Brides of the Kindred Volume One Read online

  “I’ll be fine,” she promised, trying to smile. “Just stay here and take it easy. Why not take a dip in the pool?”

  “The pool?” Xairn frowned.

  “You know, that big, blue rectangular thing filled with water right beside us?” Lauren raised an eyebrow at him and nodded to the right side of the condo where the gently lapping water was visible from the kitchen window. The proximity to the pool was one thing that had drawn her to the little efficiency even though her mom would have happily put her in a much larger space. The pool was clear and cool and well maintained since people used it year round. It almost never got too cold to swim in Sarasota—even in the winter months.

  “I thought it was a holding tank for drinking water.” Xairn shuddered visibly, and a strange look passed over his face. Terror? Horror? Lauren didn’t catch it completely but whatever it was, it wasn’t good. “You mean you willingly submerge yourself in it?”

  “Of course, why not?” Lauren shrugged as she pulled on her clothes. “What— you don’t like to swim?”

  He shut his eyes briefly and took a deep breath, as though trying to calm some inner turmoil. “I do not swim, no.”

  “Well, I don’t either, really,” Lauren admitted, still wondering about his strange reaction. “I mean, I guess I should, being raised in California and all. But I’d never make much of a surfer girl since I can’t swim a lick.” She smiled. “I do like to get out on one of the blow-up rafts and just lay there and relax sometimes. It’s nice with the sun on your skin and the cool water lapping your toes.”

  He frowned. “You risk your life in the water and you don’t even know how to swim?”

  “Oh please, it’s not that much of a risk,” Lauren protested. “It’s barely eight feet at the deep end and the pool isn’t that big. I’m sure I could get to the side if I had to.”

  “The last I looked you are not eight standard Earth feet tall,” Xairn pointed out. “You should refrain from going into this ‘pool’ until you learn how to swim or grow three more feet.”

  Lauren laughed as she powdered her face and put on some lip gloss. “Well neither one of those things is going to happen anytime soon. I have too much to do to take swimming lessons and I wouldn’t add three feet to my height even if I could. That would make me taller than you and that’s saying something since you’re over six foot six and broad as a barn door.”

  Xairn didn’t join in her amusement. “I would not go into that water for any reason,” he said frowning. “And you shouldn’t either.”

  Lauren sighed. “Fine, I don’t have time to go swimming—or floating—today anyway. I need to get things cleaned up and back in working order at the shop.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” There was a wistful note in Xairn’s tone that made her feel bad but Lauren shook her head firmly. “I wouldn’t mind if I was just baking but I work better alone when I’m cleaning. And I need to be able to think without any distractions. I have a lot to get done if I’m going to be up and running again in time for the weekend crowd.”

  He nodded. “Very well. I will stay and try to absorb some of your culture through this medium.” He nodded at the battered old flatscreen viewer on the wall across from the couch.

  Lauren smiled. “You do that. Just don’t absorb too much. Some of those soaps will rot your brain.” Then seeing his horrified look she added, “Not really. I just meant that daytime television programming is pretty vacuous. Unless you watch the History channel or something like that you probably won’t find anything on with any substance.”

  “I’ll try to learn some of your history, then,” he said, settling himself on the couch. “But I don’t like letting you work while I do nothing.”

  “I’ll be fine. Working clears my head.” Lauren smiled and gave him a light peck on the cheek before she left.

  * * * * *

  Xairn watched her go with a sigh of guilty relief. He loved her to distraction but lately the tension between them made him feel like he was going to explode every time she came near. He was sure Lauren sensed it too—he could see it in the way she looked so hurt every time he flinched from her touch, every time he didn’t return one of her loving caresses.

  But I can’t, damn it, he thought, curling his hands into fists in frustration. Can’t risk hurting her. Better she should think me cold and unloving than that I should injure her with my unchecked lust.

  It was true but it didn’t make him feel any better. If anything, he felt worse. He’d been hoping that the human DNA grafted onto his own would help him control himself. Or else that he would gradually get used to Lauren’s casual touches—but that wasn’t happening. It seemed like every day he had to take himself in hand more and more often but with each painful, self-given orgasm, his desire for Lauren only seemed to increase and become more and more unmanageable.

  Xairn wished there was something he could do to work off the tension that was threatening to drown him but this world was woefully short on stress relief—at least his kind of relief. Back aboard the Fathership he could have thrown himself into his work or sparred with one of the vat grown soldiers which outnumbered the true Scourge now by more than a thousand to one. But here there was no work he could do and no one to fight. There was nothing, in fact, but that damn pool of water which Lauren had pointed out before she left.

  Standing, Xairn went to look out the kitchen window at the blue water lapping the rectangular edges of the pool. Gods, he didn’t want to remember but the memories came rushing back anyway…

  “Sssink or ssswim, my ssson. Only the ssstrong sssurvive.” The AllFather laughed his high, evil cackle as he watched Xairn flail in the deep rectangular tank filled with black slime.

  “Please! Please, Father!”

  He was only a child of seven or eight and he had yet to get the size and strength he would attain as a mature male. He had never been immersed in the thick, black liquid of the drowning tanks before, though he had watched in horror as the urlich were thrown in one by one during their training.

  The modified canines the Scourge used as scouts were forced to swim in the drowning tanks for hours upon hours to prove their stamina and courage. The weaker ones died and sank to the bottom of the black ichor. Their rotting bodies added to the nauseating stench of the tanks and served as a warning for others.

  But not for me, Xairn thought wildly. I am no urlich—I am his only son. Why? Why is he doing this?

  It was a question he asked himself daily aboard the Fathership as his father perpetuated cruelty upon cruelty on the son he claimed to love. The worst thing was Xairn never knew when the punishment was coming. Most of the time his father ignored him completely but sometimes he would be kind and almost loving for days. He would take Xairn around the ship and talk to him about its inner workings, teach him the history of their people and explain their hatred of the race-killing Kindred who had doomed them to slow extinction after the abortive genetic exchange.

  Then, just as Xairn was beginning to trust him, beginning to think that this time his father truly cared, he would do something vicious and cruel, something Xairn could never have expected. This time they had been walking by the urlich kennels while the AllFather lectured him about the proper way to train the modified animals. Then, with no warning at all, his bony, scabrous hands had closed on Xairn’s arms and he had flung him into the deepest tank.

  “Father, please!” Xairn flailed wildly at the viscous black ooze that surrounded him. “Please, I can’t swim!”

  “I know you cannot, my ssson.” The AllFather could barely stop laughing long enough to speak. “But you ssshall learn. Or like the weakest urlich, you ssshall die. Remember, only the ssstrong are fit to sssurvive.”

  “Father, help! I’m scared! I can’t—” He went under, his mouth filled with the noxious slime. Fighting his way to the surface, he spat it out. His arms and legs were getting tired—it was like swimming in glue. But he knew if he didn’t make it out on his own, he would die in the tank. Di