Dhakhar by Annabelle Rex

Author:Annabelle Rex [Rex, Annabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prospect and Raven
Published: 2020-08-14T05:00:00+00:00

When I’m done hunting for something to cook with, I’ve calmed down enough to face her again. Whatever this is, it’s starting to get very annoying. On the one hand, it’s good that the princess, that Charlie and I are on better terms. She knows she can trust me now. But that trust, and the comfort she seeks from me is only making this instinctual response to her worse. It’s like my relaxing of my manner around her has unleashed something from a cage my prim formality kept it in.

I’ve got to reign it back in. Years of conditioning in the army taught me to reign in the fight instinct and this is no difference. Only hopefully it won’t take years, because I’ve already done it once before. I don’t need to learn how to do it from scratch.

I make up two of the freeze dried meals, adding water from sealed bottles that I find stashed in the back of the kitchen cupboards. They don’t look appetising, but the smell is enough to remind me how hungry I am, the bread roll Jax bought me not enough to sustain me through a fight and a hunt and a foot chase through a mountain. I find utensils and bring the two bowls out. Charlie hasn’t moved from her chair, but she has wrapped herself in one of the blankets. I set a bowl down in front of her.

She pokes it with the utensil I give her. “Do I want to know?”

“Kind of like army rations,” I say. “Not pretty, or probably very tasty, but filling.”

I take a bite, and it’s actually not too bad. Or maybe I’m just extremely hungry.

We eat in silence, the lights dimming to the soft glow of candlelight. They won’t last much longer, and I don’t have enough left to crack another for the night. We’ll need them in the morning.

Even in the low light, I can see the angry mark across Charlie’s forehead, shaped a bit like a tear drop, with smaller circles within it. Sucker marks.

“I think I know what attacked you,” I say. “I think it might have been an Abbarax. They’re a strange species. Feed on brainwaves. To incapacitate their prey, they pull up all their bad memories. Just like you said - every bad thing you’ve ever felt, including all the stuff you’ve forgotten. They were used to torture people during the war. Owning them is illegal, but then… so is abduction and here we are.”

She pales, pausing with her food halfway to her mouth. “It doesn’t do permanent damage, does it?”

“Only with repeated or extended exposure. And it’s mostly psychological damage. You’d have to be exposed to one for a really long time before they physically turn your brain to soup.” I give her a gentle smile. “Clever things, Abbaraxi. Leave little capsules of their toxin behind in case their prey get away. Then when their prey bumps the area, bursts the capsules, they’re incapacitated again and the Abbarax can catch up to them, feed on them again.

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