Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79603 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79603 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 398(@200wpm)___ 318(@250wpm)___ 265(@300wpm)
But even with danger all around, she was unafraid. The feral part of J’are wanted to fight—wanted to kill the guards who had harmed him, wanted to hurt the Cruel Mistress the way she had hurt him. But she said he must not and the sentient part—the thinking part—also said not to. So he listened and followed her out of the cold, echoing room full of danger.
Followed her out into the open and away from all the bad people towards home.
Eleven
Imani hadn’t arrived at the legal building until late afternoon and the trial—if you could call it that—had taken several hours. By the time she and J’are emerged onto the sidewalk outside the tall black building, twilight had fallen.
The big Nightwalker Kindred looked like a vast shadow in the deepening gloom—all except his eyes, which glowed eerily in the gathering darkness. He didn’t seem too happy to be so close to the heavy traffic, still whizzing by.
He whined uneasily as an especially large vehicle whooshed past, flattening Imani’s skirt and blouse(which she had put back on as soon as she left the courtroom) against her body with the force of its passing. If he had been a dog, she thought, his ears would have been flat back and his tail would have been tucked.
“Come on now, J’are.” Imani could feel the tension in the leash as she tugged it gently. She was well aware of the awesome physical strength on the other end of the black leather strap she was holding. If the big Kindred decided he didn’t want to go where she was leading, he damn well didn’t have to. There was absolutely no way she could force him because she was not going to break his trust by using the remote to the pain collar, which was still tucked into her bra.
The phrase Got the tiger by the tail popped up in her mind. Yup—that was pretty much what this amounted to. She had a huge, only semi-sentient beast who had killed five people on the end of a leash and it was nearly full dark outside. How was she going to manage to get him home?
At first she tried hailing the Yonnie Six equivalent of a taxi or an Uber, but the traffic was whizzing by much too quickly for anyone to stop. Or maybe the drivers just didn’t like the look of the huge, bound male who was covered in black gook from head to foot. What was that stuff on J’are’s skin anyway and how hard would it be to get off?
Well, that was a question for when they got back to her suite at the Luxx—if they could even find a way back, that was, Imani thought grimly. She wished she had arranged for a ride to pick her up, but she’d been in such a hurry not to miss the court date that the idea hadn’t even occurred to her. She sighed.
Well, maybe she would have better luck finding a ride back where the last driver had dropped her off before court. It had seemed to be some kind of a drop off and pick up zone. Unfortunately, it was across the street.
“Come on, J’are. I know you don’t like the traffic but just try to bear with me, okay?” she said coaxingly. “I promise we’ll be home soon and then I’ll get you a nice bath and a yummy supper? All right?”
She realized she was talking to him like he was a pet or a tired child, but it just seemed natural to do that when his more animalistic side came out. Back in the courtroom, he had almost seemed lucid for a moment. But now that they were out in the busy street with the Yonnite vehicles whizzing by and the stink of alien exhaust rising in the night, he seemed to have reverted to his feral state.
Imani just hoped he didn’t start growling again. She didn’t know how well she could calm him down now that the light was gone from the sky. Did Nightwalkers get even more feral at night? She wished desperately that she had more information on his kind of Kindred, but the sources that talked about Nightwalkers had been few and far between.
Basically once the Kindred High Council had determined that the offspring of the Kindred males with the Nightwalker females resulted in such terribly dangerous and unstable children, they had shut off any further cross-breeding and quarantined the planet. Imani wished they had sent some scientists to do further study on the small, remote world. If she ever got back home to the Mother Ship, she would certainly recommend it.
“Come on, J’are. Come on,” she coaxed, tugging gently on the leash. She led the big Kindred back the way she had come, down the sidewalk and over to the base of the cross walk. J’are came willingly enough and they climbed the long, winding stairs that led to up to the raised bridge together.