Stealing Her Heart Read online

  But the art in the windows wasn’t the only decoration. There were glass cases against the walls—some of them several stories tall—filled with mounted specimens of insects from hundreds of different worlds. Chain saw plinkk spiders smaller than a quasi seed in one case and a monstrous yorgyx wasp with a six foot wingspan and a barbed stinger as long as his arm in another. Truly, an impressive collection, he admitted to himself. But right now it wasn’t the bugs that concerned him, it was Victoria.

  “I’m sorry—I really don’t know what ‘tasty remarks’ means either,” he murmured in her ear. “I’m also sorry you’ve been forced to take the lead here. I didn’t realize we were going into a Yonnie Six-type situation.”

  “A what? What’s Yonnie Six?” she demanded, frowning.

  “A planet where women rule over the males and treat them as slaves,” Chain told her. “I don’t think it’s quite that bad here, but it does seem like females are in charge on Priima Belle. So I’m afraid you’re stuck doing the deal for the T’lix-Kruthe.”

  “But what if I can’t? What if they don’t like my lecture and I can’t convince them I’m a good enough teacher?” Victoria shook her head. “God, this is like an observation times ten.”

  Chain gripped her shoulder firmly.

  “You can do this,” he murmured, wanting to give her as much strength and courage as he could. “Remember how you faced down those Varians when they came after me in the Last Call? I was in awe of your performance—the way you dived right into the roll. You can handle this, Victoria.”

  She threw him a grateful glance and he thought again how lovely she was in the fluttering green gown and exotic eye makeup. Then again, he found her lovely in just about anything—or nothing at all, he reminded himself, remembering how luscious she looked naked. He just wished she could see herself the way he saw her—as a sexy, confident mature woman who was incredibly desirable.

  Did she find him desirable too? She seemed to, but Chain couldn’t help remembering the way she’d talked about going their separate ways after this and how he ought to find himself a younger female. If only she knew how difficult it was for an M-Switch Kindred to find any female at all who wasn’t immediately turned off by the thought of being with a “Snatcher” like him!

  Or did she already know? Was she trying to put him off nicely with all that talk of him finding someone else?

  Surely not. Chain pushed the thought away uneasily. Anyway, she was speaking the truth about them going their separate ways after this mission was over. Although, the longer they were together, the less he wanted to part with his curvy little Elite…

  “Here we are—the Grand Lecture Hall.” The rather pompous voice of Professor Lornah interrupted his uneasy thoughts and he looked up and saw they were heading into a dim, cavernous room filled with tables and chairs.

  Each table seated four and he saw that most of the guests consisted of mature women in their fourth or fifth or even sixth decade and males who all appeared to be in their second decade. So apparently the teacher-student relationship here was strictly male/female and based on age, Chain thought. There were plates in front of each of the audience members and they looked to be finishing some sort of meal.

  They were coming in from the side and at the head of the huge room Chain saw a tall stage with a woman standing on it. She was wearing the same flowing gown and elaborate eye makeup of the other females in the room and she seemed to be finishing a lecture.

  “And that concludes my presentation on the Blood and Bile Based Delicacies of Xuuruu Prime,” she was saying. “I hope you have enjoyed this lecture and thank you for your kind attention.”

  She bowed deeply and the audience all began to clap as a long blue curtain came down and hid her from view.

  “Oh—it looks like a kind of dinner theater,” Victoria murmured. “I wonder if that’s what Professor Lornah meant by ‘tasty remarks’?”

  Speaking of the Professor, she was leading the way to a center table right in front of the stage which had apparently been kept empty for her. There was no one else there and the four chairs all faced the stage.

  “Now then, here we are,” she said, speaking exclusively to Victoria. Apparently males were treated like furniture on this world—useful for some things but regarded more as a functional item than a person, Chain thought dryly.

  Well, he could deal with that, he decided. He wouldn’t want to live on such a world all his life—the Kindred believed in equality and mutual respect between males and females. But it wouldn’t bruise his ego to be quiet and take a back seat to Victoria while they were here—it was just a necessary part of the character he was playing.

  “Have a seat,” Professor Lornah continued, still talking to Victoria. “And watch my presentation to get an idea of how to do your own. When the curtain falls for me, you come up those side steps there to the backstage area.” She pointed to some steps to one side of the stage. “I’ll help you get all set up and introduce you. All right?”

  “All right—thank you,” Victoria said as she and Chain and Lorn, Professor Lornah’s student, all settled in three of the chairs. “Oh, and break a leg!” she added brightly, before she thought.

  “What?” Professor Lornah looked shocked. “Why would you hope that I break my leg?”

  “Oh, uh…” Victoria’s cheeks got pink with a blush. “It’s what we say on my planet right before any important presentation or performance. It means ‘good luck’ but since we consider it bad luck to actually say, ‘good luck’ we say ‘break a leg’ instead.”

  Professor Lornah shook her head.

  “What a fascinating world you must come from. I can’t wait to hear your lecture on the various languages spoken there.”

  “I can’t wait either,” Victoria said, smiling a little too brightly, Chain thought. “To give it, I mean.”

  “All right,” Professor Lornah said cheerfully. “Then here I go to break my leg!”

  And she trotted away, up the side steps she’d indicated to Victoria which led to the stage.

  Seventeen

  “Whew,” Vicky muttered to Chain when Professor Lornah was finally gone. “That was close. Can’t believe I told her to break a leg!”

  “Does it really mean what you said?” Chain sounded curious.

  “Oh yes.” Vicky shrugged. “It’s just theater-speak, that’s all. I’ve been coaching Drama for so long it just kind of popped out.” She looked around the darkened theater—well, she supposed it was technically a lecture hall but with the seating arrangements and the fact that there were plates in front of them, it certainly seemed like a dinner theater. “I wonder how all this works? Does someone come around and serve us food or what?”

  “I suppose we’ll find out,” Chain murmured back.

  “Or you could tell us,” Vicky said, turning to the professor’s student who had been sitting mutely at one end of the table. “Lorn—isn’t that your name?” she asked, looking at him.

  The scrawny young man seemed extremely surprised at being addressed.

  “Why, y-yes Pr-professor Victoria, it is,” he stuttered, ducking his head shyly. “Thank you for addressing such a l-lowly p-person as muh-myself.”

  “Lowly?” Vicky frowned. “Just because you’re a student?”

  “Well…y-yes.” He ducked his head again. “C-can I h-h-help you in s-suh-some way?”

  “We’re just wondering how exactly this theater, er, lecture hall works?” Vicky asked him. “I mean, does a server come around with a menu to take your order or does everyone get served the same thing or what?”

  Actually, she was getting pretty hungry. It had been a long time since lunch and she hadn’t had dinner—she’d been too busy running from the awful lizard-like Varians.

  “N-not exactly,” Lorn said. “What h-happens is the f-food m-matter distributor converts the th-thu-thoughts of the professor into ed-ed-edible substances,” he got out at last.

  “Food matter distributor?” Vicky asked, mystified.
r />   “Th-the p-pl-plate,” Lorn got out at last, nodding down at the wide, curving white china plates in front of each of them.

  Frowning, Vicky tried to pick hers up but found it seemed to be welded to the table top. Chain’s was immovable also—as were all the plates, she soon realized. But how could you clean them or change them if they were stuck to the table?

  “I don’t understand,” she said blankly. “What’s the deal with the plate being permanently stuck to the table?”

  “W-w-well, it’s n-not exactly a p-plu-plu-plate,” Lorn explained.

  “Not a plate?” Vicky frowned. “That’s okay, I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” she said quickly, when Lorn started to explain. The poor kid was red in the face from the effort of saying so much in the first place.

  “Suh-suh-sorry,” he said, looking down at his own immovable plate, his cheeks dull red with shame. “I kn-know my stu-stutter is b-bad. P-professor Lornah s-says it d-doesn’t matter though b-because my t-t-tongue is good for other things.”

  Other things? What things? Vicky wanted to ask. But she didn’t want to make Lorn explain when it was clearly hard for him to get words out. Besides, the curtain was rising, so they all turned their attention to the presentation.

  Standing at center stage was Professor Lornah. She was smiling beatifically and wearing an elaborate gold and silver crown which stuck up at least three feet above her head. Vicky wondered how much it weighed and how in the world she’d managed to get it on without messing up her elaborate hairdo.

  “Friends,” she said, “Pundits, Professors, and Pedagogues gathered here to learn and to teach. I am Professor Lornah of the Cake and Dish University here on Priima Belle and today I would like to lecture you about the many prandial delights essayed by the Ys people of the Northern Gimbol territory on Hrx Tertia and the various artisan-made platters they serve them on.”

  “Wow, that’s a mouthful,” Chain muttered under his breath to Victoria.

  “Literally,” she whispered back. “Look!”

  For as Professor Lornah spoke, describing a “rich honey cake with pippa seeds and crunchy tonga husks served upon a delicate jade green platter carved all over with crimson runes” that exact thing popped into existence on their plain, immovable white plates in front of them.

  Well, the cake and platter didn’t ‘pop’ exactly, Vicky thought. It was more like a fizzing—a staticky noise like a really old TV might make when it wasn’t tuned to any channel. During the fizzing, the item in question came slowly into existence until it looked as solid as the table it was sitting on.

  Vicky looked uncertainly at the golden-brown cake about as big as a cupcake, studded with bright purple seeds and covered in pinkish-orange shavings. Was it really real? What were they supposed to do with it?

  Lorn answered her question by leaning across the table and hissing at her, “Quick,” he whispered, this time with no trace of a stutter. “It’s an insult not to take a bite before it melts away again! Hurry!”

  “Oh—okay.” Quickly, Vicky snatched up the tiny cake and took a bite. The cake was real, all right—dense and moist and sweet and spicy. It melted on the tongue and yet had a lovely chew to it. “Mmm!” she murmured in appreciation, taking another bite. “This is good.”

  “Professor Lornah always d-does the best lectures,” Lorn said, with apparent pride. “She gets asked to speak m-muh-more than any other professor here.”

  “I can see why,” Vicky said, taking another bite of the cake. “Delicious.”

  * * *

  Beside her, Chain was enjoying his cake as well. In fact, he finished his off in two bites.

  Vicky, on the other hand, wanted to savor hers. She took tiny nibbles but she had barely eaten half of the delicious little cake when Professor Lornah stated that she hoped they had all enjoyed the delicacy but now they had to move on.

  As she began to speak about something that sounded like a cross between a jelly donut and a stuffed potato, the remains of the honey cake abruptly melted away from between Vicky’s fingers, making her sigh in disappointment.

  “Oh, too bad! I didn’t know it was going to disappear,” she whispered.

  “D-don’t w-worry,” Lorn told her. “Sh-she’s j-just getting started.”

  And indeed she was. The next cake popped up on a gorgeously scrolled limestone platter and this time Vicky was determined to eat it all. She was really hungry and the honey cake had been barely more than an appetizer.

  This cake, however, had a much stranger texture than the last. Vicky bit into it anyway to find that it was, indeed, very like a cross between a stuffed potato and a jelly donut, but the bright jelly inside it tasted strange in her mouth. It had a weird meaty flavor and it felt oozy and strange against her tongue.

  She swallowed and decided to take a closer look before she bit down again. To her surprise and disgust, she saw that the filling inside the potato-donut-cake was moving. Suddenly Professor Lornah’s voice caught her attention.

  “…filled with the immature larvae of the bleck tree-hopper of Nissa Prime,” she was saying, gesturing to the potato-donuts everyone seemed to be eating. “It’s a lovely dish and it seemed to jibe nicely with tonight’s theme and location, since we are lucky enough to be hosted by the University of Insects and Arachnids.”

  Larvae? Those are larvae in there? Vicky looked with dismay at the squirming filling of her donut. But I ate that! I ate a bite and swallowed it!

  No wonder it had tasted meaty.

  Vicky’s stomach rolled and for a moment, she was sure she was going to be sick. But she couldn’t do that, she reminded herself. She was supposed to be making a good impression and puking up the bug stuffed pastry she’d just eaten wasn’t going to do that. In fact, it was likely to mortally offend their hostess.

  Get a grip, she told herself sternly as she placed the bug-bun back on her plate and looked pointedly away from it. Just get a grip, Vicky. Hang in there—you can do this!

  This mental pep talk helped a little and Vicky felt her stomach settled just the tiniest bit. But she was determined to be more careful with the next dish. Whatever it was, she was going to cut it open before she took a bite, that was for sure!

  The next dish, however, wasn’t cuttable—not unless you were really fast with a knife, Vicky thought in dismay as she saw what fizzed into existence on the plate in front of her.

  “This coin-sized cake is sweetened with the sap of the Xao tree and served using the long-legged tushings which live and hunt upon its bark,” Professor Lorhan said. “The tushings are trained to run right up one’s body and place the cake inside the eater’s mouth. Truly, it is a remarkable accomplishment on behalf of the cake-artisans.”

  On Vicky’s plate, a huge hairy, purple and black spider with a leg-span that was bigger than the plate itself suddenly appeared and rushed towards her. On its hairy back was a small white cake but Vicky was not paying attention to the “prandial delights” Professor Lornah had spoken of earlier. She let out a terrified squeak and shoved her chair back from the table as fast as she could.

  The enormous purple spider with the cake on its hairy back ran right up to the edge of the table. Then it lifted the cake and raised it with it’s two front legs— which ended in sharp-looking pincers—as though offering it to Vicky.

  “It’s all r-right,” Lorn hissed beside her. “It j-just wants to run up and p-put the c-cake in your m-mouth. Just let it, Professor Victoria.”

  “Let a giant spider jump on me and crawl all the way up to my face?” Vicky asked, her voice sounding tight in her own ears. “I don’t think so. No freaking thanks.”

  Though she spoke to Professor Lornah’s student, her eyes remained glued to the spider. No way did she want that thing anywhere near her! But it didn’t look likely to give up on its quest to deliver its prandial package.

  The black and purple spider was poised there on the edge of the table, holding up the cake in its front legs. It was bouncing slowly up and down, reminding her of a cat w
ith a lashing tail getting ready to pounce. Apparently it was planning to jump into Vicky’s lap and run right up her body to shove the cake in her mouth with its hairy pinchers. And Vicky—who had once talked down a student with a gun and had been teaching surly teenagers for years—was frozen in fear.

  If there was one thing she really didn’t like, it was bugs—especially spiders.

  If it jumps on me, she thought, feeling like her blood had turned to ice in her veins. Oh my God, if that thing starts crawling on me and gets anywhere near my mouth—

  Suddenly a big hand came down, grabbed the hairy purple spider, and pulled it away. Vicky looked up to see that Chain had it in one hand and was holding the struggling thing away from her.

  “Are you well, Victoria?” he asked, looking at her with apparent concern. “Are you frightened of arachnids?”

  Vicky gave a shaky laugh.

  “That’s kind of an understatement,” she said softly, aware that the lecture was still going on. “I don’t like any kind of bugs but spiders are the worst.”

  “Never fear—it will be gone soon,” Chain reassured her.

  As he spoke, the struggling spider and its uneaten cake melted away in his hand, leaving no trace at all of the awful thing.

  “There—see?” Chain reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it reassuringly.

  Vicky squeezed back, grateful all over again for the big Kindred. She didn’t know what she would have done if the huge spider had jumped on her. Probably lost her shit and run screaming out of the lecture hall, which definitely wouldn’t have been a very good way to get the deal they were hoping for in regards to the T’lix-Kruthe.

  As it was, she could see that Professor Lornah was glaring down at her with undisguised irritation. Clearly she had seen Vicky’s reaction to her spider-cake-delivery system and she was angry about the minor scene it had caused.

  Looking around, Vicky saw that other people were watching her too—taking away the focus from Professor Lornah’s lecture. Had all of them just sat there and let the huge spiders run up their body and deposit a cake in their mouths, she wondered in disbelief? How could that not freak them out? But obviously, they thought she was out of line because she hadn’t sat still and let a spider force-feed her cake.