12. Chapter 12
Safely in the cradle of his arms, I leaned against his chest, holding the parts of the creature that attacked us in my hands. Curiosity won out, and I inspected one of the monster's teeth a little closer. The tip was sharp as a needle, and the edges were like a razor blade. I shuddered at imagining those teeth burrowing into my skin. A certain amount of poetic justice kept me from wincing away at the sight of the dried blood on it. Serves you right, monster , I thought, wondering how it would feel to wear the tooth around my neck. Ghan-Zahr was wearing a tooth necklace similar to this and turned in his arms. I pulled on it until I could compare the two fangs with one another. His was longer but not as sharp, probably worn down over the years.
"Xythrax," Ghan-Zahr said, wiggling his finger toward his necklace. "Vorathar"." He nodded at the one I was holding.
This time, I did shudder at the image of two different predators like this roaming this planet.
"Which one is worse?" I asked.
He didn't answer for a moment, and I wondered if he understood me, but then he said, "Vorathar."
His hesitation, however, was telling that the difference between the two probably wasn't that big.
Next, I took a look at the plates. They were different-sized, black, blood-spattered and hard as rock. I was curious to find out what the Vandruk used them for but too tired to ask. Holding on to the treasure he had entrusted me, I leaned back against his warm chest and allowed my eyes to close for a few moments. He hardly jostled me as we walked over the uneven terrain, and soon I dozed off. Only awakening when I felt soft fur underneath me.
"Rest," he commanded. "I bring food."
Too tired to argue, I nodded and snuggled into the furs until something sharp poked me. Right, the teeth. I pushed them and the plates away from me, grabbed a pillow, and, with a sigh, fell into a deep sleep.
So deep I didn't awaken until I heard voices much, much later. Curious, hungry, and with my bladder calling, I exited the tent, surprised to see how dark it was. My entire body felt sore from my latest excursion. Curiosity won out, over my baser needs, when I saw Ghan-Zahr kneeling at Carl's side, the two of them talking.
I was sure my company wouldn't be welcome, but I was a reporter, and the need to know had driven me all my life. I had made my parents nuts by constantly asking why . Once I learned how to read, I spent hours on the computer, a phone, or a tablet. Not to play games like others but to read. In the beginning, it had been simple things, like why does a bee fly, or can a shark breathe outside the water. Over the years, my quest for knowledge turned to more sophisticated subjects, and after many years, I knew a lot about a broad number of things but nothing made me want to commit to only majoring in one subject.
One day, Aunt Rubina—my favorite aunt—suggested I become a reporter. It had been meant as a joke, following me peppering her with questions about her job. She was a stockbroker and financial advisor and damn good at what she did, but not good enough to explain the financial intricacies to an eight-year-old. Still, my questions didn't cease until she said, "You would make a great reporter."
So I researched reporter and liked it. And that's what I became. Or at least a version of it. I still wasn't one hundred percent satisfied with where I was or what I was doing. I was still looking for that enigmatic something , that would make me yell out: That's it!
There was always a hunger that drove me forward. My general knowledge about so many subjects and my honest urge to dig deeper made me better than most of my colleagues. Good enough to land a job with DenverBroadcast, one of the largest news outlets in Colorado. As the newest and youngest addition, I was tasked with my favorite chore: research. For most people, it would have been a punishment to do the legwork for the real journalists , but I didn't mind spending hours trying to figure out how many drops of chlorine it would take to purify water and how many would make a person sick, or when the first artificial limb had been used and why. I mean, I imagine many people ran around with their limbs missing thousands of years ago—lots of battles and wars, or saber-toothed tigers, ready to bite an arm off. So why did one person one day decide hey, let's put wood on that stump? Or a piece of leather to where a toe used to be? Why had nobody done so before? Or had they and we just hadn't found the artifact to prove it? Following this train of thought made me question other things, like why did someone decide to boil an egg? Or why and how did people figure out how to mash wheat and make bread from it? When you really think about it, one question always leads to more. At least that's how it was for me. Always digging, always hungry to find out more.
I hadn't even been at my new job a year when I was promoted and assigned my first stories. Unfortunately, here, my sense of digging deeper got me in trouble with deadlines several times. I was easily sidetracked, and oftentimes I started looking up let's say amino acids, only to end up hours or days later trying to figure out the social structure of ants.
My looks helped to get me in front of the camera. Women liked to find out how I did my makeup and hair, while men… well, I think we all know where men's minds go at the sight of a pretty woman.
Anyway, I started reporting on the wormhole, and here I was, still filled with hundreds of burning questions, and the man who could answer them was right there, tied to a tree. I sidled up next to Ghan-Zahr, who didn't look happy about the interruption but managed a small smile at me.
"I didn't mean to interrupt," I said, trying to hide how much Ghan-Zahr's presence unmoored me.
"I have nothing to say to either of you," Carl stated. He looked tired and worn. The walking was exhausting him, but still he remained as stubborn as he had been in his office when I first interviewed him.
"What are you going to do to me?" Carl asked Ghan-Zahr.
"Khadahrs decide."
"Whatever happened wasn't my fault," Carl insisted.
"We will see." Ghan-Zahr rose to his feet. "I help, Rachel?"
"What happened to the women?" I asked both men.
"They were mated and lived happily ever after with the Vandruk," Carl sneered.
"We find out," Ghan-Zahr promised. "Come, eat."
I stared at Carl, torn between his plight as a fellow human being and the suspicion that something sinister was at work here, something I didn't know about yet.
"I'll find out," I told Carl. "I always do."
"You can dig all you want, Rachel. There is nothing here besides what you already know."
I didn't believe him.
"Why did you take him?" I asked Ghan-Zahr when we sat by the fire, and he handed me his waterskin and meat on… I shuddered, one of the vorathar's plates. It had been cleaned, I hoped, but still, my stomach turned at the memory of the beast attacking us and now picking at meat served on its parts. At least it wasn't the beast's meat. I was sure I wouldn't have been able to stomach that.
"He answer for Vandruks he killed."
I was sure Ghan-Zahr didn't mean that Carl personally had killed them but that he had hired people to do it for him, but that wasn't my primary concern. "What do you mean? How many? How long?"
As far as the public was concerned, Tzar-Than had given us the first glimpse of intelligent life on Vandruk. Ghan-Zahr's words implied that IC had had contact with them before: hostile contact.
"Since red fog came," Ghan-Zahr said, staring into the flames.
I gathered that red fog was the Vandruk's name for the portal. I had been told previously that the red fog was an indication of the portal not being active so that nobody from the Vandruk side could just come through.
"They just attacked you?" I asked, aghast.
Ghan-Zahr still stared into the flames, and I couldn't help but admire how the shadows dancing over his skin enhanced his reddish coloring and emphasized his thick muscles.
"They killed most of our gallies, women."
I leaned back in shock, nearly dropping the plate with the meat. "What? All your women? When? How?"
"The red fog appeared. Vandruk shook, so hard, I fall to knees," Ghan-Zahr recounted tonelessly. My hand reached out for his arm, but I pulled back before brushing his skin, unsure of how he would react to my touch.
"Our gallies were in cave… for a… cermony." Ceremony , I gathered but didn't correct him. "The ground shook, hard… the cave…" He uttered a word I didn't understand, but by the expression on his face, I concluded that the cave collapsed, burying his women.
"Oh my God, Ghan-Zahr, that is terrible. I'm so sorry. I had no idea. IC… Carl never said anything."
"They not know"." Ghan-Zahr turned to look at me. A haunted expression on his face, torn between… the need for revenge and understanding that the collapse had been an accident and had not been done on purpose.
Breathlessly, I stared at him. What a man. To be able to differentiate between purpose and accident when I was sure his blood was calling for nothing but revenge amazed me. I had no idea what I would do if anybody hurt, or God forbid, killed one of my family members. I wasn't a vengeful person; I had never hurt another human being in my life, but I thought I might experience a deep desire to see justice done to whoever harmed my family. Have them taken to court and be held accountable.
The Vandruks didn't have that option. They couldn't go to court and hold IC accountable for what they did, or at least they weren't aware of the option. That Ghan-Zahr held his desire for revenge in check to see Carl's side, the human's side, was astonishing and made me see him in a different light. I had already realized that there was more to him than his obvious barbarian culture. He might not be able to name the number Pi—not that I could—but he was intelligent enough to reason.
"Carl is right. We attack first. The first humans coming through portal we kill."
Now that sounded more like the barbarian culture I had anticipated.
"Let me guess, they sent more troops?"
"Troops?"
"Warriors," I amended.
He nodded. "Sa. Many with deadly weapons. Guns."
My mind worked feverishly. So Carl had started his own war with the Vandruks, not letting a word slip to the public… wait… the wormhole was government-funded. There was no way he could have withheld this kind of information from the government. People had died.
I thought back to the explorers who had vanished, who must have been killed by the Vandruks, but who the people on Earth believed had just vanished. I remembered the missing security guards, sure now that there had to be more than I had initially discovered.
"We didn't know," I whispered, clearing my throat. "The people of Earth don't know."
Ghan-Zahr stared at me. "Would that make difference?"
I swallowed. Would it? If the government knew, and I was sure they did, they could have spun this any which way and informed the public. They could have called the Vandruks hostile aliens . But the people would have demanded pictures of the enemy, wouldn't they have? My mind kept spinning. Yes, they would have, and once they saw what the Vandruks looked like, how much they resembled us… their primitive weapons… yeah, unless the government withheld the information the way they always did, they would have withheld any information about the Vandruks that would have caused an outcry. Genocide—or specicide—did not sit well with humans any longer.
I was sure I was still missing something. Something vital, though, because… because they had been about to shut the portal down. That's what my first assignment had been about. The one where suddenly Tzar-Than appeared… now my mind was really going into overdrive. No way could they have predicted Tzar-Than would appear that night or day. That Gwyn, the janitor, would open the portal for him. That he would demand brides.
Right?
My head was starting to hurt, and I was missing the main point here. Ghan-Zahr's loss. The Vandruks' loss.
"I'm so sorry. Who did you lose?" This time, I didn't pull my hand back when I moved it to place it on his thick bicep.
"My sister"." Ghan-Zahr's gaze moved up, and I gasped. I had been too frightened yesterday to look at the night sky, dominated by the most amazing nebula I had ever seen. Not that I had seen many or any, at least not in real life. On the computer, yes, but this? This was breathtaking.
"She is there, in Koronae."
I cocked my head, feeling my throat constrict. Was that what the Vandruks believed? That the souls of their loved ones resided inside the nebula? Hmm, why not? My imaginative mind argued. For a primitive species like the Vandruk, it would make perfect sense. In all honesty, I liked the idea. A lot. It was a nice notion. much better than the explanation of an imploded sun, stars being born, gases, yada, yada, yada, as our scientists theorized.
I leaned my head against his shoulder, unable to find any words other than I'm sorry , aware that they would have sounded meaningless. I couldn't imagine losing my mom or sisters like this. I could, however, imagine the anger and need for revenge I would experience if that happened.
If I were as powerful as Ghan-Zahr, I would have moved heaven and Earth too to get revenge against the people responsible. Part of me understood why he took Carl. The other part wondered why he took me.
Why was I here?
Strangely, I didn't feel mad at him any longer for kidnapping me, not like before. I was still upset that he did, but something inside me felt like it was right. Like I was meant to be here. Now. With him.
As always, my mind began spinning with all kinds of crazy ideas, including destiny and fate. Maybe I had been born looking the way I did to attract him , at just the right moment. Maybe I had been given this assignment for a reason, to lead me here. Maybe this was the big story I had always been looking for… or maybe… I was here because of him . For him.
His arm snaked around my shoulder, creating fuzzy sensations inside my body. Not in a sexual way, not like the kiss we had shared earlier. It was more… intimate. Like we were sharing a bond.
I snuck a quick glimpse up at his face, shrouded in darkness the light from the moon and nebula painted shadows on his edged features. He was a very attractive man. But having been treated like a mindless sex object for most of my life, like a brainless statue to be admired, I learned a thing or two about looks. And how meaningless they could be, how distracting. It was the person Ghan-Zahr who fascinated me.
We sat there in companionable silence for a while, listening to the fire burn; our necks craned to look at the nebula. Colorful clouds moved through it, ranging from purple to yellow. Some dark spots blocked out a multitude of stars, some brighter than others. Every once in a while, lightning would shoot through in places, fascinating me even more.
I remembered looking Nebula up once in one of my many, many researches. I couldn't remember all the scientific mumbo jumbo and names of gases, but I had always liked the idea of stars being born inside the nebula. The idea of rebirth fascinated me, just like Ghan-Zahr's notion of it housing the souls of the Vandruks' loved ones.
"What was her name?" I whispered.
"Mynarra," he replied just as hushed.
Mynarra, what a beautiful name .
His sadness over the loss of his sister was palpable. Making the way he was dealing with the people he so rightfully hated more admirable for me.
I leaned back against him, staring at our surroundings and thinking about the day I had had. About Vandruk, the landscape, how beautiful it was. Incredibly so. Despite my brush with near death earlier, it seemed to call to me. I liked how fresh the air was here, how I hadn't seen one piece of trash left anywhere. How virgin this planet was. Not at all like Earth. Granted, I hadn't seen that much of Earth yet, but I had always wanted to, hoped that one day I would be a corresponding traveling the globe. Now, though?
I liked being here.
I liked being here with him.
Sometimes sitting on the couch with Trevor, watching a movie, or talking, I had felt a sense of claustrophobia. He was such an all-consuming presence that at times I felt like I was losing myself. Despite Ghan-Zahr abducting me, I didn't feel any of this in his presence.
Or maybe it was just the magic of this planet.
It was confusing.
Either way, the sadness emanating from Ghan-Zahr called to me to make him feel better. I couldn't reach his face, not without rearranging us completely, so I turned my head to kiss his chest, to let him know I was here, that I sympathized with him.
A deep sigh from him told me that he had received my message and a small smile crossed my lips.
"She was my soul split sister."
"Your what?"
"Our mother died, giving life to us; her soul split, give Mynarra and me life"," he explained.
Goose bumps formed on my arms. So much loss.
"Oh, Ghan-Zahr…" I almost said I'm sorry . "That must have hurt."
He nodded quietly. "I loved her."
It always seemed that when I was around him, my mind swirled with emotions. Ten years ago, our scientists made the biggest breakthrough in human history. Finally, a portal had been opened to another world, making colonization of a distant planet possible. And yet, our greatest innovation had cost the Vandruks so much. Everything.
Now I understood why Tzar-Than had asked for brides. The Vandruks had to be desperate to procreate.
It had always bugged me why IC stopped sending explorers. I had always wondered why they hadn't sent marines or navy seals or whatever to find out what was happening on Vandruk. Now I was sure they had.
That the Vandruks hadn't been decimated yet was most likely only thanks to their atmosphere, which didn't allow any metal. I shuddered to think what would have happened if marines had been able to storm in with machine guns blasting.
I was also sure that it would only be a matter of time until they did. Humans were very gifted when it came to inventing new weapons. I supposed the size of the portal also played a role in the Vandruks' favor since only two people could walk through shoulder to shoulder. The Vandruks could take them out as they came through, creating a pile of bodies that would create a huge obstacle for an invading army.
But again, it was just a matter of time until humans figured out something else. We were excellent at extermination.
"Tired?" Ghan-Zahr asked.
I nodded against his chest. I was and I wasn't. Sitting here, next to him, with his arm around me, I felt the most comfortable I had ever been. He was the most exciting, good-looking man I had ever met. He had saved my life and been nothing but nice and thoughtful to me—after he kidnapped me!
Yeah, I still couldn't let go of that one little fact. No matter how much I liked him, how much he was rising in my estimations, he had kidnapped me. There was no way around that.
He rose, holding out his arms to carry me back into the tent, but I shook my head. "I need to be alone."
Disappointment flickered in his eyes. My pussy pouted. Better get used to it , my mind advised. Kissing him earlier had been dangerous. I had known from the second I initiated it, but after… after I knew what I had just found out, I would be lost if I allowed things to progress any further. My body was already yearning—no, screaming for his touch. Pouty pussy was just one indicator. My body hungered for his touch. But I was afraid that if I allowed anything more than the kiss earlier to happen, I wouldn't be able to remember that he had kidnapped me. It was already getting harder to think clearly. I was sure it would be impossible after.
I sensed his eyes on my back as I made my way first to the bushes and then to the tent. When I pushed the flap to the side, I got a whiff of my armpit… yikes. Not good. I had been walking—fine, been carried most of the time—for two days, slept in the same clothes, sweated, and was about to sleep in them again. It wasn't a big surprise how much I stank, but I had no idea what to do about it. It wasn't like I could just ask Ghan-Zahr to lend me a shirt—I had yet to see any of them wearing one.
Tomorrow, I promised my smelly armpits and icky teeth. Tomorrow, I will figure out how to get you clean. Right then I was too tired to do more than remove my boots and collapse on the furs. Even my spinning mind didn't stand a chance against my exhaustion. It tried to put up a fight, but it lost. Quickly.