My Alien Warrior (14 page)

He was sure he was in the right area, and he was also sure that he caught more than one non human gaze following him.

How many different races from other planets were hiding out here in the slums of a city on Earth? Khaos didn’t understand why someone would leave Blessini and its progress and bounty to come live on Earth, but he did understand that some individuals had it differently than he did.

So he continued on his way, trying to make as little eye contact as possible.

The device in his hand beeped when he reached a large building, and Khaos craned his neck to look at it. It was easily the tallest building in the area, but also clearly abandoned. Broken boards and bricks decorated the outside of it, and while most of the windows were intact, there were quite a few that were cracked or splintered, and they all were covered with a thick layer of grime.

Even without the device letting him know, it was clear that this was the place. Khaos frowned as he looked the building over more slowly. With so many floors, it was going to be hard to find Kayla, and he had half a mind just to smash his way in until he located her, but he forced himself to stop and think first.

If he went in, guns blazing, then there was a very good chance that they would run before he could get to them and then he would have no idea where they went or what they were doing to Kayla.

He had to do this intelligently because it wasn’t his life on the line here, and he would never forgive himself if something happened to her because he was being stupid, reckless, and impatient.

Khaos took a breath and let it out slowly, rotating his neck until it cracked. He touched his sides where the knives were hidden and let himself take comfort in the fact that he was armed and could defend himself from anything lurking in that building.

“Okay,” he muttered under his breath. “Focus.”

“You lookin’ for somethin’?”

The voice was a slow drawl, low and grating, and Khaos turned to see an old woman behind him.

“Just looking, ma’am,” he said, keeping his voice even.

“You needin’ a place to stay? Or maybe you’s huntin’ for somethin’.”

His eyebrows went up and he looked at her again. She was old and hunched, clearly weathered, and she didn’t have a look of malice about her. “If I was hunting for something, where would I need to look?” he asked, just to see. If she was working with the Vekosh or otherwise trying to lead him astray, he was pretty sure he could take her without breaking a sweat.

She lifted a hand and pointed to a door that Khaos had missed, hidden in the shadows around the side of the building. “Leads to a basement. Good for hidin’ things. Don’t like it when ugly beasts bring pretty girls through this way, so you get her outta there, you hear me?”

Well. That had definitely been easier than he was expecting. “I hear you,” Khaos said. “And thank you.”

She nodded once and then made her way back into the shadows. Khaos watched her go and then made to move forward, finding the door and rolling his eyes when it was locked. He jiggled the handle and then shoved forward with all of his strength, smirking when the lock snapped and the door swung open for him.

A long, dark staircase led down into more darkness, and Khaos’ nose was filled with the scent of rotting wood and mold. It was the same scent he had smelled through Kayla when he’d been looking for her, and he knew he was in the right place.

Just to be on the safe side, he reached into his coat and pulled out the smaller of the two blasters he was armed with, clicking the safety off, but keeping his grip loose. With his other hand he configured the device Bran had given him, remembering his instructions about how to make it into a body heat monitor.

Most everything on the stairs registered as cold and not alive, with the exception of a few rats that scurried to get out of his way as he kept walking.

Khaos tried to keep his footsteps light, but Vekosh weren’t known for their hearing anyway, so he didn’t waste a lot of time on it. Instead he kept his pace quick, pausing to listen and hold the device up to any doors he passed, his frown growing more pronounced when there was nothing inside each one.

Had the old woman steered him wrong? Had they brought Kayla in here and then gone somewhere else?

When he reached the end of the stairs, he was at a corridor. A flickering light illuminated one side of it, and the other was left in darkness. He could see three doors down the lit side, and a quick scan showed that there were warm, live beings in the rooms there. Their heat signatures were too big to be Kayla, though, and he knew that they had to be Vekosh.

Anger leapt in him, and he had half a mind to go kill them, but the noise could alert the ones guarding Kayla and if they ran, he’d be screwed, and so would Kayla.

She had to come first. There would be time for revenge later.

A sweep in front of one of the doors on the dark side of the corridor proved the room to hold two heat signatures, one of them small and huddled and the other large and advancing quickly on the other. Khaos narrowed his eyes and watched the screen for a second, but when the larger body seemed to be lashing out at the smaller one, he’d seen quite enough.

He kicked the door down.

Subtle? No. Effective? Wildly.

He stepped in once the door banged open, entering just in time to see a hooded Vekosh with his arm raised as if he was going to hit Kayla, who was tied to a chair and looking up at him fearfully.

They both had wide eyes on the door and his entrance, and Kayla’s face melted into visible relief when she realized who he was.

“You came,” she breathed, sagging against the chair.

Khaos quirked a smile at her and then looked back at the Vekosh who was frozen in place, almost as if he thought that would keep Khaos from seeing him.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” the creature hissed after a few seconds of silence. “That was the deal. You and your kind leave here or we kill the girl.”

Khaos gave him eyes full of fury. “I don’t make deals with your kind,” he spat. “Your kind are killers and underhanded vermin, and if you think for one second I’m going to let you hurt her, then you have another think coming. Now get away from her.”

“Or what?” the Vekosh asked. “You’re not at home now. The rules are different here. You have to-”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by Khaos raising the blaster and shooting a hole through his head.

The jet of red light connected and sizzled through, leaving the acrid smell of charred flesh behind as the Vekosh crumpled to the ground, his wound already cauterized so there was no blood.

Kayla’s eyes were the widest Khaos had ever seen them, and he looked at her regretfully, sorry that he had made her be party to that. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have…”

She shook her head. “I think it’s fair that you got to kill at least one of them for what they’ve done to your people.” It was not the answer he’d been expecting, and he gave her a small smile and then hurried over to start untying her.

Of course, nothing could be that easy, and from down the hall the sound of door banging open alerted Khaos to the fact that he had definitely been noticed now. He swore vehemently under his breath and moved faster, untying her arms and legs and helping her to stand. There was no way they were going to get out of there without a fight, and he sighed.

“I want you to stay behind me, okay?” he said. “No matter what you hear or see, just stay behind me. I’ll get us out of this.”

“Okay,” Kayla replied, nodding shakily. She looked pale in the dim light, but he could see the bruise blooming on her cheek and the rawness of her wrists. All that did was anger him more, and he didn’t anticipate this fight taking long at all with the mood he was in.

They came rushing through the door all at once, and there were only two of them. Two quick blaster shots would have done well enough, but Khaos’ blood was pumping, and he wanted to do it slower. He wanted them to feel it.

He had never thought of himself as a particularly
violent
person, despite the fact that he was a warrior. It had never been about his need to hurt other people, but the thrill of the fight and using his strength and skills. But this, this was a pure need to hurt. After all the Vekosh had done to his people, after all they had taken from him, this might be his last chance to get any kind of retribution, and he wasn’t going to let it pass him by.

He dropped the blaster on the ground and kicked it away.

“Kaspersi,” one of them hissed. “You’re a fool. Our king wants that girl, and what our king wants, he gets.”

“Your king can go leap into a crater,” Khaos replied. “You think we don’t know what you’re doing to us? You think we haven’t figured out your little trick with the venom?”

The two creatures exchanged looks that were filled with trepidation. “How did you find out?”

“What did you think we were doing here all this time?” Khaos said.

“Seducing humans from the looks of it,” one of them murmured to the other.

And that was really the last straw for Khaos. He pulled out both of the knives he’d had on him and tossed the coat to the ground. They’d taken his parents from him, and some of his friends as well, and he wasn’t going to let them sit there and mock the relationship he had with Kayla. Not when they were the ones responsible for taking her and hurting her. He wasn’t going to have it.

“Come on,” he said, voice hot with anger. “Fight me.”

“We need to speak to Nambroc,” one of the Vekosh said, ignoring him outright. “If they know of our plan…”

“They all know about your plans,” Kayla spoke up from behind Khaos. “All of your plans. The venom and the rest of it.”

Now they really looked confused. “The rest of it? But we haven’t even started hurting the other quadrants and races yet. How do they know about
that
?”

Khaos had to applaud her forethought and cleverness. “We have ways,” he said, and then he launched himself at them.

It wasn’t a long fight by any definition. They didn’t have weapons on them, and now that he knew how deadly their venom was, Khaos was careful not to let them bite him. He dodged their attempts to punch and kick him, wounding one of them and then the other with deadly precision. Throughout all of it, he could feel Kayla’s eyes on him, and he could only hope that she wasn’t horrified by what she saw.

Knives had never been his preferred weapons, but his body remembered how to move quick and close to his targets and he worked his way through the two of them until they were both bleeding on the filthy floor.

He’d taken a couple of punches to the face, but nothing too serious, and he was winded as he looked over their bodies.

“You can kill us,” whispered one of them, breath shaky from blood loss already. “But you won’t defeat our kind.”

“I wouldn’t count on that if I were you,” Khaos said, picking up the blaster from the floor and aiming it, ending both of their lives in rapid succession.

In the end, he wanted to be sick. Killing wasn’t something he did. It wasn’t a part of why he loved fighting in the arena, and he didn’t think it was right. But he couldn’t risk them reporting to their king until Khaos had a chance to tell Calin what he’d learned.

Kayla was staring down at the bodies and shaking slightly, but when he reached for her, she went into his arms willingly. He pulled her close and kissed her hard on the mouth for a second, needing to remind himself that she was fine. She was safe.

“Thank you,” she breathed against his mouth, clinging to him and pressing her face against his shoulder when their kiss broke.

“I wouldn’t have left you here,” he whispered into her hair, fingers carding through it as they stood there. Kayla was shaking against him still, and he didn’t know if it was from being cold or tired or scared, but he did know that they needed to get out of there.

“Are you alright?” she asked him, concern evident in her words.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

And maybe that wasn’t completely true, considering the fact that he’d just killed three living things and he was going to be in a good deal of trouble when he got back to the rest of his kind, but for the moment it would have to do.

Khaos hadn’t expected Bran and the rest of them to be waiting when he finally crawled out of the basement with Kayla, both of them dirty and worn out. He was covered in grime and blood, and when he looked up and found himself staring right into the eyes of Calin, his heart lurched.

Luckily it was just a portable holo screen and not the leader himself, though the expression on his face proved that it didn’t really matter if he was there in person or not because Khaos was still one hundred percent in trouble.

Kayla shrank back behind him, overwhelmed at being confronted by so many other people after the day she’d had. Khaos understood and kept a hold on her hand, squeezing it reassuringly. He would keep her safe no matter what.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, giving Bran a weak smile.

Bran smiled back, regret in his eyes. “Sorry. Once he found out what was going on, he demanded to be brought along.”

And there was only so much lying and sneaking around one was allowed to do when it came to the leader, which sort of went without saying.

Khaos drew himself up, completely ready to take on the blame for all of it, but Calin raised his hand, cutting him off before he could even start. “Save your explanations and excuses. What’s the situation here?”

“There were three Vekosh in the building, and from what I can tell, they were the only ones here. They’re all dead now,” he said, no emotion in his voice. “I don’t know if there are others on Earth, but they seemed to be the only ones in their group.”

“Hm. Small mercies, then. We’ve discovered how they’ve been getting the venom in our food and water, and measures are being taken. You will report back to the headquarters here and then you will be going back to Blessini.”

There was no room for argument in his tone, but Khaos spoke up anyway. “I’m going to get Kayla home first.”

All of the assembled Kaspersi inhaled sharply at that. Questioning the leader just wasn’t done, especially not to his face when you were already on his bad side. But then, Khaos had never been the first person to do the smart thing, and if he was already in trouble, then he was going to get what he could done before he had to face whatever the consequences were. Even Kayla seemed concerned, tugging on his arm gently.