Twisted: Brides of the Kindred 23 Read online

  “No, we’re not—it’s simply a greeting between Kindred,” Malik told her. “A term of respect and friendship.”

  “Oh…” Nicole sighed. “I wish my boys, who are actually brothers, would get along half as well.”

  “Do they fight a lot?” Malik asked, frowning.

  “Like cats and dogs—er, those are domestic pets on Earth that often don’t get along,” she explained, obviously catching his uncertain look. “The two youngest do, anyway—they’re twins but sometimes it seems like they hate each other. The oldest one, Jude, well…” She shook her head, looking deeply troubled. “He’s gotten off on the wrong path somehow and I can’t get him back. His father’s no help—Gary won’t do a damn thing with the boys except bark at them when they get so loud he can’t hear the game on TV. And I just worry so much that they—” She broke off abruptly.

  “That they what?” Malik asked, frowning. “What were you going to say, Nicole?”

  “I’m sorry.” She made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I shouldn’t be going on and on about my parenting problems to you. I know there is nothing more boring than somebody else’s kids.” She tried to laugh but it came out sounding wounded and unhappy.

  “Of course I’m interested,” Malik told her—and he was. He wanted to know all about her—to understand what made her so different from the woman she looked so much like. “Please,” he said, “Go on.”

  “Oh, it’s just that they need a father’s influence more than ever right now—the twins are twelve and Jude is fifteen—so of course, this is when Gary decided to leave me.”

  “You have spoken of this before but I still don’t quite understand it,” Malik confessed. “Among Kindred, the male and female form an unbreakable soul-bond which renders them incapable of leaving one another.”

  “So, there’s no divorce on your world? Or, I mean—there wasn’t before the, uh, Knower AI thing took over and wiped everyone out?” Nicole asked, raising an eyebrow in apparent surprise.

  Malik shook his head. “No. The only parting of a couple the Goddess had put together was death.” As he spoke, he felt the old sadness come over him. “That is what happened to my parents—even before the Knower decimated our world, my father died when I was young, only fifteen cycles old. He left my mother and three little brothers—none older than five cycles at the time.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible!” Nicole exclaimed. “I’m so sorry, Malik! What did you do?”

  “I helped my mother as best I could.” He lifted his chin, remembering those long, hard cycles. “I stayed with her until my youngest brother was the age I was when my father died and the other two were grown and out of the house. After that she told me to go and find my own life. I had never even been involved with a female or thought of Claiming a mate until then—how could I when she and my brothers needed me?”

  “And did you? Find your own life, I mean?” Nicole asked. Clearly she was as interested in his life as he was in hers.

  Malik nodded. “I was out piloting a test craft when the Day of Reckoning came on my home world—on Uriel Two. I tried to get back, but the Knower had already erected a kill-field around the entire planet. No one could get in or out. At first we didn’t know what it was doing but then…then it started broadcasting images…”

  He clenched his hands into fists, remembering the awful things he had seen on the viewscreen of the ship he’d been in, orbiting helplessly just outside the kill-field, unable to get to his family…unable to save them…

  “What images?” Nicole almost whispered but he could tell from her face that she had mostly guessed.

  “The Knower released a kind of nerve gas,” Malik said flatly. “The gas was actually a byproduct of a manufacturing process in several plants that it ran—it ran everything before the end.” He laughed bitterly. “Anyway, instead of disposing of the gas, the Knower had been storing it for cycles, getting ready to take over. The gas caused immediate, agonizing death for anyone who breathed it in. Which was…everyone trapped on the planet.”

  He closed his eyes briefly, remembering the faces contorted in pain, the screams and cries, the begging and pleading on the viewscreen… All followed quickly by silence and death. The many faces—some he recognized and many he did not—all twisted in their final agony with staring, vacant eyes. And then the final message from the Knower.

  “Uriel Two is mine now. Organic life forms are no longer welcome. Any attempt to invade this space will be met with swift and fatal retaliation.”

  And that was that. His mother and brothers and everyone else he had loved and worked with and cared for was gone in the blink of an eye. Just…gone.

  “I couldn’t save them,” he whispered to himself. “I tried to get to them but I was locked out. I couldn’t save them…”

  Suddenly he was surprised by arms enfolding his waist and a warm, soft body being pressed to his own. Looking down, he realized that Nicole was hugging him.

  “Mistress? I mean, Nicole?” he asked uncertainly. Her head only came up to his sternum but she was doing her best to enfold him in her embrace.

  “Malik, I’m so sorry. What you went through—all the people you lost. I don’t think I really understood earlier, but it’s terrible!” There were tears in her eyes when she looked up at him.

  Tears for him, Malik realized.

  For a moment, he could hardly believe it. The real Mistress Hellenix would never have shed a single tear for him—even if she’d cared to listen to his past trauma, which she most assuredly had not.

  “Thank you,” he said, not sure what else to say.

  “Come down here.” Nicole sniffed. “So I can hug you properly.”

  Still bemused by her unexpected compassion, Malik leaned down so that she could put her arms around his neck. Their height difference made prolonged hugging difficult but since this was the ship docking area, there was a wooden box filled with some kind of engine parts nearby. Malik lifted her gently so that her feet were resting on the lid of the box and he was only a little taller than her.

  Then he simply held her. Or rather, let her hold him.

  It was an extraordinary feeling, having her soft body pressed to his as she offered him comfort as no one had since the awful time of his planet’s takeover ten cycles before. How often had he felt alone—as though no other living creature in the universe cared for his pain? How empty and long the cycles had been.

  But now here was a female who cared—who offered him compassion and sympathy, her heart overflowing with tenderness and aching for his pain so much that she cried for him.

  Malik felt something break inside him. He crushed her to him and buried his face in her long, silky black hair, breathing in her warm scent and taking the comfort she offered without reservation or remorse.

  “Thank you,” he murmured hoarsely, at last pulling away. “No one has ever…cared before. I do not understand why you do. But, well…thank you.”

  “Of course I care! What you must have gone through, seeing that…knowing you couldn’t help…” Nicole shook her head and cupped his cheek in one soft little hand. “I can’t even imagine it.”

  “I try not to think about it,” Malik admitted. “Besides, if my plans go as I hope they will on Uriel Two, I will be able to erase all of it.”

  “You will?” She frowned. “How are you going to do that?”

  “It has to do with the device the Time Warden gave me.” Malik looked around. “I’d rather not talk about it here, if you don’t mind. Even with the privacy bubble in place, I don’t feel safe telling you. Can we discuss it on the ship, once we’re away from here?”

  “Oh, of course. I’m sorry,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  “You didn’t.” Malik smiled at her and stroked a strand of hair away from her face. “In fact, you make me feel more comfortable and cared for than I have in years. Thank you for that, Nicole.”

  “You…you’re welcome.” Suddenly she was blushing and pulling away fro