by Maree Dry
“They’re gaining on us. They’re shooting at us. Faster, alien.” She tried to kick him into greater speed, but he held her legs clamped against him with his arms. The world already whirred past them but he couldn’t outrun a bullet. “Faster, I’m not bullet proof like you--”She bounced again and the wind was knocked out of her.
“Quiet, human,” he grunted and didn’t even sound out of breath. As if she weighed nothing, he moved her, while still running, so that she was cradled in his arms against his chest.
“Why are you--never mind just run, alien,” she gasped, still feeling as if a large fist had punched her in the stomach.
He jerked. A bullet had hit him. So that’s why he’d moved her from hanging over his shoulder--so that the bullets wouldn’t reach her. She noticed he looked like John again. “I am Zurian,” he grunted.
“Whatever. I’ll call you majesty if you’d just get us out of this.” She bumped around in his arms, while he ran flat out, and was tempted to hit him again. It was all his fault. It would serve him right if she ran and left him to the reverend’s men. Except her only chance of getting out of this alive was if he carried her. She couldn’t match his speed and she sure wasn’t bullet proof. She chanced a glance over his shoulder.
“Still,” he grunted.
“They’re falling behind,” she said.
John--no Zurian--grunted something and stopped suddenly, his body tense. If that was a language he kept grunting, it was truly awful. Like rocks scraping over each other. He put her down in that fast blurring motion, keeping his body between her and the reverend’s men behind them. She half expected to be planted in the ground but she landed gently on her feet.
Her shoulder caught fire. Through the black spots swimming in front of her face, she saw a strange silver black craft shimmer into view. Between the black spots dancing in front of her, she saw the reverend’s men coming.
“Kill them,” the reverend screamed but she couldn’t see him. The sniveling coward was probably hiding behind a tree.
Zurian’s body shook against hers and she knew it was from the impact of the bullets. She heard herself scream, embarrassed that she couldn’t stop.
“There they are! Kill them!” she heard the reverend order.
“They’re shooting at you. Hurry,” she sobbed as Zurian ran into the ship and the hatch closed behind them. Lasers and bullets thudded against the door.
“I am a warrior,” he said.
“Yes but they are shooting your warrior ass full of holes,” Julia screeched, halfway toward hysteria. She frowned down at her arm. Her shoulder hurt. “I can’t move my arm,” she said, feeling dazed.
She bumped into something. He grabbed her and lowered her to a hard surface.
Bullets and laser blasts battered the outside of the ship, plane, whatever they were in. With that dizzying speed, he went to the controls and they lifted off. He looked competent, calm, as if he were shot at every day.
“They are going to hit something like the fuel tank and we’ll explode,” she screeched.
They’d shown a lot of planes explode on the TC a few years back before they’d stopped flying.
“They use human bullets,” he said with clear contempt.
She didn’t know what to say to that. They’d shot him full of holes and he didn’t even seem injured. Maybe their planes were made of stronger stuff as well.
They rose higher and the sound of bullets hitting the craft stopped abruptly.
Now that the reverend wasn’t shooting at them anymore, she realized she clutched her shoulder so hard it ached. She took her hand away and frowned at the blood gleaming wetly on her fingers. Her stomach roiled when the coppery sweet smell reached her nose. She glanced at her shoulder, which throbbed with a deep ache, and saw more blood and a hole. She held up her hand and stared at the blood.
“I’m bleeding,” she said stupidly.
Zurian, looking like a copper green demon again, pressed some buttons, grunted at the controls, and then got up and came to kneel before her.
“Are you nuts?” she demanded. “Go back. You have to fly the plane,” She tried to gesture to the controls with her good arm but quickly stilled.
Who knew getting shot would hurt that much? The Space Ranger always sat with this grim heroic look on his face while his female companion treated his wounds. Obviously, Julia was not as brave as the Space Ranger.
Zurian took a silver strip out of his pocket and, moving her shirt away, placed it over the wound. She screamed at the pressure on her shoulder then blinked her eyes, embarrassed at the tears she couldn’t seem to stop.
“The bullet is still in there,” he said.
“They shot me with a real bullet?”
His image swam in front of her. Pieces of metal imbedded in her flesh forever? Her stomach tried to heave. She took several deep gulps of breath, forced the queasiness down, and gave him an evil look. It would serve him right if she threw up all over him.
Julia grabbed his shirt, or tried to, but couldn’t find purchase. “You’ve got to get it out of me.”
He strapped her in with two silver belts that appeared silently out of the wall then took out a silver box-like thing from a hidden compartment above her. She moaned and shivered when he carefully placed a plaster like silver strip over the wound.
“This will help with the pain. The doctor will take out the bullet when we reach our destination.”
“Is he an alien, too?” She didn’t really care, as long as he got the bullet out. When she didn’t have lethal objects drifting around in her body, she would deal with the aliens.
Without answering, he returned to the pilot’s seat. The way he’d gotten up from flying the craft to help her reminded her of their captivity and the care he took of her in the reverend’s basement. She knew it had been the alien in disguise who’d looked after her but she still missed the John who’d been captured with her. She stole a glance at him. She could only see his wide shoulders and the back of his green scalp with the ridge bisecting his bald head. Goosebumps broke out over her skin and her stomach turned. Did she really kiss this creature?
She’d sat on his lap in that dirty little cell and his warm body and calm had made her feel safe.
“Where are we going?”
He’d saved her from the reverend and his men, but she didn’t want to think too closely about what exactly he’d saved her for. That kiss in the reverend’s basement had been hot and she’d been disturbed at how much she’d enjoyed it when she still thought he was John. Being attracted to a green alien, who was bald and had a ridge on his head, boggled her mind. She searched for something else to ask him. Anything to get her mind off kisses and the bullet in her shoulder spreading who knew what into her system.
“How do you know Natalie?”
“She is breeder to our leader.”
Julia’s heart stopped beating for a moment. A very sick image came into her mind and she covered her mouth with her hand. “Bag,” she whispered.
Obviously he didn’t understand her request because no bag came her way.
Taking deep breaths, she managed to get the nausea under control. Even if he landed this spaceship now and allowed her to leave, she would insist on going with him. Maybe she could help Natalie get away. Or maybe they’d both end up in cages, breeding little aliens. She gagged again. He’d used the word before, in her house and in the reverend’s basement, but she’d thought it was the drugs that made him talk crazy.
“Why did you come to Earth?”
He hesitated. “We were pushed off course and ended up in this galaxy. We decided to stay.”
“You don’t want to go back to your own planet,” she asked with real hope.
“No.”
She didn’t know if the sick feeling in her stomach was because she was travelling by air for the first time in her life, because of the pain of the bullet in her shoulder, or because of the reality of being captured by an honest-to-God alien.
“How many of you are
there?”
“That is not for you to know.”
How many of them could there be? Travelling from one planet to another couldn’t be that easy. Maybe they couldn’t TC home from another galaxy. Julia refused to dwell on an alien invasion. She was not the government or a soldier. Her priority was getting Sarah rescued and making sure Natalie was all right.
“How were you pushed off course?”
“We were hit by an asteroid and pulled into a black hole.”
So their ships could be damaged. “Is Natalie still living in the cave? Or does your leader keep her on his spaceship.” Please let her be in the cave. Rescuing her from an orbiting spaceship might be tricky. Although she’d love to see the kind of gadgets they had on a spaceship. “Did your spaceship crash on Earth or is it orbiting. Can it land?”
In the era before the big war, many spaceships were built. Some of them were built to take off from Earth and others were built in space. None of them were ever launched.
He turned his head and stared at her and, for one very brief moment, his endless-pools-of-black eyes burned red. Menace dripped off him. She whimpered and cringed back into the seat before she could stop herself.
Sure he was going to get up and kill her, she frantically tried to think of what she could use as a weapon.
“She is still in the cave.”
“Oh.” She didn’t trust his answer.
And she would be careful in future about her questions. Obviously, their technology was a sore point. Which didn’t mean she couldn’t keep her eyes and ears open and take a few things with her when she got away from him.
Her heart lurched. What if he didn’t take her to Natalie at all? She had to be at the cave to assess the situation. To see if Natalie needed help. Another thought occurred to her.
“Why are you interested in the reverend?” she asked.
They slowed down and she got a funny feeling in her stomach when they lost altitude. Where would he take her?
“He is in our territory.”
For a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about. Then chills settled over her soul. She’d heard those words before and sworn never to live within such a hierarchy again. Turf wars had killed three of her cousins. Her uncle had done the most vicious acts to other human beings for simply entering his territory.
“Please let me go. Allow me to take Natalie and just go. We won’t tell anyone about you.”
The craft slowed and the hollow sensation in her stomach told her they were landing. They set down so softly she almost didn’t realize they’d stopped. “Please, let us go.”
“Quiet.” He got up, opened the hatch, and lifted her with no visible effort.
“Not too round to lug around, huh?” she muttered.
He ignored her and, still carrying her with that gentleness so at odds with his harsh way of speaking, stepped out and onto the mountain.
“Where are we?” she asked the alien and looked around.
They’d landed on the mountain but she didn’t know where they were in relation to the town.
“Your new home,” he said and she knew her life would never be the same again.
Chapter 9
He jumped effortlessly over a fallen log. Julia moaned as her wound throbbed. A strange medicinal fruit smell, mixed with dust, assaulted her nose while sparse pine trees sped past her blurry vision. Probably planted by Natalie.
“Are we on Natalie’s mountain?” Julia asked and tried to lift her head from his shoulder.
She was a city person and all mountains looked the same to her. No landmarks caught her eye. Where was he taking her? How would she get back here if nothing seemed familiar? God, she hoped he hadn’t taken her to the mountains near Denver. She’d be a sitting duck.
He grunted something. The ship simmered and disappeared. She almost cried in frustration. What good would it do if she did manage to get away? An invisible spaceship might be her only way off the mountain. She’d figure out how to fly that thing even if she had to read the manual every step of the way. Her head swam, her wound throbbed, everything around her tilted until it seemed to her hazy mind as if the mountain was trying to shrug them off. She closed her eyes and instinctively counted his steps.
One of the first things her parents had taught her was to count and keep track of turns if she was ever kidnapped. This might not be the kind of kidnapping her family had feared, but she was still being taken to a strange place against her will. The ache in her shoulder intensified until her whole body cringed in pain with every step he took.
Julia forced her eyes open and tried to find a landmark that would orient her if she managed to backtrack their steps. More trees and a big rock were in front of them. Still counting, she peered at it then groaned and laid her head back on his shoulder.
He shook her softly, almost a comforting motion. She moaned again. “That hurts, jackass.”
“Zurian, not Jackass.”
“Whatever. Just don’t shake me again.”
She settled against this shoulder and frowned at the rock. It was getting a lot bigger the closer they got to it.
When they got almost up to it, she saw that it was made of some kind of metal. Treated to reflect the color of its environment, it blended perfectly with the landscape. It blurred into the background so effortlessly, she had to blink frantically and it still didn’t come into focus. They were practically on top of it when the rock suddenly transformed into a silver dome.
“Is this your house?” Her voice sounded strange, slurry. She heard a soft whoosh and suddenly they were inside. “Feel strange,” she whispered.
Silver walls and a huge empty room whirred past. Zurian carried her down a passage and into a large silver room.
“You guys like silver, huh?” She tried to tease but it fell flat. She could barely keep her eyes open. The bullet probably made a hole the size of a crater in her shoulder.
He carefully laid her down on a silver slab and she braced herself for the cold hard surface, only to land on a surprisingly warm, soft one instead. The spartan room only had the strange slab she lay on but no windows that she could see.
She shivered and Zurian touched the wall. It transformed into mostly empty shelves. She blinked. He took out a blanket. But her eyes had to deceive her because it looked as if it was made of the same material as the roof and walls. She braced herself for the weight but, like the metal mattress, it settled softly over her. Delicious heat enveloped her shivering body. He grunted. And now she was sure he somehow communicated with others of his kind when he did that.
At the moment, she hurt too much to be curious about the communication device he used. “The doctor is on his way,” he said, confirming her suspicions.
“T--tell him to h--hurry.”
She knew something was very wrong. Her eyes wouldn’t focus anymore and she couldn’t wrap her tongue around the words. She’d never been shot before but she’d been around others who had. A flesh wound shouldn’t affect her like this. The bullet was still in her shoulder but it hadn’t pierced a bone or hit any vital arteries.
She must’ve zonked out because when she opened her eyes, another alien held a silver pen-like object over her shoulder. He was a hazy figure, slightly shorter than Zurian but bulkier. Zurian didn’t introduce him, merely watched him the same way he’d looked at Jackson in the reverend’s basement. Even with their figures slipping in and out of focus, she couldn’t miss the predatory way Zurian tracked the doctor.
“I need drugs. Gonna shoot them all,” she slurred.
As soon as she was on her feet again she’d track down the reverend and make him hurt.
The alien doctor took a slim silver rectangle and moved it over her wound. He grunt-growled something and Zurian responded with grating throat sounds. Zurian leaned down and carefully opened her shirt. She could feel her cheeks burn even more and she felt so vulnerable with both their eyes on her naked shoulder. She moaned when Zurian lifted the silver cloth he’d placed over the wound.
She almost smiled at the doctor when the pain suddenly stopped. “I like alien medicine. It works much faster than our stuff.” She’d get her hands on the doctor’s gadgets when she was better. “Wow, it’s amazing. I feel wonderful all of a sudden.” She saw the two aliens glance at each other. “What?”
Something moved in her shoulder. It didn’t hurt but she didn’t like the sensation. The euphoric feeling of a moment ago faded. “What’s he doing? How’s he moving the bullet without touching it?”
“Do not move, Julia.”
Through blurry eyes, she saw Zurian take the torn piece of metal with a silvery cloth when it emerged and hand it to the doctor, who also took care not to handle it directly.
“Why aren’t you touching it?”
“Poison,” Zurian said briefly.
“What? Who would poison a bullet? Am I going to die?” She tried to sit up but fell back with a moan. She’d never heard of anyone putting poison on a bullet before.
“No.”
“I d--don’t b--believe--” Something happened to her tongue. She couldn’t speak.
“Our medicine will heal you,” Zurian said.
The doctor injected her with a silver tool he pressed against her neck. She felt a prick and he stood back before she even realized what happened. He took out another tool from his pocket. How they managed to produce all these things and not have bulging pockets escaped her. Whatever he injected her with helped immediately. Her tongue felt normal again and her eyes could focus.
She could feel her eyeballs trying to pop out when he grunted and a flame sprang from the metal wand in his hand. He lowered it with terrifying slowness to her wound.
Julia screamed and screamed. Zurian pushed the doctor away from her. Mercifully, blackness overtook her before she had to endure too much of this torture.
***
Zurian grabbed Viglar by the throat and lifted him away from Julia. “You would burn my breeder?”