Chapter 2
Cat could feel Talon’s protective back stiffen up behind her. Now she knew what had gotten his attention. The smell of old fish, an odor she associated with the Krak, reached her nostrils, and landed on her tongue like a living being. At least the snow wasn’t falling as heavily as it had been, so she was able to see the trees and bushes that lined the path into the zoo clearly. Nothing was moving. Nevertheless, this was a different silence from before. She had been on a high walking next to Talon, feeling his tall body next to hers, and knowing that they were both free, but that high had been filled with distrust. Not towards Talon, no. Towards herself and her fickle fate. It was always sending obstacles her way, making her life difficult. Couldn’t things go the way she wanted them to, just once? Cat realized that she was whining, and that there was actually no reason for it. She was at Talon’s side, and she loved him. It was a crazy turn of events. Just when she had made her peace with the fact that she would probably never meet someone who could awaken more than just a fleeting interest in her, fate had thrown an alien man at her feet who made her heart race.
She tried to remain calm and alert, but it was hard, since she couldn’t see the threat. She trusted Talon and his well-developed senses, but it was unnerving that she herself couldn’t detect anything unusual. Or could she? She tilted her head to the side and tried to feel something with her own gift. Just as she had learned at the Mind Reader Academy, she sent her spirit out in circles, searching for what was hiding in the shadows. It didn’t take long for her to find something living. Feeling her way as carefully as possible, she probed further, going in a circle around Talon and herself, until she was sure that she had been right. Just as she pulled back to herself, recalling her probing spirit, the creatures showed themselves.
As one being, they came out of the bushes and the shadows along the edge of the path. It was the Krak. There were so many of them that, for a moment, Cat got dizzy when confronted with their sheer numbers.
They were surrounded. Cat heard the crunching noises that accompanied Talon’s shift to his predator. Could they dare fight when they were outnumbered so badly? The Krak were still just standing there, swaying back and forth. It was spooky to look at them, swaying together in sync, and for a moment, she was distracted. It was enough that there was a lion standing behind her now, instead of an alien man. His glowing body temperature melted the snow around his large paws, and he tensed up. Right before he jumped, Cat could see what would happen next flash before her eyes like a movie.
Talon jumped into the Krak who were standing closest to him. Cut.
His mighty claws ripped through their flabby bodies. Cut.
He opened his jaw so he could tear off a tentacle that was shooting out at him. Cut.
While Talon was tearing at the tentacle, another one wound around his throat. Cut.
A second and third tentacle found their way to his body. Cut.
Cat wrestled with keeping even more tentacles away from her and her beloved. Cut.
The circle of Krak drew in around her. Cut.
Talon and Cat were dead. Cut.
She wouldn’t allow it. It just couldn’t happen! There had to be another way! Think, Cat, she told herself, as Talon’s muscles trembled, ready to pounce. The Krak had not killed them earlier. Why would they do so now, less than an hour later?
There were too many of them for her to have anywhere near enough time to plant impulses in their heads that would deter them from attacking. She remembered the feeling of sluggishness she had encountered in the one Krak’s head. She had neither the strength to influence more than three or four of the ocean creatures, nor enough time to do so.
Behind her, Talon let out a dark, deep growl.
At the last second, she was able to grab him by the scruff. Her grip alone would not have been enough to slow him down, but Cat threw her whole weight on him, trusting that the beast inside him would not fling her off with one swipe of his paw. It was enough to slow his momentum, and when she felt his eyes on her, she called his name. “Talon! They want something from us, that’s why they let us live!” The blood roared in her ears and her heart raced. The Talon she loved had disappeared under the fur of the predator. She needed to bring him out. She said his name again, softly but with an insistent tone, and finally, she saw the beginnings of understanding appear in his eyes. After three terrifying heartbeats, in which he roared and showed the Krak his sharp teeth, her heartbeat slowed. The animal’s eyes changed to Talon’s, going from yellow to the gold, warm glow that Cat recognized. Within half a minute, he was a man again. Without a word, she handed him his torn clothes. The pants were still wearable, but the shirt would need to be replaced as soon as possible. At least he had remembered to take his boots and down parka off before he shifted.
“You think they want to talk to us?” She could still hear the feline predator in his voice, a distant echo or reminder of the killer he carried inside him. Cat ignored the shiver that his voice gave her. It wasn’t just out of fear. His voice spoke to all of her instincts and senses, almost like a wordless cry that made her body want to do its bidding.
“I am fairly certain that we would already be dead if they wanted us to be,” Cat responded. She turned and put her hand on her warlord’s arm. “Let’s find out what they want.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him shake his head. It was nothing more than an implied caution, but it was enough to make the Krak come in closer. The eerie way in which they moved in complete sync with each other was the creepiest thing Cat had seen in a long time, and she had seen several weird things during her year on the run. She breathed in and out deeply, and hoped that this ancient meditation technique also gave Talon some measure of peace. “We can always still decide to fight,” she pushed him, and to her surprise, he gave in.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he growled, but Cat noticed by the tone of his voice that he was ready to give her approach a chance. It was unbelievable. Even in a situation like this one, her love for him felt like a living and breathing being inside her, constricting her throat for a moment. Cat cleared her throat. “Then let’s try it,” she said in a shaky voice that betrayed her anxiety all too clearly.
She looked around. Which one was likely their leader – the Krak she would need to deal with? They all looked the same to her. She could see no appreciable difference. Their gender was not even recognizable. Cat raised her hand tentatively, a sign that she was ready for a conversation. “What do you want?” she asked loudly, her voice surprisingly clear.
She saw some movement among the creatures, and a buzzing sound arose. It sounded as if a thousand bees were taking off at the same time, beating their wings furiously. The deep tone rose, leveled out, and then grew louder than in the beginning, but then, in a flash, silence returned. This was even more unnerving than the anxious buzzing and swaying of the Krak, this absolute and deathly silence. She took another deep breath. “I ask you again: what do you want from us?”
The ocean creatures waved at her with one tentacle, all at the same time. Were they asking her to come closer? “What do they want me to do?” she whispered to Talon, who shrugged, seemingly indifferent.
“You wanted to negotiate with them,” he replied and gave her a mocking look.
“That isn’t funny,” she shot back, whispering, and his mouth twitched in suppressed merriment.
“Oh yes, it is. Very funny actually,” he said, “and in a few years, when I tell this story to our children, you will undoubtedly agree with me.”
Fine. If Talon was relaxed enough to speak about children, then she was relaxed enough to try mind reading again. She approached one of the Krak and spoke to him directly. “I cannot speak your language, so I am going to try to read your mind.” She waited in vain for a sign of refusal. All of the creatures were standing around her, their tentacles hanging loosely at their sides. “Now,” she forewarned the one she had selected, and slid over into his head. She remembered the moment she had first heard the Krak’s voice inside her head, and prayed that it would be pain-free this time. Since she was the one who was reading their minds, she felt that there was a pretty good chance that it would be.
Cat could see immediately that this was different. Instead of the tough swamp she had encountered on her first visit inside a Krak’s head, this time she found a well-ordered head. The creature’s thoughts were still barely more than impulses, but there seemed to be a path that led to the interior. “No obstacles this time,” she thought, as if from a great distance, and then gave in to her longing to take the path to the interior thoughts. She had no idea how much time might have passed when she finally reached her goal. Cat couldn’t even have described how she knew that she had reached the point where the Krak wanted her to be. She just knew it – she could feel it with every fiber of her being. This was the right spot.
She waited, unsure of what she should do. This was a completely new experience, and not just because this was only her second time in a Krak’s head. She had only experienced the voluntary opening of thoughts to a Mind Reader two or three times in her career. And what was that? Normally, she didn’t hear anything when she sent her thoughts out on a trip. Cat had always thought that only some of her senses could travel with her, because her hearing and taste senses were bound to her body, but now a slow, steady knocking reached her ears, even though they weren’t even with her! She pushed the dizzy feelings to the very back of her consciousness and followed the noise. It led her to a door of sorts, or at least that’s what it looked like to Cat. There was no door handle, but her power of suggestion was enough to open it with a hard push.
As soon as she had opened the thing that her imagination believed to be a door, she was literally pulled into the room that lay behind it. She took in the red glowing walls and the pulsing and throbbing. Panic seized her consciousness as she realized that she was back in the room where she had once been held prisoner. She could have turned around and run out of there in a matter of seconds, if it hadn’t been for something that was pushing against her thoughts and holding her in place.
Terror took hold of every cell of her brain. She tried to escape the hold over her entire being that had tentacle-like arms firmly in place. The throbbing that had first been soft, grew louder and faster. The increasingly ear-piercing, deep gong rang in her ears, until it became one with her heartbeat that was racing, beating, and knocking like a rabbit in a trap, and then the foreign heart slowed. Her own beat matched it of its own will. The anxious knocking turned into a regular beat, and even she had to notice that the panic had vanished.
She looked around as the tentacles released her. Without words still, the creature that existed only in her imagination pointed to a box in the middle of the room. Cat went over to it and opened it. Even now, in this extremely strange moment, she was still surprised at what her thoughts alone could do. Everything, from opening a box, to seeing and feeling things, was possible even if she wasn’t there physically.
She forced herself to stay calm when the lid of the box popped open and a figure started floating towards her. It was a Krak – its tentacles raised high in a pleading gesture. A woman. She was dead. The Krak, in whose head she was, shared this information with her without speaking. Slowly, and piece by piece, the foreign head filled her own with the woman’s story.
She was the one whom Ferthoris had taken as his wife. She saw the pompous wedding ceremony and felt the woman’s hope that everything would be all right, even though the foreigner had separated her from her people. The planet where she lived now was very different from her own cool and wet home. Here, the sun burned her sensitive skin, and even at night, she couldn’t find enough shade to cool her hot and glowing body. She wanted to go home, back to the cold floodwaters. To swim with her family one more time. To dive to the bottom of the ocean, where the fish were blind and the sun didn’t shine.
Unfortunately, the king, who in the beginning had looked upon her with good will, tired of her quickly. The water in her pool wasn’t changed regularly anymore, and the only food she received were leftovers and food that didn’t sit well. She grew weak and irritated the king with her weakness, so he started to use her for his cruel games. He chopped off tentacle after tentacle, until she couldn’t even dream of swimming in the dark ocean anymore.
The man who was supposed to drop her off in the desert welcomed her. He could not speak her language, but she could see the sympathy in his golden eyes. She followed him without a word, and begged him, also without a single word, to end her life.
His orders had been to let her dry out in the desert sun. This was the cruelest farewell from a king who was closer to insanity than ever before. The man, whose name was Talon, told his men to leave, and closed his eyes before slitting her throat with one swift lash of his claws. She spent her last few minutes connecting with her people in her thoughts, so she could let them know that she welcomed death happily and willingly.