Tagen’s blood sparked, but, “Good,” was all Daria said. Her voice shook a little, but the emotion behind it never did.
“Good,” E’Var echoed. He shook his head. “You’d rather die than be saved by him. I suppose that’s what I get for assuming you liked the fucking he threw into you. But that’s v’kai for you. They do everything by regulation.” His eye came back to Tagen and narrowed. He bent again, this time to nip at Daria’s jaw. “But I don’t.”
There was no point in showing fang. Warning him off Daria would only be playing into E’Var’s game. Tagen bit down on his surging temper and remained expressionless and silent.
“Listen to that, ichuta’a,” the slaver continued. “That is the sound of a whole lot of don’t-care-if-you-die. Look at him. He doesn’t even look a little upset. Well, why should he? You’re human. The only thing a v’kai sees when he looks at a human is a nuisance.” He grazed his teeth again along Daria’s jaw. “But I don’t. And if I had a little more time—” His hand slid down along her body to cup her groin. He rubbed slowly twice, and then lightly squeezed, his eyes boring into Tagen’s. “—I ‘d show you a few things. Unluckily for you, I’m in a hurry.”
“Aren’t we all?” Daria shot back in her quavering voice. “So why don’t you give up on the whole scaring-me thing and skip to the fucking point?”
E’Var shook his head with a father’s indulgence. “Mouthy,” he remarked, and suddenly spun Daria around, wedged a claw into her mouth to pull it open, and inserted the killing end of his gun. He hushed her choking cry with that patient, soothing purr of his, his black eyes locked with Tagen’s all the while. “Just relax, ichuta’a. Relax. Don’t! Don’t pull away, just let it be. Now back up, nice and steady.”
E’Var walked, pushing Daria ahead of him gun-first. To Tagen, still in N’Glish, he said, “This is how it’s going to be, v’kai-untak. Your fuck-mate and I are going to watch you walk away—”
“No.”
E’Var’s fangs showed in a flash of ugly emotion. In Jotan, he snarled, “I’m not suggesting, slave-fucker, I’m telling you, and if you say ‘no’ one more time, I’ll shoot the head right off your bitch.”
“You offer me nothing,” Tagen said evenly, also in Jotan. “What assurance do I have that you will not kill her the instant I am out of sight?”
E’Var spat out something that was not quite a laugh, although it tried to be. “What do you want, my fucking station-dock pass card? Oh, I know. My solemn promise and word of good faith.”
“I propose we all walk to your ship together,” Tagen said. “I can therefore see that the hostage is safe, and you will know at all times where I am. You will release her when you reach your ship and by the time I get to mine, you should be through the Gate and well away.”
E’Var’s eyes were slits as he listened and when the offer was out and waiting for an answer, he grunted. For a long time, there was no sound but the droning of insects in the hot air. Then: “No.”
Tagen was genuinely surprised. It was a good offer, irreproachably canted in favor of the criminal’s escape. He could feel a frown working its way onto his features. “I will leave my weapons here,” he said, and placed the plasma gun carefully on the ground beside him. He straightened again, showing his empty hands, his empty gunbelt. “You have every advantage.”
“No.”
And this time, E’Var’s eyes flicked left to the trees, far too briefly to give Tagen time to claim his gun and fire, even if he wanted to risk such a shot. There was something in the woods, something the slaver did not want Tagen to know about. The Vahst. He’d stowed the Vahst somewhere in the forest and meant to collect it after Tagen was gone.
“What was it you said about compromise and reason?” Tagen pressed.
“You’re appealing to my sense of fairness?” E’Var did laugh this time. “Have you even read my file? No. We play this one way and one way only. I’m taking your fuck-mate with me and you are staying here. If I see you anywhere behind me, I’ll kill her. But I’ll give you a good trail to follow.”
E’Var’s hand sliced down and Daria cried out around the barrel of his gun as he cut into her arm.
“I’ll make sure there’s something fresh for you to find every so often,” he added, as Daria’s blood pattered down over the tree-needles. “Including her eviscerated corpse if I so much as glimpse you in the shadows. Now.” He did something to the gun in Daria’s mouth that made the human weapon click ominously. “Tell me we have a deal, lawman, or get ready to fire that thing.”
Tagen held the empty gaze of the slaver as the seconds slipped by. He had no thoughts. There was nothing, really, to think about. At last, he nodded.
*
The two aliens spoke for a long time in their snarling, guttural tongue. Daria could see only E’Var’s reactions, and as expert as she was in projecting the outward appearance of okayness while internally hemorrhaging emotion, she could easily read his rising frustration behind his sarcastically genial mask. Tagen’s voice remained quite calm. She was glad she couldn’t see him. She didn’t want to see anything but calm in his face.
She really hoped he wouldn’t go Hollywood on her. If Tagen promised to let this bad guy go just to let her live, she was going to slap him silly. Yes, she knew E’Var was probably going to kill her, and yes, she knew it was probably going to be a very bad way to die. But if he was going to do it anyway, she wished he’d do it fast and open himself up to Tagen’s fire.
Gosh, she was taking this well. And to think, last month she’d had a full-out panic attack when Troy had tried to cop a feel on her in the kitchen. Now she was the rope in an alien tug-of-war, peacefully contemplating her impending horribly painful death. Life was funny.
Then, without warning, E’Var cut her open with one pass of one claw—a long cut on her forearm, but not a deep one. She tried to shout, choked on the barrel of the gun in her mouth, and grabbed at the wound instead. Oddly enough, there seemed no malice in E’Var’s face when he’d hurt her and he was again ignoring her as he spoke to Tagen. But it wasn’t long before the conversation was over. E’Var cocked the gun and said just one thing more, his eyes narrowing.
Silence then. The whole woods were waiting.
And when it was done, E’Var smiled thinly.
‘Tagen,’ she thought, sighing. ‘You idiot.’
“Start walking, ichuta’a,” E’Var said, and gave her a little nudge to the back of her throat.
Oh hell, no. This was not going to end this way. Daria had been a lot of things in her life of which she was miserably ashamed, but she refused to be the girl in the movies that everybody in the audience rolls their eyes at and just hates for making the good guy give up, especially since out here in the real world, there were no script-writers standing by ready to draw up a highly-implausible happy ending.
She had just one instant to act. So she acted.
She raised her fists at once and socked him in both eyes. Not a wise thing to do by any means with a gun in her mouth, but to her utter astonishment, not only did E’Var not stop her (all his attention was fixed on Tagen) but he didn’t shoot her, either. E’Var’s reaction to getting hit was as instinctive and unreasoning to him as her panic attack had once been for her. He yanked the gun out of her mouth and walloped her with it, knocking her to the ground so fast, she was seeing the bells of impact even before she was aware she’d landed.