Chapter 11 Jessa
I staggered along behind the syto assigned to me, my hands held up by whatever invisible force connected my dumb alien cuffs to the dumb alien device he held.
We’d been on the move since dawn, and my feet ached, the thin socks I was wearing did nothing to protect me from the hot ground and millions of tiny sharp rocks I was walking over.
Tovis strode along beside me, his huge hooves kicking up the same rocks that were stabbing me like hyper aggressive legos. He seemed fully recovered from his battle the day before and he’d told me turochs could heal from almost any wound if they went into a healing sleep.
Which meant the whole time he’d been unconscious and I’d been terrified he was dying, he’d actually been healing at super speeds. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Actually, between my achy feet, and lingering headache, I was wishing I could magically transform into a turoch.
When they’d pulled up the stake this morning and Tovis had rose to his full height, I’d looked at our captors and realized he could easily free himself. Then they’d told him point blank that if he did anything vaguely threatening, they’d kill me first.
Which meant once again, I was the reason Tovis was in captivity. I was the handicap he couldn’t overcome. I’d never felt more useless.
We’d been walking about a mile from the edge of the city, circling the business district from a distance.
I spotted a sign for a strip club I’d passed before and tried to orient myself, but it had been so long since I’d been outside and I never really went anywhere but home, work and the tiny grocery store between those two points.
It had probably been years since I’d been this way, and back when there were humans, it was kind of a sketchy area.
“Were you serious?” I asked Tovis. “About the mate thing?”
His ears perked up and he grinned. “Ulto is the most serious tradition a turoch can undertake.” A slightly naughty look crossed his face, and he batted my hip with his tail. “Other than the gentling of course.”
I peered up at him, wishing the sun wasn’t glaring directly into my eyes. Both his ears were tilted toward me, his eyes sparking and his full lips were pulled up into an almost devilish smile. That look was trouble, no doubt about it.
“From the look on your face, I don’t think I want to know what that is,” I finally decided.
“You do. It’s a gift to our mates, proof of our prowess and affection. I have been planning my gentling since before I left my mother band. It will be worthy of many, many repeatings around the fire.”
Yup, wasn’t touching that statement with a ten-foot pole.
“Do I get a say in this?” I demanded. “Or do you just ‘claim’ me and I have to go along with it?”
“You are free to do what you will,” he answered easily, like he wasn’t even a little worried about his chances. “It is not uncommon for a male to claim ulto and a female to ignore him until he is shamed.”
I grimaced. “I don’t want to shame you. I just don’t want to get swooped up and turned into some kind of slave bride.”
“Turoch mates are not slaves,” he said firmly. “They are precious and beloved. I will not force you to do anything. Ulto simply makes it known that I want you, and that no other male may pursue you until you deny my claim.”
**
The sytos around us were acting oddly. Their shoulders were tense, their freaky hair tentacles were coiled up tight like angry snakes waiting to strike and they started moving quicker as they turned toward the city.
“Are we close?” I whispered to Tovis.
He shrugged, but his eyes stayed on our captors. “We haven’t found their camp yet, but from the way they’re acting, I suspect they’re bracing themselves for something.”
Bracing themselves. I’d already noticed that none of the sytos seemed happy to be returning to their camp. The guy in charge had already stated that he expected to be seriously punished for being late.
I supposed that wasn’t completely abnormal. Even people who volunteered for the military could expect some sort of repercussion for messing things up. But something about the way these aliens acted about their Kwin made me think they were utterly terrified of her.
“They don’t like the lady in charge, do they?” I asked.
Tovis snorted. “The Kwin is a cruel, distant ruler. She sees most sytos as expendable, worth only what they can be ordered to do for her. They have no love for her.”
“Then why don’t they just...” I gestured with stiff arms at the wide-open horizon. “Run away?”
He shot me a soft look. “Sytos are created in labs to perform labor for the Kwin. Obeying is all they know. Even if they weren’t pursued and killed for deserting, they’ve never lived on their own, never made their own choices. I doubt any of them would survive alone.”
“That’s sad.” I felt a traitorous twist of pity for the blue aliens. They did look scared, and compared to Tovis’ looming bulk and intimidating horns, they almost appeared helpless in comparison.
Which was ridiculous, they were human sized, if a little lean. They were all grown up and could take care of themselves. And I definitely didn’t owe them any sympathy after they shocked me until I peed myself and then kidnapped me.
It took a few minutes before I realized where we were headed, the same strip club sign I’d recognized grew larger as we continued our steady march into the edge of the city.
We passed dark windows and empty bars, dozens and dozens of broken down, dust covered vehicles littered the roads, forcing us to wind in between them and sometimes climb over pile ups.
I spotted a few half-mummified corpses, plenty of bare skeletons and a few stained drivers seats that made my stomach churn at the ramifications. While I’d been cowering in my spa, everyone else had been dying, rotting away on our invaded, empty world.
A flash of movement caught my eye and I stopped to stare as I saw pack of at least twenty dogs lope across an intersection, their ribs showing, and their tails stiff as they paused to sniff the air.
The pack was a motley collection of poodles, mutts and half a dozen other breeds, loose collars still hanging from their scrawny necks. This time last year, those had been pets, now they had the rangy, feral attitudes of dangerous predators.
Everything about my normal life had changed.
“Keep moving, human,” the syto leading me barked.
I shook off the weird feeling that had settled over me and scrambled over the hood of a red car.
“What’s your name?” I asked him. He shot me a perturbed look, his tentacles flaring out briefly before rolling back up into what I was calling ‘the stress position’.
“I am Rijish, but do not call me that.”
“Why not?” I asked. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tovis looking at me curiously. I didn’t exactly want to make friends with the guy holding my invisible leash, but I thought he was the same syto who’d grabbed me at the spa, and he’d seemed slightly apologetic about my situation.
More flies with honey, right?
I wasn’t sure I wanted flies, but I wanted the option of flies.
Maybe this was a useful, sympathetic fly. I was spiraling into my metaphor.
“I’m Jessa, this is Tovis,” I said, cheerfully, wincing at the bizarrely chipper tone that had popped out of my mouth.
“I do not need your names. I cannot help you, do not expect me to risk my life because a female deigned to be friendly to me,” he said harshly.
“Of course not,” I said. “I was just curious.”
“What are you doing, mate?” Tovis rumbled.
I looked over at him and shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.”
We reached the empty parking lot of the strip club. The low, windowless building was painted bright red and there was a dim sign with a neon outline of a nude woman twined around a pole on the roof.
The door was black with Lacy’s Ladies, painted in scrolling, glittery script on it.
The syto in charge squared his shoulders and stomped up to the door. He rapped on it twice.
“Announce yourself!” A muffled voice called from inside.
“Jiith, humbly requesting to enter the Kwin’s presence!” He answered, his tentacles coiling up to the top of his head before quickly straightening out to hang limply around his head. The action reminded me bizarrely of someone hurriedly smoothing their hair down before they faced their boss.
The door swung open and Jiith strode inside, the rest of the sytos following after him, with Tovis and I sandwiched awkwardly between them. I stepped through the doorway and blinked as my eyes adjusted from bright sunlight to the low shadows.
The building was stiflingly hot, and I instantly missed my solar powered AC more than ever. A bar lined the wall to our left, dozens of liquor bottles sitting on the shelves behind it, their glass surfaces reflecting the low light. I looked around as my eyes adjusted.
The walls were painted black, with strips of red and pink fabric hanging from the ceiling every few feet, and a dozen tables were piled against the far wall, chairs stacked on top, leaving the main sitting area completely empty aside from the many blue aliens standing at attention.
A stage dominated the far wall, and a row of poles gleamed behind a large chair set in the center. The walkway that jutted out from the center of the stage was stacked with seemingly random objects, most of them shiny and I gawked at the pile of glittering jewelry that stood at the center.
“Jiith,” a light voice hissed. “I feared you had abandoned me, I was preparing to send out a party to capture you and bring me your skin.”
Jiith tensed, two tentacles at the back of his head twining around each other before calming down. He touched the tips of his fingers to his chin and crossed the empty floor to stand in front of the stage.
Rijish followed after him, forcing Tovis and I to tag along.
The only light in the room came from two of the weird cylinders the sytos had used in their camp last night, one on either side of the large chair.
It made it hard to make out the small figure on the chair, and I peered up at who I assumed was the Kwin everyone had been warning me about.
She was pink, I could see that much. Dressed in drapey, sparkly white gauze that did little to conceal her body.
As far as I could tell, she was the same general shape as the males. Though her build was narrower and her tentacles were slender and a bit longer than the others’.
“We captured a human female on our mission, glorious Kwin. Her mate attacked us and we were forced to delay our return. I offer you both as signs of my eternal devotion.”
The Kwin released a vaguely menacing purr and leaned down, the change in angles finally allowing me to make out her face. Her wide eyes stared down at me consideringly, and her attention made my skin crawl.
“A breeder slave,” she hummed, a wry smile quirking her lips. “How useless. But the turoch...” her voice trailed off as she turned her attention to Tovis.
“Your kind has caused me no end of trouble and grief,” she mused, her voice light and amused despite her words.
“I wonder would it serve me more to use you to entertain myself and punish these,” she flicked a look at all the standing sytos below her, “disappointments. Or should I simply torment you to soothe my hurt feelings?”
No one moved and I held back a shudder. I did not like this lady. Two minutes breathing the same air as her was too much.
The Kwin sighed and slouched back into her chair.
“Someone restrain Jiith while I decide what to do with him.”
Three sytos rushed forward and one of them shocked Jiith with a baton. He dropped to the floor and was dragged off so quickly my head spun.
“You, breeder.” She kicked one leg over the other, her foot twitching like a cat’s tail as it watched a bird. I darted a glance up at her.
“You’re this one’s mate?” She sounded bored but I doubted she was. She was enjoying terrifying everyone too much.
“Uh,” I shot a panicked glance at Tovis. It felt like a mistake to reveal anything to her, let alone information I could guarantee would be used against Tovis. He nodded at me, his expression calm and I swallowed hard as I looked back at her.
“He claimed me,” I finally croaked out.
“Hmm.” The Kwin tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair and fell silent. I swore the whole room held its breath as we waited for whatever terrible thing she’d do next.
“I have no use for a breeder while I’m trapped on this primitive planet. There’s no one to sell you to, no lab to dissect you in, no arena where you could be offered as a prize. And yet, you are the first live human to be offered to me.”
I cringed at the list of terrible things she would have done to me if she could.
“I supposed that makes you a rare prize, as much as that means in this terrible place. You’ll make a fine pet, until I tire of you.”
When I didn’t respond, she let out a hiss and leaned down to glare at me.
“Aren’t you honored, breeder? Won’t you thank me for sparing your life and taking an interest in your pitiful self?”
I gaped at her.
The blunt “No” that came out of my mouth escaped before my better judgement could stop it.
The Kwin’s pretty face twisted with fury just before someone stepped forward and shocked me unconscious.