Sextus Page 12

  Sextus

  My heart broke the moment Septi died. In fact, I believed until very recently that everything inside me died at that moment—except for anger and lust. But I realize my heart is very much alive, because right this minima it’s cracking apart.

  Little Lexa is strong and courageous and everything a male could want in a female. And she just said she loves me even though she’ll never see me again. Drack. If only things were different.

  But they’re not. I made a vow a long time ago, a commitment, and I need to follow through. Daneur Khour must pay for what he did to Septi. I’m willing to die to accomplish that. What my heart wants? That doesn’t matter.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lexa

  My first day behind the controls and I’m supposed to fly this thing with tears in my eyes? Great.

  Stay focused, Lexa. Wipe your eyes, type in the coordinates and let’s get this show on the road. Don’t sit here waiting for a man to beg you to stay. That’s not going to happen. No one is coming to save you. Magic isn’t going to happen. This isn’t a fairy tale.

  I use both hands to wipe my tears until my vision is clear, set my coordinates, and take off. This vessel is super user-friendly. I stop in town and with the help of my computer pad and a little intuition, I find a grocery store, some benign-looking fruits and vegetables (at least I think that’s what they are), and extra ammo for the laser Sex put on the front seat of my new hover.

  Okay, Lexa. Stay in the moment. Keep busy, there’s a lot to do. Whatever you do, don’t think about the handsome, blue sex god you’ll never see again.

  Several hours later, I’ve arrived at my new house, cleaned almost every nook and cranny, and changed the sheets. I’ve got a load of wash going—so not impressed with Salute technology. This washer isn’t more advanced than the one in my basement apartment back on Earth.

  I’ve discovered at least ten alien species of bugs—luckily most of them were dead when I found them. Most weren’t grosser than the big, flying cockroach-like Palmetto bugs that infested the little kitchenettes dad and I stayed in when we “toured” Florida when I should have been attending first grade. I shiver just thinking about them—there’s nothing more disgusting than a cockroach.

  I watch the smaller of the two suns set as I sweep the front porch. The large sun sets so quickly I’m left in complete darkness on the back porch as I neaten up.

  Crickets. Literally, it sounds like crickets only they’re industrial strength. I’m out in the boonies on a strange planet in a strange house with strange alien bugs screaming outside my windows. It’s pitch black and I’m totally, completely alone. Dear God, what was I thinking?

  My heart is pounding in fear. I’m not twenty-five-year-old Lexa right now, I’m five years old and I’m so scared I’m having trouble swallowing. What the ever-loving fuck was I thinking when I thought I could do this?

  Skills. What skills can I use to deal with this? Think, Lexa, think. Okay, got it. Distract, use the distraction skill. Stay busy with work. I redouble my efforts, cleaning under the couch cushions. Is that an alien version of a penny? Washing the silverware by hand. What’s with the sporks, anyway? Don’t they realize having different utensils for forks and spoons is much more civilized?

  Okay, I’m doing this. I’ll keep working until I literally can’t stand up, then I’ll drop into bed and fall instantly asleep. That’s a great strategy.

  I see odd lights outside the living room window. Don’t worry, Lexa. You have neighbors; the neighbors have hovercraft, that’s what you see.

  But between the unidentified lights and the creepy screaming crickets, I’ll admit my fear is fast approaching the level of terror. Now my traitorous brain is throwing every scary movie I’ve ever seen in my face.

  When I was buying groceries and pillows, all the people in town seemed very nice. That’s why I picked this planet. They were humanoid with pleasant facial features, even though their skin was an unflattering shade of pale chartreuse. But what if at sundown they turn into creatures that look like the alien in Alien?

  Hell, the very fact that I’m not in my bed on Earth right now, the very fact that I’ve already seen a hundred different alien species in the scant month of my space travels gives credence to the fact that there could be other, creepier species out there who turn into human-eating-zombie-things at dusk.

  “Stop it!” I scold myself. I need Ambien or it’s going to be a long night. I mentally scroll through my skills checklist, but I can’t think of a single skill to help me get to sleep tonight.

  Now my brain’s completely going haywire and traitorously showing me pictures of Sextus. Naked. In the very bed that’s less than twenty feet away from where I’m standing. Come on, Lexa, get a grip. You’ve got to—

  The sound of breaking glass is not a hallucination. Nor is the seven-foot-tall alien who does look like the alien from Alien.

  Other sounds of breaking glass grab my attention as I see four more huge, creepy black aliens crash through my windows and barrel toward me.

  I can hear my heart pounding in my ears as I rush to the bedroom to grab the gun Sextus gave me. One of the alien things grabs me around the waist; its vise-like grip is so tight I wonder if my ribs are breaking.

  The five aliens are chittering at each other so fast my translator isn’t following. I don’t know if they’re talking to each other or giving me orders. The one with two of its four arms around me carries me out the front door and aboard its spacecraft.

  In less than two minutes start to finish they’ve invaded my home and brought me aboard their vessel. One of them secures me to a little jump seat on the bridge of the small ship. He ties my feet together while a second alien secures my wrists to the back of the chair. I pull against my bonds to see if there’s any play in the ties—no.

  With only two aliens on the bridge, my translator’s working fine.

  “What’s taking the other three so long?”

  “They’re looking for the Broog.”

  “Drackers. They don’t have a brain between them.”

  “He’ll punish us all if we come back without it. I’ll go back and assist.”

  He thunders down the metal ramp, leaving me alone with the one I think is the captain. I can’t help but shudder as I take a moment to examine him. He has an exoskeleton. Its chitinous, hard insect-like shell is black and reflects the blue lights from the control panel. He has four small spindly arms that are thin and covered in spiky, hairy knobs. The arms look like they’d break easily and would have trouble lifting a bowling ball, but the guy who carried me in here could have bent steel with them.

  Oh shit. He’s got four eyes. And dear God, they’re all looking at me. I now know what the term “bile rose in my throat” means because even though breakfast was a long, long time ago, it’s making a fiery ascent up the back of my throat.

  “Where’s the Broog?”

  Shit. Answer too quickly and he’ll know I’m lying. Wait too long and I think pain will be involved. I swallow hard as I stall.

  “It got lost on the run out of the casino.” I try to look him in the eye, I mean eyes. Dear Lord, I’m terrified.

  He slaps me across my cheek with his wiry-hairy hand. “We scoured the area. You didn’t drop the Broog.”

  I can’t tell him the painting was a forgery; I think that will get me killed. I can’t disclose that it’s on the Tranquility, that will get my friends killed. I panic and freeze. I don’t know what to say.

  “I’m just a slave. I did as I was told. I don’t know what they did with the painting. The asshole who held my leash gave me enough gold to buy this house and let me walk away.”

  There’s something chilling about the sound of fire. From where I’m sitting I can’t see out the doors, but I hear tongues of fire lapping at the wood frame of the house. I smell the distinctive odor of burning timber, and I can see flickers of light reflecting off the black semi-transparent exoskeleton of the male in front of me.

  My house. Gone.
Why this bothers me I don’t know. I doubt I’ll be alive tomorrow anyway.

  The four aliens from the house have boarded the ship, and by the sound of things, the five of them are arguing. Voices are rising, and some of them are hissing. In this species hissing isn’t just a noise, it involves actual saliva. Their saliva must be acidic because one of their exoskeletons is quickly developing tiny holes.

  I’m only catching bits and pieces of their conversation, but I hear, “What if the painting was hidden in the house and now you’ve burned it up?” “You should have continued to search,” and “I won’t let Khour kill us all because of your stupidity.”

  The captain hisses deep in his throat and spits a long stream of acid at one of the other males. He aimed the current of liquid directly at the guy’s face. I can hear the corrosion burning into him. He yells, grabbing his eyes.

  The captain strides forward, spits again, this time at the male’s thorax, then kicks him so hard in the abdomen that it pushes him down the exit ramp and out the door. The captain pulls out his gun, pulls the trigger, then says, “Secure the door, we’re off.”

  Holy shit. If he’d do that to his own comrade, I have no doubt he’ll do whatever it takes to get what he needs from me.

  Okay, Lexa, think. What do I know? I know Khour is behind this. And what do I know about Khour? He’s a ruthless, unfeeling psychopath who doesn’t care if anyone but him lives or dies.

  What he does care about for some unknown reason is that ugly freaking Broog painting. And I’m the last person in the galaxy who had it in her hands. There must be a way I can use that information to stay alive.

  But I have people I care about on the Tranquility. I can’t sell them out. And if I have nothing to bargain with, I’m expendable.

  The clock is ticking. I have no more time to think of every eventuality. It’s certain death for me if I keep stonewalling.

  “Where’s the Broog?” The captain, all seven feet of him, asks, his face mere inches from mine. I haven’t forgotten his spit will remove the top nine layers of my skin.

  “I’ll give that information directly to Mr. Khour,” I say, sounding a lot calmer than I feel.

  “You’ll quit stalling and tell me right now.”

  Oh shit. This is going to hurt.

  I’ve learned lots of skills to deal with emotional pain. Just look at me today. Didn’t I use massive skills saying goodbye to the guy I’m falling in love with?

  Okay, Lexa, focus.

  But physical pain—I’m not good with that.

  Dear old dad used pain quite nicely to keep me in line. Before I was old enough for kindergarten, he’d make me run money-changing cons at little mom-and-pop convenience stores. He’d hold my little hand like the most doting father in the world, but what he was really doing was keeping his thumb in position to bend my knuckle to the point it hurt like a thousand tongues of fire.

  I learned early not to let out a noise or the punishment would increase. God forbid if I tried to pull away. No, when the pain came, I had to focus and figure out what I’d done to displease him, then correct it. It’s amazing what three pounds of pressure on a little girl’s finger will do—instant compliance.

  I have a feeling this seven-foot-tall walking cockroach guy is willing to hurt me a lot worse than putting three pounds of pressure on me.

  “It’s very complicated. I need to tell Mr. Khour in person,” I inform him earnestly. I’m sitting upright in my hard, little chair, my hands still tied behind my back.

  He leans even closer. I can smell his breath, which is a cross between a can of cat food and the inside of a dumpster.

  I’ve seen a million movies where the heroine is in this position. She’s cute and spunky and actually thinks up catchy wisecracks to toss at the bad guy. Me? Not so much. I’m a minute away from pissing my pants. I have no plucky rejoinders to throw his way.

  “Where’s the Broog?”

  Oh dear God, please don’t spit on me.

  If he had a nose, it would be touching me right now. Instead, he extends his rigid, black tongue, leans a tiny bit closer, and slowly licks me from jawline to the apple of my cheek.

  Holy fuck. It burns like the fires of hell. If I live through this, that acid will burn a deep furrow that will mark my skin until the end of time.

  “Captain, Mr. Khour’s on the comm,” one of the cockroaches interrupts our little tête-à-tête. I know I need to pay attention to their conversation, but my cheek hurts so bad I can focus on little else.

  “Did you find the Broog?” Khour’s image leaps to life on half the windows at the front of the bridge.

  I clench my teeth and blink my eyes, trying to put the pain at bay and focus on the conversation.

  “No, sir. It wasn’t in the house.”

  “Drack! That’s unacceptable! Get your vessel back to Salute and look again.”

  “Well...sir...that’s not possible.”

  Khour shouts and curses. His purple majesty’s face resembles when he had his meltdown at the klempto table the other day.

  “Explain!”

  “Chrixix…burned the house to the ground, sir.”

  I take half a second to rejoice that for the moment there’s one being in this room who’s in deeper shit than me.

  The entire ship is silent. There’s just the steady thrum of the engines in the background.

  “Sir...Mr. Khour.” I have no idea where I found the guts to say anything, especially at a tense moment like this.

  “Is that the female?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put her picture on the screen.”

  My picture, four feet tall, joins Khour’s mottled, purple face on the forward windows.

  He’s silent for a moment, looking me up and down. “Show me her tits,” he orders.

  The captain yanks my t-shirt up and stands aside. After those days on Lusion you’d think this wouldn’t faze me, but the sheer brutality of the display accomplishes its goal. I feel more powerless than I already did.

  “That’s definitely her. Cover her.”

  The captain pulls my t-shirt down and steps away.

  “Where’s the Broog?” Khour asks. He doesn’t sound like he’ll tolerate anything but complete cooperation.

  “Umm, I’d prefer to tell you in person, sir.”

  “You would? Most people would prefer to stay far away from me, little female. Is it my good looks?” That’s one derisive laugh he has.

  “I…” Maybe it’s my terror, or maybe it’s the agony of the acid that I can still feel burning through my flesh, but my mind completely shuts off. I have no intelligent thoughts, no clever lies—no words to say.

  “Answer one question, little female. Was the Broog in the house my intelligent minion just burned to the ground?”

  I kick my brain back online. What answer will let me live? If the painting no longer exists, there’s no reason for him to keep me alive.

  “No.”

  “Perfect. Captain Rantin, who marked our pretty little human’s face? Was it you?”

  Ohh. It’s good to see someone else on board squirm.

  “Yes, sir.” He bows his head obsequiously.

  “You will apply the antidote immediately. I’ll watch, this should be fun.”

  The cockroach guys don’t wear any clothes, so at first, I’m not exactly certain what I’m seeing. A black chitinous panel on his abdomen slides apart in two directions exposing… well, I assume it’s exposing his cockroach penis. It’s bright red, as long as my forearm, and has hairy, brushlike knobs on it.

  I’m going to hurl. Please, dear God, I will definitely die if that disgusting, ugly, scratchy thing is forced inside me. In fact, I think I’d rather die than live through this.

  I tear my eyes from the spectacle to glance at Khour’s face on the screens. He’s licking his lips in anticipation. I glance at my four-foot-tall image and feel tremendous compassion for that poor female. She has, I mean I have, a look of abject terror on my face—eyes wide, mouth ope
n—and it’s turning Khour on.

  I force myself to glance back at Rantin; I need to see what’s coming next, although I’m tied to this chair and there’s nothing I can do to protect myself.

  Oh, fuck. His thing evidently wasn’t hard, so he’s stroking it. His gross, hairy black hand is stroking his gross, hairy red dick. Now I understand how women in movies used to faint from fear. Yep, right now I’m one second away from just closing my eyes and letting my consciousness take a vacation.