Sought(101)

“They can’t take a female unless they’re dominating her completely,” Lock said quietly.

“And they practice and enjoy forms of sexual torture that would turn your stomach,” Deep said darkly. “The Goddess help that girl if the Scourge really do have her. I don’t like to think of the torment they must be putting her through.”

“Poor Lauren!” Kat suddenly felt for Liv and Sophie’s cousin as she never had before. Before she’d been sympathetic to her plight and worried about her, but now she felt Lauren’s pain like a fist to the gut. Lock and Deep’s words brought home what the kidnapped girl must be enduring in a visceral way that nothing else had. “I don’t understand, though,” she said. “If the Scourge are so horrible, why did the Kindred trade with them?”

“A small faction disagreed with the ruling of the Council,” Lock explained. “The Scourge were the first new species suitable for a trade that we’d seen in hundreds of years. And they argued that the Kindred genes were dominant—a new generation of Scourge could be raised who had no wish to torment or inflict pain. Who loved and revered females, as we do.”

“They pointed out that the savages from Rageron had been tamed and taught to worship the Goddess,” Deep said. “But the Beast Kindred never had the genetic need to dominate that the Scourge do. It turned out to be impossible to breed that out of them.”

“So what happened? How did you guys become mortal enemies?” Kat asked. “Was it because they wouldn’t stop mistreating their women?”

“Their continued sexual practices led to a lot of friction, yes,” Lock said. “But it wasn’t until it became common knowledge that the Scourge were experimenting on and torturing abducted Kindred warriors and their brides that all-out war broke out between us.”

Kat made a face. “But why would they do something so horrible?”

“They claimed that they were looking for the connection between the Kindred and their mates—the connection they themselves seemed to be lacking,” Deep rumbled. “But nobody really believed that—what they were doing was all about revenge.”

“Revenge?”

Lock nodded. “You see, from the genetic trade, the Scourge got the Kindred size and musculature and prowess in battle but they also inherited our greatest weakness.”

“Our inability to breed females,” Deep clarified. “With our people, only five percent of pregnancies result in female children. But in the Scourge, the trait was worse. Only one fifth of one percent of their pregnancies resulted in girls.”

“They hated us for it—they still do,” Lock said. “They blame us for the decimation of their race.”

Deep made a sound of disgust in his throat. “They had something to do with it too—right here in fact. During the Battle of Berrni. You can see the results.”

They were climbing a ridge that ran along the top of the greasy brown dunes as he spoke. What she saw when they made it to the top, took Kat’s breath away.

There, on a vast field of barren gray dirt, lay the wreckage and remains of hundreds of space ships. Some of them looked a little like the shuttle they had come in and she assumed they must be of Kindred design. Others were completely alien with strange, gleaming black skin that her eyes kept wanting to slide away from—apparently Scourge ships.

“This is the Field of Berrni—it was the final testing ground,” Lock said quietly, gesturing to the wrecked and abandoned ships. “We had broken into their medical complex and rescued the prisoners they had taken and we were about to wipe them out completely. In desperation, the Scourge deployed a viral bomb designed specifically to cause spontaneous combustion in anyone with Kindred DNA.”

Kat put a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God—so they burned them alive?”

Deep nodded. “Look in any of these abandoned ships and you’ll see little piles of black ash—all that remains of the pilots.”

“But the Scourge didn’t count on one thing—they themselves had Kindred DNA,” Lock said. “They thought that they had modified their virus enough so that it wouldn’t affect them—but our dominant genes are incredibly strong. The survivors of the battle escaped aboard the Father ship but not wholly intact.”

“It sterilized them,” Deep explained. “All but a few who were completely shielded from the initial blast.” He looked grim. “We think the AllFather was one of them.”

“So he might be looking for a way to replenish his race?” Kat guessed. “Do you think that’s what he wants Lauren for?”