And, in effect, they’d tortured Jak’ri and Ziv’ri.
The Purveli brothers’ minds had filled with such guilt and remorse.
Ava hadn’t held them responsible as they’d feared. She hadn’t blamed them. She’d tried so hard to stoically endure the pain and keep them from feeling even worse. But it had just been too much. She wasn’t used to it.
Could a person get used it? Could anyone really grow accustomed to suffering that kind of pain?
Her thoughts went to Eliana.
Immortal Guardians did. Eliana had been hunting and fighting psychotic vampires for four hundred years and had sustained so many serious injuries while doing it that the crap these Gathendiens had subjected Ava to probably wouldn’t have even fazed her.
I wish I were strong like her, Ava thought.
“You are strong,” Jak’ri told her softly as he gently stroked her hair.
Sighing, she opened her eyes and found him staring down at her, his handsome face grave.
He sat with his back to the bars of his cell, legs crossed to provide Ava with a lap to sleep upon like a hammock.
Ziv’ri peered over his shoulder through the bars behind him. “Strong like who?”
“Eliana.” Every muscle in Ava’s body ached as though she had tripled the amount of weight she lifted and had worked out for five hours instead of the usual one yesterday. Even so, she raised a hand and cupped Jak’ri face, smoothing a thumb over his stubbled jaw. She suspected he’d been holding her all night and hadn’t yet had what passed for a shower or a bladeless shave here.
She studied him, touched his midnight hair, rested her hand on his neck where it met his strong shoulder and drew her fingers over his barely discernible scales with their silvery hue. “It’s strange.”
Uncertainty entered his expression. “My scales?”
“No.” She rubbed his shoulder. “That you feel as real to me in dreams as you do right now.”
He nodded, still stroking her hair. “How are you?”
She tried to think of the Alliance Common word for sore, but couldn’t. Besides, she didn’t want to whine about how much she hurt when the two of them had been here longer and had suffered far more. “Angry.”
His hand on her hair stilled. “At us?”
“No.” She jerked a thumb toward the empty lab and winced. “At those bastards.” Clenching her teeth, she drew in a deep breath, held it, and forced herself to sit up straight.
And there came the pain. She hoped tasing or shocking her in the stomach hadn’t messed up the organs that were still healing from whatever the hell they’d done to her.
Jak’ri rested a hand on her back, his brow furrowed with concern.
She forced a smile. “I’m okay.” Then she shifted her gaze to Ziv’ri. He looked remarkably similar to Jak’ri with subtle differences in his nose and jawline. If Jak’ri hadn’t told her Ziv’ri was younger, she might have thought them fraternal twins.
Ava extended her hand through the bars “Hi, Ziv’ri. It’s nice to meet you in person.”
He clasped her forearm in what she had come to understand was a common greeting out here in space. “I wish we could’ve met under more pleasant circumstances.”
She took in the scars and many healing wounds that marred his body. “I do, too.”
The pressing need to relieve her bladder gradually made itself known, and Ava felt grateful that she hadn’t peed her pants while she was being tased. It was a silly thing to worry about, she supposed. But that little humiliation on top of the pain just felt like it would’ve been too much.
Releasing Ziv’ri, she gripped a bar with one hand and Jak’ri’s shoulder with the other and heaved herself to her feet.
Yep. That had felt about as horrible as she’d guessed it would.
Both men rose, extending their hands to offer support.
“I’m okay,” she assured them with a tight smile. Heat flooded her cheeks. “I just, uh, need to use the lav.”
They nodded, exhibiting none of the embarrassment she felt.
Jak’ri took her elbow. “Do you want me to help you?”
“No, thank you. I’m okay. Really.”
Not really. She hadn’t been okay since she’d ended up on this ship. But she squared her shoulders, stiffly crossed the cell, and enclosed herself in the bathroom. It was even smaller than the one in the first house she’d rented. A claustrophobic shower took up half of it. Considering how her eyes stung whenever she used the one in her cell, she assumed it was some sort of decontamination shower. These scientists were serious about keeping their subjects clean and moderately healthy for their experiments. The cells their subjects occupied might look like crap, but they were spotless.
On the other side of the lav—close enough that Jak’ri probably bumped his elbows a lot in here—rested a high-tech toilet that apparently analyzed everything they put in it and a sink with a bottle of wosuur liquid on the shelf above it. Though the bottle looked like glass, it was unbreakable. She had dropped the one in her cell’s bathroom twice and might have thrown it down in anger a time or two as well. All it did was bounce and make a racket.
The Lasarans had used wosuur liquid on the Kandovar. The liquid dissolved any food particles in the mouth without damaging teeth or gums and was so efficient that it was the equivalent of brushing, flossing, and rinsing with mouthwash combined.
Ava used the facilities, cleaned her hands in the sink, and availed herself of the wosuur liquid.
Looking down, she peeled the bottom of her shirt up and examined her stomach.
She’d lost weight since coming here. She’d already been slender before. The network that had employed her and made this whole space voyage possible was very big on helping employees achieve good health. She had heard of other companies that provided their employees with a gym in an attempt to keep the company’s health insurance expenses down. But the network that aided the Immortal Guardians instead seemed to genuinely care about its employees, wanting them to be as healthy, happy, and safe as possible.
Once she’d gone to work for them, Ava had taken advantage of everything they offered. Free healthcare. A gym with trainers on hand twenty-four hours a day. Self-defense instruction that was optional at first then became mandatory after mercenaries blitzed the building and the number of vampires—all of whom were swiftly descending into insanity—living several stories beneath them increased. (If only that and the training she had received from Eliana would’ve enabled her to overpower the damned Gathendiens yesterday.) And three free meals a day.
Thinking of those delicious meals, Ava nearly started salivating.
Thanks to the network, she had been in tip-top shape when she’d left Earth.
Now, however, her ribcage was disturbingly prominent.
She felt a little relieved that the incision sites on her stomach still appeared to be healing. She’d worried that all of that shocking might have sparked bleeding or bruising or something. But whatever the Gathendiens put in her canteen was remarkable in its ability to speed healing. Two places on her abdomen now bore what looked like burn marks. No doubt that was where the bastard had hit her with the shock wand.
She touched one tentatively.
Odd. It looked like a burn, but it wasn’t as raw as fresh burns usually were.