ALIEN ABDUCTION (Captured by Aliens)

by Fox, Jaide

  As panic lessened its hold on her brain, allowing her mind to regain some control, she realized just how strong and powerful he really was. If she’d had any thoughts about physically gaining the upper hand, that idea was quashed as utterly preposterous.

  Trembling from the fear that still surged through her veins, Ebony snuggled against him. “All right, then,” she whispered. “I’ll put my faith on the chance that you’re at least unwilling to kill yourself. If you make it down, I make it down, too.”

  He made no answer, and so she simply continued to cling tight to him. She was a little disturbed to find that she liked the hot scent of his skin, liked feeling the way his muscles curved along his belly.

  Suddenly there was a hard jar and a sudden stop. Ebony realized they’d reached firm ground once more. Fallon disentangled her from his body and set her down on the warm sand, but her knees threatened to buckle beneath her weight after the terrifying journey down the cliff face.

  She steadied herself on his rock-hard arm. “I’m so thankful to be alive that I could kiss you--if you hadn’t been the one putting me through this nightmare in the first place!”

  Fallon ignored her. “We’ve wasted enough time,” he said, pulling off his own harness and then Ebony’s. He looked up at the women. “All of you! Get in the water! Wash off the smell of the sewer, or they’ll be able to follow us with one whiff of the air.”

  Ebony stumbled towards the sea. She glanced back at Fallon and cocked her head up towards the high tunnel where a thin but steady stream of brown sewage ran in a long fall down to the sea. “I don’t think bathing in seawater will get any of us any cleaner, since that’s where all the shit ends up anyway.”

  This time he looked directly at her and stared, and then glanced down the beach towards the north. Ebony followed his gaze and saw the other men leading the seven women away from the runoff area to a ribbon of beach where the water appeared to be clean.

  “Oh.” Ebony turned and walked towards the group, her head held high.

  The water churned rapidly. She thought she remembered reading somewhere that water cleansed itself every so many feet, so maybe moving ahead of it would keep her from contracting some horrible infection. The coolness of the water felt wonderful on her bruised and aching feet. The cold salty smell of it soon erased any remaining stench, whether real or imagined, that remained in her nostrils.

  She cupped her bound hands together and splashed some water on her legs. Then she looked up and caught Fallon standing at the edge of the surf a short distance away, watching her, his eyes riveted to her chest.

  Ebony realized that the cold seawater, combined with the fresh ocean breeze, had made her nipples harden against the thin gauze brassiere and sari-like top which were all that covered her breasts...and that both the brassiere, and the long and equally gauzy red skirt, had turned quite transparent at every spot where the water touched them.

  Uncomfortable at his notice, she turned away from him and covered her bouncing melons. She tried to make sure she was as clean as possible before she left the water.

  Then, beneath her toes, she felt something hard and sharp in the sand. Bending down, acting as if she were still washing off, she caught the little object with her toes and brought it quickly to her hands.

  It was a broken seashell. It might be very useful if she found a chance to escape. She tucked it into the front of her panties and then turned to rejoin the group, hoping she hadn’t been too conspicuous in her movements.

  ***

  Watching the women bathe in the ocean, the sight of dark nipples delineated by wet red silk fabric arrested Fallon’s gaze. For a moment he thought he’d been punched in the gut.

  Then he sucked in a harsh breath and quickly doused his head in the shallow waves, ripping his eyes off of the dark-skinned beauty’s body and getting a grip on his raging libido.

  What had she called herself? He searched his brain, trying to remember through the sudden fog filling his mind--and then he remembered.

  Ebony.

  The name suited her, with her long, thick black hair that waved gently around her face. Her smooth, dark skin was exquisitely exotic--something he’d never seen before in his life. He had no doubt why his brother had selected her as a concubine. She had the figure of a goddess.

  If her ample curving hips and generous backside weren’t enough of a distraction to him on his mission, the large melons perched and bobbling on her chest certainly were. Added to that, he recognized a strength of spirit that the other concubines simply did not possess.

  The other women had been broken. This one, this Ebony, still retained her fight.

  He admired that.

  He also recognized that she could, and probably would, be trouble. His attraction to her assets aside, he knew that he must keep his distance and watch her very closely.

  Fallon stood up straight, shaking the water out of his hair. His eyes narrowed as he stared at her, watching as she stooped down to the shallow waves and gathered more cold water to splash on her chest. Was she deliberately trying to provoke him?

  “Move, woman!” he shouted to her. “We need to take cover before they unleash the Zhala riders on us.” Fallon grabbed Ebony’s bound hands and forced her to keep stride with him.

  “Unleash--what? Zah-lah?” she asked, stumbling forward as she tried to look around for some sort of riders. “What’s that?”

  But Fallon only looked up at the sky, scanning the cliffs above them. “Zhala,” he said again. “In your tongue--dragons.”

  He clenched his jaw and then shouted at the other men. “Move on! All of you! There is no time to waste. Get them moving!” Grinding his teeth, he started walking down the beach towards the rest of them and made himself look only at the sky above them. I will not be distracted by feminine wiles, no matter how charming they might be! He stood watching them, glaring angrily at all eight women and the six men who pushed them along, until they were all finally moving together along the beach towards the north.

  Damon, his second in command and a man he trusted with his life, walked up beside him. “I see she has caught your eye. The one in the red dress. The very dark one.” He grinned. “No one would blame you. I’ve never seen her like, either.”

  Fallon jerked his head toward the horizon and away from Ebony. “No pretty little female is more important than accomplishing our goals.”

  Damon grinned, in spite of himself. “I hope you remember that. I’ve placed my faith in you, my lord, as have we all--even through the worst of times, when all I wished for was to lay my throat open and die for the horrors we had wrought on our own people. But you have kept hope alive in me--in us. I trust you and I trust your plan. It cannot fail.”

  Fallon sighed, and nodded. “You are more hopeful than I, Damon. Some wounds will never close--will never heal.”

  “Ah...I am sorry, my lord. I should not have spoken of it.”

  “It makes no difference whether you speak of it or not. The memory of my crimes against our people is always fresh.”

  “You were not the only one—”

  “But I gave the scientists the word. I told them to do it. If I had not, things would be much different now. The women of our world would yet live. Children would liven the households of them all. Chalcydon would be thriving, not dying...but that is not the way of it now. Not after what I ordered to be done. It is something I will have to live with forever.”

  “As we all will, my lord.”

  Fallon tried to smile a little. “Do not worry, Damon. We will not fail. I remember my duties, and I remember my vows to you and to the others. I will not be distracted--not by anything.”

  ***

  Ebony sighed and then resigned herself to trudging along the beach with the other women, and with the six men of Fallon’s who apparently had the task of pushing the stolen concubines along the beach. Ebony tried not to wonder where they were going, or what fate might await them once they got there. Right now, in order to escape she would have to ei
ther scale the sheer cliff wall or swim out into a vast ocean.

  There was no hope in doing either, so she simply walked along with the others and waited to see where their captors might be taking them. Yet she could not resist looking back one more time at Fallon and the other man to see what they were doing--and as she turned, a movement high above them caught her eye.

  Once again Ebony froze in place, trying to point up to the sky with her bound hands, and doing her best to scream even though no sound could be forced out of her throat. She simply could not believe what she was seeing, even though by now she ought to be used to the sight of almost anything. She was on another planet, after all, but this was altogether too much.

  “What is it now?” roared Fallon, and she could hear the fury in his voice. Ebony continued to look up to the sky, jabbing upward with her two hands lashed together at the wrists, and tried to get him to look in the same direction.

  At last Fallon turned around and looked up. Instantly, to Ebony’s surprise, he grabbed her arm and whirled her around to face the way she had come.

  “Damon! It’s a scout! Take her--take all of them--get them under cover! I’ll take care of this!” And before Ebony could think, the silvery black haired man--Damon--had taken hold of her and was pushing her at a run towards the cliff face, shouting at the other men to do the same with the women under their guard.

  In a moment all of them, men and women alike, were cowering in the sand at the base of the cliffs, trying to hide behind whatever cover they could find among the fallen rocks and tufts and weeds--all of them, that is, except Fallon, who went striding out onto the beach with his silver gun drawn.

  There was a terrible screeching cry from up above. Ebony made herself look up again, and this time she got a clearer look at it.

  The Zhala and its rider circled above them, and its rider looked straight down on them. The Zhala itself, as Ebony watched in fascination, did indeed resemble a dragon--a feathered dragon--like some cross between a bird and a dinosaur. It had bright eyes of gleaming blue-black and shining deep blue feathers running along its slender head and long neck, flowing to two great wings that beat powerfully in the air and kept it high above them. Its tail was a similar length to its neck, and the body was the size of a small elephant but not nearly as wide. Blunt talons marked its feet, and its mouth looked more like a beak than a lizard’s snout. Ebony could see neither teeth nor horns.

  The rider drew his weapon--some kind of long rifle--but Fallon shot first. The flaring burst from his silver gun tore through the Zhala’s left wing with a burst of feathers and a spray of something that might have been dark blue-purple blood. The rider shot back, but Fallon was already behind cover near the cliffs.

  The Zhala screeched and screeched, struggling to use its left wing, and Ebony almost felt sorry for the hapless beast. Finally the rider allowed it to turn away from the beach and fly back towards the land, and then they were gone.

  Ebony let out a sigh of relief, but Fallon quickly ran over to them. “Get up. All of you. Get moving. They will be back soon enough,” he said, and soon all of the crying women and grim-faced guards were moving north along the beach once more.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ebony and the other concubines walked with Fallon and his men along the beach, picking their way through rocky dunes as they headed north along the coast.

  “This way,” Fallon said, motioning to a sandy, rocky path leading away from the ocean and up a steeply sloping hillside. It was barely visible in the clumps of tall salt grass.

  Arching her neck, following the crooked line with her eyes, Ebony couldn’t discern where it led--but no matter where it went, she could see right away that it was going to be a problem.

  “Oh, look how steep it is!” said Cassie.

  “They can’t expect us to climb that ourselves!” cried Rebecca, with the dark red hair.

  “Oh, they wouldn’t,” moaned Michelle, another pale redhead.

  “Well, we’re all soft from being confined to the harem for months,” said Ebony. “I used to have muscles. I was strong. And now I’m completely out of shape. I’m already tired from just walking this little way, and I can see that the other girls aren’t doing any better.”

  “But you’re strong, Ebony!” Rebecca said, brushing her dark red hair out of her eyes. “You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever seen. If you would just—”

  Ebony laughed a little. “If I would just stop being such a troublemaker?”

  Rebecca blushed, and her breathing became faster as she walked through the heavy sand. “Even Fallon knows to watch you more closely now.”

  “Well, you’re right about that. But it’s too late to worry about it now. And I’ve always been a troublemaker. It’s a trait I’ve always had, even back on Earth.”

  “On Earth...” Rebecca’s voice trailed off wistfully. “What were you like on Earth? Before—before--”

  “Before being abducted by aliens and carried off to another planet because they need women? Too bad nobody would believe that even if we could tell them.” Ebony took a deep breath and tried to watch where she placed her bare feet, for the sand was full of broken shells and tough weeds and heaven only knew what sort of dangerous little creatures.

  “I can tell you that I was a real outsider when I was young. I’d bury my nose in books when most of my friends were out dating and partying. But I never cared about what anybody thought, and so to everyone else I was just kind of weird and quirky. And that’s usually enough to brand you a troublemaker.”

  “You have a sister, too, don’t you?”

  Ebony looked away. “One sister. Adrienne.”

  “She is here, too?”

  “She was abducted along with me. But she never had to enter the harem when she married the Captain of the Guard not long ago. I--I don’t see her much now. We…” Ebony fell silent.

  “You must miss her very much,” said Cassie, joining Ebony and Rebecca.

  Ebony nodded, and stared down at the sand as they walked. “I hardly see her,” she whispered. “It’s hard.”

  Then Cassie started to trot towards the rest of the group, holding her bound wrists out in front of her. “Oh, look! We’re falling behind! Come on! Run! We could be punished if we don’t keep up!”

  Ebony tried to jog a couple of steps, but stopped again just as quickly. She decided she’d had enough exertion already for one morning, and the heavy sand made it nearly impossible to walk--much less run. She watched Cassie and Rebecca hurry away, but suddenly decided that she was not going to run one more step.

  Then she looked up to see Fallon and Damon walking towards her. Fallon, the one with the silvery black hair and the apparent leader, seemed determined to keep her within reach.

  “Damon, pick her up. We can’t afford these delays,” Fallon said, and Ebony found herself abruptly hauled in the air. She shrieked as she was slung across a set of broad shoulders.

  Damon caught her arms on one side of his head and her legs on the other. He grunted as she shifted her weight and then trudged towards the path on the hillside, leaving her feeling embarrassed and insulted at the same time.

  She wanted to argue and fight, but bit back her roiling emotions and merely glared at Fallon instead as he followed along behind. Being a hothead wasn’t going to get her out of this. She was old enough to know better than that, even though her first instinct was to rip her nails into this other man’s neck...maybe take a little off his ear with her teeth...and tear out some of his long, silky hair...

  He did have very pretty hair that felt soft against her arms.

  On the upside, everyone was going to be tired from climbing and walking. Being carried gave her a chance to rest. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she’d still get an opportunity to get the hell out of this mess.

  “There, you see?” said Fallon. “You can be a good girl, when you want to.”

  Ebony gave him a sly smile, even as her eyes narrowed. Yes, I can. I certainly can.

  ***

&nb
sp; At last they reached the very top of the hillside. Damon shrugged his shoulders and allowed Ebony to slide down his back and onto her feet. Catching her breath, she looked up and saw only the sea stretching for miles far below them, and when she turned around there was a dark and apparently endless pine forest only a short distance away.

  “Keep going,” Fallon ordered, as he came up to the top of the hillside--the last one to do so. “There’s no time to lose.”

  The men walked at the front of the group while the women followed them, and all formed a single-file line as they began moving through waist-high grass that had gone to seed under the warm sun. The black seeds clung to Ebony’s damp red skirt like flakes of pepper as she pushed through the grass behind Damon. Fallon stayed right behind her and brought up the rear, constantly scanning the treetops for signs of Zhala pursuit.