Unbound Read online

  Lying flat on his stomach, downwind of the Hive, Varin frowned as he stared at the two huge insects guarding the black hole in the ground he’d seen Brynn entering in his vision. There they were—the sentries. He had one chance to take them out because, according to Jorath’s information, if he only wounded them, they would immediately release an alarm scent that would bring the rest of the warrior-caste insects running for the surface, believing the Hive was under attack.

  One shot, he thought and braced the blaster against his left forearm, which still ended in a mangled-looking stump. His hand was actually trying to regrow itself, which was why it looked so bad at the moment. His body had managed to regenerate the bottom of his palm and part of his thumb and forefinger, but nothing else.

  Varin wasn’t sure if there would be anything else and the parts of his hand that were regrown were weak and tender. He had found a pair of expensive Berathian driving gloves in the clothes storage unit of his stolen ship (the previous owner had really been quite the dandy) and put them on to cover the ugly sight.

  Not that he cared so much what his hand looked like—he just wanted to protect any vulnerabilities he had when going into enemy territory. At least when I shot off my hand, I took the damned obedience band with it, he thought wryly. Now if he needed to lift Brynn and make a quick get away with her he could be certain a bolt of pain wouldn’t hamper his efforts. So that was something, anyway.

  Brynn…he’d had another vision of her while he was landing his ship, being careful to leave it behind a low hill out of sight of the Hive. Someone was leading her over a narrow, steep bridge that ran across a pit of stinking death. Varin had been afraid she would fall but then she was safely across and standing in front of a small room that seemed to grow out of the wall. It pulsed with ominous light and he wanted to shout at her again not to go into it, but he had a feeling she already had.

  One shot, he thought again. I have to hurry—not much time!

  He narrowed his eyes and let his sixth sense take over—the voice inside him that pointed out an enemy’s weakness ruthlessly and efficiently. The one that had helped him win in the Arena for so many years.

  Large eyes, it whispered in Varin’s brain. Obvious target but it might not do as much damage as you’d think. Armored body—no help there. But look at the connections—the neck—the waist. They’re narrow—vulnerable. Sever the head in one shot and you should take it out before it can sound the alarm.

  Two shots, actually—he would have to shoot the other sentry almost before the first one dropped. Varin narrowed his eyes and took careful aim in the dim gray light.

  He thanked the Goddess that he’d been trained with a blaster, even though as a slave, he hadn’t been allowed to carry one. The old Master at Arms who had trained him as a boy had thought the king might change his mind one day. And besides, he had a soft spot for the baby princess—whose holo picture reminded him of his granddaughter.

  “She’ll need your protection lad,” he’d told Varin, clapping him on the back with one heavy, callused hand. “And sometimes a male needs more than a knife or a sword to do the dirty work of keeping females safe.”

  The Master at Arms had died some years ago—a fact Varin was glad of now, since the entire planet of Galen had presumably been overrun by the denizens of the Hive. But he still kept the memory of the old male sacred—he had been a kind of father to Varin, who couldn’t remember his biological parents, and his training was serving him well even now.

  Especially now that he had the insect sentries in his sights.

  “This is why a slave needs a blaster,” he muttered under his breath and squeezed the trigger.

  The first sentry’s head was knocked off and fell at his feet. The second sentry had only just begun to turn to its coworker to see what had happened before Varin fired again, severing the thin, narrow neck that held its bulbous head in place.

  As the two tall bodies crumpled to the gray, dusty ground, Varin rushed forward and plunged into the Hive.

  * * * **

  “Ahh…Now that you’ve received your first dose of Blood Honey, you should begin to come into Heat.” Sovereign X'izith leered at her, a greedy expression on his strange face.

  “Heat?” Brynn looked at him woozily. Everything seemed to be tinged in red—the edges blurry and distorted. The large insect worker that had dosed her was holding her up, since she couldn’t seem to support herself, but Brynn no longer felt afraid of it. In fact, all of her emotions seemed to have been blunted or dulled somehow.

  “Yes, my dear Princess—Heat. To get you ready for my breeding barb.”

  Brynn shook her head. “I don’t…don’t understand.” The Blood Honey she’d ingested seemed to make her thoughts as thick as, well honey and everything swam before her eyes in a very distracting way.

  “Of course you don’t—but allow me to explain while the Honey works on you,” X'izith said. “You see, it’s necessary to raise both your body temperature and your lust in order to make your abdominal cavity into a proper gestational area for the royal grubs. The Blood Honey will make you crave male fluids while forcing your body into a state of hyper-desire. In this way you will welcome my barb between your legs when I seek to breed you, rather than fighting, which would impair proper implantation.”

  “I don’t…I can’t…” Brynn tried to find words for the thought that was in her head—it was so hard to think with the Honey clouding her brain! “I don’t…want anything between my legs,” she said at last. Memories of the cruel silver club inside the deflowering chair made her shiver, despite the artificial warmth caused by the dose of Blood Honey the insect had given her. “I don’t…don’t want that ever again. It hurts.”

  Indeed, she still ached from the brutal strokes of the deflowering wand—still felt tender and violated inside. Never again, she told herself. I never want anything to enter me there again! Drugged she might be, but she was sure on that point.

  “You think that now,” the Sovereign told her in his buzzing voice. “But it will be a different story once the Blood Honey has had a little more time to work on you. It is all right—I can be patient.” He folded his arms and his filthy hands across his chest and smiled at her. “It will not take long.”

  * * * * *

  It didn’t take Varin long to find a marker. It came scuttling along the tunnel that led down into the Hive, its antennae scanning the air for new scents. Varin flattened himself against the wall, not wanting to alert it to his presence too soon.

  He’d already rubbed himself all over with the sticky muck that oozed from the floor of the tunnel to mask his scent as well as he could. Now he just had to get the marker to believe he belonged and spray him with its odor. The odor, Jorath had told him, was the key to getting into every other area of the Hive unchallenged.

  Varin jumped in front of the marker, just as it was about to pass him. It stopped its forward motion, its long antennae quivering, clearly uncertain about him.

  “Come on,” he muttered as it hesitated. If it decided he didn’t belong, it would run away, spreading the alarm and mobilizing the Hive against him. But if it sprayed him with the “welcome” or “belonging” scent, he would be able to go virtually anywhere undetected.

  The marker hesitated a moment more, then turned and started to skitter back down the hall it had come from.

  “No, you don’t, you little bastard!”

  Varin launched himself at it, landing squarely on its back segment. Abdomen? Thorax? He wasn’t sure what you called it but apparently it was the part the spray came from because a splurt of sticky clear stuff shot out of the marker and somehow hit him right in the face.

  “Fuck!”

  Varin spluttered and reached up to wipe the sticky goo out of his eyes. It stung like some kind of chemical cocktail—which was what it was, he supposed. He let go of the marker in the process, but it didn’t run away. Instead, it turned around and inspected him, running its feathery antennae out to “sniff” him, since, according to J
orath, that was how the insects of the Hive smelled things.

  Suddenly it turned around again and crouched, aiming its behind at him.

  “Whoa—wait a minute!” Varin barely had time to jump to his feet before a second dose of the “welcome” scent baptized him—this time from head to foot. Apparently the accidental dose he had received had convinced the marker he was legitimate, even though it had been the one to spray him by accident the first time.

  They really do run on scent, Varin thought as it scurried away. Damn thing was too stupid to remember it thought I was the enemy before I got a face-full of its odor.

  Well, at least there could be no doubt that he was well and truly covered in the “belonging” odor—the rest of the Hive should be accessible to him now that he was sprayed with the clear insect goop. He took a firmer grip on his now-sticky blaster (Who was he kidding? All of him was sticky now) and made sure his knife was loose in its sheath and ready to grab.

  The knife was a long, wickedly sharp, curving blade—a ceremonial weapon from the Grindeeg tribe on Larius Two—Varin knew because that had been the inscription on the framed plaque he’d broken to get it out and use it.

  The long knife had been hanging in a place of honor on the wall of the lounge area of his new ship along with several other trophies that proved the former owner was well traveled. Doubtless it was a priceless artifact that he was using like some callus barbarian—not that he cared. It looked sharp enough to lop off an enemy’s head with one blow—that was more important to Varin than how much it cost or how rare it was.

  Of course, the knife was only for last resorts—if his blaster suddenly ran out of charge, which he hoped and prayed to the Goddess wouldn’t happen—he would use it. Or if the situation called for a silent attack. But for now, it was the blaster he gripped in his one good hand.

  For a moment he considered that what he was doing would look like suicide to anyone else. One male alone, with only one useable hand, going into the Hive armed only with a half-charged blaster and a stolen knife…It was crazy. Stupid or suicidal in the extreme.

  Doesn’t matter, he told himself grimly. If I die, I die. But I have to save Brynn first.

  The thought of his Mistress—the female he had been devoted to his entire life—drove him onward. Taking a deep breath and immediately wishing he hadn’t—it smelled fucking horrible and rotten down here—Varin started following the trail he’d seen Brynn take in his visions of her.

  “Hang on, little one—I’m coming,” he growled under his breath.

  There was no answer but silence.

  * * * * *

  “Now, my little Princesss…I think you’re ready.” Sovereign X'izith rubbed his hot, dirty hands with their filthy fingernails together in anticipation. Clearly he was looking forward to what came next.

  But…what did come next? Brynn had a feeling she ought to know, but she could barely think. She felt hot all over—so hot she’d somehow managed to get out of the soiled pale pink ball gown, though she’d had to tear it to do so. She had left it in a heap on the floor and now she was wearing nothing but a short white shift, which fell only to her knees.

  It seemed to Brynn that at a different time in her life she would have thought shedding her clothes in front of a man was wrong—even scandalous or indecent. But now she was so hot it seemed like the only thing to do. Also—she ached.

  Or maybe throbbed would be a better word. All her most private parts from her “lady mounds”—the Sisters’ word for breasts—to her “downstairs area” were throbbing with a kind of need and desire she couldn’t explain. Between her thighs, especially, she felt tender and hot—the area Varin had called her pussy was pulsing like a second heartbeat. Pulsing in time to the pale, strobing light in the Breeding Chamber, in fact…

  Before Brynn could puzzle out the implications of this strange synchronization, X'izith was talking again.

  “Of course, in order for me to breed you, I fear I must abandon my beautifully crafted disguise. You do not mind, do you, my dear? After all, you took off your own outer covering…” He motioned to the crumpled and discarded pink ball gown. “Surely you will not object to me removing mine.”

  Brynn thought he was asking permission to take off his cloak and she couldn’t blame him for wanting to—it was so very hot in the little room.

  “Of course,” she murmured, swaying back to lean against one of the walls. There was an empty alcove right at her elbow and for a moment she thought about how snug it looked—how nice it would be to curl up inside the narrow, rectangular hole in the wall and take a nap…

  The thought jogged a memory and she faintly heard a voice screaming somewhere inside her—so deep down she could barely understand what it was saying.

  No! Not the alcoves! That’s where you found Amalthia! Remember how she looked—remember what happened to her! You can’t let that happen to you. Wake up, Brynn! Wake UP!

  But I am awake—aren’t I? she thought groggily. Unless this is all a dream. But why would I dream something so strange? How—

  Her thoughts were interrupted when she realized Sovereign X'izith was doing something strange with his hands. He had been rubbing them together in anticipation earlier but now he was tugging on them, pulling at the fingers of his right hand with his left.

  At first Brynn thought he was trying to clean his filthy fingernails in some way. About time! she thought. Those nails of his are disgusting!

  But even as she had the thought, the Sovereign pulled his hand off—pulled it off as easily as if it was simply a glove he had been wearing. And then he did the same for his other hand. What emerged from the fleshy gloves weren’t skeleton hands, as Brynn might have supposed, but two long, chitinous arms on each side, with hooked claws at their ends.

  “What…what are you doing?” she asked uncertainly. Even with the Blood Honey in her system she felt horrified—though only in a dull, half-asleep kind of way. Look at that—he can take his hands off. Isn’t that unique?

  He shouldn’t be able to do that, Brynn! yelled the little voice in the back of her head. That’s not normal…not right!

  “That…what you did…that’s not right,” she said, gesturing at the now discarded hand. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s…improper. “

  “Improper?” X'izith gave a hissing laugh. “I will show you ‘improper’ my dear.”

  And then he reached up and pulled off his face.

  Brynn stared at him blankly as the bulbous insect head with its black, blank compound eyes and twitching, gold-tipped antennae came into view.

  “I thought you wanted to remove your cloak—not your head,” she said at last and her voice sounded flat and strange in her own ears.

  “This is my true form.” X'izith took off the rest of his clothes revealing why his body had seemed so hard and oddly shaped when they’d been dancing at the ball which now seemed it had happened a thousand years ago.

  “An insect,” Brynn said faintly while the little voice screamed inside her. “You’re an insect. I…I knew I was in a colony of some kind and that you controlled it, but I never thought you were one of them.”

  “I am more than ‘one of them’ my dear Princesss,” X'izith hissed. “I am the Sovereign—the leader to which all of the Hive looks for leadership and direction. I grew from a royal grub into this…” He spread his arms and legs and fanned out his wings, making himself seem positively huge in the small, cramped room.

  “You…you did?” Brynn took a step back. Goddess above, if she hadn’t been drugged by the Blood Honey she was certain she would be screaming or fainting right now. X'izith was so big…so horribly alien.

  “I consumed my fourteen littermates and fought and consumed my sire in order to ascend to this position.” X'izith sounded proud of himself.

  “Consumed?” Brynn whispered. “You…you mean you ate them?”

  “Of course. It is the way of the Hive.” He took a step towards her, his long, thin legs moving with jerky, insectile speed. “That was
many cycles ago and all this time I have been searching for a female with the right bloodlines to continue the ways of my people.” He leaned towards her, his black eyes gleaming, his curving mandibles clicking. “And I finally found you, Princess. Now it is my turn to implant a litter of royal grubs. My turn to be certain my progeny will rule the Hive when I am gone.”

  There was a motion between his legs and Brynn saw with horror that a long, black, sharp thing had extended from his segmented abdomen. It was longer than her arm and twice as thick, tipped with a thin black barb that looked like the blade of a dagger.

  Only a dagger didn’t drip venom that hissed when it hit the floor.

  “Oh…oh my Goddess,” she whispered faintly. “Oh no—stay away from me!”

  The creature she had known as Sovereign X'izith frowned—or Brynn thought he did, anyway. It was difficult to tell on a face so alien she could barely read any of his expressions at all. At any rate, he clicked his mandibles in a way that seemed angry or impatient.

  “I thought you were ready for breeding—that the Blood Honey had made your mind as well as your body ripe for implantation.”

  “Think again,” Brynn gasped. Finally the little voice that had been screaming in the back of her mind for so long had moved to the forefront. She didn’t know if the Blood Honey was wearing off or the horror of the situation was catching up to her but she definitely felt more awake now. “I don’t want that thing…” She nodded at his long, black barb, “Anywhere near me!”

  Especially not between her legs which was where he was proposing to put it.

  “Now, now, Princess…” X'izith began advancing on her, his long limbs moving with the eerie grace of a web hunter stalking its prey. “You mustn’t get yourself excited. Implantation—especially of the royal grubs—is a delicate and difficult process. Why do you think I had your maiden barrier removed before I agreed to take you? Nothing must impede it—you must be perfectly still when I thrust my barb between your thighs.”