Hers To Cherish (Verdantia Book 3) (22 page)

Kella appeared stunned—as if one of the bronze statues lining the hall had suddenly come to life and mauled him. With a curse, he sent a heavy boot punching into her soft abdomen.

“Silence! Filthy sl – ”

Ram’s fist and knee connected with Kella’
s face and groin in quick succession and the man slammed to his knees with a grunt. With a snarl of pure rage, Ramsey grabbed the front of Kella’s tunic and jerked him up to smash him again, but Pansy wrapped herself around Ram’s knees.

“No!
No,
Dominus
, please! You will only make trouble for yourself. Please.
Dominus
, stop!”

{
DeKieran, stop. Pull it together. We can’t do this here.}

Steffania’s hand closed over a fist pulled back to deliver a second blow.
Ram hovered on the threshold of abandonment. The lawless, unrestrained carnage of his prior years clawed to escape his iron will with an almost physical pain. He longed to feel Strom Kella’s jelly-filled orbs bursting under his thumbs as he gouged out the creature’s eyes. He imagined the crunch of cartilage when his hands tore Kella’s ears from his head. Perhaps doing so would exorcise the impotent rage and vicious disgust that had permeated his gut since coming to this planet
.

Ramsey strained like a racehorse held too long in the starting gate while Steffania pushed his arms down and
finger-by-finger freed Kella’s tunic from his clenched fist. She wrapped her arms around his upper arms and torso and pressed her body into his
.

{
Ramsey.
Think
. Alessa DeAlbero. You cannot do this, DeKieran.
Think
.}

Ram eyed the black-clothed enforcer with frigid loathing. He barely registered Steffania’s weight flattened against his length or Pansy clinging to his legs at mid-thigh
.
“Harm anything that belongs to me again and I will kill you.”

Kella raised his head
, locked eyes with Ramsey and sneered, “Another empty threat.”

Their contretemps
had drawn spectators. Steffania’s urgent, “
Dominus
DeKieran –
Dominus
DeKieran,” had finally hauled him back from the edge of violence and he allowed her to separate him from Strom Kella. Steffania was right. He couldn’t do anything here but mark Kella for death. Only after promising himself that satisfaction did Ramsey allow Steffania and Pansy to move him back even further.

“
Dominus
Kella, please explain why you have inconvenienced one of my honored guests.” Veacon Narr’s melodious voice rose over the background of orgiastic grunts and strained moans.

With a grimace, Kella straightened. “My apologies,” came out sounding as if the words had lodged in his throat like a steel-spiked ball. Kella sketched a bow to Narr. “I understood that
Dominus
DeKieran no longer required the services of this
slaaf
.” Kella motioned to Pansy. “I was mistaken.” He bared an upper lip in what Ram supposed was a smile. “If you will excuse me.”

Ramsey watched the Enforcer
retreat and Narr watched Ramsey. A smooth smile replaced Narr’s fleeting expression of annoyance. “Such a zealous man – efficient, but sometimes he over-reaches. I am sorry for the unpleasantness. I will personally assure the future security of your rooms.”

Ram pulled
his eyes away from Strom Kella’s back and nodded. With a smile, Veacon continued, “Let’s rejoin the Khlossian. He was asking where you had gone.” Narr held his arm out in the direction of Tok and the dignitaries with all the practiced graciousness of a perfect host.

“I would like to see my
slaaf
back to our room. They have been exposed to enough this evening. I will rejoin you as soon as I get them settled.”

A transient emotion flickered across their host’s face too swiftly to be identified
then Narr’s genial smile slid back into place with well-oiled smoothness.

He does not like that I leave. Why?

“Of course, ta
ke your time. We will be here.”

{
Steffania, when we start to walk away, linger behind and tell me what Narr does.}

Ramsey helped Pansy to her feet and ushered
her toward the entrance of the great hall.

{Narr stopped a guard and is speaking to him. They are glancing at you. Now the guard is leaving—in a hurry.}

Ram shot a speaking glance over his shoulder at Steffania. {We need to get back to our rooms, quickly. I have a bad feeling.}

Not consumed by the same sense of urgency as the three he escorted, Hoyle led them back at a methodical, unhurried pace that shredded Ram’s temper. Two steps into the room, Ram knew their room and bags had been “tossed”. Whoever had been here had done a hasty search, most likely recalled before they’d been able to place the cases and other items back as they were. His Razor 88K, left carelessly on the bed, now rested on a low chest at its foot. Steffania knelt by the disordered pile of black cases that held their hi-tech apparatus.

{The atmospheric conduction relay and low-band interaction jammer are gone.} Her voice emerged void of emotion.

{
What the fuck does that mean?} Ramsey cursed his ignorance. Shit, he was the wrong man to have sent on this mission but he rejected the idea of failure. He wanted that pardon.

Her eyes held his for
long moments before she spoke. {We can’t communicate with DeTano.}

Ramsey watched Steffania twist and untwist a lock of her hair around one finger as she paced the room. “We have no choice but to hack into Veacon Narr’s communications web to contact DeTano, but that is not going to be easy.” She paused in her pacing, braced her hands on her hips and shook her head.

T
he concern in her voice paralleled his feelings. By now, even Ramsey conceded they needed help. He and Steffania had included Pansy in their conversation. By now, the petite
slaaf
knew their presence on Vxloncia had nothing to do with winning the Dominion Games and Pansy had demonstrated her loyalty. Steffania had argued persuasively in favor of using the woman to assist them, and Pansy proved to be more knowledgeable than they had guessed. It was a good thing. He knew fuck-all about communications and Steffania needed all the help she could get.

He
sprawled recklessly in a chair, legs outstretched, arms hung over the armrests. His heel worked a rapid rhythm inches from the floor as he bounced the ball of his foot. “The two of you get some rest. We’ll re-examine this in the morning. We need to find Alessa DeAlbero and escape this shit-hole.” He released a tired sigh then stood. “I will speak to Tok then I’ll be back.” His glance examined the expansive platform bed decked in pristine white dominating the suite – the only bed. “Leave me some room.”

“
Dominus
, I will sleep on the…” Pansy’s voice faltered at his cold stare and she dropped her head.

“Just leave me some room,
” he said.

Pansy exchange
d looks with Steffania.

“What?”
he snapped

“You are considerate,
Dominus.
” A shy smiled lifted the corners of Pansy’s mouth and she shrugged. “That’s all.”

“
Chances are I am going to get you killed. What’s considerate about that?” Ram turned on his heel and left.

Ram
and Tok found an unused corner in the banquet hall for a moment of private conversation. Backs to the wall, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, facing the room.

“I owe you for ‘inviting’ me here.” Ram raised a cup of some potent liquid to his mouth—the vapor singed the inside of his nostrils—and took a scant swallow. Only the Mother knew what was in it and he had no intention of compromising his faculties.

The behemoth grunted in answer. “I need your help. I’m to investigate something called ‘the quiet room’. We had an agent placed deep undercover as a technician.
GAPS hasn’t heard from him in over a week. I can’t find any trace of the man. I think he’s dead.”

Ramsey spat an obscenity under his breath, and filled Tok in on the Verdantians’ discoveries
about Narr’s activities. “I have mapped the layout of possible access routes. Come to my rooms tomorrow morning. I’ll show them to you. I need something from you as well.”

Tok grunted his agreement.

“Get a message to the League. I want a time and rendezvous point to get us and Alessa DeAlbero off-planet. Steffania and Pansy –” Ramsey bit off the remainder of his thought at the approach of a uniformed attendant. When Tok made to speak, Ramsey warned the Khlossian off with his eyes.

“
Dominus
DeKieran?” A servant in the severely tailored attire of the Bromian delegation bowed low before Ram and proffered a silver salver with a small transparent blue cube rotating an inch or so above its surface.
Right. What the fuck?

Ram eyed the servant
as he addressed Tok in a curt undertone. “What in the seven hells do I do with that?”

The Khlossian grinned. “Ignorant Verdantian. Pick up
the cube and hold it on your open hand. It is a personal 3-D vidcast. Your body heat activates it.”

Ram
exhaled with an aggravated snort – it seemed his mission in life was to amuse the Khlossian – but he picked up the blue cube and held it flat on his out-stretched palm. He suppressed his start when a three-dimensional miniature of the Bromian ambassador flickered into visibility replacing the floating cube. Ram could feel slight impressions where the ambassador’s feet stood. Then the figure spoke.

“Greeting
s to our Verdantian brother. Allow me to express my delight in the display of your physical prowess in the Dominion Games and congratulate you on your high placement.” The figure bowed with a grandiose flourish. With the sweep of the ambassador’s garment, it felt as if a feather stroked Ram’s palm, and the barely-perceptible weight shifted on his palm.
Shit. This is unnatural.
Ramsey extended his arm to its fullest. The Khlossian quaked with silent laughter
.

The small figure of the ambassador continued.
“I confess to a fascination and enthrallment with your artistic use of colored bindings in sexual domination of the female of your species. We on Bromia take pride in our integration of the best cultural aspects of alien societies and this practice of your culture has captured my interest. Some of my fellow delegates have expressed an equal curiosity. I would be immensely gratified if you would provide a public demonstration of your techniques so I and the delegates from neighboring planets might take the knowledge of this unusual art form home.”

The fuck you say!
Ram jerked his hand away and the three dimensional figure winked out, leaving once more a small blue cube which fell to the floor. With a choked cry, the attendant collapsed to his knees and with great care, slid the cube onto the silver tray.

Ram brought the Bromian attendant’s face up to meet his gaze with the toe of his boot.
“How does the Bromian representative know of the
téad de ghrásta
?”

“The vid-casts,
Dominus
. You are wildly popular, both you and your female with the fire-colored hair. Your private stream during the Games sold for three times that of the other contestants.

Ramsey faced the Khlossian with a feeling of unease.
“Tok, explain.”

“Narr offers an exclusive
, live-stream vid-cast of the ‘gladiators’ bedrooms to visiting elites. He charges them through the ass.” Tok’s eyes filled with impious mischief. “You do more than fight well.” The Khlossian studied him. “You cannot pretend surprise you were watched, Verdantian. I know you’re not that stupid.”

“I knew about the surveillance. I didn’t know Narr live-streamed a sex vid.”

Tok
’s deep laugh vibrated in Ram’s chest. “You didn’t read sub-paragraph 10, section 2.5, in the application for entry? The Games’ organizers will make a fortune distributing the
Savage Sexual Practices of Primal Males—Dominion Games XIV Edition
.”