Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3)

by Ashley L. Hunt

  Nissikul crossed to the table and lifted one of the ritual tools, an odd contraption that looked like a mechanical six-fingered hand, tipped with claws. She held it carefully to her nose and sniffed, immediately grimacing with evident revulsion. “This is a kazakatta- a heart-taker. It has been used many times. I can still smell the blood.” She worked the handle in a manner I couldn’t follow, and the claws suddenly snapped forward, closing the hand as if it were wrapped around something. A heart, I thought, and swallowed hard. That was for tearing out a sacrifice's heart. "Your people would kill with that?” I asked, horrified.

  “Not for a very long time,” Nissikul responded, putting the sinister thing back down on the stone. “They are mentioned in a few of my Elder’s scrolls, but they’re not needed anymore. They were for removing the hearts of the corrupted so that the Dark Ones hiding within could be entombed, or so I read.”

  I stared at the razor claws, imagining them piercing my skin, sliding past my ribs, gripping… I shook my head again, forcibly not thinking about it- with only limited success. Volistad seemed not to have noticed Nissi’s revelation. Instead, he was inspecting another low table, this one spread with an array of weapons, each of them as fine as his own- but all of them crafted to a different pattern than the arsenal given to him by the Deepseeker. He ran his hand gently along the fuller of a thin, straight sword, the steel rippling with strange, beautiful patterns that must have been bestowed in the forging process. The hilt was wrapped in pale leather, which was still, somehow, intact. Perhaps it had been treated for longevity somehow.

  As I looked along the whole table, I noticed that all of the weapons laid out there were made in the same style, every hilt wrapped in the same pale leather as the sword. I thought about the limited combat training I had received in the Former program, and then back further to my life… before. I could hardly wield a straight sword, I had never so much as swung a weapon like that before, and more than likely I would just end up hurting myself. In fact, most of the killing implements on this table were the sort of thing that required at least some basic martial prowess, and I had little of that. If only there were an ancient, leather adorned standard-issue Pan-American battle-rifle waiting here for me. Something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye, and I moved down the table to pick it up. It was a curved weapon, meant to be wielded in a single hand, possessing a wide, crescent-moon blade. I gave it a few experimental swings. To my surprise, it handled the way my long forgotten machete had felt. I wasn't going to be doing anything fancy with it, but looking down at the sword, I was pretty confident that I could hit something with the edge without simultaneously injuring myself. I checked beneath the table, and as I had suspected, an array of metal scabbards had been piled in a heap. I found one that matched the crescent sword and sheathed it, then busied myself fastening the weapon to my borrowed ranger's belt. Excellent. When I finished, I looked up to find the others all staring at me, shocked expressions on their faces.

  "What?" I asked, hoping I hadn't committed some grave sacrilege. I figured Thukkar wouldn't do anything about it, and probably not Volistad, but Nissi?

  “You just peeled a sword out of a carving on the table,” Volistad said, awed.

  "No, there were weapons piled all over that table. Look-" I trailed off as I looked back at the table. Sure enough, all of the weapons I had seen were no more than intricate carvings in the surface of the stone. There were no scabbards lying underneath it either. It was some kind of ceremonial display, and I had… what? I looked down at the sword belted at my waist. It was the same weapon I had picked up seconds ago, real as could be. I took a deep breath. It must have been the work of Ravanur. Having a god casually perform miracles for me never ceased to make me nervous. "A gift from Ravanur," I finally said, with much more confidence than I felt. "Her ‘Chosen One' couldn't just keep wandering around with a dull old climbing ax, could she?"

  The rangers agreed easily enough, but Nissi didn’t move. She just stared at me, clearly unsettled. I noticed then that she had shed Volistad’s cloak- which she had been wearing as a sort of makeshift robe- and donned a set of strangely intact ritual robes she had found near all the implements of sacrifice. Volistad finally broke the silence by clearing his throat. “We need to keep moving, everyone.”

  I nodded in agreement and led the way down the steps of the amphitheater toward the black, gaping doorway at its heart. Nissikul flicked her hand in a throwing motion and a second ball of blue-white light came into being, streaking through the door just ahead of me and casting its light into the corridor beyond. I squared my shoulders and stepped through the door, closely followed by Volistad.

  I hadn’t made it three steps into the low hallway before Volistad seized the back of my furs and yanked me back with a bark of warning. He was a moment too slow, however, and I heard the click of a pressure switch as part of the floor sank slightly beneath my foot. Without a moment’s hesitation, he swept past me, shoving me hard into the wall. He continued the motion in a whirl of his cloak, his crystalline armor and helm glittering with pale luminescence beneath the glow of Nissi’s light. As suddenly as he had moved, he stopped, holding something in his hand up to the light. Gripped tightly between thumb and forefinger was a fat steel dart, glistening with a dark, greasy fluid.

  I straightened back up, waving off Nissi’s concern. “This place is…” I trailed off again, not knowing the Erin-Vulur word for ‘booby-trapped’”.

  Taking my meaning, Nissi filled in my question. “Burtazzik.”

  “This place is burtazzik," I repeated, struggling with the unfamiliar word.

  "We will need to be more careful," Volistad murmured, his head swiveling back and forth as he scanned the floor ahead of us. After a moment, he pointed. "Trap." I followed his gesture, and sure enough, I could see the faintest outline of a seam in the stone, likely another pressure plate. "Let's go," the ranger said and held out his hand to guide me around the trap. I accepted the guidance and stepped carefully around the plate. I retrieved my own light from within my furs and switched it on, casting its sputtering bluish beam over the stone ahead of us. As soon as we were all past the trap, Volistad squeezed past us to clear the next stretch of corridor.

  We continued this way down the whole length of the corridor, creeping slowly along in the wake of the keen-eyed ranger, listening all the while for the telltale click of a triggered mechanism. After about a hundred meters the corridor ended and we found ourselves standing on a narrow stone bridge over a vast emptiness. Nissikul whispered her magick orb of light to its brightest state, but the light still revealed nothing around us but an empty abyss and the bridge, which was barely wide enough for one person to walk semi-comfortably. Shit. I wondered how far I would fall if I slipped. I didn’t exactly want to find out, but there was no turning back.

  Volistad led the way out onto the bridge, walking with the casual balance of the athletic. The rest of us followed, more slowly, our arms stretched out for balance. I looked over my shoulder at Nissikul and found her clenching her single arm to her chest and gritting her teeth as she took each careful step. Okay, I don’t have it so bad, I thought and continued walking. There was a sound like the crack of a whip, and Nissikul screamed. I whirled around as quickly as I dared and found her lying flat on the stone, gripping the edge with her single arm, her legs dangling over the side. I crouched and reached out to help her, and I saw it. Something like a black vine with thorns had curled up out of the dark and wrapped itself tightly around Nissi's leg. Most of the thorns had gotten themselves harmlessly tangled in the thick hide of her scavenged high boots, but some of them bit deep into her flesh just below her knee, and rivulets of blood had started to run down her leg. As I watched, the vine's grip tightened, and Nissi was dragged a little closer to the edge. She was only hanging on to the side by her fingertips now.

  I seized her arm with both hands, and as Thukkar and Volistad approached from either side, I hissed, "Cut that damned vine!" Immediately, Volistad drew a sh
ort, well-used knife from his belt. He grimaced and squinted as he held up the knife before his eyes, taking aim, and then, without disturbing his own balance atop the bridge, he threw. The blade flickered through the air with a barely audible hiss and struck the vine dead-on. There was a sound like someone plucking a guitar string, and the knife bounced away into the dark. The vine remained uncut. It tightened its grip on Nissikul's leg, and she screamed in pain as the thorns bit deeper into her leg.

  Thukkar crouched beside me, gripping the Stormwalker’s straining arm. “I have her. Try with your sword.”

  I nodded grimly and stood, wobbling a little. Volistad gripped my arm to steady me, and I looked up into his face, which was twisted into a mask of mingled fury and worry. “Hold on to me so I can reach.” Then I drew out my sword and gripped it tightly. Volistad took hold of my other arm, holding it so that we gripped each other’s wrists. I took a deep breath, and then leaned out over the darkness, immediately feeling Volistad lean back to keep me from falling. I lifted my sword so that its tip angled back towards the bridge, aware of where the ranger stood. I didn’t want to cut him when I swung. I clenched my jaw, flexed my abdomen, and slashed, twisting my hips to lend power to the strike.

  To my surprise, I didn't feel any resistance, and at first, I thought I had missed. Instead, as Volistad pulled me back to safety, I saw the vine whipping about, severed as neatly as if I had been trying to cut silk instead some kind of biomechanical cable. Thukkar dragged Nissi back up onto the bridge, and we all just stood there for a moment, panting, as the Stormwalker ripped the remnant of the vine away from her legs. As I watched, the wounds stopped bleeding, and a moment later, her flesh sealed itself neatly. "Damn," I said in Pan-American, "That's a neat trick."

  Though she didn’t understand my language, Nissi took my meaning, and she smiled her eyes slightly in response, hissing through clenched teeth. “Can we get off of this Palamun utrezbekan bridge?”

  I could guess the meaning of utrezbekan, so I didn't bother asking. Instead, I sheathed my sword, then turned and nodded to Volistad, and we continued on our way. We walked for several minutes, tense and waiting for another attack, but none came. I was relieved when the far side of the abyss came into view, and the bridge continued smoothly into another corridor. Volistad and I quickly crossed into the hall, then turned back to aid Thukkar and Nissi, who was now clutching the ranger's shoulder in a death-grip. He didn't seem to mind. "Excellent," I said, breathing out a short sigh of relief as Nissi crossed all the way into the corridor.

  Volistad and I exchanged terse nods, and I could feel the unspoken accord between us strengthen. “We make a good team,” he said in my language, smiling a little- like a human. I returned the smile as an Erinye would have done and opened my mouth to say something. But before the words could reach my lips, I heard a pair of whip-cracks from out in the darkness behind us. My legs burned as two more of the strange, metal vines wrapped themselves around both of my calves. I yelped and fell as they immediately jerked my legs out from under me and dragged me back toward the abyss.

  Volistad shouted in surprise and dove for me, seizing my arms. But we had been too thoroughly caught off guard, made careless by our own relief at reaching supposed safety. Before Volistad could try to brace himself and stop me from going over, I was yanked out and away from the bridge. The ranger didn’t let go, and together we plummeted down into darkness, screaming. More vines rose up in the darkness and seized me by the arms, yet another wrapping firmly about my waist. I heard Volistad struggling as he was entangled. He shouted my name in between furious snarls, and I tried to respond, but a vine wrapped itself around my throat, quickly cutting off my air. Thorns bit into my flesh, and I felt icy cold fear slide down into my spine. One false move and those thorns could open any of the big veins in my neck, and I doubted there would be any coming back from that.

  Ravanur! I screamed in my mind as my vision went dark. “What the fuck is this! Why can’t you stop your temple from killing us!? The vines were still dragging us down into darkness, but I felt my descent slowing. Whatever these things were, they didn’t intend for us to become smears at the bottom of this pit. Ravanur did not answer me. Either she was incapable of doing so here, or she didn’t deem it necessary. Probably the second one. She seemed like a “god helps those who help themselves” sort of deity. It figured.

  Abruptly, the vines released me, and before I could suck in a full breath of air, I plunged into a thick, rancid muck. It smelled like an unholy mixture of gasoline and bile, and I gagged as it filled my nose and seeped into my mouth. I thrashed and felt stone beneath my feet. Struggling to find my calm, I stood, spitting the foul goop out of my mouth and blowing hard to clear my protesting sinuses. I heard Volistad beside me in the darkness doing the same. I fumbled in my furs and was relieved to find my makeshift lantern was still there. I flicked it on and opened the shutters wide so that its glow spilled out all around me in a circle, illuminating both Volistad and me in its eerie glow.

  I heard Nissi’s voice echoing far, far above us, calling for Volistad. I shouted back up at her. “We’re okay! Go on without us! We’ll find a way back up!”

  Volistad shouted his agreement, and we waited as our words echoed up to our friends. There was a short silence and then Nissikul shouted back, "Fine! Stay alive!" Volistad chuckled at this. Evidently, it was a typical sort of response for her.

  “Well,” I said, then immediately spat again to try to clear the awful taste from my mouth. “What should we do?”

  “Find the source of those… rope-things,” Volistad said immediately. “I don’t see them anywhere, and that worries me.”

  I held my light high and scanned all around us. We were standing waist deep in the foul muck, which stretched as far as we could see. There didn't seem to be any supports for the bridge down here. It was probably just a single, smoothly shaped length of stone like everything else in this place. About twice my height up the wall dangled one of the strange metallic vines. It was inert and lifeless. It seemed to have grown straight out from the stone. I dug in my furs for a moment, withdrawing a scrap of metal left over from the construction of my makeshift lantern. With a quick flick of my arm, I hurled the scrap side-arm at the vine like a Frisbee. When the metal reached the level of the vine, it suddenly animated, curling like a whip and snapping the chunk of scrap out of the air with an echoing CRACK. There was a subdued splash as the metal plunked down into the mire. "Fuck," I cursed, then switched to Erin-Vulur for Volistad's sake. "They won't let us climb, so where do we go?"

  Volistad struggled over to me, his armor looking distinctly less impressive now that it was smeared with unknown muck. He stripped off his helm, revealing an expression of base fear that I wouldn’t have expected from him. His eyes were wide, and they flicked around at the darkness, looking for something and not finding it. “It smells like burug in here," he whispered. "I think… I think this might be where they spawn." As if on cue, something bumped against my foot, and I shrieked, trying to leap out of the mire, succeeding only in splashing foul gunk in all directions.

  Volistad, however, was ready to strike. He dropped his weight and plunged his arm into the liquid. He twitched and shook as he fought with something below the water, but in a few moments he rose, heaving a writhing, wriggling mass up out of the water and into the light of my lantern. It was a burug alright, but clearly juvenile, only reaching the size of a medium weight dog back on Earth. Its segmented armor was not quite solid just yet, and its many legs rattled against Volistad’s armored forearm with spasmodic ferocity. It kept trying to get its mandibles into his flesh, but the ranger’s grip was unbreakable. “You were right,” I said, some of Volistad’s apprehension slithering into my own mind.

  “Yes,” he replied grimly. “We can’t stay here. We’re lucky neither of us seems to be bleeding. One of these can’t kill us alone. But many?” He didn’t have to finish the thought. Instead, he turned and flung the larva he had caught far from us. It landed with a sp
lash and disappeared.

  “So which way is the way out?” I was turned around, and everything around me seemed to be the same fathomless blackness over the same filmy swamp.

  The ranger frowned and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He grimaced immediately. I sympathized. Though I couldn’t stop the smell from getting into my nose and mouth, I was trying very hard not to breathe too much. Volistad had just taken a big lungful of the foul stench. After a moment, he nodded his head in a direction. “That way. Fresher air.”

  I marveled at the strength of that sense. What would it be like to be able to smell as well as one could see? I raised my lantern high and set off in the direction Volistad had indicated, and soon my thoughts were fully devoted to trying to move quickly against the constant resistance of the bog. Every so often I felt a curious larval burug nudge up against me, and each time I kicked the offending thing away, hoping to teach the little monsters to keep their distance from me. But their little prods and bumps seemed to come more and more often as we proceeded, and before long, the water around us churned with hundreds of the damnable things. How long before one decided to try a nibble?