Righteous Anger (Okal Rel Saga #2)

Part 5.1: Reetions

191 Post Treaty

Horth pelted down the promenade towards Liege Bryllit's quarters after a panic-stricken seven-year-old Dorn who had come to fetch him.

"She's beserk!" Dorn warned his sire as he halted, eyes wide and body breathless.

Horth delayed just long enough to lay a hand on his son's shoulder. He burst in on Bryllit in time to see her hurl a pitcher of ship's ale at the ceiling.

"Watch that!" Bryllit raged at whichever of the Watching Dead she evidently meant to nail with her projectile, and swept up the next thing on the table where she and Horth often had breakfast together.

"Twelve!" she railed, and shook her fist at her disembodied ancestors. "Twelve babies I've given you! Go bless another descendant!"

She was casting about for something else to throw when she spotted Horth.

"You!" she roared, and launched herself at him.

Horth had heard that the hormones associated with early pregnancy could be murderously hard on a woman as Vrellish as Bryllit, whose blood was typically laced with as much testosterone as any man's. But he had not realized until now that the male responsible was the one most likely to get murdered.

Bryllit hit him like a rel-fighter doing six skim'facs, knocking the breath out of Horth's lungs. They crashed into the low table at the foot of the wide bed where the damage had been done.

Pain stabbed him in the ribs as they rolled over a piece of broken furniture. Horth tried to hang on to prevent Bryllit getting enough clearance to swing at him, or strike him with her forehead. She broke his grip with a roar, reared up, and swung down with a two-fisted blow. Horth heaved her sideways, spoiling her aim, and rolled on top of her.

The next thing he knew, she had her legs locked around his waist and was forcing a kiss on him. Slowly, muscles still straining, he let their body contact transform from violence into passion. He was grateful for the change, but wary of a relapse.

Twenty minutes later, naked and panting with the stress of spent emotions, they found themselves lying on the bed together. Bryllit lay staring at the ceiling with sweat cooling on her limbs and torso.

"It's bad timing," she explained away her earlier outburst heaving herself up and stalking across her living quarters, naked.

She returned with a slim silver box in her hand. It was oblong in shape with rounded edges. Horth could not imagine what it was for.

"Reetion," Bryllit said. "But not an old war artifact. A new thing."

He started as if she had told him it was carrying a fatal virus.

"It has pictures on it," she said. "Pictures of that dancer from Den Eva's, named Von, being molested. I'll show you how it works. Watch."

Bryllit stroked her hand over the box in a smooth motion and its surface lit up, exciting the air above. Images resolved themselves into a solid-looking display.

The technology intrigued Horth, but the images repelled him! He was looking at children in a sla-den: the sort of place that catered to abusive fetishes. The children in view were boys being mauled by a man in an unmistakably sexual manner. The children looked no older than Dorn. Horth found himself boiling with anger.

"These things are showing up at the worst sort of trading stations across Killing Reach," Bryllit told him. She tossed the silver box onto their abandoned bed. "But they seem to feature the UnderDocks on Gelion. How could the Reetions have been there? And what do they mean by selling such filth back to us? Sheer mockery? Or is it some sort of vulgar challenge?" She shook her head. "I don't know. But they might know on Gelion. See what you can find out there, and then take word to your liege-father."