Creature Worlds: Solar Slick (4 page)

“I would have my dessert.”

He chuckled, and despite his pretty words, he began to stroke more quickly. There was no objection this time when I joined in the dance, my hips lifting up to meet his deep thrusts. My nails scratched a trail down his back until I held his firm, tight ass in my hands.

“I would have it now!”

Faster and faster he plunged, rigid control giving way to baser need. Together, we attained bliss with cries of delight.

Chapter 6

“Maybe we’re fixating on the wrong thing. Maybe we should focus on getting dirt on Clay as opposed to clearing you.”

“I suppose.” The warm afterglow of lovemaking flickered away as cold reality once again grabbed us with an icy grip. I knew he was anxious to see all this unpleasantness disappear and settle into nesting family bliss, but it seemed futile to me. Clay was an expert at covering his bases. I snuggled deeper into Tigg’s arms, finding comfort from his warm breath on my cheek. This sudden attachment I felt for him was strange. Perhaps he was right and I carried his child in my womb? Maybe that bond connected us?

A thought occurred to me and I tensed. “Tigg, what if my shifting hurts the baby?” If there even
was
a baby.

“The baby is half you, my love. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“He?”

He kissed the top of my head. “Or she.”

I snickered. “You’re so sure you impregnated me, but you’re not sure if it’s a boy or a girl?”

He shrugged. “We’ll know in four months.”

I sat bolt upright and stared at him. “Four months?”

He had the good sense to look abashed. “Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier.”

“Good grief. We don’t even have a place to live. My apartment’s a dump and yours is probably not much better. Then there’s the baby room to get ready and clothes and baby stuff to buy.”

Tigg pulled me into his arms again. “No need for any of that, love. We will raise our baby the way I was raised. We’ll live in the jungle, surviving off the land.”

Though all that may sound well and good—he
liked
the jungle—we’d eventually have to surface to have the baby’s immune shots and UT injection. Without the shots the baby would be susceptible to all kinds of universal sickness and disease. Tigg’s parents must have opted to not have the shots, making them succumb to their sickness. The shot offered protection for practically every known ailment, even the common cold. The UT—the Universal Translator—was also an ingenious invention. The time of painstakingly learning new languages was over. Implanted in the part of the brain that recognizes speech, the UT would translate any language spoken in the known universe, so everyone could understand one another. Except for sneaking into civilization for the baby’s shots, we’d make our home hiding out deep in the jungle like fugitives. We’d have to live in a cave or in a hut or something, eating god-knows-what. Tigg had said that Lizord young ate bugs.

Great.

I guess I didn’t have to worry whether I was going to breast or bottle-feed.

An alarm suddenly sounded and Tigg and I both scurried off the bunk and put on our clothes. Earth was nearing. Had we spent two hours fucking? How time flies.

Tigg switched off autopilot and assumed control of the vessel. Both of us fastened our seat belts while we entered into Earth’s atmosphere.

“Where’s our destination?” I queried.

“I think perhaps we should start at your home. Where is it located?”

It seemed as good a place as any. There was an area to land the craft undetected and it was isolated enough to suit our purpose. I gave Tigg the co-ordinates and several minutes later we were sailing in for a soft landing. We exited the craft and I helped him cover it over with branches to shield it from prying eyes. Tigg brushed his hands off on his pants and looked around the area. There was a time difference between Earth and Treox. Here it was nearly dusk, and the tall trees dotting the clearing cast sinister shadows that swayed eerily in the warm breeze.

“Is that your home?” Tigg pointed to the small, dilapidated cabin nestled on the edge of the forest.

“Yeah.” I had to admit it was a sight for sore eyes. Shortly after my parents’ deaths I’d abandoned this place and all its memories and moved into the big city. Since I could control my shifting, I’d had no problem fitting in with the rest of the population. I’d worked odd jobs and scraped by, even had a tiny apartment on the eighth floor in the slum end of town. When Clay and I hooked up and I entered the high life of crime I left my little place and moved into his high-rise apartment with him.

Tigg and I strolled over to the cabin. The expression on his face was thoughtful. “Haven’t been here in a while, have you?”

“What gave it away?”

He shrugged, being too polite to say anything.

When I tried the front door it was locked. I reached up over the frame and felt around for the key I’d left hidden. It was still there.

Once I’d unlocked the door and pushed it open, I stood upon the threshold suddenly wary to enter. What ghosts were waiting to ransack my heart? Would it be the echo of my mother’s laughter? Or perhaps the sight of my father’s slippers still tucked beneath his favorite chair?

“You okay?” Tigg’s heavy hand came to rest on my shoulder. I shook off my hesitation and stepped forward.

“Sure, fine,” I said, swallowing down the lump forming in my throat.

In the off chance I may one day return home again, I’d continued to pay the utility bills out of my ill-gotten gains, so when I switched on the light it worked. I gazed around and saw that nothing had changed. My eyes darted around the large central room toward the kitchen half expecting to see Mom cooking up a storm. A counter divided the kitchen from the rest of the room. Two small bedrooms and a bathroom door could be entered from off the main room as well.

“Cozy,” Tigg said.

“It’s home.”

He walked over to the heavy wooden table near the kitchen, which served as our dining area. All meals had been eaten together at this table as a family. I could almost picture us all sitting there, laughing and talking about our adventures down at the wide stream that ran through our property. It’d been our favorite place to hike together.

“What’s this?” Tigg asked picking up a folder filled with stacks of papers my father had endlessly studied.

“I dunno,” I said, coming closer and taking it from Tigg’s hands. I put it down on the table and opened it up. “Looks like a bunch of scientific notes.” My parents
had
been scientists.

“What were they working on, do you know?”

“No, they never really said. It seemed important to them though.”

Tigg flipped through some of the pages and halfway through the stack he picked up a paper and studied it carefully. “Minka?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Take a look at this and tell me if it means anything to you.”

He passed me the sheet of paper and I looked it over. I noticed the word
shift
was written several times, along with a bunch of equations. I’d been pretty good in school but I was no scientist. “I’m not sure what it means.”

“You said your parents were working together on Zenet. But for some reason they left the safety of the planet behind and came to Earth.”

“I figured it was because of me,” I said. “They came here just before I was born.”

“Judging by what’s written here, I have a feeling they didn’t risk coming here because of you. Or perhaps it
was
because of you.”

“Now I’m confused.”

“They were working on a cure.”

“What? What do you mean a cure?” The word
shift
jumped into my thoughts. “For my dad? Do you think they figured out a way to stop him from shifting?”

“Could be,” Tigg said.

I pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, the paper still clutched in my hands. “Mom always said she loved being on Earth. The only thing she seemed wistful about was our isolated existence.” I’d never felt deprived of anything despite living out here in the middle of nowhere. Once old enough, I’d gone to school, my mom making the forty-minute drive both ways every weekday. As I got older I could go over to my friends’ houses, but no one was ever allowed to come here. I knew it was because of my dad. I knew what he was and I knew what I was. My shifts were under control long before I started school so exposure was never a concern for me. “I knew my parents were pretty obsessed with whatever they were working on, but I had no idea what it was.” Actually, being wrapped up in my own selfish little world, I’d never bothered to ask. Now I wish that I had.

I handed the paper back to Tigg. “Can you figure anything else out about what they were doing?”

He sat down beside me and studied the contents of the folder for a while. “Got anything to eat?” he asked.

I got up and started going through the cupboards. There was a bunch of freeze-dried meals so I put a pot on the stove and began boiling up some water. I couldn’t help but smile as I went through the archaic phase of making a meal the way they had dozens of years ago. Big cities around Earth were filled with all kinds of modern high-tech gadgets and accessories, but many places were still old-fashioned and behind the times like this place. What a shock it’d been to me when I entered the city for the first time with my parents. We’d gone a few times together, but I remembered it had always been a short and tense excursion.

And then they’d gotten killed.

Usually my father would stay in the vehicle and not risk being seen in public, just in case. But something had been different that time. He’d come out for some reason. And then he’d changed. I closed my eyes as I recalled the fatal shot that rang in my ears for weeks. In one instant, my family was gone. In a daze I’d made my way back home, it taking me almost all day on foot. I’d slept for a long time. Then, unable to bear being alone, I’d packed a few clothes and what money I could find into a sack and headed back to the city, never to return until now.

When the food was ready I put it onto plates and brought it out for Tigg and I to eat. “Find anything?” I asked.

“This paper here, it has an equation and beside it is your name.” Tigg showed me the paper.

“That’s strange. Wonder what I had to do with it?” I took a few bites of my meal and grimaced over the taste. It’d been so long since I’d eaten such primitive food. Tigg ate with gusto despite there being no bugs on his plate. I guess Lizords could eat pretty much anything. “Hey, you know, I do remember my dad taking blood samples from me a few times. He said something about my blood being the key or something. I never knew what he meant.”

Tigg grinned at me, sauce dripping down his chin. “Minka! That’s it. The cure for shifting. That’s what it is.”

“What?”

“Think about it. You can control your shifts. Your parents came here looking for a cure, for some reason figuring they could only obtain it on Earth. And all the while, there you were under their noses. You were the cure. Or at least your blood was.”

Chapter 7

“If they found a cure for my father’s shifting, then why didn’t he use it?” We’d retired to the sofa after Tigg’s announcement. The food I’d eaten sat like a lump in my belly.

“Perhaps it wasn’t complete. Maybe that’s what your trip to the city was about. It was obviously important enough for him to risk exposure. Your blood’s probably the key, but maybe they needed to add something else to the mixture in order for it to be effective on him.”

Memories of a laboratory in the city flashed in my mind. Though the visits had been quick, I recalled rushing into a lab with my mother. And now that I thought about it, dad had come in with us the last time. My parents had a bunch of laboratory stuff here, but if they required anything more high-tech they’d have to go into the city. Perhaps they were working with someone there? Someone who knew our secret?

An idea suddenly came to me. “What if they didn’t want to just control the shifts? What if they wanted to stop them all together? For him
and
me?” Exactly how I felt about that I wasn’t sure. Being half Ventillian was who I was. If an opportunity presented itself to stop the shift, would I?

Tigg pondered my suggestion over before he replied. “I suppose it’s possible. You did say being here was dangerous for you both.”

“Then why stay? Why not take our family back to Zenet and live there?” I demanded, as though somehow Tigg knew the answer. Being kept in the dark felt like a betrayal. Why hadn’t my parents told me what was going on?

“I don’t know, Minka. This was your mother’s home. I can’t know their reasons for taking such risks.”

Reflectively, I put my hand on my belly. Hadn’t my first thought been to have the baby on Earth despite Treox being the best chance at life it had? Even now I selfishly thought that somehow I’d make it work. Is that what my mother had thought? Was being on Earth so important?

“Tigg, what if the baby can shift?” My question came out in a whisper, as though I was too afraid to say it aloud.

Tigg reached over and his hand joined mine on my belly, our fingers twined together. “We will be safe on Treox.”

I snatched my hand away and jumped to my feet. “But what if I don’t want to live on Treox? It’s too damned hot and full of giant bugs. I hate it there!”

Tigg flinched as though I had struck him. I immediately felt contrite. Had this been an argument my parents had had? Did my father finally relent and come to Earth despite his fears? “I’m sorry,” I said. I sat back down on the couch and Tigg took me into his arms. His hand stroked down my back comforting me.

“We’ll figure things out, Minka,” he said, his voice calm and gentle.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not usually so emotional.” To my horror I actually felt a tear slip down my cheek.

“Hormones, my love.”

“I don’t think we’ll solve anything else here. The file was a good start, but I think we should go into the city and visit that lab.”