Dark Warriors: A Dark Lands Anthology (Darklands) (37 page)

Dagon stepped forward. “Dey.” By his tone, he was going to be “reasonable”.

She’d had it with reason. “I’m going to put my own guard on him, and then I’m going to go to the swamps and get my great symbiont. Anyone who gets in my way will be flattened.”

A spark of respect glimmered in Dagon’s eyes. “I see. And who is it you plan to stand guard over him? I doubt your own people will be helpful here, and Keg’s friends believe as we do.”

He had her there. Most of the Symbionts here would be glad to watch Keg die. And those from her old village…her eyes lit up. There was someone! Even better, if he came, she wouldn’t have to leave Keg’s side, wouldn’t have to slog through the swamps hoping to find her symbiont cycle as she tried to avoid getting eaten. But would he be willing to do her a favor for Keg’s sake?

Decision made, she faced Dagon and dared him to contradict her. “Are you willing to send for Armetris, his cousin? If he will come, he can certainly heal Keg. He won’t linger in a coma, and I’ll get my man back. All it will cost you is a little time.”

“It will be expensive,” the healer interjected. “These machines cost a fortune to run…” He trailed off at her killing look.

“You’ll get paid,” Dey told him frostily. “It’s a small price to pay for a life. Now get out of here. I’m no longer interested in your babble.”

Casting an angry look at the room at large, the medic left.

Dagon smiled at her. “All right, daughter. I’ll send your message. Let us all hope that Armetris can do what you think.”

“He will.” Dey promised. He had to.

Armetris was delayed. For three long days Dey never left Keg’s side. She watched Keg and Roac watched her. It got old.

“I could just heal him and end this boredom,” she offered, watching him through half-lowered lids. The seat on the chair she used was hard, so she’d stuffed a pillow under her rear and tilted her chair back on two legs to help keep awake. Not that she thought Roac would dash across the room and pull the life machine plug, but… No sense taking chances.

He snorted and continued to tinker with the machine he had apart on a small table. “I noticed you really loved your blood transfusion. Keep it up. If you try it often enough, you won’t have a drop of original blood in your body.” He gave her an evil grin.

Quelling her roiling stomach, she glowered at him. “Very funny. We Symbionts should have annihilated you while we had the chance.”

“You tried and failed,” he taunted her with a superior smile. Thoughtfully scratching his back with his blunt-ended tool, he remarked, “I’ll give you points for loyalty, though; once you’ve acknowledged your conquerors.” He nodded at his brother.

Knowing he was provoking her, but irritable enough to take the bait, she groused, “I didn’t have to get captured, flea-brain. I chose him.”

“Nice of you to admit to it,” he said with a smile, visibly relaxing more than she’d seen since the shooting. “His mother wasn’t nearly as willing to adapt.”

“His mother? Vana…”

“Is not his birth mother. She adopted him when he was a half-grown mongrel, along with me and Dagon’s little brothers.”

Confused, she tried to work it out. “Dagon’s...wait. How could she adopt her brothers-in-law?”

“Long story.” He waved his hand.

Determined to sort that out later, she got back to the most important question. “Tell me about Keg’s mother.”

Roac ran his thumb over his implement, frowning. “She was a mean one. Keg’s father captured her before the idea became popular. No one interfered with them, since he treated her well, but she hated all things alien, especially Keg’s father, and later, Keg.

“She refused to nurse him or care for him at all, leaving him in the care of his father’s servants. When Keg’s father was killed, she ran away, back to her people.”

The story hurt, and she could easily see it happening. Feeling sad for him, she stroked Keg’s hand. “What was her name?”

“Mekin? Mugin?” He shrugged.

“Megin?” Dey took a deep breath, expelling it slowly. To have such a mother! She could see Megin doing such a thing, and the name was an uncommon one. “You take a horrible risk, stealing women for wives. What if more of them react like Megin?” She remembered Megin shouting at Keg in the swamps. Did she recognize her grown son? It must have been hard, seeing his half-siblings, capturing her and her children.

“Extinction is a bigger threat,” he said, as obstinate as all the Beast were over the issue. Maybe he thought they had no choice.

Maybe he was right.

Refusing to be drawn into the issue, she tamped down on her instinctive antagonism and cleared her throat, intending to query Roac about his adopted brothers.

A knock sounded on the door. At the sound of their relieved greeting, Vana poked her head in. The shadows under her eyes attested to her own lack of sleep. “May I join you?”

“Please.” Roac hastily deserted his chair and offered it to his mother. “Have a seat. I’ll go find you refreshments. You look starved.” He nearly trampled her in his haste to be away.

Vana laughed as the door shut behind him with a muffled bang. “You’re getting to each other, aren’t you?”

“Only every other minute,” Dey said tiredly. She smiled at Vana and stretched out in the cot beside Keg. The only time she slept was when Vana relieved her in her vigil. Being a non-Beast, she didn’t hold the same views as Dagon and Roac concerning Keg’s coma; had Dey not given her word to wait for Armetris, Vana would likely have turned her head while Dey healed Keg.

“I’m lucky you’re a Symbiont,” Dey murmured sleepily, ready to drop off.

“Oh, I’m not,” Vana confidently.

Shocked, Dey bolted upright and stared. Had she been lulled into foolishness, believing that Vana was one of her own? She looked Symbiont, but who could tell?

Vana laughed at her expression. “Relax, child. I’m as human as you are. It’s just that I come from a different place than you imagine.” Since Dey was still frowning suspiciously at her, she added, “Dagon lured me, and others like me, from Earth. That’s another world. In fact, Dagon tells me that it’s the place where your people wandered from, a very long time ago.”

Earth? Dey had never heard of it or traveling to other worlds. Unsure what to believe, she said cautiously, “And how did they get to this…Earth?” She recalled Keg once hinting that the Beasts had been to the moon. Could they have taken their sky barges to other planets?

“They built a gate with their technology, one that opened onto my world. They tricked us into coming to a fake “academy”, then snatched as many of us as they could before the authorities caught on and they had to close the gate.” She grimaced. “Then they discovered that a deficiency was behind the inability to have girl children, learned that the fruit to cure it grew exclusively on the edge of the swamps, and failed to negotiate a treaty with the Symbionts to obtain the land peacefully. The rest you know.”

Did she? After three days of vigil, this information dump was draining. Keg had a mother. Her people had wandered into the Dark Lands from a place called Earth. Vana was from Earth.

Dey raised her hands to her temples and growled. “I swear you and Roac are doing this to me on purpose. No, don’t say another word. I have to get some sleep. Maybe after that we’ll talk.” Muttering over the craziness of Life-After-Keg, she lay down and fell instantly into REM.

The sound of Keg’s labored breaths jerked her awake. He was convulsing.

Swearing, she reached over grabbed his chest, trying to still him. She could hear Vana’s deep breathing in the background. The fatigue and stress of the last days had sent her into a deep sleep. Without her training in the swamps, Dey might not have woken, either.

Not bothering to call for a medic, for what could those butchers do for her man? Dey forced her symbiont to attach to Keg, sinking deep into his mind even as she fought her symbiont’s natural repugnance.

Nausea swamped her. She could sense Keg’s spirit leaving. He warned her without words to leave, that she would be hurt saving him.

Fighting his will, her symbiont’s will and the painful, queasy shudders as she worked to repair his fried synapses, she blasted him with pure emotion in that wordless place. Either he would work with her and come back, or she would go with him. There were no other choices. Death didn’t scare her. Life without him would be agony.

He stopped fighting her. The mush inside his head took shape, reformed into proper synapses and gray matter. Keg healed.

And she started to falter.

Roac strode into the room, bursting with hope. Armetris and his friends had arrived, and with him, Keg’s best hope for survival. He was going to get his brother back without sacrificing Dey to do it. She might be angry with him for a time, but once Keg was whole again she’d come around. After all, they’d both wanted the same thing.

“Hey, guess who I found… Sweet Father of Mercy. Dey!” His smile changed to a look of horror as he rushed to Dey’s side. He lifted her bloodless, green-tinged body, fearing he was too late. She was barely breathing and her symbiont hung off her in blackened, shriveled strings. He barely had time to note his brother sitting up in bed or his mother’s sleepy, startled gaze before Dey started to gasp.

Hot on his heels, Armetris entered the room. One look at Dey and he started swearing. Ripping the dead symbiont from her arms, he tossed the remains on the floor and took her from Roac’s arms. “See to your brother. I have to get her out to the bikes,” he snapped when Roac balked. “Stupid girl’s tried to kill herself.”

It took three different Great Symbionts to draw off the worst of the poison. Each enveloped her in turn and took a little, then moved away sluggishly, swirling with streaks of slime-green. When the worst had past, Armetris knelt at her side on grassy lawn before the hospital. Carefully, he tested her with his symbiont. “Wake up, brat. You know better than to try to heal an alien.”

She sat up, wincing as she rubbed the back of her head. “Husband, not alien.”

“You should have waited for me. You killed your symbiont.” He sat back on his heels and fingered his hematite earring, scowling.

“You’re turning into an old man, Armetris.” She froze his retort with her fingers on his lips. “Thank you for what you did.” The words were tight with emotion. She’d miscalculated. Keg would not have appreciated the gift of his life at the cost of hers.

Assured that she was in one piece, Dey shut out the grief over killing her symbiont with thoughts of Keg. “Take me back inside.”

He carried her, cutting off her weak muttering with a curt, “Shut up, brat.”

It was so like what he’d called her as a child that she suffered a sharp stab of homesickness. The material of his shirt against her face even smelled of home. The disorientation of it all made her dizzy. It had been a long time since she’d simply been “brat” to somebody.

Unwilling to face any more lectures, she closed her eyes and pretended to fall asleep, soon tumbling into a true, healing slumber.

“They’re still weak. Now is the perfect time.” Dybell faced the Symbiont woman, wanting to pace with frustration. Megin was his best chance for revenge, and she was wavering.

Keg should never have survived that rifle blast. If not for that Symbiont bitch, he wouldn’t have. She was the one he wanted to see pay; she was forever ruining his plans.

Dybell knew her name, but he never used it. Women were for using, not naming. Hadn’t his own mother taught him that? When she’d rejected him and his twelve brothers, wasting her life grieving the daughter she would never bear, he’d learned to despise her. What she had wasn’t good enough. Why would he bring more greedy women into the Beast nation? The Symbionts had an endless supply. Better to take from them, and then exterminate them. What did he care if his nation repopulated? He didn’t want daughters, anyway, or sons for that matter.

After he’d risen in the ranks, he’d carefully sought out men who felt the same and wallowed in the pleasures of slaughter and rape. Even his superiors hadn’t a clue what he was doing, for who was alive to seek vengeance? That is, until the bitch had discovered him.

And that wench had the audacity to hunt him. All but two of his men had died, stalked like helpless prey in the dark of night. If only to himself, he’d admit that he’d felt fear.

For that she would pay.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

Rage flared, and he almost backhanded her. “You don’t have a choice.” He gave her a small weapon and showed her the trigger. “Keep this in your pocket and kill them the moment you have the chance. Fail me and I’ll eviscerate you.”

Dey rolled over on the bed and looked at Keg. Their bedroom was the same, but she feared that everything had changed.

He was awake. For a long moment he said nothing, merely looked at her. Finally, he sighed. “I won’t say it. I know Armetris has already seared a strip off your hide.”

She looked down.

“Dey?” He nudged her chin up with a gentle hand. “Thank you. I love you.”

The lingering fear sifted out of her. Her man was back, and they were all right. She kissed him softly, still a little weak. “I couldn’t not do it. I need you.” The words were simple, but the emotion behind them was not. She did need him.