“All right.” Lauren sighed and nodded. “I trust you to do right by me, Xairn. Just please hurry—this place gives me the creeps.”
“It has been the site of untold horrors,” he agreed, taking her into one of the empty, glassed in cells. “But they’re over and done and in the past. You have nothing to fear now.”
“I hope you’re right.” As he deposited her gently onto her feet, Lauren reached up impulsively and gave him a tight hug. “Come back soon,” she whispered in his ear. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I will come as soon as I can.” Xairn gently disengaged her arms from around his neck and when his face came into view, it wasn’t at all happy. “But you must stop touching me that way, Lauren. It…is not a good thing.”
“Because it makes you feel?” she asked softly.
Stiffly, Xairn nodded. “Yes. I must go now.”
“All right.” She stood with her back to one glass wall and watched as he locked her in. “Goodbye.”
“I’ll return,” he said shortly. “Remember, you’re perfectly safe. There is no one else on the entire planet besides the two of us, my father and his guards. And they are programmed to stay exclusively with him and protect him.”
“All right.” Lauren nodded and watched as he left the medical wing. She listened as the echo of his boots died away to silence and then began to pace. The glass holding cell was small—barely bigger than the one she’d been kept in aboard the Fathership, although thankfully larger than the tiny cramped space she’d been shoved into on the adjunct ship. Still, it only took her five steps to get from one end to the other and eight steps to go across diagonally.
Lauren supposed she ought to conserve her strength but she couldn’t help it—she was nervous. She had faith that Xairn would keep his word—or try to, anyway—but she didn’t like being locked in a cell on a dead planet with an evil being who wanted to rape her. Not to mention his monstrous, soulless guards. Those things were eight feet tall if they were an inch and she had no idea how Xairn was going to get around them if they got in the way when she and Xairn attempted their escape. Or—
Lauren stopped pacing suddenly and listened. What’s that sound?
At first she thought Xairn was coming back because the faint noise sounded like the echo of his boots in the hallway. But it was coming from the opposite direction he’d left from and soon she could tell that it wasn’t just one set of boots approaching her. There were at least two, maybe more, and the deep, masculine voices she heard murmuring over the tap-tapping of their boots were wholly unfamiliar.
My God, she thought, panic rising in her like a tidal wave. There are other people here—strangers—and I’m locked in this cell like a sitting duck. They can do anything they want to me and I can’t stop them, can’t get out.
She was trapped.
* * * * *
“I thought I told you not to disssturb me.” The AllFather floated forward, his skeletal form partially obscured by the round crimson-black orb of the dravik which surrounded him in a bubble of polluted blood. In each of the four corners of the Souda stood an eight foot tall soldier—the AllFather’s personal guard were silent as always. Xairn ignored them.
“I know what you said, Father, but I wanted to let you know that the Complex is secure.” He kept his voice neutral.
“I sssee.” The shape inside the blackish-red bubble nodded. “Well then, that isss all to the good. Where isss the girl?”
“Securely imprisoned within the medical wing, as you requested.”
“Very good. Sssee that ssshe isss ready.” The AllFather’s voice was a hiss of pure lust. “I’ll take her the moment my dravik burstsss.”
Xairn felt a muscle in his jaw clench and forced it to relax. Nothing I feel nothing. But it was no longer true. Lauren had woken something inside him. Something that would have been better left undisturbed.
“My ssson?” The AllFather floated closer, seeming to glide within the confines of the dravik. He was always in the exact center of the glistening, blackish-red bubble, no matter which way he moved. “Isss all well with you?” he enquired.
“Yes, Father.” Xairn did his best to appear stoic and unconcerned. “Of course.”
“I sssense sssomething from you. A disturbance…” Claw-like hands reached out but the AllFather couldn’t penetrate the wall of the dravik, which was feeding him power, and his fingertips stopped inches from Xairn’s face. Thankfully, the bloody bubble also kept his mental powers in check so he couldn’t rifle through Xairn’s mind—though it was obvious he could sense that something wasn’t as it should be.