Enhanced: Brides of the Kindred 12 (The Brides of the Kindred) (54 page)

“I said, do you understand, Sayers?” he demanded again when she
didn’t answer.

Charlie took a deep breath, trying to master her rage.

“Yes, Sir,” she said icily. “I do.”

“Good. Keep the big bastard secure until you hear from me.
You’re excused from active duty until further notice. Just stay with him and
keep him under your thumb.”

“Yes, Sir,” Charlie snapped again.

“Good.” Purvis yawned. With the problem at least temporarily
solved, he was apparently done for the night. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said
and hung up.

The phone went dead in her hand. This time she pictured her
supervisor rolling over and going back to sleep. Probably getting a good
night’s rest while he had just condemned
her
to a completely sleepless
night standing guard over an angry alien as big as a horse. He might as well
have ordered her to bring home a mountain lion or a timber wolf and keep
it
in
her spare room until he could think what to tell the press.

God damned idiot!
Charlie thought again, fuming. But
standing around out here all night wasn’t getting her anywhere. She was going
to have to take the big Kindred home and find a way to make him secure somehow,
at least for the night.

Remembering that she had been going to call in a unit to deal
with the girl who had been attacked by her date, Charlie pulled out her cell
again. But during her phone call, the girl had wandered back to the front of
the bar and apparently called some friends. Craning her neck, Charlie could see
her standing with a group of girls, talking. She looked fine but she was still
going to have to answer some questions eventually.

Walking around, she got the girl’s information and asked if she
wanted to go to a hospital and get examined.

“No, I’m okay. I was just upset.” The girl rubbed her arms as
though she was chilly. “Billy really was going to hurt me—I know he was. He
would’ve if that big Kindred hadn’t pulled him off. Is he…”

“I have him in custody,” Charlie said. “He’s going to an
undisclosed location.” Which was a laugh, considering.

“Oh, good.” The girl rubbed her bare arms again and shivered.
“They didn’t used to bother me but now we’re at war with them and they’re so
big.”

“They are that,” Charlie agreed, thinking how huge the big
bastard was going to look in her small bed room. “I need to go now. We’ll be in
touch. If not me, then another officer or agent,” she promised.

“All right. Thanks for everything. And, uh…” The girl
hesitated. “Thank the Kindred for me too. I know they’re our enemies but if he
hadn’t stopped Billy…” She shook her head and sniffed.

“Come on.” One of her girl friends put an arm around her
shoulders comfortingly. “Let’s get you home.”

Charlie left them to their bonding, trying not to think of
Missy. Her older sister had always been there for her like that when things got
tough. The two of them had been close—so close Charlie hadn’t felt the need for
any other girl friends. After Missy was gone…

Stop. Just stop it,
she lectured herself angrily.
You need to
stay in the here and now if you’re going to be safe. Letting yourself get
distracted is about the most dangerous thing you can do in the situation you’re
about to be in.

She stalked back to her car, trying
to stay in the present instead of replaying the past. Thoughts of her older
sister always made her blue. But it wasn't just melancholy over her sister that
was making her feel sad. She winced as she felt a dull, grinding ache beginning
in her pelvis. It stopped after a moment but she knew that much worse was to
come. Just great—on top of everything else, her period was coming on too. It
never lasted long but the cramps could be severe. What a night Purvis had
picked to saddle her with a dangerous prisoner!

Nothing to do but get through it. Bitching and moaning won't
help. Just deal with it.

Taking a deep breath, she opened the front door of her sedan
and slid inside. It was a converted squad car so there was reinforced wire mesh
between her and the back seat. She could see her prisoner sitting with his arms
bound behind his back and his knees practically up to his chin in her rearview.

She couldn’t tell what color his eyes were but they gleamed
like an animal’s in the dark, making her heart jump up in her throat for an
instant. He held her gaze in the mirror, steady and unblinking, until Charlie
had to look away. Great and she had to take
that
home with her. What the
hell was Purvis thinking?

Thinking about covering his own ass, that’s what he’s thinking.

She threw the car into drive and bumped over the rocky dirt
road until she got to Curlew, which was at least paved, even if it was full of
potholes.

They drove in silence for five minutes before the Kindred
finally spoke.

“I may be your prisoner but I have the right to know where you
are taking me. Is our destination the local penitentiary or incarceration
facility?”

“Nope.” Charlie cast another glance in the mirror and looked
away before he could catch her eyes with his again. “Not going to jail or
prison.”
Not now, anyway.

“Where then?” he growled. “Unless you are planning to execute
me—”

“No, I’m not going to shoot you,” Charlie snapped. “That is,
unless you misbehave. You’re going to be on a very tight leash where we’re
going.”

“But where
are
we going? Where are you taking me?” he demanded
again, stirring restlessly in the back seat.

Charlie sighed. “The last place I want to—my place.”

To
be continued…

Can’t get enough Kindred?
Don’t
worry,
Cursed will be coming this fall… And if
you happened to read this book out of order, the first four novels of the
Brides of the Kindred are now collected in one volume
here

 
Brides
of the Kindred
Glossary

AllFather
—the
evil head of the Scourge, a race that are the byproduct of a failed genetic
trade. The AllFather is one of the Old Ones and has the power to reach into a
person’s mind to harvest emotional pain and trauma. He lives for the
fulfillment of the Scourge Prophesy.

Ancient
Ones—
beings which live in the Deep Blue—the darkest and most inaccessible
part of the Rageron jungles. They are sentient but not related in any way to
the Kindred. Each Ancient One has two forms—a bipedal form which resembles a
human or Kindred and a beast form which can be deadly and they can change
between forms at will. The Ancient Ones predate even the First Kindred and
revere the
skrillix
plant, which they
guard jealously.

Bespeak
—to
contact someone mentally using a Think-me device. It is considered rude to
bespeak someone you don’t know intimately.

Beast/Rager
Kindred
—come from Rageron—a jungle planet full of beautiful but deadly
flora and fauna. They have dark hair, golden eyes, and hot tempers but their most
defining characteristic is the mating fist. The mating fist is an area at the
base of the Beast Kindred’s shaft which engages fully only during bonding sex
with his chosen mate. When engorged it swells to keep the Beast Kindred and his
bride locked together until she is completely bonded to him. This ensures sex
that is both extremely long lasting and multiorgasmic for both partners.

Blackness
between the Stars—
another name for the Hoard or
Grimlax,
an ancient enemy of the Kindred. These beings have no
souls and so are considered demonic by the Kindred.

Blood
Fever—
a condition suffered by unmated females on Tranq Prime, the home
world of the Blood Kindred. Blood Fever or Burning Blood as it is often called,
is caused by a parasite living on the icy world that affects only women. The
parasite—found in the
fleeta
or blood
beetle—reacts with a compound in the Tranq Prime water supply to cause the
fever. Symptoms include chills, increased sexual need and the feeling of the
blood heating in the veins as well as increased coloration of the nipples and
sex. If the fever is not treated in forty-eight hours, it will result in death.

Once a Kindred
male has had a female’s blood, he forms a natural antidote to Blood Fever which
he can pass on by sharing body fluids with her. The most effective way to get
the antidote into the female’s system is for a Blood Kindred to bite her,
thereby injecting it along with his essence. However, it is also possible to
pass along the healing fluid through sex.

Blood Fever used
to be very common on Tranq Prime which is what prompted the cold, proud natives
to initiate a genetic exchange with the Kindred in the first place. A recent
vaccine has nearly eradicated the disease, however, and the original
inhabitants of the ice bound planet have little reason to continue the trade. A
faction calling themselves Purists are against any further trade with the
Kindred.

Blood/Tranq
Kindred
—are blond with pale blue eyes and come from Tranq Prime where ice,
snow, and arctic-like temperatures are the norm. To combat the severe weather
conditions, the Blood Kindred have higher than normal body heat with double the
human amount of red blood cells. They have developed specific biting rituals to
share their supercharged blood and take the blood of their mates during their
own version of bonding sex. They have a set of double fangs located where a
human’s canine teeth would be. These fangs do not develop fully or become sharp
enough to pierce flesh until a Blood Kindred is with a woman he wishes to mate and
bond with.

Bonding
Ceremony
—a wedding-type ritual which takes place after the Claiming Period
if the bride chosen by a Kindred warrior has allowed him to have bonding sex
with her and joined her mind to his.

Bonding
Sex
—the extra step a Kindred warrior takes to bind his bride to him
permanently during intercourse. For the Beast Kindred, it is the use of the
mating fist. For the Blood Kindred, bonding sex means sex during penetration.
Twin Kindred bind a bride to themselves by entering her and coming in her at
the same time.

Claiming
Ceremony
—a sort of engagement service that takes place when a bride is
first claimed by a Kindred warrior. He declares his intentions toward her and
she vows to obey the laws of the Claiming Period.

Claiming
Period
—women who are drafted are required to go up to the Kindred
Mothership and spend a thirty day “claiming period” with the warrior who has
chosen them. If, at the end of that time, they have managed to resist the
charms of their Kindred mate, they are allowed to go back down to Earth and
resume their normal life. However, if they succumb to their Kindred male’s
seduction, they are mated for life and must move to the Kindred ship to live,
leaving everything else behind and seeing their family and friends on Earth only
infrequently. Of course, many women are unwilling to give everything up at the
drop of a hat, draft or no draft. But the Kindred have a secret weapon—devotion
to their female’s pleasure and attention to detail during incredibly hot sex.

Claming
Period Rules
—The Claiming Period lasts for four weeks during which the
Kindred warrior attempts to seduce his chosen bride and she tries to resist
him:

The Holding Week
:
the Kindred warrior may hold his bride.

The Bathing Week
:
the warrior and his bride bathe together and he is allowed to
massage her with scented oils and make her come.

The Tasting Week
:
the warrior is allowed to perform oral sex on his bride.

The Bonding Week
:
sex is allowed but it is completely up to the bride whether she
will take things a step further and allow bonding sex which is a special and
specific process to the three different types of Kindred males. (Most women
have given in well before this point but a few do resist.)

The only way out before the claiming
period is up is a breach of contract. This can happen if the Kindred warrior
does not strictly follow the rules and tries to skip forward in the order of
allowed events or by breaking one of the rules laid down by the Kindred High
Council. These rules—mostly to do with restrictions on communication with
Earth—are for the safety of everyone aboard the Mothership and are
nonnegotiable. Ignorance is no excuse for breaking them and will result in
immediate termination of the claiming period.

Convo-pillar—
A
half inch long insect which resembles a brightly colored caterpillar.
Convo-pillars were genetically engineered by traders on the fringe colonies
around Rageron to translate alien languages by communicating via thought waves
to their wearer’s brain. They have been outlawed by the Kindred High Council
because their notoriously unreliable translations cause more conflicts than
they solve.