Found

by Reagan Woods

  Tentatively, she said, “Bram?” Something flopped with a wet slap nearby. “Bram?” She called again, uneasily.

  She was leaning forward to put her eye to one of the air holes when someone mimicked her from outside, “Bram?” The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Was there another woman out there? Or was something else trying to make her believe it was safe to come out?

  There wasn’t much time to wonder because the box went airborne. Her stomach bubbled momentarily with weightlessness. She landed hard, head slapping the unforgiving metal behind her.

  A piercing shriek nearly deafened her as the wet, slap, slap, slap rained down on her shelter. “Bram? Bram? Bram? Bram?” The voice replaced the shriek, but the slaps kept coming. What the hell was that?

  Bracing her body between the top and bottom, Lacy saw the snake come through her air hole this time. Only, it wasn’t a snake. It was a tentacle.

  “Oh, fuck no,” she gagged. Keeping one hand pressed hard against the top of her box, Lacy lopped it off. Whatever was out there shrieked again, the slaps intensifying, rattling her hard in her little cage.

  Another tentacle pushed in, she sliced it, trying not to notice when it oozed around on her lap. “Bram? Bram? Bram?” The thing shrieked. “Bram?”

  “Lacy?” She didn’t understand anything else, but she heard her name through the blows against her cage. It was Zocan’s voice, she thought. Or maybe it was whatever that thing was. “Lacy!”

  There was a loud clatter and a deafening roar. Blessed silence fell.

  “Lacy!” She didn’t trust that it was really Zocan. Her head was buzzing to the point it felt as though her teeth vibrated in her head. Absently, she noted the tentacles littering the cage had stopped writhing.

  “Lacy,” a yellow eye appeared at her air hole. A Lyaran eye.

  “Zocan?”

  Relief was obvious in his voice though she didn’t understand any of the sinuous words he rattled at her. “Lacy.” He was cajoling now.

  “Oh. I guess you want me to come out, huh?” Desire to get out and away from the nasty tentacles warred with her need to stay safe inside the box. The lever was considerably harder to dislodge this time as the escape panel had been dented in the fray.

  Her overriding motivation to find Bram gave her the needed strength to finally bust it loose. Zocan gently helped her stand on noodley legs, his golden eyes compassionate. He had a bit of black goo splattered in his hair and across his face. A long silver pipe, obviously a weapon of some kind, smoked in his hand.

  The first thing she noticed was the blood. Bright red dripped everywhere. It splashed into tiny puddles on the dull gray ground and painted abstract patterns over the grimy gray walls on either side of the domed hall they were in. “Bram?”

  Chapter 29

  Zocan grabbed Lacy’s elbow but she jerked away. “Bram!” She called louder. “Bram!” Her voice echoed off the walls of the hallway. The ceilings were high and shadowed. Polished skull-shaped sconces shed pools of light in macabre shadows from roughly nine feet up on the wall. The whole area reminded her of the service hall that the workers in the Officer’s Club used to get to the kitchens – only creepier.

  “Shh!” Zocan furiously tried to shush her.

  Lacy spun, catching sight of the ugliest squid-shaped thing she’d ever seen. Stretching roughly eight feet long, it was clearly dead, black goop leaking from the charred hole where an eye might have been.

  She retched a little at the smell but continued to stumble around in search of Bram. Zocan’s annoying voice followed as she looked for clues as to where Bram might be. Zocan plucked at her robe and Lacy slapped him away.

  “Bram?” She called quietly. “Get away, dude, seriously. I will cut you.” Brandishing the laser sharp convinced Zocan to back off, but he stayed close.

  “I’m going to find Bram,” she told him calmly, following the red smears on the floor. They ended abruptly. Looking around, she saw what had to be the alien version of a flatbed wagon. Beyond it, she saw a red drop.

  Deliberately blocking the stench of the burnt creature, Lacy picked up the faintest tinge of copper in the air. Bram couldn’t have been gone long. She could still smell his blood – even if she couldn’t see it. How she knew the blood was Bram’s, she couldn’t say. The scent called to her, giving her hope and dragging her forward. She had to believe he was waiting for her to find him.

  “Thanks for your help back there and all, but I really don’t care if you come with me or not.” Without the ship’s onboard translator, Zocan couldn’t understand her, but she couldn’t be bothered with that right now.

  Somewhere inside, she realized she was a little shock-y. Yet, she couldn’t shake the thought that she would never see Bram again if she didn’t find him now. Panic at the loss pushed her beyond the gray spots in her vision and her aching head.

  As she rounded each corner, Lacy expected to come upon one of the many denizens of the nasty place, but they were alone. It took a while to pick up the blood trail again and follow to the end. Too long.

  The door looked like a prop from a Hollywood horror film. Screaming heads, some of them human, decorated the silver surface. As she watched, more heads bubbled up out of the shiny metal and they whirled in a macabre dance. For a moment, she thought perhaps the door was liquid mercury.

  Lacy walked up and placed her hand against it, avoiding the creepy faces. It wasn’t mercury, but something solid. She turned and eyed the weapon in Zocan’s hand. The pirate sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, twisting his head away as though to deny her request.

  “Bram is in here,” she whispered vehemently. “Give me the damned thing.” Before he could react, she swiped the heavy pipe from his hand.

  “For the love of God, why won’t this damned thing work?” Shaking the cylinder, twisting, rubbing the smooth surface; none of it made the weapon fire. Just as she hefted it to strike the door, Zocan grabbed the tube out of her hand with a frown.

  Pointing the cylinder at the door, he flicked his wrist subtly. A flash shot out of the opening and the door blew in with a racket and clatter.

  Zocan followed on her heels, expression grim as they confronted a Labyrinth of sorts. Dark hallways fanned out like six sun rays away from the door.

  “There’s blood there,” she pointed out, eyes straining in the low light. “Wait. There’s blood there, too. Shit.” She feared she was wasting valuable time, but she stopped. Inhaling deeply, she pulled in the slightest whiff of his familiar scent. She followed her nose, her gut, really, down the hall at a dead sprint.

  She heard Zocan curse and the tromp of his boots behind her. A low drone rose and fell from somewhere ahead. The sound swelled until it drowned out her own pounding heart. Twisted shadows flickered against the blood smeared walls. How long she ran, praying for Bram to hang on was anyone’s guess. He had to be alive. Had to.

  Finally, she emerged into a fire-lit sanctuary. There was a group of shirtless aliens, muscular bodies tattooed in grotesque scenes, kneeling and swaying in a ring around a stone altar. Echoing images of carnage danced along the walls in stomach-churning detail. In the center of it all lay the man who’d given his all to protect her, time and again, while asking nothing in return.

  Patting her waist absently, Lacy made sure she still had her trusty healing wand. Bram had told her to keep it close and it had to mean something that she’d listened. There was no blood around the altar that she could see, and that observation had her bowels twisting with worry. The cuts on his inner thighs and inside his arms should have been oozing blood at the very least.

  Nausea rolled through her. The whole room had a sickly-sweet stench laced with the telltale scent of his blood. She beat the sickness back ruthlessly, refusing to consider the ramifications of Bram bleeding out before she could get to him.

  At long last, there was someone good in her life, someone who put her above everything and asked only friendship in return. Was it any wonder she loved him? It was ironic that th
ey weren’t likely to survive long enough for her to tell him of her feelings. Anger unlike anything she’d ever experienced rose up inside her at the thought.

  Her rage grew and built as she listened to the priests wail and moan through their ritual. The rage went from white hot to reptilian cold, sweeping all nausea and fatigue out of her system and replacing it with an icy calm. And a desperate plan.

  She loved Bram. He made her feel cherished and important. If these disgusting freaks had ruined that for her, she didn’t have any desire to live.

  She’d been used and abused her whole life, by God, and she had a shit ton of anger to work out. Black rage pumped through her veins in place of blood and her vision tunneled down to a pin prick with one focus: death.

  The memory of pulling the laser sharp out, turning it on, and charging the biggest wailing savage would forever be a cloudy, confused jumble in her brain. Warm blood spattered her face and the stench of copper clogged her nostrils. A jolting sensation vibrated up her arms with each hack and stab of the laser sharp. The sizzle and crunch as it sawed through bone and tissue was the stuff of her darkest nightmares.

  An enraged scream clawed its way out of her throat as she turned to face another alien. He tried to grab her, losing both hands to her sharp, before she slit his throat.

  Somewhere nearby, she registered Zocan’s curses, the savory-sweet odor of burning meat as he fired on the flesh-eating ghouls. There was no room in her heart for pity or fear, a singular purpose drove her; she had to get to Bram.

  When she had an unobstructed path, Lacy bolted, scraping her knees on the sharp edges of the altar as she scrambled to reach him. There was a symbol she didn’t recognize carved into his flesh directly above his heart. Up close, his skin showed evidence of paper-thin cuts around his calves and thighs. More slices circled his pecs and the ripped muscles of his arms.

  Ripping off the black robe that had swathed her clothing, she hacked it down the front with her laser sharp and spread it over Bram’s cold, still form. It barely covered him.

  The wand in her hand tried to lie to her, tried to tell her Bram was a lost cause, the red light flashing on the handle as she straddled him and began to work. “I didn’t ask your opinion,” she spit. “Just do your job.” She applied the tool over his heart and torso, adding swipes over his head and face for good measure before setting it aside.

  Pillaring both hands in the center of his thickly muscled chest, Lacy began rhythmic compressions, counting out a series of ten before breaking to switch the wand on again. Alternating treatment methods, Lacy lost track of time. Her arms and shoulders ached, her head throbbed, and her neck was a mass of stiff tension. Still, she continued.

  “I’m kicking your ass as soon as you’re better. It was a simple plan. All you had to do was stick to it,” she informed Bram’s slack face as she worked. His eyelids didn’t flutter, the strong chest didn’t rise and fall beneath her hands. “You can’t die on me. You can’t. I’ll be all alone out here. That’s not okay,” she willed him to live. “Wake up. Fight, dammit!”

  “Lacy! Lacy!” Zocan’s shouts broke into her focused world.

  Sparing him a glance, she saw he’d dragged the flat bed cart over. Finishing out a set of chest compressions, Lacy pulled the cloak over and, together, she and Zocan used it to roll Bram’s bulk onto the cart. If anyone else tried to harm her man, she knew, down to her marrow, that she would burn this shitty planet to the ground. If she didn’t see some sign of improvement in him soon, she might do it anyway.

  Chapter 30

  Zocan followed the sounds of battle and pulled his burden out the carved three-story doors of the temple. Before she’d gone into panic mode, he and Lacy had broken in the back door that led to the inner sanctuary. Now, they were escaping out the front entrance.

  “I thought you’d never return, darling,” Lyon shot a wink over his shoulder as Zocan pulled his burden close. Lyon’s short yellow hair had blood, someone else’s he’d wager, sprinkled throughout. Splashes of the same decorated his pale gray shipsuit. He looked happy to be in the thick of the skirmish.

  “I see you’ve riled the natives,” Zocan took in the scene, resignation and dismay doing a swirling dance for dominance in his gut. Xani was supposed to be a haven for their organization. After today, Lyarans would have one less shelter in a universe of dwindling possibilities.

  Lyon and Ssszit stood behind tall black crates, one on either side of the wide, ornately decorated hall. The two had created a bottleneck of sorts. Z’cari and Natar, two of their Lyaran brethren, shot down anyone who tried to enter the corridor leading to the Temple of Ashwamei, the blood-thirsty goddess of the flesh eaters.

  “Did you defile the heathen temple?” Z’cari, very much like his own Lyon, reveled in bloodshed and battle. His once handsome face now sported ropey scars from each corner of the mouth to his ears, souvenirs of his first run-in with the worshipers on Xani.

  Zocan and Lyon had been following Bram and Lacy at a safe distance, Ssszit hidden away in a crate like Lacy, when the swelling crowds had separated them. The High Priest had double-crossed Z’cari and Natar, a not uncommon occurrence, by reneging on the safe-passage bargain they’d struck.

  The likely motive for the priest’s vicious attack was power lust. Bram was a massively built male with the bearing of a warrior. At the heart of the Ashwameic faith was the firm belief that consuming a dominant lifeforce grew the flesh eater’s power.

  Instead of allowing Bram passage, the priest sic’d his t’man’ga, a semi-sentient, many-legged invertebrate, on the male and claimed his body as payment for allowing the others to live. That was all speculation, of course, as Lacy had decapitated and dismembered the priest the moment she saw Bram’s lifeless body on the alter.

  “The temple stands,” he replied dryly. “But the priests are dead.” With a pointed look, he indicated the little female as she performed some ritual astride the Doranos. “Apparently, she’s a berserker.”

  Lyon’s white smile lit up his whole face. “That must have been a sight to behold. I’m sorry I missed it.” Casually, he used his energy cannon on a male in ragged clothing who broke the line. The grubby body flopped on the polished onyx floor like a fish for a moment before succumbing to the blast. A well-aimed kick and the would-be hero’s weapon skittered into the little cache at Natar’s feet.

  Ssszit grabbed the fresh cadaver’s ankle and tossed the grimy body atop a large pile of his comrades. “We’ll have to torch them and run,” he stated. “The ships are all at the High Priest’s private dock.” His gleaming black arm pointed to the narrow side-hall that shot off at their backs.

  Zocan nodded his understanding. He’d seen the schematics. The docks were vertical instead of horizontal. The passage to the docks was a corridor that switched back and forth in a series of ramps wide enough to accommodate twenty large males standing shoulder to shoulder. After the first two or three hundred feet, there were no longer walls or handrails at the sides, just open-air so small private transports could dock at each landing.

  “Z’cari, you and Natar cannot stay here, not after this,” Zocan stated implacably, holding up a hand to forestall their protests. “They’ll kill you and we can’t spare two such accomplished fighters.”

  “As you will, my lord,” Z’cari dipped his head in acquiescence, scarred cheeks pulling into a twisted parody of a grin.

  Lyon frowned. “This lull won’t last,” he warned. “Ssszit’s right. We need to move, but his flier, the one he needs to get back to Opu, is in the ship we allotted to Bram. Not to be morbid, but he clearly can’t use it now.”

  “Let me speak to the female,” Ssszit proposed. “Perhaps she can tell us who she will accompany now that her protector is…incapacitated.”

  “We can’t take him with us,” Z’cari wrinkled his nose. “He’ll stink up such a small ship.”

  Natar agreed, “We should put him on the pyre before we go so they can’t eat him.”

  Lacy shrieked and Zocan su
rmised Ssszit had made mental contact. If the strident hacks she emitted were anything to go by, she was less than pleased with the choices before her.

  “She says she will not let a scaly freak and a bunch of males prancing around in tights tell her what to do,” he reported. “And that’s the censored version. She’s got a vicious tongue.”

  “Tell her she can stay here with him, but we’re leaving,” Z’cari shrugged, his gaze landing speculatively on the fiery-haired female.

  In the end, Zocan agreed that Ssszit should pilot Bram and Lacy out far enough that they had a fighting chance of survival. He would disembark from their ship and fly a bullet for Opu in a few days. If Bram’s condition had not improved, he promised to try his best to find a safe place for the stubborn Earther.

  Lyon studied the fragile female as she worked furiously above her hulking male. “Bram must have done something right. He wasn’t interested in owning her, but it seems he does, all the same.”

  For her part, Lacy was defiant, the laser sharp on and at the ready in her hand as she continued to labor over her lover. “She’s certainly loyal,” Zocan observed as they made ready to enact their escape. “What do you think she’s doing?”

  “She’s obviously a savage. Maybe it’s a death ritual?” Lyon shrugged.

  Curious, Zocan ventured closer to the Earther and peeked over her shoulder. “Ah.” Recognition dawned. He grabbed Bram’s wrists, checking for implanted healing agents. Lacy eyed him but kept to her routine. Finding an implant in Bram’s left wrist, Zocan gripped a small knife and stabbed with quick efficiency.