NEW BLOOD

By

Amy Gallow

© copyright March 2006, Amy Gallow

Cover art by Dan Skinner, © copyright March 2006

ISBN 1-58608-857-2

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.

Chapter 1

“Mistress...?”

Dael, a lesser hive member of the Blood and reluctant administrator of this insignificant northern archipelago, turned from her contemplation of the view through the stern windows of the great cabin and faced the Senior Councilor of Kyos. One of Belen’s Elite, he was obsessed by the minutiae of administration and terrified of responsibility. She didn’t like him.

“Yes, Councilor?” she said aloud, putting aside the ease of mind-to-mind contact to hide her dislike of the man.

“We need a decision from you before we proceed…” She needed no mind scan to feel his fear. Everything about her made him nervous. Her choice of female hosts upset him, and her habit of traveling in the flesh for periodic inspections offended his self-importance. He retained too many of Belen’s prejudices.

She didn’t mean to frown, but the matter was so trivial. A simple extension of existing policy…

Panic at her displeasure swirled around her and she reacted instinctively, freezing the minds of all eight councilors to buy time. The four women weren’t the problem. It was the males, all Belen’s ex-hosts. The Hive Master was too quick to punish and careless of the harm it caused. It made his Elite a burden on the rest of the Hive, easily panicked and difficult to calm

Gentling each mind took time, but there was no point in hurrying. The Elite were in no danger and their meeting in the great cabin was private--no Commoners allowed.

The Senior Councilor proved difficult. Belen had handled the changeover carelessly, leaving too many memories unedited, with fear the dominant emotion, making the man afraid of the simplest decision--hardly the ideal qualification for his role in Kyos. It was her fault too. She should have scanned him thoroughly when Belen sent him to her.

Immortality provides no guarantee against error.

The thought came into her mind, not as a deliberate communication, because it had no source, more a wry observation, carrying the shadow of another’s amusement. An echo from the Group Mind, perhaps. She’d long since accustomed herself to it monitoring her and had to concentrate consciously to sense its presence. Belen’s dissatisfaction had reached it.

She wished she felt as the others did on entering the Group Mind. She could share their joy only secondhand, never personally experiencing the total integration transcending all consciousness of individuality. She sometimes wondered whether they were pretending, victims of a willful self-delusion practiced long enough to feel real.

She put this aside and focused, working her way through the Elite until she was satisfied. Their experience as hosts to the Blood made it easier, conditioning their minds to accept her control. A little time to arrange the scene, dumping most of the food out the stern galley, to account for the time lapse. Even the Elite had no idea how much the Blood could manipulate their minds and those of the Commoners, so she wanted nothing to arouse their curiosity when she released them as a group.

“Sorry I had to leave you for a while. I hope you enjoyed your lunch.” Speaking made it easier to conceal the truth. Mind contact carried verity, sometimes a little too far.

A brief warring between their physical hunger and the recollection of eating imposed by Dael created a moment of confusion, but all of them could afford to miss one meal.

The meeting continued, the Elite following Dael’s example, nibbling at the left-over food as they talked. She saw no reason to deprive her host body of sustenance. Samara wasn’t over-fed and she’d grown fond of her in the last twelve years. Gentle manipulation had cleansed her of inherited disease, toned her muscles, and enhanced her natural beauty until no one could doubt her status as a Chosen. Even her mind had learnt discipline and no longer battled for control. Dael scanned its dreaming state and approved. The woman would make a useful Elite five years from now, probably here in Kyos since she came from a fishing village just down the coast.

Relaxed, Dael let part of her mind wander, the remainder having no trouble keeping up with the flow of primitive thought in her companions. Like all non-telepaths, their need for a language limited them. They called her race theBlood, but the word captured only a tiny fragment of the complexity of its identity. Group Mind, Hive, and Hive Master were all approximations. Even her personal name was beyond them, shortened to a meaningless sound, another frustration of dealing with the indigenous race.

Yet the Blood needed them. Unable to survive without physical hosts, the Group Mind had tailored the rewards of hosting to ensure a constant supply of volunteers from the Commoners. Many people were willing to exchange seventeen years of their lives for a healthy body, doubled life span and elevation to the wealth and power of the bureaucrats of this world, the Elite. Both races had prospered--until recent times...

“Mistress?”

Dael refocused. It was the Senior Councilor again. She’d replace him soon, which would anger Belen. The Hive Master didn’t like his actions questioned, especially by a subordinate he’d reprimanded even before she left the Hive. But she couldn’t tolerate repeated stupidity.

“The Commoners still resist being ordered around by women.” The Councilor glanced at Dael’s Elite. “It goes against the grain, so to speak.” He was looking at her and she could feel his fear lurking behind her conditioning.

“I am a woman. Do they object to me?”

“You are a Chosen. Everyone knows you can be whatever you choose.”

He was right, although Dael hadn’t chosen a male host in the last three thousand cycles, the source of another reprimand from Belen.

“They will become used to it.”

“Change?" he said skeptically. "Mistress, we don’t change things much.”

He was right again. The Blood had enforced a system of peaceful cooperation on a primitive planet of warring tribes so long ago that no one remembered the last change. History no longer existed.

Dael scanned him, probing below surface uncertainties to find the cause. Coercion was simple and she had the power, but it never felt entirely satisfactory.

Belen again. He thought so little of his Elite that he never took the trouble to heal them afterwards. This poor fool had accumulated all his faults, including a prejudice against women. She’d have a lot of work to do, fixing this. Replacing him was simpler.

Samara’s physical distress impinged on her mind. Her host was tired and deserved more consideration than this fool.

“We’ll meet again tomorrow. We can discuss it then.”

The others, uncomfortable with the hint of discord, agreed, rising hastily to their feet and backing towards the cabin entrance. The sailing master, alerted by Dael, was there, opening the bulkhead partition and shepherding the Elite away, even the Senior Councilor, who still hesitated.

“Come on, good sir. It’s slack tide. Makes the gangway steady.”

It was enough. Dael’s routine of having onboard meetings during her tours of inspection had seen more than one Elite dumped unceremoniously by the narrow plank gangways, deliberately rigged without hand ropes.

Left alone, Dael scanned her host body. Aside from a healthy hunger and an incipient cramp from having sat for so long, it was well. The menstrual cycle, now perfectly regulated, was approaching its monthly fruition and the hormones triggered by the impending ovulation were in full flow, probably the cause of the tiredness. They’d retire early and Samara could rest.

It was strange she never lost the awareness of her host. No other in her Hive experienced such continuous connection.

“Ma’am,” the sailing master called from behind her.

Dael smiled as she turned to face him. A stiff-necked individual, he always sounded as if the honorific was catching in his throat. “Yes?” Mind to mind contact made him uncomfortable, so she limited it.

“When will we sail? Our draught makes Kyos tidal and we’re not long past the neap.”

“Is there a suitable tide two days from now?”

He nodded.

“Make it so, sailing master.” She was teasing him by echoing his nautical jargon.

“Aye aye, ma’am.” He was smiling, too, and Dael wondered if it would be this easy if she’d chosen an ugly host.

“Rig the awning, sailing master. I’ll sleep on deck tonight. It’s warm enough.”

“Aye, ma’am.”

He turned away and Dael watched him go, still puzzled by the sudden impulse to change her sleeping arrangements. These sudden impulses were occurring more frequently of late. Perhaps Samara was flexing her mental muscles?

Two hours later, she was pleased with her decision. Screens beneath the awning ensured privacy from the wharf, keeping it snug without any of the sour bilge smell that pervaded every 'tween-decks space in the ex-trading schooner. A soft bed of cushions outboard of the coach-house completed the furnishing.

Dael could feel her host body’s need as she relaxed. Samara was asleep within a dozen breaths, and Dael retreated into her haven, the closest thing she knew to human sleep. The others in her hive spent their host’s sleeping time in the Group Mind, but Dael was never entirely comfortable there.

* * * *

A callused hand clamped down on Samara’s mouth brought her back. The reek of fish and the sense of a primitive mind confirmed that a Commoner was attacking her host. Hardly surprising. No Elite would dare to attack a Chosen. With no prior conditioning of his mind to accept control, she must kill this fool to defend her host! The task repelled her, but she focused--

NO!

Her mind reeled under the mental assault of a veto so absolute it drove her away from her host. Its source lay beyond the Commoner, radiating such raw power it overwhelmed every sensation. And then it vanished as abruptly as it arrived, leaving only the Commoner holding her host body.

Impossible!

A mind can’t disappear. It might fade with distance, but the consciousness of it would remain. This was different. The intruding mind had snapped in and out of existence, going from total authority to nothing in an instant.

Her distress reached Belen, its power snatching him from a healing. He arrived flustered, but she granted him access to relive the intrusion while she reached out to resume control of her host.

She found Samara swathed in a coarse woolen blanket, lying face down across the shoulder of the Commoner with callused hands as he carried her along the deck. His fear suggested knowledge of the Blood, but his determination came from another source. This could be the host of the other mind. She probed deeper, but Belen’s shriek of distress startled her into retreat.

He fled, too, trailing glimpses of other minds destroyed by the same wrongness. His terror, radiating outwards like a ripple in a pool, closed every mind it touched. Their auras remained, but her pleas for understanding went unheard. Belen was banishing her from the Hive.

Permanently!

Then the Group Mind excluded Dael and she discovered fear. No member of the Blood had ever survived total exile. She was going to die!

You will not die.

The thought came out of nothingness and was gone as completely. Another impossibility. Not even the Group Mind could scan her without permission, nor exist without betraying its presence. Dael reached out, searching--and found only the commoner carrying her.

The change in motion told her they’d boarded a smaller boat and she sensed other minds waiting. It was time to act. If she could establish contact and slip into another host, physical escape was a possibility.

Another shock.

Barriers within their minds barred her from them. She focused, trying to break through, but remained trapped inside her host. Without the Group Mind’s support, she was helpless.

You will come to no harm. The intruder swamped Dael’s thoughts, blanking out a world made lethal by her banishment from the Hive and exile from the Group Mind with a healer’s compassion. She fought against him, but he spun a protective cocoon to absorb her efforts without trace and she plunged into a black immensity, abandoning her host to its rightful owner as a greater mind enforced the blankness of non-being.

* * * *

Samara moved experimentally to confirm Dael’s departure, then relaxed to consider her position. She’d accepted the status of Chosen willingly as a thirteen-year-old and hadn’t regretted the decision. Dael had taken over, molding her body into perfection and opening her mind to the structure of the world. She’d been content until the entity she knew as Peter had touched her.

Where the Masters ignored her, he’d quizzed her gently, exploring her thoughts and promising freedom beyond anything she’d ever known … and she’d believed him, for a being like Peter need never lie. Then he’d left, and she’d waited without impatience, just as she’d waited the previous twelve years. At worst, another five would see the next choosing and she’d become an Elite. Free to marry and bear children, but he’d promised better.

He?

The Masters took their sexual characteristics from their hosts, but their sexual identities were second-hand, weaker, more easily changed. Peter was male enough that even the memory of him sent waves of warmth quivering down her spine to nest in her womanhood, waking the feelings repressed by Dael’s manipulations. She pitied Dael. The brilliant logic, dealing in concepts she could glimpse only imperfectly, hid a soulless emptiness, without joy, without love. She couldn’t imagine eternity with no sense of wonder and no sex.

Peter had promised something better, even if he’d remained silent on the details. This must be part of his plan. All she had to do was respond normally. He’d not let her come to harm.

“You can get up now,” a Commoner said, a Southlander by his voice.

Samara unwrapped the blanket and shivered when the cold sea air bit through the flimsy gown she wore. She sat up and gathered the blanket around her.

“Put this on. It will keep you warm.” The sun-darkened man at the tiller held out a long sealskin cape.

“Thank you.” She shed the blanket and took the cape. Closed with toggle buttons, it covered her from head to foot.

“Come sit with me,” he said. “We’ve a long day’s sail, and you can prepare the food.”

The boat was small, only half decked, a weathered grey lugsail driving them across the ocean swell from the open sea. Samara looked astern and could see only a low brown smear of land.

“Don’t gawk!” he said impatiently. “I’m hungry. The others can eat when they wake.”

Samara smiled, recognizing the fear behind his bluffness. She rose and shifted to the after thwart, taking her place on the lee side, as a fisherman’s daughter should. The cooking fire was in a sand-filled stone pot with a cast-iron cover. She knelt and blew the embers into life, adding just enough wood from the rack under the thwart. The food locker was under the transom, close to the helmsman, and he had to move his legs for her to open it.

She could smell his unwashed body.

The familiar odor took her back to her father and his brothers coming into the cabin long after dark, jostling around the cooking fire as they warmed themselves. She smiled at the memory, twelve years of pampering by servants vanquished by its power.

“Is this all you’ve got?” It was poor fare, the type kept on fishing boats for emergencies. “You must be poor fishermen.”

“We borrowed the boat,” the helmsman said. “The family’s gone to a wedding feast in the next village.”

“You’ll return it?” She knew what a disaster the loss of a boat could be. No one starved, but family pride was important. No one took food from the Masters without need.

“Yes. It’ll be back before they return. Pete insisted.”

Samara recognized the diminutive and her smile grew. It didn’t feel right, but it confirmed they were acting for Peter and not foolish thieves.

She sorted the contents of the locker, putting aside what was immediately edible. The helmsman could snack on these while she cooked the rest. A glance forward to the half-deck identified four bodies huddled together for warmth. She’d cook for six.

“Here.” She handed the helmsman a strip of dried meat covered with herbs. “Chew on this till the food is ready.”

“Good,” he said, an equivalent to thanks she’d not heard for many years.

The cast-iron pot, sluiced clean over the side and set between fid bars over the flames, was achingly familiar. Samara found pleasure in the simple task of cooking, drawing on both her childhood memories and what she’d learnt as a Chosen.

Before long, the lid of the pot was jiggling merrily, sending delicious aromas forward to cause a stir in the huddle of bodies under the half-deck.

“You cook good,” the helmsman said. “Feed them first. I’ll eat when Jac takes my place.”

“What’s your name?” His accent was from beyond the Southland Isles.

“Torred.”

A name from half a world away. “What are you doing so far from home?”

“You know a lot for a woman.”

“I am a Chosen.”

“True,” he admitted. “They say it makes a difference.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“Pete saved my life and told me to come.”

The cooking pot demanded Samara’s attention, but not her thoughts. Unlike Dael, most of the Masters never traveled, acting through the Group Mind to reach other places. Peter was unique, traveling physically and able to project himself without the limitations of the Group Mind. A man with the powers of a Master and more. She sensed an alternative to the puzzle of his nature, but it eluded her.

The huddle under the half-deck separated into four individuals drawn from afar to a common purpose. One a flat-faced northerner, another a sharp-featured easterner, a small brown man, and a giant as black as ebony, their Common Tongue distorted by accents myth claimed were the vestiges of individual languages.

Alike in appetite, they ate the food with grunts of approval, each man with his own spoon. With two thirds of the food gone, Jac, the northerner, took the tiller. Torred offered Samara his spoon after sluicing it in the sea and wiping it on his jersey. “You eat.”

Conscious of the compliment of precedence over a male and the use of a personal spoon, Samara took it and ate, consuming a little less than half of what remained.

“Thank you.” She cleaned the carved whalebone spoon before returning it.

“Good.” The universal word conveyed more than thanks and was accompanied by a roguish grin that made Samara’s cheeks warm. Rugged enough to verge on ugliness, Torred’s face mirrored his thoughts when he chose, the attribute of a successful liar. His movements in the boat betrayed him as a seaman, probably not a fisherman. There was a big-boat feel to him. The sea was his home, not a place to be pillaged. He probably worked on a trading vessel she thought, one of the thousands distributing the largesse of the Masters.

When he finished, Samara cleaned the pot and utensils, stowing them away in the locker. She banked the fire, adjusting the cover slide to allow just enough air to keep the embers alive.

The five men watched her, probably curious to see how a Chosen performed menial tasks

“I’m not so different, am I?” She directed her challenge at Torred.

“Prettier, though.” This was definitely a seaman, experienced with women.

Samara was enjoying herself. She whispered a secret prayer Dael would not wake.

You have this day and the next. She needs rest, Peter said in her mind. She glanced at Torred, but his face showed nothing.

Is she safe? she asked Peter.

More has happened than she can understand. She needs time to put it in perspective.

She was alone again.

Samara compared Peter to the Masters and found a gulf deeper than the ocean she now sailed. He shared her humanity; they observed it, used it, controlled it.

“What did Pete say?” Torred asked. “I saw you looking inwards.”

“We have this day and the next before Dael wakes.”

“We’ll be at the settlement before then.” He smiled, as if many things could happen before then and he intended to enjoy all of them. The warmth in Samara’s face had nothing to do with embarrassment. It was twelve years since a man had looked at her as a woman. She’d matured early, but a primary qualification for the Choosing was virginity and this had kept her impulses in check until Dael’s gentle manipulations of her body had muted them.

Perhaps her changed status had reversed this. She’d responded to Peter and now Torred.

She looked out at the sea, as if searching for their destination, but used peripheral vision to study Torred. This was the sort of man she’d have taken to her bed, first as a lover, then as a husband. A suitable catch for a fisherman’s daughter, but out of the question now, for the Elite married only Elite. In another five years, she wouldn’t notice him in the street.

He smiled often, cracked jokes with the others, and took more than his fair share of the work, if his stint at the tiller was any indication. A good seaman, she liked him, felt comfortable with him. He reminded her of her brothers, the same solid body, long black hair cleaner than theirs and tied back with a twist of tarred cord, with eyes more knowing than any fisherman. The other, Peter, was more than a man. She’d give herself to him, but never share more than his bed--if a disembodied presence ever used a bed. She giggled at the thought.

“Something tickle your fancy?” Torred took the opportunity to move to the windward of her. A burst of spray coming over the weather bow rattled on his oilskins as he leaned close to shield her, bringing him directly into her line of sight.

She smiled at him. This was no fumbling amateur, yet she sensed she’d be safe with him. He’d allow her to change her mind right up to the last second about how far she wanted to go. The run of her thoughts should have shocked her, but they didn’t. She had two days of freedom, the first in twelve years, and no intention of wasting them.

She shifted on the thwart, as if to gain more shelter from his body, but really nestling into his protecting arm. “The wind’s cold,” she said.

“We can’t have that.” He reached under the half deck and found a rolled canvas dodger. “This will keep the wind out.” He wrapped it around their bodies, tucking it under them to form a cocoon with only an opening for their faces.

Except for Jac, the others had retreated under the half deck, and Torred shifted a little to hide their faces from the helmsman. “Call me before we reach the entrance,” he said, and Samara heard Jac grunt an acknowledgement.

Nothing happened for a while and Samara shifted impatiently.

“I’m warming my hands.” Torred’s whisper warmed her ear.

“Are your lips cold, too?”

He chuckled. “All in good time. We’ve another three hours, a night, and a day.”

“Perhaps a second night as well.” She was enjoying this.

“Did Pete say that?”

“Not exactly, but we might be able to negotiate.”

His fingers slipped the toggles of her cape, peeling it away from her body, and she turned, lifting her knees and swinging them over his legs. A little assistance from him and she was sitting on his knees, her legs tucked behind his and her cape enveloping them both.

“You’ve done this before.”

“I became a woman early and the boy next door worked on my father’s boat.”

“Are you ready to go further this time?” The prime qualification for the female Chosen was well known.

“We’ll see.”

“Fair enough.” He wasn’t unhappy with waiting, confident in his own skill.

He didn’t rush it, taking the time to let her get used to the intimacy of his hands on her body as she buried her face against the muscled column of his neck. Callused fingers probed gently, easing the tension of back muscles before wandering lower.

“A kiss first.”

“Bossy Boots.”

The name from her childhood distracted her enough that her eyes were still open when his lips descended on hers. She tried to say something, but lost the urge when a wave of sensations swamped logical thought. Either she remembered imperfectly, or else what had happened twelve years before had been but a pale shadow of what she felt now. She abandoned everything to enjoy the response of her body, barely aware of anything outside it.

Her fingers, tingling with the need to feel his flesh, burrowed their way through layers of clothing as if they had minds of their own. Her feet curled until she expected the toes to touch the heels. The muscles of her legs tightened, thrusting her hips forward, and her nipples tautened until they woke a gentle ache through the core of her swelling breasts, but these were distant things. The centre of her being had become her lips, and the tip of her tongue dancing a sensual arabesque with his.

She sensed him holding back, gentling his responses out of consideration for her, and damned him. She wanted everything--and she wanted it now.