When she turned, he was too close. “Excuse me?”
“I stand alone. That’s the way it works.”
“Then maybe it’s time to change the system. Before it breaks you.” He took a step toward her, and she shoved him in reflex.
He caught her wrists in his hands and pulled her toward him. She fought without even considering why she couldn’t stand his warmth. When it became clear he wasn’t letting go, she went limp in his hold, startling him into loosening his hands. She folded into a ball, arms wrapped tight around her knees. The urge to scream as he’d invited rose, an endless clamor in her head. She couldn’t count all the times she had brought a problem to Ike, who’d always listened with infinite patience and kindness.
To her chagrin, Jael knelt and wrapped his arms around her taut back. She clenched her teeth until her jaw hurt, then she slammed her head back against his shoulder. He grunted, but he didn’t let go. Dred hovered mere millimeters away from losing all control. She strangled the urge to pummel Jael and rake his face with her nails, not because she truly wanted to hurt him but because he was here, and he wouldn’t leave her the frag alone.
“You don’t know how to take a hint,” she growled.
“It’s never come up. I have encounters, not relationships. So nobody’s ever asked me to go, mostly because I was already gone.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Hell if I know.” His hands were gentle, at odds with his offhand tone.
She sucked in a shuddering breath and realized there was one thing he could give her that would shut off her brain for a while. “Would you mind if I objectify you a little?”
“Just a little?” His mouth quirked in a half smile.
“Until we’re exhausted and can’t think anymore.” She followed the words by going in for a kiss, and he met her halfway.
His lips were a blaze of pure fire, kindling all of her cold and desolate spaces. She wrapped her arms around his neck and bit down in surprise when he rose with her in his arms. I always forget that he’s stronger than he looks. Jael carried her to the bunk, and she pulled off her clothes in reckless urgency. Better to be stupid like this. Once they were both naked, she pushed him back and came down on top of him.
“One of these days—” But she didn’t let him finish.
A hungry kiss. Another. Until his hands dug into her hips, and he moved beneath her with ever-increasing need. Dred poured everything into him, making his body a canvas upon which she painted all the fear and grief, all the loss, and it transformed into the pulse of desire. She ran her lips down his neck, then bit. He twisted under her, hips bucking.
Dred took him then, but the moment she did, he rolled, so they were facing one another. It wasn’t enough like Artan’s preferred posture of ownership to mess with her head, but it was strange and intimate. She made a sound of protest, then he stole her breath with a long, determined stroke. Their legs were tangled; this position was a little awkward, but it took away the pretense that she was in charge. This way, he wasn’t either.
Jael drew her closer still in a haze of soft, drugging kisses. His hands played down her back in teasing patterns, so she pricked his shoulders with her nails, a demand or a reminder, she wasn’t sure which. It was hard to think with the pleasure drumming in her ears. He pressed deep and held; she cracked open like a ripe fruit, spilling cries and tears. Dred didn’t realize she was crying until he pulled back, leaving only his arms to hold her. She wept into his bare shoulders, smearing him with salt and sorrow. He was still hard, pressed against her belly, but he seemed more focused on comforting her than searching for satisfaction.
“There’s something wrong with you,” she whispered.
“I know, love. People have been telling me that for ages.” His voice sounded deep and low through the tangle of her hair.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You let me use you. But you didn’t—”
“That’s not the beginning and end of everything. It’s a flicker, really. As it turns out, I appreciate other pleasures more.”
“Such as?”
“Feeling you come apart in my arms, knowing you trust me with your fear.”
Oh, Mary. The truth of it hit her like a metal ballast. But even as she choked on the realization, he was kissing her face gently. Each brush of his lips felt like it might pull her apart, snapping bones and sinew until she was a series of disconnected components. Desperate to reassert control, she shoved him away. He moved as if to leave the bed, but she put a hand on his chest.
“I believe in fair play. It’s your turn.”
If he had protested, she would’ve stopped. But she glimpsed cognition of her motives in his blue eyes, which made it simultaneously better and worse. Jael settled against the pillows as she went to work with her mouth. He twisted and writhed, just as he was supposed to, but even when he lost control, arched in a perfect bow, hands tangled in her hair, she never lost the sense that he had won this battle—that something had permanently shifted between them.
Afterward, he drew her up into his arms. Shaken, she rested her head on his chest and listened to his heart. Nothing unusual about the sound, no sign he was anything but human.
“Do you think you can sleep?” he asked.
“Probably. The better question is if I should be able to.”
“If I thought it would help, I’d tell you it wasn’t your fault. It was bad timing or luck or some combination of the two. Ike wouldn’t blame you.”
“If I could, I’d ask him,” she said softly.
“I know.”
She sighed, rolling onto her side to face him. “This is so backward.”
“What is?”
“This.” Dred gestured at their proximity. “Everything about us. I need to stay away from you, but I never follow through.”
He flinched, such a fleeting expression that if she hadn’t been so close, she would have missed it. And the words sounded as if they were being dragged out of him with hooks and wires. “If you really think this is a mistake—”
She put two fingers to his mouth. “Against my better judgment, yes, but . . . I’d be lost without you, Jael.”
He kissed her hand, then pulled it away from his mouth, so he could tuck his face against her neck. “I should’ve realized I needed to go all the way to hell to find my soul.”
22
The Past Is Another Country
A day later, they were still mopping vomit off the floor and blood from the walls. Hell of a send-off. Ike might even approve. After Jael left the common room with Dred, the populace apparently ran amok, with the usual results and casualties. People were still sullen, nursing grievances that sprang out of nowhere. Or at least, it seemed that way to Jael.
Maybe it was more accurate to say that liquor gave men the courage to say shit they’d never otherwise admit. As a result, tensions were high today. A number of Queenslanders had only pretended to accept the admission of the aliens, intimidated by the example Dred made of the man who disagreed with her decision. Since nobody wanted to end up like that, their complaints had gone quiet, confined to whispers that stilled as soon as Jael approached.
Good thing they don’t know I can hear them from here.
“I can’t believe we have to share bunk space with those freaks,” a Queenslander was saying.
“They’re eating up our food,” someone else complained.
“If I’d known the Dread Queen was such a sympathizer, I’d have—”
“What?” Brahm stood behind the group, talons splayed.
At his back, there were a number of aliens from the Warren, some of whom Jael knew by name, like Ali. The rest he had no experience with, so he couldn’t be sure how quickly this situation would escalate. And he wasn’t sure of his role anyway. Maybe Dred would be pissed
if he stepped in, like he held actual power.
But Cook solved the problem by hurling his knife. It thunked into the table where the xenophobes were sitting. The handle quivered as the man stalked over to retrieve the weapon. He paused for a few seconds in silence before picking it up. Not surprisingly, the malcontents found other places they needed to be. Satisfied, Cook went back to his pot.
“Sorry about that,” Jael said to Brahm.
The Ithtorian still gave him the creeps, but he knew better than to blame Brahm for the shit he’d gone through on Ithiss-Tor. It was a personal bias, one he was struggling with, and he didn’t intend to make a public issue of it. But the alien regarded him for a few seconds out of side-set eyes without speaking.
“You have a problem with me,” he said.
“Not like they do,” he answered, defensive.
The Ithtorian clicked out a laugh. “No, your issue is specific to my kind. I don’t notice it around the rest.” He turned to his companions and waved them away. Ali seemed most reluctant, but she eventually moved off, presumably so Brahm could speak to Jael in private.
Once they were alone, relatively speaking, Jael said, “It doesn’t matter. I won’t move on you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Brahm tilted his head, mandible moving in a way that Jael recognized as being a thoughtful gesture. He’d learned a lot about Bug body language during his long incarceration. He wished the cues didn’t make him want to pull Brahm’s head off.
“I’m not. You seem to have more honor than that.”
“Seem being the operative word.”
“The Dread Queen relies on you. And we’ve noticed that her advisors are a cut above the rest of the population.”
Jael wasn’t sure where this conversation was going. “Thanks. I think.”
“But you’re naïve if you think our assimilation will pass without bloodshed.”
“That’s not something I’ve been accused of before.” The Ithtorian wasn’t wrong, though. He saw the tension growing as the days rolled on. Sooner or later, it would explode.
“I imagine not. The interesting thing about you, downright intriguing, in fact . . . is that I’ve been speaking Ithtorian for the last few minutes.”
Now that Brahm had pointed it out, Jael registered the clicks and chitters that comprised the Ithtorian native tongue. The alien stood there, silently awaiting an explanation, and Jael gave it reluctantly. “I spent some time in the Ithtorian penal system. They chipped me, so I could understand orders the guards gave me.”
Mostly it had consisted of turn around, present your limbs to be shackled, and step out of the cave so we can hose it down. Not exactly scintillating conversation. But limited interaction was better than nothing, better than silence. Yet Brahm went still, his mandible locked in a position Jael identified as tension.
“You’re the one.”
Before he spoke, he suspected. “Pardon me?”
“You’re the man who tried to murder my father.”
Shit. Brahmel Il-Charis. Charis Il-Wan. There had been a reason the name sounded familiar, but it’d been so long. Jael didn’t take a step back even as the Ithtorian moved forward. He blocked when the Ithtorian reached out slowly with razor-sharp talons.
“If I was a better scion, I’d cut your throat,” Brahm said in universal.
The men nearby froze at that, and Jael knew they’d back him if it came to a fight. Can’t let this escalate. Ali stood with the rest of the aliens, but she was clearly paying attention to Brahm. At a gesture from him, they would wade in. He didn’t see Katur or Keelah anywhere, so that was a blessing. Their presence might put the stamp of approval on a bloodbath, so far as the rest of the aliens were concerned. While they were loyal, they lacked the ferocity necessary to kill everyone in the room.
That’s because they’re not killers by nature.
“I could make excuses,” he answered. “Say it was just a job, nothing personal. But it is personal for you. So that wouldn’t help.”
“You took the coward’s path, poisoned him.”
Jael wanted to ask if there was a good way to murder someone, but levity would only worsen the situation. A couple of Queenslanders pushed to their feet and came to stand at his shoulder. By the smell, it was the ones who had been complaining about the aliens. Yeah, they’ll love it if this explodes.
“This is between him and me,” Jael said over one shoulder.
Then he faced Brahm again. “What will square this? A grudge match?”
The Ithtorian spread his claws. “I bear you no malice. My only regret is that you didn’t succeed.”
“What the hell—”
“I did say if I were better. I loathe Charis Il-Wan, and I wish I’d poisoned him.” So saying, Brahm shocked the shit out of Jael by offering his claw, human-style, for a clasp.
Recovering, Jael shook his hand, wondering exactly what the Bug politician had done to his offspring to make Brahm wish he’d killed his old man. The tension seeped from the room like air slowly escaping a balloon. Little by little, the Queenslanders went about their business, and the aliens left the hall entirely.
“I can safely say I didn’t see that coming. How did you end up here anyway?” Maybe Brahm was the exception, an alien who had been locked up for capital crimes.
“I was banished from Ithiss-Tor. It was bad luck that landed me here, got caught up in immigration sweeps on New Terra, like everyone else.”
“I don’t understand that,” Jael said. “Why not just deport the lot of you?”
“Most of us know something about the current administration. It would be . . . inconvenient to have us revealing that information.”
Given what he knew about the government, he wasn’t surprised. “Pardon me. I shouldn’t have pried. That goes against the code.”
“You’ll note I didn’t volunteer anything about my exile.”
“Noted.”
With a parting nod, Jael excused himself and went to join a card game. He played for several hours, while the men around him gradually relaxed. There was nothing for winding convicts up like the promise of violence. But the common room was much emptier than it had been when he first arrived. Full tables sat vacant, chairs never to be filled. When you looked at the conflict as a war of attrition, it was hard to imagine anything but inevitable loss.
The crowd thinned even further as the hour got later. He wasn’t paying full attention to his hand, so he lost more than he won. No, it was the activity among the alien-haters that troubled him. They slipped in and out, never more than one or two at a time, and they had the shifty look of assholes up to no good. One man stole up to another, whispered in his ear, then left. The other one waited for a couple of minutes before taking off after him. Yeah, that’s a sure sign they’re rallying. Cook turned off his equipment and headed for the dorm, so there would be no backup from that quarter.
Quietly, he threw down his cards. “I fold.”
The rest of the gamblers hardly glanced up when he slid out of the hall. The conspirator glanced both left and right before bearing left. The training room was this way; so was the armory. Jael half expected the man to stop and fiddle with the lock, but instead he kept moving, quickening to nearly a run, as if the anticipation had grown too much to bear.
He grabbed a man who was on his way to his bunk, and ordered, “Go find the Dread Queen. Send her to me immediately. If you fail, you’ll wish you were dead.”
Gulping, the drafted messenger took off at a run.
Jael didn’t know what he expected to find, but the reality was worse. The men had captured an assortment of aliens, Keelah among them, and they were bound to support beams in the training room. The bastards had grabbed the weakest among them, too, so Ali and Brahm were both conspicuously absent. Some of them were bleeding while others trembled in anticipation of pain to come. Now he understood wh
y they had been traveling in pairs, better to pounce on a single target and drag him off.
He slammed a palm against the door as he strode through. “I’m damn sure the Dread Queen didn’t approve this. Which means it amounts to treason.”
23
Let the Games Begin
“So it does,” Dred said.
When the runner Jael had sent showed up, panting and out of breath, she’d known something must be wrong. She stalked toward Keelah, blade in hand, and cut her loose. Then she offered the knife. “Free your people.”
It was better to show complete support for the newcomers. Though it was technically the middle of downtime, she couldn’t let this ride; there would be no delays to justice or waiting for the rest of the territory to wake up on its own. Some offenses had to be tried immediately in the court of blood and bone. Once the aliens were released, she turned to the treacherous Queenslanders, all of whom looked half a second from pissing their pants.
“Perhaps I didn’t make the rules clear,” she snarled, pointing at the tallest of the lot. “What are they?”
There were eight of them, yet they didn’t try to fight. She had the Dread Queen’s reputation to thank for that. Instead, they stood frozen beneath the weight of her wrath, and one of them even moved closer to Jael, as if he thought he might find mercy there.
You don’t know him very well.
Jael shoved the man who was supposed to be answering her question toward the rest and added a kick for good measure. The impact sent him reeling to the floor. Nobody moved to help him up. He shoved to his feet with a defiant air, but he couldn’t hold her gaze long. He pushed out a wavering breath.
The man thought hard, brow furrowed as sweat dripped down one cheek. “No stealing, no unauthorized fighting. Bathing. Do your work—”
“Then you have no excuse for this offense, cretin. Not even ignorance. You tortured your fellow citizens. Did you think I’d let that go?” Long strides carried her over to where alien blood smeared the ground, not always red, but unmistakable. Kneeling, she swiped her fingers through the sticky droplets, then she returned to the criminals and painted the backs of their hands one by one. “Now their blood truly is on your hands. Remember this feeling. Remember this mistake. It will be your last.”