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“I’m having the weirdest feeling,” she said, averting her gaze.

“Like you’ve done this before?” He laughed and cupped her head, guiding her to his chest.

She bit, and then, without any prompting, twined her arms around his neck, licked up to his throat and bit again. Her hips rocked slightly, just once, an instinct she quickly stifled.

Sue-Eye was watching from the table, her eyes dark and face tight. Kane waved her over, growling his desire. She was on the bed beside him in an instant, digging her little claws into his chest and sinking her teeth into his shoulder. Her aggressiveness was eerily familiar to him and made her suddenly very appealing. He wrapped an arm around her waist and gave her lead.

He wasn’t going to let this get out of hand. The food was coming and he wanted to eat without rushing, but it felt good to unwind in the grip of these twin pairs of hands, to feel teeth on him in restrained savagery (very restrained, as far as Raven went), and to have the scent of them ripe in his nostrils. He lay back slowly, letting them braid with him, the three of them uniting into a single coil. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell which was which—Raven was gentle, caressing, and Sue-Eye, brusque and demanding.

At the moment, he preferred Sue-Eye’s kind of touches, although he hated playing into her game. But it would be nice to smooth out the evening hours with some rigorous sexplay, the kind that spilled a little blood—his and hers both—and kept the body burning for a few hours afterwards. And Sue-Eye, fool that she was, would be grateful for it, no matter how rough he got. She’d probably even see it as some sort of personal victory.

Ah, what the hell. Kane had never had a personal slave before, but he considered himself well-schooled in the way of keeping them, having watched his father do it all his life. One of the greatest lessons his father had taught in that regard was that once in a while, whether they deserved it or not, you had to give slaves what they wanted or else they’d sour. A sour human was a dangerous thing. A sour human lost its fear, lost its training, started thinking that long life as a slave wasn’t necessarily preferable to dying and that as long as one was dying anyway, why not blow the ship up and kill everyone?

Sue-Eye had never been all that scared of him to begin with and hitting her didn’t seem to do much. Every now and then, old Urak had run into a slave that reacted like that and it had proved necessary to train them with reward rather than punishment. Urak didn’t like to keep them, but in the short term and with the proper incentives, they could be astonishingly loyal. And Kane knew what Sue-Eye’s prime incentive would be, didn’t he?

He caught the blonde’s chin as she scoured his chest with her teeth and brought her up so that he could nip at her cheek. Her smile was immediate, dazzling, and only brightened when Kane grazed his fangs lightly down the slope of her throat to bite at her shoulder. A knock sounded at the door and Kane gave Raven a push in that direction, both his hands slipping up beneath Sue-Eye’s shirt to scratch teasingly at her thin skin. “We’re going to eat,” he told her, in between careful testing of her fragile flesh. “And then I’m going to use my
ichuta’a
. How does that bite you, human?”

“Use me,” she hissed, and gave him a bite to the chest hard enough to draw a few beads of blood. Her hand cupped him through his coverings and he uttered a growl that was only half-warning. “Use me now.”

“I said, first we eat.” He pushed her off him, but not out of reach, and gestured for the waiting Raven to bring the food to the bed.

Humans ate the strangest things. Dinner came in a wide, square box and seemed to consist of hot bread topped with sauce, meats, and less identifiable things, all of it pressed into a round shape and cut into wedges. Kane had to watch his humans for clues as to how to eat it. He found the taste indefinably unpleasant, but both humans ate their share with unfeigned zeal. Kane had only the one wedge. His hunger dulled, he was content to wait for something better. His appetites at the moment were more for flesh than for food, anyway.

“Tomorrow we go north,” he said, settling back on the bed to watch his females feast. It struck a primal chord in him to see them devour what he had provided, if only obliquely. “I want another hunt. A good hunt.”

Raven lowered her food and looked at him. Sue-Eye helped herself to another wedge.

“How ‘bout a motel?” his
ichuta’a
asked lightly. “We could get the passkey, flip on the No Vacancy sign and go room to room, no problem.”

The words, predominantly meaningless, flowed through him and left only an impression of possibility behind, like a footprint in mud. He glanced at Raven and raised an eyebrow.

“I guess we could.” She looked down at her unfinished food and put it aside. “I wouldn’t want to hit one too close to the highway, though. You do that too many times and they start putting up roadblocks. We can’t afford to let any cops get too good a look at you.”

“Oh bullshit,” Sue-Eye said. “You have to kill, like, a hundred people right on the road before they go trolling for you like that.”

“Lady, we
have
killed a hundred people.” Raven’s voice faltered on the last word. She swallowed hard and looked away, her face shadowed.

This was interesting. Two voices, one of ambition and one of caution. It was like being a bystander in his own brain.

“A hundred people,” Raven muttered. She was still staring blankly at the opposite wall. “Jesus Christ.”

Kane reached out and rubbed at Raven’s thigh to bring her back to the here and now. She leaned into the touch for a second, then stood up and moved away to the table. He let her go, turning his attention to Sue-Eye. She responded at once, dropping the dinner box with its few remaining portions of food onto the floor and crawling to him on her hands and knees. She smelled of spiced sauce and sex musk, an appealing combination.

“Continue with your thought, Raven,” Kane said, as Sue-Eye’s teeth resumed their work on his flesh.

Raven glanced at him. It seemed to Kane that her gaze lingered where Sue-Eye teased him, but then, his blood was getting high and he couldn’t exactly trust himself to be objective. “There’s only so many roads going back and forth,” she said. “That’s pretty much my only point. We have to use them. I don’t like…hunting…on them so much. It’s risky, Kane.”

“We—” Sue-Eye began.

“Quiet. Your mouth is busy. Raven, look at me when I’m talking to you.” He waited for her to turn, waited for Sue-Eye to engage her mouth along his chest and stomach, and then said, “What risks are you worried about?”

Raven hesitated, biting at her lip. The sight of her little teeth exposed, even in an expression of anxiety, gave him a pleasant sort of jump. She said, haltingly, “We’ve left so many witnesses…”

“The female at the bar where I collected my
ichuta’a
, you mean.” Kane caught Sue-Eye’s hand and led it to the front of his pants. She slipped beneath the tight material, caressing the stiff length of him. “She won’t tell a tree, Raven. Her mouth is as good as capped with steel.”

“Not just her.”

“The female in the woods.” Kane shrugged, recalling with a smile the glazed and wondering shine in that human’s drug-addled eyes. “I don’t think she’ll tell anyone, either. She had enough shit in her blood, I doubt she’ll even remember me.”

“Not just her, either. Everyone, Kane. Everyone at every motel we’ve stayed at. People at gas stations. Food delivery guys. Everyone.”

“Easy,
ichuta’a
, we haven’t started yet.” Kane chased Sue-Eye’s fingers away from the fastens of his clothes, but then rested his hand comfortably on her thigh. He considered Raven thoughtfully while his over-eager mate of the moment indulged herself in what he’d allow her of his body. Raven’s face was striving to be stoic, but there was frustration in it she could not hide and it seemed genuine enough. “Why are you concerning yourself with people who haven’t even seen me hunt?” he asked at last, knowing there had to be a prudent answer.

“All it’s going to take is one tee-vee report asking who’s seen us and where and these roads are going to turn into a death trap for us.” Her voice slipped, admitting a thin note of exasperation through to stain her next words. “We stand out, Kane. We’re the kind of people other people remember.”

Far-thinking Raven. Such thoughts had probably never been far from her mind. And she was right. He was killing in large groups, leaving bodies right out where they could be found. What passed for the Fleet here on Earth must know someone was slaughtering their kind. The only question was, how easily could they focus in on who?

“We’ll watch for these tee-vee reports from now on,” he said at last. He pushed his hand between Sue-Eye’s thighs and she opened readily to his touch. He stroked at her in the same rhythm she used on him and was not surprised when she immediately quickened her pace. “And if we see anyone asking after us, we’ll leave.”

“We have to assume we’ve been seen already,” Raven said stubbornly. Her face had gone tight with the effort of not looking at Sue-Eye.

“Agreed. And so I’ll let you pick the towns where I hunt.”

She recoiled, but Kane noted this from the distraction of pulling Sue-Eye up into position for mating. When he looked around again, his
ichuta’a
seated and rocking wildly atop him, Raven was once again stone-faced.

“But part of hunting smart means bigger kills. I’ll fill up faster and we’ll leave all the sooner, so keep that in mind when you’re choosing your towns. And don’t—” He broke off, snarling as Sue-Eye did something unexpected and acrobatic with herself, and then resumed the thread of his thought somewhat hoarsely, “Don’t hesitate to tell me when you have thoughts like these. They’re useful.”

He dismissed Raven with a flick of his claws and then seized his
ichuta’a
and threw her down on the bed beside him. Foreplay was done. He took her now without restraint, drawing howls of equal parts pleasure and pain from her arching throat. A sweet sound. He relished her cries, rapidly losing himself in the natural give of female flesh.

Some people were just made for rough fucking. Kane watched his blonde
ichuta’a
thrash and cum deliriously beneath him, making no effort whatsoever to please her and yet, here she was. He teased it out for a while, contenting himself with teeth and claws and the rising scent of her musk, all the while wondering idly just what he was going to do with her once Raven was well again. He supposed he must have at least some subconscious plan to carry her around, or else he wouldn’t care if she went sour on him or not. If not, it seemed like an awful lot of trouble just to ensure her obedience for a few more days.

“But you will be obedient now,” he growled, striking hard at that soft female place and sending Sue-Eye into gales of shrieking pleasure. “Won’t you? My good little
ichuta’a
.”

Sue-Eye’s entire body clenched tight and she shuddered hard, bringing him violently to climax. He fell over her, snapping spastically at her shoulder and grinding his hips into hers as he emptied. He stayed there, fit close, until his breath evened, and then he rolled to his back and stretched luxuriantly. His human came in under his reaching arm and he let her stay curled against his side. He shut his eyes, dozing to the scent of blood and musk and the sound of both their heartbeats.

Raven. He roused himself to look her way and she instantly sat at the table with her back to him and picked up her stylus. Scratching letters in Jotan columns across her paper, just as though she’d been doing it all this time. He was tempted to call her over, break the mask of that indifference with a few well-moved fingers, but no. She was still having her period and he, well, he had a tendency to get caught up in the moment.

“Thank you, Kane,” Sue-Eye whispered. The arm that lay over his chest, bruised and bloodied, squeezed him in a hug.

He licked at the nearest wound, her shoulder, and settled his chin comfortably on her hair. He thought of Raven, well again and ready for mating. He thought of tomorrow’s hunt. He thought of the ship that he would have when he finally got home. He smiled and he slept.

*

Daria woke up.

It wasn’t easy. Just opening her eyes brought her no closer to clarity. It only took her from one surreal setting to this one. Dan’s old room, awash in the flickering orange fire of sunset, with towers of boxes looming all around her and another man sleeping in the bed beside her. Daria stared up at the ceiling, watching shadows cast by swaying branches and wondering if she was really awake at all or if this were just some bizarre continuation of her dream.

She’d been dreaming of the hospital, or at least, of a funhouse mirror’s version of it. White walls glowing with sterility and her in the bed. She’d been fastened in place by thousands of wires and tubes; they surrounded her, constrained her, invaded her body, brought her fluids and took them away, filled her arms and her belly and her mouth. But this wasn’t horrible, for some reason, although the memory of it in waking Daria’s mind certainly was. In the dream, it was just Daria in the bed, and it was the way things had always forever-been. And Dan was there, wearing a tux of all things, complete with cummerbund and carnation, playing chess with her. She couldn’t move her pieces, of course, her arms were utterly constrained, so Dan moved them for her. She didn’t tell him how to move, but somehow he always knew which piece and how and in the dream this hadn’t seemed a bit odd.

He’d been a lot like that in real life, she remembered. Sensitive. So marvelously attuned to her little wants and needs. When she didn’t feel like cooking, he always had a way of popping up to suggest going out. When those first restless threads of desire began to weave themselves together, his arms had a way of sliding unexpectedly around her. In bed, he always knew just where she needed to be touched. It was as though there was no part of her life, no part of her body, that held any secrets from him. She’d always told him he was wasted in patent law, that he should have been an artist. He’d say he wasn’t temperamental enough, and then they’d both laugh.