Chained (Brides of the Kindred) (40 page)

“Well then?” Maggie looked at him
expectantly. “Hurry up, Donald. This may not bother you but it isn’t every day
I end a five year relationship and I’m just a
little
bit upset. What is
it?”

“About that,” he said. “As our relationship
is
ending, it occurs to me that you should give back the engagement ring
I purchased for you. It represented a sizable investment on my part and since
said investment—i.e. our relationship—did not come to fruition, I would like to
recoup my losses as much as possible.”

Maggie looked down at the tiny diamond
chip winking on her finger. She had kept it on through everything—her
adventures at the spa, capture, implantation, slavery, her time with Kor—and
the entire time it had been a symbol of her guilt. A weight tied to her,
reminding her of how she was breaking her promise. A promise she had thought
was sacred. But now she wondered.

“What did it really mean?” she asked
softly. “What was it really worth?”

“Actually, I think I can get enough for it
to purchase a new laptop,” Donald said seriously. “Not a top of the line model
but something serviceable I can take to conferences so I don’t have to worry
about my current one being lost or damaged.”

Maggie choked back a sob. “So that’s my
price—my worth to you,” she whispered. “The cost of a not-very-good backup
laptop. That’s it.”

Donald frowned. “Really, Margaret, I don’t
think one can equate one’s personal worth with that of a computer.”

“Oh, I think you just did.” Maggie pulled
off the ring and threw it at him. It bounced off his narrow chest and fell
behind the bed where he would have a hell of a time reaching it.

“Margaret!” he protested. “Was it really
necessary to—”

“Goodbye Donald. Good luck with your new
laptop—I’m sure it will bring you a lot more happiness than I ever did,” Maggie
said.

She slammed the door and left, not looking
back.

Chapter Thirty-four

“Okay, Missy, I think you’ve had enough.”
The bartender attempted to wrestle the bottle of white wine away from Maggie
but she held on grimly.

“No. I can still think,” she argued. “I
haven’t had…” she hiccupped. “Haven’t had nearly enough.”

“I’m not so worried about your thinking as
your
driving
,” the bartender said grimly. “Hey, is this still half
full?” He shook the bottle which made a sloshing sound. “You must be a real
light-weight, lady.”

“I’m not a big drinker, no,” Maggie
admitted and hiccupped again. “But I’m working on it, starting
now
. And
you’d be drinking too if you were me and had everything that happened to you
happen to me.” She frowned. “Wait, that’s not right…”

“All right, I’ll bite.” The bartender
sighed and let go of the wine bottle. “What happened?”

“My fiancé and I broke up today. Like an
hour ago.” Maggie poured herself more wine with an unsteady hand, getting some
on the bar top in the process.

“Sorry to hear that.” The bartender wiped
up the spill with a white cloth. “You engaged long?”

“Five years.” Maggie took a gulp of wine.
“’Course, I couldn’t blame him for leaving me after what I did.”

The bartender laughed. “Uh-huh, a nice,
respectable looking girl like you who gets drunk on half a bottle of white wine
at two in the afternoon? What kind of trouble could you get up to?”

“I rescued a murderous felon to start
with,” Maggie said. “He was all chained up and covered in this awful dust that
makes you really thirsty and saps your strength. So I washed him off—I touched
him all over, you know,” she added, taking another drink of wine. “I mean
all
over.
And I told myself I was only doing it to set him free but really, I
liked
it.” She raised her eyebrows at the bartender who was staring at her
blankly.

“So that was just for starters?”

“Uh-huh. Then I ran away with him to this
weird ultra-posh alien spa and pretended to be the lady I freed him from who we
chained up in his place. Oh, did I mention that part?” Maggie hiccupped.
“Anyway, she totally deserved it.” She took another drink. “So at the spa, we
had all kinds of adventures. I wore some really tight clothes and I touched the
wrong trees and I fell in a pool that looked like it was filled with blood and
made me feel really guilty because it showed me memories of my fiancé.” She
pointed at the bartender. “Oh—and the Pillow Fruit, I can’t forget that part!
It was huge and it tasted just like Krispy Kreme.” She sighed. “Unfortunately
it turned out to be a carnivorous beast that would eat your head if given half
a chance. Such a shame…”

The bartender looked into the bottle.
“Hey, what’s in this wine?”

“So then we had a misunderstanding and he
left me at the spa and I got kidnapped,” Maggie went on. “And I was implanted
with an alien device by that same lady I told you about—the one we chained up?”

“Yeah?” the bartender said doubtfully.

“Yeah.” Maggie nodded. “And she sold me as
a slave but Kor—that was the name of the murderous felon I rescued by the
way—he rescued me by buying me from the slave master. Then we had a really nice
week—just one, really but it was enough.” She sighed. “That’s when I really
started falling in love with him, you know?”

“Uh-huh…” The bartender was staring at her
strangely but Maggie barely noticed.

“So then we had to go on this really huge
ship full of masters and slaves and lots of the women had been modified. Some
of them had like…four or five breasts and some of them had cat tails and ears
and whiskers and one…” Maggie leaned towards him and whispered loudly. “One had
a
vagina
for a
mouth.”
She shivered and took another drink. “Poor
thing—can you believe it?”

“Actually, no—I’m not believing any of
this.” But the bartender continued to watch her. “So
then
what
happened?”

“So then we got to Hargous—I think that
was the name of it—the asteroid in the Dragon’s Mouth where all the implant
houses are. Anyway we found the right one and there was this gnome there with
blue skin and pink cotton candy for hair and he showed me all the feathers the
alien implant had grown inside me and I
freaked out.”

“So just
then
you freaked out,
huh?” the bartender asked. “Not before when you saw the ladies with multiple
breasts and cat tails? Or when you ate the Krispy Kreme beast?”

“Uh-huh.” Maggie nodded and poured more
wine…most of which ended up on the bar top this time. She frowned at the tiny
amount in her glass, shrugged and drank it. “So then Kor helped me get the
implant out—but I won’t tell you how because
that’s private.”
She winked
solemly at the bartender. “At that point I
knew
I was in love with him
but then the stupid bounty hunter came banging on the door demanding to show me
my family on this Venetian blind looking screen thingy.”

“Bounty hunter?” The bartender wiped up
the spilled wine.

“I’m talking about my family now—try to
keep up,” Maggie scolded. “So my stupid little sister told me how my fiancé,
Donald, stepped in front of a bus and got a compound fracture and she showed me
the bone sticking out of his leg and I felt so guilty I decided I
had
to
come home.” She hiccupped. “And I tried to nurse him back to health but being a
sex slave
changes
a person and he said…” She sniffed. “He said I got on
his
nerves
because I put the creamed corn before the cream of celery—can
you imagine?
So I told him about Kor and we broke up and you know the
worst part?”

“Uh, no. Out of all that, I can’t pick
just one worst part, sorry,” the bartender said.

“The worst part is that I realized I loved
Kor
too late.”
Maggie gave a little sob. “I wasted all my time with him
feeling guilty over Donald and now I’m pretty sure Donald never loved me at
all—or not the way Kor did. Oh, God…I miss him so much.” She put her head down
on the bar, tears leaking miserably down her cheeks.

The bartender shook his head. “I’m sorry
you’re sad, lady but I have to say, that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard
and I’ve been tending bar for twenty years. I mean, it sounds like the plot of
some crazy, fucked up science fiction novel, you know?”

“I know,” Maggie said sadly, looking up.
“Could I have…” She hiccupped. “Could I have some more wine, please?”

The bartender considered for a minute.
“Honey, give me your car keys and you can have as much as you want. It sounds
like you earned it.”

Maggie started fishing through her purse
for her keys but just then her cell went off. She was determined to ignore it,
thinking it was probably Donald with more nasty but logical insults. But to her
surprise, the number for the HKR—the Human/Kindred Relations building—was
flashing on the screen.

Maggie slid her finger across the screen
unsteadily and stared at the screen.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Is this Maggie Jordon?” The face
on the screen was an unfamiliar Kindred warrior.

“Yes.” Maggie frowned. “What do you want?”

“Miss Jordon, I have an urgent call for
you on the viewscreen here. Nina Kerrick calling from Tarsia. Can you come to
the HKR building and take it?”

“Well, I’m in no shape to drive right now
but I guess…” Maggie hiccupped. “I guess I can take a cab.”

“Do whatever you have to do but please
hurry,” the warrior said urgently. “I am told that lives are on the line.”

Maggie frowned. “Sounds important but I
don’t understand why they want to talk to me. I’ve never even
been
to
Tarsia. Hell, I’ve never even been to Gaia which was where I was supposed to go
before I wound up on Yonnie Six pretending to be Lady Pope’nose instead.”

The Kindred warrior frowned. “Just come. I
will hold the call until you get here, Miss Jordon.” And the screen went blank.

* * * * *

“Oh, Maggie—thank goodness!” Nina’s face
on the large viewscreen looked worried and scared. “Look, Lissa—she’s here.”

Another familiar face popped up beside
her. “Hello, Maggie,” Lissa said.

“Hello, girls.” Maggie waved at both of
them a little unsteadily. “You interrupted my getting drunk and it cost me like
sixty bucks by cab to get over here. So I hope you wanted to do more than just
say…” She hiccupped. “Say hi.”

“Oh no—she’s drunk!” Nina exclaimed.
“Maggie, it’s only three o’clock over there in Tampa, isn’t it? What’s going
on? Are you celebrating something?”

“Celebrating being alone the rest of my
natural life since Donald and I broke up and I lost Kor because I was stupid
enough to pick Donald in the first place.” Maggie sighed. “I’m such an idiot.”

Nina frowned. “Oh dear, I’m sorry! But if
Donald was anything like the way you described him, you’re probably better off
without him.”

“That’s what
I
told
him.”
Maggie
declared, stabbing one finger toward the viewscreen. “I told him, I said, ‘I
didn’t get two Ph.Ds to empty your bedpan and re-alphabetize your creamed corn,
Mister!”

“Huh?” Nina and Lissa both looked
confused.

“Never mind.” Maggie shook her head. “The
point is, he wasn’t right for me. I just wish…wish I would have realized that
earlier, back when I was still with Kor.”

Lissa frowned. “Kor is the name of the
male you rescued from Lady Pope’nose, right? The slave who later bought you at
the Flesh Bazaar and took you to the Dragon’s Mouth to have your implant
removed?”

Maggie frowned. “Hey, how did you know all
that? Have you been talking to my bartender?”

“What? No—she’s been talking to the bounty
hunter. That Salix guy.” Nina shivered. “I don’t trust him.”

“No, but he brought Maggie home safely,”
Lissa pointed out.
“And
he’s the one who recognized Kor as the male that
was with Maggie. Although now he’s going by the name of Therron.”

“What?” A great deal of Maggie’s
drunkenness seemed to magically dissipate. “What name did you say?”

“He says his name is Therron and he’s
terrorizing our whole planet,” Nina said urgently. She put a hand to her
temple. “God, I
know
I’ve heard that name before but I just can’t
remember where.”

“He’s already destroyed two villages and
he’s moving towards the capital city,” Lissa continued for her. “There doesn’t
seem to be anything anyone can do to stop him—he’s completely invulnerable to
weapons of every kind.”

“Lasers and bullets bounce off his skin,” Nina
said. “Fire and ice have no effect on him. Saber even authorized dropping a
bomb and he walked away from the blast without a scratch.”

“Oh my God.” Maggie put a hand to her
head. “What…what is he doing? Is he shooting things with his eyes?”

“Yes,
exactly!”
Nina cried. “He’s
got these incredibly hot red beams that seem to shoot right out of his eyes.
Did he have those when he was with you?”

“He did.” Maggie nodded. “But he didn’t
destroy anything with them. Well, I mean he blew a hole in Lady Pope’nose’s
dungeon floor, but other than that he only used them for good. He gave me
corrective eye surgery with them.” She pointed at her face. “See? No more
glasses.”

“If he was using this power for good when
he was with you, why has he suddenly gone berserk with it now?” Lissa wondered.
“And why is he going by Therron instead of—what did you call him?”

“Kor. I called him Kor.” Maggie felt like
crying. “This is probably all my fault. He was really upset when we parted. I
mean, he always tries to act nonchalant but I know when he’s hurt—I hurt him by
picking Donald. Oh, why am I so
stupid?”

“Honey, you have to stop beating yourself
up over it,” Nina soothed. “These things happen—we all make mistakes.”

“Most of those mistakes don’t end with
someone’s ex-boyfriend blowing up towns with his laser vision, though,” Maggie
pointed out morosely.

“Those glowing red eyes…” Lissa shook her
head. “It’s not natural. That kind of power isn’t Kindred, yet outwardly he
appears to be one of our people.”

“Oh, he
is
Kindred—or he has
Kindred blood, anyway. But he hates them,” Maggie said. “Because he says his
first slave master told him it was the Kindred who sold him away for being a
freak.”

“What?” Lissa frowned. “None of us would
ever sell a baby to slavers, even if it was different.”

“I don’t know.” Maggie shrugged. “That’s just
what he said.”

“So he gets upset after Maggie breaks up
with him and comes here to target the Kindred on Tarsia,” Lissa said
thoughtfully. “But why us?”

“Wait a minute.” Nina snapped her fingers.
“Maggie, when you rescued him, what did he look like?”

“What did he look like?” Maggie frowned.
“Well, he was mostly naked…”

“No, I mean, did she have him tied up to a
post? Put him in handcuffs…?”