“Raven,” he growled. He brushed the backs of his claws across her brow, and then backed away fast as his blood surged.

She moaned, uncurling with arthritic slowness, and rolled onto her back. It seemed to take a very long time for her eyes to open and he didn’t see recognition right away. “I fell asleep,” she said thickly, a lost child stating the obvious, and closed her eyes again.

Gods, this wasn’t good. Kane paced back to the edge of the trees and had a second, sharper look. Did he need her? Four houses. That meant the chance of attracting attention from three of them even if he could clear out one without incident. If he left Raven here while he did his killing, he’d have to come back and get her, and that was three more chances of being seen.

He returned to Raven’s side, his stomach a hot stone, and said her name again.

She reached down without opening her eyes and pulled her skirt up, splaying her legs with stuporous indifference. He got back in a hurry, but then had to curl around himself, grinding the heel of his hand at the swollen agony of his tsesac. Time crawled around him in igneous streams as he battled for control of his body, and when it ended, Raven was asleep again.

He shook her. She woke with difficulty and lay limp, watching him from sunken eyes without expression.

“Houses,” he managed, and drove his claws into the earth to keep from rubbing at his cock. “And cars. Can you stand?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try. I need you on your feet.”

She nodded without strength or surprise and rolled onto her stomach. Kane watched from a careful distance as she struggled to rise—drawing one knee up and then the other so that she was posed with her hips in the air sent Kane back another body’s length—in the first of seven attempts to heave herself up. She fell back twice, once hard enough to knock her head on the ground. Kane did not help her. In the extremity of Heat, he didn’t dare.

But she managed at last without him. She stood swaying, gazing at him in vacuous anticipation as he circled her. “They’ll never let you in,” she said when he came back to face her.

“I’m not planning on doing the asking. You are.” He looked her up and down, his skin crawling at what he saw, adding, “And they’d have to be some cold-bellied bastards not to let you in.”

She gave him a small, sick smile. “Flatterer.”

He tossed his chin in the direction of the houses and she went before him, leaning on the trees she passed, but holding up pretty well, all things considered. Nothing stirred behind the windows of any of the houses as they crossed the manicured yard; he dared to hope that meant no one had seen them, not that no one was here. Food and water he meant to take in any case, but he needed a human here to give them the keys to a groundcar. He doubted even a human would leave something like that just lying around unguarded.

Kane sent Raven alone up onto the porch of the house he believed to be occupied while he crouched low in the adjoining garden, his back against the wall. She was right when she said no one would let him in. Even if he weren’t bursting out the front of his pants and looking like six shades of rabid death, he doubted anyone in these pert, prettied-up houses would unlock a door for a strange man. His little Raven, maybe, especially looking halfway to falling-down herself, but never him. That left him out of easy reach of whoever came to open the door, but some risks just couldn’t be avoided.

Raven made a fist and tapped her knuckles on the door, then leaned onto the railing and bent her head. Her legs were shaking. Kane’s talons flexed in the soft garden soil as he watched her steady herself, and he thought some new black thoughts about the Fleet slave-fucker who’d broken them up. If not for him, Kane would be strapping Raven into the co-pilot’s chair on the prison transport ship right this beshitted second.

‘Patience,’ Urak muttered grimly. ‘If you can’t be wise and you can’t be lucky, be patient, boy.’

“Yes, sir,” he whispered, and then shook his head hard, sending sweat flying out in a spray around him. Losing his damn mind.

Footsteps. The curtains of the window above him twitched and Kane pressed close to the wall, his muscles coiling. He heard a high human voice say, “Yes?” in cautious tones.

“Please, can you help me?” Raven spread her hands to show them empty. “My boyfriend…he…I’ve been walking for hours. Please, can I call my mom and dad? Or just can I have a drink of water? I’ve been walking…It’s so hot.”

She wasn’t acting much and it showed. The door began to rattle. Kane gathered up all the tattered shreds of his energy and got ready. He had one good jump left in him. He’d better make it count.

Hinges creaked and a human half-stepped out onto the porch. “You poor—”

Kane gripped the rails and vaulted over them, slamming the flat of his hand into the human’s midriff and knocking it back into the house with all its air whoofed out of it. He lunged after, drop-straddling its waist and gripping its throat to hold it still and silent while he listened.

Raven came in behind him and shut the door. “Is she dead?” she asked.

A she? Kane gave the human beneath him a second startled look. It didn’t look very female to the naked eye. He prodded at its chest and felt some slight swellings. Swiveling, he moved his palm between its thighs instead and sure enough, it was female. Heat surged and Kane fought it down with difficulty.

“No,” he said. He leaned in close to the female’s face, making her see only him in all the wide world, and said, “If I take my hand away, are you going to be quiet?”

She nodded, gasping and gagging, her eyes huge and translucent with terror.

Kane relaxed his grip on her throat and showed her his claws. That got all of her attention all at once, and what color there was in her frightened face washed out in an instant. Her eyes rolled back, her head lolled and all the fight went out of her.

That simplified matters. Kane stood up, seizing the female’s arm, and dragged her with him out of the front room as he scented the air for sign of others. The house seemed quiet. He found the kitchen and dropped his human on the tiles. There were dishes soaking in fresh suds in the sink; he’d caught her in the middle of cleaning. “Drink something, Raven,” he said distractedly. “Sit down somewhere.”

“She doesn’t live alone.”

He didn’t ask how she knew. If Raven said it, there had to be a reason. He takked his talons on the floor, torn. He didn’t want to leave the female with only Raven to guard her, but he had to check the rest of the house.

He hunkered down and gave the female a light slap, and then a harder one. She moaned rustily, her eyes fluttered, and finally her eyes opened. Her mouth opened.

“Scream and I’ll carve you,” he said.

She didn’t scream.

“Are you alone?” he asked. “Understand, human, that if you’re not and you tell me you are, I’ll kill whoever you’re trying to protect right in front of you. Behave yourself and everyone will live through this.”

Her lips moved, but it took some effort to force sound from her bruised throat. “Huh…husban…”

“Where?”

“…bed…room…back…hall…” A tear welled up in the corner of her unblinking eye. She raised a trembling hand but didn’t quite touch Kane’s knee; he paused, looking down at her with his head cocked, waiting for her to form words. “Please…don’t…make…him…watch.”

Raven turned suddenly and started going through the kitchen cupboards.

“I won’t unless you make me,” Kane said. He opened up his pack, scowled at the contents, and started mixing some painkiller. When he had it loaded into his dermisprayer, he stood up. “Lie still and lie quiet,” he told her. “If I hear one sound…”

She shook her head, her eyes shut and lips tightly compressed. Raven kept her back to the room.