Heat (12 page)

*

The sex was good. The human, being as small as she was, couldn’t help but close on him tighter than any fist, and even if she’d been wailing at him the whole time, at least she’d tried to move around a little. It got the job done, that was the thing; it emptied him of seed and sweat and mindless rage and let Kane think with clarity again, so the sex had to be judged good. It was nothing like sex with a normal female, but the worst sex in the world would still be pretty damned good under these conditions.

To be fair, all of Kane’s sexual experience could be summed up by his furloughs to the Flesh-halls of Jota and by Tari’i Sunorrok, the
Yevoa Null’s
navigator. As the only female aboard ship she had first choice of mates, and if her choice was not always Kane, it was often enough that Kane never felt the lack. Now
that
was some great sex. The last time he’d taken a roll with that fine female, she’d broken his collarbone in two places and he hadn’t even noticed until after. Ah, Tari’i. Gone now, like the rest of them. Probably in the Dan-tar Prison Port, where she could trade a lifetime in confinement for a mere fifty years, provided she agreed to breed ten or twelve offspring. And she should. The universe needed more like Tari’i.

Kane glanced around to see how his human was holding up. He didn’t like what he saw. She’d done nothing but slow down ever since the sun fell, but she was limping now as well. It was hard to judge her color by the light of the half-moon, but he thought her eyes looked smudgy and sunken all the same. Her mouth was open, and he could hear her breath rattling as she walked.

She needed to drink. She probably thought she needed to eat, too, but water was the critical thing. If she didn’t get some of that before sun-up, she’d probably die. Kane knew there was a river around here somewhere—the river where his yellow-haired first attempt had killed herself—but he’d lost track of it in the days before encountering Raven. Now it could be anywhere. The plants he passed were dried out and dying; he’d seen no real game.

Ah, but there was one hope left to him. In the dark, any lights cast by human camps would be more visible. Kane knew the woods were inhabited. It was just a matter of time before he stumbled into one. His human had only to survive until then.

No sooner had that comforting thought crossed Kane’s mind than he heard a low moan behind him. He turned just in time to see his human pick up her foot, put it down in front of her, and then just fold up and drop. Her body slammed into the ground hard enough to knock up a little cloud of dust and her breath came out of her in a retching cough. She began to make that gaspy wailing sound, but her eyes made no water.

Hell.

Kane walked back to her, reminding himself that she couldn’t help it, the nanozymes had half-parched her already and the dry heat had done the rest. She was human, she was fragile, and it wasn’t her fault.

His hand closed on the belt of her wrap and he hauled her up, swinging her effortlessly onto his shoulder. She weighed only a little more than empty air and she didn’t struggle. Kane started walking again, scanning the trees surrounding him. He thought he could see a clearing to his left and he turned in that direction, scenting the air in the vain hope of smoke.

It was more than a clearing. It was a valley, carpeted in brittle grass, with the hard-baked cut of a dead river running through it. On every side, the forest loomed, stretching up in foothills towards the distant black peaks of mountains. And there, just as he had known there must be, were lights, twinkling like fallen stars in a nest of shadowy trees.

The human hung limp down his back, but she never shut up. She kept making that sound, like the breathless crying of a hoarse baby, until Kane thought he was going to go mad. He couldn’t blame her. Everyone had their limit and she’d hit hers, but he was coming up on his, and if she didn’t hush it in a hurry, he was going to do something he’d later regret.

The lights in the forest taunted him, but Kane forced himself to stop. He pulled Raven off his shoulder and set her on her feet. She staggered under her own weight and then dropped onto her butt, splay-legged and dazed, staring up at him. She was still crying and her eyes were still dry.

“Does anything hurt,” Kane demanded, trying very hard to keep his voice low, “or are you just giving me shit?”

Her face puckered up and she fell onto her side, drawing herself into a small ball and wailing into her arms.

Patience. Damn the gods, had there ever been such a fucked-up hunt as this?

Kane dropped to one knee beside his human and took his pack off. His scanner had a pin-light on it. He thumbed it on and had a look at his human’s eyes. Bloodshot and sunken. He forced her mouth open and prodded at her gums. They dimpled white and remained so. She wasn’t dying yet, but she would be very soon.

Kane considered his options, even though he already knew what he had to do. And in the end, he did it. He brought out his one and only protein boost and loaded it into the dermisprayer to give her.

Raven wailed as soon as she saw the device in his hand, and she tried to shove it away when he reached for her. Kane’s irritation got the better of him; his hand flew out and slapped across her sobbing mouth before he could stop himself. Her head rocked back and banged into the ground. She blinked stupidly into the sky, blood pooling around her lips. She began to cry again, looking confused.

‘Leave her the fuck alone!’ Kane snarled at himself in Urak’s voice.
‘Tar
! It’s like kicking a baby!’ He took a deep breath, willing calm, and she chose that exact moment to say “Just kill me.”

The last shred of Kane’s temper snapped. “All right,” he said, and grabbed her by the hair. He stood, pulling her up with him as she screamed and slapped at his arms. He yanked up her tattered shirt and dug all three claws into the middle of her chest. “This is what you want?” he snarled, pushing his face close to hers. “You want to see your meat and bone break open? You want to see your heart spitting blood? You want to hold your guts as they dry? You want me to kill you? Say the word, human, and I’ll do it.”

Raven bawled wordless negation at the sky.

“Then shut up.” He dropped her and stomped away, pacing a short circle in the dead grass until his head quit throbbing. When he turned around, she was still lying on her back with her hands over her face, shaking with her tearless sobs. “I’ll forgive you for saying such a stupid thing,” he said, returning to her side and retrieving his dermisprayer from the ground, “but I won’t forgive it twice.”

He pressed the head of the dermisprayer against her arm and injected its contents through her skin with a hiss of air. “I only have one of these,” he said, packing it away again, “so you’d better not make me sorry I gave it to you. Get up.”

Raven rolled onto her hands and knees and slowly stood, wiping over and over at her dry eyes.

Kane took her arm and bodily turned her. “Do you see it?”

She looked at the lights, sparkling just out of reach in the sloping woods at the far end of the valley. “Yes,” she whispered.

“That’s where we’re going. I’ll carry you. And if you start making that damned noise again, I’ll be carrying you unconscious. You’re not the only one hot and tired.”

“I’m sorry.”

He growled at the apology and lifted her again. She felt heavier this time and wearing her over his shoulder was like wearing a fur coat, but Kane kept teeth on his temper and started walking. His body was full of complaint—he was hungry, thirsty, hot, sore and exhausted by Heat’s daily assaults—but complaints don’t change facts, and the fact was that reaching the lights meant a goodish hike so he’d better keep moving.

He needed to keep things in perspective, that was all. The human on his back was heavy now, but he’d be damned glad of her when the day rolled around and brought Heat with it. Besides, she wouldn’t be dehydrated forever, and before she’d gotten quite so sick with it, she’d been reasonably good company. She was quick enough, strong in her own way, and so determined to please. Under other circumstances, Kane thought he could come to like a human like this. He was positive that Urak would.

And it was also true that the lights he saw in the woods were a half-night’s walk away, but at least when he reached them, there were sure to be water and food, and there was likely to be a groundcar as well. The speed that would lend him in the hunt was worth this rotten night.

So he would walk, and he had better keep his temper as he did so. Things will always get worse before they get better, or so Urak had been fond of saying. And since this was about as bad as he could imagine things getting, surely there had to be improvement on the way.

“Let me down,” the human said, her voice slurred. “I can walk.”

“Be still,” he grunted. The protein boost would no doubt give her all kinds of delusions of strength, but it wasn’t flooding her with moisture. He needed her to conserve her energy, and he was prepared to use force if he had to.

“I’m okay now,” she insisted, pushing against his back to half-rise. “I want to get down.”

Kane gave her thigh a stinging slap and she fell limp again at once. He wasn’t used to fussing over humans. Apart from the little pets that Urak was in the habit of keeping, Kane was accustomed to taking the sorts of liberties that could leave a human dead if one pissed him off enough. But if the lesson of the yellow-haired female had taught him nothing else, it had taught him that he was by no means assured of finding another if he was careless with his toys.

The valley was flat and open; the woods on the other side, far distant. And the human’s impatience was contagious. Kane risked a light run, his eyes darting over the dry grass for dangers, aware that a broken ankle now would be as good as a plasma burst to the head. His own strength was not unlimited, but it felt good to run, as satisfying in its primal way as raking claws down an enemy’s chest or feeling a female’s bite on your shoulder. His pulse sounded in his ears, his feet flew over the dry earth and the female who rode him swayed with his stride. It was a good run, and all the while, the lights ahead drew nearer.

The forest reached out to embrace him again and Kane slowed. He was tempted to rest, to set his human on the ground and wait until his breath came slow and steady. Maybe to finish out the high mood his run had put him in by having a roll with his Raven, one untempered by Heat’s madness, and to catch a nap in the shade of Earth’s night.

But the lights, invisible now behind the sloping thick of trees, still beckoned. Food, water, perhaps a groundcar, and shelter for a few more hours of sleep. A place for Raven to regain her strength before he moved them on. These were the things he had to focus on now. The night was waning.

Kane got moving, keeping unerringly to the course of the lights. Earth slowed him as much as it was able-brush and branches slapped at him, roots made the ground into treacherous footing, fallen trees and thorny thickets did their best to herd him off course-but he made his distance one step and a time, and eventually, he could make out the flash of lights behind the screen of trees. Another hundred paces brought him into the clearing where the house stood, and he stopped there to take its measure.

He counted six structures in the clearing, most too small and crudely-built to be inhabitable. There was one large building contained within a fence; its roof had fallen and the whole thing sloped dangerously to one side, and yet there was an animal housed there. It drank from a rusted bucket, a creature nearly as tall as Kane himself, with four horn-capped feet and a back bent by hard time and neglect. He’d seen creatures like this one before, had even tried to eat one once, and he knew it was harmless, just another dumb animal that humans kept for their own unknowable purposes.

Kane set Raven on her feet, but kept his hand around her wrist as he approached the only building that showed signs of human life. The house was decrepit, badly built and fallen into further disrepair, but light poured from its windows and no one appeared to be standing watch. Someone had cared enough once to paint it, but the color was washed out and the paint itself had come up in great peels and cracks. Thorns had overgrown one wall and much of the roof, which was itself much patched against the weather. There were groundcars in the lot leading to the musty porch, but some were rusted, others missing wheels. Kane drew nearer, keeping close to the fence, and scanned the house for movement.

He saw none, save for that of the animal, which kept pace with him as he walked. It made an urgent nickering noise when Kane stopped again and Kane reached out absently and patted the side of its huge head. His fingers came away grimed with dust.

He glanced at Raven and found her also searching each dirty window in turn. “Well?” he asked, his voice pitched low.

She swept her gaze across the yard. “There’s lots of cars,” she said. “I only see two that look like they can drive, but they
can
drive…there’s tracks in the dirt.” She pointed.

Good eye. Again, Kane found himself thinking that his father would definitely like this human.

“And there’s a lot of junk everywhere, but it’s not all overgrown. Someone lives here.” She sniffed the air, an action that struck Kane as incredibly cute, considering how useless the human olfactory senses were. “And someone’s been barbequing tonight.” She licked her lips and then stiffened up and looked at him. “Are you…going to kill people?”

“Yes.” Kane gave her wrist a squeeze to get her attention as she tried to curl in on herself. “But if you’re good, I won’t make you help.”

She looked up at him, wan and unhappy, but nodded.

Kane raked his eyes over the house, assessing its size and the speed with which he would have to move to take the inhabitants. He had seen no activity, but the fact of the light told him that someone must be awake, and he had to assume that they were armed. Kane wasn’t, and he had his human and his chemist’s pack to protect besides. The decay of the house was a trap; any step he made could result in a creaking alarm to the humans within. He had to be careful.