Healing the Broken: A Kindred Christmas Tale Read online

  Still the crawling sensation was almost more than she could bear.

  Shouldn’t have thought about the palmetto bug—shouldn’t have thought about roaches, she thought miserably. The awful memory made everything worse and the feeling of being climbed all over by many, tiny, chitinous claws was maddening. I’ll go crazy if I don’t get them off soon, Sarah thought wildly. Completely crazy!

  Suddenly Toodles was back, shoving his way through the gathering crowd. He was pushing a rolling silver cart and on top of it was a cage like the one he’d originally used to bring out the catchems for their table—only this one was much bigger. It looked big enough to hold dozens if not hundreds of the little cat-crab creatures.

  Sarah eyed it skeptically.

  Great. So there’s the cage—now how is he going to get them back in it?

  Her question was answered when the waiter put a silver whistle to his lips and blew three, short, sharp blasts on it. He was quite close to Sarah when he did it and the noise was deafening—but at least it had the desired effect.

  The catchems began climbing off her as fast as they had climbed on. Dozens of them jumped off her breasts and onto the table—using her almost like a human trampoline. At least that was the half-hysterical image that filled Sarah’s mind. But at this point she didn’t care how they were leaving as long as they just left.

  Soon all but a few of the cat-crab creatures had skittered across the table and jumped into the large wire cage. The ones that were left were mewing hysterically and tangled in Sarah’s long brown hair, which had long ago come down from its bun.

  “Hold still, sweetheart,” Sazar murmured as he picked the distressed creatures carefully off her, untangling their flailing legs from the strands of her hair. “All right now—I think that’s all of them.”

  “Are you sure? I swear I can still feel them on me…all over me!” Sarah rubbed her arms, trying to get rid of the awful crawling sensation which still lingered even though the catchems seemed to be gone. She wanted to get up and leave the restaurant but there was too much of a crowd around them. It seemed that the Alquons were almost as nosey as the giant tizen which had been staring in the bathroom at her. They wouldn’t move an inch, even when Toodles begged them to.

  “Please, would all guests return to their seats?” he asked, trying again to make his thin, reedy voice heard above the babble. “Please, there is nothing to see here. Please go back and leave these fine people alone.”

  Nobody budged and Sarah saw lots of them had little flat black squares they were pointing at her. Was that the Alquon version of a cell phone or a camera? Was she going to be plastered all over their social media as the girl who was attacked by cat-crabs?

  “Please,” she whispered desperately. “Please, I just want to go home.”

  “Enough of this,” Sazar growled. He moved from his side of the booth, pushing the shorter Alquons physically out of the way when they wouldn’t step aside, and reached for Sarah.

  Before she could say a thing, he had swept her up and was holding her to his chest, above the babbling crowd.

  “Out of the way,” he roared, making her wince and put her hands to her ears. “Fucking move!”

  But his deep, base voice had the effect that their waiter’s exhortations to the crowd hadn’t. The Alquons looked at the big Kindred uncertainly and began to clear a path.

  “That’s more like it,” Sazar growled. Holding Sarah close, he left the milling crowd behind and at last, to Sarah’s intense relief, got them out of the restaurant.

  She took a deep breath and it came out in a shuttering, shaking sound that was too much like a moan. Sarah clamped her lips shut before more moans followed. Her nerves felt as though they had been strung as tight as harp strings and some cruel musician had been plucking them for hours.

  The catchems crawling all over her, the pressing, babbling crowd, the feeling of being vulnerable and exposed…it was too much. Just too, too much. She put her head against Sazar’s broad chest and shook silently, feeling like her whole body was going into overload.

  Feeling like she would never feel normal again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sarah seemed shaken and silent after their escape from the ill-fated dinner and Sazar didn’t blame her a bit. The poor little human had had one traumatic experience after another from the moment they’d gotten here.

  First she’d been forced to show much more of her body than she was comfortable with, then she’d been ogled by every male that came near them and she’d been nearly assaulted by that bastard Rando, not to mention mentally molested by the perverted Lord Magnate. After arriving at their nighttime accommodations she had been confronted by both snakes—or something that looked very like snakes—in the fresher facilities, and a giant creature with an eye bigger than her own head staring in at her.

  All that was a heavy load even before the incident with the catchems. Sazar was inclined to think his little human had probably had much more than she could bear.

  And it was all his fault for dragging her here in the first place.

  He carried her silently through the streets back to their room at the Courtly Row. When he got her inside he said, in the softest voice he could manage, “Sarah…sweetheart—”

  “Don’t…” She was shivering and her teeth were chattering. “Don’t talk about it. I just…just want to take a shower. They were all over me. Please—I need a shower!”

  “As you wish,” Sazar said quickly. He put her in a chair and gave her a drying blanket, then went into the fresher to try and figure out the strange shower device. Luckily Kindred were almost as good with machinery as they were with languages. He was able to get the complicated array of buttons to give him a hot flow of steaming, sweet-scented water in a short time.

  He came back to find that Sarah had stripped and was holding the drying blanket wrapped around herself.

  “It’s ready,” Sazar told her.

  “I…is it? Good.” She tried to stand and nearly fell over.

  She’s in some kind of overload. In shock, he thought as he caught her.

  “Sarah, maybe you should just lie down a moment—” he began.

  “No!” She began to struggle in his arms. “No, I need a shower now.”

  “All right,” Sazar said grimly. “You’ll have your shower but not alone.”

  He carried her into the bathing area and leaned her against him while he stripped off the long robe he was wearing and toed off his boots. He left his trousers on for propriety’s sake. Then he unwound the drying blanket from around her shoulders and lifted her again.

  “W-wait,” Sarah tried to protest, her teeth still chattering. “Wh-what are you d-doing? I…I’m n-naked! I can take a shower b-by myself.”

  “Not in this state you can’t,” Sazar growled. “I won’t have you slipping and falling in the tub. Besides, you’re not naked—you still have on your underthings and your, er, jewelry.”

  He nodded at the tiny, skimpy panties she was wearing which honestly were just strings and the double strand of pearls. She was still wearing the nipple rings and breast chain too but he would worry about that later.

  “But—” she began again.

  Sazar ignored her. Carefully, still holding her close to him, he climbed over the high side of the tub. When he got her into the shower, which was the kind that rained straight down from above, he leaned her against him again and reached for a puffy white thing he was fairly certain was a bath sponge.

  The sponge had one soft side and one abrasive side and emitted a flood of floral-scented bubbles when he held it under the water and squeezed. Sazar used the abrasive side to scrub Sarah’s skin, making sure to clean everywhere he thought the catchems might have crawled.

  At first she just stood there shivering, allowing him to scrub her. Then, after a moment, she leaned her head against his chest and her shoulders began to shake with low, almost inaudible sobs.

  Sazar felt as though she’d reached into his chest and squeezed his