by Anna Argent
As he neared his van, a buzz at his waist caught his attention again. The device only went off when he was close to a Loriahan. It had stopped buzzing as he’d fled the house, and then started again.
Either he was being followed, or they had another warrior posted in the direction he fled. He couldn’t tell where, so he stopped and surveyed the area.
A truck was parked just out of sight of the house. Its lights were dark, but the hum of its engine told him the machine was running. Inside sat a shape in the shadows.
He froze in place, breathing slowly so that the mist of his breath didn’t give him away.
The shape shifted toward the light just enough for him to make out the delicate, feminine bone structure of a cheek. She was too small to be a warrior. She could have been a Loriahan child.
Or she could have been raised here, one of the Taken, now grown.
Excitement fluttered inside Krotian’s chest. She was alone. Her protector had left her here, presumably to keep her out of danger.
Without a sample of her blood, he couldn’t be sure of her identity, but that would be easy enough to collect. And if she was the woman he sought—the one he’d sent the human man to collect—he was one step closer to finding the sphere and getting off this frigid planet.
All he had to do now was get close enough to ensnare her in his gaze, and she and all of her secrets would be his.
Chapter Seven
Talan stood back and gave Radek room to work clearing traps on the door leading to the basement. He could hear the human child crying below—sad, muffled sounds filled with tears and terror.
Reece stood just outside the entrance to the house, staring in shock at the pile of Dregorg and Cytur bodies.
“Do not come in here,” ordered Talan. “This place is filled with traps. I can hear your child. He’s alive, and we want him to stay that way.”
The human gave a tight nod and stayed where he stood. “What about the poison?”
“It’s already dissipated. If it hadn’t, you’d be dead.”
The man blanched. “How did you know it wouldn’t hurt Davy?”
Talan patted his vest. “I scanned the house. The only human present is below ground. The poison is lighter than the air here. It rises.”
Reece swallowed and nodded. “I can hear Davy crying. Please hurry.”
“This isn’t the kind of thing you rush,” said Radek. “Trust me.”
Talan wanted him to hurry too, but kept his mouth shut. Zoe was out there alone, and as much as he wanted to rush back to her, there was no way to know what awaited them on the other side of the door. His scans had identified one Raide, but there could be more. He wouldn’t leave Radek alone to face the threat any more than he would leave before he was sure the boy was safe.
So he waited, anxiety crawling in his gut, while Radek did what he did best.
A lifetime later, he said to Talan, “Get back. Just in case.”
Talan did as his friend asked. Radek opened the door. There was no sign of the Raide, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t down there. They had technology that could make them impossible to detect. He was probably biding his time, waiting until he spotted Zoe before revealing himself.
If it weren’t for the child, they could have simply dumped another poison capsule down and let it knock out whatever was hiding. But there was no way a small human would survive that level of toxin. Several of the Dregorgs were still alive, but they would probably be unconscious for hours and sick for days.
The boy’s voice was louder now that the door was open. His father swayed forward, and only Talan’s hard glare kept him outside the open doorway.
Radek began the grueling process of checking each step for traps. Talan’s insides itched with unease. Something wasn’t right here, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. All he could think to do was guard his friend’s back while he worked to free the child.
It took forever for Radek to clear a path. The basement was mostly empty, its cement floor showing marks where objects had once sat. Vacant now, there was a hollow echo in the space, amplifying the sorrow of the child’s cries.
“Everything is okay,” said Talan, keeping his voice gentle, his eyes scanning the room for Raide. “Your father is here. We’re going to take you to him.”
“Sit tight,” said Radek through the door. “I’m going to make sure it’s safe for you to come out.” Quieter, he asked Talan, “Do you see anything?”
“No, but there’s no way out. He’s got to still be here. Deal with the door. I’ll watch your back.”
With his hand full of sharp metal sheengs, Talan put his back to Radek’s and searched for hints of movement and sound.
There was nowhere for the Raide to hide, but if he was wearing one of their invisibility suits and made no noise, he could walk right past them, undetected. However, as creaky as the stairs had been, there was no way the Raide could make it out without giving away his location.
A dark, square opening lurked on the far side of the room. Talan couldn’t see what lay beyond without getting closer, and he didn’t dare leave Radek’s side. Instead, he pulled a small disk from his vest, let it pull from his cells the power it needed to light up, and sent it sailing into the dark space.
A faint glow spilled over aging concrete, showing a set of stairs. They led up to nothing. A line of wetness bisected the stone steps as if a tiny strip of rain had fallen on them. He leaned down low enough to see what lay above, and made out the faint seam of some kind of doorway.
They hadn’t seen any windows or doors leading out of here, but Talan had never thought to look for a horizontal access point hidden under the snow. That’s what that wet line was—melted snow.
The Raide wasn’t down here. He was outside.
With Zoe.
Chapter Eight
Zoe wasn’t sure what she was seeing. It almost looked like footsteps were magically appearing in the snow as she watched. She stared at them, trying to make sense of what she saw, but it had to have been her mind playing tricks on her, because they just stopped. No new footprints formed.
Maybe her brain was starting to freeze up the way her body had. No matter how high she turned the heat, she couldn’t get warm.
The footprints led from the house toward the street, ending twenty feet from… anything. There were no other tracks in the pristine layer of snow. No vehicles nearby. It was almost as if whoever had made them had been scooped up from above.
She leaned forward, trying to get a better view, but her mind still couldn’t make sense of what she saw.
Then, as she was staring as hard as she’d ever stared at anything, a set of feet appeared, then a body, and a head.
The man was thin, tall. He had long hair the color of bleached bone. A strange, matte gray metallic suit covered his spindly body. His jawline was… wrong. Not human. Not Loriahan. Something else. It was too sharp, too elongated. Just like the Raide.
Her father had shown her a drawing of one once, warning her never to look them in the eyes. She sat stunned, realizing she was face-to-face with a creature like the one who had tortured and killed her mother. And her best guess told her this one had kidnapped a child in order to get her in his grasp—likely to end her life too.
Talan, Radek, Reece and his son were still inside. She had no idea what this alien had done to them. For all she knew, this creature had killed them all.
As the implications of this settled in, so did a slow, hot fury. He was not going to get away with what he’d done.
Her gaze clung to his jaw. She wanted so badly to look this fucker in the eyes and rage at him for the pain and death his kind had caused, but she didn’t dare. Through sheer force of will, she did something completely against her nature and kept her eyes downcast, like some kind of submissive doormat.
Zoe was anything but.
She was already behind the wheel as Talan had insisted. She’d promised him she’d drive away if she saw anything scary. She wasn’t a liar, but she
didn’t see any harm in driving away in the direction of her choosing.
She put the truck in gear and gunned the engine, aiming right for the Raide. His kind had invaded the world of her birth and killed her mother. He’d abducted a terrified child and used him as a tool to get to her. As far as she was concerned, this asshole had given up his right to keep breathing. Crushing him under a truck seemed the least she could do.
The truck skidded on the snow, lurching as it hit the curb and went up onto the lawn. She held the wheel steady, despite the cold clenching her muscles.
The Raide had nowhere to go. He turned and ran, but the truck was faster.
The front bumper hit him, sending him sprawling over the hood. A sense of deep satisfaction broke some of the ice in her veins, but it wasn’t enough. He was still moving. Still alive.
Zoe braked to make him slide off the hood, but his skinny fingers grabbed the edge near the windshield wipers, and he stayed put. Before the truck finished skidding to a stop, the Raide lifted his head, and she made the biggest mistake of her life. She looked him right in the eyes.
Pain exploded in her skull, going off like a bomb. Her throat burned. Strangled, high-pitched screams echoed in her ears. She tried to make them stop, but her body was no longer hers to control.
Angry orange veins radiated out from his pupils, and her whole world became a collage of agony. She couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, couldn’t breathe.
After a few seconds that felt more like years of torture, she felt little flickering bits of thought being sucked out of her. The creature was in her head, looking for something, and there wasn’t a thing she could do to stop it.
Helplessness washed over her, bringing in a wave of fear so powerful it shook her to her bones. She tried to shove the creature out, but there was nothing for her to grasp—nothing to push against. She felt him worming through her thoughts, slithering inside her memories, searching for something.
This was what her mother had endured. How she’d died.
Grief swelled from the pit of Zoe’s stomach. She’d lost her mother before she’d ever really known her. Dad had died last year. Now it was Zoe’s turn.
If she had known this was going to be her last night on Earth, she would have done things differently. She would have spent more time with her friends and less time working. She would have laughed more. Loved more. And she sure as hell would have kissed Talan, just to see what it was like to be with a man from her home world.
But none of that was going to happen. The Raide was going to suck what he wanted to know from her head. And when he had what he came for, she was going to die without even enough breath left to scream.
Chapter Nine
Talan was not the kind of man who freaked out. At least he hadn’t been until this very moment. A chaotic fluttering of panic settled in his chest, making his heart beat hard and fast. “The Raide escaped. He’s outside. With Zoe.”
“Go,” said Radek without looking up. “I’ve got this.”
Talan raced up the stairs and out the way he’d come, nearly knocking Reece over as he passed. He didn’t dare exit the same way the Raide had for fear of more explosive surprises.
The human uttered some urgent, fearful question about his son, but Talan ignored him completely.
He sprinted over the snow, rounding the house until he saw Zoe barreling toward the Raide—Krotian—with Talan’s truck. She hit him. He hit the hood and clung as she tried to dislodge him by skidding to a hard stop.
Talan saw the moment Krotian locked eyes with her. He saw her body go rigid, and heard the pain-filled scream wrench from her chest.
He didn’t stop to think. Everything inside of him was demanding that he respond to the attack on her with hard, fast violence.
The sheengs in his hand streaked through the night, one after another. He pictured the path they would each make, felt the slight weight of them in his hand as he let them fly. The first sharp metal disk ripped through the hood of his truck, hitting the exact spot where Krotian’s neck had been an instant ago. The next sheeng hit the Raide’s leg, right at the artery. Instead of penetrating and slicing through skin and bone, it bounced off in a yellow spark.
Armor. Of course the fucker was wearing armor. The only part of him that wasn’t protected was his face. Talan didn’t dare aim for Krotian’s head for fear of his sheeng bouncing off the armor and hitting Zoe. She had little protection. Even one sheeng could slice right through the windshield into her.
All he needed was for the Raide to turn his attention away from her and place it on him. Even a split second would be enough to release her from his gaze.
But Krotian was smarter than that. He didn’t look away. Instead, he trusted his armor to protect him and used a spike on his forearm to shatter the windshield.
Zoe didn’t even flinch as chunks of safety glass sprayed out over her body. Talan was running as fast as he could, but he was still too far away to stop what was playing out in front of him.
Krotian punched through the sticky, broken pane of glass and ripped it free of the truck. He grabbed Zoe’s shoulders and hauled her out through where the windshield had just been. Her body was limp, but her eyes were wide open. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks, and her lips were parted on a hoarse scream.
“Stay back or I will kill her,” warned Krotian without looking away. His sharp fingernail was poised over the pulsing vein in her neck. One swipe and she would bleed to death before Talan could stop it.
Every instinct inside of him was clawing at him, urging him to strike, but he’d been at the receiving end of a Raide’s lack of mercy before, and knew just how much damage those brutal claws could do to Zoe’s delicate flesh.
Talan stopped moving, but his mind went through a series of options that would lead to her safe release. The only way to make that happen was to keep her alive for a few more seconds while he worked another weapon out from his jacket’s cuff.
“I’m not alone,” said Talan. “If you let the woman go, you can walk away alive. Hurt her, and I’ll make sure it takes days for you to die.”
Krotian released Zoe from his gaze, turning it on Talan. Years of training had his eyes darting away. Instead he focused on her, watching as her chest compressed on a heavy exhale.
She was still breathing. Each breath forced out more of those horrible, mewling sounds of pain, but at least she was still alive.
“You care for her?” asked Krotian, as if the concept was some confusing, alien thing to be dissected and studied.
Talan didn’t answer. There was no answer he could give that wouldn’t make this situation worse. “I’ll start by cutting out your eyes,” he said, as if no question had been asked. “Then I’ll pull out those fucking claws of yours, one by one. They’ll make a pretty necklace, don’t you think?”
Krotian began backing away, using the truck for cover. Zoe’s shoes slipped off as he dragged her over the snowy ground. She was still limp, her head drooping to her chest.
Talan didn’t have a clean shot. The sheeng he’d slipped from his cuff wasn’t going to do him any good if Zoe remained in the way. And even then he needed to hit the only unarmored part of the Raide, namely his face.
No way was Talan looking there to tighten his aim. That was exactly what Krotian wanted.
A few seconds from now, the Raide would be hidden by the truck, completely out of Talan’s sight. With Zoe.
He couldn’t let that happen.
Talan shifted sideways to keep the Raide in sight.
“I told you not to move,” said Krotian. “You should have obeyed.”
Krotian sliced a sharp claw across Zoe’s neck and let her fall to the snow, bleeding.
Chapter Ten
Radek opened the dark closet to reveal a small, trembling human child cowering in the smallest space possible. He was tiny, probably not even old enough for school yet. His face was wet with tears, and his nose was red and leaking.
“It’s okay, Davy. Your dad is here, right u
pstairs. I just need you to stay still for a minute so I can make sure it’s safe for you to come out, okay?”
The boy sniffed and gave a shaky nod.
Tucked along the left side of the closet was one of the Raide’s favorite type of explosive devices. The small, superheated charge would destroy everything in a limited radius and set fire to the area. It wasn’t big enough for the noise to draw the attention of people nearby, but it was absolutely lethal if triggered accidentally.
Davy’s little body would stand no chance against that kind of blast.
Radek shifted his position so that he was between the explosives and the child while he searched the boy for signs of triggering devices.
“Did he attach anything to you, Davy?” asked Radek.
“The monster?”
“Yeah. The monster. Did he make you sit in a special spot?”
“He told me to hold this.” Davy held out his tiny, clenched fist. “He said if I let go, I’ll blow up.”
Radek wrapped his hand around the child’s, being careful not to exert too much pressure. With his free hand, he felt behind the boy, carefully searching for any redundant triggers. When he found none, he turned his attention to the floor, which was concrete. Nothing under there to worry about.
“Okay. We’re going to go out now, but I want you to do exactly what I say.”
His voice was thick and choked with tears, but his eyes were filled with trust. “Okay.”
“Wrap your arm around my neck and hold on tight. I want you to close your eyes and keep them closed until I say you can open them. Understand?”
Davy nodded and did as Radek asked.
He tucked the child’s head against his bare chest and lifted him slowly off the floor. Nothing blew up. The lights on the explosives didn’t shift color, indicating activation.
The small, shivering bundle in his arms reminded him to move slowly, carefully, searching for signs of anything he’d missed. Of course, Talan had already made the trek back up the steps, so chances were they were safe.