Enemy Games (31 page)

Her heart slid into an uneasy rhythm.

“Damen? Let me . . .”

His head came up, tension and purpose in every line of his posture. He smiled, pure feral intent.

Despite the worry for him consuming her, liquid heat rushed into her belly. She stomped on the urge to rush into his arms.

Jayleia admired the coordination, the loose-limbed stride, the flow of red gold hair, even as he stalked her. He coiled and sprang, trapping her in contact with him. He wrapped his arms hard around her and fastened his mouth on hers before she could blink.

Her handheld dropped.

She tensed, expecting the metallic bite of blood on his lips, or the sour tang of illness. She sensed neither. He tasted clean, like spring rain, warm and sweet, filled with promise. Still, she clenched her teeth when he sought to push into her mouth.

Because it wasn’t Damen kissing her. Some vital piece of him was absent. She was being assaulted by a puppet wearing his face.

Jayleia stiffened her spine. When trying to loosen his grip had no effect, she changed tactics, leaning closer, pressing tight, wrapping her arms around him.

He shuddered at the touch of her hands.

And for a moment, she heard it.

Humming.

She’d heard it before. Her pulse beat loud in her head.

Chekydran.

It sounded so like the dream she’d woken from, Jayleia strained to listen. She started when it resolved into something comprehensible.

“. . . no harm. Have no fear. Help us.”

Her heart squeezed hard.

Damen was infected, somehow, if her medical readings could be trusted, and had been reduced to serving as a vector.

Someone needed her infected.

Why?

With what?

Had her healing trance prevented them from infecting her the same way they’d infected Damen?

“Help us.”

Damen gained access to her mouth and invaded.

She’d expected him to release her the moment he’d achieved his objective. He didn’t. Neither did his attack ease, but the tenor shifted. No longer concerned with transferring a pathogen to her, it felt like someone relinquished control of him. He was present, arms tightening, mouth demanding a response from her.

Something about that perceptible shift, as if he’d suddenly been given back control of his body, touched off a superheated chemical reaction in her blood.

Until the pain hit, taking her breath.

Damen broke the kiss, but refused to release her.

Hurt sliced through her body.

“Gods!” she yelled. “Does nothing have an incubation period? Ow!”

The illness ripped apart her insides, shaking vital bits of her out, and rearranging them. The impression of being remade stabbed violent nausea through her middle.

Damen clasped her to his chest, running his hands over her back as if she were a child in need of soothing.

Maybe she was.

The nausea and discomfort eased.

She breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back to look him in the face.

He closed the gap and took her mouth again. The gentle strokes of his lips against hers felt like an apology.

The hum intensified. She heard it and sensed it vibrating through her body. Coming from him? Or from her? Approval. Encouragement.

Desire gathered at her core, burgeoning, eroding thought and identity until it erupted.

She gasped and shuddered.

Damen gasped and shuddered.

They broke apart and collapsed in unison.

 

JAYLEIA
came to, warm and comfortable. She felt sinfully good. Hell of a kiss if it could—memory kicked her in the gut. It hadn’t been the kiss.

Chekydran.

She knew of at least one other case wherein the Chekydran aural network, the hum the insectoid creatures used to connect to one another, had excited sexual responses from human prisoners. Up to now, she hadn’t thought the Chekydran had known they could affect humanoids in that fashion.

There’d never been any indication that the Chekydran cared how they affected other species.

She forced her eyes open and tried to banish the glow still shimmering through her veins.

Where was she?

Alone. Wrapped in pale yellow strands of—what was this stuff?—web? Light bled through layer upon layer of strands wrapped around her.

Too tight.

Too close.

Fright wrapped around her chest. The air grew heavy in her lungs and her vision hazed.

Heart racing, she thrashed against her bonds. The web loosened and gave as she fought, easing her initial burst of panic at the enclosed space. She struggled for a deep breath, found she could get it, and that the air felt fresh.

She gasped, momentarily spent. It took a long time for her runaway pulse to approach normal.

Comfortable, and not confined, or at least not bound. This did not mesh with what she thought she knew about Chekydran prisons.

She couldn’t feel the vibration, but Jayleia caught a strain of hum. Chekydran.

Check that. They were prisoners.

Memory handed her a snippet of tactile sensation, Damen’s mouth, hot and demanding on hers, and a hum. She’d imagined she’d understood that nonverbal, low-level vibration. “Help us,” it had said.

Think, Jayleia
.

Given: Chekydran cruisers that didn’t fire upon the
Kawl Fergus
, even though the Chekydran and the Claugh were at war. She was captive on a planet rather than aboard a war cruiser. The Chekydran seemed to know they affected humanoid emotional and physical responses via their aural network. A warm, cozy cell made of webbing that gave way as she moved. What if she and Damen weren’t prisoners per se?

If they weren’t prisoners, it followed that she wasn’t in a prison cell.

She was in a cocoon.

Intrigued by the possibility, she picked a spot where the incoming light seemed brightest, drew her knees to her chest, and kicked. The web compressed. As she watched, the strands adhered to one another and coalesced into a sheer, shell-like layer.

She kicked again.

The shell fractured. Light bled through the cracks, bright but diffused.

She coiled to deliver another blow.

Someone, or something, outside grabbed hold of one of the cracked pieces and pulled. The shell snapped. The individual came back to wrench away another piece and this time Jay saw what reached in to help her.

A tentacle.

Terror flooded her. Her heart raced. Her hands shook and she broke out in a cold sweat, but she refused to retreat.

Another segment of shell broke away.

She could hear and feel the hum of the aural net, now. It sounded muted; nowhere near as mind numbing as she’d been led to believe it ought to be.

A shadow fell across her. She looked up.

A Chekydran, or at least the head of the creature, extended into the cocoon, sweeping back and forth as if unable to see her. The creature issued a short, inquisitive burst of sound. Apparently satisfied, it drew back and reached for her with two tentacles.

Jayleia braced herself, but they never made contact. Looking again, she saw the tips curling in an unmistakable “come here” gesture. An offer to help her out of the cocoon?

How civilized.

Not an adjective ever attached to descriptions of Chekydran behavior.

She frowned and paused in reaching for those tentacles. How could she know with such assurance what the gesture indicated? Body language didn’t always translate from one species to the next. More to the point, how could a species with only rudimentary visual capability possibly know that crooked “come with me” appendage motion?

She couldn’t still her quaking, so she straightened her spine and forced herself to grab hold of the offered tentacles. She’d expected slimy or sticky. The creature’s skin was cool and dry and soft, despite the faintly sticky segments under her hands.

The Chekydran pulled Jayleia out of the thing she’d thought of as a cocoon.

The creature holding her aloft didn’t look like any Chekydran she’d seen on a view screen. The head had the familiar three rows of vestigial eyes, though they gleamed with iridescent rainbows like polished Novastone. The precious few people who’d survived Chekydran captivity hadn’t mentioned that detail.

This Chekydran had wings. Another detail never before mentioned. Jay tipped her head, studying the play of light on the glossy, finely veined wings lying along the creature’s back. Cocoons. Did that mean the species’ body form varied based on life stage?

It lowered her until her feet touched ground and her legs agreed to hold.

She glanced around. They stood on ochre plain marked by the low, yellow-webbed mounds dotting the ground as far as Jay could see.

Cocoons. The plain was a nursery.

Several more Chekydran, all identical to the one that had freed her, scuttled about on the plain. They shuttled items back and forth, pausing once in a while to dig into the webbing and push whatever they carried deep before covering it.

She frowned, watching the other Chekydran. They spared her not a glance. Only the creature beside her hovered, keeping an eye—or several—on her.

“What are they doing?” she asked, not expecting a response. Humanoids and Chekydran didn’t share similar vocal structures. They couldn’t reproduce one another’s languages.

The Chekydran shifted when Jayleia spoke, jerking her gaze back to it.

She had to force herself to relax when she realized she’d tightened every muscle at the creature’s response.

It hummed and chittered at her.

An answer? One she couldn’t understand. Frustration broke open in her chest and she huffed out a breath. What she wouldn’t give for a translator.

A shrill hum went up not ten meters from where they stood. One of the Chekydran had stopped scurrying. It bobbed and danced in one spot. Two other Chekydran rushed to the scene. The three of them began digging, humming in unison.

Encouragement. Reassurance.

How did she know that?

They stopped digging.

Jayleia realized what was happening as one of them grabbed hold of something with both tentacles and pulled.

Something was emerging from another cocoon.

She took a step before realizing it might be a bad idea. The Chekydran beside her didn’t look concerned, assuming she’d know concern in this species if she saw it.

She had so much to learn.

A spurt of excitement shot into her chest. She shook her head. How stupid was it to get ramped about studying a species that didn’t recognize humanoids as sentient beings?

Curiosity overcame fear. She sidled toward the three creatures breaking open the cocoon shell. Nothing stopped her, though the Chekydran shadowed her. The hair on the back of Jay’s neck rose at the sound of six legs shuffling in her wake.

Her attendant chortled as they neared the other three Chekydran.

Jayleia jumped.

The three others paused and hummed in their direction, throat pouches vibrating. As one, they stepped back, giving her access to their excavation.

She eyed them. Nothing she’d ever heard about or seen of the Chekydran led her to expect the behaviors she’d so far observed. They weren’t allowing her to look. They were inviting her.

Curiosity killed the xenobiologist?

She crept to the edge and peered over. She yelped and staggered back. Her Chekydran caught her.

It was not Damen.

Hand pressed against her chest where her heart tried to beat free, she straightened and went back for another look.

It was a Chekydran, wrapped up tight and glistening with moisture. It writhed, straining against the membrane entombing it. Its eyes turned up to the diffuse bluish light.

She swore, voice shaking.

This Chekydran’s eyes had pupils that constricted in the light. Those eyes focused on Jayleia. The newborn could see.

The four Chekydran around her intensified their hum as the first tear appeared in the chrysalis membrane.

She watched, fascinated, as the Chekydran emerged a centimeter at a time from the cocoon, then perched on the edge of the hole, waiting for blood flow to straighten crumpled, gossamer wings.

“What a beautiful creature,” she breathed, surprised to find it was true. It shifted something inside of her and while fear of these Chekydran didn’t drop away, it did diminish.

She’d begun to suspect that whatever portion of the Chekydran made war upon her people, these Chekydran were not the same population. Why hadn’t she heard of them before now? This couldn’t be first contact. Could it?

She studied the newborn. How could a species that had seemed to be on an evolutionary path away from sight manage to produce an offspring with such advanced visual structures? Did the young Chekydran fanning her wings to dry them and joining in the hum—how did she know the creature’s sex?—also exhibit commensurate changes in her brain structure to accommodate those eyes?

Was this mutation? Throwback?

She didn’t have time to examine the young female further. Her attendant whipped a tentacle around her neck and yanked her against its throat pouch.

Surprise and terror knifed through Jayleia’s gut.

“What are you doing?” she protested, struggling, as another Chekydran brandished a sharp-tipped foreleg. “Wait! No! Don’t!”

The Chekydran struck, slicing through shirt, skin, and muscle, laying open her abdomen from belly button to pubic bone. Overwhelming hurt slammed through every nerve, sucking the breath from her lungs.

The sharp, metallic smell of blood spilling hot and heavy down legs that no longer worked filled her head. Her heart labored against panic and shock.

When the creatures began rummaging around in her exposed organs, she screamed until she blacked out.