Chapter 10 #4
“They’re real if you have money,” he says shrewdly.
I pull out my credit card. “You can have all of this if you give me a parachute that works.”
“No way for you to know if it’s going to work or not,” he says. “Once I’ve got your money, and you’ve jumped, it’s pretty much over.”
He’s got a point. I have to trust in this back alley parachute salesman because that’s what the world has come to. I know every second that passes is one second that my bosses are probably capturing my mates and taking them off to a laboratory somewhere, or worse.
“Take the card,” I say, grabbing one of the parachutes and putting it on my back. I snap the straps into place, ensuring that it stays on my back while I am hurtling toward the ground at terminal velocity.
“Fuck it,” I say.
“Wait!” he shouts, just as I am about to step over the ledge.
“What?” I pull back, heart thumping.
“Do you know how to pull the cord? That’s a really important part,” he says. “Some people don’t pull the cord. Don’t wait too long. A couple of seconds at most. The fall isn’t as far as it looks.”
“Now you tell me this.”
“Yes,” he says. “I forgot that part. I always forget that part.”
“Alright. Thanks. I gotta go.”
“You’re my first customer,” he says. “I hope you’ll be okay.”
He sounds regretful, but I have already stepped off the edge and am falling. I count to three, then pull the cord. The chute opens. I can’t believe it, but a big canopy of fabric billows out behind me and my descent is slowed considerably.
I don’t think I’m going to develop a taste for skydiving, but I tolerate this experience as I turn my lines toward the ship, or the place where I think the ship is.
I can only imagine the panic that will be ensuing if Zeal soldiers come down to the village and start freaking everybody down there out. They’ve been through enough.
It turns out my sense of direction is uncanny.
I can see the ship, and unfortunately, I can also see Zeal soldiers with weapons pointed at my mates.
I can see that an altercation is in progress.
There are about twelve soldiers. I instantly know they did not send nearly enough people.
Even heavily armored, even with high-powered weapons, it takes more than four men to take one of my mates down.
I am helpless to intervene. I am swaying back and forth at the end of the chute, waiting for gravity to deliver me to the fray.
I see a light flash that must be Sharp pulling one of his super dangerous swords. From this height, it’s more like a glinting little flash, but I know what that looks like. I’d know it anywhere.
There are so many pretty little bursting lights, which correspond to the Zeal soldiers opening fire. They may as well be little LED lights flashing on a game board for all the effect they seem to have on my mates.
Boss lowers his head and shoulders, then charges the nearest cluster of soldiers, goring through them in one brutal motion.
I am getting closer by the second, and I know that the soldiers on his horns are not holding on.
They have no choice. He has turned them into impromptu head decorations, and now he uses their limp bodies as a kind of shield while the others continue to fire on him.
This gives Sharp all the opening he needs to start swinging his weapon, a sword that cuts through every bit of the soldiers where it makes contact. He is skilled with it, but even if he were not, I have no doubt that he would be making diced meat out of these soldiers.
Poor bastards. They didn’t know what they were in for.
Kronos lights the rest of them up with cracking lightning that seems to emanate from his hands and fingers. Still have no idea how he does that. There is so much more to him than meets the eye. That’s true of all of them, I realize as my feet dangle in the rushing air.
Stuck floating toward carnage, I realize again that I finally have access to all my memories with them.
They make me blush…
Some time ago…
“Kneel, pet.”
I blush, but I don’t go to my knees.
“Why do you resist even the slightest display of obedience?”
“I don’t know,” I whimper as I hide my head, a little ashamed of myself under Sharp’s stern stare.
“You speak the same language. You understand me entirely. But you have decided not to obey. Why?”
“Don’t make me explain myself,” I plead.
“You will have to explain yourself. You can either use your words, or you can choose to obey. I will take either option.”
“It feels weird to kneel. Makes me feel… small, I don’t know.”
“You are small,” he points out pragmatically.
“Yes, but that’s not what I mean. I mean I don’t… I don’t want to do what you tell me to do.”
“Are you sure about that, pet?” Sharp’s stern voice is laced with a hint of sexy warmth. He is so patient. Dangerously so.
“Yes, I am pretty sure,” I say, squirming.
“The others have put you on your knees, but I want you to do it for me. I do not want to have to manhandle you every time you need to do something.”
“But I don’t want to…”
“You whine like a juvenile,” he says. “Do you want to be treated like a little baby? Is that it? Should I treat you like a little pup? Crate you? Take you out to the toilet? Ensure you are not messing yourself?”
He is not going to let me get away with this. The others just put me on my knees and go about their business. But Sharp is more patient than that, and smarter too.
“Kneel, pet,” he says. “Or what happens to you will be so much more humiliating than the simple act of going to your knees. I can promise you that.”
“Well, now I’m curious,” I say, only somewhat joking. I thrill to threats. I know nobody on this ship is going to hurt me.
“Don’t be,” Sharp says flatly. “Kneel.”
I almost kneel. I seriously really almost do. But at the last moment my knees just refuse to bend. There’s something in a human that just doesn’t want to give in. I think it’s built into our DNA.
He picks me up, and starts stripping me of what little clothing I had on. In seconds, I am naked. He attaches a leash to my collar and pushes me into a hands and knees position.
“You’re going to crawl,” he tells me. “You’re going to follow me naked on hands and knees until your kneeling becomes second nature to you.”
I try to get up, of course. But he pushes me back down, then tugs on the leash.
“Come,” he says. “Come, and think about how much easier and less uncomfortable it would have been if you could have just kneeled to begin with.”
“This is mean,” I whimper in complaint.
“Mean would be whipping you for your insolence. Mean would be taking my leather tongue lash to your beautiful breasts and buttocks until you begged for mercy—and then showing you none. Now come with me, pet.”
“I’m sorry, Sharp,” I whisper, pulling back against the leash.
“I’m sure you are,” he says. “I promised you that you would regret your actions. And now you are. Take some heart that you can trust my threats.”
He gives me quite literally no choice in the matter. I can’t physically resist him. He’s much stronger than I am, and he is determined to make this punishment happen.
That doesn’t mean I don’t try to get out of it. I flop to the side and let him simply pull on the leash. This results in an unpleasant choking sensation. I gag and writhe and make myself look as pathetic as possible. Unfortunately this also has the effect of making me feel as pathetic as possible.
“If you don’t want it to hurt, don’t make it hurt,” he says, his voice calm and even.
“Just let me do what I want,” I whine.
His stern face cracks just a little. He smirks and shakes his head. “No. It wouldn’t do you any good.”
He crouches down in front of me, running his hand beneath my chin and turning my face up to his. His alien gaze searches mine. I feel probed. I feel known.
“Hands and knees, pet. And next time I ask for you to kneel… kneel.”
He drops a kiss on my forehead, and then he makes me crawl.
I remember too, that I eat my dinner naked, kneeling at his feet. Kronos and Boss act like this is normal, even though every part of my body feels like it is absolutely aflame with shame.
He offers me a treat from his fingers every now and then. This is clearly the only way I will eat this evening, so though I want to be prideful and refuse, I accept it.
“Good girl,” he praises, giving me a little sweet treat.
“God,” I mutter to myself as my face goes bright fucking red. The things these mates have done to me. The things I have done to them…
I come back to the present moment as the ground rushes up at me faster than it seemed to be doing before. I don’t know what that’s about, but I guess it’s a good thing because it means I can get into the fray and save the aliens who treat me like an animal but somehow make it hot.
“Stop!” I shout, floating in with my parachute.
My plan was to kick the guns out of their hands, or at least kick them over.
I have a lot of momentum that comes from falling from the sky.
But I don’t have a lot of experience in directing myself while falling from the sky.
It’s my first time. So instead of coming through the attacking soldiers like a bowling ball through pins, I skim over their heads and sort of knees up barrel right through my mates.
It’s not all a loss though. The parachute lines and the canopy fall behind me and grab the soldiers up sort of like a big moving net that can’t be resisted because of all the aforementioned momentum.
“I’ve saved you!” I declare at the top of my lungs, as my mates go through the writhing canvas and kill every single one of the soldiers while they are unable to get up.
It’s brutal.
Boss grabs me by the back of my shirt and drags me with him across the battlefield toward the ship.
“Careful of my head, they cut it open and my skull is loose in bits!” I scream.