Tagen set Grendel in the rear of the groundcar and returned to his own seat, keeping his hands curled so as not to leave grime all across his reach. Daria harnessed herself, rubbing the grease that gloved her own fingers off on her pants, and started the engine. The vehicle moved smoothly back onto the road and neither of them spoke.
This was unbearable. Tagen moved his hand from his knee to hers, feeling the fabric of her clothing soft and warm between him and her firm flesh. She released half her grip on the guidance wheel to rest her hand over his, holding him there, and never mind the grease.
“Yours was the first house I came to after I had landed here on Earth,” he said suddenly, and then sat and wondered where to go from there.
“Well, I didn’t think you’d picked my name out of the phone book. I always figured I was just the first human you stumbled on.”
The weight of his plasma gun pulled at him; he could hear the crackle of crisping flesh, smell its phantom smoke. He said, “The first after I resolved to better know your kind, yes.”
“Lucky you.” There was sarcasm in her tone, but no venom.
“Indeed, I am. I anticipated battle—”
“And got it.”
“Ha. No.” He squeezed her knee lightly. “Difficulty, yes, but not battle. I have seen battle. You have been a remarkable host to me, more than ever I could have hoped.”
She returned her hand to the guidance wheel and Tagen shut his eyes to mask an open grimace. Host. A poor word. He flexed his claws on her thigh, thinking.
“I came to admire you,” he said. “Against my better judgment. And then to desire you, although I feared that you should know. Heat…came between us. I suppose I should be grateful. If not for this tar shu-rak weather, I would have never dared to show you my desire. And now…”
There was a reason Tagen had never been asked to give a speech, and this, he thought bitterly, was exactly why. He was stumbling blind in a mire and he refused to get any deeper in. Tagen took his hand from her and stared out the window at the rushing stream of trees that grew beside the road, wishing blackly that his father had, for even one season, allowed his son to be schooled in oration.
“Now?” Daria prompted.
He shook his head, not facing her. “I have made ruin enough of words for now,” he said bitterly. “It is your turn.”
She was silent a long time.
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” she said finally. Her voice was very small, and yet still managed to push the air out of the groundcar. “You’ve been very honest with me about everything and…and I understand how things work. I’m not going to make things complicated when you have to leave.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, but there it was, spoken at last, and naturally it had been her to do so. He couldn’t touch her, as much as he wanted to. He couldn’t even look at her as she struggled for composure.
“I’m not as bad as I was,” she was saying. “You don’t have to worry about me, after. I’ll be okay.”
Her promise sounded hollow to his ears, a reminder that he had taken her by force from the security of her self-imposed prison, taken her out into strange lands at his command, and soon meant to abandon her. That she felt she had to reassure him at all was a touching reflection of her essential Daria-ness. She would be ‘okay’, too, whether she truly believed so or not. She was so much stronger than she knew.
But it was not fear of her making her way home alone that darkened his thoughts (although he supposed it should be, were he not so selfish a man), but simply the loss of her in his own life. If there were an easy way to say this…if there were any way to say this…
Daria’s hand rose from the console to swipe at her eyes. “Please don’t do this,” she said, her voice now scarcely above a broken whisper. “Please, don’t make me lose you before I have to. Say something.”
The silence drew out and out while Tagen strove to claw words together from the black chaos of his mind. At last, in pure desperation, he said, “My hands are dirty.”
He wanted to shoot himself.
Daria sighed and reached to switch on the vehicle’s radio. He caught her wrist halfway and only held it. He could feel the pulsing of her life’s blood beneath his thumb.
“I hate this,” he said quietly. “I hate this world and I hate this weather and I hate the prisoner who has necessitated this mission. I hate that I have come to feel hate for the first time in my adult life. The one thing, the one thing in all this Earth, that can make me forget all that I have come to hate is you. And I am leaving you.”
It was her turn to stare fixedly ahead and hold silent.
He looked down at the hand he had captured. Slowly, he brought it towards him and pressed his mouth to the sensitive skin of her inner wrist. Her scent, healthy human sweat faintly perfumed by female pheromones, illuminated his senses and he closed his eyes to breathe it in, to taste it.
“You’re already leaving me,” she said. “I’m riding around with you in the seat beside me and you’re already gone.”
He shook his head, not in dispute of her words, but in simple defeat. “Tell me what to do,” he said helplessly. “Tell me how I am supposed to leave you. Everything I can think of…hurts me.”
She laughed unexpectedly. It was a high, bright sound, and filled with despair. “Welcome to Earth,” she said. She pulled her hand gently from his grip and wiped at her eyes again before returning it to the guidance wheel. “There’s not always a good way to say goodbye, but there’s still plenty of bad ways. Giving me the silent treatment for five hundred miles two days in a row is a bad way, Tagen.”
He accepted this with a nod and a sigh. “I apologize. I know you are doing this for my sake.”
“Yeah, well.” Her lips twitched and she slid a glance at him that had at least some glint of real humor. “My motives aren’t entirely pure.”
“No?” He eyed her guardedly.
“I hope that when you see how I labor on your behalf, you will be desirous to mate with me.”
She captured his stilted and careful speech exactly. Tagen smiled helplessly and brushed at her hair. “It’s working,” he told her, slurring the peculiar N’Glish contraction with great care. She leaned into his hand slightly, but did not continue. Quiet descended again, but of an easy sort. And that was fine.
That was very fine.
Chapter Thirty-One
They stopped for the night at a real mom-and-pop place. The hotel’s yellowing roadside sign boasted cable, air conditioning and a pool, but the pool was empty and bleached by disuse, the A/C was louder than a jet engine, and the cable was limited to Lifetime, the WB, TNT, and Animal Planet. Not having access to local news made Raven nervous, but Kane didn’t move them on.
He was in good spirits, relaxed and even cheerful as he looked over the newly-filled vials in his pack. Ten more, from the other motel. Cozzzy Nook, it had been called. With a raccoon in a nightcap, holding a candle and yawning its way to bed, painted on the side of the building. She’d picked it out. They drove away from it with ten more bottles of brain juice. She hadn’t kept count of how many people had gone into filling them. Too many, that was all. One of them had been hers.
Kane…going from room to room and bed to bed like some demonic Sandman, bringing the bone-snap of death instead of dreams. All those people. But it was the kids that kept coming back to Raven’s mind, the kids that filled her with the sickest swelling of horror. Those poor goddamn kids. Too young, Kane had said simply, but he’d given them a good long look before he’d said it. Too young for Vahst, was what Raven knew he meant. No one was too young to die. So he let the kids sleep while he killed their parents, their big brothers, their big sisters. He let them live so they could wake up there in all that…mess.