Chapter 4
Cat had felt the strength seep out of her, like blood from an open wound. “There you have it,” she thought. “You went beyond your limits and will pay for it.” She almost giggled, because this had never happened to her before in all of her years as a Mind Reader, even though Darren and Anna had warned her about it. Cat had always managed to get out of the stranger’s head before her body rebelled. As if from a great distance, she thought it probably had less to do with the amount of time she had spent in the Krak’s head, and more to do with the mass. Somehow, it hadn’t been just one Krak she had been bound to. She had felt the presence of many different thoughts, each of them stemming from a different being. They had been moving at the edge of their own awareness, but very carefully, as if they knew what could happen. If they had all decided to come at Cat at once, she would probably have been reduced to a dribbling blob without any self-awareness.
However, she thought, as she stared into Talon’s golden eyes – it hadn’t happened. The only thing she felt was exhaustion taking hold of her body making it feel like lead. It was not uncomfortable – quite the opposite. She sighed in contentment, giving in to her fatigue. Just one or two minutes of blessed peace before she got up. It was just strange, because she couldn’t close her eyelids anymore. It was as if they were being held in place by invisible fingers, forcing her to keep staring at Talon’s eyes. Or at the gray sky above his head. The sky seemed to be getting closer, settling around Talon like a blanket of snow. Thinking about the swirling, white splendor made her realize how cold she was. It didn’t matter, because very soon she and Talon would be traveling to distant galaxies, and maybe they would even visit his home planet, Kanthari 7. There, he had told her, the sun never set all the way. Talon’s eyes were like the sun, Cat observed numbly. They shone, even when they were filled with concern that bordered on panic. She wanted to reach for his hand and let him know that she was okay, and that the Krak weren’t demanding anything impossible from him, but why go to all that trouble? Talon could always tell what was going on inside her, anyway, and she was so terribly tired.
He was mumbling something to himself, his eyes closed. She couldn’t understand his words, but she felt the power emanating from them. That was nonsense, of course. Actions speak louder than words, but no words had ever sounded like the ones he was speaking. It was almost unnatural, like she herself was. A force of nature reaching for the stars. Something that wasn’t possible within the laws of physics.
That something turned into a light, and the light turned into a source of heat. For a moment she gave in to the pleasant sensation of feeling the cold leave her body. Then the warmth turned to heat. A torrid heat that tore through her insides, looking for the very core of her being – scrutinizing it. She wanted to defend herself, to get away from this strange force that was now taking her heart in one hand and reaching into Talon’s ribcage with the other. Cat thought she might faint, but she was probably just delirious. Just? She felt like laughing, but she couldn’t even manage a smile.
The heat melted into one glowing core, and now it only warmed her instead of burning her. Talon was sitting next to her, that much she could see. With great effort, she sat up, but noticed that she was not nearly as weak as she had expected. Where had the fatigue gone, or the cold? Instead of the leaden heaviness, she felt an unexpected surge of energy. It lifted the fog from her eyes. Talon smiled somewhat sadly, but at the same time, he seemed very proud and relieved when she sat up and looked around.
Had the wave of strength come from him? Cat didn’t dare think about it any further, but her thoughts kept unwinding on their own. She knew that she had been close to death, and that whatever Talon had done, had saved her life. It took a moment for her to notice that something was different than before. If she paid close attention, she could tell what he was feeling, just a little. It had nothing to do with her gift. This felt final, as if an invisible thread bound both of their lives together now.
A thousand questions were on the tip of her tongue, and it was hard to find the most important one. Finally, her curiosity won. They stood up, but before Cat could ask him that most important question, Talon answered it. “I am sorry, but I had no choice,” he whispered as he brushed the snow off her back.
“What did you do? And please, for now, the simple answer will do just fine.” She tried to take the sting out of her words. At first, he avoided her eyes, but then, his pride won.
“Our people have a rite that binds a man and a woman to each other. We can share strength and energy through the bond whenever it is necessary.
A storm of feelings raged in Cat’s chest. Outrage, because he hadn’t asked her. Relief, because she had cheated death once more. Gratitude, because Talon had made a decision that she had not been able to make for herself, and last, but not least, love, because it surely couldn’t have been easy for him to bind himself to her forever. Cat stayed silent at first, afraid that she would say the wrong thing. She chose her next words carefully. When they had finally left the zoo behind them, she carefully asked him how long the bond between them would last. “Please Talon, don’t misunderstand me,” she said and looked at him directly. “I am grateful to you for everything you have done for me…” She fell silent. How could she explain to him that she felt safe in his presence? That she loved him with every fiber of her being, but that she would have preferred to have been asked? “I know you didn’t have a choice,” she added quickly.
Talon’s silence had taken on a different quality. It wasn’t a pleasant silence anymore, during which they didn’t need to say anything, because they already knew what the other one was thinking. He stomped through the snow, his eyebrows furrowed darkly, and his face unreadable. Cat could barely keep up. His long legs made him at least twice as fast as she was, and he was furious. At the edge of her own consciousness, she could feel his feelings brewing, driving him onward.
She had already dropped back several feet behind him. “Talon, please,” she cried after him. “I didn’t mean it like that. Please give me a chance to explain!”
He responded by increasing his speed even more. If he kept this up much longer, she would lose sight of him. Cat noticed that his anger boiled over into her. It was like a quiet and smoldering fire, coming closer and taking hold of her. Why wouldn’t that idiot give her a chance to explain? She consciously fell back even more. She could barely see Talon’s broad back anymore, especially because it had started snowing again. Cat could still see his footprints. She would just have to assume that he knew the way back to the library, because when she had left it the last time, she had been unconscious. Cat didn’t know these outer districts very well, so it was hard for her to navigate them at night. In the inner city, on the other hand, she knew every street and door.
The moron, to whom she was now bound, disappeared from her line of sight. Cat followed his footsteps grumpily. They were increasingly hard to trace, the further she went from the zoo. She came to a fork in the path. It looked vaguely familiar to her. Had she passed this place when she had been on her way to her first meeting with Talon? She looked at her surroundings and tried to make out any landmarks under the heavy blanket of snow. “No chance,” thought Cat. She was lucky that she could even still see a path. She turned to the left, in the direction where she saw some movement. It must be Talon waiting for her.
Forcefully, she pushed his feelings to the side. This wasn’t as easy as it sounded. She was bound to him, and to make things more difficult, she couldn’t touch his feelings. This was different than mind reading, where she could reach for things just like she had learned. She mumbled a half-hearted curse to herself about machos who didn’t give you a choice, and then went after him. When would they finally get there? She could hardly wait to return to her comfortable camp of blankets in the library. She would be able to wash up, and if she was lucky, nobody had taken the supplies that the warriors had left behind before leaving. When she thought about the fact that Talon was now separated from his people, she suddenly felt a rush of guilt. No, it was more than a rush, and there was something else in the back of her mind, nagging her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. The harder she tried to find the thought, the more it seemed to hide from her.
Talon had sacrificed everything for her. He had sent his men away, knowing well that he would have to stay behind on Earth, alone with her. He had openly opposed his king, and not just by staying behind. She stopped abruptly, realizing with a pang what Talon had really done. His decision to bind himself to her, to make her his companion – that was equal to an open rebellion. Ferthoris had won her in a poker game, fair and square. Maybe the king didn’t have the law on his side though, because games of chance, in which humans or other intelligent beings were the prizes, were illegal. The poker games happened in a legal gray zone. More important, however, was that she had signed a contract, and had received a large sum of money as part of that contract. Morally, Cat was obligated to take Ferthoris III as her husband. She wasn’t supposed to take his chief warlord as her husband. Ex-warlord, she reminded herself with a grimace.
This former warrior had risked his life and sent his understanding of concepts like honor and loyalty to the back of the line, in order to save her life. It was a small leap from that thought to the next one. Cat wiped the cold tears from her eyes and forced herself to follow her thoughts to their bitter conclusion. She had nothing else in her head other than complaining that he hadn’t asked her if he should save her life. How did the noticeable connection with Talon measure up against the fact that she was still breathing? She shook her head at herself in disgust and wished she had reacted a little more calmly. Her question about the length of the bond must have felt like a slap in the face to Talon. “Stupid,” she chided herself. How could she have been so dumb? Wasn’t this exactly what Cat wanted, anyway? She hadn’t said out loud that she loved him, but had thought it so often that the thought of being separated from him seemed like an impossibility. Her heart started to race like crazy. Where was he? Cat squinted in the dim light, but couldn’t see his broad back anywhere.
“I love you,” she said, once, just to get used to the sound coming from her mouth. It felt good to say it out loud, so she repeated the words louder one more time and laughed. She spread her arms and spun around in a circle. Why had she waited so long? She pressed on with renewed energy, trying to catch up to Talon. Instead of saying anything that might sound like a lame excuse, she would finally tell him how she really felt!
She thought of one more thing as she continued to follow the path. Without looking left or right, she just kept going. She was going to come clean, and while she was at it, she needed to admit that she was just as arrogant as Talon. When the Krak had finally told her what they wanted from her, she had agreed. The assignment she had accepted in exchange for both of their lives did not just affect her. The Krak wanted Ferthoris. There was no way she would be able to lure him to Earth without Talon’s help, so who exactly was making important decisions without consulting the other one?
Out of the corner of her eye, Cat saw movement and looked up. Even though she was moving along quickly, Talon was faster. “Wait,” she called, and for the first time, she realized that a wind had come up. It whistled in her ears and was so loud that Talon probably couldn’t hear her, despite his excellent hearing. “Talon,” Cat screamed as loudly as she could. There was a tone of desperation in her cry. The path she had taken didn’t look at all familiar now. Cat doubted that it had anything to do with the snow. She frowned and tried to remember all of the turns she had taken. When was the last time she had seen Talon’s tracks? Was that Talon calling for her? She stopped and closed her eyes, so that she could concentrate on listening, but there was nothing other than the howling of the wind which was really getting stronger. “Talon!” she roared now, trying to decide if she should keep going or try to backtrack. Would she be able to find her way back to the zoo, where she could at least crawl into one of the cages and wait out the storm? Valuable seconds passed while she tried to figure out what to do. She had no idea if she was even heading in the right direction. The library could easily be around the next bend, or it might be a few hours’ walk away.
Without Talon, she was lost.
This realization hit her with a force that almost made her fall over. When had she started relying on him? Cat made her decision based on her gut and turned around. She estimated that she had been walking for about half an hour, so she thought she could make it back to the deserted zoo. All she needed to do was follow her own tracks. The Krak were probably still hiding in the zoo, too. Hopefully they would leave her alone. Back there, at the very edge of her field of vision, she could see something moving. Once more, she called her beloved’s name as loudly as she could, but her vocal chords were no longer up to the challenge. All she could manage was a hoarse croak. She gathered her strength and started running. Well, she tried to. She braced herself against the wind until her muscles started to shake but her progress was painstakingly slow. Something appeared again, and this time Cat was quick enough to catch a glimpse of whoever was running ahead of her.
It wasn’t Talon. Whoever, or whatever, was moving in front of her was too small and stocky, and Cat thought she could see a tentacle. That was impossible. No Krak would dare to go out in weather like this, and why would they when it was nice and warm in the zoo? No, when she caught up to the creature, Cat saw this was not a Krak. It only had one tentacle, or rather, a snout. The creature moving towards her was a Sethari. Damn. Cat had thought that the Sethari had left Earth a long time ago. At the very latest, after the legendary battle during which the mercenaries, people called the Qua’Hathri, had annihilated the energy vampires. Surely, the last of them had fled the blue planet at that point. Back then, they had kept humans like cattle, so they could feed on their energy, but finally the fearless Khazaar Drasurq had managed to kill them. Cat thought it was strange that one of them was still on Earth after so many years. Those who had not been able to flee had suddenly found themselves in the opposite role, as the prey, and had been hunted by humans. Either this Sethari was very clever, or he had enjoyed the protection of a human. He would have never survived alone in a world where people called for his head every time they saw his unmistakable figure.
Could she take on a single Sethari?
Cat weighed her chances. She still had a small reservoir of strength left, but she didn’t know if she was fast enough to be able to evade the quick snout the Sethari used to suck their prey empty. If he was able to place his snout at the back of her neck, she would be out of luck. She was also not sure if she would be able to use her gift. She had never been in a Sethari’s head, and honestly didn’t want to be. She had had enough experiences in strange heads for one day – even several days.
She was just about to turn around and flee, when something odd happened. The Sethari stopped in his tracks. It was as if he wanted to make sure that she was following him. The other odd thing was that she suddenly felt the strong urge to do just that. Cat shook her head to gather her thoughts. This was very strange and extremely eerie. The urge to follow the Sethari was not coming from inside her. Cat recognized the foreign impulse, standing across from him, but the thing that really spooked her and made her hair stand on end was something else. She hadn’t felt a thing! Even when she was newly with the Mind Readers, and her mentors had wanted to demonstrate something, or when she had an opponent who had the same abilities as she did, she had always felt it when someone slipped into her head. Not to mention that it took a lot of training to be able to implant an impulse to act, in someone else.
She felt a wave of adrenaline with this realization, and it made her jump a few feet, even in this storm. One of her ex-colleagues from the Mind Reader Academy must be behind this attack on her free will. She gulped and forced herself to run in the opposite direction. Her legs grew heavier the further she got from the Sethari. He was still waiting patiently. Her thoughts were going in desperate circles, and the urge to run to him was getting stronger. Why had she never learned how to remove a strange impulse?
She hadn’t made it more than twenty feet when she had to acknowledge that she wasn’t going to make it. She sank to her knees, but the strange will didn’t want to allow her to do this, either. She stood up heavily. With every step in the right direction, it became easier. She cried and while her own will was fighting desperately to win the upper hand, Cat knew that it was useless.
It was time to give up.