THE XANDRA: BOOK Three

GODDESS OF LIFE

By

Herbert Grosshans

Chapter One

The morning air smelled fresh and cool. Strange, how things never seemed as foreboding and gloomy in daylight.

Commander Beringer looked into the cloudless sky, half-expecting to see the shape of a winged girl against the rising alien sun. Scratching his neck, where Naomi bit him to suck his blood, he attempted to recall the feel of her naked body against his, wanted to remember the heat of her alien vagina. However, the harder he tried the more the events of the night seemed to recede, only fragments remained.

The memory of another naked body proved stronger. Thrusting breasts, gleaming red in the light of the moon, blotted out the ghostly memory of the vampire-girl.

Starmote.

She invaded his mind, taunted him.

Her nude body glistened with droplets of water as she rose out of the lake. When he reached out for her, she laughed, turned and ran away. He watched the play of her plump buttocks, reached out…

“Commander, are you alright?”

His eyes flew open, staring unfocused for a second before they fell on Starmote who rode beside him. “I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head to clear his mind.

“You are bleeding from your neck again,” Starmote said, reached over to wipe the blood away. Then she brought out her little device and held it against the blood on her finger. “Traces of the same venomous substance in your blood, as I suspected.” She looked at him with curiosity. “Tell me what you did last night.”

“I went for a walk, then I went swimming with you,” he answered.

“What happened on that walk?”

“What makes you think anything happened?”

Starmote pocketed her device, glanced at him. “There are two puncture wounds on your neck, Commander, identical to the ones you had yesterday morning. Unless you inflicted those wounds yourself, something or someone did. What happened?”

Beringer stared at the thick black mane of the horse he rode. The face of a girl with black skin and short black hair appeared in front of his eyes, needle-thin fangs gleamed in her open mouth. Then the vision was gone.

“Naomi,” he whispered, “her name is Naomi.”

“Who is she?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “She sucked my blood.”

“A vampire-entity.” Starmote said. “They appear at night to drain their victims of their blood. There is usually a joining of bodies involved.”

“They only exist in our legends,” Beringer said.

“Not only in yours. Ours, too.” Starmote removed the device from her pocket again, adjusted some settings, then she leaned over and pressed it against Beringer’s neck.

He flinched involuntarily from the sting.

“We call those creatures Soul-eaters, most of them are considered evil. They give you great pleasure while devouring your very soul.” Starmote gave Beringer a sharp look. “Tell me, did you have sexual intercourse with that creature?”

Whatever she had injected into him seemed to have cleared Beringer’s mind. “I don’t remember much, but I think so. I don’t believe she is evil, though.”

“Maybe not. She will seek you out again, and again, and again. Your body will become weaker with every encounter. She will come until she has taken your last drop of blood. She can’t help it--that is her nature. I suggest tonight you don’t wander around by yourself. Stay with someone.”

Beringer grinned. “With you?”

She didn’t smile. “If you wish.”

He watched her ride toward the front of the wagon train, an attractive figure on her horse. He twisted his body to look back at the riders behind him. They had eleven more horses, enough to give everyone a mount, but some of the Xandra-born women still preferred to walk.

Quirma Ballard, her son Brico, and her daughter Helgie, had joined the caravan. Although wounded badly, Brico would survive. Quirma’s husband, Holger Ballard, and a couple of their sons, already went to the City to deliver the harvest, wagons full of wool. The Ballards were raising sheep-like animals.

 One of the Xandra-born saw Beringer looking back. She waived, dug her naked heels into her horse’s flanks and let it catch up with Beringer.

 Reyna.

 Her green eyes shone brightly under long dark lashes as she smiled at him. “I missed you last night,” she said. Staring at his neck, she gasped. “You were visited by a Shadow-Angel. Did she collect your seed?”

Surprised by her horrified look, he answered, “I believe so.”

“Did you drink from her nectar?”

“You mean did I suck her breasts?”

She nodded. “That is what I mean?”

Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”

“That is good. Would it be otherwise your soul surely would have been lost.” Reyna leaned over, touched his hand. “Tonight you must lie with me, drink from my nectar. That will wipe out what she injected into you. You will be safe.” She smiled at him and pulled at the reins to slow down her mount.

Beringer chuckled. He just received the second invitation this morning. Starmote’s had been more subtle than Reyna’s, but nevertheless, he had read Starmote correctly, he was certain.

It promised to be a good day.

The three wagons ahead of him rumbled over the packed dirt road. As long as it didn’t rain, there would be no problem. The sky had cleared and it didn’t look like rain in the near future. They were back on the winding road that ran parallel to the river. There were steep cliffs on this side of the river, since the land had increasingly been rising. The river had widened. On the other side lay a flat valley, surrounded by a deep forest. In the distance ahead of them Beringer could see the tall trees of another forest. The lush prairie grass had given way to a shorter, more sparsely growing variety. Small rocks and boulders were strewn across the landscape.

The wagons creaked as the horses strained against their yokes, trying to pull the heavy load up the incline. One of the riders fell back. Berringer recognized Aran, the young man he first spok to when encountering Esram’s family. He smiled at Beringer, let his horse fall in beside him. “My father is a little worried,” Aran said. “Robar hasn’t come back yet. Father sent him ahead early this morning to scout out the forest. He should have been back by now.”

“Maybe he’s taking a little nap while waiting for us to catch up,” Beringer suggested. “Or maybe he got lost.”

Aran shook his head. “Not Robar. He is the best. He can find his way back in the dark. Besides, he took two of the hounds with him.”

“Anything I can do?”

Aran smiled. “Father wonders if maybe you, with your strange weapon, could ride up front with him, just in case we encounter some difficulties. There could be bandits ahead.”

“Those trees would be a good spot for an ambush,” Beringer agreed.

When Beringer reigned in beside Esram, the old man greeted him with a short nod. “I’d like to get into the trees before midday,” he said and spit a wad of some black substance into the dust. “There’s water there for the horses, and I’m sure the women wouldn’t mind taking a dip.”

Beringer wiped his forehead. “Neither would I, the sun is suddenly getting hot. I’m not used to this heat.”

Esram chuckled. “Wait till that ball of white fire rises higher. This is usually the hottest time of the season.”

“Aran tells me you’re worried about Robar?”

The old man spit again. Taking something out of his pocket, he shoved it into his mouth. “He should’ve been back, this is not like him.” His voice sounded thick, tired. “This whole business with Ballard’s family makes me jumpy and angry. I hope that we’ll find Holger and his two sons alive and well in the City.”

“Does this kind of thing happen often?” Beringer asked.

“Only for the last couple of years. Never this close to the City.”

“Those men, who murdered your neighbors, are they members of an army?”

Esram snorted. “Some army. They call themselves The Pure-Ones, those murdering bastards. They’re just a bunch of fanatics, who believe everybody is evil, except them. Satan’s Mistress, that’s what they call the Xandra.” He laughed, spat a black gob onto the dusty road. “If it weren’t for these raids, we wouldn’t really need to worry about them too much. They’ll never get enough men together to form a real threat. They would never openly declare war against us anyway. They are much too cowardly for that. Most fanatics are. When we get to the City, I’ll have a talk with Colonel Bandares, he commands the army that protects the City. Maybe he’ll send out a group of soldiers to get rid of the small bands that roam Xandra-land.”

Beringer filed away this little bit of new information. An army!

Something began nagging him in the back of his mind. The Pure-Ones, he had heard the name before, he just didn’t remember where. “These Pure-Ones, they are a religious group?”

“They pray to some god they call Odinallah, a male warrior-god, who does not acknowledge any other gods, especially a female one, like the Mother.”

“You mean the Xandra?” Beringer asked.

Esram nodded. “She is real. She is a goddess. We pray to her. Their god is not real. He exists only in their minds. No god would ever command his people to go out and kill innocent beings, human or Xandra-born. It is a false god, an evil one.”

“Much blood has been shed in the name of religion,” Beringer agreed. “It is part of humanity’s history.”

“What god do you pray to?” Esram asked.

Beringer smiled. “No particular one. You might say my god has no name, but I am not an unbeliever. I do believe in a Supreme Being.”

“Wait till you meet the Mother. You will know that you are in the presence of a Supreme Being.”

Beringer didn’t answer. Images of a beautiful woman’s body melting into a mass of charred flesh from the heat of a laser-burst flashed in front of his eyes. Had they murdered a goddess that day?

A thousand years in real time, weeks in his own memory, still fresh in his mind.

He wiped his hand across his eyes and looked up into the sky. The Xandra was still alive on this planet. Would she remember that incident? Would she recognize him? If so, how would she treat him?

Looking across the river into the valley, he saw a few thin tendrils of smoke rise into the blue sky. They were too far away to see any details with the naked eye. “Is anyone living in the valley?” he asked Esram.

The old man followed his gaze. “I’ve never been to that side of the river. But, yes, there is a small settlement over there, mostly fruit-farmers. The valley is very fertile, things grow well there.”

They didn’t receive any warning. Suddenly armed men surrounded them. They popped out of the grass and appeared from behind large boulders and the few trees that were growing along the side of the road.

Beringer’s first instinct compelled him to draw his weapon, but he realized immediately that it would be a futile act. There were at least two dozen, maybe three, whom he could see, all of them armed with rifles. Primitive weapons, but deadly just as well.

One of those rifles was trained at Beringer’s head.

“Get off that horse!” the man who held the rifle said with a rasping voice. He wore a long coat, similar to the ones the renegades back at the Ballard-farm had worn. Most of the other men were dressed in the same fashion. A red band that decorated the upper part of his left sleeve set the speaker apart from the others. Obviously, their leader.

Beringer followed the man’s orders. Esram cursed beside him, but did the same.

“All of you!” the man commanded.

Beringer felt relieved when he saw Esram’s sons sliding off their horses without trying to take a stand. If the attackers had wanted to kill them, they could have done so from their hiding places. The fact, that no one had been killed, proved somehow encouraging.

“What do you want?” Esram demanded.

“What do we want?” the man with the raspy voice said and laughed. “We need your horses and we are confiscating whatever you carry in those wagons.” He looked down the road, toward the end of the wagon train. “And we want those Xandra-born creatures.”

“Why? So you can murder them?” One of Esram’s sons said with a loud voice.

“Watch that tone of yours!” the man rasped. “You cannot murder a thing that has no soul. But don’t worry, Xandra-lover, we won’t end their pseudo-lives. Since they pretend to be women, we will use them as such.” He stared at Beringer. “You,” he said, “you don’t look like a farmer to me.”

“I am a visitor to this land,” Beringer said.

“A visitor from where?”

“From far away. Across the water.”

The man’s eyes narrowed below his bushy eyebrows. “From across the water,” he mused. “I think the Colonel will find that very interesting.” He looked at the gun on Beringer’s hip. “What is that?”

“This is a device to make fire with.”

“Show me!”/

Beringer removed the gun from its holster, changed the setting to low and pointed it at a clump of dry grass. A thin, white pencil of light set the grass aflame.

“Give it to me!”

When Beringer handed his weapon over, he let the small power crystal inside the handle drop into his palmed hand. The man aimed it at another clump of grass. Nothing happened.

“You have to press that red button,” Beringer told him.

Again, nothing happened.

“It doesn’t work for everybody,” Beringer explained. “This one only works for me. In my land, they call me Fire-maker. Better give it back to me.”

“No, I’ll keep it. Somehow, I don’t believe you. It looks too much like a weapon to me.”

While he talked, the other men collected the weapons from Esram and his sons.

“Take the horses,” he told the men, “then let’s get back to camp.” He stared at the two hounds crouching beside the wagon. “Kill the hounds!” he ordered.

Beringer heard Esram’s moans when the two animals fell under a volley of bullets. The raiders took no chances with them. No less than five of them emptied their rifles into the large hounds.

The crying of a baby caused Beringer to look to one of the wagons. Esram’s daughter, Mirna, clung desperately to her baby-boy while one of the raiders tried to pull the child away from her.

“Leave her alone!” Esram called out hoarsely and stepped forward to help his daughter. The butt of a rifle smashed into his midriff, causing him to double over and gasp for air.

“You don’t move, unless I tell you!” rasped the bandit-leader, then to his man, “Let her be.”

 A couple of rifle shots rang out from the back of the wagon train. When Beringer looked, he saw a man slump to the ground.

Vic, one of the Xandra-born men.

“Damn you!” he bellowed angrily, “there was no need for that.” When he stepped away from the group, he heard the crack of another rifle shot. A sudden kick to his left thigh threw him to the ground. He cried out involuntarily as sharp pain ripped through his body. Red stain began coloring his pant leg.

A shadow loomed over him; he looked up to stare into the barrel of a rifle, aimed at his head. “You die now!” The man grinned.

Beringer became aware of the sudden smell of ozone. The grin on the man’s face froze and turned it into an ugly mask, decorated with a small red hole between the eyes. The rifle fell from his hands. He crumpled into a lifeless heap.

A figure in combat dress sprang over the dead body, uttering a sharp ear-piercing cry.

Lt. Wang.

Before anybody could react, Wang stood behind the bandit-leader, the shiny blade of his knife against the man’s throat. Wang looked at the ring of rifles pointing at him. “He’s dead before any of you can pull the trigger,” he said calmly.

“Put down your weapons,” the leader spoke with suppressed anger. His men followed his order with reluctance.

Beringer gritted his teeth. The pain started to become almost unbearable. He knew he was losing blood. He also knew that they were dead the moment Wang let the man go. The bandit-leader had been humiliated in front of his men. He could not let it go unpunished.

“Release me,” the leader said to Wang.

“I want insurance that nobody gets hurt,” the lieutenant said.

“You have it.”

Wang chuckled grimly. “Are you a man of honor?”

Before he received an answer, the slim figure of a girl rushed to Beringer’s side, knelt beside him. “Are you alright, Beringer?” she asked, her green eyes large with concern.

Beringer nodded, smiled. “Thank you, Reyna. I’m still alive.”

Reyna looked at the bandit-leader. “You are lucky,” she said loudly. “Beringer is a messenger from the sky-gods. He can kill with lightning bolts from his hands. I will ask him to let you live, if you allow me to look at his wound.”

Beringer made the effort to grin. Looking at the bandit-leader, he said, “She is right, you know. I could have killed you, but I came here in peace.”

The leader grunted. “There will be no more bloodshed. I promise.”

Beringer nodded toward Wang, who let go of his prisoners. Beringer saw Wang slide his knife into his boot, where it became part of the boot’s design.

The bandit-leader rubbed his throat. “Tend to his wound,” he told Reyna.

The Xandra-girl opened the Commander’s belt, pulled down his trousers. Beringer grimaced at her. “Under different circumstances I would say you are quite bold, young lady,” he whispered.

Reyna said nothing, just looked at him gravely with her large green eyes.

“I knew you were no simple farmer,” the bandit-leader said and threw a thoughtful glance at Lt. Wang. “Your man risked his life for you. I wish my men were that loyal.”

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