Chance of Stardust

Stardust (ch 5)

Cassie followed Ari down a narrow hall, trying to ignore the way he kept a close eye on her. Didn’t want her sneaking off, did he? She understood that, but it didn’t keep her from craning her neck to peer through doorways or study the walls as they walked. Llyr seemed happy enough in his perch in Ari’s arms and he hummed to himself as they went.


Everything she saw was small and built for optimal use of minimal space. Narrow doors, narrow halls, beds that followed the same lines. Nowhere did she see windows. There were no handles on the doors, no obvious way of opening or locking them. She brushed her fingers over the wall only to find it cool to the touch. Metallic and seamless. The sense of disassociation she’d felt before was back full force and the detail took on life or death proportions in her scattered mind.


What kind of place was this? Buildings, even metal ones, had seams where the plates or sheets came together. Even planes and trains had seams on the walls. There was just no way around it. The whole place couldn’t have been formed from a single piece of metal which meant there had to be seams somewhere. Didn’t it?


Snarls and growls broke the quiet. Neither Ari nor Llyr seemed troubled by what sounded like a fight between lions. Cassie abruptly found herself far more wary of what lay ahead than interested in the oddness of her surroundings. The hall turned again to end in a single door. Ari stepped aside and motioned her in. Cassie stepped closer, nerves jittering.


The room was the largest she’d seen so far, a wide open area with no furniture or rugs or anything else that might get in the way. Not that she cared about the décor at the moment. In fact, she could have stepped into the Taj Mahal and not noticed. Her eyes were fixed on the combatants currently bleeding on the white flooring.


Leiv with his distinctive stripe of red hair faced off against Revelin, plainer with his sunshine on oiled oak coloring, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral snarl. Long canines flashed in the light and Cassie closed her eyes, her head swimming. She had to be dreaming. Or maybe it was the drugs. That was it. The drugs were making her see things that couldn’t possibly be real.


A roar snapped her eyes open in time to see Leiv lunge for Revelin, claws extended. Claws? She shook her head, unable to look away. At the last possible moment, Revelin stepped aside, his arm catching the other man around the middle, lifting him up only to slam him down. Hard. She flinched from the sound of the impact. Leiv twisted up from the ground, his body growing as he moved, stretching taller and larger than before. Slashing with his claws—those were not some fetishist’s wet dream—he went after Revelin like a lion after a gazelle, his body twisting more catlike than human.


Cassie choked, backing away from the scene, her mind spinning. No. This wasn’t happening. Teeth. Claws. Ears…


Turning, she bolted. She heard Ari shout her name, but she didn’t slow. With no idea of where she was or where she was going, she only wanted to get away. From them. From all the weirdness that had overtaken her afternoon. Most of all, she wanted to wake up from this bad dream.


The hall turned and turned again, until she ran into a dead end. No door. No windows. No way out. Her hands slid on the slick, seamless wall as she searched for a way out, her breath coming in panicked gasps. No handles. No escape. Sobbing, she sank to the floor and pulled her knees to her chest, rocking, trying to make sense of what she’d seen.


Drugs distorted reality. She knew that. But people growing claws and getting larger? There should have been a dreamy feeling, shouldn’t there? Some sign of disconnection. Like being drunk. Or high. Not this waking nightmare. The memory of watching Leiv grow, his body bulking out like a werewolf, assailed her and she whimpered into her arms. It couldn’t be real. The human body wasn’t made to change like that no matter how many shapeshifters peopled the pages of popular novels these days. Holding tight to that fact, she battled for her sanity.


She heard whispers behind her, male and worried. Tucking her face in her arms, she hid the only way she could. She didn’t want to see them. Her heart beat too hard in her chest, making her feel light headed and heavy limbed at the same time.


“Go, Ari.” Revelin. That rumbling growl of a voice was distinctive. “I’ve got her.”


Silence and then the shuffle of feet.


“Cassie?”


She shook her head. She wasn’t talking to a delusion. He could go weird out someone else. She’d had all she could take for one day.


“Cassie, you know I’m not going to hurt you.”


Actually, she didn’t know that. She only knew that he hadn’t hurt her yet. Claws… She waved a hand at him, trying to shoo him away.


“What is it, Cassie? Talk to me.”


Breaths shuddered in her lungs, her diaphragm seizing. “I… He…”


Words failed and she could only shake her head.


“Leiv shifted.” Revelin moved closer. She could hear him, but there was nowhere left to run. “It must have looked frightening to you.”


“A dream. Has to be.” She sucked a breath past spasming muscles. “Drugs.”


“No one has altered you in anyway.” A moment’s hesitation. “Except for the Universal. Ari didn’t know the tube would implant one. No one wants you hurt.”


“Can’t be real.” She panted, trying to get her breathing under control. It wouldn’t do her any good to pass out.


“We are real.”


She shook her head, refusing to accept it.


“What would it take to convince you?” Silence. “Cassie? Look at me.”


“No.”


“If I’m not real, what harm is there in looking at me?”


If she hadn’t been in the throes of her first ever panic attack, she might have been able to come up with an answer for that. But rational had taken a leap right along with reality and logic.


“Look at me.” Soft. Coaxing. “You’re braver than this. You bested Leiv with nothing more than a food tray.”


Her heart rate slowed, the shuddering sobs easing. She felt a light touch on her hair, a soothing stroke. She chanced a peek.


Revelin crouched beside her, his expression grim. Not that she’d seen him look happy, but he looked more upset than he had before. Blood trickled from marks on his upper arms and stained the metal scales of his shirt. She could smell the coppery scent of it, feel the tug as his nails caught in her hair. His breath was warm on her arms as he settled himself onto the floor beside her. Her heart stuttered again. He felt real.


“What scared you so much?”


She fought to find her voice, clearing her throat.


“Claws,” she croaked.


Revelin slowly held out his hand, palm down. His nails were flatter than her father’s, tougher looking and thick. He turned the hand over. Calluses lay across his palm, making her think of a carpenter or lineman. Someone who held tools all day for a living. Before she could get comfortable with that image, he curled his fingers and claws slid from under his nails, sharp and lethal.


She whimpered.


“You have nails,” he murmured. “You used them on me earlier. Mine are a little bigger. Nothing more.”


He kept his hand outstretched as if inviting her to touch. Cassie wiped at her eyes, trying to work up the courage to touch him. To find out if he was real. Tentatively, she reached out and touched one of his claws with a curious finger. It was hard and curved like a cat’s and sharp as a knife blade.


Quick as a thought, the claws retracted under her touch and she gasped, jerking her hand back. Revelin’s lips twitched.


He was playing with her. Like a cat, she thought.


She met his gaze, her head still swimming. “May I?” She nodded at his extended hand.


“Yes.”


Still shaking, she took his hand and turned it over, examining his nails. Thicker than normal, they were blunted and hardly threatening. Under the edge of the nail, she found the small sheath of skin. She blinked and took a deep breath against the black spots that danced in front of her eyes. That couldn’t be right. Even if plastic surgery could attach claws under a man’s natural nails, he wouldn’t have the musculature to extend and retract them. She pressed lightly and the claw slid from under the nail until, with a slight click, it locked into place.


Startled, she looked up at Revelin who watched her patiently. “They lock into place?”


He nodded, unfazed by her question. “It’s useful when I have to climb.”


“You pull your body weight up by your nails? Doesn’t that hurt?”


He shrugged. “No more than lifting yourself by your fingertips would. By locking, the claws gain the support of the bone beneath rather than dragging directly on the attaching tendons.”


She surrendered his hand, wrapping her arms back around her knees. He hesitated and then withdrew his hand.


“The claws weren’t the only thing that frightened you, were they?”


She closed her eyes, focusing on the air that moved in and out of her lungs. Fatigue weighed on her, a lethargy that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with emotional overload.


“What am I doing here? Who are you and what do you want with me?”


She heard his soft exhalation.


“You are here because Llyr is a curious child and Leiv is an idiot,” he snarled. “They should have left you where they found you. You knew nothing then. You were no threat to us. Instead, they brought you here and implanted a Universal which can be tracked if I allow you to leave the confines of the ship.”


“I’m no threat to you now,” she tried. “I still don’t know anything about you.”


He shook his head, his golden eyes a touch sad. “The Gurot won’t care. They can and will trace your Universal. Regardless of what you know, you would beg for death before they were done with you.”


“That’s awfully melodramatic, isn’t it?” Beg for death indeed. She shifted uncomfortably under his steady regard. “Can’t you just take the thing out and be done with it?”


“Universals cannot be removed. They integrate too closely with the brain. It’s how they work.” He sighed. “Cassie? You haven’t answered my question. The claws were not the only thing that frightened you were they?”


She looked away. “It was nothing. I was scared and imagining things.”


“Leiv shifted,” he pushed. “He got larger. Stronger. You saw it and it frightened you.”


She shook her head emphatically. “No. I imagined it. People can’t do what I saw him do. It’s not possible.”


“Your people can’t change their bodies, perhaps, but we aren’t your people.” Revelin tapped her chin with a finger. When she refused to look at him, he gripped her jaw, turning her to face him. “We are hirrient, Cassie. We are not the same as you.”


“People can’t—”


The finger over her lips kept her from repeating her denial. Oddly, Revelin didn’t look impatient with her denials, only resigned. His touch slid away, but she didn’t speak.


“You are an intelligent woman. Why is it impossible?”


She thought about that, her mind going back to the anatomy/physiology class she’d cursed last semester. All that memorizing might just come in handy now.


“Your bones aren’t rubber. They would have to be stretchable to allow you to gain height.” He accepted that, and she took a deep breath, forging ahead. “Muscles don’t gain mass. There’s no way to do what you’re saying you do.”


He waited until she was done. “If I were to tell you that hirrient have a flexible skeletal structure? We have the ability to loosen our joints, to grow as you put it. We also have a secondary set of muscles that engorge with blood when we enter our battle form.”


“But to pump that much more blood, your heart would have to grow,” she shot back triumphantly. “Your lungs would have to get bigger, too, to supply oxygen to that much more blood. It’s not possible.”


He stood and held down a hand. Cassie eyed it warily.


“Come. Let me show you.”


“I don’t think so.”


“If it is impossible, you have nothing to fear, do you?” He stripped off his shirt revealing a well muscled chest and the four long claw marks on his side that still bled sluggishly. He didn’t seem to notice but stuck his hand down for her again.


“Before I show you, I want to assure you that shifting into battle mode is a conscious decision,” he went on, grabbing her wrist and hauling her to her feet when she didn’t take his hand. “We don’t become animals or lose ourselves in blood lust. I am as sane in my battle form as I am now.”


She wasn’t sure just how sane he was, but, then, she wasn’t exactly sure of her own mental health at the moment.


“Are you ready?”


She shook her head. “No.”


He grinned suddenly, a spark of humor she hadn’t seen in him before. “Smart girl.”


He changed.


Cassie backed away as his muscles bulged, growing larger and larger. His body began to expand and she heard his joints pop. Her shoulders hit the wall, her eyes huge in her face. But she didn’t scream. It took a handful of seconds and then he towered over her, his head nearly touching the ceiling and his chest and arms folded in thick muscle. He’d gained mass as well as height.


“It’s not possible,” she whispered.


He motioned her closer with one clawed hand. “There’s nothing to fear. Come here. I would show you something.” His voice rumbled, a lower octave than before with resonance that came from a larger ribcage. The words penetrated her dazed mind.


Come closer? She shook her head, her hair flying. “Not on your life.”


He chuckled. “I only wish to show you how very possible it is. Nothing more.”


“I can see that from here.”


His amusement faded. “Until you touch me and see for yourself that I am real, that what I can do is real, you will never believe your eyes.”


“I’m good. Really I am. I believe.”


“Touch me.”


It was nothing short of a command and Cassie took a reluctant step forward. It wouldn’t do any good to piss off the person who appeared to be in charge around here. His eyes gleamed down at her. Revelin’s eyes. Revelin’s face. She blinked. His head hadn’t enlarged with his body. The cranium had no joint or connective tissue to expand, she reasoned. He looked a little strange with his head perched atop that massive body, but the difference in size wasn’t enough to make him look comical. He could intimidate larger predators on sheer mass alone.


“Put your head on my chest,” he instructed. “Listen to my heart and tell me what you hear.”


His hands remained loose at his sides. Cassie eyed the claws and decided they weren’t nearly as frightening as they had been before. No, the very large, very capable of killing predator in front of her was more a terrifying package than mere claws.


She took another step forward.


His chest wasn’t hairy she noted absently. Rather than the pelt she’d seen on men around town, he was lightly furred, the golden color delineating the lines of muscle on his chest and abdomen. And he was definitely muscled.


She took another step.


Heat radiated off him. She was close enough to touch now, within reach of those claws if he chose to attack, but it was the warmth of his body that caught her interest.


“You’re hot,” she said softly.


“Additional blood flow to the muscles as well as added skin surface has that effect,” he told her.


She was shaking again. Hating herself, hating the fear that kept swamping her, she leaned forward and rested her ear on his chest as he’d asked. His heart beat strong under ear, a steady rhythm. But not a normal rhythm, she frowned. There were added beats. Instead of a two step, it was a waltz, a triple beat that fascinated her.


“There’re extra beats.”


“Just as we have extra musculature, we have chambers in our heart that only open when we go into battle mode,” he explained. “The same for our lungs. There are areas that shut down when we do not need them.”


She looked up at him, nerves still jittering. “Can you please get smaller again?”


He grimaced and then shrugged. “It takes longer to come out of this form than it does to achieve it. It will be a few minutes before I will be as before.”


It was that slightly irritable answer that finally convinced her. He was real. Cassie forced herself to breathe, wishing she didn’t feel so small and helpless next to him.


“Revelin?”


“Yes, Cassie?”


“I want to go home.”


He sighed, reaching out to brush a knuckle over her cheek. She didn’t flinch away from the touch or the wickedly curved claw. She simply didn’t have the energy left.


“I wish I could let you. Truly, I do. I have no wish to hurt you or steal your home from you, but I cannot let you go.”