Page 129 of Seven Oars
He took another step forward.
She had nowhere to go.
And then he was on her, hooking the cable to the collar and dragging her closer to the Tana-Tana's corpse suspended from a rusty hook. Icy crystals covered the meat that had been frozen too long and too deeply.
Losing all reason, Rosamma fought him.
“Sadistic, evil alien! You’re sick! I hate you!”
She pushed at the unyielding body of the Rix manhandling her. She slapped his arms and shoulders and scratched his neck. Her legs kicked out, and she twisted and contorted her body, writhing and trying to slither away, because a mere thought of being shackled to a skinless, headless corpse filled her with fear so sour she could drink it like liquid.
“Kill me. Kill me now!” She tried to crawl away.“Take me to the chute. Anything but this, please, I beg you!”
She was choking on her sobs and weakening fast. Her body couldn't maintain the levels of adrenaline adequate to keep up the fight.
Fincros subdued her easily.
He affixed the other end of the cable to Father Zha-Ikkel by winding it around the middle and pushing the end into the abdomen that still retained a layer of yellow fat. Then he took out a small device and zapped it. The corpse.
The frozen muscles gave a slow, weak response, contracting.
Rosamma lurched backwards, dragging the cable taut.
The corpse swayed toward her.
A deep, keening wail tore from deep within her soul.
Fincros dropped to his knees and gathered her close, holding her loosely.
She lifted her eyes to look at his impassive face, all blurry from the tears that kept welling. She was shaking, and her nose was running, and her hands were cold and sweaty, and she felt like she was already dead inside from terror and anguish.
She slapped him across his scarred side, hoping he’d kill her on the spot.
He brushed a strand of her limp hair to the side.
She cried like a child while giving him feeble kicks within his lax hold, and he tolerated it.
But when she attempted to turn her head to fearfully check on that hair-raising carcass to which she was now tethered, Fincros wrapped his hand around the back of her head, fingers spanning it from ear to ear, and held firm.
His scarred face with his alien eyes filled her vision.
“I hate you,” she whispered between sobs.
He leaned down and pressed his mouth to her forehead, trailing his lips down her eyebrows, her eyelids, her cheeks, all of it wet and sticky.
Tremors rocked Rosamma’s body. Her restless hands stopped hitting and were now moving over him. She felt the strong beating of his hearts. His body was big and solid and secure.
If only it were not an illusion.
“Finn.” It was a plea to release her.
“Have no fear. Everything ends. This will end, too, and you’ll be free,” he said against her temple, implacable.
“Make me free now.” She could think of nothing else.
“Soon.”
She tasted him, her captor and torturer. She wasn’t sure why, how. She liked it, or she didn’t—nothing was certain. Nothing was real.
