Chapter 4 #2
What the place wasn’t was dirty. Or, to be more accurate, it had been separated into two areas—one for all the tools, and an area to my right where carpets covered the floor. There were also mattresses piled together, with pillows on top.
At first glance, those looked like seating areas, and a second horned dude actually lounging on one such mattress and pillow pile and reading some kind of manga of all things confirmed that.
I froze when the second horned stranger looked up from his manga. Inkiri made the clicking noises, and the second stranger put his book aside and came over.
Like Inkiri, this one had horns, but smaller ones in charcoal gray, with white tips rather than all blue.
He wasn’t blue either, but a silver gray with darker gray around his hairline and neck.
His hair was a light grayish blue, and all of it was braided, above and below his horns, the strands gathered artfully behind his head.
His ears stood out darker as well, and I noticed they were pointy. I glanced up at Inkiri, but the loose part of his hair covered his ears, with double braids running up and above them to the back of his head where they were tied together.
My fingers itched to reach up and brush those ink-dark tresses aside, but something like that might send the wrong message to someone who already seemed so preoccupied with my nonexistent uterus.
As the stranger approached, I got a closer look at his horns as well, and the line of white running from their tips all the way down their lengths to his skull.
His eyes were the orangey red of burning coals, he was shorter, less muscular, and less broad than Inkiri but like Inkiri, this one moved with predatory grace.
He was still a head taller than me, and if I’d ever been in the Bible book club, the orange eyes would have probably made me think he looked like a demon. A pleasantly smiling demon, but still.
He said something to Inkiri in a language I didn’t recognize before turning to me and showing teeth that were human-ish, apart from the extra set of incisors.
“This is Lissir.” Inkiri stressed the second syllable and rolled the R in a way I couldn’t hope to replicate.
“Hello, sweet human,” Lissir said. He spoke in posh English as well, but with an accent that I doubted was from any place I knew. “You look very scared. You don’t have to be scared at all anymore.”
In my experience, when someone told you not to be scared, it was high time to think about running the other way. Fast. As if to support that reasoning, yet another horned stranger walked into the room, this one decidedly taller and broader than Inkiri.
“I smell human,” the newcomer said in a booming voice, and it was all I could do to keep control of my bowels and bladder.
Lissir said something in the other language, and Inkiri hiss-growled.
This new monster looked like something the ocean had spat out just to scare me. He had turquoise skin and horns the color of fresh kelp above striking blue eyes.
“I’m not that scary,” the big monster said as if he’d been chided. Like Lissir, his accent was more pronounced. “Is this one a woman?” He stepped closer and noticeably sniffed the air.
“He says he has no uterus and likes big boobs,” Inkiri said.
Well, wasn’t that just the gift that kept on giving. Why had I said that thing about the boobs again? And why was everything I said to Inkiri coming back to bite me?
“Oh. I’d not have guessed that.” Lissir crossed his arms and looked me over. “He’s very…tender-looking.”
My jaw dropped, and I actually huddled a little closer to Inkiri. It was a reflex I couldn’t quite account for.
The big one crossed his arms in front of a massive chest as well and tilted his head, showing off his massive ibex horns. Should I maybe compliment them on the horns? Was that a thing you did when trying not to get eaten?
“You wish to procreate, little human?”
“He says no,” Inkiri said. “His name is Rory. Rory, this is Fellisse.”
“Hi,” I managed, though I wasn’t sure how I was still able to make words. My heart was beating hamster-fast in my chest, and I wasn’t sure what I needed to be more afraid of—being found tender enough for dinner, or tender enough to procreate with after dinner.
Clearly, these guys were way too fixated on reproduction and reproductive organs. And they were all looking at me way too intensely, as if I were a new toy and they couldn’t quite figure out what I was for.
Yup, I needed to hightail it out of here as soon as I was able, and definitely before they decided they wanted to take this new toy for a ride, but right now I was surrounded. And being stared at.
Fellisse stepped in close and…smelled me. Like, he didn’t go so far as to touch me, but he leaned in and definitely sniffed my neck. And then he made the soothing clicking noises as well.
“Uhm, nice to meet you too,” I said, because my brain had decided manners were the correct response when you were being sniffed and clicked at by a guy whose horns were maybe an inch away from your face. Okay, brain, okay.
“Oh, you found what you were looking for!” said someone else, once more in accented English, although his accent was fainter than Lissir’s and Fellisse’s.
I looked past Lissir and Fellisse to see an azure blue monster approaching. This one had lighter horns, almost sky blue; a sharp contrast to his nearly black hair. Unlike the other three, whose clothing was black or at least a very dark gray, this one wore taupe top to bottom.
“Let me have a look!” The guy in taupe easily maneuvered past Fellisse, who looked like he could make himself a living obstacle if he had an off day.
“My name is Nokim, and it’s so lucky that you are here.
That Inki found you. Do you want food? I’ve been experimenting with human food, but I don’t know if I’m getting it right.
Donna said she likes my food, but another opinion would be so good.
” He tilted his head like the others had done, horns almost brushing Fellisse’s cheek.
“Should we celebrate? I think we should celebrate.”
“Uhm…” I said. “D-Donna? Is she here?” That would be good. If there was someone else here, someone human, then maybe we could band together and escape.
Nokim sighed. “No. She had somewhere else to go, and we helped her get there. We learned a lot from Donna.”
I bet they had. Not that I needed to find out what they had learned about humans. I exhaled, but it came out as sort of a rattling noise.
“Fellisse has been scaring him,” Lissir said.
Nokim gaped and turned. “Why would you do that? Can you not be happy Inki found his human?”
“Noki, enough,” Inkiri said.
“Hey, while you talk, mind if I use the washroom?” Hopefully this was all of them and the front door wasn’t locked.
“I’ll take you,” Inkiri said, but this time, when I tried pulling my arm free from his hold, he let me.
“That’s cool.” I smiled. “I’ll just go, you know, powder my nose.
Can do that by my lonesome.” I had no idea why I was saying that with this stupidly wide smile plastered on my face, but I was beginning to understand why the third-grade teacher had cast me as the second tree from the left.
I circled the group. The four of them looked as if they wanted to jump me.
“I’ll just be a sec.” I beamed harder, forcing myself not to run.
I made it out of the room, which had clearly been meant to become the living room of the house.
I passed a kitchen that looked pretty much finished—and used as well.
Something was bubbling away on the stove, and I did not care to find out what that was, oh no. Strange food didn’t interest me at all.
With the house being so big, there were several rooms to navigate, including some that didn’t have doors yet, and the staircase was still the temporary metal kind, not what you’d want in a nice house like this once it was all done.
I hurried past that and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the reassuring solidity of the front door with small windows set above it to let in natural light.
I rushed toward it and got it open a crack, but a strong hand appeared next to my head and slammed the door shut again with a final-sounding thud. I squeaked.
“You’re a runner.”
That voice wasn’t like the others. He spoke unaccented English, or at least I couldn’t hear the strange accent the others—apart from Inkiri—had. He didn’t sound British either. He sounded almost like I did.
Shuddering, I turned. “I don’t mean to be a burden.” Surely, what had worked once would work again, and I was feeling some damsel energy.
This fifth monster was just as horned as the others, but his skin was darker, almost midnight blue. His horns were the same color, dark as the midnight sky, and he wore a black hoodie with his black hair much shorter than the others’, just a casually messy length.
He was calm in the way coiled snakes at the zoo are calm, and I could tell that this one was a killer.
Even more so than Inkiri was. This one was good at it.
He had that vibe. I’d seen it before over the last two years, even if I wished I hadn’t.
His steel-gray eyes were piercing, looking right into my soul.
“I find it’s rather easy to tell when humans are lying. You’re lying. Why are you trying to run?” He said that so lightly, but nothing about this situation was light. My heart was racing in my chest, and his glare was getting more withering by the second.
“Vergis, what is this?” Inkiri said from behind monster number five, a.k.a. the scary one, a.k.a. Vergis, apparently.
“The one who’s been calling to you was trying to leave.
” Vergis took a step away from me. “You might want to keep an eye on him.” He turned and walked away toward the metal staircase.
When he rounded the corner, not only did he vanish into the shadows under it, he also went completely silent; no echo of footsteps, nothing.
Inkiri did the head tilt, left, right. “That’s true what he said, isn’t it. You want to leave?”
Whether it was something in Inkiri’s soft, almost breakable tone of voice or whether it was meeting the super scary Vergis, I…
started sobbing. And crying. I could feel myself dissolving in a way I had almost never allowed myself to after everything, after watching Cat and Jacob turn to ash and knowing all lovers had left the world in ash and nothingness, and that I was to blame.
“Please, I…I’ll just go, okay? I’m not with any other humans, so I won’t tell anyone where you are, and you can do whatever you want, but…I just don’t want to get eaten. Or become your…your…slave. Please. Let me go, okay?”
Slowly, ever so slowly, Inkiri stepped closer, reached out, and wiped a tear from my left cheek. “No one will eat you. No one will enslave you. Rory, I would not hurt you, not when I am hoping that you will allow me to prove myself. I’m hoping you will take me as your mate.”
That drop bombed, and so did my jaw. Goshdarnit, what my only occasionally sober aunt had said was right after all: the only thing men wanted was sex, and that didn’t change when they had horns. Or blue skin. She hadn’t said the bit about the horns or blue skin, but I inferred.
Inkiri leaned in. “I hope, with time, you will see past my lack of boobs.” His voice had dropped to a low, pleasant rumble, making it that much more awkward for the both of us.
Oh, how truly, truly sorry I was for making the apocalypse happen with a single, stupid wish. This was clearly the universe getting back at me for that.