Defiler
Book 3
by
Cari Silverwood
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author
Copyright 2015 Cari Silverwood
www.carisilverwood.net
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book only. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials.
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
Making a book means a lot of writing and that gets difficult when your mind’s a mess. Without Carly ODonoghue’s encouragement and fangirling I would probably never have completed this, or if I had, it wouldn’t have been as good as it is. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
I also have to thank Emma Rose and Jennifer Zeffer for reading through the early versions and pointing out problems and cheering. I always need the cheering! Thank you to Jody Rhoton, Ann Grech (another Australian erotic author), and Kath Pigou for beta reading, as well as everyone else who helped me in any way. Mwah! To all of you!
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Chapter 1
Ally was helping dry the dishes when she felt him coming, walking through the cane field, the stalks rasping as they brushed his armor. It was a novel experience, having an alien warrior coming for her.
When she looked through the kitchen window, the sun was burnishing his shoulder armor a bright lollipop red. Not a good camouflage color. Maybe in space it worked, but in the middle of green cane? Not so great. She hurried to the door and opened it. The outer fly-screen door squeaked on its spring, as she toed that open too and held it there with her shoulder. No one with him, though the click of Mrs. Stewart arming her pump action shotgun said she wasn’t so sure.
“He’s okay, Mrs. Stewart, he’s a good guy.”
“You sure, love?” Then she stepped out from behind Ally and onto the porch. At times like this, when she wore apron and dress, the contrast between her prim-and-proper appearance and her no-nonsense armament both awed and amused.
Ally swung her gaze back to their visitor.
The man had his helmet off. Man, he was a sight. Like some prince from a fairytale story or one of the badass soldiers from an online MMORPG game. How many nights had she dreamed of a fair-haired warrior arriving on her doorstep to whisk her away? Many...too many lonely nights trapped in her house. She’d been Snow White in her glass coffin, Rapunzel in the tower, Cinderella cleaning the house while the ball raged on at the castle, only without the abundant hair, or the dwarves, or the kissing prince.
As a late afterthought, she tugged down the cloth of her white Minions Rock T-shirt, where it had caught up on her boobs, then the hem of her shorts. Twenty-three and her boobs still did stuff she didn’t expect. Sucked.
But back to the kissing prince. He was leaving dents in the dirt from his weight. She could totally see this alien guy ripping off the lid of a glass coffin.
What a pity the Bak-lal were here as well aiming to take over the Earth to enslave and bioengineer everyone. What a pity she had some motherfucker nerve chewer in her head trying to make her a Bak-lal soldier or something else she hadn’t figured out yet. Kind of took the shine off the good days.
“Hellooo!” She waved, grinned then gestured sideways. “This is Mrs. Stewart. She won’t hurt you.”
The grumble from Mrs. Stewart gave the lie to that. The woman was remarkably protective considering they’d only known each other three weeks...ever since she’d teleported in that day – with her foot missing a toe and her screaming from the head pain. Mrs. Stewart had barely blinked.
At her words, the man had kinked an eyebrow, then he stopped before them, his own weapon still holstered across his back. His heavy boots stirred up dust. Only a little machinery whine from his back begged one to question how fast he could draw that weapon and shoot. Pretty fast, she’d bet.
His gaze had stayed on her the whole walk in, except for a microsecond when he assessed Mrs. Stewart. As if she, Ally, was all he wanted to look at. This alien man was an Igrakk warrior. He had the same facial markings, resembling parallel claw marks, as some of those who’d visited her and Willow’s house just before the Bak-lal burned it down. Yellow claw marks in this case.
That day, they’d only come to decorate the bedroom so Willow and Stom could have their cute fucking ritual, and this Igrakk too, he was...Ally cocked her head, thinking at him, assessing his aura, his mind.
Yeah, he was nice. Really, really nice. He didn’t send scraping, screeching, fingernail sounds through her head like most people did. For an alien that non-effect seemed common, for a human, like Mrs. Stewart, it was rare.
Porting herself here, to this farm, had been the best luck ever.
“You’re Ally?” he asked, his voice low and non-alarming, except to her insides. The timbre was all that a male voice should be. Warm. Sending a tingle of excitement through her.
More than nice.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat, subtly. “I am.”
“My name’s Rimmil. You know you’re in danger?”
“Yes. Thank goodness you’re here. Now we don’t have to explain all the Bak-lal bodies in the shed.”
“Oh?” Both his eyebrows shot up this time
“Two this week.” Mrs. Stewart lowered her shotgun until only the floorboards were at risk of perforation. “We thought the locals might get worried, so I kept it secret.”
“Yes.” Ally nodded. “I think she’s looking for me especially, the Bak-lal factory queen.” Her voice trembled a little.
Learning about the factory queen, from the Bak-lal who’d held her captive, had been as horrible as anything in her life, including when they’d cut off her toe. So she brushed past that bit of the discussion, even knowing it would come up again. She couldn’t ignore forever something that wanted to have her brain for breakfast, or whatever experiment the queen aimed to do to her.
“Invite him in for tea, dear.”
The whispered prompt from Mrs. Stewart made Ally glance nervously at her.
Tea? She’d never wanted to invite anyone into a house. People did it in sitcoms, though, and in stories. This was normal behavior.
Inviting a man into her house just to be polite was so out there the air felt pregnant. She stared at him and Rimmil stared back. Being an alien, he mightn’t know normal, or that she wasn’t it. Thank god. The tension cracked, lessened.
I can do this. I can do normal.
“Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee? I need to know how Willow is. I need to know what you’re planning to do, as in you, umm, the aliens.”
Was that rude? Saying it like that? Aliens. She’d heard the news these last days. Everyone knew about them and how they were here to defend the earth against the evil Bak-lal. She wasn’t going to argue the evil label as she had first-hand experience of that.
“And...” She sucked in a breath, cleared her throat again. “And I guess I need to know how I can help.”<
br />
“Of course.” Then he went past her into the house, brushing her breasts with his arm. Probably didn’t even know he’d touched her due to the armor. Still...
She remembered to exhale and followed him into the kitchen.
The house breathed too, and let him past. She’d set up defenses, same as at their last house. Only small ones, so far. Ally had a feeling she wasn’t going to get time to do more. There was an air of destiny about what was happening to her, around her. Sometimes she could almost reach out and pluck her fate from the air. She was pretty certain she could help against the Bak-lal.
But Willow – she prayed her cousin was okay. She’d have known in her gut, if she wasn’t. Wouldn’t she?
So they, she and Rimmil, with Mrs. Stewart opposite on a chair, sat on the sofa, with the cushions pressed down by his weight, sipping from Mrs. Stewart’s tea cups, while Rimmil enlightened them about the surveillance of the farm by other Igrakk Preyfinders. She and Mrs. Stewart were being kept safe and Willow was fine and had told them not to stray too close. They knew that would drive Ally into a crazy panic attack.
She clutched her tea cup and nodded at Rimmil. Their thighs touched, now and then, and though his was armored, it seemed too close. Difficult to avoid when he was like a gravity well on the sofa, bending the cushions inward, sucking her in. Having never ever been close enough to a boy, or man, to touch them, excluding doctors, this was a novel situation. Ally figured she might explode any minute. He smelled like nothing else she’d smelled before. Doctors and nurses, male ones as well as female ones, always smelled like antiseptic. Being bombarded with their thoughts had always put her off any appreciation of them as people...or boy or girlfriends.
This was too much.
She swallowed the tea, calmed her shaking hands, and tuned in again. Thinking straight with this alien man beside her wasn’t simple. Instead of thoughts she was being bombarded by scents, sights, the curve of his hand, or the muscles at the side of his neck. She imagined herself putting her nose there.
Ally sighed. She was definitely still crazy.
“...so she should be here soon. In a few hours,” Rimmil concluded, putting his cup on the small table before the sofa and turning to her.
“What?” She blinked. “Willow is really going to be here? Today?”
“Yes. She’s coming down from the orbital platform with Stom, her Feya mate. You know Stom?” She nodded. “We’re going to work out a way to keep you safe without smothering you in warriors. Dassenze thinks you’re important.”
“He does?” She was being a parrot but this was so revelatory, that the aliens’ god-in-the-flesh Dassenze should agree with her own visions.
Fate, it was fate. Something big was going to happen, and she was going to be a part of it.
Ally smiled. A key, that was what she was. All her life things had been missing. Now, this moment in time, seemed right, and a purpose arose from within.
“Bring it on.”
It was Rimmil’s turn to stare. He shifted on the sofa. “He also thinks you and I are destined to be mates just because I could track you.”
“Oh.” Her mouth stayed open. Fuck. Emergency, emergency. Where was the red button for ejecting from a room when the ultimate embarrassment occurred?
His mouth twitched, once. “I wouldn’t worry too much. They seem to have neglected to check my records. I’m of the Peson sect.” When she only stared back, he added. “It means I’m celibate until I find the perfect mate. Even then, I can’t do what the Preyfinders did with the other earth women, like Willow. Nanochem.”
“What?” She frowned. Seemed as if she was condemned to answering in single words.
“Nanochem. A special chemical that induces mating, arousal, obedience even.”
“What. The. Fuck?” She’d known Willow had succumbed rapidly to Stom’s attractions, but a chemical?
He frowned.
“I mean...that’s insane and ridiculous, all at once.”
“Uh-huh. My translator lost the meaning entirely.” Rimmil nodded. “Okay. Yes, I agree. It isn’t my way of courting at all. To use an earth expression though – to each, their own.”
She closed her mouth. Mating, arousal, obedience? It sounded like a date rape drug. Still, the rest of his words wandered in and made her think.
“What will you do when you find this perfect mate?”
Shallow, Ally, very shallow.
The room sat on pause.
“I would,” Rimmil said softly, “Court her with flowers and trinkets and words that were as beautiful as she was. I’d take her to a quiet place where we could talk about us, and I’d never forget how blessed I was to have her as mine. It’s the tenet of our sect.”
Oh damn. Swoon time. Who was this alien? Romeo in disguise? Maybe she should check him for hidden glass slippers and ask about hair-climbing skills?
Say something.
“That would be amazing.” If only it could be her.
Then he smiled and she could see, to the nth degree of exactness, how his gray-blue eyes focused in...on her. These last words were even quieter, but she heard every inflection, every syllable. “Yes. It would.”
The tiny crease in the center of his forehead spoke of puzzlement.
She was dreaming. He didn’t really want her. He’d said as much. If there ever was anyone who wasn’t perfect, it was her. There was some weird alien bug in her head, she was moderately mentally incapacitated, minus a toe, and she had no idea what to do in normal society.
Klutz R Us. A crocodile at a sheep party had more chance of a date than she did. But, putting aside all that, she almost wished he wanted to use some nanochem on her.
Her face felt flushed; her heart was hammering away.
Falling for the first man she ever sat next to was stupid. Though she wasn’t, really, it was more lust. She wasn’t a complete virgin – if you counted fingers and a vibrator. Was this what Willow felt for Stom that night? Maybe Rimmil had slipped something into her cup?
Mrs. Stewart brightened and leaned forward. “More tea? A Tim Tam biscuit?”
“Thank you. Then I must get back to the squad.”
The man was so polite. From anyone else, this would make her nauseous.
“I’ll get those bodies in your barn disposed of too, Mrs. Stewart.”
And so practical and rugged. Ally shuddered, bounced into recalling the last super-big man with the stomach so round he’d wobbled onto the property. Snarling and vacant-eyed, teeth bloodied from eating some recent kill, he’d seemed less interested in pretending to be human than those before him. She prayed whatever he’d killed had been only a rat.
“Call me Betty, son. You too, Ally, from now on.” She caressed the shotgun propped on the footstool at the side of her chair. “I figure I’ve got things to do from here on that require a Betty and not a farm owner called Mrs. Stewart.”
Wow. She’d never heard the woman’s first name before. A name made this more serious? If she thought Betty was better, so be it. Names had power.
When he left, Rimmil bowed to them both, the breeze playing with his blond curls as he paused, head down, then he marched away.
She fanned herself. “Mrs. Stewart...Betty, am I stupid to be lusting after him?”
Betty chuckled and her carefully arranged coiffure barely moved – a white monument to hairspray. “If we ignore that he’s an alien? No dear, if I was younger, I’d have pounced on him too. Lust away. I figure we may not have long to live in this current climate of animosity anyway.”
*****
The factory queen preened as she watched her latest batch of Bak-lal soldiers, with their suits and dresses and briefcases, leave her nest and take the tunnels leading upward. She needed them airborne, on their planes, and at their destinations soon. Because soon there would be problems for humans wanting to journey long distances. These were the pluses and minuses of war.
Beneath the earth, she flexed her hundred-yard-long legs. Cakes of dirt crumbled. Tremors wou
ld reach above, where humans strolled oblivious to her presence.
In days perhaps, she would emerge from her decades-long cocoon.
The taste of the earth had changed during recent times, as if some spice had been added that sizzled on the receptors on the surface of her metal bioskin. It reminded her of the taste of witches.
Witches. These creatures could not exist, yet they did. They would be her triumph for she was mere micrometers from unraveling their powers, from deciphering their intent, and from harvesting the output of their souls.
Nothing escaped her. She focused on one of the many bioengineering rooms within her belly. Here the latest catch wriggled in restraints. Her pink hair waterfalled over the edge of the metal table. This one had such promise.
We Bak-lal have cloned and adjusted to new specifications every species we’ve encountered across the universe.
The witches would be next.
The mythologies and stories of this planet gave her such novel ideas. Scales and tails, serpents and trolls, cats with toothy smiles.
If she had hands, she could’ve rubbed them together with glee.
Instead, her many legs squirmed in the earth. The taste of the stirred-up earth made her shudder. As an afterthought, she searched in her audio files then sent a small cackle echoing throughout the cavities of her body.
It seemed appropriate considering the circumstances.
She directed all her lenses at the table and sent in a second rover, just to be a voyeur. Her video feed blurred for a millisecond, as if with excitement.
Be still, be still, she told herself. A factory queen was never more than distant and objective and logical.
The little spider-legged rover that doubled as her surgeon started the drill to insert the nerve chewers into the pink-haired woman. The whine ramped up. She’d found a way to inject the nerve chewers without the drilling at wrist and ankle but had not yet weaned herself off watching the process. The wriggling of the humans as the drill bored in was far more interesting.
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