Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 94582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
“Ah, Officer Sky’lar, come in—come in.” Captain Thal’nx beckoned her to enter and close the door behind her.
Sky did so, coming to stand at parade rest in front of the desk with her arms clasped loosely behind her back and her chest thrown out. She paid no attention to the stranger beside her, though she was well aware that he continued to study her, albeit from the corner of his eye now that she was standing to his side rather than directly in his line of sight.
“Good morning, Captain,” she said smartly, nodding her head. “I understand there’s a special case?”
“Yes, a rather nasty one, I’m afraid.” Captain Thal’nx flickered her forked tongue in a way that let Sky know she was disturbed and worried. “An off-worlder living among us has been killed,” she told Sky. “Not just killed—murdered in a messy and very pointed fashion.”
“Oh? And who was it?” Sky raised her eyebrows attentively—it was her version of flickering her tongue—something she was unable to do, since she lacked the long, agile tongue of a Serpentine.
“One Lady Allesandra WinterBright—she was the Kindred ambassador to our world and she was living in Region Twelve,” Captain Thal’nx said. “This person here is a ranking officer from the Kindred Mother Ship,” she added, nodding at the huge male standing beside Sky. “He says there have been similar murders on two other planets and he thinks the killer is the same person.”
Sky cast a quick look at the giant stranger. So he was indeed her kind of Mammalian. Strange—she’d always wondered what a male of her species might look like, but she hadn’t imagined they would have gray skin and glowing golden eyes. And she certainly hadn’t pictured them as begin so big.
“We believe he’s what the humans call a ‘serial killer’—one who kills over and over in the same way for the sexual gratification it brings him,” the giant said.
Sky couldn’t help looking at him again when he talked—he had the deepest voice she’d ever heard. It was low rumble that seemed to shake her bones. He spoke the Serpentine language perfectly but with a slight accent, like her own—the result of trying to pronounce the slippery speech without the benefit of a long, forked tongue. Sky had learned to compensate since she had learned the language so young and her own accent was barely noticeable—but it was loud and clear in the stranger’s deep voice.
“Why would someone kill for sexual gratification?” she asked blankly. “How could he get any kind of pleasure from it? Unless he…” She trailed off, not wanting to say the unpleasant thought that had popped into her head.
“He violates his victims first, before he kills them,” the huge stranger said and there was a grim look on his face, as though he was talking about something unspeakably disgusting to him.
Sky frowned. Murder and rape were crimes of passion and there were few of those committed here on Portex Three. Passion required hot blood and the Serpentines were a cold-blooded and methodical race.
“These kinds of crimes are reprehensible to usss,” Captain Thal’nx’s voice ended in a prolonged hiss—a sure sign of her distress.
“And very unusual,” Sky added.
“Oh? And why is that?” The giant stranger turned to her, raising his eyebrows just as Sky did.
At first, she thought he was mocking her but then she realized that the gesture must be a natural sign of questioning. It was strange to see it on another face, other than her own.
“Well, to begin with, rape—or forced penetration as we call it—and murder, are crimes often committed in the heat of passion,” she explained. “The Serpentines are a cold-blooded race—they usually don’t do anything without thinking it through first. Also, it wouldn’t occur to a Serpentine male to try and rape a female.”
“This is true,” Captain Thal’nx agreed. “Our males are so much smaller and meeker than the females of our species—it wouldn’t enter their heads to try and force penetration on an unwilling female when she would most likely just overpower her attacker and turn him in to us—the Peace Keepers.”
“Captain Thal’nx is right— males are mild-mannered and weak. A few of them work outside the domicile but most of them simply want to stay at home tending the eggs and cooking and cleaning,” Sky affirmed. “There isn’t a violent bone in their bodies.”
“I see.” The giant’s deep, rumbling voice was mild but Sky thought she saw some emotion she couldn’t interpret flash across his face. She wished she had more practice in reading the faces of her own kind of Mammalian, but she was continually surrounded by Serpentines. The flicker of a tongue or the slide of a secondary eyelid over a slitted eye meant more to her than the micro-expressions of the stranger.
“Well, because of our inexperience with such crimes, and because he believes the murderer is the same one he is currently tracking, Commander Torin is going to be shadowing you on this case,” Captain Thal’nx said.