At least she looked the same so far. Still lovely. Still pure and undefiled. Xairn prayed she would stay that way, though he hardly knew who he was praying to.
“Lights, dim,” he whispered hoarsely. At once, the room was plunged into shadow. Because Scourge had excellent night vision, he could still see her, but her features were muted and indistinct. She was still beautiful, though, still Lauren.
Without thinking, Xairn reached for her hand, the one that was lying on top of the covers. Taking it in his own, he laced their fingers together just as Lauren had when she was holding his hand earlier. As he squeezed her fingers gently, he felt a tingling throughout his entire body. Was it her DNA having an effect on him, changing him forever? Xairn was too tired to care.
With a deep sigh, he closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
Chapter Thirteen
Somewhere in the dark reaches of space a pair of red-on-black eyes opened and a low, frustrated hiss filled the air.
The AllFather sat up, his skeletal frame still dripping with the nutrient slime of his personal pit. He never ingested food or drink, preferring to take physical nourishment through his tightly-stretched, paper-thin skin. It was emotional sustenance that he truly craved—that he could not live without. And now that Xairn had run and taken the human girl with him, the AllFather had none.
“Ssstupid fool.” Rising, he stepped from the pit and began to pace. The greenish slime, impregnated with the poisonous, tainted metal at the core of the Scourge home world, slid from his body and splattered on the metal flooring.
Having recovered with some difficulty from the confrontation with the damned Kindred deity, the AllFather was back aboard the Fathership and heading for the Maw Cluster. He could feel that Xairn and the girl had gone there—could sense them like two pinpricks of light far away on a distant horizon. Their traces were faint but he could follow them, sniffing out the familiar scents like an urlich hot on a scent.
Or he had been able to until just a few moments ago.
Closing his burning eyes, the AllFather cast his dark net again, flinging his consciousness out into the blackness of space like a poisonous spider flinging a strand of toxic silk.
But there was nothing. The lights had disappeared, the traces had vanished.
Where could they have gone? Were they dead somewhere, the flimsy little ship Xairn had stolen crashed into the side of a stray asteroid?
The AllFather felt no sorrow at the thought—only rage. Rage that his only son and best source of nourishment should have escaped him so completely.
But he didn’t truly believe that Xairn was dead, or Lauren either. His son had developed a ridiculous fascination with the human girl. Knowing him, he would go to great lengths to protect her. Just as he had tried to protect the common urlich which he had taken for a pet. The AllFather well remembered how foolishly attached the boy had become to it—how upset he had been at the dumb beast’s demise.
But why the Maw Cluster? There was nothing of interest there—nothing but the thuggish splicers, constantly carving each other up and recombining the DNA into different configurations. Always…
The AllFather stopped pacing abruptly. His long, skeletal hands squeezed into fists. Of course. Their DNA—Xairn has taken her there to get their DNA changed. And he’s succeeded—their signatures are completely different now. No wonder I have lost sight of them!
The AllFather threw back his head and let out a long, hissing howl that echoed through the entire ship. Far down the bleak, empty corridors of the Fathership, the urlich heard him in their kennels and took up the cry.
“Gone!” the AllFather screamed, as his personal guard came running to find out what was wrong. “He’sss taken her away and changed her. They are gone forever from my sssight. Gone!”
Chapter Fourteen
Lauren woke suddenly from a horrible dream about a pair of big red scissors cutting off her hand. No, not my hand—it was my finger. My pinky finger.
She raised her left hand to her face and examined it anxiously but everything looked normal. Didn’t it? On closer examination she wasn’t so sure. Her pinky finger looked…strange somehow. Lauren couldn’t put her finger on it—no pun intended—but when she touched the tip of her pinky finger to her thumb it tingled. Also, the nail on it was a lot shorter than the nails on her other fingers. Lauren wasn’t a nail biter and she didn’t remember breaking a nail, so what was going on?
Don’t be silly, she told herself uneasily, turning her hand this way and that to examine the suspect pinky. It was just a bad dream. Get over it and move on.
Feeling more awake, she looked around the room for Xairn. He’d said he was going to sleep on the couch across from the bed, but it was empty. Then she became aware that someone was in bed beside her, breathing deeply and obviously asleep.