Marissa no longer considered herself another species from them. Her transformation was complete, and no doubt it began the same way. She ate their food, drank their tea, and one of them touched her with his hands until Angondra invaded her very cells.
She wasn’t human anymore. She didn’t have the same patterns of hair on her head or their pointed ears or their blunt noses, but she was one of them. She admitted it herself. The pack was everything to the Lycaon, and she was a member of their pack.
Chris couldn’t let that happen to her. She had to fight it, and she had to find a way off this planet. She would get hungry and thirsty and lonely, and those needs would wear her down until she gave in. She had to escape before that happened.
Marissa only smiled at her during the meal. She read Chris’s every thought. She knew exactly what was going through her mind. That smile drove Chris insane. She had to get away from Marissa, too—but how? The Lycaon could outrun her, and their strong senses of smell and hearing could track her through the woods.
She sat up. Maybe one of the other women would help her. The women she crashed with couldn’t help her—not before she transformed into one of these aliens. They might even welcome the transformation after their ordeal with the Romarie. They would tell the Lycaon what she planned to do and try to stop her from getting away.
Who would help her? Not Marissa. Marissa only wanted to make the assimilation process painless for her. None of the Angondrans understood her problem. Turk kept staring at her all through the meal. He fixed her with his inscrutable gaze. Then he would catch himself and look down at his food again. But eventually, his gaze always migrated back to her face.
What was he thinking? Was he planning to destroy her as an enemy of his people? If he could read her thoughts the way Marissa did, he would understand how much she loathed everything he represented. If she couldn’t escape, she would destroy anything that crossed her path.
Caleb barely noticed her. He talked to Marissa and his brother through the meal, but he gave Chris only the most cursory attention. Maybe he couldn’t forgive the slight of her rejecting his family. Turk lived in a house nearby with their mother and sisters and children. These were Caleb’s relatives, too. They’d honored her by offering to house her with the Alpha’s family. Marissa explained all that, but Chris couldn’t accept it. She didn’t want to be honored. She wanted to disappear into the ground and never be seen by these people again.
But where could she go? Marissa insisted again and again that Chris could choose where she went and what she did. She could choose any other faction if she wished. Maybe one of Marissa’s friends wanted to get out of here as much as she did. One of them would help her get off this planet.
She ran through the scanty information Marissa gave her about them. Carmen was with the Felsite, Aria was with the Ursidreans, and Penelope Ann was with the Avitras.
She got up and tiptoed to the door. No one saw her. Marissa and Caleb went out together after the meal, and Turk went to his own house. No doubt his mother and sisters would wash his feet and give his shoulders a rub. They fawned all over their hero brother. Chris could just see it now.
She peeked outside, but the village was deserted. Afternoon sun slanted through the trees. Smoke twined out of the roofs of the other houses. The Lycaon must all be inside resting after the trek back and busy tending the new arrivals.
So much the better. Chris stepped out of the house and, with one last glance around, set off through the woods.
She glanced back over her shoulder, but nothing stirred in the village. She walked faster, and the farther she went, the faster she hurried until she broke into a dead run.
How long she ran, she couldn’t tell, until she stopped to catch her breath. Nothing but miles and miles of trees surrounded her on all sides. She couldn’t distinguish one direction from another. She could be running in circles and never know the difference. Only a faint shimmer of sun snuck through the canopy to lighten the forest floor. She couldn’t use that as a guide.
In Girl Scouts she learned that the moss grew on the north side of tree trunks. If you ever got lost in the woods, you could guide yourself with that to find your way. Maybe the moss didn’t grow on the north side of the trees here, but it would grow on one side and not the others. She could use that as her guide.
She ran her hand around the nearest tree trunk, but moss grew on every side of it, all the way around in a uniform mat of velvet green. Every side of the tree was in the same shadow as every other side. Chris shook her head. She couldn’t let this discourage her. She had to go on.
But she didn’t run blindly anymore. She walked and let her mind turn over the problem of finding her way to one of the other factions. She knew nothing about this planet except what Marissa told her. The Aqinas lived near the water, and the Avitras lived in the trees. The Ursidreans lived in caves in the mountains, and the Felsite lived in cities on the plains. That didn’t tell her anything about how to find them or how to deal with them when she did.
The sun slipped by overhead, and the day disappeared. In the depths of the forest, Chris noticed only a change in the quality of the light, and a drop in the temperature. The golden sunbeams streaming through the trees turned to grey, and the animal life chattered to quiet. Night was coming.
Where could she spend the night? A pile of sticks and leaves sounded pretty good right about now, and the memory of Marissa’s stew of meat, herbs, and roots made Chris’ stomach grumble. She should have eaten that stew when she had the chance. Who knew how long it would be before she got a hot meal like that again?
But she couldn’t go crying over spilled milk now. She had to keep her thoughts clear to find food and water for herself. Thirst started to gnaw at her, though. That was a much more pressing problem right now than food. She ought to head downhill. If she kept going down, she would find water. And she could follow a river or stream—where? To the Aqinas?
Then, out of the corner of her eye, a shaft of light caught her eye. It was different from the rest of the grey sky falling into dusk. A rainbow of glorious color split the cloud cover and illuminated the canopy. The trees opened up, and she hurried toward the place. At last, she was getting out from under those trees.
She struggled up a rise and broke out onto bare ridge stretching up to a headland overlooking the countryside all around. She rushed up the slope to the very pinnacle and gazed out at thousands of miles of empty wilderness. Nothing moved in that trackless land. No plains or mountains interrupted the view. As far as the eye could see, the same dense forest covered the entire planet.
If the Lycaon territory covered so much forest, how could she find any of the other factions? She would travel for weeks just to get out of that forest. But she couldn’t turn back now. She had to press on.
She fell back on her first strategy, to find a river or stream and follow it out of the forest. She went back down the promontory and into the trees, but as soon as the canopy closed over her head, night set in and she couldn’t see more than a foot in front of her face. She had to find a place to spend the night.
With night, the air turned freezing cold. It cut right through her shirt, and when she rubbed her arms with her hands, the cold fabric chilled her hands until they ached. Her teeth chattered, and she stumbled through the crumbly loam underfoot.
She searched everywhere for some shelter—a fallen log, a hollow tree, an overhang of rock—but nothing offered her any protection from the cold. In the end, she had no choice but to rely on the Lycaon and their methods. She kicked a bunch of fallen leaves and debris into a big pile at the base of a tree and crawled into it. Dirt and leaf meal sprinkled into her eyes and mouth until she choked, but as soon as the leaves closed around her, they trapped her body heat and she stopped shivering.
The ground under her still chilled her, but the cold wasn’t so bad. Hunger and thirst pushed sleep just beyond her reach, and her mind raced around and around trying to come up with some solution to he
r predicament.
How long could this go on? She couldn’t travel even one more day without food and water. She couldn’t sleep like this another night. She wasn’t sleeping now. Where was her four-poster bed with the down comforter when she really needed it? Where was her dog Tanner and Riccarton, her cat, to keep her warm? She'd grown soft with comfortable living these last few years.
Her heart ached at the memory of the life she left behind on Earth. When would she get it back? What if Marissa was right, and she never got off this planet? Why did the Romarie have to take her instead of the lady next door? The lady next door didn’t have any family or pets or a business to run. It wasn’t fair.
But she couldn’t drown in self-pity. She peeked out of her leaf pile. Was it dawn yet? But black night still covered the forest. She couldn’t even make out any stars in the sky above the canopy. She tucked her head back inside her pile of leaves.
What would she do when she got....wherever she was going? What would she say to the next human woman she met? “Marissa told me there was no way off this planet, but I didn’t believe her. Can you help me?” That didn’t sound very good. They would laugh her out of the room.
Or they might be so disgusted with her for scorning the Lycaon’s hospitality that they would refuse to help her at all. They might send her back out into the wilderness to fend for herself. But Marissa insisted the Angondrans wouldn’t do that. Her friends made their homes with these aliens, so they wouldn’t do it, either. They would take her in.
So why couldn’t she be happy that the Lycaon took her in? Why couldn’t she accept the honor of staying with the Alpha family? It couldn’t be the little stick houses they lived in, could it, that she couldn’t stomach? It couldn’t be their animal nature, or their garments made of animal skins. She couldn’t be so shallow as to reject them for that, could she?
Would she be happier in the city on the plains, or a house in the treetops with the feathered Avitras? What if Marissa was right, and she really couldn’t get off this planet?
Chapter 6
She must have dozed off, because she started awake and choked all over again on the dust and leaves. She fought her way out of her pile of debris and stood spluttering and coughing in the misty morning. At least that night was over. She set off once again right away and wound her way downward, always downward, into deeper darkness and thicker stands of trees, away from the bright sky in search of water.
Time disappeared without the sun to guide it. She pressed on and on. Most of the day vanished under her feet, but she couldn’t stop. Unbearable thirst drove her forward. She had to find water, and soon. She couldn’t last the day without it. The sun touched the treetops. It must be close to noon. She couldn’t go on this way. She needed food and water. Then something like music tickled her ears. It soothed her, but her heart sank at the sound. Was she hallucinating in her dehydrated delirium?
Then she listened to the music closer and recognized it. She fought off the exhaustion threatening to drag her down. She had to move. She would die if she laid there any longer, and the sound gave her one last glimmer of hope.
She started forward, toward that wonderful sound. The sound drove her mad. She put out her hand from one tree to the next, when she almost fell headlong down a sheer cliff to an expanse of stony rubble below. She dug in her heels and clawed the crumbly soil for support, but her foot hung in mid-air over a towering canyon of sheer rock.
At last, she dared to look over the edge at the rocks below. Trees and brambles dotted the ground between the rocks, and light glistened on ripples of water snaking through the canyon. The soft musical sound she heard higher up thundered against the canyon walls and echoed in her ears. The river crashed over waterfalls and giggled through deep pools.
Chris caught her breath. This was so much more than the stream she hoped for. This river would turn into a major waterway when it left the forest. It would lead all the way to the sea, through continents and into the territory of the other factions. It would lead her where she wanted to go.
She stepped back away from cliff edge and skirted around to her left to find a way down. The cliff stretched as far as she could see in both directions, but she didn’t care. She followed it with her spirits soaring to heaven. She’d done it. She’d escaped.
After an hour or more of searching, she found a path down the cliff to the boulder field. She spent another hour picking her way over boulders and between puddles of algae to a rivulet of clear running water. She knelt down on the hard stones and lowered her parched lips to the blessed water. She touched the silver liquid to her lips. Then she cupped it into her mouth, and at last gulped it down in mouthfuls.
When she sat back on her heels and gazed across the water at the woods on the other side, her eye fell on a patch of low-growing moss wedged between the rocks. Tiny blue balls dotted the grey-green surface, and Chris held her breath to stop the apparition from vanishing before her eyes.
She picked her way across the treacherous riverbed. She stepped from one teetering rock to the next. She dragged her eyes away from those tantalizing blue beads to place her feet at each step, only to lock her gaze on them again.
Closer and closer they drew, but still she dared not hope they were what she thought they were. They might be poisonous, and she’d be dead out here in the middle of nowhere. No one would know where she was or how she died.
But she didn’t care. Her stomach told her to hazard everything on this one slender chance. She tiptoed across the river, and her hands shook when she plucked the shiny blue berries from their bush. They dropped into her palm, hard and taut with juice, and pearls of river foam clung to their dusky skin.
She popped the first three into her mouth and bit down. The juice squirted down her throat and pricked her tongue. Oh, she never tasted anything as good in her life! She clawed handfuls of the berries off their bushes and crammed them into her mouth as fast as she could. She would probably give herself a gut ache, but she didn’t care. She would suffer any torture to satisfy her hunger—and what a way to satisfy it!
She ate as many of the berries as she could find, and at last her hunger faded. She drank some more water to wash down her meal and sat down on a rock to rest. Her legs and feet burned from walking. She sighed and looked around the canyon.
These sheer walls wouldn’t let her follow the river bed very far. She would have to hike back up to the tablelands to follow it. But at least she could come down to the water’s edge for a drink and something to eat. She could follow the river wherever it led her.
But right now, she had a different problem. Where was she going to spend the night? She couldn’t spend it down here, and she didn’t care much for the idea of spending it inside a pile of leaves again. If she was going to spend any time near this spot at all, she would build herself a sturdier shelter, something more like the Lycaon’s dwellings.
She hated to imitate them, but they must have learned a thing or two about living in this landscape. Marissa said they were nomadic and moved around. They kept their dwellings simple and temporary. In retrospect, with the benefit of a full stomach, their practicality made sense. How could she think them squalid and dirty? Wasn’t Marissa’s food good enough for her?
The sun sank below the cliff rim, and the canyon fell into shadow. In an instant, all the warmth vanished from the world. Chris definitely couldn’t spend the night down here. But she couldn’t force herself to stand up. She would rather freeze to death than to take one step away from the precious water and berries. She might wake up in her leaf pile again and find out it was all a dream.
Then, out of the shadows across the pool, two glistening black stars pierced the gloom. She stared at them, but they never wavered. She blinked, but they didn’t. Her scalp prickled. Would some fearsome creature leap out and tear her limb from limb?
The last light sparkled on those two unblinking points. Dense foliage surrounded them on all sides so she couldn’t make out the shape behind them
. But the longer she stared at them, the more certain she became that two eyes watched her from a hiding place beyond the water.
She tore her gaze away from them just long enough to look around. A stick stuck out between some rocks nearby, but it was too far away. She would never reach it before the creature attacked. Instead, she bent down and picked up a baseball-sized stone from the riverbed at her feet. She kept her eyes locked on the creature the whole time.
She hefted the stone in her hand. It was perfect; round, smooth, and heavy. It sent a surge of adrenaline through her. She squared her shoulders and gritted her teeth. She would have one shot at this, but if she hit it hard enough, it would probably run away without a fight.
She did this once with a brown bear in the mountains near her home. One good hit with a rock stopped it in its tracks and sent it running for the hills. Most wild animals didn’t want to fight something that would fight back. They wanted easy prey.
She wouldn’t be easy prey. She never had been, and she wasn’t about to start now, not when she finally found food and water to help her on her journey. She eased herself up off her rock and planted her feet wide.
The eyes narrowed at her in malicious rage. The branches swayed around it. Chris pulled her hand back and cocked her wrist. She wound up all her strength to send the rock smashing through the undergrowth.
But at that moment, the creature broke cover and charged toward her. It rushed at her so fast she never got her weapon launched before he struck her with all his weight. Chris recognized him halfway across the pool, but the sight of him only enraged her even more. It was Turk.
He’d followed her. He was probably laughing all the way at her hunger and thirst, at the night she spent in a pile of leaves. He probably got a good chuckle out of her staggering halfway across hell and gone trying to find her way out of that wilderness.
And now here he was, attacking her the way she always knew he would. He was dangerous. She knew that the moment she laid eyes on him. She didn’t care what Marissa said about him and the rest of the Angondrans. She would never trust him. He was a killer, and here he was to prove it.
Optorio Civil War Complete Series Box Set (Books 1 - 6): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance (Optorio Chronicles Book 2) Page 37