.

  There had to be something I could do, but the guy in charge of the resort was the one in charge of whatever nefarious shit was going on down there. Who was I even supposed to talk to about this? One thing was certain, those weapons weren’t sanctioned for civilian use. They were heavy duty, military-grade firearms.

  It was time to get the hell out of here, slip back into bed before anybody saw me, and spend the entire day drinking and getting laid. Let this be somebody else’s problem. As attractive as the little devil on my shoulder sounded, I knew that was bum advice. Well, the latter part of it, anyway.

  It was going to take some real doing to figure out who I could turn to about this. My first thought was to get back to Elle. She had a head for this kind of thing. She would be able to size up the situation and know exactly what course of action to take.

  The crates were all on the truck now, so Alzon gave it a couple of hard cracks with his fist, and it glided off out of sight.

  “Alright, guys. Start raking over this sand. I want it to look like the tide just went out.”

  If I was going to get out of here, now was the time. Pretty soon, they’d all be making their way back up the hill, and I needed to be gone when they did. Backing up in my low crouch, I was starting to turn around when something cracked me in the back of the skull and turned out the lights.

  Elle

  “G’morning,” I whispered, lazily rolling to the side and draping one arm over Kazan’s chest. Except Kazan wasn’t there. Running one hand through my hair, I stifled a yawn and sat up on the bed. My eyes immediately darted to the bathroom, but the lights were off.

  Getting up, I put my slippers on and wandered through the empty cabin, looking for any sign of Kazan. The rosy morning sun slipped past the curtains, pushing back the shadows and announcing the start of a new day, and so I made my way to the kitchen and turned on the kettle. Nothing beat a good cup of coffee to kickstart my brain.

  “Kazan?” I called out, but silence was the only reply. Maybe he had decided to hit up the resort’s gym, or go for an early run on the beach. Still, it was odd. Whenever he did that, he always let me know before slipping out of bed and leaving. Wrapped in little more than a bedsheet, I dragged my still half-asleep body to the cabin’s entrance and opened the door.

  A small layer of morning fog floated on top of the ocean, but the warm sun was already tearing it apart. The waves lapped gently on the sand
, as they always did, and a sense of stillness permeated the entire world. Most of the guests occupying the other cabins were still asleep, and there was absolutely no one on the beach.

  It would’ve been a peaceful scenario for me to contemplate, except I was starting to get worried about Kazan. Where could he possibly be? It wasn’t like him to leave the cabin without letting me know where he was going.

  Trying not to act like a paranoid housewife, I wandered back into the cabin and decided to finish brewing my coffee. I was still putting in the sugar when I heard the wood boards on the porch creaking under someone’s weight. Smiling, I didn’t even need to look up as I heard the door open.

  “Where were you?” I asked, reaching for another cup so that I could offer him some morning coffee. “I didn’t notice you leaving the bed, and I was starting to get—who the fuck are you?”

  Standing behind me were two Jorkan males, their scales gray and worn down. One of them was missing a horn, and they both wore a black shirt and pants, with heavy boots on their feet. They didn’t look friendly. At all.

  “You’re gonna have to accompany us,” the one missing a horn said, taking a step toward me. Instinctively, I backed away from him and ended up bumping against the kitchen counter. “Come on, let’s not waste any time here.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Miss, I’ve told you that you must come with us and—”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I shot back, feeling more than a little uneasy.

  “Yeah, you are,” he continued, then lifted up the hem of his shirt to reveal a weapon tucked in his waistband. Stunned, I reacted too slowly when he came for me and grabbed me by the wrist. He started dragging me across the kitchen, and only then did I come to my senses.

  Reacting without thinking, I reached out for the kettle and grabbed the handle. Twisting my torso, I threw the kettle at the two Jorkan trespassers, and boiling water flew everywhere. They started screaming and, the moment I felt the pressure of his fingers on my wrist relax, I pulled my hand free.

  “Help,” I yelled, sprinting out the door and onto the sand. I heard their heavy boots on the wooden floor as the men started giving chase. I ran harder toward the ocean and, once I felt the wet sand underneath my feet, turned to follow the shoreline. It was all useless—far taller than I was, the Jorkan closed in on me fast.

  One of them tackled me to the ground, and I immediately rewarded him by kicking sand into his face. Crawling away from the bastard, I only stopped when the one-horned Jorkan appeared in front of me, hands folded over his chest. Grinning, he stepped on my hand, pinning it down with his boot.

  “Let’s stop with the games, shall we?” he growled, and bent over to pick me up. He held me down while the other placed zip ties around my wrists, then tossed me over his shoulder as if I were a sack of potatoes. With only a bed sheet to cover my nakedness, I was pretty sure I even looked like one. Reaching for the radio-like device hanging from his belt, the one-horned Jorkan pressed a button on it. “We’ve secured the human.”

  “Understood,” an eerily familiar voice said through the crackle of static. “The truck is on its way.”

  Just a couple of moments later and I heard the growl of a heavy-duty engine as a truck appeared on the horizon. It made its way straight toward us, then my two Jorkan captors walked around it. They opened the cargo door on the back and unceremoniously shoved me inside.

  “Let me out, you goddamn bastards,” I shouted, banging my fists against the closed door so hard that pain shot up my arms. I only made it worse when I accidently bit my tongue. “Damn it.”

  “Elle?” I heard someone say at the back of the cargo space, the dim light filtering in from the outside only allowing me to see a faint silhouette. That voice, though, I’d recognize anywhere.

  “Kazan? What are you doing here?” I asked, breathing out with relief as he made his way toward me. He also had zip ties on his wrists, and there was a bruise on his left cheek. “What's going on?”

  “It’s Alzon,” he replied, his voice coming out as an angry growl. “That fucking bastard is involved in something shady. I stumbled upon him and some of his men on the beach this morning. They were unloading all these crates from a ship.” Turning, he waved at the crates surrounding us, stacked up to the ceiling.

  “What’s in them?”

  “Weapons,” he said. “Alzon is smuggling weapons.”

  “No way,” I muttered, not sure of what to make of it. Could the polite resort owner really be an arms trafficker? What in the world had I just got myself caught in? “Are you sure it’s him? Did you really see him there?”

  “Yeah, no shadow of a doubt.” As the truck started rolling down the beach, Kazan leaned against the wall of crates and sunk down, sitting cross-legged on the floor. As my body started swaying back and forth from the truck’s motion, I did the same. “I knew there was something wrong about that asshole.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Not much we can do,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “We just have to be patient, wait to see what happens, then make an escape once we have an opening. If these guys are arms traffickers, it’s not going to be easy. They’re used to this kind of shit.”

  “Oh, God,” I whispered, closing my eyes as I felt a sharp stab of fear. I took a couple of deep breaths to steady myself, and we both remained silent as the truck headed to its destination. After five minutes it stopped, and the cargo doors were flung open.

  Squinting, I watched as the two Jorkan from before climbed inside and dragged us both out. They threw us out of the truck’s rear onto a polished marble floor.

  “What the…?”

  I was expecting to see some creepy dark building, but that’s not what I found once I looked up. Instead, I saw an opulent three-story mansion with too many balconies to count, most of the walls made of floor-to-ceiling glass panels. It had a futuristic look while, at the same time, keeping a certain classic vibe about it. All around it was a massive garden, tall hedges keeping the world outside.

  Pushing myself to my feet, I heard the click of shoes against the marble floor, and turned, to see Alzon walking around the truck.

  “Welcome to my home,” he said, showing us a glimpse of his golden tooth. “Glad to have you here.”

  Kazan

  Pacing the length of my cell, it was almost impossible not to let anger consume me. I could feel it simmering under my skin, and my hands seemed to have turned into two permanent fists. I was more than ready to punch my way out of this place.

  With each step I took, I wondered about Elle’s whereabouts, and that just ended up making me feel even angrier and more anxious. Alzon had ordered his goons to separate us after we had been tossed out of the truck, and I had been dragged here, to a moldy hole-in-the-wall prison. The place seemed to have been a wine cellar ages ago, but the wine shelves were now completely bare, and the bars and gate were keeping me in, instead of thieves out.

  “Colonel Kazan,” I heard Alzon say, his voice drifting into the cell from the corridor outside the heavy gate. His soft footsteps echoed throughout the room for a moment, and it took a couple of seconds before his stupid blue face and his ridiculous golden tooth made an appearance. Standing outside the gate, the heavy metal bars between us, he clasped his hands in front of him and smiled. He said nothing for a moment, just staring at me like a fucking creep.

  “You know I’m going to kick your ass once I’m out of here, don’t you?” I growled, walking toward the gate. I went as far as I could, my anger going from a simmer to a full-out boil once I was no more than a couple of inches away from him. “I’m going to beat you into a pulp.”

  “I doubt that’s going to happen,” he said, his voice as smooth as ever. “It’s a shame, this situation we find ourselves in. I’m sure that you agree, don’t you, Colonel?”

  “What is a shame is the fact that you’re a fucking criminal,” I growled. “Who are you selling those weapons to?”

  “Might I remind yo
u that you don’t have the upper hand in this conversation?” Shaking his head as if he were disappointed in me, he pursed his lips. “If you were any other Jorkan, you would have been shot already, your body dumped in the middle of the ocean. Luckily for you, it’s bad business to kill a Colonel in the Jorkan military.”

  “You’re not as stupid as you look, it seems.”

  “Always with the witticisms,” he continued, once more shaking his head. Condescending asshole. “You’re just lucky your death would bring me a lot of unwanted attention right now. Don’t worry, though. As soon as I’ve done what I need to, I’ll make sure your disappearance from the realm of the living will be a swift one. I’ll make it painless, Colonel, and that’s a promise.”

  “Once I get my hands on you, the only thing I can promise you is that I definitely won’t make it painless.” Grabbing the bars, I leaned forward, locking my eyes on his. It only lasted a second, but I saw a sliver of fear dance in his eyes. “What are you trying to do here, Alzon? What are you planning to do with those guns?”

  “So much curiosity.” Laughing, he stepped away from the gate. “Do you really think I’m going to tell you, Kazan? Do you think I’m that stupid? If I were you, I’d just stop with all the questions. They’ll take you nowhere.”

  “What have you done with Elle?” I continued, ignoring his smugness. “That question you better answer right now, motherfucker.”

  “Oh, what’s that? Have you started caring for her?” He smacked his lips together, and smiled. “Seems like all the effort my resort put into this matchmaking process yielded some results, hunh? It makes me proud. I never thought a brain-dead soldier like you would realize just how lucky he got.”

  “What have you done with her?”

  “See, human females are quite exquisite.” Was he ignoring me on purpose? Soon enough I’d be pissed enough to rip the gate off its hinges and shove my fist down the bastard’s throat. “Their leaders are shortsighted, or maybe just greedy. I think the citizens of Earth should know there’s a vast galaxy to be explored, don’t you think? Wouldn’t it be amazing to have this resort teeming with lovely women from that blue planet? I mean, the first time I laid my eyes on Elle...woosh! What a woman.”