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  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Call and Response

  Copyright © 2008 by Sara Rustan

  ISBN: 1-59998-890-9

  Edited by Laurie Rauch

  Cover by Christine Clavel

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2008

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Call and Response

  Sara Rustan

  Chapter One

  Janeth leaned against the window frame and focused on the negative empathic energy that permeated this planet, but she still couldn’t identify its source or nature. She understood now why the planet of Dragnath was forbidden to her people. There was danger here.

  The moon shone brightly, turning the city nestled among the hills into a patchwork of shadows. She opened the window and leaned on the sill to support her weakened body. A cloud scudded across the sky, changing the patterns of light and dark to barely perceptible shapes. An occasional light twinkled in the houses climbing up the valley. She wasn’t the only person up at this pre-dawn hour.

  Her energy was very low. She’d put off making the mating call until it was almost too late. The changes of plenerty had used up her empathic energy—the drain of calling would bring her close to death.

  The room was a cheaply furnished rental. The furniture was shabby but sturdy enough, the carpet thin and worn. Her luggage and her brother’s belongings filled a table by the narrow bed.

  It was a sterile and lonely place to bind with a mate. She had no family and friends to support her, nobody to help.

  But she must try. It might not work—her brother had failed. If she did manage to call a mate and he rejected the binding, he would be released soon enough by her own insanity or death. Somehow that made the deception she planned more acceptable to her. At least she would pay the price.

  She had one great advantage over her brother—her broadcast range and strength were higher than usual for a member of her race. She was famous for her shontil concerts, performances that combined singing with the broadcasting of emotions. She had brought an entire village to tears with her performance of “The Ballad of Gytha and Ranulf”. But tonight she wasn’t performing a well-known piece to a receptive audience. She was singing for her life, her mate. The stakes were much higher.

  The fresh air of early dawn cooled her skin. She heard the muffled sound of a tram and the soft tap of footsteps. The birds twittered and complained in the trees as the sky lightened in the east, and the smell of baking bread floated up from downstairs.

  She gathered the remaining shreds of strength and stood, preparing herself for the most important performance of her life. She breathed in deeply and sang out, “Come to me, come to me my love. I wait for you. Help me.” The notes echoed in the empty streets and floated over the roofs to disappear in the foggy hills. The yearning and need that she broadcast struggled through the thinly spread miasma. She repeated the call two more times, though the last notes were breathy and strained. It was a good thing her teacher couldn’t hear that performance.

  Exhausted, she stumbled a few feet and collapsed on the bed. The clattering of the landlord in the bakery on the ground floor comforted her. She had told them that someone—possibly multiple someones—might be visiting her today, but she hadn’t been quite sure of the address. So if a confused man—or men—showed up, please show him to her room.

  The landlord had looked at her solemnly, no doubt thinking her very odd, but had instructed his teenage son to keep watch. If she could rest for a few minutes, she could watch for responders with her other senses, but she didn’t completely trust her own strength. Not with something so important.

  Tommelin K’Restan woke from a sound sleep to a rending feeling of need. Someone was broadcasting intense yearning and a plea for help. Even with his weak empathy, he could tell that the call came from several miles away. It would take off-the-chart empathic strength to achieve that range. Could this be the source of the anomalous empathic energy he was here to investigate?

  The whole continent stank of negative emotions, and his mind often felt like he was slogging through heavy mud. The locals didn’t seem to be affected. He suspected that empathically sensitive people simply hadn’t survived here, and the genes had died out. It was an average, out-of-the-way little planet settled by groups originally from Old Earth Brazil and India. Off-planet visitors were infrequent, since Dragnath was not on any of the major spacelanes.

  This empathic broadcast was the first thing worth following up that had happened since he arrived.

  It was one of the most frustrating cases he’d worked on in years. The initial report was of an empathic assault, but it was clear that the higher-ups hadn’t really believed it, because sending someone like him, who had low-level empathy but not enough to detect the perpetrator, didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The whole assignment reeked of ass-covering. His guess was that Jorj Helmley, the sector chief, wanted to have a plausible position in case something went wrong down the line, and hadn’t really expected him to find anything.

  Unfortunately, if that was what Jorj thought, he was dead wrong.

  Something here was rotten, and Tom was way underpowered to figure out just what. Screwed again. It was hard to see how he could come out of this smelling like a rose, but maybe this was his lucky day and the source of this broadcast would solve all his problems.

  He threw on his clothes and splashed some water on his face in the bathroom. The rented house was comfortable at least, unlike the city itself. The inhabitants squeezed tightly into the valley bottom, leaving the surrounding hills looking like parks. The cheek-by-jowl intimacy tended to make him twitchy—and the crowds of people rubbed his empathy raw.

  Like most worlds outside the population centers of the Alliance, Dragnath was a creative mix of low and high technology. Small technologies—like handhelds, entertainment devices and computers—were easily imported, but the cost of importing larger equipment was prohibitively high, and the smaller population sizes meant that building factories wasn’t financially feasible for some products. Dragnath transportation was particularly bad—slow and bumpy—so Tom walked almost everywhere.

  As he strode down the street toward the source of the empathic broadcast, he dropped his shields and concentrated. He had gotten a good sense of direction from the original call, and could pick up the emotional echoes as he hurried along. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any connection with the cloud of negativity. If anything, the atmosphere lightened as he drew closer to the broadcaster.

  It looked like this wasn’t going to be his lucky day.

  The feeling of urgency and need increased as he walked down a side street and paused outside a bakery with a sign advertising rooms for rent. The source was very close. He turned from side to side, concentrating, then looked up the face of the building.

  A teenage boy darted from the bakery and grabbed his sleeve. “Come,” he said. “This way. The woman you’re looking for is up here.”

  “Who?” Had the boy confused him with someone else?
/>   “You’re looking for someone, yes? I’ll take you to her.” He tugged on Tom’s arm. “Quickly. I have to get back to the store.”

  The boy’s demands merged with the urgency flooding him from the unknown empath. He could just walk away—the smart thing to do—or satisfy his curiosity. Unfortunately, he never could resist a mystery. With a sigh at his foolishness, he allowed himself to be led up a narrow flight of stairs. A short distance down a dark hallway, the boy knocked sharply on one of the doors, motioned him in, and closed the door behind him.

  He stepped into a small, bare room. A woman rested on the bed, her head elevated by a pile of pillows. Her hair was a shimmery silver, but her features were drawn and her eyes were tired. She gave the impression that she might have been ill recently.

  She was certainly the source of the recent call, but he strongly doubted she had anything to do with his assignment. The feelings that he picked up from her were too…clean and bright, if not precisely happy. She couldn’t possibly be the perpetrator of the empathic assault.

  She slowly smiled with warmth and pleasure, and unexpected emotion surged in him. This stranger felt like an old friend he was finally seeing after years of separation, even though he knew he had never met her before. He would have remembered that, he was sure.

  Had she been calling him? She certainly seemed to be expecting him—or somebody. What was this all about?

  He had come. This man had heard her call and responded. Janeth would have leaped up and wrapped herself around him, but she wasn’t physically capable of such exuberance right now—and she didn’t want to scare him off. There was still the possibility of failure. His response to her call proved his empathic compatibility, but that didn’t mean he would like her or be attracted to her.

  His presence and her joyous relief gave her enough energy to sit up slowly, carefully. She put her feet on the ground and leaned forward, eager to meet this potential mate.

  He was strong, hard. Confident. But weathered by life, by pain and disappointment. He was a survivor, with a core that was strong and clear, glowing with inherent integrity. The joining could be joyful with such a partner.

  His hair was thick, somewhat shaggy, warm brown with reddish and blond highlights, and his eyes were soft green. He was at home in his strong, firm body, which hinted at athletic or martial training, and his clothes were comfortable and loose.

  Janeth breathed a sigh of relief. This was a man she could welcome as her mate. The goddess had been good to her—or maybe it was finally her turn for good luck, after the last disastrous week.

  “Please have a seat.” She waved her hand at the simple wooden chair sitting at the table.

  He hesitated, but finally settled down on the chair, his legs spread, feet firmly on the floor, arms crossed. “Who are you? What do you want of me? Are you sure you have the right man?”

  She smiled. “I’m sure. Would you honor me with your name?”

  “Tom. Tom Domdil K’Restan. And yours?”

  “Janeth Dewellin.” Exhaustion swirled through her, and she held out her hand in greeting—and to absorb some of his empathic energy. “I’m pleased to meet you.” It was rude to take without permission, but she was going to do much more than that. No sense in balking at little things.

  He took her hand in his warm, powerful grasp, holding hers as though it were fragile enough to break. Her need sucked in his energy, a stream of warmth and health and hope. Her skin tingled. Just enough to go on, that was all she would take. She took a deep breath and pulled away.

  He stretched his fingers, examining them with a frown, and then looked at her. “Who are you?”

  She couldn’t answer that—it was forbidden, in order to keep the existence of her people and their planet concealed from the rest of the galaxy. She couldn’t tell him that she needed to have sex with him to bind them together empathically in the equivalent of marriage. He would certainly think she was nuts—and refuse.

  The truth would not work here. What could she tell him?

  With the stolen energy, she brushed over the surface of his mind, searching for information that would allow her to construct a satisfactory answer. She wasn’t a telepath; she couldn’t read specific thoughts. But some kinds of emotional constructs held enough information to draw conclusions, and concepts like home and family and work tended to have decipherable contexts. This man was not married, and was not from this planet. The emotions he had toward it were shallow and recent.

  But she couldn’t tell his occupation. He seemed to travel frequently. Could he be a trader?

  She had to come up with some way to get him to spend enough time with her so she could entrap him with the other effects of plenerty. Perhaps she could try to tempt him with the telayin gems she had brought with her to pay for her travel. Nothing else came to mind.

  “I represent a…consortium that is looking for someone reliable to handle regular shipments of telayin jewels.” Any trader in this sector of the galaxy would give his eyeteeth, sell his firstborn, for a chance to trade telayin. The bait had the great advantage of holding large elements of truth. It was a closely kept secret, like the existence of her race, but her people were the source for all telayin.

  Tension vibrated through his body and he rubbed his palms on the sides of his shipsuit. “Telayin? You have proof of this?”

  She picked up her satchel, set it on the bed next to her, and pulled out a small leather case containing a velvet shield-cloth bag. She emptied the contents into her hand and held out the jewels for him to examine. They pulsed in her hand—ruby, carnelian, sapphire—radiating familiar emotions.

  He ran his hand a short distance above the jewels and breathed in sharply. “These are the real thing, all right. Where did you get them?”

  She smiled slightly. “You don’t really expect me to tell you that.”

  “Why are you showing these to me?”

  “Are you a trader?”

  He hesitated. “No, not really. Though I suppose for telayin jewels I might make an exception.”

  She shrugged. “Then you are in the right place.”

  He wasn’t quite satisfied, she could see that. But as long as he was interested enough to spend more time in her company, that would be enough. Relieved but not surprised, she poured the jewels back into their special bag. The pull on her emotions faded.

  She needed Tom. She didn’t have the leisure to pick and choose and consider her choice, rejecting unsuitable candidates, and she wasn’t on Lorelly, where everybody, even the majority of the population who weren’t actively empathic, understood the process of plenerty and mating.

  The need had come over her unexpectedly. It should have been at least six more months before she started plenerty. Perhaps the stress of the search for her brother had brought it on early, but more likely it was yet another effect of the empathic weirdness here. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that both she and her brother had suddenly gone into plenerty long ahead of schedule.

  So here she was, looking eagerly at this stranger.

  She had dated a few men who were interested in presenting themselves as mating candidates. Johan in particular would be very disappointed if she came back mated. But Tom could hold his own in any purely physical comparison.

  Her gaze slid down his wiry, muscled body, and the female parts of her body throbbed in anticipation. It had been years since she had been in a relationship with a man. As her binding time approached, it had seemed a betrayal, somehow, of her future, unmet mate to indulge in casual sex. Now that time had arrived. If all went well, she would soon be having sex with Tom.

  He was no pampered desk jockey, she could see that in the strength and control in his face. She could also feel the suspicion that she would have to overcome to get close to him—to betray him.

  She waved a hand toward the jewels. “We’re looking for someone who can act as a long-term broker. Are you interested?”

  His body tensed and he rubbed his chin. “Not if you want somebody on
Dragnath. I’m only here for a few days.”

  Janeth’s breathing halted as panic flashed through her. She had so little time—and nobody else would come. That fear had become a certainty.

  “I…we could discuss some off-planet contract.” She was fumbling this, that much was obvious. His suspicion of her was growing.

  His eyes narrowed. “Well, Janeth, why me? Why now?”

  Tom’s emotions combined with her own to make her head pound. She leaned forward to rest her forehead in her hand, trying to think of some believable response through the fog.

  “What’s wrong with you? It was you who was broadcasting, right? What—who—were you looking for?” Beneath the abrupt questions was a thread of concern.

  Her consciousness was fading, the sound of his voice thin and hollow in her ears, her vision fracturing around the edges. She needed more of the energy that vibrated inside him.

  Lifting her head with much effort, she reached up to him. “Could you help me up?”

  He grasped her hands and pulled her up, gently but firmly. Once upright, she leaned forward, resting awkwardly against the strength of his arms. His energy flooded her, soaking into the parched ground of her body. The rush caused her to sway, and he grasped her shoulders to steady her. The flow redoubled in strength, and she could feel her strength returning.

  Her cold hands warmed, and her legs stopped trembling.

  He looked down at her face with concern. “Are you sick? Do you need a doctor?”

  Flushed and hot, she focused on the muscular breadth of his chest, his strong arms and shoulders. It was new to her, this excitement she felt at the shapes of his body, her desire to see him naked. People of her race—the Shenkiloi—went through puberty at human-typical age, and indulged in sex in a playful, exploratory way, but without the depths of passion she knew existed in standard humans.

  Intense sexual interest only developed at plenerty, when the body flared to full, sexual life for the first time. The body changed physically, though more subtly than at puberty. Women’s breasts enlarged, their hips rounded. Janeth had enjoyed her body before, been pleased that it was healthy and strong, and enjoyed exerting it in sport and recreation. But now, for the first time, she became aware of her body as something sexual.