Alien Shield, page 2
“Yeah. Just nauseous and tired,” Cece confirmed. Theresa finished with her hair, and Cece gave a weak but grateful smile as Theresa shuffled on her knees to join me again.
“Well, that’s what we’re here for,” I said. “We brought some grix. We’re going to make some more of that drink.”
“Awesome. I’m going to lie back down,” Cece said. She eased herself back onto the hides, her woven Sea Sand tunic pulling a little at her gently swollen belly. With her comfortable, I jumped back up, grabbing a small knife from the bone shelves and then coming back to open the valok plants. Well, it was the smallest knife I could find, anyway. In reality, it was more like a decent-sized butcher knife in my hands, but for a Sea Sand man, it was probably more like a dagger.
Holding the lethal black blade carefully, I got to work opening the valok plants. I dumped the contents – a translucent green tea-tasting gel – into the stone bowl. Then I emptied my pockets, tearing up grix leaves and sprinkling them on top of the glistening valok gel. Theresa watched me with interest, leaning forward.
Cece closed her eyes. “Let me know when it’s done,” she said.
“Will do,” I replied, beginning to grind away at the mixture, breaking up the leaves and mixing them into the gel.
I realized I had no idea how much grix I should have been using, and I hoped the taste would still be acceptable to my pregnant friends’ sensitive palates. I also realized part-way through that my mixture was really gritty and lumpy from the fibres of the grix leaves that were impossible to break down. Sweating, I stripped out of my jacket, then angled the bowl towards Theresa.
“Is it supposed to look like that?”
She tried to smile, but the wrinkling of her nose let me know otherwise.
“Hmm. I wonder if they strain it somehow...” I said, more to myself than the others. “I’m going to run to a healers’ tent real quick.” Theresa nodded at me, looking relieved that I wasn’t going to ask her to drink the stuff in its current form. Maybe the healers have some sort of fibre mesh strainer they used for stuff like this...
I put my solar protection jacket back on, slammed my shades onto my nose, and stepped back out into the sun.
The closest healers’ tent was the one belonging to Gahn Buroudei’s tribe. I walked towards it, moving into the shelter of its shadows.
Inside the tent stood an old Sea Sand woman, a healer whose name I’d come to learn was Rika. I was most familiar with the healers and women of Gahn Fallo’s tribe, as we’d been with them the longest, but now that we were all here at the Cliffs of Uruzai I was glad to get to know the other women too.
This tent was lined on three sides by large bone shelves, filled with jars and plants and stacks of clean peet grass bandages. On the ground were neat rows of beds for the sick or injured. Mercifully, no one occupied any of them at the moment. We hadn’t had any major bloodshed since Gahn Baldor’s attack a few months ago, and for that I was grateful.
Rika did have one patient, though, I realized with a smile. A young boy was standing in front of Rika with his head tilted up. Even on his foreign features, I recognized the universally child-like expression of impatience on his face as Rika smeared Lavrika’s blood on a gash on the boy’s forehead. Even though I’d seen the Lavrika’s blood do its thing dozens of times by now, I still felt my mouth open into a soft O of amazement when the boy’s shallow gash healed almost instantaneously.
I really need to get that stuff under a microscope. Maybe with a tissue sample, too. See what it’s doing to the cells... I knew Kat had been spending a lot of time studying the Lavrika’s blood in the lab on our ship out in the desert, and I’d been meaning to join her. But between minding Jocelyn’s garden and tending to Cece and Theresa, I hadn’t had the chance.
Forehead in good shape, the boy bounded past me, the energy that had built up from standing there exploding into his young limbs. Alien or human, kids were pretty much the same all over the universe, it turned out.
“Hi Rika,” I said with a smile. The Sea Sand woman turned to face me, a soft smile playing about her own full lips. She was dressed in typical Sea Sand fashion, with a long greyish-green peet grass tunic belted at the waist with a strip of dakrival hide. Her sight stars glinted silver and grey with age, but her eyes still held a bright intelligence. She wiped the last remnants of the Lavrika’s blood from her fingers onto her tunic, then tilted her head at me, her long grey braid shifting against her shoulder.
“Hello, Zerena. How can I help you?”
“Do you have anything to strain that grix drink you guys taught Jocelyn how to make? I tried to make more, but it’s turning out pretty stringy and gross.”
Rika’s smile widened, revealing fangs.
“I expect that this... stringiness... is not pleasing to our pregnant Gahnalas,” she said knowingly, her sight stars twinkling.
“You got that right,” I chuckled.
“Come,” Rika said, spinning on her heel with surprising agility for someone of her advanced age. Even as an old woman, she had a good head of height on me. I wondered, by Earth standards, how old she would be.
Rika bent her head, her dark, high ears brushing forward as she reached for something on a lower shelf. She straightened and handed me a few sheets of what looked to be something comparable to cheesecloth. But like the bandages and Rika’s tunic, it wasn’t white, but rather the signature grey-green of peet grass. The fibres of these cloths had been woven into a loose grid, unlike the tighter weaves of clothing and bandages.
“This is exactly what I needed. Thank you!” I said, tossing her a smile as I folded the cloths into a tight square.
“It is no trouble. We all wish to do anything we can to care for the pregnant Gahnalas during this time.” An expression that was sort of wistful, almost pained, passed over Rika’s aged face. These pregnancies meant a lot to the Sea Sand people. For so long, their population had been dwindling, with not enough women to support their numbers and keep their tribes thriving. So these pregnancies were more than a blessing. To the Sea Sand folks, the pregnancies were a miracle.
A surge of affection for the old healer, and all the Sea Sand people, went through me. I’d had no family left back home in Newfoundland, and having these people, the tribes, doing everything they could to help us, welcoming us so easily... It was beautiful.
I replaced the sudden ache in my throat with determination – determination to see Cece and Theresa and anybody else through their pregnancies safely.
“Thank you for this again,” I said, lifting the cloth between us and dipping my head. Rika swished her tail before turning to tidy up some of the items on the shelves.
As I left the tent, I wondered if the grix had steeped long enough in the valok gel, and if I should strain it as soon as I got back to Cece’s tent or if I should wait. A sharp, rhythmic thudding, like the collision of metal and stone, distracted me from thoughts of steeping drinks. I whipped my head around, feeling my brows contract behind my shades as I tried to locate the sound. It was a vaguely alarming noise, but nobody else at the settlement seemed concerned by it at all. Well, that’s a good sign. Enough of a good sign that my alarm got beaten down by my curiosity. I’d always been curious and a keen observer. It had been what had led me into the field of biology in the first place – wanting to study the things in my environment. Wanting to understand it all.
Deciding that I’d let the grix leaves steep a little longer, I started walking briskly towards the sound. The invisible trail of the ever-louder clanging in the air led me away from the tents, back towards the cliff face. I moved a little quicker, wondering what the hell would be making a sound that was somehow both violent and poetic – so brutal yet controlled in its beating rhythm. As I got closer to the cliff, following the stone wall of it, I started to feel the pulse of that sound in my body. The throb of a drum, but harsher.
A crag split outwards from the cliff wall, and I rounded it, finally finding the source of the hard and rhythmic calling. Weirdly, that was exactly what it had felt like. A calling. Something that had drawn me here.
Behind the crag was a sort of clearing area – a small open part of the cliff wall that dipped into an enclosed spot. Despite the high cliff walls rising up around me, this area wasn’t shadowy. In fact, there was a fire burning here, its orange light licking up the rock. Heat rolled outwards towards me, overwhelming me. I couldn’t totally see the fire, though. I could only see its light on the stone and feel its heat.
I couldn’t see the fire because an absolute tank of an alien man was blocking my view.
A massive Sea Sand warrior had his back to me. Look, all the alien guys were massive. But some of them were longer and leaner than others. This guy, though? He looked like someone had carved him from the biggest, most rugged piece of stone they could find, using a gigantic barrel for the torso’s reference. Like the other men, he was clad only in a loincloth, the muscles in his meaty thighs and powerful glutes tense as he worked. His tail was a thick long muscled line behind him, its black tip dragging through the sand. My eyes trailed upwards, snagging on the bunch and stretch of each hardened muscle in his broad back. His shoulder clenched and rotated like a small boulder as his heavy arm came down over and over again.
Oh, right.
I’d been so distracted by the frankly fucking amazing anatomical specimen in front of me that I’d completely missed what he was actually doing.
The warrior was slightly bent over a large flat-topped stone that came up to his waist. One of his hands was steady upon the stone. The other was in motion, ramming downwards again and again, an absurdly large stone sledgehammer pounding against whatever he was working on. God, that hammer looked like it should belong to Thor or something. I doubted I’d be able to lift the thing even with both hands. This was what had created that fantastic, almost corporeal rhythm. This was the brutal drumbeat rolling through the air. It was him.
I didn’t want to distract the warrior from whatever he was doing, but I was dying to see what he was working on. I edged around to the side, thinking I was sneaky. But at my movement, the warrior’s own movement instantly stopped. He froze, the hammer high in the air, and once again I was struck by the Thor-ness of the image. Hammer raised high, thick muscles primed. Power I could barely comprehend.
“Sorry,” I said quickly, suddenly flustered. I felt like I’d been spying, even though I hadn’t really meant to. The hammer lowered slowly with almost exquisite precision. He laid the tool carefully upon the table and then turned to face me.
A lick of heat went through me, and I wasn’t entirely convinced it was just from the fire in front of me and the sun above me. I tried my best, I tried, not to be a creeper. But he was even more impressive from the front than the back. Wide-set shoulders, a brick wall of a chest tapering down to his waist, hips, and muscled legs. Thick, long black hair hanging loose past his shoulders. A powerful, thick, yet somehow elegant neck led up to a strong-jawed and serious face. His expression was composed, the pulse of his sight stars slow and observant as they moved over my face, drawing yet more heat to my cheeks and neck. There was something... solid about him. Steady and controlled and quiet in an almost deceptive way. That, coupled with the very slight crinkling at the corners of his eyes made me wonder if he was a little older than some of the other warriors. Some of the warriors had a vicious, snapping energy to them that made them appear somewhat young to me. Gahn Fallo came to mind, as did Jocelyn’s mate Razek. Men who fought and raged, quick and explosive, like tempests. This man? He was like a dark, still lake. A quiet and calm surface over bottomless depths. I wondered what kind of trigger would bring those depths upward as battering waves...
I myself was 33 years old, older than most of the other human women here, and I had to admit the maturity of the man I was seeing before me was immensely appealing.
And he became about 20 times more appealing when he spoke, his voice smokier than the fire behind him.
“It is I who should apologize,” he said, his glinting copper sight stars trained on my face. “I should have sensed that you were here immediately. This is dangerous work. Sparks and shards could injure you.”
Good God, was I ever getting sweaty. I shoved my hood back, running a hand through my damp, shoulder-length hair. I pushed my sunglasses up like a headband, keeping the sticky strands off my heated face.
“What are you working on? If you don’t mind me asking that is,” I said, leaning slightly to the side and trying to peer around him. As distracting as this very large, very attractive warrior before me was, I still wanted to know what he was doing. If he’d tell me.
He stepped aside, a liquid movement that seemed way too graceful for someone of his size. With a large and calloused hand, he gestured towards the natural stone table he’d been standing at. The fire behind the table crackled as I glanced at his work surface.
A blade.
A long weapon gleamed on the stone’s surface, hammered into the vague shape of a sword. It didn’t have the bone handle most of the other weapons had yet – clearly it was a work in progress. Like pretty much all the weapons I’d seen here so far, it was jet black, shining like onyx. Though it wasn’t finished yet, I could already see how deadly its point was, the strength in its shape.
So this was the alien version of a smithy. And its master, I could tell even without looking, was watching me closely as I observed his work.
“Very nice,” I said, meaning it. I mean, with all the weapons these guys used, it made sense there had to be people actually making them. I just hadn’t seen it yet. And now that I had, I was suitably impressed.
“It is unfinished,” the man beside me said. There was no trace of blustering in his words, no reason to think he was saying that out of embarrassment that I’d seen his project half-done. It seemed to just be a statement of truth. No embellishment, no excuses.
“I’m sorry I interrupted you,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed and squirmy even if he wasn’t. It was hard to get a read on this guy. I couldn’t tell if my interruption had bothered him or not. I snuck a quick glance at his face but that didn’t help much either. Aside from a contained burst of his sight stars as my gaze met his, there was no real indication if I was annoying him or not.
“You need never apologize for that,” he said as I turned to face him fully.
Whether he was just being polite or not, I still felt relieved.
“Alright, thanks. I’m Serena, by the way,” I said.
An almost imperceptible muscle jumped in the warrior’s jaw.
“I know.”
My stomach muscles tightened as I sucked in a small, quick breath. Why did the fact that he already knew my name feel... so nice?
There are only twenty humans here. It’s not that many names to learn, I told myself.
But it made me feel bad that I didn’t know his.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“I am Xyan,” the warrior said. I gulped as the stony scrape of his name moved down my spine. The name seemed to suit him. Nothing fanciful about it. Short and strong and to the point, with that surprisingly smooth Z sound at the beginning.
OK, what the hell? I am thinking about this way too much.
It was then that I remembered I actually had things to do today, including tending to my very dear friends who were waiting on me.
“I should go,” I said, blushing and flapping my hand vaguely towards the settlement’s tents.
Xyan watched me for a long, silent moment, and I wondered, sweating harder now, if he was going to say anything at all in response to my proclamation. I was about to turn and hurry away from his unrelenting gaze when he finally spoke.
“Please return here any time you wish. But next time, speak up over the sound of my hammer and anvil.” His sight stars rolled slowly down my face to my exposed neck. “It would not do to injure such soft skin.”
“Right,” I said, barely even hearing my own reply. Xyan’s gaze on my neck was an intensity I was not prepared for this early in the morning. OK, it was probably closer to afternoon now. But still. Not ready.
I nodded quickly. Just before I turned to go I saw him raise his tail over his eyes. Odd. I’d only seen men do that for figures of authority or people they respected immensely, like the Gahns or the Lavrikala. Maybe this guy is just really formal. Yeah, that seemed right. There was something almost... classical about him. Like he’d fit right into a historical romance novel as the quiet, dark-eyed duke.
As I hurried away, I ignored the fact that I’d compared him to a duke in a romance novel instead of just... a historical dude. Now was not the time to get caught up in whatever the hell that meant. I had shit to do today.
And I was going to do it.
CHAPTER THREE
Xyan
I watched my mate walk away from me, back towards the tents. I forced myself to remain still, rooted to the spot, despite the way my muscles thrummed and my claws itched to reach for her. The generous curves of her hips and legs as she walked had me stifling a deep groan, and I mourned the loss of her pale face and lovely brown hair as she pulled up her hood.
This was the first time I’d actually spoken to my mate. The Lavrika had called me six nights ago and shown me Zerena’s lovely blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and pink mouth in its pools. But even before it called me, I knew she was mine. From the moment I’d seen her after our arrival at this settlement, I had not been able to keep my eyes from following her every move.
I will have to tell my Gahn soon. Six nights and days was already the longest I’d kept a secret from Gahn Baldor. Not only was Gahn Baldor warlord and king of my tribe, but he was also my closest friend. We’d hunted together since our youth and had a strong bond forged between us. And yet, a part of me (not so small a part, it turned out) had wanted to keep this one thing from him and from everyone else. A quiet secret, deep inside. I hadn’t even told Zerena herself, yet. And clearly, she had no idea of this development. She had no idea that my entire body, my entire being, was at her service now. Every claw, every muscle primed to love her. I’d already learned from other mated men that the new women, the humans, did not feel the pull of the mate bond as we did. They had to develop feelings naturally in their own time, hopefully aided by a competent mate who could stir such feelings in them. Though I would not consider all the Sea Sand men I’d seen win their mates so far entirely competent. Or entirely sane. The Gahns Fallo and Razek came to mind at that. But that only strengthened my resolve. If the mad Gahn of the hills and the feral Gahn of the Death Plains could win a soft new woman, then so could I.
