At least she hoped the kitchen staff thought so.
“Do not fear—she will be well,” the Goddess murmured in Alli’s ear. “Now go back quickly. You and your warrior must leave very soon. Do not worry about the missing cloak—no one will notice.”
Then her presence was gone again and Alli knew she was guiding Rachel and her brother safely away from the Overlord’s fortress and towards the Resistance.
She only hoped that she and Kane could get away too…before the Overlord found out what she’d done.
Thirty-One
“Well now, where is Rachel?” the Matron’s assistant demanded when Alli came back by herself.
“The Matron of the Harem took her,” Alli said quickly, hoping the lie would fool the woman, at least for a while. “She saw us as we were coming back from the restroom and took Rachel up to the Overlord’s chambers to, er, get her ready for tonight.”
Apparently this wasn’t unusual because the woman only nodded.
“All right then. Just have a seat. I think the Kru’ell One’s meeting is breaking up so your Master should be here for you soon.”
No sooner had she spoken than Kane appeared in the doorway.
“Allisandra, come,” he snapped. “We must go. I’m in a hurry to do the Overlord’s bidding!”
“Yes, Master.” Quickly, Alli followed him out of the room and down the long corridor. The left under the watchful eyes of the guards but no one tried to stop them. It was a fairly smooth exit but she didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until they were back in Kane’s shuttle and leaving Earth’s orbit.
“I take it everything went as planned?” he asked, lifting an eyebrow as he shot her a glance.
“Yes.” Alli nodded. “I gave her the cloak, just like we planned. Oh—and I met her brother, too. So the two of them are going together.”
Kane looked skeptical.
“Well, I hope the two of them make it to safety. Though as I told you before, I consider it a long shot.”
“There’s something else,” Alli told him. She took a deep breath. “The Goddess was there. The Kindred Goddess—from my Universe, I mean.”
“The Goddess?” He looked at her in evident surprise.
“The Mother of All Life. She spoke to me, Kane!” Alli was still overwhelmed by the memory. “She spoke to all of us and promised to guide Rachel and her brother to the Resistance.”
Kane shook his head.
“I didn’t even know there was a Resistance.”
“Just like you didn’t know that some humans were immune to Calm,” Alli pointed out.
“True.” He frowned. “I thought all the females the others of my kind were feeding on had been numbed by the Calm. I didn’t know…” He cleared his throat. “Didn’t know that the Overlord was torturing his concubines.”
“He’s a sick, sadistic asshole,” Alli said fiercely. “Somebody needs to get rid of him!”
“Yes…” There was a distant look in Kane’s mirrored eyes. “Yes, perhaps someone should.”
The trip back up to his fortress, orbiting the Earth, didn’t take long and before she knew it, Alli was disembarking in the by now familiar ship. Just as she was getting out, the viewscreen started to blink with an incoming call.
“Go ahead to your room,” Kane told her. “I need to take this.”
Alli would have liked to talk more to the big Kru’ell One. She felt like working together to help free Rachel had brought them close again. But could she really want to be close to someone who came from such a savage, predatory people? It was clear Kane didn’t practice torture himself, but the other Kru’ell Ones seemed to have no compunction about it.
Maybe they’d do better if they didn’t have a leader who was so corrupt and evil, she thought. What’s that saying? The fish rots from the head down. If they could just get rid of that disgusting man living in the White House—or what used to be the White House—maybe they could end the corruption and the horrible practices going on right now.
As she left the docking area and went back to her room, she had no idea that Kane was speaking to that “digusting man” right that minute…or what the consequences of their conversation would be.
Thirty-Two
“Overlord,” Kane said, nodding his head stiffly when his leader’s face appeared on the viewscreen of the shuttle. “What can I do for you? Did I forget something back on Earth?”
“You did indeed,” the Overlord growled. “You forgot to tell me that your fresh-mouthed concubine helped my new concubine escape.”
Kane lifted an eyebrow.
“That’s a serious accusation. Do you have proof?”
“Do I need it? After the way you let her speak to me?” the other male snapped, his eyes glowing red. “But as it happens, I do. Your concubine and mine left together after the feast and only your concubine came back. She told the Matron’s helper that the Matron had taken my new concubine up to my rooms but the Matron knew nothing about it. By the time she and her helper were able to search my fortress, my new concubine was long gone. Now she’s nowhere to be found.”