Once they’d fed, they could leave. Out to the car and its climate controls. Raven would take them back to where he’d found her. His locator would lead them the rest of the way to his ship, by road as far as possible, on foot after that, and if he was lucky, it’d be late enough to avoid Heat. Earth’s sun would set, and Kane would never have to see it rise again. Not on this trip, anyway. It was almost done.

‘And done damned well,’ he told himself in his father’s voice. He’d have a few empty vials once these nine had refined down, but that was all right. He’d reached the point where the difference of a few thousand crona didn’t matter to him. He was tired and it was time to go home.

Sue-Eye was coming back already. Laughing with her prey, no less. She must have taken his words to heart.

Kane heaved a sigh and pushed himself off the tree, pulling his harvester into his hand again. He got low and crept silently to the bushes separating his clearing from hers. Through the screen of foliage, he watched his ichuta’a at work.

The male, perversely enough, didn’t seem to want to get started. Its eyes kept moving over the trees, not as though it feared discovery but just as though it wanted to be sure it was alone. Something in the way it did that put an edge up in Kane and he flexed the claws of his killing hand, watching.

The male’s attention finally wandered back to Sue-Eye, who was busily trying to unlock the male’s belt and clothing. “You here alone, baby?” it asked.

Kane covered his eyes, his teeth bared in silent exasperation. ‘You don’t need to talk to her,’ he thought furiously. ‘Just fuck her, for hell’s sake!’

“Of course I am,” Sue-Eye said, laughing. “Nobody here but us chickens. Now come on, let’s see that—”

CRACK!

Kane’s head came up fast just as Sue-Eye struck the ground on her stomach just in front of him.

“The thing is,” the male continued, searching the woods surrounding them again. “I don’t feel much like paying.”

Sue-Eye groaned, rubbing at her cheek, and her eyes went confusedly to Kane’s through the bushes. He made a lie-still gesture, watching the male above her as it paced around its clearing, and she obediently shut her eyes and feigned unconsciousness.

Gods damn it all, the little shit wasn’t even hard yet. Kane was going to have to send his ichuta’a back out again.

The male finally returned to Sue-Eye and rolled her roughly onto her back, then knelt between her splayed legs. It pulled her skirt up and its lips curled back from its teeth in an expression of disgust. “Whore,” it said.

Well, what else had the numb shit been expecting, having followed her into the fucking woods? Kane rubbed at his eyes, fighting his temper. What to do? Kill it now, or wait and see if it was ever going to get in the fucking mood despite the risk to his ichuta’a?

“Wake up, whore!” A slap, and Sue-Eye sputtered. “And don’t you make a sound.”

Dutiful silence.

“Aren’t you going to beg?” the male demanded.

“Make up your fucking mind,” Sue-Eye said irritably, exactly at the same time as Kane thought it.

The male slapped her. Sue-Eye looked back at Kane, her mouth tight, seeking orders.

Kane thought about it. He shrugged and made a fist.

Sue-Eye looked back up at the male who was now beginning to look seriously pissed. She balled up her hand and punched him.

That did it. The male slapped Sue-Eye some more, then seized her throat and squeezed as it yanked her shirt up. “You make a sound and I’ll kill you, bitch!” it hissed.

Sue-Eye nodded. Kane takked his claws soundlessly on the forest floor and waited.

The male captured Sue-Eye’s wrists and pinned them above her head with one hand so that it could mangle her breasts with the other. Kane watched, his fingers flexing on his harvester, as the male aroused itself with readying his ichuta’a for rape. It occurred to him that if Sue-Eye really wanted to get free, she might actually be able to do it. The male was careless and Kane’s ichuta’a had a real affinity for killing. If she wasn’t trying so hard right now to please him, she might have this fucker’s tsesac off and stuffed in its mouth by now.

The male was ready. Finally. It went to finish unfastening its clothing, its breath coming hard and its color high.

It was good enough for Kane. He sprang, tracheated the male in one instant and then, for his ichuta’a’s sake, castrated it in the next.

“Thank you, Kane,” she said as he was spinning the male around and digging into bone.

“Ah, you’ve been good.” The skull cracked off in his hand and the male’s struggles turned to torpid writhing. Kane harvested the gland, watching with satisfaction as the last vial filled completely. “Very good. Go wake Raven.”

“I’m awake.” Raven stumbled to his side to prove it, rubbing at her sleep-puffed eyes. “Is that it? Are we leaving now?”

“We’re eating first.”

“Oh, great!” Sue-Eye sighed, and immediately started picking through the dying male’s pockets for money. “I’m so thirsty I could spit sand.”

“I’m sure if you’d asked nicely, Kane would have let you suck off a few cocks before he killed them.”

“Easy, Raven,” Kane said, smiling. Sue-Eye was not as amused. He gave her a pat as he put the last vial into the preserver and sealed up his pack. “We’re all hot and sore here.”

Raven muttered something and stood down.

Kane shouldered the thick strap, feeling out the weight of a full pack with real pleasure. “Let’s go,” he said.

Sue-Eye started moving; Raven stayed where she was.

“Can’t we just leave and get something on the road?” she asked. “Air conditioning, Kane!”

“Obedience, Raven,” he retaliated, and she sighed and showed her teeth at the ground. “Let’s go,” he said again, and this time there was no argument. They moved out of the woods together and went to be swallowed up by the fair.

*

Inquiries at the entrance had been fruitless, but that was neither surprising nor discouraging. There were thousands of humans here and only two persons at the gate. Upon first passing into the jumbled city of teeming pathways and crowded booths, his perception of it as hunting grounds for Vahst only increased. If E’Var was not here yet, then surely he would come here soon. It was not impossible to imagine that this fair was the reason for the disturbing quiet of the previous day; perhaps E’Var had made his camp nearby, preparing for a full day of hunting in these choice environs. His humans, who had taught E’Var so effectively of movie theaters and motels, would have been quick to guide him here.

Knowing that, it was easy to be patient as he patrolled the outer walks nearest to the gate, but slightly more difficult to be nonchalant. Tagen walked at Daria’s side, his hands curled at his sides and Daria’s socks upon his feet, searching the crowd around him for sign of his prisoner and doing his best to ignore the curious looks the humans had for his uniform.

Under other circumstances, Tagen thought he might enjoy ‘fair’. Circumstances involving, for example, a day of heavy drinking and temperatures perhaps half what they were now. Ah, no, in all honesty, he supposed all he’d truly need was to be a boy again. This had to be a child’s idea of heaven. All the bright colors, flashing lights, loud music, unhealthy food, gaming shops with toys as tall as Tagen for prizes, the rides…great merciful gods, the rides…and of course, the throngs of other children to provide camouflage so that one could freely indulge in the most deviant behaviors.

When he’d been a boy, he probably would have given the teeth out of his head for a day in a place like this. Looking around now, however, he could not help but see it as a place of near and inevitable danger, even without the threat of E’Var’s possible presence. He wondered if that was a soldier’s perspective or, with the healthy female of the past many days’ matings at his side and in his thoughts, a father’s.