Genesis (12 page)

Abruptly, it occurred to her to wonder if at least a little bit of Kole’s anger was for the same reason, because he did like her and now wished he didn’t. She’d been unconscious when he was hurt, but she didn’t believe the bot would’ve attacked him if he hadn’t attacked first. It was after her, not Kole.

She saw when she glanced toward him that he was watching her, but she couldn’t tell anything about his expression--except that he wasn’t looking at her like he hated her. As if he realized he might have given something of his thoughts away, he turned, stalking to the other side of his yard to talk to one of his tribesmen, she supposed. She watched them until Consuelo settled across from her, catching her attention.

* * * *

Kole had spent days battling his helpless rage and remorse, and he was no closer to containing it or dealing with it although he’d torn his habitat apart and pounded the walls until his fists were bloody. He couldn’t get their faces out of his mind. He couldn’t prevent horrific images from flooding his mind as to how the
Sheloni
had ‘disposed’ of them--their women.

He’d known most of them from birth, had trained with them in combat, had shared his body intimately with most of them. He had not been particularly attached to any one of them, not one more than another, at any rate--that was not encouraged because strong emotional attachments only led to doing something stupid at the wrong moment and endangering others. Rather, he had felt a closeness to all of them, just as he did the male tribe members.

There had been a time when that was not the case, so he had been told, but it was long ago--before even his parent’s memory. Before the holocaust, when life on
Ach
had been good, the
Hirachi
had lived as families, in great cities, not banded together in tribes in barely adequate shelters. Most of the laws of their village had been designed to create a sort of group closeness that allowed them to trust in one another, know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and work as a team.

He could not imagine feeling worse about their deaths, though, and he wondered if they had really mastered the ability to stand their distance from others and protect themselves from the deep, emotional wounds such relationships caused. He would not have admitted it under torture, but he had felt crushed when the elders had died, hopeless.

And now the women were dead, too.

He wanted to kill something--the Sheloni--destroy everything they had tainted with their touch.

The fear that it was somehow his fault only made it worse. If he had shown no interest in Bri, would this have happened?

He thought it might not and the thought tormented him, made the rage boil out into physical violence against the only things near enough to vent his rage on. It exhausted him, bruised his body, but the pain that was inside didn’t go away. The exertion didn’t banish the images from his mind.

He had to tell the others. They had a right to know. And yet he was loath to tell them all that he knew of the
Sheloni’s
plans. If they turned all of their pent up frustration and rage against the only thing available to them, the alien women ….

He almost welcomed the likely consequences of that, except that it made him sick to his stomach to think of brutalizing such weak and helpless creatures. In any case, although he almost welcomed the thought of not having to deal with the grief and hate anymore, he didn’t want to die without taking at least a few of them with him. As infuriating as it was that they could not defeat the Sheloni, it was many times worse that they could not even inflict appreciable damage in retaliation for all that his people had suffered at their hands.

The Sheloni were the enemy, he reminded himself. He couldn’t help but resent the alien women who had replaced their women and were indirectly responsible for their deaths however unwilling they, themselves, had been, but he wasn’t so irrational with grief and anger that he didn’t know that. He would have to tell the others in such a way that it did not make them turn on the women.

He was still trying to decide how he would do that when he spied her. Instantly, images of the lab flooded his mind. The rush of desire that washed over him stunned him, seemed to knock the breath from his lungs.

He’d held out as long as he could, deliberately filling his mind with images that revolted him, but in the end it hadn’t helped him at all. In spite of everything he could do he couldn’t resist looking at her, and the moment he did other images crept insidiously into his mind, ousting the ones he’d used to protect himself. And he’d imagined thrusting into her, imagined that it was the feel of her body along his shaft, not the twice damned machine.

And they’d injected his seed into her.

A mixture of chaotic emotions went through him at the memory.

Fear for her was uppermost. It roused anger and disgust, mostly toward himself. And the fact that she refused to look at him only created more havoc inside of him. By the time she
did
look he was in such turmoil that he hardly knew what he was doing or where he was, but the
way
she looked at him penetrated his disordered thoughts and emotions with the piercing pain of a javelin to the chest.

Sucking in a harsh breath, he deliberately turned his back to her, trying to come to grips with the anger and resentment that boiled inside of him because she’d looked at him with both fear and reproach.

He had not touched her. He was fairly certain he would have if he could have, but he hadn’t, and he had certainly not volunteered to have any part of that humiliating experiment.

Spying Yardof, he strode toward the man, trying to gather his thoughts together.

Yardof nudged a chin in Bri’s direction. “Have you learned aught of the alien women?”

Kole shrugged. “Their world is called Earth. It’s meaningless to me.”

“Both females?” Yardof asked in surprise. “Did you not say they do not even speak the same tongue?”

Kole nodded absently. “Strange to be from the same world and not--particularly since neither seems to understand the other, but, yes, I think so.”

“Primitives?”

Kole frowned. “No. Definitely not extremely primitive. They do not smell like animals.” He was almost sorry he’d brought that up because the memory of her scent instantly filled his mind, and it was anything but repulsive. Shifting uncomfortably as his member stirred and firmly tamping the urge before it could betray his thoughts, he turned his mind to their women. “Have you seen our women of late?” he asked, wondering suddenly if the Sheloni had only told him that to fuck with his mind.

Yardof grimaced, shaking his head. “No one’s seen them since the day they let them all out together and they discovered the alien women had two of the babes. If they’ve let them out since, it was when everyone else was confined … which worries me. Even if they rotate the times, someone should have seen them.”

Bile climbed into Kole’s throat. “I’d hoped the Sheloni had only said that to demoralize me,” he muttered.

“Said what?”

Kole gave him a look.

Yardof stared at him for a split second and then his face hardened. “They’re dead then?” he asked hoarsely.

“We knew that was a strong possibility if we defied them.”

Yardof looked down at the ground, balling his hands into fists. “They didn’t even get the chance to make their lives count, did they?”

They both knew they hadn’t. The
Sheloni
were well aware of their physical inferiority to the
Hirachi
. He had no doubt that any one of the women had been capable of taking out three or four with their bare hands, but the
Sheloni
knew that, too. They rarely came near enough for any possibility of one of the
Hirachi
reaching them and only then when they were certain the droids were near enough to protect them.

There was rage in Yardof’s eyes when he looked at Kole again. “They captured the alien females to replace them as breeders,” he growled. “If we snap their necks, the Sheloni will see we will not breed more slaves for them.”

Fury flooded Kole. “
We
do not prey upon those who are weaker,” he growled.

“It would be a kindest to spare them the indignity and suffering of life as a slave. They will die like crushed flowers anyway. Do you not see how scrawny and weak they are? Our children are stronger! We have slain our own infants to protect them. How is this different? Do they deserve any less consideration only because they are not our kind?”

“
We
did not slay our young!” Kole snarled furiously. “The women decided upon that themselves. I would not have had the stomach for it!” If he’d known what they planned, he would have forbidden it … not that he thought they would have listened. If there was ever a time when they were not completely in control it was during the mating season. Their losses and grief, topped by the sharp spike in hormones had clouded their reason.

Yardof glared at him angrily and finally looked away. “Me either,” he confessed finally. “But I am certain it was the right thing to do. We are fortunate our women had the strength.”

Kole wasn’t convinced it was strength, though he didn’t want to say so. However much he wanted to honor the memory of the dead, though, and dismiss the doubts in his mind, he had known most of the women well, and he suspected spite had played a part in their decision--with some of them anyway. It was one thing to think of sparing the infants pain and suffering, and entirely another to consider they had died only to spite the
Sheloni
. He was willing to do almost anything to retaliate--but not that.

Surreptitiously, he glanced toward the alien women, wondering, not for the first time, if either of the babes were his.

“Likely they will die with the infants,” Yardof said, dragging Kole’s attention from Bri. “I can not see anything that fragile delivering a Hirachi into the world. You don’t think it would be cruel to allow that to happen to them?”

He had seen their women deliver their infants, and he thought it would be unconscionably cruel, but even considering it hypothetically he wasn’t at all certain he could bring himself to end Bri’s suffering … supposing he had the opportunity, which most likely he would not. “Maybe they are stronger than they look,” he responded, not believing it for a moment. “Or maybe they will only have small babies like themselves. Either way, there is nothing we can do about it. The Sheloni have decided to use them. If we refuse to breed them, the Sheloni will either force the issue or dispose of them as they did our women.”

“The machine,” Yardof agreed, looked as if he was considering asking Kole if that was where he’d been taken, and then apparently thought better of it. “Do you think we will have a chance of fighting once we reach the world they are taking us to?”

About as much chance as they’d had on
Ach
, Kole thought. He didn’t need to point out that he thought they were less likely to, though. “We will find a way to avenge the deaths,” he ground out instead.

“
Shentalgo
,” Yardof muttered.

“Ritual suicide would only inconvenience them,” Kole responded dryly, “and force them to return to
Ach
for others. If those captured before us had fought to the death instead of seeking
shentalgo
we
might not be here.”

Yardof nodded. “I will tell the others. Likely it will not stop Dansk, though. I did not want to say anything and shame him, but he allowed himself to grow … too attached to Lyaaia. He will very likely behave irrationally when he learns of her death.”

Chapter Eight

Kole felt his throat close as he stared down at Bri. He had hoped/dreaded it would come to this. His seed had not taken, and, not to be thwarted in any way, the Sheloni had decided ‘natural’ might work where science had failed.

Or, more likely, they had decided natural impregnation might be achieved more quickly.

A wall of heat and desire had washed over him the instant it clicked in his mind that this time would be different. This time he had not been brought into the room first and bound to the machine. This time when they had brought him in, Bri had been strapped to the table already, her legs elevated, her thighs parted to receive--him. Fortunately, it was that same situation, and the frightened look in her eyes despite the glaze from the drugs, that had sent an equal blast of ice through his veins so closely upon the heels of desire that he’d thought for a moment he’d black out from the swiftness of the rush of blood to his cock and then away again.

“You will impregnate her,” the Sheloni repeated.

Kole blinked, wiped the expression of befuddled lust from his face, dragged his gaze from Bri with an effort, and affected an expression of indifference. “As you see,” he said, gesturing toward his flaccid member, “there is no interest. If you had cocks yourself, you’d know this is not something that responds to command.” He did not, in point of fact, know whether they did or not--suspected they must--but it was impossible to resist the opportunity to insult their virility.

To his disappointment, the Sheloni didn’t seem the least insulted. Instead, he looked surprised--not that they were capable of showing much by way of emotion, but Kole could see the face and eyes behind the shield go blank. “You have no interest in this female?”

“No,” Kole lied.

The Sheloni studied him a moment more and turned to one of the bots. “Dispose of this one and bring another.”

Kole’s heart seemed to stop in his chest. Fury washed through him, but it was aimed as much at himself as the Sheloni. He should have known the creature would not hesitate to call his bluff and toss out a counter challenge. It flickered through his mind that the Sheloni was bluffing, as well, that Bri was of value to them in caring for the child even if she could not be used to breed, but he knew he couldn’t trust that that was true. Swallowing against the bile in his throat, refusing to glance at Bri again, though he wondered if she could understand anything that was being said, if she realized her life was hanging in the balance, he maintained his look of indifference with an effort. “They all look the same. I would have no more interest.”