Protected

by Evangeline Anderson

  “Warning—Hull Breach! Warning—Hull Breach! Oxygen loss imminent. All passengers should evacuate immediately.”

  “Oh my God!” I looked at Grav. “What—”

  That was as far as I got before one of the skinny metal spiders fell from the ceiling above my head and landed right in my lap.

  I shrieked in wordless terror—roaches aren’t the only creepy crawlies I hate—and propelled myself into Grav’s lap.

  “Careful, darlin’!” He narrowly avoided stabbing me with his knife but I barely noticed. I was too busy shaking my legs like crazy, trying to get rid of the awful metal spider. And then I heard Teeny’s voice, coming out soft and frightened.

  “Grav,” she whispered. “The…the ceiling.”

  I looked up instinctively and saw to my horror that the metal spider which had fallen on me had friends. They were squeezing in through the narrow hole the first bug had made and boiling across the ceiling in a wave of long, thin, needle-tipped legs and sleek, fat silver bodies.

  I don’t know if you remember that old show—Fear Factor? The one where they subjected contestants to their worst fears? Sometimes they would take somebody and lay them down inside a clear plastic box and then dump bugs all over them.

  I couldn’t stand to watch when they did that—I had to change the channel and concentrate hard on something else. Just the idea of having that happen to me freaked me out. So you can imagine how actually having it happen made me feel.

  I panicked.

  My heart started racing so hard I could hear it pounding in my ears—my breath came in short, ragged gasps and I started to feel dizzy and ill. My hands got cold and clammy and I thought I might go crazy if I couldn’t get out of the shuttle. It had seemed roomy enough earlier—even too big, since it was made for alien males Grav’s size, not Earth-sized females like me.

  But now with the spiders filling the ceiling and beginning to rain down on us, it seemed no bigger than a coffin—a tight silver coffin filled with bugs that were squirming all over me.

  “Oh my God!” I gasped, writhing like a fish all over poor Grav’s lap. “They’re in my hair—they’re in my hair!”

  It was true. I felt their long, silver legs tangling in my long strands. And then they were skittering over my shoulders and arms and up and down my legs. They were even getting on my face! I stopped screaming and clamped my mouth shut—no way did I want one of them in there!

  But then I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were constricting with panic and behind me I could hear Teeny screaming and twisting around, trying frantically to get the spiders off her as well.

  The only one who kept his head was Grav. He kept one arm around me and with the other, he smashed as many of the metallic spiders as he could. They made crunching-splattering sounds and their soft gooey innards—which were a bright, poisonous shade of green—came raining down on our heads.

  I didn’t know which was worse—the dead spiders or the live spiders. Either way, I felt like my heart was about to burst in my chest I was so completely freaked out.

  Oh my God, I moaned inwardly, since I didn’t dare to open my mouth, lest a spider get inside. OhmyGod,OhmyGod,OhmyGod!

  And then a cold, female voice spoke from overhead.

  “Be still!” it commanded sharply. “Cease this useless thrashing or my minions will be forced to sting you.”

  I was so surprised that for a moment I did hold still. Where was the voice coming from? From one of the spiders? From the hole in the ceiling which was gradually letting out our oxygen? Even now it was getting hard to breath but I honestly didn’t know if that was from lack of O2 or the fact that my entire body was in overdrive.

  And then, as I looked up, another spider fell—right on my face.

  So much for being still. I shrieked and fishtailed my body wildly, batting at the horrid thing, trying to get it off.

  “Very well,” I heard the voice hiss. “Stinging it shall be since you refuse to be still!”

  “Wait!” Grav roared. But it was too late. The spider that had fallen on my face crawled around to the back of my neck, right under my hair. (Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t be still and stop freaking out?) And then I felt a sharp, stinging pain, as though someone had jabbed me with an eighteen gage needle just at the base of my skull.

  I opened my mouth to scream but I didn’t have a chance before everything abruptly went black.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Grav

  I woke up to a nightmare.

  The first thing I knew was that there was a cold blue light shining in my eyes, half blinding me. The second thing was, I had a headache fit to split my skull—probably from those damn metal spiders. I could still feel a throbbing at the base of my neck where several of them had stung the hell out of me.

  The third thing I realized was that I couldn’t move—couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle.

  Why? Was I paralyzed? Had those damn spiders incapacitated me that much?

  Blinking my eyes I looked down, trying to figure it out. Finally my eyes adjusted to the brilliant blue light and I was able to see. The good news was, I wasn’t paralyzed. The bad news was, I might as well be.

  Leah, Teeny and I were all wrapped up, our limbs held in place against our bodies by long, sticky white threads. Not only that but we were in the center of a web made of the same threads, held in a half-reclining position. I tried to see other details about the room we were in—which seemed to be extremely large—but the light shining in my eyes was so bright it cast everything else into shadows.

  The webbing—because that was what it was—had a rancid, sickly-sweet odor, not unlike the rotten meat back on Chndra that had covered Teeny’s scent so well even my sensitive nose had missed her. Speaking of Teeny and Leah, were they okay?

  I looked over at them again. Teeny still looked passed out, her pale face slack with unconsciousness. Leah, however, was beginning to come around. I saw her long lashes flutter open and she blinked, taking stock of the situation just as I had.

  “Leah,” I said hoarsely. “Leah, darlin’—you okay?”

  “I think so.” She tried to move her head and groaned. “Ugh—my head isn’t okay though. Feels like I have the worst hangover ever.”

  “Yeah. Probably a reaction to the spider venom,” I muttered.

  “I guess.” She got an anxious look on her face. “Are they all off me? I can’t stand having bugs on me Grav. I mean, I really can’t stand it.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out, darlin’,” I said dryly, remembering the way she’d been bucking and writhing all over my lap. “Don’t worry—I don’t see any on you. I think you’re safe. Well, as safe as any of us is.”

  “Where are we?” she asked, squinting as she tried to look around the brilliant blue light shining in our faces. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Me neither,” I growled. “This light is screwing with my eyes like fuckin’ crazy.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Do you still have your knife? Can you cut your way out?”

  It was a good question. The knife in question was my best fighting blade and it had saved my ass more than once. I thought I could still feel it, tucked into my boot, but there was no way I could reach it—not trussed up like I was. The white webbing wrapped around my body put the Binding-warrant Captain Verrai had wanted to put on me to shame.

  “Grav?” It was Teeny—her voice a faint little whisper. She was finally waking up and her big violet eyes looked hazy and uncertain. “Grav, where are we?”

  “Don’t know just yet, sweetheart,” I said, though I thought I had a pretty good idea. “Just hang tight, all right?”

  “Okay, but—” she started but just then a cold, female voice—the same one I remembered hearing inside the shuttle—spoke.

  “Well, well, Braxian. I’ve waited a long time to meet you,” she said. “You’re quite an impressive specimen, just as I was promised.”

  “Who’s there?
” I demanded. “Who said that?”

  “Why, I did.”

  Suddenly the dazzling blue light that had been aimed at our faces swept away and pinpointed something else, on the other side of the room.

  No, not something else, I saw—someone else.

  It was a female, standing on a wide platform across from the web we were stuck to.

  I looked up at her…and up and up and up.

  I’m a pretty big male so I don’t usually have to look up to anyone. But this female was incredibly tall—almost twice as tall as me. She had a normal looking head and torso, though. Most of her height seemed to be in her legs, which were hidden by a long, gown that belled out around her, hiding her feet.

  She was dressed all in white and her skin and hair were the same color. In fact, the only thing about her that had any color at all were her eyes. They glittered ruby red, seeming to bulge from their sockets like an insect’s eyes as she stared at us.

  I didn’t need a fuckin’ sign to tell me I was looking at the Widow—the elusive owner and tender of the Spider’s Web.

  “Hello, Braxian,” she said, giving me a slow, cold smile. “Or should I call you by your true name—Gravex N’gol? Well met, at last.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean—“at last?’” I growled.

  “It means I have been searching for one of your caliber for many long years…and at last I have found you.”

  She smiled at me—a smile as cold as the inside of a grave where soulless things skitter and squirm.

  I don’t mind telling you, it gave me the fuckin’ creeps.

  “What do you want with us?” Leah asked, speaking up bravely, if perhaps foolishly. When you’re facing down someone like the Widow, it’s best not to draw their attention to you if you can help it.

  But the widow barely glanced at her—those ruby red, bulging eyes remained fixed on me.

  “I want nothing with you, little Pure One,” she said, sounding almost bored. “You and the other little female are of no interest to me. I want only Gravex.”

  “Good,” I said at once. “Then keep me and let them go.”

  “Grav! No!” Leah protested at once. “You can’t just stay here while we go free.”

  “No one is going free, I’m afraid,” the Widow said. “I said that I had no interest in you, little female. I didn’t say that no one did. There is one here who wants you.” She looked to her right and I saw someone else—a male who had been almost hidden by her voluminous white skirts had now come forward. “It was very good of you to alert me that such a tasty prey was within my reach,” the Widow told him.

  “I thought it was a good opportunity for us both to finally get what we were after,” the male said. “You have no idea how long I’ve been tracking these two” He nodded at Leah and me. “I knew your Web would be the perfect place to finally catch them.”

  “An equitable arrangement all around,” the Widow agreed.

  I looked closer at the male she was speaking to and saw it was no wonder he’d almost been hidden. He was extremely short and puny for a male—barely taller than Leah. In fact, he looked like he might come from her planet. Well, except for his strange coloration.

  He was orange.

  A lank tuft of yellowish hair flopped over his wrinkled forehead and he had small, squinty eyes. He was wearing an outfit similar to the ones I had seen Earth males wearing when I was watching Leah on the AMI light screen but he seemed to have some of the components reversed. He had the bright length of silky fabric Earth males usually wore around their throats threaded through the loops in his gray trousers. And the leather strip they usually wore around their waists was instead cinched around his neck.

  It was an odd display and I could tell from Leah’s face she thought so too.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered faintly. “Is that who I think it is? I always knew he was some kind of alien!”

  “Silence,” the Widow ordered her, frowning. “If you must know, this male is the last of the Assimilated.”

  “No, he’s not,” Leah protested. “That’s—”

  “I said be silent!” The Widow’s voice cracked like a whip. “Keep your mouth shut when your betters speak, Pure One!”

  She sneered the last words, as though the idea of Leah having the pure DNA of the Ancient Ones made her sick. I supposed for a hybrid like the Widow—one who wasn’t even a mix of two of the Twelve Peoples but instead, some abortive combination of one of the twelve and a wholly alien insectile creature—it must be irritating to see someone like Leah.

  “There will be plenty of time for talking—and begging—once we return to my ship,” the orange-skinned male said, leering at Leah.

  I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this puny male with his strange skin and puffy slits for eyes—a very bad feeling.

  “He can’t be one of the Assimilated,” I said flatly, ignoring the Widow’s warning to be quiet. “The Imperial Guards wiped out almost all of them fifty cycles ago. And I killed the last one myself, not two solar months ago. He called himself—”

  “Count Doloroso.” The orange-skinned Earth male grinned triumphantly. “Yes, it is I, Braxian—the one you thought you killed. But the Assimilated can never truly die—not when we have the ability to download ourselves into new bodies at will. This time I have chosen a powerful and influential male from Earth—the home planet of your beloved.”

  “Huh—doesn’t look very powerful to me,” I remarked, looking him up and down. “Why is the skin that strange color? And why are the hands so small?”

  The male flushed, his orange face turning almost maroon with rage.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think, Braxian. It’s what your female thinks. And I have it on good authority that the male this body belonged to was one of the most powerful and loved persons on her entire planet—she will not be able to resist me in this body.”

  “Ugh!” Leah made a face.

  “Looks like she can resist you just fine,” I remarked dryly. “I don’t know how much you paid the Commercians to get that body, but I think you were ripped off.”

  “Be silent!” he shouted, his eyes squinting into narrow, puffy slits. “The point is, you tried to kill me and you couldn’t! Now I’m back and this time when I go, I’ll be taking your sweet Leah with me.”

  “Like Hell you will,” I snarled.

  The fact that he looked like a joke didn’t minimize the threat he posed to me and my loved ones.

  I flexed my muscles, willing the sticky strands around me to snap. But there were too many of them.

  “I’m afraid he’s telling the truth,” the Widow said blandly. “You see, the Count here has big plans for your female—as I have big plans for you, Gravex.”

  “What…what plans?” Leah’s voice faltered uncertainly and my heart twisted to see the fear in her eyes. I needed to get free, damn it! Needed to fulfill my oath and protect her. But I couldn’t move a muscle—the strands around me were tight as iron cables and just as unbreakable.

  “Ah, such plans…” Count Doloroso—because I was forced to acknowledge that it really was him—rubbed his orange hands together. “Everyone thinks that my people are gone—that the Imperial Guards of the Goddess Empress wiped us out fifty cycles ago. But it’s not true. I alone survived to carry out the mission of the Assimilation. And I and I alone will bring back my race from extinction. With the help of you, my sweet Leah.”

  “No!” Leah twisted in her bonds, the same way I was twisting in mine. “No-never! I recognize your name now—you’re the one my friend Zoe tried to warn me about. I don’t want anything to do with you!”

  “Well I’m afraid, my dear, you’re going to have a lot to do with me very soon.” The Count smiled evilly at her—a look which his new body seemed to excel at.

  “You touch her,” I growled. “So much as touch one hair on my female’s head and I’ll fuckin’ gut you like a fish, Doloroso. Just leave her the fuck alone!”


  For some reason, my reaction made the Widow frown.

  “Dear, dear,” she said, frowning and shaking her head. “I had hoped you were just traveling together but I see that a most unfortunate attachment has formed between the two of you. Well, something will have to be done about that. I don’t want a male who is entangled with another.”

  Before I could ask what she meant by “wanting a male,” she made a motion with one long, thin, white hand. I saw an answering motion from the corner of my eye. Turning my head, I saw a spider like the ones that had attacked our shuttle crawling towards me. Only this one was fucking massive—the size of my fist at least. And my fist isn’t small—unlike the ones sported by Count Doloroso’s current Earth body.

  “Wow!” Doloroso remarked, eyeing the spider. “That thing is huge.”

  “It is one of my little pets. It stores truth venom in its toxin-glands.” The Widow made another motion and the spider crawled right up to me.

  I’m not as freaked out about insects as Leah is but I don’t exactly like them either—especially when I’m tied up and I can’t get lose to squash them. I really didn’t like it when the damn thing crawled on top of my head.

  “Get away—get off!” I snapped my head from side to side, trying to fling it off but it was no use. It’s long, needle-like legs dug into my scalp, refusing to be dislodged.

  “A half dose, I think, my pet,” the Widow said to the spider.

  The thing shifted and from the corner of my eye, I saw a long, slender, wicked-looking stinger tipped with a droplet of green venom. I tried to move away but it stabbed me in the right corner of my mouth. I felt a burning, stinging pain followed by a numbness that made the whole right side of my face feel rubbery.

  “Fuck!” I exploded—at least I was still able to talk. “What in the Frozen Hells did you do that for?”

  “In order to severe the emotional bonds between you and this little Pure One, of course,” the Widow sneered. “I can see quite plainly that you love her and that she loves you—we must put and end to such frivolous emotion so that your attentions can be turned elsewhere.”