Chapter Five #2
More murmuring from the hall, and I could hear doors all along the hallway opening and closing.
Suddenly, my door flew open and one of Davos’s red jacketed Imperials looked in at me as I jumped to my feet and turned to shout something down the hall.
I backed up against the wall, and raised my fists.
I had some confused idea that they were going to try to kill me.
I heard someone shout at me to warn me. The voice had sounded like Evoq.
I decided to run and if it was already too late, then to fight them with everything I had.
Davos came in and stared at me from the doorway as I raised my fists up in a fighting stance. He smiled at me.
“Get out of my room!” I yelled at him.
“Lieutenant?” he said, with a menacingly lazy tone. “You’re all dressed up. Are you going somewhere? I did come all this way especially to see you.”
“Get out! Leave me alone!” I shouted at him, but he just stared at me, shaking his head.
“Enough of this. You’re going to hurt yourself. Come along—you’re coming back to the palace.”
“No! You want to kill me.”
“No, Lieutenant, I want to fuck you. Big difference.”
His men laughed, and he smiled as he turned to look over his shoulder at them.
“Leave me alone! I barely know you! Why are you persecuting me?”
“What the four hells is that supposed to mean? You barely know me?” he thundered at me.
“I meant what I said. We never met before your return.”
I decided I needed to run, but I was a bit awkward with the armored vest, that was way too tight, I’d realized after wearing it a while.
I sidled past him against the wall, but he grabbed me before I went more than a few steps, and I cried out in fear.
He picked me up and held me up off the ground, looking right up into my face.
I bent over and fumbled at my boot again, trying to reach my knife, but he was on me in seconds.
He easily knocked my knife to the floor.
Then he sat down in the chair, still holding me against him.
I was horrified to find myself there so close to him—on his lap.
He put his hand up under the vest and slipped his hand into the trousers.
I thought it might be just to prove to both of us that he could do whatever he wanted.
“Stop your foolishness. You’re coming back to the palace with me.”
Just then one of his men made some kind of crude joke, no doubt, because they all laughed, and he took his attention away from me long enough for me to slip out of his grasp and try to run.
I snatched up my knife as I sprinted past it.
One thing about being so much smaller than the Tygerians—I was also faster and better able to dodge around and under them.
I ran into the hall and right into a solid wall of flesh, in the form of that damned Valkarr.
He pulled back his fist and deliberately hit me squarely in my stomach, or he tried to.
The armored vest finally came in handy. It still hurt though, and I gasped and doubled over in pain.
But when I came back up, I was brandishing my knife.
I had only meant to warn him away, but he roared in anger and pulled back his fist to hit me again.
If he hit me in my stomach a second time, I feared he would hurt my baby.
I plunged the knife into his heart two times before Davos grabbed my arm and wrenched the knife away from me. I fought him like a crazy person then, desperate to get away, though I knew there was nowhere left to run.
Davos picked me up and tossed me to one of his guards as others began to swarm over Valkarr’s body.
I was still doubled over in pain, and I was half out of my mind with fear and rage.
The bastard Valkarr hadn’t pulled his punch at all but had hit me with his full strength, so I was gasping for air.
One of the guards bending over him said something that I thought—hoped—was the Tygerian word for dead.
I laughed hysterically, and Davos and all the others in that hallway looked at me in surprise.
But I truly didn’t care at that moment. He’d been trying to kill both me and my baby. I would have done much worse than that to protect us both.
The hallway had erupted into chaos. Davos came over and took my arm in a custodial grip and began to haul me out of the crush of people who were beginning to jam the corridor.
It seemed to me that everyone in there was yelling.
Tygerians were always loud and always seemed to be shouting, but this was even beyond that.
I was stumbling along beside Davos, when he made an exasperated sound and swept me up to carry me in his arms. I was almost used to getting manhandled.
It barely seemed to register anymore. I was also feeling lightheaded and dizzy, so I probably wouldn’t have been able to walk much farther anyway.
I sent up a quick prayer to Veran that Davos wasn’t taking me somewhere to kill me.
He carried me outside and to a waiting hovercraft. Within minutes, he had me strapped in a seat, and we were on our way back to the palace.
?? ?? ?? ??
The king was quiet on the way back. I figured he was shocked by what had happened.
I was pretty appalled myself, come to think of it, now that I’d had a chance to calm down.
I was exhausted from the adrenalin rush and all the exertion that was not good for my health.
I closed my eyes and suddenly I was dreaming of my grandmother.
She used to say, using one of her old country expressions, that I would “fight anything when I got mad. Even a circle-saw.”
I remember telling that to Davos once, but naturally, he had pretended to not know what the hell that meant.
I must have dozed off sitting bolt upright in my seat, because I realized that I was dreaming, and in my dream, Davos leaned over and said, “A circle what?” still pretending to misunderstand, like he always did.
I gave up trying to explain altogether and gave him a dirty look.
I knew he understood me pretty well, and he spoke excellent Earthan because of the human who had raised him.
He proved it by saying then that he had to agree with that grandmother of mine, because I surely did love to fight.
He said he didn’t have a saw to fight me with, but he’d be glad to wrestle me if I wanted to.
He waggled his eyebrows at me, because I knew that on Tygeria, wrestling was always done totally in the nude, so he was just being an ass.
I tried to turn my back on him, but the next thing I knew he had tackled me to the bed and got busy stripping off both our clothing, so he could demonstrate some wrestling holds, he said.
When I started laughing and tickling him, he tickled me back and while we were both laughing, I suddenly woke up.
I realized I was back in the real world and we had just hit some turbulence that had shaken me awake.
I sat very still for a moment as I realized that I’d just been having a sweet dream—one that had seemed like a memory of a conversation—and other things—I’d once shared with Davos.
He had been gazing down at me with real affection on his face.
It was a mystery, and it couldn’t have happened, anyway, because I barely knew Davos.
I couldn’t figure it out. I glanced over at him in confusion.
He’d said one of the last times I’d seen him that he was “going to fuck the truth” out of me, and that he would “ruin” me for any other men.
He’d been acting like a jealous lover. That memory was far from being sweet.
So what was real and what was just fantasy?
My god, I didn’t even know anymore. My head started to ache.
I kind of swooned back against the seat and Davos looked concerned and said he would call for the physicians as soon as we arrived.
I thought I was all right, but he said I looked pale, and he thought I might be in shock too.
I knew he had killed many men, even though he was younger than I was, so I guess he would know about shock.
And how the hell did I know how old he was or anything else about him for that matter?
I shook my head, trying to clear it. For all my bravado, I was sorry Valkarr was dead at my hands. When I said so, Davos gave me an odd look.
“What makes you think Valkarr is dead?”
I glanced up in surprise. “Because I stabbed him in the heart!”
“How is it that you humans can never seem to remember what side our hearts are located on? You came nowhere near Valkarr’s heart.”
“I-I didn’t?”
“No. Disappointed?”
“No, of course not. I wouldn’t wish anyone dead.”
“You tried to kill him. Stabbed him twice.”
“Well, I-I was overwrought. It was wrong of me, even though I was provoked.”
“Uh huh.”
I simply glared at him and didn’t keep arguing.
He put me in a guest room adjoining his own rooms and called for servants to put me to bed. I resisted just to be difficult, even though I was exhausted. He posted a guard inside my room too. And they locked me inside.
Davos watched the whole thing and when I was finally put to bed, he turned to leave, stopping to say something about me to the guard on his way out.
I knew it was about me, because they both gave me a long, disapproving look.
Davos glanced over to find me watching and quirked up an eyebrow at me inquiringly.
“Why am I being locked in this room?”
“It should be fairly obvious even to you.”
I glared at him. “It’s not. So explain please.”
“Because I don’t want you to leave it.”
“Well, why not?”
He raised his eyes heavenward and shook his head.
“Let me go. Please. Send me back to Earth.”
“Why? So you can die?”
“Maybe that would be for the best.”
He made a sound of disgust and turned away to walk out the door.
I turned over and closed my eyes, wishing I was anywhere but with this man and under his control. Something about that felt really familiar, and I fell asleep wondering why that was.