Chapter 4
Vera
I was going to get used to this if he kept it up.
Being carried around in Azure-Eyes’ big brawny arms was far more pleasant than it ought to be, considering his rather monstrous appearance.
I seemed to have a thing for monstrous as it turned out.
Maybe that was the head wound talking. The knock on my head had caused a fierce pounding and throbbing in my temple.
Probably a mild concussion, but I couldn’t worry about it now; there were bigger things at stake.
“Hey, my name’s Vera. What’s yours?” I asked, licking my dry lips. His eyes darted from the narrow path we were on, down to my face, and then lingered for a moment on my mouth. His own tongue flicked into the air, showing me that it was split like a serpent’s. Of course it was.
I couldn’t keep calling him Azure-Eyes, at least not to his face, even if they were really pretty blue eyes.
When he drawled, “Zathar,” my belly tingled in response.
Oh yeah, that was way better. The name Zathar fit him like a glove, it slid right off the tongue, even if mine wasn’t split. It matched the serpentine vibes.
“Thank you, can you tell me where we’re going?
” I asked, trying to remain polite when nothing about this situation was normal.
I had been manhandled and touched by this male far more than my last boyfriend ever had in the span of the three months we’d dated.
To be fair to that ex, he’d been approved by my mom and I had abhorred every moment I had to spend with him, which was not exactly conducive to a physical relationship.
Why was I even thinking about relationships and sex? Zathar was a stranger, an alien that was so different from me that he didn’t even have legs. I shouldn’t be contemplating anything but my survival and the survival of the other humans with me.
“We are headed to Vangor Pass, and after that, our hideout. It is where Iave will meet us with the others.” Zathar dipped his head to mine, his eyes blinking at me in a sideways blink as fully developed nictitating membranes slid closed over them from the inside corners of his eyes.
“Don’t worry, he will protect them. They are fine. ”
I liked that he was trying to reassure me but I wasn’t fooled.
We’d already lost one poor person to the watery depths.
Now Kalani and Naomi were left behind in the middle of a horde of very hostile Naga.
I didn’t think they, or Zathar’s friend, stood much of a chance at all.
That just left the other girl, whose name I didn’t even know yet, and Reid.
Plus that very injured lady that Zathar’s other friend was carrying, but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be advocating for her yet or not.
She was one of the pilots of the ship that had brought us here, did she know what she was transporting? I mean how could she not?
My head wound made thinking about all of this, and about our future, far harder than I liked.
The gentle swaying motion my body made in Zathar’s arms didn’t help either; I was starting to feel lightheaded and dizzy, with matching nausea rising in my belly.
I did know that if I had to walk up this steep path that wound into the mountains with sharp twists and turns, I would have passed out by now.
Sucking it up, I tried to just focus on one point in the strange, alien surroundings.
Maybe that would help me battle the dizziness.
Every bit of foliage I could see was tinted in shades of purple or gray, from the deepest dark colors down to pale lavender.
It matched the glow of the purple sun shimmering high overhead.
The mountains were all rising in sharp, jagged peaks, some of them capped with snow that looked lavender in the purple sunlight.
I couldn’t tell where we were going, but it was obvious that Zathar knew this terrain like the back of his hand.
He was sliding along the narrow path full of confidence, leading the pack while his friend held up the rear.
I tried not to think of that as a prisoner escort, but a protective detail instead.
I struggled to imagine the hideout he mentioned, was it going to be a cave?
A camp? A little village? Would there be more Nagas there?
I wasn’t sure how happy I’d feel if we were going to a place where we’d be surrounded by more of his species.
Those other ones hadn’t seemed happy at all to see us; was Zathar sure his own people were going to be more receptive?
When the path started to get even more narrow, and a deep drop opened up on our left, my head really started to spin. A cool sweat was starting to break out all over my skin, and my belly was fervently rebelling. I wasn’t too fond of heights but with my vision dancing, it was exponentially worse.
I was just about to open my mouth, a risk considering I felt like hurling, to ask Zathar for a break.
The path opened up as it turned sharply to the left and suddenly there was no drop but a gently rolling field of grass, cupped protectively between the flanks of two mountains.
It was without a doubt one of the most idyllic places I’d ever seen.
Then I ruined the moment when my stomach rebelled.
I could only just fling myself forward in his arms to prevent shamefully spewing all over his pretty, shiny, azure scales.
He made a shocked hissing noise and then he was lowering me, his tail flicking around to hook my hair behind my ear with the agile tip.
“Oh no! Vera,” the girl yelped from behind him.
Figures that she’d recognized me too, had they all been taken after my shameful trial and execution back on Earth?
I didn’t want that to haunt me out here as well but it seemed like there was no escaping it.
When she braved Zathar’s presence to hover near my side with a worried expression, I felt like a heel for thinking that.
She was deathly pale from shock, and red rimmed her eyes from all the crying she’d already done.
Her eyes were actually still shimmering with unshed tears, but she was biting her bottom lip so hard it was nearly bloodless from the pressure.
She was trying to hold all those big emotions inside so she could offer me support.
Zathar was being shockingly nice too, gently holding me, keeping my hair from my face, the whole shebang.
He was flicking his tongue at the air, his azure eyes sliding frantically over my face, lingering on the pulse in my neck.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was absolutely terrified that there was something seriously wrong with me.
“I’m okay,” I croaked out to reassure both of them.
“Just, if I could have a sip of water? That would help.” The girl was casting her head about immediately as if she would personally locate water for me if she could.
But Zathar was the one who immediately slipped one hand to his belt to grab a leather waterskin.
“Thanks,” I said after I’d taken a few careful ships and swirled out the bad taste in my mouth.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I added while looking at the girl.
In response, her eyes welled and she started quietly crying again, pressing her hand over her mouth to muffle the heart-rending noises she was making.
Zathar gently pulled me away from her, sidling backward with me in his arms as if he were afraid that the crying was contagious.
She sniffled a little louder and up I went, higher as he raised himself on his tail and just stared.
I was certain that wasn’t helping the poor girl, and now that I was feeling a little better again I knew I couldn’t let that go on.
“Hey, stop that, she’s just crying. And you’re making it worse,” I said to him in a hushed whisper. He hissed, his tongue flicking out. His expression told me he was thoroughly disturbed by what he was seeing, far more than by my puking a moment ago.
“Her eyes are leaking!” he said, horrified. Then he looked over the girl’s head at Reid and his buddy who were both just watching what was going on from a distance. Reid looked almost as uncomfortable with the situation as the two snake-men, he had no excuse though, he knew what crying was.
Huffing in annoyance, I ordered Zathar to put me down, which he did with obvious reluctance.
Then his tail curled around my middle, holding me up and I had to admit I was grateful for the support, my legs felt like noodles and the world was already back to swaying a little too much.
Avoiding the evidence of my upset stomach, possibly the remains of my last meal on Earth, I went to the girl’s side and put my arm around her shoulders.
She was younger than me, and just a tiny little thing too.
Freckled and pale, with long red hair draped around her shoulders in messy waves.
She looked like she could fall apart at just a look, timid and small, hunched in on herself.
It was obvious that while my life hadn’t been all roses, hers had been rougher when I spotted the small nicks and scars that covered the backs of her hands.
“Cosima!” she stuttered out, finally giving me her name.
I hugged her tight and tried hard not to flash back to my final confrontation with my mother.
I had desperately desired a good warm hug then, so I knew what Cosima was feeling.
I was happy I could be there for her right now.
Whispering reassurances at her, that soon just became babbled nonsense, it didn’t take all that long for her to get herself back under control.
I admired how hard she was trying to end her crying jag and move on.
Even if crying right now was the least useful thing to be doing, she couldn’t help it.
And if I hadn’t gone through the tough things I’d gone through, my heart wouldn’t be this hardened right now either. Maybe I’d be a bumbling mess too.
When she had calmed down, we both got back to our feet.
Obviously, I was helped a little by Zathar’s tail.
“Okay, we’re good. Both of us. Right, Cosima?
” I eyed the weepy girl a little warily as her bottom lip started to tremble at the question.
She held it together with sheer willpower this time, just barely giving me a nod.
I wanted to try to walk a little on this much more gentle terrain and feel the ground beneath my feet.
I didn’t want to be the damsel stuck in the hero’s arms the entire time; like I was just a little weakling who couldn’t take care of herself.
There hadn’t been a day in my life when I hadn’t had to be my own advocate, my own defender.
It didn’t take long for the dizziness to come back though, and I realized that I was seriously slowing down the pace.
Zathar was patiently hovering at my side, his tail never leaving my waist so I couldn’t possibly stumble or fall.
With the added side effect that we could understand each other since that apparently required physical touch.
But it was the other Naga that made me realize I had to suck it up.
Zathar had introduced him as Corin while I walked, and his face was drawn in anxious lines as he kept glancing at the injured woman in his arms. I was being selfish by trying to walk when that woman needed aid.
So I allowed Zathar to pick me up again for the rest of the journey.
We crossed the beautiful meadow and made it down the side of the mountains into a wide valley.
The air started to heat up a little at this lower elevation, but beneath the tall purple trees with their gray bark, it was humid and refreshing.
I could tell that fair Cosima was getting a mild sunburn along the bridge of her nose and it was obviously better for her to be in the shade.
For my head too, the shadows were easier on my eyes, giving me a little respite from my nasty headache.
When the trees started to thin out I realized we were headed straight for a giant cliff face rising in the distance, beyond it a mountain towering higher than any of the others. It was like a fang piercing the sky, the tip shimmering deep purple in the strange sunlight, the rest a forbidding gray.
I gasped in surprise when I saw the giant gate carved into the cliff, with what appeared to be several statues guarding the entrance. Nobody said anything, the silence pierced only by the occasional weepy sniffle from Cosima or the foreign bird and insect noises of this planet.
When we got closer I could tell just how tall that gate was, and how black the hole into the mountain beyond it.
The statues were as tall as a house, towering over us as we crossed between them.
They were old too, weathered almost beyond recognition, the gray stone pockmarked and cracked, all features lost except the general shape.
A long sinuous form with a man-shaped torso, these were statues of ancient Naga.
So ancient, that time had all but erased them.
The gate had been carved with symbols and shapes too, but now mostly it was a bumpy texture along the edges of the gate.
The pillars were the only thing that made any real impression.
It reminded me of when I visited some of the ancient ruins in Egypt, the scale and the erosion had impressed me.
How a civilization could have built things that were still there, still admired, thousands upon thousands of years later, was mindboggling.
These statues were just as old, if not older unless the weather was very extreme on this planet.
This looked like the entrance to an ancient temple, or an ancient underground city maybe.
It looked like it was built by a civilization far more numerous than just three Naga males.
A gate this large should be buzzing with people, but it was empty, abandoned.
As we passed silently beneath the stone arch, a chill went up my spine. It felt like we’d walked into a ghost city or like we were walking across graves. I didn’t like it, it felt unwelcoming. Like we were about to get seriously cursed if you believed in that kind of thing.