by Ivy McAdams
No, worse.
These guys are making sounds I’ve never even heard before and sure couldn’t replicate.
I can’t even guess what their words mean.
But I can make out many curious and skewed faces. Many are stretching just to get a better look at us, others are scowling and turning their noses up.
A guy with skin that’s nearing white curls his lip in my direction.
I give him a pinched-lip smile. You’re not so amazing looking either, friend.
When my rescuer dismounts behind me, I have a sudden vision of snatching up his reins and riding his dino-mount into the horizon. But with my luck, the thing would take two steps and turn around to eat me. Plus I can't leave these other humans to be taken prisoner.
It’s a moot point anyway.
My savage captor never moves far enough away for me to lean forward, much less escape. If I made a quick movement he could easily reach out a giant arm to swipe me right out of the saddle.
“Gemma,” someone says in a hushed whisper.
Eva is on the back of Happy Trail’s mount, standing just a few feet ahead of mine. My alien is talking to others on the ground, so I take my chance to lean over to whisper back.
“Are you okay?”
Her head moves in rigid motions as she nods. “I think so. Are you?”
“No injuries that I can tell. Only what the fuck are we doing here?”
Her head rattles up and down again. “There are so many of them.” The first real sound of fear creeps into her voice.
“Maybe they’ve just never seen humans before.” I haven’t convinced myself, but I try to stand strong behind my suggestion. “They don’t seem to be hurting anyone.”
“Not yet,” Eva hisses. “Except I’m not so sure about that guy.”
I turn my head to follow her eyes. A short gray man with a long, spiraling walking stick moves through the crowd toward us. A small humanoid-looking skull dangles from the top of the staff, decorated with features and a palm-sized leather pouch. He has braids and beads woven into his black hair.
His eyes are light, nearly white, and he regards us before my rescuer steps up to speak with him. They fall into a deep volley of conversation.
“I don’t like the looks of that,” Eva says.
“They’re just talking.” I’m not sure who needs the convincing more. “Maybe the big guy is telling him we need food before we go back.”
Yeah, right. The notion is so ridiculous that I can’t even laugh in my head.
“I think that guy wants to invite us to dinner,” Eva says.
“See? Maybe they just have zero training in manners and acting in polite company. I’d hate to think this little guy is here to welcome us and we’ve pegged him as a dirty, human-eater.”
Eva shrugs but only makes it halfway through the motion before the man with the braids starts pointing. His bony finger indicates each of us, one at a time. Then some of the male savages step out of the crowd and approach the dinos.
The next moment is a blur.
The small alien points at Eva and me. Big silver bodies come at us and pull us off the dinosaurs.
Women are screaming again. I’m doing my best to hold my tongue as I glance around the guy who’s got his hands on me.
The small man is still speaking, pointing toward the huge leather-skin hut next to us. His appointed minion picks me up as if I weigh as much as a cat and slings me over his shoulder.
Kovak
It's hard for me to stand to the side and watch the others gather up the alien females, especially when the chief's son puts his big hands on the woman that rode with me. She protests, pulling against his hold as her head moves around. An odd sense of hope rises within me, but I have no idea what for until she looks back and finds my eyes.
Hers are wild, desperate. She’s afraid. And she’s looking for me.
My entire body goes rigid and I take a step forward, but the Shaman is already ushering all the captives into his tent. Most of the crowd follows, hovering in the entranceway. I push through and step inside, trying to keep my eyes on my woman.
“Bring them around to this side,” the Shaman says as he skirts the dozen occupied cots set up on one side of the long tent.
The short beds, only a hand’s length off the floor, each hold a woman of my people, lost in endless slumber. They’ve been in a catatonic state since the stagni executed their dirty plan nearly a year ago. Now they sleep, kept alive by some of the Shaman’s medicines and magics and cared for by his apprentices.
When the aliens see the women, they begin to scream anew. I frown and press a thumb to the throbbing part of my forehead. Perhaps I chose wrongly in bringing them back to the village, but the Shaman seemed very interested in what I had delivered to him.
He’s a miracle worker, so I stand by his decision.
Even if it includes stealing away the woman I picked up.
She at least isn’t screaming, but she’s eyeing the big spread of women and pressing a hand to her stomach.
“Perfect,” the Shaman says, then points toward an empty space along the wall. “Set them here. We’ll prep them.”
He motions to some of the tribe standing just inside the door and two of my brothers come in with platefuls of meats and berries.
The Shaman smiles at the terrified aliens as they’re plopped onto the stone floor. “Eat!”
The food bearers kneel over the captives and begin practically force-feeding them. They protest, no one wants a bite, but the men are insistent.
As the battle of willpower unfolds, I slip closer to the Shaman.
“What are we to do with them?” I keep my voice low, just over his shoulder.
“We must be sure their bodies are ready to accept the lofo herb. After that, we make the switch.”
I blink, looking between the captives and the comatose women in the beds as my brain whirls. “You intend to spirit swap them?”
He nods firmly. “They may be too primitive to accept the change, but it’s worth a try.”
My gaze jumps back to my woman and I can feel her fear, but also her curiosity. She’s trying to figure things out, and I’m sure everything around her is more confusing than she can grasp. But my energy still reaches for her, hoping to calm her.
As she refuses yet another bite of meat, she looks in my direction. Her shoulders move with a deep breath as if I've startled her.
Or awoken her.
My nerves flicker to life. I want to pull her to me and bury my nose in her hair. And dip my fingers into the junction of her body again.
I hadn’t grabbed her cunt on purpose before―how was I to know these strange little beings were built the same as our women? I only meant to keep her upright and in position on my mount. But I knew for sure what I had done when her little body warmed against my fingers. She’d struggled, but even that seemed without much energy. As if she were only rubbing herself against me. She’d certainly grown hotter.
The very memory of it stills my breath and tightens my cock beneath my loincloth. My hand clenches at my side.
Her eyes are still on me, pleading. For help, for me. I wonder if she’s thinking of my fingers on her body. Either way, she stares, and I like it.
My energy match feels my spirit too.
“Will it hurt them?” I ask before I can stop myself.
The Shaman pauses as if considering, then looks up at me. I can’t tell if the small tilt in his eyebrow is because he’s thinking or if he’s trying to figure out why the hell I care about these captives. He works with spirits and herbs all the time. Who am I to question him?
“If it works properly it should not hurt them.”
“But shouldn’t we test it before we give it to all of them?”
His nose quirks slightly. I’ve irked him. But he still acknowledges my question.
“There’s no way to know the outcome of this experiment, it’s true, but we have a whole herd of women this could work for. It’s worth the risk, I’d sa
y. Wouldn’t you?”
My eyes jump to my woman for a breath, and the Shaman snorts.
“We have three females,” he says. “They’re giving us new babies as they can, but I’m sure you’ve noticed, even those have been mostly male.”
It’s a fact that hasn’t slipped by anyone. The three women in our tribe are all mated and produce young often, mostly out of obligation to keep our dying tribe alive, but even those have been rarely female babies.
“I just hope it works,” I say, trying my best to pull all my attention off my woman and focus on the good of my tribe.
She's merely a stranger we need to bring our people back from extinction. With over half of our population killed in the stagni wars and most of our women stripped from us, we've been living with the foreboding knowledge that our entire race could disappear from existence.
If the Shaman believes these aliens can help turn our odds around, then I am on board and ready to help in any way I can.
“It should work,” the Shaman says, waving over one of his apprentices.
The younger fellow has a stone mortar cradled in his hands and presents it. The Shaman takes it, sniffs at the green paste within, and nods.
“If they are strong enough to accept the bodies all will go well,” he says. “They’re too weak in their current forms, so we will offer their spirits Kutarian bodies. Vessels to better ground them to our world. Then our people will be great again.”
I smile, a light warm feeling filling my chest. A chance that the Kutarians can thrive again is enough to make me want to leap into the air, but it’s nothing compared to a more primal urge coursing through me. With a new handful of women running around, I may just have the opportunity to take a mate, a privilege my warriors and I wrote off long ago.
Chapter 5
Gemma
My head is pounding when I open my eyes. My vision crosses as I stare up at a leather hide ceiling. I don’t know how many shots I did at this party, but I am sure feeling it. I must have been destroyed.
I pinch my eyes shut and grind my fingers into my forehead, trying to rub the pain away.
The last thing I remember is the smaller alien with all the braids and sacred-looking robes talking to me. He had huge olive-colored eyes and he watched me as if utterly fascinated.
He also talked way too much, especially for a guy that had to know I had no idea what he was saying. But sometimes my rescuer behind him would react, so I guess he was talking to him too. One time the big savage even smiled, and I hate to admit, but that looked really good on him. Big strong macho dude with a heavy brow and stern face that completely morphed into an actual hot guy with that tiny smile.
I wonder what he looked like when he smiled for real.
Of course, the little guy had to ruin my moment, staring at the hunky half-naked alien, when he held some sort of green mush under my nose. It made me gag and I pushed it away.
He shook his head and stuck a thumb into the stuff, then held it toward my mouth.
Whoa, no way fella!
The thought of eating their foreign food made me feel queasy and I fought to keep it away from me. This shit had a spicy strong smell that set all the pistons in my brain firing. It was definitely some sort of drug.
The last thing I needed was to get alien roofied on another planet.
And yet, that asshole popped that fucking thumb in my mouth and smeared the shit all over my tongue. I gagged again and tried to spit it out, but it was too late.
Much too late. The alien moved on to the next girl and I don’t remember anything after that.
Lights out, Gemma.
I’m rather hesitant to move and find out what they’ve done to me while I was asleep. Maybe I can just pretend I’m not awake yet and face it later. Besides, my head could use another long nap.
But my stomach cannot.
It growls and squeezes like it’s been empty for days. I grumble and rub it absently. My fingers slide over my soft skin and I stop.
Where are my clothes?
My hand moves up my abdomen to my ribs. Naked. Both hands jump around, to my hips, my shoulders, my boobs. Wait, those aren’t mine.
My eyes fly open and I push up to look down at myself.
Only it’s not my body.
Holy fuck is it not my body!
It’s long and slender and silver. And naked!
I shriek as I jump back, grabbing at the platform I’m lying on while leaning far away as if I can outrun my own legs.
But they’re not my legs.
I slip backward until I run out of bed and crash to the floor. Thankfully I’m only a couple feet in the air, but it still hurts my bony not-my-ass.
Someone is shouting nearby and I jerk toward the sound, looking around frantically.
“One’s awake!” A young male’s voice calls out as it moves away.
Who is that? I don’t recognize the voice. I thought all the survivors with me were women.
I press a hand into my cot and pull myself to a sitting position. My pewter-colored fingers splayed out against the dull cloth bedding looks so fucking weird I have to look away.
As I settle into a seated position―it's hard to move these long stiff legs―I look around. Whoever spoke was gone, but that's fine because I have much bigger things to worry about.
I'm in the center of the big lady alien shrine that was set up in the healer’s tent. I don't know what the deal is with the women, but there are so many of them just lying there. Naked mummies or something.
It's surreal to stare at them, realizing for the first time that they're not all simple clones as they'd looked before. Up close I can see some are taller than others, some thicker or slimmer. Different shades of silver. A lot of different hairstyles.
The fact that I’m sitting in the middle of them makes my stomach turn though. There’s the empty cot I was laying on. It looks eerily similar to the ones around me, holding the dead ladies.
I clench my eyes to block out the truth.
Oh my God, I’m a fucking alien.
How did this happen? What did they do to me?
And I’d been worried they’d ruin my poor little human body. Those assholes just damn stole it!
I rub my hands over my face, trying to control the bubble of panic in my chest. I haven’t been this freaked out since that one time I ate a few pot brownies my sophomore year at university and the army of cockroaches with huge cartoon eyeballs chased me around my dorm room the rest of the night. At least then I could run and protect myself.
Now I’m stuck in a giant lanky body I can barely move.
I move my fingers over my cheeks, feeling a row of scales along the hairline on my forehead, a mop of hair, nimble pointed ears. The skin on my arms and abdomen feel normal, although very attuned to my movements. I can feel the air around me and some sort of feeling of peace radiating from the floor. I’ve never experienced a physical wave of peace, except maybe walking into Antonio’s Pizza Palace on the corner next to my parent’s house. Whatever these stone tiles beneath me are putting out, it makes me want to lay down on them and soak the shit up like Prozac.
My hands drop into my lap unceremoniously and I pinch my eyes closed, trying to fight back the emotions bombarding me. Maybe I should lie on the floor, because holy shit.
I’m in an alien body.
I’ve seen enough dinosaurs to satisfy my curiosity. I just want my human body back and to go home now. Tears sting my eyes and throat, but I bite them back with a soft growl.
Getting upset isn’t going to fix a thing. Even though I really want to freak out and scream and cry, that certainly won’t get me my body back. I just need to figure out how to stand up and look around.
I uncross my legs and lift a foot in the air. These things are like stilts. As I’m rotating my slender foot, the voice I heard before approaches again.
“Just one, just now.”
The young guy that brought the bowl of roofie paste is back, and he’s looking right at me. The heale
r is behind him, his face lit up like Christmas in July.
I clutch the sheet that fell to the ground with me up against my naked chest. Or at least up against these strange boobs, out of habit I suppose.
As the aliens draw nearer, I can feel an odd sense of electricity in the air. An excitement practically oozing off their bodies. It’s contagious and my pulse quickens.
If the circumstances were different, it’d be rather fascinating, but I remind myself I’m in quite the shitstorm right now and I need to find my human body.
The strangers stop a few feet away from the pack of lady aliens surrounding me and stare. There’s no subtly or side glances. They just stare at me.
The young one looks shocked, but the healer is drinking me in like I’m the best thing since sliced bread. The most fascinating specimen he’s ever laid eyes on. I imagine that’s what I looked like staring at the dinosaurs. Though surely not as irritating.
When the silent judging continues, I huff out a breath. “What do you want? And what the fuck did you do to me?”
Both aliens jump, but the healer breaks out into a huge grin.
“Amazing,” he breathes.
His eyes jump across my entire body but never blink. It’s unnerving.
"It worked," the healer continues. "I wasn't entirely sure―"
“You had reservations?” his companion asks, a hint of surprise in his voice.
The healer gives a noncommittal shrug. “A few. Nothing serious.”
I know practically nothing about these aliens, but even I can tell he’s lying. He had no idea if his experiment was going to work, which makes my stomach queasy. I’ve just been apart of a dirty science experiment?
“But I shouldn’t have worried.” The healer’s grin grows again. He’s starting to remind me of a creepy clown. “It worked just perfectly. You. You there.” He clears his throat. “Can you understand me?”
I lift an annoyed brow. Does he think I was staring at him because he’s cute?