Tristan's Loss

THE PET 4:TRISTAN’S LOSS

THE PET 4: TRISTAN’S LOSS By Nix Winter J.J. Massa

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Nix Winter / J.J. Massa

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Scene One

Jira tightened the fitting on the hydraulic connection, then held the sensor strapped to her wrist close to the little tube. Wrench held between two fingers of the same hand; she ran the test. Pressure rose, slowly reaching where she needed it to be. Without the damaged part of tubing she'd removed, she'd have less maneuverability, but she'd still have some control. “Come on, baby boy,” she purred to her ship. Skinny, of spacer stock, with pale eyes and a bar code from the middle of her right eyebrow to her ear, she looked like the space debris she was. With the gravity off, big black and steel boots were all that held her to the sunward floor of her ship. “One more jump, baby,” she said, patting the quilt-like welded skin of her ship's inner wall. Parts of her ship were registered with Earth, and parts with various independent governments. Some components were registered just with space going clans that probably were the least tolerant of parts being savaged before they got there. It had no central computer, but it did have a couple of half functioning AI's that sometimes got along and sometimes didn't. Jira's Baby could fly though, and that was a lot more than some were doing. It wasn't much of a ship, but she wasn't paying reg-taxes to anyone. “Tig! You got that repair done on the aft burner?” she asked, happy with the pressure in the improvised wing rudder system. Some things leave such big holes in you that you can't even feel that some parts of you were ever there. Salem Whitegate, the ratty colony she'd been born and raised on had been little more than a refugee camp with a nice name. Things had been getting better though, much better. She didn't know what had happened, not really, other than that the sun in their system had turned into the biggest after-burn party anywhere. She knew the water had been working again on Salem. She new that her best friend Tanin had gotten involved in something near the main computing center of the colony and he'd told her he was going to be a real doctor, really able to help people. She'd believed him too and then 4

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he'd brought home the other one, this other man and she'd believed in anything, believed in love and passion and health, in peace and joy. Floating towards the core of her Baby, she wondered at how fast six months could go by, like a whole lifetime could go by so fast. Arin Skye had his secrets, but he brought his dark-eyed self home to their little house every night, or nearly so. Arin was beautiful, tight jaw, red lips, dark eyes, silky black hair, beautiful like he was some gangster out of a bootleg vid. She asked him once, where he'd really come from, and he'd given her a one-word answer, 'Earth'. Yeah. Well, she didn't believe everything. The computer that had named itself Tig spoke in Tanin's voice, a slow mellow tenor. “The aft burner has no replacement for the vairsh filament. No more than thirty seconds of drag burn at a time. I think you haven't eaten in ten hours. I think you should replenish energy reserves.” Jira shoved off from where she was crouched, reaching for the connecting tube above her. “Thanks, Tig.” It was hard as hell to decelerate out of a wake jump with thirty-second bursts of retro fire. It could be done though. At least, she figured it could, if she had a long slow path, and they would drop out of the wake jump into a battlefield. There'd be plenty of scavenge. There would be Tanin and Arin too. Hanging out in the near nowhere of space, her solar sails up to gather energy, Jira's Baby was coming apart at the seams. Her six months with Tanin and Arin had ended badly and she hadn't seen it coming. Guilt was a dark stone in the back of her soul. Jira's Baby could carry maybe three people, but her Tanin, her blond-braided boy-faced lover had become something else entirely. Suddenly a gust of energy and flash of light and she'd been on her ship, away from the colony on a fast out-system-bound acceleration. An Earth ship had ripped a wake sunward of her ship and she'd scrambled to catch the wake before it ripped Baby to shreds. Her sun had chased her out of the system, ripping heat through the wake. Debris from Salem Whitegate strafed her, a million tiny shattered lives like machine gun fire over her shields. So here she was. She'd lost that wake when the ship had redirected, but not before she'd caught a signal from Tanin. How Tanin and Arin could be on a huge Earth cruiser fighting and still alive, she didn't understand, but that she believed. Tanin was all she had ever had and he'd brought Arin, and she didn't care if they weren't totally human 5

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anymore. She'd kick her way across the universe to get back with them. Tanin. Thoughts of him soaked back to her as she leaned against the food terminal. It was built into the middle of the only full sized corridor because that was about the only place she could get it a full energy supply. Ten hours since she'd eaten last, so that meant it had been ten hours since her world had gone up like a fiery pom-pom. Tanin had made her pom-poms when they'd both been children in the camps, promised her they'd turn into energy spheres if she believed. She'd always been trying to believe enough. Ten hours since he'd pulled her off the station and threw her into the Baby, somehow, impossibly. He was a slender man, short. He was a year younger than she was and he'd nearly starved before they got to be friends. Somewhere out there, there was a war and it wasn't kind to anyone. Tanin had blue eyes that were always looking for the better side of everything and long hair that he loved to have braided. He'd always said he'd grow it out, all the way down to his ankles, but there wasn't enough of anything in their diets to really make that happen. Dirty blond would only make it to his shoulders. She closed her eyes, hating the weakness that made her lose moisture from her eyes. “Trixie. Don't give me any shit, uh? Can you just materialize me a decent burger? Think of it like a last meal.” Trixie was really Alpha-Unit-7613471-1327779, but Jira liked Trixie better. Trixie had been the life support system on an Earth cruiser, at least a subset of life support before she'd become part of The Baby. The food server was part of Trixie's system and it would only produce decent food if Arin asked. That was almost enough to make his claim of being from Earth seem more valid. Trixie had refused any kind of voice adaptation either, so she sounded about as computer-ish as a computer could. “Request declined. You are an enemy combatant.” “Fine.” Jira sighed. “Give me something so I don't starve. If I starve, you're gonna float out here a long time before some big Earth ship finds you.” “But one will,” the stubborn Earth computer said. “I can not let you starve though. Earth cares for all, even criminals like you.” "I'm gonna space you one of these days," Jira said, reaching into the dimming metal cavity for the plain white nutrition bar that she knew would be there. “Thank you,” the peevish thing said and the light flashed again. Jira reached back in to find one single, hot and golden French fry. 6

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“I really am gonna,” Jira sighed, sucking on the fry as she moved down to the end of the hall to the 'bridge'. The bridge had been the cockpit of a fighter, but now it was hard melded and shielded into being the nose of her Baby. Bar in one hand, she toed a grip bar and pulled herself down from the hall into her captain's chair. Bar held between her teeth, she flipped the safety off the ignition and then ran a fingertip over the energy reading. “Come on Baby, suck it up.” Neither computer asked her just what she thought she was going to do when she got through to the other side. At the very least there was a star destroying Earth ship, full of marines, and weaponry that a little scavenger wouldn't know the front end from the back. But her lovers were over there, so that was where she was going. “Come on Baby, suck up that light,” she repeated to her ship. They were going to need a lot of it, because out here in the middle of nowhere, she didn't expect to catch another wake jump. The slow moving energy meter gnawed at a darkness in her. Fear was the worst enemy a spacer could have. She could hang here like a little solar spider talking to the sun and live for the next six months, but that wouldn't get her to Tanin and Arin. So it was fear, fear of what had happened to them, fear of what would happen to her when she stopped to think about how many pieces the only world she'd ever known was in. She had to wait until she had the energy and then some, or a jump would leave her little baby in pieces too. The voice was songy, whispy, like some ghost out of a vid, “We can help you.” “Oh, fuck me! I don't need your help, you damn ghosts!” In that moment, she didn't know if they were the ghosts of people who'd gotten sucked into the wake jump with her or more of the alien bastards that had Tanin and Arin tied up. The world was starting to unravel a little for her and she pulled her safety harness down and latched it. Fear could make an early jump seem so very reasonable. “Get away from my ship!” “This is a ship?” the voice asked, very human derision dripping like dark ink that she could almost see running down her walls. “We thought it was a coffin.” “Who are you?” Jira's fingers caressed her energy meter, even though she couldn't see it as she watched the narrow hall leading up to her cockpit. The response made her skin crawl, shivers cold prickling over her face, scalp. She'd heard, sensed the reply months before, in the place that Arin had taken the dying Tanin. The creature that had embraced her precious Tanin and driven away plague, that embrace had left Tanin so different than he'd been before. This creature had called itself 7

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the same name. Di'jigh, this creature called itself, but before it had been sung with a musicality that made Jira believe in hope and love and joy, made her believe they could do anything. Now, it was filled with a loathing that had tears running down her sweat sticky cheeks. Now, this song of color and temperature that translated so poorly into human sound was nothing like the one she'd known on Salem. Voice shaking, teeth chattering, she snarled, “What do you want?” The thing seemed to roll down all her walls, putrid water, dark oil, sliding down like some disease. Finally some part of it near the door way congealed and pulled into a vaguely human form, long tousled hair, Tanin's face shape, but dark, diseased skin, puss and blackened teeth. “This is what frightens you, mud kicker? Bacteria that you can't fight? How can you fear something so small?” “I'm not afraid of you,” she said, a new kind of shiver over her skin, and in her mind, deep from the still place inside, she could feel Tanin's hand on one shoulder, Arin's on the other. She had family and they would always be with her. “You are not like the other Di'jigh I have met.” The thing imitating Tanin's form lazed both arms over it's head and tilted its head back a little to look at her more clearly. “You do smell like Di'jigh, like Sword,” it sneered. The word 'sword' was the human word for sword, but also layered with accent that meant something else she was sure, something to the Di'jigh. “My family are swords.” “Then go to them, mud kicker, and tell them, that we are coming. We are Wolves and we will kill them when we find them. Traitors to the sun should die!” The creature's head tilted hard, as if his neck had just been broken, eyes empty and dead, as he continued to speak to her. “Your family...this memory I found in your mind... This is what he looks like? Your sword? We will rip the Di-Jigh from him and he will shrivel and die!” “Shut up!” Jira screamed, forgetting she'd fastened her own safety strap as she tried to lunge at the invader. “Leave him alone! Don't you think you can touch him!” The creature laughed, like sharp off key music and her energy meter buzzed a warning about capacity. What she'd thought would take weeks to fill had taken minutes. It's fear or action, 8

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or maybe both; sometimes you just can't tell and have to do the best with what's at hand. She set the engines to rise in temp and programmed her grapple cannon with a trajectory that she'd not had time to really double check. Whatever they'd done to her energy supply, she had to have faith that her ship would get her where she was going. If she didn't go, didn't jump, the rising energy they were shoving into her ship, wouldn't do more than make her baby pop like a balloon. She punched the button on her improvised jump cannon with all her heart riding on it and a blue flare screamed out the nose of her ship. It hit jump space and tore through space like an anchor dragging her down to the bottom of the jet-black lake. Space folded around her and if the Di'jigh who'd been threatening her was there still, she hoped he didn't mind a little excessive G force! She fell into the wake of her own cannon and breath left her. No time in a Jump wake, not without good shielding, and that was something The Baby was a little short on. So she was suddenly in the garden behind the big house where Arin's master had lived, just the three of them sitting on the grass, on some red and white-checkered cloth. Arin's smile had been shy almost, as if she'd never really seen him before. Watching him watch Tanin as the blond tried to get this kite in flight with so little wind, brought her a warm and generous feeling for him, as if she could forgive her dark swan anything. He lifted his hand, just reaching for a piece of fried potato, and wind suddenly rose under Tanin's kite! The red paper thing rose high, towards the now working imitation blue sky. Tanin, blond and laughing, was such a believer in everything and Jira loved him too! Laughing she rose and ran after his kite with him, which lifted on a wind that shouldn't have been there until it took both of them to hold the tugging string. That had been a beautiful day. In the timelessness of the jump wake, it was as if Salem Whitegate would be there forever, that artificial blue sky would always be struggling to find a few clouds. The right directional shield gave way, and she felt it go, felt it even as she felt Tanin's arms around her, both of them holding the kite tugging kite string. Jira's Baby spun, smoke filling the cockpit, and she was out of the wake, sliding back into her own battered body in the present. A cruiser listed above her as the baby skidded fast and hard, her thirty seconds of retro fire screaming on and off. The bitch of a cruiser above her was the one that Tanin and Arin had been fighting. Calmly she wondered if they'd won, if lost. Part of her was 9

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still clinging to that memory of them and the kite. And again without invitation a Di'jigh brushed her ship, clear and more familiar, the light and song brushed over her face. Suddenly there was clear air and she was gulping hard, sucking it in. Another streak of blue went over her, a broader and more powerful ship's wake jump. She'd bent time. She knew it. “Hot damn! I'm alive! Well fuck you, you diseased bastards,” she spat at the Di'jigh that had invaded her ship before the jump. Rushing, she threw herself into righting her ship, to running damage reports. If she could make it this far, so could Tanin and Arin! “I'm com'in! Just you wait and see!”

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Scene Two

Time doesn't mean a whole lot to the Di'jigh. Between Episode Two and Three, Somewhere, just inside jump-space: It was like a song, reaching deep into his blood, lifting him, cradling him as he sobbed. Lean body bathing in the sunlight, basking in the gentle warmth he felt one with all that was. Sky blue hair dancing with static, with life energy swayed and sparkled, extending into the long lines of life that entwined into the sunlight. Alix didn't know when his soul began, when that of the light ended, and he did not remember that he did not remember. There was only the most splendid life and music within and without until he himself began to have never existed at all. The voice was cold as steel, cold harp strings that echoed dark midnight, “You must chose.” “Choose?” Alix said, eyes empty, seeing all of life so that there was no focus for anything smaller than everything. “You cannot merge,” the voice, ethereal and delicate pronounced, words echoing out into his understanding like the tinkling of a perfectly pitched wind chime. “You must choose who can merge,” she said, as the light pulled back, leaving him in the nowhere, shivering, dying for the light and music that was. “You must choose. Your soul is not strong enough to take his place, but you know now what is required. You must choose another.” “No! I don't understand! I wouldn't let you take my master!” And he was spinning now, gasping, no longer floating in the perfect nothingness. “I don't want them to die!” And he knew them, all of them, as if each of the friends he knew were himself, knew them, understood them, loved them all. “I will save them all!” “Such beautiful music,” the voices said, no longer only one, but many, and so distant. “You will choose the right one and we will save all we can.” 11

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“My sister,” Alix said, falling back into himself, spinning back into being just Alix the Harper. “My mother!” Tristan caught him as he fell, arms tangling in loose hair. Distantly Alix could hear Tawn complaining, wanting to know what he was doing on the bridge during a jump? Was he a member of the crew? He could remember walking up to the elevator, keying in his master's code that he wasn't supposed to know. “Master, I was afraid for you,” Alix whispered, held tightly in Tristan's arms. “Tawn, didn't you give him the sedative? It's his first jump!” Then his Master's beautiful voice came back to him, “It's alright, Alix. Everything is all right. The jump is finished now. Anything you saw was just a nightmare, that's all it was.”

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Scene Three

The shooting star shot over the little cottage. And the wish, Alix's wish was sudden, deep as his soul, for happiness for Tristan. Darkness had taken a deep hold on his Master's heart long before Alix had come into his life. Thinking of how he'd come into his master's life, of the table and cake, the days after, restraints, pleasure, pain, and it was a swirl of pleasure that left Alix's shoulders dotted with goosebumps and his manhood hardening. And now that he met Valentine, a sick understanding curled into him. He'd thought his master just knew all the right things to do, just knew him so well, but the fact was, he was created to respond in this way. Created to moan and lift his ass a little higher, he was a toy. His mind walked around that idea a couple of times. It was so distant, so much like it was someone else walking around that idea, not himself. He was Alix. He was the one his mother smiled at, the one his sister laughed with. The world was much bigger than just waking up late and spending all day playing with his harp, bigger than listening to Majin complain about who she was or wasn't able to seduce into her arms. And fear grabbed him then, fear so deep, that all his friends and family were at risk. Any of them could be 'taken by the gods' and could have been already. They could have been one of the “pets” crying on the shuttle, hooded and begging. Both of his hands slipped into his hair, so short, silky, such fine hair that it wouldn't even make good thread. “Free persons have short hair,” was what Valentine had said. Perhaps they were gods, if they could make someone like Valentine. Alix's fingers snapped to the tingling bite wound at his throat, rubbing the very small punctures. The disbelief was so subtle, like a slightly out of tune string, so slight one isn't quiet sure. He didn't believe these people were gods, but he did believe in the strength and goodness 13

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of his master. Standing on the hill where Valentine had left him, Alix squatted down and reached for several stray strands of his own hair so long and tangling in the grass. He made songs and once he'd made a harp. Struggled for a whole winter to shape the wood, to polish and refine it, and it had been his and he'd loved it. It had been the harp he'd been playing the day they'd taken him. Somewhere someone else played his harp, maybe. A harp only plays the song that it's maker pulls from its strings. While he would gladly sing any song his Master wished to pull from him, unlike some made thing, some harp, he could make his own songs as well. His master seemed to be playing some song that wasn't his own too. His master was someone else's harp and didn't seem to know he had a choice. Since the moment they'd gotten on that shuttle his master had been slightly out of tune with himself. On top of that, Alix did not believe that his master's people had created Valentine, not deep down. In the bite, when it had felt as if their souls would dance together, there had been an age and garnet blood deep truth to the vampire's soul. It left Alix with some shadowy memories that he knew were not his own. It also left him knowing, knowing like a truth truer than the gods had ever been that there were worlds other than this one and that Valentine was simply biding his time. Another shooting star went over, and Alix wished again, wished for his master's safety because these people who called themselves gods were dangerously insane. That was another truth he was sure he'd confirmed with his soul dance with the vampire. Only this shooting star stopped, stopped dead in the sky, and dropped. Alix jumped, nearly took himself down the hill behind him, heart pounding. The star dropped down behind the maze, and as he looked, really looked in that direction, he could see the straight line of ... a roof? Not star then, but a shuttle? Would a shuttle look like a star? So much for his wishes. No shooting stars, no wishes, no gods, and Alix shook his hand, sending severed strands falling back towards the ground and breeze. One other difference between a harp and a man, is that the harp does not want to know who's pulling its strings. So quietly, almost too deep in his thoughts to even be heard, a harp seemed to whisper, “Choose”. He would choose. He would choose to find a way for them to be safe and free. 14

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Scene Four

Valentine bowed as graceful and cool in Tristan's sitting room as he would be in Her Majesty's throne room. Behaving in a rote fashion, always the perfect image of what he was supposed to be had never worked so very well as it did here in this world. The nobility of this world didn't expect him to be in sync with it, because he was a slave, a creation, very thinly cloaked as a retainer of Her Majesty. He had a burning desire to know what had brought Her Majesty out to Tristan's home instead of just sending a summons for him. This world was all about rules and etiquette and the kind of power that ground a person into the dirt. Valentine had not seen anything nearly close since Regency England. He hadn't been noble then either, but had acquired a taste for nobility, in a way. “Valentine, my dear,” Yraine said, holding out one gloved hand for him to kiss. He rose and strode from the door to her, taking her hand and kissing the pristine white-gloved knuckles with the kind of familiarity one only has between wielder and weapon. “Majesty, has something gone awry?” “Not that you can't fix for me, darling,” she said, her voice playful and slightly flirty, which in itself was a little out of place. She reminded Valentine of the perfect girl stereotype from his youth, well not youth, per se, but long before humanity had reached out to the stars. A pretty princess with polished shoes and spotless white gloves, diamond pins holding up soft brown curls. She'd been just a girl when she'd taken the throne and though Valentine had known some humans to mature quickly, to rise up and face whatever challenges, he'd also known some that hid behind rules as if the rules themselves made a good fortress wall. Except for Micha, whom Valentine was still working on saving, the rules served a vampire quiet well on this world. It was a world made for an intelligent vampire. “I will fix anything for you, My Majesty.” And then, quiet terrifyingly, there was a flash of intelligence in those dark eyes of 15

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hers, some spark of cunning that flickered away too quickly. “Our guest from Earth, you remember him?” “Indeed,” Valentine said. He remembered the dog well, short, unenhanced, greedy eyes that held a lust for things he should not touch. Valentine had never quite been a peasant either. Mr. Earth was simply lunch waiting to realize it. “Has he caused My Majesty distress?” “You may not eat him yet,” Yraine said, stress lacing her words together like the corset of her mental restraint. Worse, she was less than her perfect princess self today. She held out a compact, a Y engraved in the gold of the case. “Here. Give me your honest opinion, Valentine. Do not give me what is safe to hear. I wish to know what you truly think.” Valentine was not ready for the rules to change in his happy little world, but neither was he ready to be caught off guard and die. There it lay in the palm of her hand though, and one little compact in the palm of a girl who lived for balls and fairy tales did not the end of the world make, yet he hesitated. She was not his queen, just a woman that he used so that he could pass through this world. This was not his culture. He was simply a squatter with nowhere better to be. He too was always his perfect self in cream linen and tidy blond hair, perfect manners. Within him though, there was something clean, something hopeful, and in the very small moment that his hand reached for the compact, he understood that it was the echo of Alix's soul as they'd soul danced. He almost regretted being drawn in so closely to the little blue-haired slave. Alix did not have a complex soul. He embraced what felt good, what he enjoyed. He loved with all there was of his heart, holding nothing back, and finding more than he had. Alix was genuinely kind and full of beautiful music. It wasn't as if Valentine had not found such a soul in his taste testing of humanity before, but here, in this world he wasn't a shadow stalking them. He was a friend. Alix was not afraid of him. Alix could be his friend, as Tristan was, as Micha had been. He did not care about Her Majesty's culture, but he did care about a world where people like Alix and Tristan could be his friends, about a world where he could find Micha again. “What is it, My Majesty?” “Watch it and you tell me, Valentine,” she said, fear still coloring her words a misty gray. 16

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He clicked the little compact open and there, in the mirror, he watched the end of his world. He'd run so far from Earth and her wars, but he knew an Earth Marine when he saw one. Black armor, worn only over chest and the back of the neck and up over the head, just enough. Earth was a very sparing culture. The riffle on the armored shoulder was big, a cannon type of riffle, the kind of artillery used to take down a tank. Valentine sat down on one of Tristan's dark blue damask chairs, one hand on the carved rose wood arm, as the recording played. How long had he been gone from Earth? He couldn't quite remember, and he didn't understand the words the marine was shouting to her team. She sounded short, clipped, in the heart of battle, the kind of edge that promises this is the last stand and hell or heaven, the enemy's not getting through. That he understood. The perspective of the recording shifted showing the end of a blast damaged corridor. Valentine had not been human for a long time and he had not believed in demons for even longer. At the end of the corridor, brushing through black and gray swirls of smoke rose long slender pole like leg, a flower of translucent red at one end. The pole-like arm called the light itself to sparkle down its length. Raised up that way, the red from the wide petal-like appendages rolled down through the hollow tube of the leg. It couldn't be intelligent, couldn't be life. A weapon of some kind, Valentine told himself. Marine fire hailed down on that end of the corridor, two minutes of it, and Valentine let himself soak into the recording, draw up details. Instinct told him that no matter what his mind would like to believe, it was a creature, not a weapon. The smoke moved differently, as if it were hitting a wall of some kind, rolling back towards the marines. The captain screamed, “Cease fire!” Valentine was very good at hearing hope and other emotions in a human's voice. There wasn't much hope in the captain's voice. Smoke lingered, but in spots it rolled through. A net of some kind, it was filled with red and gray as if it had swallowed smoke and blood, and it stretched the full length of the corridor, sealing it off. A marine screamed. The recording ended. Valentine sat there. Maybe he did believe in demons. “Drexel says this is proof that they can protect us from these monsters, if we join 17

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with them.” “Drexel is a liar,” Valentine said, snapping the compact closed. “Yraine,” he continued, using her given name as a way to emphasis that he was not acting a part as he spoke. “Earth lost in that battle, and Earth Marines never lose. Do you understand the meaning of that?” “That is what I thought as well,” she said, and at last, perhaps, Her Majesty was growing up a little.

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Scene Five

Alix had expected to find servants. Lots of them. Scurrying around like temple servants. He walked through the open door, the black stone frame reminding him very much of the temple at home, so much so that he had to remind himself that this was not a temple. The hall was huge. A great open space, floor black as a moonless sky with little stars of gold set into its smooth surface. He touched the closest one with the ball of his bare foot, feeling the slight warm of the metal in the stone. Then he stepped to the next one. It left him feeling small, the distance between one star and the next, and when he really looked, he found small glazed over diamonds set around the stars. A map and he squatted down again, fingers touching the little diamond planets, as if he could learn more about them in some magical way. From where he squatted to the other side of the great room had to be, maybe five hundred paces. There were stars, some denser, some spread out, but they were dusted all the way from where he was to the door on the other side. Without his hair, without that marking his submission and offering to the gods, he didn't know his own place in any of those little diamond worlds or golden suns. It made him understand the true meaning of the word naked. He rose, naked as innocence can get, and looked at the spread of stars. His master didn't belong on the diamond hard world they were living in either. There had to be a better place for them somewhere. Hundreds of little tingles danced across his bare shoulders and he spun, hands up to defend himself, and found a small female... with wings. She wore long blue hair and an irreverent smirk on her tiny mouth. If he placed both of his wrists back to back, fingers pointing out, that's about how tall she was, with wings double that size. “Hello,” he said, cautiously. 19

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“Hello,” she mimicked him, bowing, hands behind her bent hard at her wrists. “Hello, guest. I am Angela, the spirit of House Yarill. You seem to be lacking clothing and the Master has requested that all guests wear clothing. Are you the pet of a guest or a guest? I am confused about your status.” She giggled and spun around in the air. Alix sucked his cheeks in between his teeth and considered. “Why are you confused, Angela?” “Your phenotype suggests that you are of pet status. Your ascetic appeal supports this, however you are not registered in the house registry of allowed pets. You did not come with Her Majesty or Lord Drexel. You entered the domicile via the Lord gate which pets are restricted from. Your hair states your status as a noble and your behavior is that of a guest even though your genetic markers state you are a pet. I am confused. Clarify for me please.” “I am,” he started, unsure of what he should or even wanted to say, and what the consequences were. Shifting from one foot to the other, he considered, and then, it was the gold star under his foot that made up his mind. “I am a guest from a different world. I lost my clothes, on, uh, reentry.” Okay, if he were going to play the master, he'd have to go all the way. “Provide me with clothing.” It wasn't as if he hadn’t listened to the temple workers for years. They had to get their stories and arrogance somewhere. She bowed again, dancing now, where she hung in the air, as if she'd accepted his story. “May I have your name, Master, and your function, so I can produce acceptable clothing?” “I'm Alix,” he said, “I'm a harper. Can you also produce a small lap harp?” “Of which design? Ketestial or Greek?” Alix couldn't actually say he knew anything about either, but hoped greatly that a harp was something to play in either case, and if that was so, it wouldn't matter. “Greek.” He almost yipped as she literally shattered into millions of little dots of light that swirled around like insane fireworks. The harp appeared first. It was dark, and curved, winged men on both of the curved sides and translucent strings, when Alix was used to metal. He was so intent on examining the new harp that he didn't notice the dark green velvet tunic that appeared at his feet, or the soft black ankle boots. “Master Alix, I have generated your clothing. I believe they will compliment your 20

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ascetic. Is the harp acceptable?” It felt like forever since he'd picked up a harp and it brought feelings of homesickness like a hangover for just not thinking about things. The translucent strings though had a different kind of sound than his more familiar metal, softer and faster, less twang at the end. He ran through a quick scale, then an inverted scale, up, down, up, down, and found himself smiling, at peace, no longer naked, even as he stood there on the map of the universe wearing just a harp. “It's wonderful. Thank you, Angela.” The clothes fit perfectly, flowing around his lean body, soft over the bare tops of his feet. He tied the tunic top and sat down, harp in his lap. Just a moment more and he'd finish exploring the house, looking for some clue as to what was pulling his master's strings. One leg out, he notched the bottom of the harp against one bent knee and filled the big empty room with the soul of a lost harper, mournful music that was the best voice of his heart. *** Yraine set the shot glass down. She'd never been one for spirits. Her world was ordered and gentle, with everything in its place. Every person had their place and as long as each one upheld their role, the universe danced through a beautiful ball that was life. Her place was to maintain that dance. She wanted another shot of Lord Yarill's nice spirits, something dark and 'burningful'. “Valentine,” she said, plaintively, “What am I do?” “For starters,” he said, from where he sat, leaning back in Tris' favorite chair, both feet firmly on the floor, as if he were just a little blown back by his current conversation. “You can tell me how you realized I wasn't created here?” Yes, she thought to herself, more spirits. She poured another full shot and started sipping on it. Her gloves had long since come off, her hair down from the clips, leaving sable curls clinging to flushed cheeks. “We tried to duplicate you. You are what Earth wants, Valentine, dear.” “Oh dear god,” he said, both hands firmly on the arms of Tristan's chair. “Were you successful?” Her words were slurring ever so slightly, as her next sip turned out to be half the shot glass. “Success is so very,” she paused to finish the shot glass, “So very subjective, is it not? The results were unfortunate. This is when I realized that the walls of my world are a little smaller than the walls of the universe.” 21

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“About bloody time,” Valentine snapped. “Valentine, what am I going to do?” she asked again, the thought so much in the front of her mind that she didn't notice she'd begun repeating herself. “You don't mind what I am?” “And what are you? Either you are a pet whom I allowed short hair, whom I allowed to prey on my enemies, or you are a man able to stand equally by my side. You are Valentine, and Valentine is,” she paused, looking into the seemingly bottomlessness of her shot glass, “That is, Valentine is beyond the walls of my world.” “My lady,” he said, his voice softly British when he hadn't even heard a British voice in a hundred years. “My lady, were I you, I might select my favorites and take to a fast and solid ship, and find a new home. Become a new founder.” “You’re suggesting to run? You can't be serious. I must protect everyone. It's my place in the world.” She threw the shot glass at him, but it shattered on the hard stone floor long before it reached him. “Even you, you vampire. I will protect you as well.” “My Majesty,” he said, rising, stately, thoughtful. “Listen to the voice of experience. It is not always possible to protect everyone.” “You're still angry over Micha, aren't you? I have explained. He is a pet and pets have no soul, no thoughts except as we give it to them. I always knew you were different. He only seemed like a person because he had been programmed that way! Pets are no different than the pixies that clean the house, organic computers with pretty faces. Do you wish to free all the pixies too?” “My Majesty,” Valentine snapped. “Yes, just as we're being so honest with each other and facing the walls of our worlds, yes, I am bloody well angry over Micha still.” “I'll buy him for you! I'll make his owner give him to me as a tribute. I can do that, you know,” she said. “Or I'll buy you a better one and install the original Micha programming and you'll never need to be without him again. We can make him as immortal as you are, Valentine. Think of it.” Rage could do odd things to him, shift him when he didn't mean to. It was the same with fear and watching some alien life form decimate a squad of marines was close to terror. His eyes shifted red and he could feel his fangs pressing lower. “Listen to me well, my lady, the measure of a person is not simply in the program which one installs. Micha is not something which can be bought.” She held to the bar behind her, dark eyes wide, and she looked like the child he 22

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saw her as in that moment, just a child trying to wear her Mommy's shoes. “All things can be bought. That's what we do.” “No they can't,” Valentine whispered. And that's when the music drifted in, sweet and quick, a melody that made her sway with it before she understood. Elegant fingers brushed back through her tousled curls as she moved towards the door. “I like Lord Yarill's house, but I thought we were alone. Valentine, you said we were alone.” “We are alone,” he insisted, following her out onto the landing. “Oh Christ,” he said, a curse from his really early years. The main hall stretched below them. The map of the universe stretched wide as the universe itself almost, thousands of gold and diamond celestial bodies glittering in the valley of the main hall. And there nearer the edge of unknown space sat one slender man, short hair curling around his neck, dark green velvet cloths making him seem almost as if he were just a part of the floor, a part of this image of the universe. His hair seemed nothing more than a dark blond, dusty in the dim light, slightly ragged, but very comfortable on him. Against his bent knee he held a harp, an ancient style, even if the music it played was fresh as the last morning one could have. “Stairs,” she commanded as easily as someone might have flicked a light switch in an older world. The railing disappeared in front of her and four pixies appeared, holding golden steps for her, moving them quickly, so she walked down towards the hall. Valentine grabbed for her and missed, as she began to run down the pixie held stairs. He hissed. He'd kill her, he would! Before he'd see her damage the sweetness that was Alix. Tristan or no, he would not allow Alix to be mindwiped and destroyed. “My Majesty,” he called, wanting to draw her attention back from the oblivious little harper. It was his fault, and Valentine would never get used to his own capacity to screw things over. If he hadn't cut Alix's hair, this wouldn't be happening! “Hello!” Yraine called, waving as she ran in her girly cute little fashion towards Alix. “I didn't realize that Lord Yarill had a guest!” Alix looked up, smiled, that damn death sentence short hair clinging to his face. “Hi! I thought I was alone!” He stood, tucking the harp under one arm and held out his hand, as if he were greeting another pet. Valentine covered his face with a hand while rubbing a temple. 23

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Tristan was going to kill him, and it would be justified. “Hello,” Her Majesty said, apparently forgetting her royal obligations after a couple shots of whiskey. “I'm Yraine! What were you playing? That's the most beautiful music I've ever heard! Why haven't I heard you before? Have you been in seclusion learning to play like that? You must come to the palace with me!” Valentine's headache throbbed in his fangs, all the way to his temples. He put one hand on the railing and vaulted over, landing with a small flash of his suit jacket. “My Majesty, this is my dear friend Alix.” “Alix?” she said, wobbling as she turned to face Valentine. “Doesn't Lord Yarill call his new pet, Alix?” Then she turned back to Alix, “You should demand that he change the thing's name. It shouldn't have the name of such a talented musician.” Alix's mouth dropped open and both arms went around his harp. Valentine shook his head, very small, very sharp and Alix swallowed. Valentine mouthed, “My Majesty.” Then Alix's eyes went really wide. He licked his lips and forced a smile. “My Majesty, I'd be happy to play for you some more. Harping is about all I'm really good for, but if,” and he paused, to look at Valentine for clues, “If you'd like, I'd be happy to play for you some more.” “Would you? Lord?” “Lord Harper,” Valentine said, lips a very thin line. “He's visiting me from my home world. He can't stay though.” “Valentine, Valentine,” she said, moving close to him, so that she could slip her arms around him, “The world is ending, please don't lie to me. I don't mind so much if Lord Yarill takes in some other lord's bastard and hides him. Lord Yarill is always so kind like that. That's why I trust him. What is one bastard compared to the end of our entire race?” Valentine shuddered, fingers stiff and itching to strangle the woman holding him. The laws of breeding in this strange world had never truly bothered Valentine. It wasn't as if he could become concerned about the legitimacy of offspring. “Alix,” he said, “Play us something cheerful. Her Majesty has had disturbing news today.” “Of course,” Alix said, sitting back down where he had been. If breeding rules were lost on Valentine, they were doubly lost on Alix, but music he could play.

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Scene Six

Darkness clung to Tristan's dreams. He had not been home for years. The nightmare twitched across his face and he shivered, a fist wadding up sweat dampened sheet. He'd brought Alix down from The Raver, against his better judgment because the nightmares had not shaded his dreams since he'd been holding Alix. The dream echoed Alix in his arms, cuddling, safe, happy, so full of life, even in his sleep, almost aggressively affectionate, crossed with darker images that Tristan didn't want to see again. Once there had been three of them. As boys, Tristan and Micha had found Valentine in Micha’s grandmother's closed up lab. She'd been a very talented geneticist. It was a practiced dream. Micha, smiling, curly red hair around his face, mischievous blue eyes, reaching for the door to the lab's main containment core. It had been dark in the lab, just emergency lights, so quiet, no equipment, just the sound of two young men being where they shouldn't have been. “Be careful, Micha,” Tristan had said, but the door was opening already. What was within was out, a flash of blond and tweed, and Micha was shoved back into a table, over, up against the wall, in microseconds. So fast, Tristan never even had a chance to process what had happened. “Be careful, Micha!” And the slap that came next, his sister's hand, years later, after they'd found Valentine. “If you were my first born, I would have spaced you!” She snarled, furious, his beautiful and ambitious sister. He didn't blame her, and even in the dream he'd stopped trying to explain. There were 194 founding families left and the head of each line, the firstborn in 25

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each new generation, had the right of 'swearing off' or challenging the ruling house. Each founding house had as much right to the throne as any other. Tristan was firstborn, the one who carried the Yarill right to swear-off or challenge. From the moment he'd been able to dream of what he wanted, he had wanted the Celestine. She was a graceful jump ship that could, in theory, make the jump to Maris9 and back again, solar powered. She was a failed project that had never made the jump, never displaced Centri-minemas from the center of the known universe. The swear-off price could be very outrageous for a powerful house. And the other side of those prices could be just as harsh. His sister continued screaming at him, “You traded our future for a slave? A mindless pet? He's not real! Tristan! He never was! It was wrong what they did, but it was a swear-off price! Do you understand? Just an old woman's wish.” “This is my wish! My price!” Panting, heart racing, dark memories chasing him, Tristan woke, sitting upright in his bed, “Alix! Val?” Fully Lord Yarill, servant to a raging need to possess his Alix, he rose out of his bed. Jealousy quickly suppressed guilt and sorrow from his nightmare. If submission were genetic in a pet, possession matched it in a master. Tristan Yarill was the head of a line bred to mastery for a thousand years, noble and entitled before humans had ever left Earth Prime. Red hair stood on end. He grabbed his pants, pulling them on as he stalked through the little play cottage. “Alix!” As he stepped out of the little cottage, a flash of blue caught his eye, long and tangled against a green shrub wall of the hedge maze. Real fear iced the blood in his veins. Alix wouldn't know, wouldn't understand, and Tris had only one swear-off price. “Alix! Where are you?” He called as he ran. “Alix, come to me!” Hair had drifted like debris through the maze, tangling and twisting against the green. The swear-off price that had given Micha a normal childhood and youth had expired the night of their college graduation. The swear-off price of his grandmother had been a normal childhood and full college career for her grandson, a grandson she'd created in her laboratory after the death of her daughter and unborn grandson. If she'd lived long enough to see that, she could have kept him safe, kept him free and never 26

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knowing. She hadn't. The swear-off price of his uncle had returned Micha to the status of pet on the night of his graduation. Tristan's best friend for all his life was a pet. Tristan's swear-off wish fought Micha's Uncle's and what came out made few people happy. Tristan lost the Celestine and squandered five generations of climb towards the throne, but Micha lived. Many times Tristan had wondered if he'd made the right choice. Micha was still gone and in his place there was a submissive, empty eyed pet. The last thing Micha had done was cut his hair, refuse his pet status, and they'd mind wiped him because of it, creating in him a sweet and affectionate no one. Tristan grabbed silky blue evidence from the maze and cried, “Angela!” “Master,” the pixie said, the soul of his house said, bowing. “How may I help you?” “Locate Alix.” “Guest Alix is within the main house, with Her Majesty and Guest Valentine.” White, his vision went white. The house had not recognized Alix's pet status. He ran, full out, heart pounding. He'd run, take Alix and Valentine, and steal Mischa...just run. The Raver could make the jump to Maris9 as well, if he wasn't coming back. Wearing just his pants, bare feet sticking to the marble floor as he ran in, he was ready, he'd just run. They could not take Alix and make him empty! There in his main hall, on his own star map they stood. Alix sat on the floor, the back of his neck naked and visible. Valentine stood above them, and Tristan's mind refused to say who was there, sitting on his floor. The arrogant blond held out his hand, then drew a finger back to lay over his lips, urging silence. Tristan held out his fist, damning blue hair dangling from both sides in accusation. The vampire grinned, crooked and looking no older than he'd been the day they rescued him, no more mature, just cocky and reckless, as if he were above their laws and ways. Both hands out, palms up, he shrugged. Tristan was so angry, so enraged over the danger his lover had been put into, he almost didn't even hear the music, harp and voice, sweet and beautiful music. “I'm going to kill you,” he mouthed, knowing his long time cohort in crime would understand just fine. “You're welcome to try,” Valentine mouthed back, still grinning and not the least 27

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disturbed by Tristan's anger. Alix must have seen Valentine's silent comment, or the near laughing grin, as he stopped singing and turned to look back over his shoulder. “Tristan! Look, the house gave me a harp!” And then, Tristan realized that Her Majesty, the keeper of their world's law and the only person who could agree to or enforce a swear-off price sat up, looking sleepy and tousled. “Lord Yarill,” she said, one arm going around Alix's neck, embracing him. “I so love you! You protect the most unfortunate and talented people! Didn't you save Valentine? And now you've saved this wonderful man too! I love you so much, Lord Yarill!” He couldn't think, the fist with Alix's hair hidden behind his back. Her voice was slurred, and the rational part of his mind said she was drunk, very drunk. The panicked part was screaming that this was a spoiled young girl who could have him and his whole family turned into so much bacteria food. If he crossed her, even his swear-off price protecting Micha could be taken back. “I love you too, Majesty.” He bent one knee, bowing, heart gone stone cold terror white. “It's the end of the world, Tristan. I may call you Tristan, mayn't I? You've always been one of my favorites. Are you still angry over that Micha thing? I promised to make Valentine another of him. Should I make you one too? We can get the original personality and install it again! It'll be just like it never happened! Then you'll help me, Tristan?” And then the thought of killing her and trying to run came back. Tristan and Valentine's eyes locked, plotting snapping between them. The anger faded back a little. “I'll do anything I can to help you, Majesty.” “Well, to start with!” She said, dramatic, drawing herself up, swaying as she pointed her finger at him. “You must change your pet's name! This wonderful musician is named Alix as well and he should not share his name with a pet! I'm going to kill them all, all the pets, all the farms! And then the aliens will never find us! We'll be safe!” The slap hit before anyone even really saw Alix stand up. And there he was, harp in one hand, a cold fury on his face, and the hand slapped again, leaving flaming outrage on her cheek. “You can not save by killing. If we are in danger, we will all stand together. My mother says that courage is found in truth and in harmony. It's like a good song, the 28

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notes must work together or the song will fall apart.” Hand on her cheek, tears running down her face, she was nothing more than just a confused girl so completely out of her league. Eyes locked with Alix's, she whispered, “I'm afraid, but I'm supposed to know what to do. I'm supposed to know because I was bred to be the ruler. Everyone has their place in our world. Pets serve, donors wait to be part of the world, nobles enjoy and protect, and the head of the ruling house guides. The pets are told to believe the nobles are gods, and it makes their lives easy, but the nobles believe I'm a god, and I have to be.” Tristan could see his pet's knuckles white where he held the harp and it surprised him, such passion and personhood, even in his own sweet Alix. Silence was anything but quiet between pet and queen as they stood there on the star map trying to find themselves. “Do you think if you kill the pets, that your place will go away too, and you wouldn't be responsible for what happens next?” Tristan moved to interrupt, thoughts of killing his queen already gone, and he didn't know how to find a safe way through, but Alix could only make things worse. Valentine held up his hand though, fingers poised, and so completely exotically not of Tristan's world, something ancient and Earth like. Yraine nodded. “If the pets are gone, there will be nothing on the outlaying worlds and the war will just pass us by.” “Don't kill my family, please. If you're to protect, aren't you to protect us all?” “Was your mother a pet?” Yraine asked, incredulous. Tristan groaned and waved his finger at Valentine as the vampire snarled silently, long fangs pressing against his lower lip. “My mother, my sister. Don't you have family that loves you? That can help you with this? Why do you have to do it alone?” “I love you!” Yraine said, her arms going back around Alix's neck. “Alix, will you be my family? Will you help me?” Alix wrapped both arms around her, holding her, one hand soothing her hair. “I'll help you. You can be my sister and we'll figure out how to protect everyone.” “I don't care if your mother was a pet! Or your sister! You can be my brother! And I'll make you the head of the head of the 195th house!” Smiling, she pulled away a little, and looked over her shoulder at a very pale, very predatory Valentine. “Isn't that a wonderful idea, Valentine? I can do anything. I'm the queen. My word is the law and I'll 29

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declare peace and the proof is that Alix is the head of the 195th house! What is your family name, Alix?” “Harper, but Yraine, I don't want to be a house, not like the small woman with wings. I like being with Tristan.” “But you can come be with me for a while, can't you Alix? Come and be my family so I don't have to be alone? Tristan can come visit you at the palace. Just stay with me for a little while, Alix, until the war goes away. I'll give you the Celestine if you do. I know Tristan wanted that and you can give it to him as a wedding gift if you keep me company just for a little while.” Alix looked to his master, whose mouth had dropped full open, eyes wide with shock. Alix smiled at him, felt such great love for him. “I would like to give Tristan something he'd wanted. I haven't had anything to give him except myself. I'll come stay with you.” “Wonderful! Lord Harper! I'll make you Lord Harper! Do you like that?” Tristan didn't feel anything, not the floor, not the breeze over his bare skin, not the long strands of blue slipping from his fingers, and before he knew it, he was being held against the hard cold body of his friend, the distinctive sweet flower smell of Valentine's hunger around him. They'd gotten themselves into some loss this time.

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Scene Seven

In Poison's House Valentine had left Tristan to drink the rest of his spirits. In the centuries of his life, he was sure he'd been in more trouble, but he couldn't really remember any particular place. It was Micha's fault. It was Tristan's fault and his damned Alix. Life would be so much easier if he could just run without them, but he couldn't...just couldn't make himself. And really, he liked this world. The mores of the dominant culture actually reminded him a great deal of his childhood. It was like returning to his hometown in that anything one had the means to pay for could be had and could be had with a graceful delivery. Back in the capital city, and refusing to think about Tristan being alone in his big house, he was working on getting them all out of deep water. He looked the part that he played, which always made everything so much easier. A lean man, sharp in his movements more than elegant, with moonlight pale hair and pale jade eyes, he did look like something that might have come out of a laboratory on this twisted little world. He had been born when laboratories still belonged to alchemists and stars controlled destinies not navigation systems. It was good to be a demon in a world that did not believe in demons. Humans, even before he wasn't one anymore, always judged a book by its cover. Bad idea. He wrapped the long blue strand of stolen hair around his pointer and middle finger and then unwrapped it. He was guilty of judging a book by its cover too. He'd seen all that long blue hair, that sweetly formed body, and he'd thought there was nothing within, except what had been programmed. Very bad idea. Alix would change everything, had already done so. Lord Harper. It would upset the world. The worthless little creature should have been no more than an afternoon lunch, if he had not been the property of a friend. Valentine still did not fully understand how lunch could be come a friend so very very quickly. 31

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Valentine's coach slowed, perfectly, not even the slightest jerk of a real carriage. No matter how perfect something might be, nothing was ever really as one remembered it. He stepped smartly out of the replica hansom carriage in front of a five story ivory white house with more stained glass than Chartres had had. Valentine had always found Poison's house bordering on the obscene with decadence. It was one of the reasons he loved the man. “Home,” he said to his horse, a raven black creature with black eyes and silver edged hooves. The horse bent one knee and a warm chocolate elegant voice spoke from the silver heart on the collar around its neck. “Yes, Master. And a return?” “Put yourself to pasture. I may be some time. If Lord Yarill makes contact, tell him that I have not been seen.” Tristan was distraught, raving as badly as when Micha had been made a pet, now that his Alix was made a lord. Status shifts seemed to bother humans, but Valentine had no time for hysterics. “Yes, Master.” Spike acknowledged. Centri’menemas was a city with many stranger things than a talking horse as a servant. It was a city in the last days of its life though and Valentine knew this. Sometimes cities survived the death, and sometimes they did not, and he was not staying around to find out if this were a Paris or a Bejing. That had always been the plan, to not stay, but now, now maybe he would. “Damn, Tris and his stupid pet,” he thought, pushing a dancing nymph from his arm as he crossed to Poison's door, Alix's hair still wrapped around his fingers. The door opened, greeted him with the voice of a long dead singer and he resisted the urge to kick it. There were times when the fantasy world he lived in drove him to distraction and frustration, which only made his hunger rise. “Tell your master I require his immediate attention,” he demanded of the door as it closed, a beautiful woman's face rising out of the wood to smile at his back. “Lord Valentine,” the voice purred, seductress, vamp, “My master requests you meet him in the library. He said to tell you that he's missed you a great deal and you're very naughty for staying away so long.” The scent of blood, warm and tinged with lust drifted around him and Valentine groaned. “Alright, already, I'm coming!” he said, hunger giving his words a very old world British accent. Goddamn Poison and his pheromones. Not that blood was a pheromone, 32

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but maybe more effective in any case. No matter how far he got from home, the hunger always took him right back to being a petty cutpurse in a back alley. “Poison!” What is that awful stench?” A portly man with a glass of dark and ice in his hand asked, exiting the room that had been the Poison's former master's favorite sitting room. The man looked very much like one would expect Daver Mascon to have looked, sounded like him, could pass a voice recognition as him, had all his memories, would pass a DNA verification. Yet Daver Mascon was so many spare proteins in Poison's lab. Daver Mascon, when he'd been alive, had been Micha's uncle, and he'd used his swear-off price to the most unfortunate outcome. “Sod off,” Valentine snapped, and the man's eyes glazed for a moment. “Yes, Master Valentine. You're looking hungry. Want to bite me?” The response was one of the first hardwired into the man by his real master. The man dropped his glass and a dozen tiny fairy-like creatures emerged from the walls of Poison's house and swarmed the mess. “Poison!” Valentine growled, peeling his tweed suit jacket off. “Things have changed!” The scent of blood thickened in the air. Only now it was tainted with more than lust, hunger, anger, and Valentine's fangs remembered his truer form, skin translucent, eyes half hooded, lips parted as he panted and keyed in the code to the 'library' door. Code in, he held out his hand and a fairy, maybe twenty centimeters tall and looking very much like a scantily clad pink haired Tristan rolled over his hand, letting the household computer system do a bio scan of him that would have shamed Her Majesty's technology department. The fairy Tristan knelt in his hand and blew him a kiss before disappearing into a glittery mist of light. It almost made being a vampire feel mundane, but then the door opened and he forgot even to be concerned over the coming war, let alone to be angry at Poison. Poison was Micha Mascon, biochemist. Micha had been a genuinely nice person with blood like honey, kindness in his eyes that made plain into beautiful. In Centri’menemas the only law was that you couldn't break the law unless you had the power to do so. Pet's always had long hair. A person did not make an exact replica of a relative who had not been dead at least fifty years. Pets were not allowed to think they were humans. Poison had broken every law his world could think up, so he was ready for a new world. 33

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Micha Mascon was a pet, had been born in probably this very laboratory. He'd grown up in this house, running and laughing and being a boy. He'd owned his own companion pets. He'd gone to school and he'd gone to balls. He'd fallen in love and he'd been all that nobility could offer a person. He'd been the one to free Valentine from the lab. He'd been Valentine's first real friend. There had been days of looking for a cure, days of hope and laughter for Tristan, Micha, and Valentine. And then his uncle had called him home from the graduation ball. It was all a lie, the vilest lie that Valentine had ever heard of in nearly 2,000 years of preying up on human kind. One of the main problems of preying on one's fellow humans is that sometimes they're smarter than you. Before Valentine could have his own vengeance, before he'd even realized the horror that this people were able to come up with, Micha had become Poison and the days of looking for a cure were over. Those were long years gone though and it was Alix's blood and the powerful life and innocence in that blood that brought such memories back, that made him remember Micha when he saw Poison. The library was a computer system, the most advanced that Valentine ever wanted to see. Thoughts seemed real within and imagination reigned, or insanity, as the case may be. Valentine's hunger distorted his face, he could feel it, skeletal, fangs in a snarl, and there before him was the most beautiful creature in all the worlds. “You'd think that if I were a leprous troll,” Poison said floating around slowly, bare feet dangling above a pool of shimmering blue data. Red hair, impossibly red, floated around him, and Valentine thought of old paintings of 'the lady of the lake' and there was his friend. Poison read his thoughts so easily and Valentine didn't know if that was something to do with the technology or if they'd shared too much blood and were kin in deeper ways now. Stepping into the room, he moved, walking over what his mind told him was a clear blue lake, “Come here, my sweet little monster.” Poison reached for lines in the air that were simply part of some angelic harp to Valentine's eyes. Whatever DNA one needed to interface with these computers, Valentine did not have it. “Tristan's DNA has been in the stream.” Impatient now, hunger boiling from Poison's perfumed invitation, Valentine spoke through gritted teeth. “And that means?” “Someone is making a copy of him. He's not so pretty that someone couldn't 34

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create better. Someone is planning treason. We need to leave, Val. The ship is nearly ready. Did I make you hungry, Valentine?” “Very. You are a very wicked person,” Valentine hissed, and the room around them changed, recreating itself out of Poison's imagination. There were so many things he needed to tell his friend, but he couldn't put one rational thought next to another. The biochemist now lay on a huge four-poster bed; the covers turned back so it was just his lean body nestled on the white down covering. Hair red as blood, the mark of his slavery, wrapped around his wrists, tying them to the headboard, leaving his very male, very beautiful body vulnerable to a vampire's hunger. Valentine walked slowly to the side of the bed, as gold and green speckled eyes followed him. Poison could fairly bleed excited terror, with tight little pink nipples and a perfectly shaped cock lying unprotected against soft red curls. Valentine's fangs ached. Poison bent one knee, blocking Valentine's view of his cock, as if he were trying to hide himself. “Please don't hurt me,” he whispered. “Oh god,” Valentine groaned, dropping his shirt and forgetting to even try to tell Poison about the Celestine. Quickly he was as nude as his shivering 'victim'. Valentine was hard as well, the curve of his cock glistening with desire. This whole culture seemed fixated on virginity, maybe because so few of them could remember actually having it. “Lower your leg, I wish to view what is mine to take. Spread your legs, Sacrifice. Accept your fate.” Stepping out of his trousers, he climbed up on the bed and ran cool fingers down Poison's jaw, to a smooth-chested nipple, which he pinched and rolled as the smaller man tried to pull back, tried to escape the grip on his sensitive nipple. “Owwwww,” Poison cried, but he was arching up into the pulling twist. “Bastard!” Breath deep and hard, Valentine straddled his prize, their cocks touching, sensitive, silky flesh striking sparks of sensation in both of them. “Hush, Poison, hush,” Valentine groaned, sliding smooth hands up the muscular body under him, “I'm too hungry already.” “Hurt me,” Poison pleaded, letting the fantasy fall away. “Valentine, hold me later.” “Lay still.” It was a command, in a short tone, ancient accent. “Be very still, Poison.” 35

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There were moments when Valentine truly did frighten Poison, when the danger of what he taunted reached into him and wakened something dormant and hidden, some part of him that wished to live. There were things he did not understand about the man he'd welcomed into his sanctuary, things that went beyond unlacing a man's DNA to have a peek into his soul. Cool fingers caressed down his chest, over the line of his waist, and encircled his hard cock. Hardness was like every sensation began and ended between his legs. Maybe it was like that for everyone. Maybe it was just the way he was wired, but he understood that Valentine would hurt him, seriously hurt him if he pushed the vampire's blood lust any farther. And so he lay there, spreading his legs in invitation, wrists bound with his own hair above his head. Toes pointed as those cool fingers massaged his balls, gentle, so gentle as if the vampire did not want to harm him. Valentine was a good man, and Poison respected that, respected the friendship between them as if it were the last thread to what remained of his own humanity. He closed his eyes as those fingers explored between his legs then, seeking entrance to his body. From the moment he'd known Valentine was coming, he'd made sure he was ready for this, for the intimacy of this penetration. Melted oil, the kind a pet often was prepared by, slicked the movement of Valentine's finger around the very sensitive skin of his entrance. Still was so very hard when the touch felt so good, so dangerously wicked. As the finger slipped into him, slowly spreading the tight ring of his muscle, his head tilted back, and the slight movement inflamed the dangerous man holding him. He wasn't sure when Valentine's arm had gotten under his shoulders, and wasn't sure when his mouth had been possessed by the strong mouth of his friend. A glamour and it only worked at height of Valentine's lust, Poison abandoned himself to the nearly savage kiss, to the deep explorations of his most intimate place, stroking heated flesh that clamped tight around the invading finger. The kiss tasted of blood, but he did not feel the bite, only the powerful tongue painting his mouth with a kind of companionship, a kind of longing and need that Poison was only too happy to give back. Long canines, sharp, warmed now by Poison's blood and life energy, Poison loved those fangs, the power he could feel behind them, aged and refined, timeless lust that could barely contain itself. When the kiss broke, his lips felt bruised, touched unmistakably by real passion, and he lay, in Valentine's embrace legs spread, while 36

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Valentine's hard fingers searched out his secret spot. “You were very naughty to get me so worked up, my dear, and now you must pay. First you are going to cum as I stroke your button, spill your seed on your belly like a bad school boy,” Valentine pronounced. “But I'm forty-six,” Poison protested, though he didn't look his age. Biologically he had not aged since he became Poison. “I'm very naughty, but I'm not a school boy.” “And then I'm going to roll your reckless self over and spank you.” “You wouldn't!” Poison dared him. “And when you have remembered how very mortal your sweet little body is, I'm going to fuck your sore little ass. How's that for pain?” “Did I really anger you, Valentine?” “No, but you did frighten me. I would never want to truly harm you,” he said, “And who is to say that I do not just wish to spank you before I fuck you?” “Fucking vampire!” Poison growled as those fingers finally found his prostate and stroked, slowly, expertly over the spot. Poison bent one knee, lifting his hips off the bed, but Valentine's fingers stayed with him, teasing, stroking the pleasure higher. “Damn blood sucker!” “That's right, Poison, feel it building? Feel me take you up? You can't escape it. I can do anything I want with you. Give in, my friend, when I give you leave, you will release, creamy and thick.” “No, I can't,” Poison said, hips moving, but it was hard to say if they were moving away or towards the fingers fucking him. Some of Micha echoed in that plaintive cry, and Valentine knew this was as near to his old friend as he would ever get. Deep from within himself, Valentine unleashed a memory of release, of passion and flashed that into the tight body in his arms. Poison cried out, hips off the bed, body frozen, as cum shot from him, splattering pearls over his chest and belly. Valentine held that, like a meditation, holding that passion echoing between them, until Poison began to tremble and cry softly. “Valentine.” It was only one word and Poison, for all his tinkering was still only a mortal man, but it echoed so much. It spoke of loneliness and fear of a darkness that one could only see when there were glimmers of light. “I'm here,” Valentine promised. “I will always be here.” And then there was the holding, strong arms around Poison's still trembling body. 37

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Soft caresses went both ways. Accepting fingers wiped blood from Valentine's pale lips which then resumed their kiss, tender now. Small wishes, sucking softly, licking, a vampire kiss, sharing blood, sharing soul and small bites. Valentine rolled his little captive over before there could be another protest. Poison set the scene, imagined the world they played in, but once it was set, it was set, and Valentine knew his friend didn't want the scene to end yet. “No, I'll be good!” Poison lied, moving his smooth ass, inviting. Valentine's lust was sated more now though, enough to bring back worries. “Things have changed, Poison. Tristan has a new pet.” “Valentine? What do I care if he's got a new toy? I don't care if we leave him here when we go. You're the one that insists on bringing Lord Yarill.” “What happened was not his fault,” Valentine pointed, out, keeping the slender body of his lover pinned. “But there is a chance we could get our hands on The Celestine.” “The Celestine? How? Only the royal family can power it on. I have already tried every maneuver I can think of, and I can think of a lot. You've eaten a couple of them.” “You're such a good cook,” Valentine teased, and there were moments when he was afraid of Poison as well. “There is a new opportunity,” Valentine continued, pouring out what had happened with Tristan's pet. “Lord Harper? She has made a pet into a lord and she will give it The Celestine?” Rage, like drying blood, shriveled Poison's voice. The scene shifted, shimmering and darkening, so they were no longer on a thick comfortable bed, but in a dungeon, dank and dark, and Poison's eyes shimmered with dark light. Valentine pulled back, again wearing his pants as they'd come back, ragged twill between his knees and the wet stone of the dungeon floor. It was a memory of his own, from the darkness of his own past. “Micha,” he screamed at the red head kneeling in front of him, “What have you done?” Poison had always been beautiful, glowing skin, kissable lips, but now there were fangs as well, delicate, beautiful fangs, not like Valentine's. “Are you surprised? I know you've feared it, feared my becoming what you are, Valentine. There is a way, a beautiful way. I can't copy the royal family close enough, but I can copy a pet. The copy will do anything I say.” 38

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“No, Poison, listen to me,” Valentine growled, unable to hold his ground as Poison shoved him back, pushed him against the wall. “Alix is valuable! He's not replaceable!” Valentine felt himself spun around, felt an unmovable and delicate body pressed hard against him. “Do you love him more than me?” “No,” Valentine protested, as strong hands opened his trousers again. “Poison! Listen to me.” “Oh, but I am listening to you, Valentine. I hear your racing heart and I feel your passion. I feel your wish that you were human again. I feel the kindness growing in your heart and I feel how excited you are that you're pushed up against this wall and how much you hope I'm going to fuck you while you feel like such a weak little mortal man. I feel feel how excited you are to be taken without permission by one of your own kind. You're a beautiful man, Valentine St. Grenis.” “You didn't! You didn't really, Micha?” Valentine asked. “No, tried, can't. You're one of a kind. You were just so involved with what Her Misbegotten had done that I got jealous and wanted your attention back on me. Valentine,” Poison said, spinning Valentine back around, kissing him, soft, wet kisses from tears that didn't show in the illusion they were hiding in. “I need you. I love you.” “I'll protect you,” Valentine said, and they were suddenly back into the lab, in the dark, floating together above Poison's data pool, hanging in zero gravity, surrounded by all lines of illicit data that Poison could hide in. “I'll protect you, Poison, I will.” Salt made tears taste a little like blood and Valentine licked Poison's cheeks, kissed away tears and slowly they let their passion build back up. Muted now though, they held each other, kissing, tangling up in each other, and Valentine's hand went around both their cocks. Sexual need and comfort, primal hungers, older even in Valentine than the blood hunger. He needed to hold his lover, to feel the warmth of his skin, the rhythm of his heart. “Take me, Poison?” Valentine whispered into silky hair. They shifted into different positions as they floated, the larger Valentine sliding up, one leg around Poison's waist. “No,” Poison whispered, hands, nowhere nearly as strong now that they weren't in a fantasy illusion, climbing his way up Valentine's body. “I'm the one that's ready, you 39

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fuck me. You said you were going to.” “Alright,” Valentine murmured, hands on slender hips as he pulled the slick entrance closer to the head of his cock. “When I'm with you, I'm mortal, because I'd die if anything happened to you.” They joined, tight warm heat sliding down over Valentine's cool hardness, inflaming and merging them both in a way that illusion could never do. Poison wrapped himself around Valentine, locking his ankles as their kiss joined again, his hands on Valentine's head. Slow thrusts met with slow rocking and they fucked each other, friends and lovers, timeless and without worry about what would come. Some things had changed, changed more than Valentine could understand.

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Scene Eight

The world of Centri'Menimas curved below her like the soft swell of life, blue and green, swirling white, as delicate a love as Captain Sa'vira Yarill had ever known. Most loves were not delicate and she didn't expect them to be. Silent as the void that stretched from away from the heart of their world, she waited for her prey. Lira, her Shirk, hung cloaked in the velvet night, betraying not a glittering of light or a shimmer of heat. Each Shrik was born and nurtured for the one and only pilot it would ever know. Living and deadly, it grew into the self-image of it's pilot. Sa'vira petted the back of her hand over the smooth living wall of her cockpit. They had flown together for the better part of ten years, she and Lira. Through Lira's sensors, Sa’vira knew her squad was there as well, waiting, that no one had picked up any data yet. So they would wait. Sa'vira had another love though that no swear-off price could ever have gotten her close to. Lira shifted under her, so subtle, sharing Sa'vira's longing. One might as well have loved a star for all her longing was going to get her though. She wasn't a beautiful woman. The enhancements she had were all for her Shrik, all for her flying. She had plain brown hair, short enough that the Shrik's sensor pads had no problem connecting with her scalp and neck, dark brown eyes with an intelligence that had been there long before any enhancements. Nestled deep within her Lira, she was as beautiful as she was going to get. A screen flared, it's blue data jumping to life in mid air, targets. Targets were not a love, but very close. Lira's thoughts, predatory and powerful rose over Sa'vira's and they decloaked. Lira un-stretched her wings, onyx sharp and reaching out to both sides like a harpy incarnate. Lira's skin was a deep blue black, light frosting over a human shaped face of black diamond hardness, deep blue as a midnight twilight. She screamed, a harpy's shriek, and there were half moon blades of red light in her hands as she jumped onto the back of one of the rebel Shirk. 41

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There were eight targets and only four Royals. They had a harpy, a dragon, an angel, and a fox demon, and they engaged the enemy with all the honor of Her Majesty on their hearts. Harpy-clawed bird feet dug into the back of the unsuspecting mecha Lira/Sa'vira had attacked. Her weapons became not blades, but two red energy bows that she looped over her prey's head, pulling the bows in either direction and taking the head off Her Majesty's enemy! Lira's scream echoed triumph through the speakers of her squad. The lead of the enemy targets spun, a huge silver canon balanced on one arm of his mecha, treasonous mechanical out-world weaponry. Lira/Sa'vira's wings ruffled, as she ran up the back of the mecha now falling planet bound. The silver cannon fired, a rage of gold light that hit Ani square in his chest, then right out the other side of him. An angel, gold and white, created from some storybook, his flaming swords went dead and rained planet bound so much ash. Lira/Sa'vira hung there, watching beautiful wings become ash, watching the death dance up ivory wings, over golden hair and she screamed in rage and grief. Such a weapon was an abomination! Sa'vira was captain of her squad before she was a warrior though, and she did not know how to fight that weapon. The cloak fell over her remaining squad as fast as it had risen, but nothing would cloak her rage at a demon that used such weapons! She would kill him!

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Scene Nine

Captain Evander Rinyain landed his body-ship and climbed out with the help of two assistants whose names he couldn’t call to mind. With difficulty, he wrestled his raging adrenaline and managed a curt nod to the two young people as he climbed down. One of his men had been beheaded right in front of him and he’d been able to do nothing to save him. Nothing to avenge him. Angry didn’t begin to describe his mood. Barely slowing his stride, he hit the communicator embedded in the breast of his uniform. “I’m on my way Quarl. Have a pet prepared for me,” he growled, “now!” “Yes Captain, I have a new one for…” the grating voice of the self-appointed petMaster began. Evander tapped his chest, ending the transmission as he continued toward his quarters. The Forbidden City, The Hidden City, it didn’t matter what you called it. It was the heart of the resistance and Evander was the resistance’s leader. He believed in freedom from tyranny. He believed that people should be accountable for their actions. He also believed that war was on the horizon and the royal family was leading the people into it. Right now, however, he believed that he needed to bury himself inside a willing, or at least pliant body, and take his pleasure until sleep took his thoughts. He entered his rooms peeling off his clothes as he walked, finally striding naked into his sleep chamber. There, kneeling with his wrists chained together to the wall above his head, he found a young pet, blindfolded and whimpering. “Why do you cry, pet?” Evander spoke, not really caring about the answer. He simply wanted an idea about this pet’s age and experience. “I,” he sniffed and hiccupped, squeaking as Evander tilted his chin to view his face. “I was told you would take me somewhere and I am weary of travel. Master Quarl said you were powerful and might hurt me when you take me away.” “Take you I will, little pet, most vigorously, though we shall not leave this room,” 43

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his thumb caressed the slightly violet lips and the chin of the pet’s face. “What’s your name little pet and how many years are you?” “I am called Ily and I am eighteen winters,” he whispered, apparently not much reassured by Evander’s words. His head was bowed now and long wavy purple hair flowed over Evander’s wrists. “Old enough then,” he declared, looping an arm around Ily’s waist and lifting him to unhook his wrists from the wall. Inhaling deeply he enjoyed the fresh almost floral scent of this pet as he carried him to his bed. The young offering had already been prepared for him, he realized, as the oily fluids leaked onto his aching cock. “What will you do to me?” pleaded Ily, placed facedown on the bed. “Will you not unlock my wrists?” Evander pulled the pet into a kneeling position, placing a finger along the open cleft and caressing the oily hole. “Ohhhh, Master, ohhh,” moaned Ily, pressing back against the questing finger. Evander moved a little until his rigid erection pressed itself against Ily’s bare thigh. “This I will put here,” he slid a long finger into the prepared anus and pulled it out again until just the tip remained. “No! Master, no! Something that big was never meant to go in there,” Ily began to weep, sharply pulling away from the invading finger. The momentum of his struggle propelled him facedown on the wide bed with his haunches in the air. In one fluid movement, Evander pulled the wriggling body around so that Ily lay sideways across his lap. “You have disobeyed me and shall be spanked, pet,” Evander growled. “No,” Ily wept, “Please, Master!” Pulling a strong arm back, Evander delivered one stinging slap after another until Ily sobbed openly, his purple-tinted cheeks glowing pink. After six severe swats, he began to caress the warm globes, his shaft hard and aching, and Ily’s tears only increasing his need. “Hush, pet. On your knees with your back to me.” Silent but for the low sobbing, Ily pulled himself to his knees, turning away from Evander as instructed. Reaching under the appealing body before him, Evander extended one hand and 44

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lightly caressed Ily’s smaller hard member. “You weep, sweet pet, but your body craves such attention.” “Ohhh,” Ily moaned, rocking slightly as Evander caressed his balls lightly, entering two fingers into the tight pucker spread open in front of him. “Do you like that, pet?” he crooned, pumping the fingers in and out of the tiny hole and trailing his fingers up and around Ily’s now weeping shaft. “Master, Master! Please, Master!” begged Ily. Evander scissored two fingers inside of the tight ring of muscle and added a third. “Are you ready, pet?” he murmured, knowing he couldn’t wait any longer no matter what the answer should be. Ily moaned and Evander shifted a little further forward, sitting back on his heels, so that Ily's bottom almost rested on his lap. He bent his knees and brought up his cock, nudging it home, pushing little by little until the head was safely in, then sliding home into the glorious heat of Ily's body in one smooth shove. “Ah, ahhhh!” Ily yelped, his head falling back against Evander’s broad shoulder and tears pouring down his face. Evander wrapped one fist around the young pet’s weeping cock and stroked the damp purple hair from his forehead. He waited long seconds for Ily’s body to adapt to the large invader. When it did, Ily began to squirm, begging wordlessly for more. “So you like that do you, little pet?” Evander rumbled, barely able to speak now as he drew out a little, and then pushed in again. “Oh, Master, oh yes,” Ily moaned, “More please, Master?” he begged, trying to rock himself against Evander. “Ah, ah, ahhh, sweet pet, and call me Captain. I will only be your master tonight,” Evander ordered. Plunging forcefully, he found a rhythm, caressing the little bump deep inside of Ily and causing him to gasp and whimper in ecstasy. Evander leaned harder into his thrusting now, feeling the tightness of the recent virgin surround him, shifting a little on his heels so that he angled forward more, feeling the glide over the little bump that was making his temporary pet shiver every time he massaged it. He put more power into the ride forward while pulling lightly, teasingly on the smaller man’s cock with a powerful hand. Again and again, he drew Ily hard onto his jutting cock, rocking sharply backward and stroking him with the flat of the other hand. 45

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Ily's breath was coming in desperate little pants now, pushed from him every time Evander rocked forward, and sobbed back in every time Evander drew back. He shifted one hand forward without losing his rhythm and trailed it over Ily's chest until his fingers found the left nipple, drawn up hard and tight, surrounded by little nubs, and he pinched it just as he rode forward over the little internal bump again. Ily gasped and shook like a seal coming out of water, and again when Evander found the right nipple, pinching it in turn. Evander felt his balls constrict and start to draw up under the influence of those shivers and he began pumping forcefully, erratically. Wrapping his long and slick fingers around the pet’s dripping cock, he began to pump it firmly in counterpoint to his own now frenetic pace. He felt Ily's body stiffen, felt himself sink ever deeper into the tight flex and clasp of Ily's heat, and rode this receptive little pet like a mating bull. He felt the electricity gather, lightening sparking at the base of his skull, behind his eyes, sliding down his spine like a high-tension wire. The heat gathered in the bottom of his belly and lower, until he caught Ily close to him, pierced to his core on Evander's lap, and exploded forever and ever, feeling Ily's walls massage every bit of ejaculate from his cock, shooting deep, deep inside. He was still fisting Ily, still hugging Ily to him. “Come little pet,” he forced from his dry throat, “Come for your captain.” He could almost feel the tingle that shocked the pet’s limbs rigid as Ily went off like a bottle of champagne, threads of pearly ejaculate spewing from his cock in a high stringy arc. He slumped back in boneless unconsciousness, head lolling onto Evander's shoulder. Evander milked him more slowly until Ily was quite soft again and wrapped both arms around him as well, keeping him gathered close in his utter relaxation, feeling the fast heartbeat slow to a regular thump under his hands. For a long time, he simply sat holding the soft warm body, giving himself up to the reassurance of that slow, regular breathing. He wished he had a pet of his own, an intelligent pet that he could talk to, maybe learn to love if such a thing were possible. Really, though, Evander didn’t believe in love. Truth, justice, equal rights for all humans and freedom from strife, sure, he believed in those things. Love in his life? No. This sweet little virgin pet had been a nice treat tonight. Tomorrow he would pay Quarl his price and gift him to his second in command 46

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for a job well done.

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Author Bio

Nix Winter lives in Seattle, in an apartment by the bay, with city lights and a gray cat. She loves science fiction and fantasy, works on making her own graphic novels and other various artistic projects. She's a strong supporter of artistic freedom and a believer in the power of love.

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