by Kate Rudolph
They started to walk, Kayde in the lead. “Any idea where we are?” she asked him.
“That Mara person mentioned that we were in the palace. Based on the mountains in the distance and that faint buzzing sound, I would suggest we are just outside the Governor’s palace. Which means,” Kayde paused and closed his eyes before turning slightly toward the right and continuing on, “the markets and the shuttle station are this way.”
“You think it’s going to be that easy to get back to the ship? We just walk there?”
Kayde didn’t stop moving, but she didn’t need to be facing him to hear the weary tone. “No,” he said. “I am sure this won’t be easy at all.”
Chapter Twelve
HE WAS RIGHT, THOUGH Quinn tried not to hold that against him. The first trouble came from the guards. They mostly stayed out of sight, but every time she and Kayde strayed too far from the direction of the forest they were meant to be heading to, a patrol of guards conveniently came within hearing distance. She and Kayde never saw them, but that was for the best. She didn’t want to think what the guards could do to them if they thought she and Kayde were breaking the law.
They probably were breaking the law.
So even though they knew where the market was and where their ship should be, they were slowly herded out towards the woods which were in the opposite direction of where they wanted to go. Darkness was falling, the sun setting in the distance, and the shadows from the trees reaching out like long grasping fingers to release night from their grasp. If it weren’t for the fear of impending death or the memory of recent captivity, the place would’ve been idyllic in its own way. It almost reminded her of home, of Earth. The grass was green, the trees tall with brown bark and green leaves, but the fruits were different, in bright jewel tones and shapes that looked nothing like anything she’d seen back home. She was tempted to taste, but wasn’t fool enough to give in to that.
No, there was only one temptation she wanted to give in to, and he was walking right beside her. They’d been walking for hours, and Quinn’s everything ached, her toes, her feet, her calves, her thighs, and all the way up the rest of her body. Who knew that walking at a steady pace could give a girl a headache? Had she known that it was possible for her earlobes to hurt? But she was doing her best to keep her complaining to a minimum. Kayde had the heavier pack, he was the one who had to find the path out of here, and he had been forced to fight in the arena for his life multiple times. He hadn’t told her what the Beznens had done to him, but he had begun to limp a little as if he had an injury on his leg, and she knew his leg hadn’t been injured in his most recent fight. It wasn’t a difficult leap to make, to figure they had made him fight other captives in the arena.
She stumbled over a large rock embedded in the dirt and it was only Kayde’s grasp on her arm that kept her from face planting. Her companion came to a stop.
“We should rest for a while, we’ve covered a lot of ground.” He took his pack off and let it fall to the forest floor, where it landed with a dull thump. How many kilos did that thing weigh? Twenty? Thirty? His shoulders had to be killing him. Quinn’s only weighed half that and her back practically cried in relief when she let her bag fall to the ground.
“We’ve covered a lot of ground in the wrong direction.” It came out snarky and Quinn flinched at her own tone. This wasn’t Kayde’s fault, but he was the only person around, and she had to take her frustration out on something before she started screaming and forgot how to stop.
Kayde didn’t respond. He was like that, she noticed. Most of the time he only spoke when directly addressed, when he was asked a question. No one would accuse him of being a sparkling conversationalist.
Quinn lowered herself down to the ground and as soon as her butt hit the dirt she knew it was a mistake. She wasn’t going to want to stand back up for all the riches in the world, and even the promise of a ride off this planet wasn’t doing much to the hard comfort of the cold ground. She braced a hand by her side, certain that if she fell over and lay down she wasn’t going to get back up. She couldn’t expect Kayde to carry her out of this place; he was already doing all of the heavy lifting, so the least she could do was carry herself.
Kayde dug a hydration pack out of his bag and tipped his head back, letting the vitamin infused liquid flow down his throat. Not a drop escaped his lips, and Quinn was fascinated watching his throat work as he swallowed. Heat lit through her body and she found a reserve of energy she hadn’t realized she’d been holding back. Had she thought she couldn’t cover another meter? If Kayde gave her one hint, she would cross the distance between them and be on him in a second.
But her stoic alien warrior seemed oblivious to the effect he had on her. She was beginning to think that moment that they’d shared back at the palace had been all in her imagination. All one-sided. She had just about managed to convince herself of that when Kayde finished drinking and lowered his chin, looking at her with those fathomless dark eyes of his and lips wet from the memory of his drink. His eyes flared red and Quinn sat up straighter, leaning forward until she came up on her knees and crossed half the distance between them.
“Why do your eyes do that?” she asked. It had seemed like too intrusive a thing to ask the other Detyens she knew. But she didn’t feel the same reluctance when it came to Kayde. She wanted to know everything about him, almost like she had the right.
“Do what?” he asked in response.
“Turn red.” It was like they were on fire, or he was possessed by a demon, something sinister and yet so seductive she couldn’t stop herself from reaching out and touching him.
Their fingers wove together as she grasped his hand. “They shouldn’t.”
“They are. You’re a mystery, you know that?” The longer she spent with this man and the more she learned about him, the more she wanted, no needed, to know. And the more questions she had.
“I am no mystery, I am merely a... remnant.” His fingers squeezed hers and Quinn thought he was going to pull back; instead he tugged her forward until she was practically splayed across his lap. One of his hands came to rest on her hip, the heat of it burning through the thin material of her jacket.
“A remnant of what?” The red hadn’t faded from his eyes and Quinn felt like she was trapped beneath the gaze of a hunting beast. A predator’s prey with no hope of escape.
“It is not my secret to tell,” Kayde said after several long moments. “And certainly not here.”
For a few seconds Quinn had managed to forget just how much trouble the two of them were in, but those words were like a bucket of cold water dousing any ideas she might’ve had. She pulled out of Kayde’s grasp and returned to sitting across from him. “So is there a plan?” she asked. She desperately wanted to follow up on whatever secret he was hiding, but he was right, this wasn’t the place to share.
Kayde nodded. “Get your rest, you’ll need it.”
WHEN DARKNESS FELL, they moved. Kayde had no doubt that the forest around them teemed with danger, with deadly animals and traps laid to catch the unwary. It would be wise to confine their movements to daylight, but with the guard patrols and the possibility they were being monitored ever present in his mind, Kayde knew that their only chance at making it back to the market and then to the ship came from moving by night.
Quinn had managed to fall asleep and Kayde waited until the last moment possible to rouse her. He told himself that his decision was completely logical. The more rested she was, the faster they could move. But he suspected that his real motivation came because she looked so peaceful with her eyes closed and her breathing even.
She woke with a start and Kayde had to cover her mouth to keep her from crying out. Her eyes flashed with fury, but as soon as she saw it was him, they softened and that chasm deep inside of him shrank just a tiny bit more.
He handed her the cloak he had fashioned out of spare blankets, leaves, and dirt and used a series of gestures to instruct her to put it on. From his silence, she
gathered that they both needed to be quiet and it only took her a minute to get dressed. He had struggled for several minutes about the decision to leave their packs behind. Those supplies could be the thing standing between life and death, but they also weighed him and Quinn down, tiring them out and making them move slower. He stuffed as many hydration packs and protein bars into his pockets as he could manage and decided to leave the rest. Speed and stealth were the two most important things at that moment, and if they were stranded out in the wilds long enough to need their provisions, they were already dead.
He and Quinn had not discussed the possibility that the ship might not be waiting for them. They hadn’t spoken of the ship at all out of fear that whatever surveillance was watching them would hear and the Beznens would figure out their plan of escape.
Kayde was a skilled pilot and as long as there was a single ship at the shuttle port, he would get them off of this planet. Quinn had placed her trust in him, and he would not fail her.
Kayde held out a hand and managed not to flinch at the wave of sensation when Quinn took it. It hurt to touch her, but at the same time his body craved it, and every time they touched the need to do it again only grew. Could she really be the woman for him? Every hour they spent together the emotions he shouldn’t have been feeling got stronger and stronger, and Quinn said his eyes had gone red, which was something impossible for the soulless. But he had known Quinn for months, had first seen her when she was recovered from Fenryr 1 with the rest of the women that they’d collected. Back then, Raze had gone from soulless to mated in the course of a week. He must’ve recognized Sierra almost immediately. How could Kayde have known Quinn for so long without suspecting what she was to him?
Then again, he reasoned, he had attempted to flee a planet to escape the emotions she roused in him, fearful that he was destabilizing. That was some sort of recognition, even if the conclusion was incorrect.
Kayde buried all thoughts of denyai and mating. They could dwell on that possibility when they made it back to the ship and escaped from Beznifa. Until then he had to cling tightly to his training and use every sense and skill that he possessed to get Quinn away safely.
With their hands clasped, they moved as quickly and quietly through the forest as they could. During the day, Kayde had barely noticed the sound of Quinn moving beside him, her footsteps blending in with the calling birds and the wind whistling through the trees. But the darkness seemed to amplify everything and every footstep she took was like the crash of boulders in the quiet night. But he knew that his own footsteps weren’t featherlight. He had training on how to move quietly, but he wasn’t accustomed to moving with stealth through foliage this dense.
They couldn’t stick to the path, as it was sure to be monitored, either remotely or by guards, but Kayde didn’t trust his instincts enough to stray too far. Even during the day, the forest around them was dense and he lost sight of the landmarks that told him where they needed to go. The palace and the city were behind them, but in the dark it was disorienting, and they moved slower than he would have liked. It took more than an hour to cover a stretch of forest that had taken them a quarter of the time to traverse when they could keep to the path. But guards and surveillance weren’t the only dangers in the woods at night.
Quinn had mentioned several times that she felt like she was being watched. Though he believed her, Kayde’s own instincts hadn’t been tripped. Until now. In the darkness, off the path, and far from safety, he could practically feel the eyes of some dangerous beast following them. Stalking them. They were being watched, hunted. By what, he didn’t know, but given all of the dangers that he and Quinn had faced while indoors, he didn’t want to meet the kind of trouble they could find in the wild.
The safest move would be to find a secure place to stay for the night and light a fire to keep beasts away, but that wasn’t a possibility, not if they wanted to escape the planet. Kayde hoped that the creature on their tail couldn’t find exactly where they were. They were disguised in cloaks covered in dirt and leaves, and that would help disguise their scent. But tricks like that would only work against something born to hunt these woods for so long.
Quinn sped up beside him, perhaps sensing the same danger. Branches crunched around them as they broke past them and they still couldn’t move fast enough to satisfy the sense of urgency riding both of them, but before long they made it to the edge of the forest and within sight of the governor’s palace. It was only a few kilometers on to the market, and a few kilometers beyond that to the port, but the ground here was open, easy to surveil, and had to be crawling with guards.
“Are we really just going to walk out of here?” Quinn breathed the words against his ear and Kayde had to work to suppress a shiver.
He took his time, trying to see any hint of danger peeking out from the streets or the buildings beside them. It didn’t make sense to him that the Beznens would just leave them alone, out in the open, where they could make a move to escape the second the guards’ backs were turned. Was the call of the riches so great? What kind of people did they usually abduct?
Kayde kept his guard up, but he led Quinn out of the forest towards civilization. They stayed off the roads as best they could and crossed them with caution when it couldn’t be avoided. By the time they made it to the edge of the port, the sun was already starting to crest the horizon and it would not be long until someone noticed the two of them.
He used his claws to cut a hole in the fence surrounding the space port and he and Quinn sprinted for their ship, which sat, practically gleaming, right where they’d left it. He was so focused on the risk of guards that he almost didn’t register the growl that went up around them, making the hair on his arms rise at the threat.
Then Quinn screamed and everything got a whole lot worse.
Chapter Thirteen
A RUSH OF AIR WAS KAYDE’S only warning as a giant mass of angry animal barreled into him, knocking him sideways with a growl sinister enough to make his hair stand on end. Kayde kept moving, rolling away from the beast and flipping back to his feet, getting into a ready position to fight. He spared a quick glance for Quinn, but didn’t see her. His claws flashed out, but sharp as they were, it would take a lot to damage the thing in front of him. It was large and black, on four legs, with a head as big as Kayde’s entire upper body. It had to be at least five times his size, and he was certain that this was the beast that had stalked them out of the woods. How had it been so quiet? Its paws were as big as the wheels of an automobile back on Earth, but it slunk forward with a liquid grace that made it seem almost unreal.
Kayde didn’t see it move; there was nothing, no bunching of muscles in its legs, no gathering of air in its chest, nothing to hint that it was about to spring forward and attack. It was just there, and Kayde was covered by its daunting weight. He swung out with his claws, but the beast’s skin might as well have been made with some combination of metal and leather. No matter how hard he hit, he couldn’t pierce it. All he could do was try to avoid the beast’s own wickedly sharp claws and its mouth, which looked strong enough to bite Kayde in half.
The beast grunted as Kayde got a good strike in with one of his feet. He was practically pinned, but had just enough space to shimmy completely under the animal and escape from between its feet. He never stopped looking for a weak point, and the beast gave a mighty yowl as his claws struck the tender flesh of its belly. Before Kayde could dive back and hit it again, it screeched at him and retreated several meters. Kayde took stock of his own injuries, but the beast hadn’t managed to do any more than give a few bruises and make the wounds he already had a little worse.
Bright lights flashed all around him, ruining what was left of Kayde’s night vision and momentarily blinding him. He dove for cover, taking a position behind a small vehicle that looked like it was made it to haul supplies from the market to the port. He expected the guards to start shooting at any moment, using the strobing lights to keep him disoriented, but he waited several
seconds and nothing happened. He risked a glance up from where he was crouched behind the vehicle and saw that Quinn had managed to climb on top of a maintenance tower and was manually turning the bright lights off and on with the press of a button.
“I think that cat thing is gone,” she called over to him, her voice echoing through the open port. There wasn’t much use in remaining quiet now; if any guards were around, they would’ve seen the flashing lights. They didn’t have much time.
“You scared it away, good thinking.” He didn’t know if he would’ve been able to defeat it by himself.
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll congratulate each other later.” Quinn lifted her hand from the button, leaving the lights off before climbing down the metal scaffolding that formed into a ladder on the side of the tower. The sun had risen higher while he fought, casting the entire port in eerie morning light. Quinn came to his side and leaned back against the vehicle. “The ship is just over there.” She nodded past a wide open swath of tarmac. There was no cover, no vehicles, no trees, nothing to obscure them from view. “What are the chances that guards start opening fire the second we break cover?”
“Almost certain.” The cat-like creature’s attack had been lucky in its own way. By pure chance, they were covered by two large ships, the maintenance tower, and the small vehicle that he and Quinn were currently leaning against. The second they broke out from under the cover of one of the ships they’d be dead. Already Kayde could hear the stopping footsteps of guards getting closer. Either the lights or the cat’s screams had summoned them to check out the disturbance.
He might have considered stealing one of the two ships that they were trapped under, but both the doors were sealed tight, and he didn’t know what kind of security measures they would find aboard. He knew his own ship, and as long as he could get himself and Quinn safely on it, he would find a way to get them off this planet.
