Exterra

By P. Egeli

Danu arrives on Exterra wanting only to stay on her ship until its time to move on again. She's fed up with her crew members and her life. When she meets a very old, very skilled vampyr at the Pleasure Fair she surcomes to her curiosity.

What follows is a very different kind of love story in which Danu learns to love herself as well as some irresistible faeries and the lifeforces of two planets. But first she has to survive her various honeymoons! She has to shed her unexamined beliefs about sexuality and where it can go. This story has implied as well as detailed sexual. content. It is written through the viewpoint of Danu as she finds her power sexually as well as many other ways.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Aug 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228813880

P. Egeli

The author lives in the pacific northwest on a Canadian island. She has had many adventures including surfing in the cold Pacific and teaching her children and their friends how to surf, working on a 38 foot salmon troller out beyond sight of land for days, and achieving an M.A. in counselling psychology after children. She has recently retired from working as a counsellor. Paulette has a continuing interest in free will and choices in her and other's lives.

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the women I knew who chose to live outside of the expectations of those who would define love in one way, or by one set rules. They loved themselves and went off to be pilots, adventurers, doctors, and wise women. Their daughters, maybe some of who are reading this book, were not taught to distrust themselves; nor did they compel themselves to love or partner according to the rules of whatever community they found themselves in.

In my own life, they include my grade school teacher, Mrs. Agnese Henry, who, when I asked why she didn’t have a husband, said, I had one and we loved each other. But he died. I don’t need another one.

Didn’t need a husband? That rocked my fourth-grade world.

Acknowledgments

It was the living life force of this planet that took me in, as I wandered as an only and lonely child. Beings came to meet me—coyotes, birds of many sorts, and later, bottle-nosed dolphins that surfed beside me in the Gulf of Mexico. Later people encouraged me to ponder about our responsibility to life, and that it wasn’t all blooming and growing and carrying on for us humans. It was a vast dance and we were but a part of it. Some of us could wake up to that fact, but mostly we humans forgot this again and again.

James Hershberger, my botanist and alchemical friend, would scowl at me when I asked what a plant that he was showing me was good for. I finally got it: it’s not all for us and we’ve made a mess of things and, hopefully, will have time to make some repairs to the much-torn web of life.

Finally, I thank everyone who told me to write (I was writing just a little bit at times). Those who read my early efforts and encouraged and gently helped me cull overused words and sentence fragments—Billy Jack, Ellory Littleton, Myra King, Vanessa at Tellwell, and my circle of friends who saw me to the finish line with this project: I thank you.

EXTERRA

The Beginning: Book One

Chapter One

An Unlikely Beginning

I watched the planet rapidly grow in the viewing port from a small green orb to a clear view of the buildings of the spaceport directly beneath us. I felt the last moments of precise adjustments before our ship made landfall on Exterra––another earth-type planet where we were delivering cargo.

I had managed to avoid leaving the ship the last time we were here. Being a reluctant spacer tourist in ports like this had lost its meagre pleasure for me. It was finally quiet after most of the crew went landside. I craved being alone, to have time to think my own thoughts without the distraction of people moving and talking and thinking around me. I would dream my own dreams that I tried so hard to remember when I awoke. There was often the fading sense of finally being where I should be, among those who understood me without me having to accommodate them.

I had grown up on old Earth. Being on a ship was nothing like old Earth, of course––and I liked that. The ship had adjusted gravity and even a small swimming unit. I was sick of Earth and her offerings. Preserved parks, with the paths that kept all away from any remaining significant experience of nature: carefully protected trees with precisely monitored underground watering systems; a few bears that watched through the fences around their small territories. We were still pretending that nature was still thriving outside the cities, but the pretence had worn thin with me.

From above old earth, one could see the sprawling cities that merged into each other in a solid blanket of light that kept out the stars. People down there were hustling for something, anything that might lift them up from their precarious position on the ladder leading nowhere.

I didn’t want recreational sex, the fantasy of sexually explicit videos (Three Dees), designer drug vacations and the rest. Swimming in the seas of Old Earth was not a good idea. I did it anyway, and noted that few gulls flew now, and almost no fish swam amidst the garbage and plastic. Sunshine danced enticingly on the empty waves but the water was devoid of most life. I wasn’t just sick of old Earth. I was heartsick for her.

I shipped out. I flew as a techno and didn’t care where I went or if I would advance, or even if I saved my credits. They accumulated anyway because I wanted little that they could buy. Nothing bothered me much except dealing with my co-workers. It was eventually noted that I did not willingly partake in recreational off-ship opportunities. In time, this fact moved me into the active category of needs monitoring, which meant I would eventually be called in for a talk.

I was summoned shortly after we landed on Exterra where we would spend a week unloading and taking on cargo before moving on.

I smiled unconvincingly and feigned forgetfulness about how long it had been since I went off-ship –– forgetful being a more desirable label than paranoid traits –– and stepped down to the planet’s surface, shoreside, as I sometimes thought of it—a reluctant visitor.

I wandered, vaguely drawn to a carnival-like gathering of tents and colours, music and smells. The food smelled good, although some offerings were intriguing and sometimes unpleasant.. I had always tried not to be a conservative Earth-woman, but in truth I lost my own appetite quickly. Better not to eat in port anyway. I wandered on.

By continuing to walk, I eventually ended up in the exotic sex trade section of the fair. Blue and pink banners flew.

Various people stood behind the golden cords of electro-barriers, calling out to the passers-by, trying to strike a fast deal.

I was quickly closed in on by a guide. His job was to be able to assure the company that owned our fleet that I had voluntarily chosen what I might sign up for here.

Males preened, some in archetypal Old Earth outfits that hadn’t changed since male strippers had arrived as cowboys or firemen at parties of housewives wanting to go slightly towards the edge for a night. Females also strutted, catcalled, and did what they could to advertise their wares without giving up much for free.

Nothing especially interested me. I’d had this conversation with myself before. I wished I was interested, knew that I was probably being observed, and wished I was a better actor. The truth was: I felt the same way about their offerings as I did about a stroll through a protected wilderness area. Nothing of any significance would happen. I had tried setting aside my dislike of men before and usually ended up just paying them for the agreed upon time and returning to the ship. They were making a living, and I respected that. I just didn’t want their wares. I felt apologetic unless they laughed.

Some did laugh.

As I walked on, I noted the banners were violet now. Those standing behind the slight but possibly lethal cords were more intense. The guide, who had kept pace with me, was insistent now. I didn’t really listen as he rattled on, catching only fragments.

No, no, no. This would not be appropriate for you! Perhaps something more …? He did not say safe but it was clearly implied. One man or, more accurately, being behind the barrier made brief eye contact that reminded me of a caged lion I had seen on Earth––unblinking and unreadable, and very aware of me. He had the eyes of an old, weary, but hopeful predator.

This section offered possibly more than temporary diversions. Here one could probably find final relief.

I lingered and looked around curiously. Some moved towards me, seemingly casually. Some didn’t bother, having judged me as a passing tourist with not enough courage or desperation to find out what was being offered.

It was then that my eyes locked with a shock-like intensity with those of a tall, lean man. Perhaps it was because he was the first who seemed to see me, and he smiled an acknowledging faint smile. I could feel, hell, I could see the air between us tremble. I stood transfixed.

I was a lot closer to the fence. I didn’t remember moving. I couldn’t recall how that had happened, and worse, since I normally value thinking before acting, I found that I didn’t care.

I didn’t notice how he had approached so close to me either. He was looking down at me and smiling as if we shared a private joke. Or perhaps, an understanding.

Can fierce and reassuring be entangled in one look? It can. It was.

Time stood still. I know it probably hadn’t, but time is subjective. I’d learned that during the long night watches, which were longer than possible by the clock. And brief times of joy are so fleeting that even as one experiences them, one is saying, Goodbye, goodbye … And yet, everything around me was still and unmoving. It was as if I was poised between one moment and the next.

We were close enough to touch. We were touching without physically touching. I could feel his absolute attention and it was deep and quiet. I breathed as I had learned to breathe as a diver far beneath the surface, struggling to calm myself, knowing I was on the edge of something that demanded my full attention. An edge I had never believed existed.

I had the new realization that under certain circumstances, one might agree to … anything.

This may be confusing for you, he said wryly. His saying anything was thrilling. Just as the air had trembled, now the sound of his voice entered me like a sustained note. I knew we were attuning; he was tuning me. I knew I was open to the process, even though some part of my mind was shouting from behind a hastily shut door, No! Danger. Danger! You don’t know what you are doing!

Thing is, I did know. I knew that those of the Old Blood, those who humans called vampires, had lived and thrived on Earth, and later found space travel an interesting way to extend their hunting grounds. I knew that my cynicism was no match for this.

He was glamouring me.

Unbelievably, I loved it.

He smiled again, somehow curving towards me, easily avoiding the barrier between us. You know what Robbie Robertson said. ‘You like it now. You’ll learn to love it later.’

How would he possibly know I valued what Robbie Robertson, a songwriter from the late 1900’s, had said?

And then he shrugged and said, Would you like to get away from this crowd? He smiled again. If that’s what you want, you have to say yes. That’s part of it.

At this point the fairground guide, long ignored by me, grasped my arm –– the first physical contact he had attempted and the last. My look caused him to quickly drop his hand. I was of course, armed. But he was showing genuine fear, a dread for his own future that caused him to assert himself briefly, to come between me and what was coming into being here. He hastily produced an electronic pad and pen and wrote in the necessary details. He was documenting that I was voluntarily going to cross the line.

I would now have to sign that I had chosen to leave with this being and was freeing the company of any legal responsibilities. I would be a temporary visitor; the screen said I would be transferred to the care of a Shadakon.

I hereby agree that in the event that I find it appropriate to my total experience of pleasure, I agree to surrender my physical life, the form read.

And I was asked to sign and initial one of two choices at the bottom—

Yes.

Not at this time.

I shakily signed and initialled the second choice, witnessed by a bored server who was circulating with a tray of assorted drinks. The crew behind the fence was playing what was probably a well-understood game of trying to get him a little closer. He skittered out of the way and carried on.

I signed to banish the guide. He disappeared with the tablet, but not without smirking briefly at me. One of those, then, he muttered.

The Shadakon was still very close by and I knew he had taken in my reaction to signing out to whatever fate befell me.

What is this? I demanded, already knowing it was a futile gesture. This was not unexpected to him; this clause in fact referred directly to him and the incredible anticipation that was starting to build in me. Was this just business? How could it be anything but? I had just met him behind a thin encircling wire. I was a first-time attendee of the fair and had already put myself in the hands of … a vampire? Had I lost my mind?

I already knew that I had, but there was no fuzzy feeling of induced consent.

I felt more awake than I had in a long, long time, maybe since childhood when it was explained in no uncertain terms how I could and could not act. The questions I had asked as a child were already problematic for my parents. Why didn’t we help that man today? I had seen him, thin and struggling to remain on his feet in the long line he was waiting in. We didn’t stand in lines. Why did he have to?

I learned not to ask too many questions and certainly not any important to me. I gathered my own information from an early age. But I wasn’t going to disappear into the night with this strangely desirable being—although it was still early afternoon—without getting a few answers first.

We’ve got to talk, Player, I said with as much matter-of fact calmness as I could fake at the moment.

He studied me for what seemed to be a long time, though time was no longer predictable to me at this juncture.

Don’t pull back, pleasure-seeker. You knew and came to find me once you entered the gate. Do I not have your invitation within, as well as a signed contract?

His voice was calming, educated, with a slight, unique accent. It brought to mind old Shakespearean plays I had suffered through in my studies long ago. His eyes held mine; they were like dark amber, with dancing lights. I knew that he was telling me the truth. I had felt the faint pull of attraction that had led me to his corner of the fair. It had grown and was continuing to grow into something I could not even imagine. Long before, I had given up on wanting someone, assuming that people lied about this as they did about so many things. I thought on this afternoon I had finally experienced ultimate hunger for something.

It might turn out that I was very wrong.

Still, I tried to hold onto what—up until a minute or so ago—was important in my life. I had been a lonely child, eager to test myself against the wider world. But the accomplishments I achieved had not brought more than momentary happiness. My parents had been relieved when I was accepted into the space fleet, after my other nomadic work as a diver. That my new career might end my life we all knew, but meanwhile it was prestigious. I learned to cover my curiosity and not ask unwise questions. They asked me nothing about my life. I gave them weather reports of every planet I visited—number of moons, colour of sky, strange folks I saw there, and no doubt they shared these details with their social circle and gained approval from having such a dutiful (at last) daughter.

As for friends, I supposed what I had had were passing acquaintances. They were people to have a meal with, with promises to re-join with them that faded away with time. I didn’t miss them or wonder why this happened. I was—off planet––but, more than that, we had never really shared a common reality.

I owned some land in an ecological reserve in the rain forest of Pan America. Of course I could not live on it, and it might already have fallen to the increasing pressure to harvest the valuable timber since I left. It would eventually be a stripped hillside. If not now, later.

It did not take me long to run through the list of my holdings, but there was also my life that even in these last grey years, I had taken for granted. Early escapes into drugs and alcohol seemed to cost more and more the next day or week, and I learned to take what came on my own, without comfort of such distractions. Life was as it was for me. But surely I was not forfeiting my life today, was I?

Your life is your own today. You are protected by contract.

I have always been a private person and have never appreciated others trying to second-guess my thoughts that I had chosen not to reveal or elaborate on in the first place. I had run into those who, for their own reasons, attempted to draw me out with remarks that seemed to imply rapport. I see sadness in your eyes … and the implied, "… and I can fix that with my attentions." But this man or whatever was not guessing what was going through my mind.

He knew.

Yet he allowed me the politeness of some lapsed time before he responded to my line of thought. I sensed that what was growing between us was driving him on, too. Such calm. Meanwhile I felt my hands shaking and jammed them into my pockets.

We can leave now, he said. And he held out his hand, a hand with long tapering fingers.

In one of many acts of courage I would take, I put my cold hand into his cool one and the shock of contact made me gasp.

Chapter Two

The Flight

He laughed and I heard within, There’s more, much more.

His laughter was as cool and sure as his handclasp. And then we were rising up, the fence obviously no impediment to him. We rose over the heads of a stop-framed crowd, none of whom looked up to see us.

I felt keenly alive and somehow not surprised to be moving through the air. It was much like moving in the sea, only I could take deep breaths of air that had the taste of smoke and the body scents of the many people gathered here woven into it. We were moving, but he was not dragging me, I was staying aloft with no difficulty while holding his hand, although part of my mind was shouting in fear and incredibility. And then we outdistanced my rational mind.

The me who had longed on countless nights to leave the ship and float off into the night waters of deep space, was awake and laughed.

… never … coming down …

Some old rocker had sung that. Ah, Steppenwolf. I was able to easily pull that from decades-past times of listening to the Before Music. Before: when Earth and her inhabitants still believed in forever. Perhaps the singer had managed to not come down, but the rest of the planet’s population had brought themselves very down. Families—very small families with at most one child if they won the draw—lived in very small places. Ecstasy, either induced or natural, was not practical. Nor was it tolerated.

We landed with a slight thump on a quiet street. My knees were weak but not with fear. I leaned against this stranger’s arm and said with feigned formality, I think it’s time we learned each other’s names.

I had signed the form in front of him of course, but I had scrawled it for the benefit of the company’s records. Anyway, it seemed significant somehow that I give my name, after flying through the air with him, away from any safety and sanity that I previously might have comforted myself with.

And so I spoke my names to him, first, unused middle, and last. And then, acting on a feeling of strong and unexpected intuition, I said aloud another name that I had chosen in my youth, when I was researching many lines of enquiry about the nature of the universe and still believed that metaphysics might trump our inevitable fate. I had developed some skills, though I used them little these days. Still, giving this name seemed to be correct now, though I could not imagine how.

I had never before spoken it to another.

He regarded me for longer than his usual pauses. For my mortally slow thought processes? To consider what I had done? Was it appraisal I felt? Approval? Was the request for his name an unusual one, perhaps with unknowable connotations? This was not my world and probably not originally his. The Blood were scattered across the worlds that we had so far encountered. Now it was I who waited …

I waited.

They call us Shadakon. That is close to the name of … my kind.

Where? When? How long? I resolutely pushed these questions aside.

You called me ‘Player,’ a nice image, he said.

I got a flash of him, wearing a fedora in a smoky back room.You humans’ mythology of the vampire is partially true, he continued, although history is always written to suit the teller.

Still no name. I thought.

He studied me again and for the first time I wondered if he could see into me as completely as I had thought.

So you like to fly … are you so well-travelled that you are fearless in the air?

I thought of my childhood dreams that had entertained but also tormented me. In them I had learned to move freely, to drop lightly to the ground from far above. The ship had had canned air and music, inescapable music with its subliminal commands telling us that we felt fine, that we were enjoying the exciting privilege of space travel. But I would simply sit there, only wishing to fly away.

God, how I hated those curving corridors, and how I loved the eye-aching emptiness of the deeps. Even the recreational free fall was in a confined space with metallic air and cumbersome required safety gear. But all the time, all of us, were in enforced togetherness, feigning civility while meanwhile the crew generated endless gossip and speculations. Some of it centred on me and the fact that no one entered my room. Ever.

But flying! I had yearned to fly since my earliest dreams in which I successfully willed myself off the ground. How could he know my joy that left my knees wobbly?

We had come to an outlying treed area that surrounded the spaceport. We were in front of a stone house, an anomaly in a time of more modern and lighter built buildings. There was an encircling barrier of cypress-like trees, blue green and pointing narrowly at the sky and defining a private space behind the house. He looked at my grin of joy, and said, My name, one of my names which I still think of myself as, is Dagon. And with that he walked up the three stone steps and palmed open the door. He did not draw aside to let me enter, but instead stood at the entrance, with the afternoon sun making blue highlights in his thick dark hair. For the first time I saw the control, the patient fierceness.

Yet his voice was mild and he made a playful-seeming bow and flourish.

This is my home. Please enter and be my guest if you so wish.

The sunlight caused a flicker of light to play off his eyes, although he did not squint nor look away. At this point in the stories, one still has the chance to get away. Or does one? I had the choice of euphoria or the predictable sameness that was my life. I had never wanted anything like this before; I finally knew how that felt.

His home was simple and uncluttered, with rich-coloured furniture—just enough to suggest a lived-in space. What was there was priceless. One wall featured a tapestry so intricate that it could only be medieval in origin. The colours were muted and rich, and the picture was that of a great hall with a banquet in progress. Even the hounds beneath the tables were depicted with great accuracy. The people were uniformly small by our current standards and all dark haired. Stepping back to study it, I saw a troubadour with his harp sitting on a low seat before what must have been a queen or highborn lady. He was tall and dark and lean. She was looking at him with undisguised attention.

Dagon came over beside me and we studied the picture. I looked from it to him and he put a finger lightly to his lips.

Don’t ask. Please. I only keep it to be reminded of how I survived and how far I’ve come. And how most things are still the same.

So we sat down and he offered me wine, which I had no thirst for.

And then he offered me bliss.

Chapter Three

Going Beyond

Who got up first, who closed the gap between? I cannot say for sure, although it may have been me.

And now, I must unavoidably give evidence of my general dislike for a favourite human activity. I was pretty sure that kissing might be happening soon. Of course I had been kissed over the course of my life. The social kisses felt like an unhygienic waste of time. Being marked by saliva or the suggestion of it perhaps, claiming an acquaintance or friend, not unlike a cat might mark his place in your house. The cat, having made its point without concern for the effects on others, is uninterested in any consequences that follow.

My experience of supposedly intimate kissing was even less desirable. It felt too close, even though the other was often emotionally miles away from being with me, and yet, perversely, glued to my lips. I usually tried not to stiffen, but the other, intent on kissing, seldom noticed my politely unspoken lack of enthusiasm. This was just one part of my general withdrawal from erotic or sexual interactions. It generally got worse from there, especially with those who saw me as a challenge. I didn’t want to be cured of not-liking an unpleasant activity.

I had finally arranged my life so that such interactions could be held at bay.

This man, this being, had kissed and touched throughout the history of his and my kind. I had seen the expression in the eyes of the lady he played to in the tapestry. But now nothing was the way it had been before for me. We were sitting close to each other. When had that happened?

When I wanted him so badly I thought no more thoughts, remembered nothing else in my life. He brushed my cheek lightly with his fingertips in a tango-like move that went down and lingered on my shoulder and then down my arm. We were dancing. There was brightness between us that shimmered and flared. We had all the time in the world. He ran his hand lightly down from my hair this time, and then tipped up my chin.

His eyes held me. The room grew transparent and the evening was around us. He kissed. I kissed. Was such a difference from my previous experiences possible? I could feel the edges softening between me and this stranger. The waves of pleasure broke high and higher upon my beach. My fortressed island was going under the waves.

He read my state of mind and smiled again. You like it now; you’ll learn to love it later.

I was under the surface now, but with no desire to breathe. Rapture of the deep—I would have given my last pearl of air to a passing fish. He swept me up and laid me down on a soft yielding substance. A tiny part of me registered—fur? Is that fur? For such an item would be an unthinkable luxury now, if it could even be found.

As I melted in, I saw his eyes above me. They looked almost sleepy, but for a moment I saw the panther poised over me and I looked back into its now golden eyes with no fear.

We intermingled after the first kiss in every way I thought was possible and some that I only learned that day. Later we may have been outside under the stars, perhaps above the ground, in the treed area around his house. I cannot swear to that or anything else that happened that night. I believe at one point I cried a strange high note and he laughed. I felt his presence in my mind and body and it was the same, the same … incandescent yet not burning brightness. No pain, no awkward even momentary struggles with trapped legs or arms.

Or perhaps we were flying part of the time.

I had once seen a documentary about two eagles mating in the air. They fell spiralling and calling and pulling up and out to climb and do it again and again. I remember wind rushing by, although it just as easily could have been the blood rushing within me in this marathon of pleasure and more pleasure.

Eventually though, I felt that I might truly drown. I was more tired than I had ever been, even after weeks of pulling midnight watches. Even after months of midnight wakefulness, of struggling to solve why I was the way I was, I had eventually set aside those questions to find sleep. Now I was unable to maintain awareness. My inner light faded to grey. I was perhaps in an emergency, but no warning siren rang. I slid away toward an event horizon of nothingness.

I fell into a dream. In the dream I could not move and I struggled to draw breath from an empty tank. My legs were knotted and my hands were in painful fists. I was wrapped in a grey fog that swirled around me.

I was so thirsty! I could smell water nearby and knew all I had to do was to wake up and drink. I was so thirsty, so depleted. I faded further but carried that thought back up to consciousness later.

I awoke at twilight of the next day on the pelt of thick, cinnamon-coloured fur. Dagon was sitting beside me. He watched me as I struggled to come out of the dream, thirsty, needing …

Then, abruptly, he wrapped me in his arms and gave me—what? Energy? Relief? I came up to a usual level of wakefulness and then continued to recover and take more of the energy such that it spilled out, luminescent in the space between our bodies. Like phosphorescence, it glowed in my hair and surrounded us in dancing motes of moonlight.

He fed me, although I would not have said that then. He offered unbelievable energy, and I took and took until he pushed us apart gently, frowning slightly.

I was getting a little better at reading him now. His gaze seemed questioning. I had no questions. I knew that he had taken from me at the end of our evening. He had tapped into my funded life energy and also that which his actions had raised in me. I awakened with the memory of the glory of our night’s connection faded to dull grey.

I briefly touched my neck and he just shook his head. It is rarely like that now. It is the life essence that we require. In our youth and, only rarely later, do we enact the old blood ritual. He continued to study me.

Perhaps he had a question but was not yet prepared to ask. Time would lead us to that question and answer—but not yet. My life was my own, yes? This would end with the deep disappointment of returning to the ship and moving on and on, yes? I did not ask myself these questions. The answers were no longer important.

I still sparkled with energy. For the first time in my life, I was completely happy.

Chapter Four

The Revealing

As the evening darkened, he lit candles in niches all around the room. There were two white flowers floating in a bowl of water that seemed to put out more and more scent as we moved into the night.

I wanted to move, to dance. After pacing around the room twice, he caught my arm and attention. Now it was he who was sinuously relaxed. He was laughing, kindly, at me; aware of the effect he had on me. He pulled me down to sit next to him.

You do not ask. Are you not curious about the gift that you received?

I shook my head. I will not judge you. Or myself.

He raised an eyebrow. Fair enough, simple ethics, milady? Perhaps there’s something else you’d like to know?

I heard his ironic tone and his expectations of the predictable questions—how many people, how many women had he known? Taken what they unknowingly offered? How many had not survived his attentions?

I did not ask any of these questions while he waited.

I want to see you; to see your body in the light. I whispered. He looked directly at me.

As you wish, he said. But you must be willing to do anything that you ask me to do. There was something under-spoken in these words that I thought that I should pay attention to. But at this moment it eluded me.

In the paleness of moonlight and candle bright, he took off his loose shirt and shook out his long black hair, although when we had met at the fair I had not remembered it quite this long. As he turned slowly to show me what I had asked, I saw pale ridges of scars running here and there.

There was a large white star burst over his heart.

This man—this being before me—had been staked! It took all my years of space-time not to cry out, to let go of the fragile thread that tethered me to my old life and sanity. Fear circled me like the sharks I had met diving. This was no drug-induced reality that I was experiencing as I lay waiting somewhere for the dose to wear off. What I saw as I looked at him was real.

I touched him. There. He was cool and muscled under my hand.

He nodded. Yes. Some things leave their marks. They thought I was undone. He smiled. More inaccurate mythology. Now you.

My clothes came off in a lump that maliciously tripped me at the last moment. I briefly stood on one foot, clumsily ridding myself of my shoes and feeling the difference between his body and mine. I looked like I had been constructed out of every protein bar, sugared snack, and slack day of my life. If I was a swimmer (and I still was in a limited way), he was of the air—lean and strong. I shivered while he languidly removed his pants and unzipped his soft boots. He looked innocent of my mindset, but we both knew he was not.

Come here, woman.

He was cool and pale. I was surprised and grateful that touching him brought me as much pleasure as being touched, and so I moved easily into exploring him. He lay relaxed but aroused and watched me. I took my time, and found myself in unfamiliar territory. I would at times have a wave of fear and stop, as if I had heard the branch crack nearby in the woods (or how I imagined that might have been in an earlier time). But nothing happened to justify my fears and so, alert but reassured by the continuing seeming safety, I would resume. No one before had ever allowed me to find my own rhythm. Always there was an overriding, shortcutting, of something that might have grown stronger if I could have found my own way. He drew me down over him. I rocked to the rhythm of my beating heart, its tempo increasing and increasing. And when I could stand it no more, I realized that he was subtly withholding, not giving into the growing energy between us.

He caught my eyes and hissed. Yesss. You want your soon unstoppable release that will lead you to peace. But I must resist mine. My hunger is as great as yours is now. I want to take you! But I am abiding by your wishes, confused as they are, and that of the contract. Now you know a little more about me!

There was a storm building within my body and I was crying out, and not caring that I did, beating on his chest, and maybe even trying to get loose, to stop what could not be stopped, when I came by my own efforts. My last thought, as the last waves crested over me was Take it then! And doubtlessly he did avail himself of my energy, for I awoke in the morning, and he was gone.

Chapter Five

The Real(?) World Intervenes

I awoke to pounding and an official voice on the other side of the front door. I struggled into a robe that I found across the foot of the bed, weighing my options to withdraw to the inner, window-free part of the house, when I distinctly heard my name and rank being called.

Shit! I opened the door, feeling as horrible as I no doubt looked.

They assessed me glumly.

OK, no breach of contract at this time, but we need to talk to you. Not here … The one speaking looked about nervously. Ah … outside in ten minutes. We’ll wait in the vehicle.

Damn right you will wait, I thought. I considered my options, already knowing that I would at least superficially cooperate. There were two of them, Tweedledum and Tweedledee—company cops. I knew I had missed my ship-out but I also knew that with my work record and unused shore leaves they couldn’t really do anything to me. However, it would be well to keep my options open.

I found my clothing and put it on, noticing that it was rumpled and baggy on me. I rinsed my mouth, and thought longingly of the sunken tub in the back of Dagon’s house that I could not get into for the immediate future. It also occurred to me, in a fleeting way, that I couldn’t remember when I had eaten last, during however many days I had been here. Then I went out to meet them.

They insisted on taking me to a nondescript cafe, whose retro decor suggested cappuccino coffee—or at least a soya and algae analog. They put a menu in front of me and waved that I should order. While we waited, they got down to the business at hand.

We are here to advise you that you are engaging in a high-level dangerous activity and further advise you to immediately quit the premises of the so-called— He consulted his notes, … Shadakon.

Why are you bothering to do this? I asked balefully.

Our investigation has shown you to be on an ordered leave, with chronic stress and subsequent anti-social maladjustment. Your profile shows you to be within statistically significant parameters shared by other people who have upgraded their recreational contract to allow death by choice. As you know, the company has a lot invested in you … His voice trailed off.

The soup I had ordered tasted like dead things, like a swamp maybe. I stirred it around as if I might put another spoonful in my mouth, but knew I couldn’t. They looked at me and my untouched cooling coffee and looked at each other and then at the compu-pad in front of them.

And then I understood the situation I was in.

Company men. Keeping things legit and properly accounted for. I had just received my second official warning. Duly noted and signed by me. These transactions were probably good business for this dump during slow afternoons. There was always a server available to witness as needed.

They noticed me glaring at them and the remains of their lunches.

Anything else you have to say? I asked, seemingly calm.

One of the men stared at me with a look of disgust and perhaps a dollop of righteous pity. A woman like you doesn’t have to … I mean, there must be something else at the fair that would turn you on besides this!

I stood up, gratified to see the bowl of congealed soup and cups travelling leisurely outward for a long time before they crashed to the floor, and the table slowly rocking from where I had momentarily been. They jumped back, but not before giving me their last words of advice. Change the damn contract to the first option Lady, to your acceptance of death by pleasure. He’s got a copy ready. Save us all a lot of trouble. He’ll be calling us to remove the body before the end of the week.

They left without looking back.

Ugly men. Ugly place. Bad thoughts.

I decided to walk around for a while. So I wandered, pondering. I identified one choice would be to go back to work if allowed. No doubt this would remain in my file, but I am good at what I do, and not focusing on my crewmates meant my mind was clear for work. However, it occurred to me that I might have been set-up somehow on this forced leave, on this planet. It could have been any one of my many colleagues who did not appreciate my continuing obvious disinterest. So it might shake down that I wouldn’t be back in space other than as a paying passenger. I could maybe get a job as a hack maintenance worker on a shallow water algae or fish farm on old Earth.

I’d seen a few of these farms on my trips to the coast and during my earlier diving experiences. The giant, open-ocean cages held fish, bred to eat nonstop and grow fast. They were so damn stripped of their genetic fish wisdom that if they made it out of the cage, they’d swim around the outside perimeter, waiting to be fed and would be picked off or die of starvation.

Or I might qualify to work on an algae farm, putting in shifts doing repetitious scraping of the fast growing crop until a failure in my diving rig left me drowned and food for the remaining scavengers.

I was good enough at my work underwater or alone on a watch, no good at card games, team vids, small talk and the connections that was required to be a team player.

I might live on and on, stuck on Earth with its charms of crowding, food rationing, increasing solar radiation through the tattered ozone holes, ever-rising heat and pollution. Not much to do there except to work and partake of the remaining sins. Most people still used the cheaper opt-outs—alcohol and drugs, and computer hook-ups. Humanity would always have its means of small escapes.

My assessment of my choices left me feeling bleak. Space was the best I had managed, and I was often miserable in space. Always the feelings of being caged and watched, my behaviour shaped to suit others. Maybe I had already lived out the best part of my years. I still I wondered why my shipmates seemed content enough about their fates. You don’t miss what you never knew? I wondered.

Or, I could let a nonhuman use me for food. All very legal of course, just the slightest whisper of implied suicide, no longer uncommon in us humans. Death by bliss? A pleasant ending at least.

I was starting to feel shaky and the low sun’s glare off mirrored windows was evoking something that promised to be a very bad headache. I consulted my inner map, and made for Dagon’s house, with an immediate plan to fall into the tub and be gathered enough to have a conversation with him before I would retreat into my now usual unthinking state. Or I could just let the evening proceed without providing the details I was struggling with.

Who was I fooling? Maybe myself. Certainly not him.

I stood at the door and realized that I had a lot of assumptions but no reason to believe that they were valid. I might not be welcome anymore.

Surely he would have sensed the earlier presence of the company men; it lingered unpleasantly in the air at his front door. And what made me sure that he was alone? I stood silently, headache hammering, seeking refuge in the panther’s den.

Until the door opened and he was there.

Welcome to my home, if you wish to enter, he said. There was no playfulness in his tone this time.

We faced each other until he backed away to allow me entrance and stood observing me. The glimmering light and my headache decided what I had in fact, already decided. It was cool and twilight in the room. One perfect blossom floated in a crystal bowl and filled the room with its essence. It smelled … otherworldly. I could not even imagine how it had come to be here.

There were white flowers in the tub room that looked like what Earth’s lilies once looked like. Their stamens were blood red against the white petals. The huge tub that I had so wanted to be in earlier was filled with warm water that gently swirled. I felt soiled by the rub and bump of contact with the people outside and particularly the men I’d had my unpleasant conversation with. I climbed in gratefully.

I stretched out in the water and sank below the swirling surface, bobbing up to breathe, then down to float almost weightless near the bottom. Exhale. Exhale. The in-breath came of its own volition. Until at some point, it wouldn’t. I had seen a few people die. Always there was that last out-breath, sometimes as gentle as a sigh.

My skin softened in the water, my hair softened and floated around me.

It was longer. Long ago I had had long, windblown hair. My parents indulged me by not mentioning it during one of my last difficult summers with them before leaving home. But after that, my diving interests resulted in me having short, practical cuts.

And when I entered the Space Corps, I kept it short. It was just another thing that might draw unwanted attention to me. Wavy, auburn hair. I reached out and wrapped a tendril of dark red around my finger. Two wraps. I came out of the water.

There was a small mirror on the wall. Framed within it I saw a pale woman, without the sunburnt neck and wrist zones that most spacers have on land. There was a hint of cheekbone and hip that was not familiar to me. My hair hung to my shoulders. But I was too restless to focus over-long on this.

Dagon was obviously in the next room. I could feel the pull of his presence—and something else. Concern? For me? For him? I walked in, leaving the muddle of my clothes on the floor. He smiled at that.

How quickly things change, he said mildly.

On a low table sat a carafe of red liquid, fresh bread and a plate of sautéed vegetables. There was a place setting for one. Dagon lounged nearby and waved me to sit. I poured and swirled the liquid in my glass. Plum wine. I breathed in sunshine and ripe fruit. God! Plum wine. Where had these grown, how had he obtained this? The cost …

Lost in my reflections, I looked up suddenly to see him watching me intently.

Drink. It was a soft-spoken command.

Instead I turned my attention to the vegetables. Barely cooked golden squash, some translucent onion.

It looked like the best of my past, before Earth’s birthrate had peaked and all possible land was put into the most efficient crops—soya and high-pro rice and grains and endless yellow fields of modified canola and corn.

Eat.

And so I tried, really tried, to honour the richness of this gift. I sipped without swallowing and tasted and felt the golden squash flesh in my mouth. I mouthed and tasted and cut and pushed the beautiful shapes around on the plate until he stopped me.

Enough. Do you see what is happening here?

I did not completely see, only that I was not hungry for dead vegetables and fermented plums. I only wished for the night to flow on, to still my growing restlessness, to combine with this man-god-demon.

I was still hungry. I merely could no longer eat … food.

Chapter Six

It Gets Complicated, Very Complicated

We looked at each other in both spoken and mind silence.

Something is happening to me, I said. I’m changing.

He sighed. It was the perfect exhale, as good as any diver. It’s become complicated, he said. No. It began complicated. I should have seen … I should have let you pass.

Let me pass? I thought you plied your craft at the fair. That you took all comers. I was angry and wanted him to know it.

He waited to respond, weighing his words. I work at what I do under contract. Somewhat like you in your work, I must conform. I cannot live without energy and I cannot live on squash either. So I present myself. I am paid handsomely. You probably didn’t notice, but my services cost you half the credits you had at hand.

I winced.

He looked down at me angrily. For some it is all they have and more. If they want final release, I do that. I take it all. But mostly, I just take what I need. They go on to live their lives remembering a pleasant afternoon that was strangely tiring—and not much else.

"But this is different, and I am not acting as I usually do. I never bring someone home. I never fly someone to my home. They—" we both knew to whom he referred, have never come to my door. Oh, of course they know where I live—for now. They have never … hauled a body away! His eyes blazed. I am a professional. I do what I do in the equivalent of an office at the fair. I come and I go. No one comes here!

I should have realized! he said with what sounded like anguish. I had never met—

You didn’t realize that you were turning me into someone like you! I interrupted.

I tried to hang onto my anger, but it felt unjustified somehow and I knew it.

You are not turning into someone like me! he said. "You are someone like me."

We stared at each other.

You have the Blood, though not enough to be one or the other. Apparently you cannot be a human very well, although you’ve tried hard all your life.

I could not breathe. There was an overwhelming mixture of joy and validation, anger and confusion. That is it. That is it! The thought pounded in my mind.

But you cannot become fully what you are. It is not allowed. You would be a danger to us. It takes great will and focus to live with humans, and yet we must. Or it ends in flames and rage. He touched his scarred chest briefly. We have scattered ahead of human anger across the universe. Always our dealings with humans comes around to the chase and flames.

"Not allowed?"

It is not my choice to make, he said sadly, although I see the wisdom in it. You are a wild card. It is why we can read and hear and fully feel each other, you and I.

In spite of myself I smiled at that. But then, Not allowed?

How long can we hold this balance? I simply asked.

He shook his head. The tipping point has passed. Your life will end one way or the other at the end of the contract. Things are out of my hands now. The people who came here are not the biggest problem. They will report this to … others. He snarled as he spoke.

I was still stuck back at the how long part. How long is my contract?

He looked at me sadly. Two more days, little one. Maybe less, if other events occur.

And if the result is my death, and the final clause is not signed, what happens to you?

Ahhh. He exhaled again. "I forfeit my holdings here and must leave immediately.

Or there could be other, ah, complications. Punishment. Or both."

I thought of the tapestry, the crystal bowls, the graceful house and garden. I thought of him jumping ships, working slowly to create another identity somewhere. I am past a choice that I can see. I thought. Why take him down too? I have had the best few days of my life and I could have a few more days?

Give me the contract. I put out my hand...

In the event that I find it appropriate for my total expression of pleasure, I hereby do surrender my physical life with no further claim against the company. I read aloud.

I signed yes and entered it. The pad went blank in my hand.

What now? I said.

He sighed. Do you still wish to come to me? he asked quietly.

I listened within. I expected fear and anger. But the anger had come and gone and left me strangely calm. I looked into his amber eyes and thought, Perhaps we will both reach what we want tonight.

He was the most beautiful being I had ever seen and I would have him. If he took my life, then he would. I walked over to him, as he stood motionless watching me.

I want you, wherever that takes me, I said.

He drew me to him and our energies joined. First for me, he provided energy that I badly needed.

Soon I was floating in perfect balance, midway between body and my constant dreams of weightlessness. Unbodied. Taking and giving. We were dancing the energy dance of life and death. Waves of pleasure came and came until … he broke away; pulling back and making me focus suddenly.

I have a request, he said. I want to ask you out loud. (I almost laughed at his formality). I once used the old, wild, ways, and to me they are still sweet and deeper, much deeper than mere energy transfer.

I waited.

I want to taste your blood; to pull your living heart’s energy into me. It will be a little different for you, some pain but … you will share my pleasure.

He waited for my answer but it surprised him when it came. Do you remember when you said to me, ‘be prepared to do whatever you ask me to do?’ I remembered my first awkward disrobing.

He stopped and then … he totally stopped, as if this request required his full attention. Maybe that could be it! he said.

I waited for an explanation but there was none.

I will not say more at this time, he said.

Yes, I said.

Yes, he smiled. The true surrender. He shivered.

I made an archetypal gesture from old movies I had seen, head to the side, heart pounding, making my blood offering to him.

He looked to see that I was watching, eyes open to his, and then sunk what felt like very sharp teeth into my shoulder, where the life force flows with a strong pulse, before going onward to the body’s business.

Electric pain. I screamed.

He bent to the flow and watched me.

I gestured and felt his tongue moving slowly on me, heard a languid slow lap, and then swung out and over and away from my life and back, high, high over us and I heard a scream within me that was not my own.

The sound of a hawk, triumphant. The cry of having killed. That was from him—his ecstasy filled me, even as I faded.

I awoke to filtered morning light. I had an inconsequential almost healed wound above my shoulder blade. The cover on the bed was not the gory scene I expected. Nothing. Except—

I was still alive.

He had made his choice.

We settled briefly into what could only be called a strange routine. He left in the morning and I waited, my need growing as the day progressed. He introduced me to his library—computer access, of course, but also real books, books printed on paper. Books hand-lettered and bound in leather. Histories, genealogies … I studied them, drawn into a history and a story that, no matter what book or source I chose, no matter what middle page I might open—was the same. The story of The Blood. There were medieval manuscripts on vellum, meticulously preserved in enviro-envelopes. I looked down on loops and curlicue letters and block prints and elaborate illustrations of dark gods or demons. His youth? I shivered.

He had given me a low entry password and I researched in as many languages as I had—Pan Hispanic, some Amerindian, English, even Latin. There were unknown scripts in non-human languages as well, and related articles on shape shifting and witchcraft—an area that had interested me once. The screen would hold the indecipherable pages and then clear if there was no further enquiry on my part. Eventually I would return to the books and papers: magical treatises both modern and musty, alchemy and old maps.

I was bent over my studies when he returned. He seemed angry, almost fierce.

I was surprised. Did you think I would not be interested? Am I not welcome to find what I may?

He shook his head. It isn’t that. I have shared with you and this is part of it. He glanced at the materials I had gathered in front of me. It was easier when all one needed was a fresh fast horse to successfully escape.

Well, there are faster means now, I suggested. And further to go.

He shook his head. It always comes to this, the midnight flights … the torches. And before we learned to tolerate the light, the final torture by sun. He shuddered. But I always escaped. Until now. I am not free to leave now although I should. I cannot leave with you. I cannot leave you to your fate.

There is an agreement, he said. And I have broken it. I fooled myself or perhaps you have more skills than either of us realized.

The flames were in his eyes again, although this time there was no reflecting light to cause them. I cannot leave you to what will come. I do not wish to end what continues to grow between us. But others will. There is one faint chance and both of us must take it. If you fail, I fail also.

In spite of the terrible calm words that he was saying, I felt a rush of relief come over me.