Devil in the Hold: A Scifi Alien Romance (Fated Mates of Breeder Prison Book 3)

by Tammy Walsh

  “Well, well, well,” a deep-throated voice said over my shoulder. “What have we got here?”

  I recognized the voice immediately and spun around, releasing Agatha’s hand and taking up my bedpost cudgel. Before I could bring it around, one of the Afzit twins placed the point of his blade up under my chin.

  He had a large bulge from where I’d struck him over the head earlier. He had other cuts to his face and unless he came in contact with another prisoner earlier, it was my handiwork and labeled him as the elder twin.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said.

  “Oh, but we do,” Afzit the elder growled under his breath. “Nobody issues a beat down of the Afzit twins without paying for it.”

  I was keenly aware there was only one brother. Where was the other one? Had I hit him over the head so hard that it took him out of commission?

  I hoped so.

  Agatha screamed and when I turned, I found the other twin wrapping his arms around her waist and tugging her away from me.

  “Agatha!” I yelled, turning to confront Afzit the younger.

  The blade stiffened beneath my chin and made a small incision there, causing the blood to run down my neck.

  “We’ll have none of that,” Afzit the elder said. Then he spoke to his brother. “What have we got there?”

  Afzit the younger pulled Agatha’s hood back, revealing the smooth cheeks of her face and her gorgeous blazing eyes.

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Prize!” the younger Afzit twin said.

  “Is this true?” Afzit the elder said, fixing me with a dangerous glare. “Have you been holding out on us?”

  Afzit the younger grabbed at Agatha’s breasts through the thick material of the shirt she was wearing.

  “And boy, she’s a beaut!” he said.

  “And where might you be taking her?” Afzit the elder said.

  My hands weren’t far from the blade at my throat. If I was quick, could I take him out? I glanced across at Agatha, who struggled against Afzit the younger’s wandering hands. He lifted up her shirt and cupped a naked breast and lowered his mouth to suck on her nipple.

  I might take out one brother but it would leave Agatha in danger.

  I turned to Afzit the elder, his black eyes drilling into me.

  “I was taking her to the Klika gang leader, Inchun,” I said.

  The elder blinked, taken aback. Afzit the younger’s mouth pause and came no closer to Agatha’s nipple.

  “Inchun?” Afzit the younger said, sharing a look with his elder brother. “Why would you be taking a fine specimen such as this to the likes of him?”

  “I owe a debt,” I said calmly. “This is my way to repay him. I found her wandering the halls, lost, and decided to make the most of the opportunity.”

  Afzit the younger released Agatha’s breast and wrapped his hand around her throat instead. Even he wouldn’t want to anger Inchun if she really was his property.

  “But he doesn’t know you’re coming with her, does he,” Afzit the elder grinned. “You owe us a debt for the attack you made on us earlier. And you can take what little of her is left to Inchun once we’re done with her.”

  “Inchun won’t be pleased with a damaged product,” I said, overriding the nasty taste of bile bubbling at the back of my throat at my own words.

  She wasn’t a product. She had been early in the evening but after I claimed her and made love to her for the first time, we’d become so much more.

  “We’ll take you both to our cell,” Afzit the elder said. “We’ll have our way with her, you’ll watch, and then you can take her away.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  I couldn’t bring myself to look at Agatha. She would have a beaten and broken look on her face that I could do this to her.

  “Your cell is this way, right?” I said, turning to point, knowing the cell was in the other direction.

  “No, it’s this way—”

  As I turned one way and Afzit the elder turned the other, his blade left my throat an inch. I snapped my hands around his arm and twisted it. I wanted to break it so it was unusable, but the damn creature moved with the movement, jumped, spinning end over end, and threw out a leg.

  It struck me across the head but it didn’t knock me down.

  The reactive movement of my head was less than Afzit the elder expected. He lost his balance and fell to the ground.

  I slammed my foot on his chest and, my hands still wrapped about his wrist, twisted his arm.

  There was the satisfying crunch as I ripped it from its socket but it wouldn’t be enough to disable the creature. Such injuries were common in the pit. It wouldn’t take him long to heal from it.

  A snapped bone on the other hand…

  I brought his arm down over my knee. A sharp snap tore a scream from the elder’s throat.

  I leaned forward and buried a fist in his face. It wasn’t enough to knock him unconscious but the resulting slap against the hard floor was. His entire body went limp.

  His knife fell from his grip and I caught it, lowering it to his throat.

  I looked up at Afzit the younger who had his own blade at Agatha’s throat. She struggled but it was no use.

  “Let my brother go,” he hissed.

  “Let her go first,” I said calmly.

  “How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

  “I think we both know I’m the more honorable of us.”

  The younger twin hissed through his fang-like teeth and growled. He was crazy enough to slit Agatha’s throat and run at me with the blade. The twins were known to do a lot worse.

  Agatha ended the stalemate with a hard stamp of her foot on the twin’s boot, twisted, and separated herself from him.

  It was only a moment of distraction but it was enough for her to rush to my side.

  “Good work,” I said.

  Afzit the younger took a step toward us.

  I cut a small slit in the elder brother’s throat to match the one he gave me. It was enough for the younger brother to stay his hand.

  “Drop the shiv,” I said.

  “You said you would let him go if I let her go,” he said.

  “You didn’t let her go. She let herself go. Drop the shiv or I’ll murder your brother with his own blade. Drop it.”

  The twin ground his teeth and placed it on the ground. I didn’t remove my eyes from him until he stood up again. If I thought that was the only blade he had on him, I was a fool. He could easily hurl a blade at our backs as we fled.

  “Lie down,” I said. “Face down. Hands on the back of your head.”

  The twin just glared at me, then slowly got down and did as I told him.

  “Hand me the bedpost,” I said to Agatha, not taking my eyes from the other prostrate brother.

  Agatha did. Now I had a shiv in one hand and an effective cudgel in the other.

  “Stand over there,” I told her.

  It was far away enough from both brothers in case either one was preparing to attack.

  I stepped forward and struck the second brother across the back of the head, the unseen blow knocking him out cold. His body went limp, knocked unconscious for the second time from the same weapon.

  I drew the cudgel back high and, with five or six hard blows, smashed his skull open like a ripe qualli. I slit the neck of the elder brother. His blood seeped from his neck and pooled over the floor.

  Agatha stood aghast.

  “I-I thought you were going to let them go?” she said.

  “And risk them coming after us again? I don’t think so. I gave them a second chance. They won’t get a third.”

  I tucked the twins’ shivs in the band of my pants.

  “Trust me, the prison is a better place now.”

  Not that that was saying much.

  I took Agatha by the hand and was surprised with how little friction she put up.

  We drew up to the pit where three, maybe four, figures lay sprawled faced down in the sand. A
terrible fight had taken place down there and for a moment, I wished I had been there to witness it.

  I could have placed a bet and earned a few credits. I’d always been pretty good at spotting the stronger fighter, although I was certain sometimes the fighters threw their fights. I guess there were cheats in every enterprise so it wasn’t surprising.

  We were drawing closer to the Prize Pool at the end of the hall. Something was going on inside the science lab. I tore my eyes away from it as it wasn’t my escape route.

  We crept further down the hall to the Prize Pool. I heard loud footsteps approaching from an adjacent hallway and paused.

  I held out an arm and blocked Agatha’s approach. An angry mob of a dozen prisoners or so descended upon the Prize Pool. They were held at bay by fighters I recognized as those belonging to Inchun the Klika.

  Odd, I thought, that they should be sending reinforcements here when there was so much call for them elsewhere. After all, Klika was the most powerful gang in the prison and they could really clean up if they used all the forces at their disposal. Instead, they were defending the Prize Pool from attacks.

  But one thing was for sure.

  There was no way we were getting in through this entrance.

  I was aware there were other entrances, so I took us around this obstruction and checked each of the others, gnashing my teeth at the time this was taking me.

  I discovered all the entrances were under attack and equally defended by other members of the Klika gang.

  Damn me for trying to be noble!

  I turned on Agatha.

  “Do you know of any other ways into the Prize Pool?”

  “No. Just the ones you’ve seen.”

  I growled and stamped my foot.

  “Is there anywhere you would feel safe other than the Prize Pool?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m not sure I would even be safe in there!”

  As hard as the prisoners were fighting to get at the girls in the Prize Pool, none had yet breached their defenses, and unless I missed my guess, they weren’t going to.

  “We’re going to have to get you somewhere safe before I get out of here,” I said.

  “Get out?” Agatha said. “How are you going to get out?”

  Damn me for a fool!

  I never meant to let her into my little plan to escape.

  “It doesn’t matter how,” I snapped.

  “Even if you get out there, you’ll never survive! Everyone knows that.”

  “Some survive.”

  Agatha looked me over, her eyes scanning my triumphant smile and confident manner.

  “You could survive out there? How?”

  “Because we’re not all from wet planets with enough water to drown in. Some of us are from planets not much different to this one.”

  Agatha must have seen I was being serious.

  “Take me with you,” she said.

  “It’s going to be risky and I don’t want you slowing me down.”

  “I won’t slow you down.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  She grabbed me by the lapels of my shirt—at least, she would have if she could reach—and jammed her face in mine.

  “No, I won’t,” she growled.

  I marveled at her gumption.

  And why couldn’t she come with me? So long as she kept up and didn’t slow me down, there was no need to leave her behind to be brutally raped. Not that dying beneath a baking hot sun would be much better if it came to it.

  “Fine, I’ll take you,” I said. “But no whining. If you slow me down, I’m leaving you behind. Understood?”

  She nodded but didn’t say a word.

  “And you have to do everything I say when I say it,” I added.

  “Quit talking and get us out of here!” Agatha said.

  I led us down a corridor adjacent to the one we’d been heading down. We had to fight against a flood of prisoners moving in the opposite direction but we never had to engage in open combat.

  All these months, I had been working on the guards in an attempt to bribe them into letting me outside. I tried subtlety, I tried manipulating third parties, tried bribing them directly. Each time, I failed.

  And the bribery case almost got me sent to the isolation cells where the real criminals were kept. I managed to convince them I was joking and got off the hook.

  The guards were incorruptible—quite a revelation at the time. I had never met a being I couldn’t corrupt before. It was almost like these guys were machines.

  I worked with some of the other prisoners with certain skills that might allow me to get outside the walls. I only gave them enough information to carry out their part of my plan.

  Unfortunately, they always twigged what I was attempting.

  “So, this is for an escape, right?” they would say.

  After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I would deny their insinuation but it never worked. They refused to do the work unless they were part of my team. “That’s my price,” they said. “Take it or leave it.”

  I agreed to their terms and before I knew it, I had an entire escape team working on my plan. The part that always got their attention was my announcement of a shuttlecraft waiting outside the prison for me that my gang dropped off the moment I got slammed in here.

  I was supposed to creep out, reach it, blast off, and I would be free and clear. I knew exactly where the shuttlecraft was and never shared the location with anyone.

  The only difficulty was in getting out of the prison. Now the riot kicked off and made my original plan irrelevant.

  Now it was onto Plan B.

  “Okay, we’re here,” I said to Agatha.

  I placed my back to the wall that looked out on an open stretch of space with a huge pair of doors on the opposite wall.

  “What is this?” Agatha said.

  “The entrance hangar.”

  “But what are we doing here?”

  “We’re getting out of here.”

  “Where?”

  “Through the door.”

  Agatha peered around the corner at the huge door again.

  “That door?” she said incredulously.

  “That’s right.”

  “But… It’s the main entrance to the prison!”

  “Is that why it’s so big?” I said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

  “There will be a ton of guards arriving here any minute! How are we supposed to slip past them?”

  “Will you chill out? Everything will be fine.”

  She was already getting under my skin. Did I really want to have her on this trip? There was no telling how long it might take to reach the shuttlecraft.

  It was because this was the very last place they expected an inmate to escape from that I felt confident it would work.

  I raised the device I’d made and ran an eye over it. I fiddled with some of the cylinders on the side.

  By the light of the Creator, I hoped this worked.

  If it didn’t, I’d be doomed to spend the rest of my days in solitary, and there was no worse fate than that, perhaps anywhere in the galaxy.

  The orange lights on either side of the giant door flashed. A moment later, they slid open. Half a dozen large shuttlecraft drifted inside and sat down in perfect rows inside the hangar.

  The doors remained open.

  The shuttlecraft hatch doors opened and hundreds of guards marched from each craft.

  Wow. The warden really wasn’t messing around. He’d sent far more than I expected. Either the riots were worse than I thought or the warden was angry the prisoners had rioted.

  If he wanted sedate prisoners, he never should have included the strongest and most powerful fighters in the galaxy.

  The orange lights flashed once more and the doors began to slide shut.

  The guards were still exiting the shuttlecraft. There were so many it was taking some time to unload them all.

  We stood to one side of the huge shuttlecraft. If we hurried, we might slip p
ast them without them noticing us.

  “We can’t go now!” Agatha squeaked in my ear. “They’ll see us!”

  “Not if we hurry.”

  I had one chance to make it work, and this was it. If I didn’t go now, I would have no chance of getting out of here. I would have to turn and run back to my cell and dream about being free.

  But the attempt would come at a terrible cost if I failed and got caught.

  I would be sent to the bowels of the prison and never emerge again. I would never get to spend time with Agatha and she would be forced to service the other prisoners—and that was if she was lucky!

  “If they catch you,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “Tell them I forced you to come with me. There’s no need for you to be punished if you can avoid it.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then cast an eye at me, and shut it.

  I took a deep breath and watched as the doors continued to slowly close. I could make out the lines of electricity than ran the width and height of the doorway.

  I adjusted my device slightly, taking care to peer at the security system to set the cylinders as accurately as possible.

  This was it.

  The last of the guards exited the shuttlecraft, carrying their shock rifles in their arms. If just one spotted us, if just one managed to successfully hit us…

  It would all be over.

  The doors were almost shut.

  If I was going to do this, it had to be now.

  For the second time since the riot kicked off, I hesitated.

  I could return to my room right now and enjoy Agatha until the guards got the prison under control and came for her.

  Did I really want to risk that?

  It was tougher than I thought it would be.

  But I had to give it a try.

  Time with Agatha was one day. Through that door, the rest of my life waited.

  Out there, I would be vulnerable.

  Easy to see if anyone turned around.

  Easy to shoot if they aimed.

  Easy for my entire life to go up in flames if I tripped and fell.

  Easy for someone to have lied and my device not to work as promised.

  So many problems.

  Everything had to go perfectly for me to escape.

  But it wasn’t the first time I had the odds stacked against me and lived to tell the tale.