Breaking Brandi (10 page)

Brandi blinked, unnerved by how quickly he
disappeared into the brush, particularly considering his size.
Thankfully, he returned only a few minutes later carrying his
bedroll and pack.

“Where’s the … uh … animal?” Brandi asked
blankly, surprised enough to see him return without their ‘ride’ to
speak directly to him.

He flicked a frowning glance at her. “They
will see the guak’s heat. I have left him near the stream in the
hope that they will discount him as a forest creature and not
connect him to us.”

Brandi’s jaw dropped. She stared at him
blankly as he approached the tree and then carefully spread the
pallet beneath the cave-like roots, struggling to ‘interpret’ what
he’d said since it made no sense to her at all.

Guak, she supposed, was what the beast was
called, but what ‘they’?

It sounded like he’d suggested they were
hiding from someone. She just didn’t know who or why—and that
bothered her because she also didn’t know how scared she should be
that ‘they’ might find them.

Shivering, she glanced around at the
deepening gloom that was enveloping the forest as the sun set.
“They?”

Instead of answering the question, he
gestured for her to come to him.

She responded automatically, but she thought
she would have even if she’d had time to think it over. Ulrick was
physically intimidating, but at the moment that was just what she
wanted because it made her feel safe.

He lay beside her on the pallet, pulling her
closely against him. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry
that he made no attempt to couple with her.

Wide awake now, Brandi lay scanning the
woods within view until it was too dark to see. “Do you think they
can see our heat?”

He didn’t respond for so long that she’d
begun to think he might have fallen asleep. “It is to be hoped that
they cannot.”

Shivering, Brandi huddled a little closer to
Ulrich. “What happens if they see us?” she asked in a shaky
voice.

That time she sensed his hesitation in
responding. “Nothing good will come of it.”

Brandi swallowed with an effort, torn
between the desire to know exactly what the threat was and the
certainty that she wasn’t prepared for whatever it was and wouldn’t
be no matter what he told her.

It seemed certain he didn’t have any
intention of telling her.

“Have you met a lot of humans? People like
me … from Earth?” she asked after a few moments, wondering how else
he would have learned the language so well.

He shifted away from her, pushing her to her
back and staring down at her. “I have never met one such as
you.”

His voice was almost caressing. She would’ve
thought that was pure imagination except for the fact that he
lightly brushed his fingers along her cheek when he said it.

isHBrandi blinked at him, but she discovered
it was impossible to bring his image into focus well enough to
judge his expression. “But … you speak English so well.”

She had the sense that the comment had
surprised him. He made a scoffing sort of sound, threaded, she
thought, with amusement. He cupped one hand around her neck,
rubbing a spot on the base of her skull.

“Your chip was synced to mine when I bought
you.”

Chip?
She had a fucking chip in her
skull?

Wait! He had one, too?

“So there can be no doubt a slave
understands his master’s orders, they are implanted in all
slaves.”

Brandi stared at him blankly while that sank
in.

And then she remembered he’d told her he was
a slave, had been—and he’d bought his freedom.

She frowned. Wouldn’t they
all
have
to have them, though, if the masters needed the chips to make the
slaves understand them? Pretty much everyone on this world of
masters and slaves and religious nuts that didn’t have any qualms
about chaining their sacrifice down if they showed any inclination
that they were reluctant to give?

And where had the chips come from? And the
knowledge to make and implant them?

When
had they implanted a chip in
her?

She supposed after a moment that it must
have been done as soon as they’d taken her but it was disturbing
that she didn’t have any memory of that event at all—disturbing
because there was no telling what else they’d done to her.

“You were … born on this world?” she finally
asked tentatively.

His entire attitude changed. The softness,
if she hadn’t just imagined it to begin with, vanished. “I was not
born
… at all.”

* * * *

It was still dark when they rose and
ate—from another loaf of the alien bread—and then resumed their
journey. Disoriented and confused, Brandi struggled to kick her
mind into gear.

She couldn’t detect anything around them or
about Ulrich that suggested danger, or trouble of any kind, and yet
they had deviated so far from the routine they’d established from
the time they’d left the slave auction that she was convinced
something was up.

She just couldn’t figure out what that might
be.

As she became more alert, it occurred to her
to wonder if it was nothing more than that Ulrich was pissed off
about her prying questions.

Naturally enough, the moment that occurred
to her she was instantly diverted to trying to puzzle through it
again. She’d fallen asleep trying to figure that one out and was no
closer to understanding now.

Because it didn’t make any damned sense!

He certainly wasn’t hatched!

Living things—larger, complex organisms—were
born!

Was he saying he was a machine?

She didn’t believe that! He was
mammoth—everything about him and on him!—and he was hard—but it was
the tensile hardness of muscle—biological materials, not metal.

Maybe it was … a lie someone had told him?
Some sort of superstition? Dimly, she thought she recalled old
Earth superstitions where gods and people were created in other
ways—like Eve being made from Adam’s rib. Mud figures brought to
life by the breath of some god. Someone springing from the brain of
Zeus? Something like that.

Was that it? Did that explain such a
statement?

She decided it seemed likely—
more
likely than the possibility of him being an android—which still
didn’t actually tell her anything.

Like—had he been captured from another world
and brought here like she had been?

It didn’t matter. She told herself it
didn’t, at any rate. She was just trying to understand what made
him tick so she could use it to her advantage.

She wasn’t making a hell of a lot of
headway, she thought glumly, not that she could tell, anyway.

She’d thought she was in a fair way of
taming him sexually, thought she’d glimpsed light at the end of the
tunnel and the possibility of a better future. Now she wasn’t
nearly as convinced.

And it unnerved her that she felt like
something had changed radically and she didn’t understand what it
was.

Maybe he’d done something and they were
being pursued? Or he thought they were?

Inwardly, she shook her head.

Even if that was true, she wasn’t going to
figure that out.

He might have done something, but she’d been
preoccupied ‘giving’ to the god Nhewa and had no idea what he had
been doing while she was making sacrifice of blood, sweat, and
tears—sweat and tears anyway—to ensure a safe journey, and she
didn’t think he was going to tell her.

They followed a similar pattern of travel,
eating, and rest for two days. On the third, they reached the edge
of the forest and were confronted by rocky outcroppings that
inclined sharply toward a mountain peak concealed by thick
clouds.

Dismay flickered through Brandi.

She really hated high places and she
especially didn’t like the idea of going up a rocky mountain on the
back of an unpredictable animal.

She hadn’t been given any choices about
anything since she’d been taken, however, and she didn’t bother
voicing her complaint aloud.

Ulrich would do what he wanted to do.

And at the moment, he seemed content to sit
studying the rocks … very carefully.

It unnerved Brandi. She began to stare at
the rocks herself, braced for whatever might be hiding and ready to
pounce.

She didn’t see anything, however, and
glanced at Ulrich after a few moments.

“Hold on,” he said grimly.

And then kicked the damned animal before she
had time to do a fucking thing beyond gape at him.

The beast lurched into a run, almost
slinging Brandi off when he bounded into motion. Fortunately, she
hung her chin on Ulrich’s arm as she slid sideways. He grabbed her
waist and dragged her closer, pinning her hips with his thighs. “I
said hold on!” he growled.

“But you didn’t give me time to brace
myself!” Brandi snapped. Retribution was almost instantaneous, but
not from Ulrich. The jarring gait of the bounding beast made her
bite her tongue when she unclenched her jaw to snap at him.

They’d raced across an area roughly the size
of half of a football field when Brandi saw what they’d been trying
to outrun.

She supposed.

Black ants swarmed out of a valley/crevice
formed by a line of boulders that lay before them.

They weren’t actual ants, of course.

It looked like an army.

Of priests.

Except they weren’t just wearing the robes
she’d grown way too familiar with. They were bristling with
weapons.

Ulrich changed directions abruptly.

Brandi gasped when the abrupt switch in
directions sent her flying toward the dirt. Impact with the hard,
rocky ground hammered the air out of her lungs and sent her
spiraling down into darkness.

Shock made it difficult to sort her
perceptions, but she knew Ulrich leapt down, gathered her up and
launched the beast into a run again when he’d leapt into the saddle
with her. She knew the moments he’d lost collecting her off the
ground had cost both of them because they were surrounded in
moments and both of them dragged from the guak’s back.

She thought Ulrich might have tried to fight
his way out of the trap, but he couldn’t reach her and, when the
priest/warrior that had her in a choke hold barked something at
him, he stopped fighting abruptly.

They were both bound, although Brandi wasn’t
aware of that at first. The only thing she knew after the fight
stopped was that she was bound and tossed across the rump of a guak
on her belly. Fear of falling should have been sufficient to keep
her alert, but she was still badly shaken up from her fall and
having the wind knocked out of her again was enough to send her
over the edge of consciousness into the nether world of no
awareness.

Chapter Seven

What the hell had happened? What had they
done? Not done?

Brandi wondered for a little while after she
finally regained her senses if it was possible that she was simply
hallucinating, but she thought it must be nearly impossible to
imagine the sort of discomfort/mild pain/developing into all out
agony she was experiencing.

What could they possibly have done to
warrant this sort of thing, though?

Unless these guys weren’t the priests—and
they certainly appeared to be—
they
had done what they were
supposed to. Ulrich had dragged her from one fucking temple to the
next and handed her over to pay the damned travel toll!

Maybe it was just a case of mistaken
identity, she wondered a little hopefully?

But how could anyone possibly confuse Ulrich
with
anyone
else?

She slanted a speculative glance at Ulrich,
heavily bound and being led on foot by thick chains—dragged if he
tripped. The muscles in his arms and shoulders and back were taut
and bulging from his efforts to stay upright and keep up with the
guaks so he wouldn’t be dragged.

His expression was stony. A muscle in his
jaw twitched—as if he was grinding his teeth.

He didn’t glance in her direction. Beyond
the flexing muscle in his jaw, he didn’t acknowledge he was even
aware of her.

And yet she thought he sensed her gaze.

Should she take that to mean he was totally
pissed off with her, she wondered uneasily?

Did he think it was
her
fault they
were in this predicament?

Probably, she thought angrily!

People always looked for somebody to blame!
They never wanted to take responsibility for their own
actions—unless they were being rewarded for them!

Of course, these weren’t people like she
thought of people—aliens might have a totally different
mindset.

But Ulrich certainly seemed more furious
than frightened and he wouldn’t look at her and that usually meant
the person being snubbed was thought to be the guilty party.

Well! It would’ve been nice to know exactly
what she was supposed to be guilty of!

For a little while, her anger buoyed
her.

Then her aches and pains took the upper hand
and she began to think about all of her bumps and bruises and
recalled that she’d fallen off the guak when Ulrich had tried to
escape … and he’d come back to get her and they’d been
captured.

Ok, so she supposed she could see his
point—to an extent!

God! It wasn’t as if she was
used
to
making a getaway! Or used to riding an animal like this, for that
matter!

If
, she thought resentfully, he’d
bothered to inform her that there
might
be a problem she
might have been better prepared!

She’d been caught totally off guard!

She thought about that angrily for some
minutes and then it occurred to her that she hadn’t been completely
caught off guard—no sense in lying to herself!

She’d begun to suspect something was up when
Ulrich had left the trail and headed off through the woods. Not
that she’d had any idea what might be up, or even been certain
anything was, but she couldn’t deny that she’d thought it was
strange that they’d completely changed their previously established
travel routine.