Chapter 43 Jean
It’s evening when the aliens finally stop to rest. Even though I haven’t been doing any running myself, I’m in need of a rest too. Riding shoulders is every bit as exhausting as riding in a saddle, it seems.
I can’t really call what we’re doing tonight camping.
It’s far too spartan for that. Ghorak’s poor longstrider is long gone, along with most of the supplies.
The guys managed to loot some gear off the dead dudes back there at the Crater of Death.
A few scraps of food, a couple of waterskins.
Enough to last us a day or two. Of course, Ghorak recovered as much of his weed as he could find in the dead men’s pockets.
And Venim stole a dagger to replace his missing blade.
There will be no comfort tonight. No blankets, no pillows.
I don’t even bother to ask about a fire.
The place the aliens have selected for our resting spot is not the most inviting either.
It’s a skeleton of some sort, and it looks like it could have belonged to Godzilla himself.
The arched vault of the rib cage offers no real protection from the elements, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.
At least the big, column-like bones give me something to lean against while I sit and rest my weary body.
When I look through the gaps between the bones, I can see the Vents way off ahead of us.
From here, they’re still nothing more than a constant flicker of pink light, like a fireworks show just beyond the horizon.
It would be nice if those distant lights were enough to quell my nightly urges, but I know they won’t be.
Even though it isn’t fully dark yet, I can already feel my own fireworks show building inside me.
The bombs aren’t going off yet, but the fuse has been lit, and it’s only a matter of time.
It doesn’t help that I’m surrounded by three shirtless alien dudes.
Scythro is lounging next to me, gnawing a piece of jerky while his tail absently doodles in the ashes beside him.
Even though his hands are free now, his wrists are still encircled by the shackles Venim’s men put on him.
They look like a pair of rusty bracelets decorated with bits of chain dangling from the sides.
Each time those chains jingle, it is a reminder of what Scythro truly is. A prisoner. An inmate. A criminal.
I force myself not to look at the mark on his chest. I do my best not to think about what it means.
Ghorak, meanwhile, is sitting nearby, quietly smoking one of the weedstalks he reclaimed from the corpses in the Crater of Death.
I’m trying extra hard not to think about his brand and what Venim told me it means, but the more I try not to think about it, the more I do.
Mass murder. What the heck does that even mean?
That he’s killed people, obviously. But how many?
Is that why Ghorak smokes so much? To forget the enormity of his crime?
It occurs to me that Venim might be lying. For all I know, he made up the meanings of the other guys’ brands. That’s just the kind of dirty trick that asshole would pull. I guess I could just ask, but I’m too scared.
Scared I’ll find out Venim wasn’t lying.
Speaking of him… he is just leaning against one of the upright rib bones, staring off into the distance at the gradually darkening sky. It’s going to be night soon, and this time he’s going to be here.
I’m still not sure I made the right decision keeping him alive.
I’m not sure I had a choice.
I’ve been trying to rationalize the decision all afternoon, telling myself I didn’t want his blood on my hands, telling myself he’s an asset to our little gang of misfits.
But whenever I glance inside myself at those dark places I’m too afraid to look at for long, I get the feeling there’s another, deeper reason.
A reason that’s almost too shameful to even admit.
Whenever I try to think about it, it comes to me in images rather than words.
Images of my darkened bedchamber aboard the Scarlet Ship.
Of the glowing portrait hanging on the wall.
Of the thing in the glass case below it.
The Znthians were conditioning me for their Emperor, and Venim is the closest thing to the Emperor I’m going to find on this god-awful planet.
Crap.
The sky is almost fully dark now. The clouds that were covering it for most of the day have pulled back, revealing a smattering of early stars, along with the curving white blade of a crescent moon.
Those celestial bodies provide some light, but it won’t be enough to save me.
My insides are already beginning to twist with the onset of my nightly heat.
I’m sweating inside my bodysuit, and the fabric is damp with my nervous perspiration.
And between my legs, it’s wet with more than mere sweat.
Why aren’t the aliens talking? Nobody’s uttered a word for several minutes now. The tension is oppressive, like that feeling in the air just before a storm.
Say something, damn it! Somebody say something!
“We need to talk.”
It is Venim who finally breaks the silence. His voice is like a blade of ice on my skin. It makes me shiver.
“About?” Scythro asks nonchalantly, a touch of purring in his voice.
“The female,” Venim says, turning. His Y-shaped tongue flickers out between his lips, and I shiver a second time as I remember how that thing felt inside me. “The sky is darkening. She will soon go into heat.”
“So,” Scythro says, “you know something of human biology.”
Venim scoffs.
“It isn’t a human trait,” he says. “It’s because of the drugs.”
Scythro looks at me briefly, then back at Venim.
“Drugs?”
“Imperial concubines are subjected to an intensive regimen of medication,” Venim explains.
“In part, this is to make them biologically compatible for breeding with the Emperor. But there is more to it than that. There is also a program of psychosexual conditioning involved. I will spare the human the indignity of going into all the lurid details. Suffice it to say, it involves the use of drugs that induce estrus-like urges in the absence of light…”
He pins me with his cobalt eyes.
“…Isn’t that so?”
I can sense Scythro’s eyes on me as well. Ghorak’s too. And though neither of them says a word, I can feel them silently echoing Venim’s question.
“It’s true,” I say at last, looking at Scythro. “I lied when I told you before that my heat was a human thing. That was before you guys knew I was a concubine. I was going to tell you about the medicine, but there just wasn’t time. I’m sorry.”
Scythro shakes his head and smiles.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Jean. Nothing.”
Venim groans. His solid blue eyes make it impossible to tell, but I’m pretty sure he just rolled them.
“That’s very sweet and all, but it doesn’t change the fact that the human is going to go into heat, and soon. The question now is: what are we going to do about it?”
Scythro answers with a growl.
“I intend to do the same thing I have done for the past two nights,” Scythro says. “I will help her through it to the best of my ability.”
My face heats at those words even as my body quivers at the memories of all the ways Scythro has helped me. Ghorak too. Overhead, the stars seem to be multiplying in the sky, and my urges are multiplying with them.
I shouldn’t need three men to satisfy them. I really shouldn’t…
“I am Znthian,” Venim declares proudly. “I am not accustomed to sharing.”
“That so?” says Ghorak, stubbing out his weedstalk. “In that case, you can sit this one out while me and Scythro take care of the female ourselves.”
“Perhaps you and the whore are the ones who should sit it out,” Venim replies, “and let the Znthian show you how mating is done.”
So far, I’ve managed to keep my mouth shut—mostly because I’m not sure I’ll be able to control the sounds that come out—but at this point I feel like I can’t keep quiet any longer. I have to say something.
“Hellooo… I’m right here, ya know? I can hear everything you guys are saying about me.”
For a moment, Venim looks as if he had genuinely forgotten about my presence—or at least the fact that I’m a sentient being with actual thoughts, feelings, and emotions. He opens his mouth to say something, but I cut him off before he has the chance.
“So, you’re not accustomed to sharing?” I ask, mocking the pompous tone he used a moment ago.
“Well, we already knew that, pal. All your kind does is take. You take other people’s planets.
Then you take their women to be your concubines.
You don’t like to share, but you’re perfectly happy to have a harem of sex slaves to do your bidding. ”
Venim glowers.
“You seem to have me confused with the Emperor…”
Those words spark something inside me, lighting up half-forgotten memories—memories of an imaginary lover conjured in the shadows of a darkened bedchamber, of a not-Emperor to take my pain away.
Dreams of ashes and hot wind.
Of being shared by three.
When I come back to my senses, the sunlight is all gone, and I’m lying on my back on the dirty, filthy ground. The aliens are standing over me, their shirtless bodies limned by the pale light of a crescent moon. Giant rib-bones curve above us, like the ruined vault of some desecrated temple.
My facemask suddenly feels suffocating. I rip it away.
My clothes feel like they’re on fire. No, like they are fire.
I fumble with the zipper. The aliens help.
I speak to them in a language I know they cannot understand.
In truth, I can barely understand it myself.
I beg them to save me. I beg them to do unspeakable things.
The aliens don’t answer me right away. For a long moment, they just stare at me like three handsome idiots, totally stunned by my suddenly wanton behavior.
Once again, it is Venim who finally breaks the silence…