Ravenous Virtue Read online

  Chapter 6

  Raven lay frozen on the hospital bed, staring up at Raven – Douglas – Daagiis. She didn’t know what to call … it. She did know she didn’t like seeing herself staring at her with that slightly mocking grin.

  “Stop looking like me,” she demanded.

  “As you wish.” The other Raven became Douglas once more.

  Raven forced herself to breathe calmly. “Okay,” she said. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again, and repeated, “Okay. Start from the beginning. And let me up.”

  The face-changer regarded her. “I will be glad to tell you everything, but only as I think you can handle it. As for getting up, only Vendeen has the power to release you.”

  Raven ground her teeth together. Bastards. “Fine. Talk.”

  “You are in the alternate dimension on the space station I told you about.”

  “Alternate dimension? Does that mean there’s an Earth here too?” That gave her some hope.

  “A long dead planet. The inhabitants destroyed it during a cataclysmic war. Vendeen’s people are the descendents, though they bear only a superficial resemblance to your kind now. Humans spread out over several planets and evolved in different ways from each other. Vendeen’s ancestors settled on a world named Giloth.”

  Raven frowned. “He looks pretty human to me, other than the skin and eyes.”

  Douglas – no, Daagiis – shook his head. “Physically, his kind haven’t evolved much. But there are important differences.”

  “Such as?”

  It was Daagiis’ turn to grimace. “Longterm exposure to him is addictive to many species, including yours and mine.”

  Raven blinked. “Addictive? As in like a drug?”

  Daagiis nodded. “It’s something to do with his pheromones. His people developed a compound that altered their body chemistry as a way to attract mates and food. It’s now part of their DNA, so it’s a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

  Raven stared at the man she was now accepting to be an alien. “Food?”

  He gave her a half-smile. “Mostly of the quadruped variety. Vendeen’s people do not eat other sentients.”

  “Good to know. You said I’m this guy’s slave?” Raven really didn’t like the sound of that. She ached to punch Daagiis for putting her in this position.

  Daagiis cleared his throat. “You are currently Vendeen’s indentured servant. He paid for your repairs and upgrades, which were extensive.”

  Her mouth went dry. “Repairs? Upgrades? What the hell did you freaks do to me?”

  “You have a robotic arm, which replaces the one you lost. We also installed a manufactured heart and lungs since your old organic ones were also destroyed. Additionally, you’ve been equipped with a computer interface that runs through all components of your brain, capable of receiving downloads so you can instantly learn languages, laws, fighting tactics, and whatever else we deem necessary.”

  Raven couldn’t stop the rage boiling over, nor did she want to. “You bastard. How much did he pay you to fetch me?”

  Daagiis’ eyes narrowed. “He didn’t pay me. I went after you at my own discretion. If anyone paid heavily for it, it was me.” Something dark moved behind his golden eyes. “Vendeen was not happy that I exiled him and this station in orbit around our dimension’s Earth for several months while I searched for the perfect protector. Trust me, he made his displeasure very well known upon my return.”

  A sense of helplessness overcame Raven. She’d been kidnapped and brought to another dimension, far from her friends. There were apparently no humans here to ask for help either. She was expected to be a man’s slave, a man who had no compunction when it came to dealing out pain. She was still angry, but a lance of emotional pain twisted her insides too.

  Raven swallowed down the grief and terror before it could announce itself in embarrassing tears. However, she couldn’t hide the tremble in her voice as she asked, “Why, Doug – Daagiis? What did I do to deserve being snatched from my home and friends? Why did you bring me here?”

  “First of all, to save you,” he said. He blew out an unhappy breath. “Plus I need you. Vendeen needs you. You are strong. Dedicated to doing what’s right. Determined to see justice done.”

  “You don’t have cops in this dimension?” She snorted. “What kind of fucked up world have you brought me to?”

  “We have enforcement and plenty of people who would take the position I’m putting you in. Unfortunately, these are the same people who would sell themselves to the highest bidder. The man with the most money and power just happens to be Vendeen’s biggest enemy.”

  “Do you often run to my world to grab unwary people to serve as your slaves?” Raven’s tone dripped acid.

  Daagiis shook his head. “The Lurers recruit from your world, but your people come here knowing what they’re getting into. I was following that path with you when you got shot.”

  She fixed him with a bald glare. “I am not here by choice.”

  “Technically, you are. ‘Beam me up,’ you said. You chose life over death. The only way to give you life was to bring you here.”

  “I wasn’t fully informed. I never would have agreed to this!”

  “Raven, Joshua Wills is from this dimension. This is where he sent those women he abducted.”

  She started. “Wills?”

  Daagiis nodded. “His real name is Taambaa, and he’s one of the Paatiin. One of my people.”

  Raven stared at him, trying to ignore the excitement coursing through her veins. “Did he come back here? To this dimension? Do you know where his victims are?”

  Daagiis pressed his lips together, as if holding in an angry outburst. He took a deep breath before answering. “Taambaa returned here with the last half dozen women he abducted. He’s taking them to a very bad man who will sell them into slavery. Real slavery with no chance for escape except death. We probably won’t be able to rescue them, but we can stop Taambaa and Hanos from taking more.”

  Raven’s brows screwed down tight. “You’re telling me if I accept being Vendeen’s servant, I’ll have the chance to get my hands on Wills?”

  Daagiis’ grin was a vicious thing. “You can catch him and have him brought to justice. Real justice. We don’t do ‘technicalities’ here, Raven. If we bring them in alive, the accused stand trial. When found guilty, the convicted pay.”

  She considered. She wanted Wills. She wanted that bastard. All those women, abducted from their families and children … they deserved justice.

  Still, Raven felt Daagiis wasn’t telling her everything. “What else do I need to know?”

  He grinned, sensing she was at least considering the offer. “We’ll get there. Don’t worry, when the time comes you’ll be ready.”

  “For what, exactly?”

  His grin threatened to eat up his entire face. “Everything.”

  Raven thought there was more threat than comfort in that answer.

  Something beeped behind her head, claiming Daagiis’ attention for a moment. “Ah. The doctors have released you from medical treatment. You’ve been pronounced healed. You may get up now.”

  Raven felt a tension she hadn’t noticed flee her body. She jerked so that she sat upright. The sheets over her body slid down, revealing her bare breasts. She was naked. She jerked the linens back up so hard they ripped.

  She didn’t think to comment on the apparently flimsy nature of the bedsheets or her brief flash of au naturel. “Son of a bitch! I thought you couldn’t let me go; that Vendeen had to do it.”

  Daagiis seemed unimpressed with her glare. “I couldn’t. Vendeen made it clear you were not to be allowed up until you were ready to be taken to our quarters.”

  Raven narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s he got on you, anyway?”

  Daagiis grimaced and hunched his shoulders a little. “I am his, just as you are. I serve and protect him, which is what your function will be.”

  “So you’re indentured as well?”

 
“Not quite.” He turned away sharply and stomped to a pile of black fabric on a shelf that jutted from the wall. The shelf was low to the ground, actually more like a ledge large enough for people to lounge on, if they so chose.

  The room was almost blinding in its brightness. Everything in the room was an unrelieved sterile white except for that bunch of folded cloth and Daagiis’ strange clothing.

  “Here are your clothes,” he told her, picking up the pile of folded material and tossing it at her. Raven reached to catch it out of instinct. The sheets began sliding from her chest once more, and she caught it just in time. The clothes Daagiis threw at her landed in her lap.

  “Very funny,” she groused. “How about leaving while I dress?”

  Daagiis gave her his evil grin. “Not a chance. Until your compliance has been guaranteed, you will not leave my or Vendeen’s sight.” He laughed outright at her stare. “Don’t look so outraged. I’ve already seen everything.”

  Raven fought to keep her temper under control. “What the hell are you talking about? Don’t tell me you have x-ray vision on top of all the rest. Or have you been taking advantage of me while I’ve been unconscious?”

  “I like my playthings fully aware of me,” Daagiis said. Before she could bristle at his calling her a ‘plaything’, the air around him shimmered and he morphed. Raven gasped as he turned into Todd.

  The cold smile he wore didn’t wear well on the boy-next-door features. “We had fun that first night of your boyfriend’s shift change, didn’t we?”

  Raven’s fists clenched. If she hadn’t been naked, she would have launched herself at him and kicked his sneering ass. “You son of a bitch. That’s coercion.”

  Daagiis resumed his usual form of auditor Douglas Bringer. “I had no choice. I had to be sure you were compatible with Vendeen and myself in every way.”

  “In every – are you telling me I’m supposed to sleep with him? And you?”

  “Indentured servitude, remember? It’s all a part of the package.”

  Raven’s upper lip curled back from her teeth. “I am not agreeing to sex with you two freaks. No fucking way.”

  Daagiis paced towards her. No, he slunk towards her, like a panther stalking its prey. As he came, his strange outfit sent shimmering strands of color chasing across its surface. Raven slipped off the bed, pulling the sheet with her in sudden fear. The face-changer kept coming, moving around the bed, getting close fast. Raven bumped into the bland white wall, flattening herself against it. She had nowhere else to go.

  Her normal reaction should have been to drop the sheet, neverminding her nudity, and fight her way out. The way Daagiis looked at her however, his eyes intent on her face and an utter lack of fear in his carriage – it left her as helpless as if she’d been in cuffs.

  He stopped close enough that Raven could feel the heat coming off his body. His fingertips trailed down her jaw to her throat to her upper chest. There, the sheet she held in a death grip ended his progress. He grinned.

  “You know, I may not have x-ray vision but I do have a keen sense of smell. You reek of arousal. I scented it on you back on Alt-Earth, even before I had you. I noticed you like the look of Vendeen, too.”

  Son of a bitch. Raven hadn’t wanted to admit even to herself she’d gotten wet when the men stood over her, that Vendeen’s danger was every bit an aphrodisiac as Daagiis’ was.

  Hoping he was only bluffing about being able to smell the juices that insisted yet on sliding down her inner thighs, Raven snarled, “Get your nose checked. It’s apparently not working right.”

  “Really?” Daagiis tapped on something around her neck, and Raven remembered the voices in the dark and the pressure on her throat. She only noticed now it was still there as Daagiis told her, “The collar can’t make your body respond, though its connection to your in-brain computer can enhance any arousal you feel. If you have any notion of interest in me at all, it only takes a few voice commands to activate you.”

  Anger was making Raven forget the instinctive fear that had arisen as he’d come after her. “Activate me? I’m not a sex toy for you to turn on and off, asshole.”

  “Sweet. Soft. Yielding,” Daagiis whispered.

  Raven’s insides seemed to melt as need mounted within her. Daagiis stepped close enough to touch and her senses ignited. She moved against him, feeling the suppleness of his body through the thick outfit he wore. She moaned, wanting to feel him without the barriers keeping his skin from her touch.

  His mouth drifted down towards hers. Raven went up on tiptoes, straining towards him, tasting his breath a moment before his lips softly slid over hers. Her tongue flicked out, tasting his sweetness. Arousal flashed from that contact point all the way down to her pussy. Balmy wetness coated the insides of her legs as she responded to the delicate but profound bliss of kissing Daagiis.

  His mouth sealed over hers, and Raven opened to his searching tongue. She parried it with ecstatic abandon. This was what she wanted, him claiming her as his. She sank against his hard body, trying to mold herself to him. Trying to melt into him.

  Daagiis pushed her back against the wall and tugged at the sheet. Raven immediately let it go, eager to give him anything – no, everything – he wanted. What she wanted, too. Her arms circled around his neck as he cupped her breasts in his hands, squeezing their fullness and rolling the nipples between thumbs and forefingers. Raven moaned into his mouth as excitement tumbled through her guts.

  Daagiis released her mouth and breasts and stepped back, his lips curled in a knowing smile. Raven clawed the air, reaching for him.

  “You can stop now,” he said.

  Raven’s brain kicked back into gear. She gasped as she realized she was standing naked and practically begging Daagiis to fuck her. With a horrified cry, she stooped and retrieved the sheet, snatching it up to cover her body once more. What the hell had just happened to her?

  He folded his arms over his chest. “Get dressed. Vendeen is waiting.”

  She couldn’t speak. She could only stare at Daagiis.

  He shrugged. “You needed convincing. Trust me, my methods are far more gentle than Vendeen’s. You’d do well to accept your own urgings to submit before you encounter him again.”

  Shocked by her ardent response to her abductor, Raven forced her shaking legs to carry her to the bed where the clothes Daagiis offered awaited. Her hands shaking, she quickly dressed.

  She found the skin-tight leggings and tank top were both made of stretchy material. Her outfit looked like workout clothing for the body-unconscious. The fabric clung tight to every curve of her, showing her breasts and ass in shocking detail. Even the vee of her pussy was outlined blatantly. The outfit was almost pointless. She felt every bit as naked as she had dropping the sheet to dress, but there was no help for it because she saw nothing else for her to wear. There was no way she was giving Daagiis another chance to take advantage of her. No fucking way.

  Now that she had the suggestion of clothes on, Raven looked at her bare right arm, the one they’d replaced. It looked normal, like a typical human arm. There was nothing to suggest its supposed robotic nature, at least not to a casual glance.

  Yet there was something off about it. There should have been a small puckered burn scar on the heel of her hand from the time Raven had fallen into a smoldering fire left behind by inattentive campers. And the pair of large freckles on her forearm … well that was familiar, but it wasn’t quite right. She looked at her other arm, where a matching set of freckles were.

  “Since your right was completely demolished from mid-upper arm down, the replacement was modeled on the other one. They’re mirror images.” Daagiis smiled a little as he solved the mystery. “You can’t tell it’s robotic at all, can you? It even feels like the one you were born with.”

  “Is it stronger than my regular arm?”

  “Much, but I have inhibited the amount of power you can exert for now until you are better used to it.”

  Too bad. Crushing the face-cha
nger’s throat was a happy fantasy right now.

  Raven hated the way she cringed when he approached her but couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t so much fear of Daagiis as the fear of what happened to her body when he was near. Even now, restored to her own mind, the look of mastery in his eyes had her insides swirling with eagerness, as if a part of her wanted nothing more than to be bent to his will once again. To be made helpless and trembling with desire that robbed every inclination to fight.

  This is not me. This is not who I am, her thoughts insisted, yet she flinched as he came close.

  He held his hand out to her, offering her something. Raven blinked to see an ordinary hairbrush.

  Daagiis snorted. “You have a hell of a case of bedhead. I know it’s supposed to be sexy, but you just look a mess.”

  Somehow, his disdain set her to rights better than kindness would have. Raven straightened, her temper and courage spiking once more. She snatched the brush from him. “Bastard.”

  He grinned as she plowed the brush through her curls, knowing she would only make them a frizzy mess. She didn’t care.

  Daagiis said, “My dear Ravenous Virtue, conqueror of criminals, devourer of doughnuts, you have no idea the bastard I can be. But you will, very soon.”

  His words sent a thrill of terror and sickening arousal through her. She chose to ignore both. “Why do I get the feeling I would have been better off dead on the side of the road?” she snarled at him.

  “That might be true. However, if that was the case you wouldn’t get your hands on Wills, a.k.a Taambaa, and the man behind his evil. “

  “There is that.” Raven stopped trying to tame her hair and tossed the brush to the bed’s surface. “Do I meet your beauty requirements now?” she asked, hands on her hips and chin thrust out defiantly.

  “Very nice. Very beautiful,” Daagiis said in a low purr.

  The look he gave her was scorching, making her hot all over and confused. Damn it, she was in trouble around this – alien. Trouble she wasn’t sure she could escape. Trouble that made her body respond in ways she didn’t want it to.