Dragon in the Dark (Kindred Tales)

Unfortunately, Iyanna had been sharing a room with a colleague from USF who had decided to avail herself of Amsterdam’s legal marijuana scene. She had skipped all the lectures and stayed in their room, smoking weed the entire weekend conference. The skunky, swampy smell had unfortunately permeated all of Iyanna’s clothing and luggage. And it just so happened that the drug dogs were out when she went through security.

Of course the dogs pointed her out and Iyanna had been escorted to a small back room where all her luggage was thoroughly searched. She got a pat-down herself—from a female guard, at least—but there was nothing to find except the aged Gouda cheese she was bringing back for a friend.

The whole time Iyanna had been in a cold sweat—sure that her colleague had slipped drugs into her suitcase and she was going to be arrested and sent to jail. When the guards finally released her, she had missed her flight back to Tampa, but she didn’t even care.

Locking herself in a stall in the ladies room, she’d had a mini breakdown—sobbing quietly into a handful of tissues for fifteen minutes before she was finally able to pull it together. Then she had wiped her eyes, washed her face at the sink, and headed straight to the rental car desk. There she had rented herself a car and then she had driven all the way home, from Miami to Tampa. It was a four-hour drive but Iyanna didn’t care—she’d had enough of the damn airport and just wanted to get out of there!

But there was no car rental counter here. And the “dogs” the guards were using to sniff everyone in line were huge six-legged creatures with green fur that looked more like grizzly bears than canines. Lix’dorian guards in plain black uniforms were strolling around the vast security room, leading the enormous beasts on long leashes with spiked collars. Every once in a while, one of them would stop and sniff someone standing in line up and down, their lips parting in a silent snarl to show dagger-like teeth as they did so.

Given the incident in the Miami airport, Iyanna found herself getting more and more nervous as she got closer to the front of the line.

“Hey, uh, can you tell me the procedure here?” she asked, tapping Yanni on the shoulder.

“Excuse me?” the Lix’dorian woman turned around, frowning in confusion.

“I said, would you mind explaining what exactly happens at this, uh, checkpoint?” Iyanna asked her. “I’ve never been to Lix’dor Prime before so I don’t know what’s expected.”

“Oh.” Yanni’s pastel features cleared and she smiled her lavender smile. “It’s not hard at all, actually. They ask you who you’re coming to see and where you’re staying and how long you expect to be here—that kind of thing. And then you’re free to go out to the rest of the spaceport.”

“Um, okay. Thanks.” Iyanna nibbled her lower lip nervously. All of those questions sounded like exactly what they asked you when you passed through customs in an international airport back on Earth. The problem was, she didn’t really know the answers to some of them.

She had no idea where she and Dra’vik were supposed to be staying or how long they were staying either. She only knew they were supposed to be meeting the Lix’dorian Minister of Botany somewhere here in the spaceport once they got through the checkpoint.

If they let me through, that is, she thought apprehensively.

A new worry entered her mind and she tapped Yanni on the shoulder again.

“Yes?” The other woman turned around, still smiling politely.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but they don’t do any kind of searches on you here, do they?” Iyanna asked. “I mean, they won’t ask us to, uh, remove our modesty patches or anything, will they?”

“I certainly hope not, since mine are sewed on.” Yannie smiled proudly and nodded at the silver embroidered triangles that adorned her own dark purple outfit.

“They are?” Iyanna asked blankly. “But I thought your husband had to be able to rip them off if he wanted to.”

“That’s the way it is with many marriages,” Yanni said. “But my Yorg and I are soul mates. After I gave birth to our brood, he elevated me from cherished wife to highly honored wife and swore to never rip off my patches and turn me into a mere pleasure slave. Which is what I was, when he first bought me from my father,” she added.

“He bought you?” Iyanna asked, horrified.

“Oh yes—as is the custom with us Lix’dorians,” Yanni told her. “It’s not always a happy arrangement,” she said, no doubt seeing the horror on Iyanna’s face. “But in my case, I was lucky—Yorg and I were a love match right from the start. He elevated me from pleasure slave to cherished wife only a year after we were first married. And he’s never shared me with another male—not even once,” she added proudly. “He is the father to every single one of our brood, which is quite rare.”