Read Earthblood for Free Online Page B

. . . now I feel as though I must have died and here I am still alive."
    "You're a half-breed?" he asked. "Or a mutation?"
    "I'm an albino," she said. "You saved my life, didn't you? You did that on purpose."
    Then they were silent a moment, looking at each other in the little moonlight. Caught in the brief bond of savior and saved, they tried to meet minds across the deeps and dimensions that separated their alienesses.
    "I belong to you now," she said, and clung to him, and he held her close and felt her whiteness and kissed her strange, cold mouth and it was all a part of the swaying darkness and the hissing Veed and the dying gracyl and the death that Roan had made. The dead Veed and the victory. Roan had lost the threads that bound him to himself and all that was left was the white gracyl woman under his hands in the sickle moonlight. Across the grove, the gracyls were screaming as they fell but Roan was not thinking of them dying, only of the distant music of their voices.
    "That one was Clanth," she said dreamily. "I was going to be his female and now . . . "
    "Clanth!" Roan cried, and came to himself.
    "Yes. Only Clanth. After all, I just took him because nobody else wanted me and now it doesn't matter."
    "Doesn't matter!" He yanked her savagely to her feet. "Show me which way the scream came from! Show me where Clanth is!" He had not been listening. He had been not caring. He had been as bad as a gracyl. Worse, because they couldn't help it and he could.
    He saw the Veed beginning to leave the grove as they made their way through the trees. Either they had had all their fun or it was time for them to get back before their parents discovered they were gone.
    "There he is," said the white gracyl female. "What do you want with him?" One last Veed, seeing Roan, gave Clanth a parting slash and moved sinuously off. Roan knelt by the dying gracyl. "Clanth, I couldn't find you. I couldn't help." But he hadn't looked.
    "I'm broken," Clanth said. "But, Roan, I had a female."
    "I brought her to you," Roan said. He stood and put his knife at the white female's back until she came over to Clanth. "You can die in her arms."
    "That was silly," she said when Clanth had died.
    The gracyls, those that were left, were coming down from the trees now and incredibly starting their mating ceremonies again.
    Roan walked away through the grove, and out into the white moonlight. He climbed to the top of the tallest garbage heap and sat, looking down on the ghetto, not listening to the happy gracyl sounds, thinking about what a human woman might be like.

Chapter Four
    Here on the high ledge, the wind was sharp with sand particles, buffeting angrily like a gracyl when you held him upside down to show him that even if you didn't have wings, you weren't something to throw chunck flowers at. Roan got to his feet, holding on tightly to the tiny fingerholds of the wind-worn carving, feeling with his toes for a firm grip. He was high enough now: over the tops of the purplefruit trees, he could see the glare panels strung out across the arena gate, spelling out:
GRAND VORPLISCH EXTRAVAGANZOO!!!
    Renowned Throughout the Eastern Arm!!
    Entrepreneur Gom Bulj Presents:
    Fabulous Feathered Flyers!
    Superb Scaled Swimmers!
    Horrific Hairy Hurlers!
    A Stupefying Spectacle of Leaping Life-forms,
    Battling Boneless Beasts, Wingless Wizards of Wit,
    Frightful Fanged Fighters!
    See Iron Robert, Strongest Living Creature—
    Stellaraire, the Galaxy's loveliest creation!
    Snarleron, Ugliest in the Universe!
    ADMISSION, G. CR. .10, plus tax.
    Roan's hand twitched, wanting to go to his credit coder to check once more; but he restrained it. He knew what it would show. The balance gauge would barely glow. Even the five demi-chits he'd earned stacking bread-logs for the Store was gone, spent for dye-wood billets for carving. He'd have to be satisfied with what he could see from here—not that that would be much. He could hear the noisemakers faintly, but the dusty