Finding the Jewel Read online



  Chloe felt a surge of pure panic go down her spine. What would she do if the big Kindred didn’t buy her and she was stuck here in the weight loss house for the next six months without even the occasional plain chicken breast to look forward to? She would go crazy.

  “Hey,” she said urgently, daring to reach out and tap the huge warrior on the shoulder—only it was more like she was tapping him on his back—there was no way she could reach his shoulder because he was so tall.

  “Wh-what?” he demanded, looking down at her.

  “Could you maybe not stand on the scale?” Chloe asked, trying to make her voice sound decisive instead of timid. “That damn thing determines what I get to eat every day and it thinks you’re me. Now it’s threatening to keep me on a diet of pellets and water because it thinks I gained a hundred pounds so if you don’t mind—”

  The Beast Kindred looked down at the scale he was standing on for a moment, his golden eyes blazing. Then he lifted one enormous black boot and stamped down hard. A crack appeared in the scale’s crystal read-out square and the black metal casing bent sharply. The shrill, nagging voice began to run down like a record playing too slowly.

  “Chllloooeeee,” it droned at her. “Nothing buuuut proteeeeein pellets untilllll you looooose all that weeeeeeeight.” Then it stopped abruptly and didn’t say another thing.

  The big Kindred looked at her and nodded his head sharply as if to say, “There—problem solved.”

  “Ha!” Chloe couldn’t control the shout of laughter that burst from her lips. How often had she dreamed of breaking the scale? But the damn thing had seemed practically indestructible. Now this huge warrior had proven the opposite—her mechanical tormentors—the weight loss Nazis—were breakable after all.

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed. “You have no idea how often I wanted to do that!”

  He grinned at her once—his smile a flash of sharp, white teeth in his dark face—and then moved out of the bathroom and headed back down the stairs. Apparently whatever he was looking for, he hadn’t found it in the top part of the house.

  “Hey!” Chloe rushed to follow him. She was beginning to like this huge, alien warrior, even though she knew he was probably extremely dangerous. Still, he hadn’t threatened her in any way. In fact, he seemed completely focused on finding something else—although what she couldn’t tell.

  She found him in the living room, tossing the cushions off the couch and feeling everywhere down inside like a man searching desperately for the TV remote.

  “Hey,” she said again, daring to touch his elbow this time. “Hey, what are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.”

  He frowned for a moment and she saw the thoughts flicker across his face. He was debating whether it was worth trying to tell her—trying to get the words out—as opposed to just continuing the search himself. Finally he took a deep breath, screwed up his face and said, “J—J….” He shook his head in frustration and tried again. “L-luh-looking for the j—j—j—.”

  He was blocking again, Chloe saw. Trying so hard to get the word out that his throat was locking up on him. He knew exactly what he wanted to say but there was a wire crossed in his brain, making it nearly impossible to get it out. Nobody really knew what caused stuttering—although functional MRIs of stutterers’ brains showed that both sides of the brain were trying to send messages at once when they talked, as opposed to just the left side which was normally responsible for speech. But whatever the reason, stress certainly made it worse.

  She knew from experience not to try and finish his sentence for him or to tell him to “spit it out.” Listening to a stutterer could be a frustrating experience—but not nearly as frustrating as it was for the person who was trying so desperately to get their thought across. She waited quietly, giving him her whole attention and not allowing her eyes to slide away in discomfort or boredom as he struggled to get the words out.

  “J—J—” The big Kindred’s golden eyes narrowed and blinked rapidly as he tried again—J was obviously a hard sound for him. It just didn’t want to come out.

  “St-stone,” he said at last. “P-puh-precious st-stone. Have you suh-seen it?”

  His voice was a deep rumble which would have been very pleasant to listen to if he wasn’t fighting so hard to get the words out.

  And after all that effort, I can’t even help him, Chloe thought regretfully.

  “I’m afraid not,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve been living here for over a month and I haven’t seen anything like that.”

  He started to turn away, obviously frustrated.

  “Hey—” She put a hand on his arm again, drawing his attention back to her. “But I’ll help you look,” she told him. “I don’t know where the Commercians might have hidden your jewel but I’ll help you look for it.”

  He studied her with those molten gold eyes for a long moment, then nodded. Good, he would at least accept her help. Why that should be important to her, Chloe couldn’t tel,l but somehow it was.

  “Come on,” she said to him. “Let’s go through the rest of the house. You haven’t even seen the home theater or the gym yet. Maybe it’s in there somewhere.”

  The two of them searched high and low, though Chloe wished she had a better idea of what she was looking for. She would have asked for more information but after seeing how hard it was for the big Kindred to get a simple sentence out, she didn’t want to put him through it again. He had one of the worst stutters she’d ever heard and that was saying something, considering her degree and the work she did.

  They had just finished tossing the home theater room—which had an exer-cycle instead of a comfy reclining seat because vigorous exercise was required to make any movie she picked play—when Chloe heard the voice of the head Commercian again.

  “Right this way, my Lord,” it squeaked. “We have another prospective buyer here today but you will be given equal opportunity to bid on our lovely little prize female.”

  “Exxxxcellent,” burbled a voice that sounded like someone talking underwater.

  To Chloe’s horror, another male slithered into the room—and slithered was the right word for how he moved.

  The new buyer was every bit as big as the Kindred beside her but he was shaped like a cross between an octopus and a squid with green, slimy, mottled skin and unblinking eyes as wide and yellow as lanterns. A bald, bulbous head sat on top of a wide body which billowed around him like the bottom half of a sea creature and instead of arms and legs he had…

  “Tentacles,” Chloe breathed in pure horror. “Oh my God, he has tentacles!”

  Had she thought the big Kindred looked alien? This new monstrosity made the huge warrior look like the boy next door! Without thinking about it, she took a step back, trying to put space between herself and the slimy monster.

  “I sssee you were not lying,” the new buyer hissed. He had a mouth full of long yellow teeth that looked like some kind of modified, sharpened tusks to Chloe. “Ssshe isss indeed mosst tasty-looking. I have always wanted to bed a biped and thisss one is quite lush.”

  “Please…” Chloe found her voice at last. She looked at the wormy blue Commercian standing to one side of the new buyer. “Please—you can’t sell me to him—uh, it—uh whatever this is! We’re not even the same species. There’s no way we would be, uh, compatible.”

  Not that she wanted to be compatible with this monstrosity.

  “Be quiet, Chloe,” the Commercian said sharply. “You must not denigrate our buyers! You would be lucky to be bought by the estimable Lord Globber, who is a Slimerian of the highest order.”

  “Lord Globber the Slimerian?” A hysterical laugh rose in Chloe’s throat and came out as a choked, awful noise. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “It issss the name of the one who will be your lord and massster, girl,” the new buyer declared. “The one who will bed you nightly and teach you the meaning of pain and ssssubmisssion.”

  Chloe felt sick. Visions of tentacle rape porn c