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

by Tammy Walsh

I kicked it open and immediately slammed my back against the wall.

  If someone was going to get the drop on me, it would be from here.

  I would be facing an enemy on two fronts and chances were they would pin me down.

  That would be the smart thing to do.

  But were these things smart?

  The jury was still out on that one.

  They knew what they were doing with their merchant business, that was for sure.

  They needed to be good at hiding to survive for this long beneath the prison guards’ noses without them knowing they existed.

  But that didn’t translate to being good at fighting.

  When no shots fired from the other side of the door, I knew I at least had a chance of getting out of there.

  I eased the door open with the tip of my rifle and peered around it.

  The stairs were on the left and the slaves I saw earlier huddled in a corner.

  Their chains clinked as they raised their arms over their heads in surrender.

  They made low moaning sounds of pure dread.

  If they weren’t so far gone, so helpless, I might have released them of their chains and encouraged them to fight their captors.

  They were too far gone for that.

  They were as likely to attack me as they were their enemy.

  I hastened up the broad stairs three, four at a time.

  They belonged in a palace more than a ramshackle vehicle such as this.

  I didn’t stop until I reached the top.

  I checked over my shoulders and found no one pursuing me.

  At least, not yet.

  I approached a wide arch of a doorway.

  On the other side, I spied a pair of figures.

  The bracelets hanging from their thin wrists caught the suns’ glare and winked at me.

  “Hello?” I said. “Is someone there?”

  I aimed at the opening and waited as one of the figures stepped forward.

  She was tall with long lithe limbs and lips that were a little too thick for my liking. She was otherwise a stunner.

  “Do you have an appointment to see his excellency?” she said.

  Her voice was slow and drawling.

  Just listening to her made me feel relaxed.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “I don’t have an appointment.”

  The girl smiled at me amiably and motioned for me to enter.

  “Please, take a seat. Draw will be with you in a moment.”

  Okay, so this wasn’t what I was expecting.

  A gang of ravenous guards armed to the teeth and willing to fight to the death?

  Absolutely.

  A battle with the putrid and disgusting Draw who possessed more strength and speed than I ever thought possible?

  Sure.

  A pair of sweet girls with happy smiley faces?

  Not so much.

  I eased through the doorway and kept a close eye on my surroundings in case this was part of an ambush.

  I saw no danger and slipped inside.

  I appraised the open layout and the modern feel to the room.

  The other girl had a ribbon of red hair that kept moving even when she didn’t move a muscle.

  “May I take your jacket?” she said.

  “Uh, no,” I said. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

  She reached for the plasma rifle and I gripped it tighter.

  She didn’t wear an expression of surprise, only interest.

  “You can keep it if you want,” she said.

  “I will, thanks,” I said.

  The first helper floated over with a tray.

  On it was a cold towel and a fresh glass of water.

  I waved her away and focused on them both.

  “I’m looking for the girl Draw brought here. Her name is Agatha.”

  “She’s with the supreme leader right now,” the girl with the flowing hair said. “We suggest you take a seat and he’ll be right with you once he’s… finished.”

  It was the first and only time I noticed a hint of hesitancy in her tone.

  She blinked as if coming awake and then immediately returned to her glassy-eyed expression.

  It was all an act, I realized.

  Neither of them wanted to be here anymore than I did.

  I stepped toward her, and she took a step back.

  “I’m not here to hurt you,” I said, raising my hands. “I’m here for the girl. That’s all.”

  “The supreme leader will be available shortly—”

  I held both her feminine hands in mine.

  She was shaking like a leaf.

  “Listen to me,” I said. “I know a lot of bad things have happened to you. Help me, and you’ll be able to escape.”

  The girl looked at me.

  Her eyes were bloodshot and filling rapidly with tears.

  “This… This isn’t a test?” she said.

  “A test? No. I just need to find Agatha. And I need to find her now.”

  The girl’s attention flickered back and forth between my eyes.

  “You care for her.”

  “With all my heart.”

  It was what the girl needed to hear.

  She smiled and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “I haven’t heard anything like that in a very long time.”

  The other girl placed a hand on her arm.

  “Jixa, don’t,” she said. “This won’t reflect well on you if you help him.”

  The friend’s words of advice had an effect on Jixa.

  I placed a hand on her other arm.

  “Please. Help me.”

  Jixa was torn between the two of us.

  I could understand her friend’s concern.

  I could only imagine the ordeals they’d been put through.

  They likely hadn’t received a single kernel of kindness in a very long time.

  The same way Agatha and the other Prizes hadn’t.

  Jixa came to a decision.

  “Follow me.”

  Her friend looked on helplessly, holding the tray in her hands as she watched us head down a hallway just off the main entrance.

  I held the rifle close to my chest and followed Jixa as she rushed through the hallways.

  There were so many doors that fed into other corridors that there was no way I could have found Agatha without her help.

  The longer we traveled, the more scared I grew that I might be too late.

  I tried to memorize the twists and turns we made but after a while, they mixed into a heady daze.

  We would have to find another way to get out or else ask Jixa to help us.

  Then again, heading back the way we had come wasn’t the best idea when Draw’s guards were out there waiting for me.

  “How much further is it?” I said to Jixa.

  “Only a little. Just up here.”

  I kept a close eye on our backs and the hallways we’d already traversed.

  I didn’t want the guards crawling up our ass.

  Finally, Jixa came to a stop outside a door a plush walnut color and polished to a high shine.

  “In here?” I said.

  Jixa nodded and backed away from the door.

  I reached for the handle, causing Jixa to whimper and turn away.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”

  “How are we supposed to get out of here?”

  She had no answer for me as she turned and ran back the way we’d come.

  I pressed the handle and shoved the door open with a firm shunt.

  The door swung open and didn’t emit so much as a squeak.

  I peered inside and eyed the room beyond carefully.

  It was dark but there was light from a single source.

  Daylight, I thought.

  It streamed through a long series of windows along the back wall.

  More light could have gotten through if it wasn’t for the fact they’d been greyed out, giving the room a tint the colo
r of a turgid nightmare in the dead of winter.

  I moved behind a set of blinds and listened carefully.

  The room filled me with terror.

  It wasn’t the kind of place where good things happened.

  Arranged along one wall was a long row of machines.

  They were bizarre devices with straps and handles, cranks, and protruding nails.

  The blood fell from my face.

  It was a torture garden?

  I swear, if he hurt so much as a single hair on her head…

  “Ohhh,” a ragged male voice said. “Yeaaah. That’s good.”

  “Do you like that?” Agatha said in a teasing voice.

  I couldn’t bear to hear her say that.

  Not when she was saying it to someone else, at least.

  The situation, everything about it, didn’t make any sense.

  I couldn’t bear it any longer and stormed around the blinds.

  I aimed with the plasma rifle, prepared to unload into the evil beast at a moment’s notice.

  I came to a stop and stared in disbelief at what I was looking at.

  Let me rephrase that.

  I came to a stop and stared in disbelief.

  What in the Creator’s name am I looking at?

  In all my expectations of what I would encounter in this room, especially after seeing those evil-looking devices, I had feared the worst.

  But never this.

  Draw was strapped into a machine.

  His stumpy arms and legs were held down by leather straps that pinned his considerable girth in place.

  Agatha stood perched over him armed with a candle that dripped wax.

  She wore a pink outfit of a fluffy creature with long ears that I’d never seen before.

  They turned to look at me.

  Suddenly, I felt self-conscious about being there.

  “You?” Draw said. “What are you doing in here? Guards! Guards!”

  “Egara?” Agatha said.

  She dropped the candle and ran to me.

  She threw herself into my arms and I swung her around.

  “You came for me?” she said.

  “Of course I came for you. I thought he was going to hurt you. Instead…”

  Draw struggled against the straps in an attempt to pull himself free.

  He growled and pulled so hard the machine rocked on its struts.

  “Guards! Guards!” he yelled.

  I ignored him and felt the gorgeous woman in my arms.

  She was warm and soft the way I remembered.

  Our lips joined and the fear melted like ice.

  “How about we get out of here?” I said.

  “Guards! Guards!” Draw continued yelling.

  “Your guards aren’t coming!” I snapped at him.

  I approached the figure strapped to the bed and wasn’t sure what I was meant to feel.

  All I could manage was pity.

  Of all the things he could have done with Agatha, he chose something anyone could have done.

  He didn’t seek to take advantage of the true beauty she was.

  I was relieved and appalled at the same time.

  “Unless you want your guards to see you strapped to the machine like this, I suggest you quit shouting,” I said.

  Draw shot me a glare.

  “Set me free,” he ordered. “Set me free and I’ll give you your shuttlecraft.”

  “You can’t give me what’s already mine.”

  “Actually, technically it’s mine now,” Agatha said. “I did the work, remember?”

  I beamed at her.

  “Fine. But I’ll be the pilot.”

  She ran a finger down my nose, tickling it.

  “You’ll always be my pilot,” she said.

  We kissed again.

  The ground shook beneath my feet.

  What a woman.

  “That was the best kiss yet,” I said. “I felt the moon shift.”

  Agatha frowned and drifted to the window.

  “I felt it too. Only, it wasn’t the moon. It was the building.”

  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  I recognized the sound immediately.

  I grabbed Agatha and whipped her away from the window.

  The drone zipped past the window and then paused, turning and attempting to peer through the grey covering.

  It leaned in close and thought it’d seen us for sure.

  Then it pulled back and joined two other drones that buzzed off.

  “They found us…” Agatha said.

  “They found this building. They haven’t found us yet. Where are his clothes?”

  The sudden shift in topic made Agatha’s brain freeze.

  “What?” she said.

  I moved through the room, looking for the small pile of clothes I knew should be there somewhere.

  “Over here,” Agatha said.

  I tossed Draw’s sheer fabric to one side and found the device I was looking for.

  It was small and black and fit neatly in my pocket.

  “What is it?” Agatha said.

  “The device that will unlock the shuttlecraft and allow us to get out of here.”

  I moved to the window and peered through the grey lattice at the ground below.

  “Are there any guards?” Agatha said.

  “Not that I can make out,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.”

  Draw gnawed on his restraints but wasn’t having much luck.

  The machine had been designed for him not to escape.

  “I’m going to let you out of this machine,” I said. “But first I need you to tell me how to get out of here.”

  Draw’s breath sawed through his nose as he peered at me.

  His eyes slid over to Agatha and his expression softened a touch.

  “Go through the door at the end of the hall,” he said. “Turn right and use the stairs. They’ll take you to the back exit.”

  I released one of the straps from his arm and flabby legs and another from his head.

  “I’ll let you open the rest,” I said.

  It would buy us a little time to get out of there.

  I turned on my heel and marched across the room.

  I was surprised to find Agatha wasn’t at my side.

  She stood beside Draw and my heart was in my throat.

  This guy was dangerous and I had released some of the restraints.

  Couldn’t she see that?

  “Hey,” she said, smiling at Draw warmly. “You don’t need to be ashamed about this. We’re not going to tell anybody. And your men will never know.”

  Draw responded by smiling appreciatively up at her.

  “Thank you.”

  “And you know,” Agatha said, bending down to retrieve the candle she’d dropped earlier. Its wick was still aflame. “You could always do this for yourself.”

  She put it in his hand and they held it together as she tipped the wax over his skin.

  He hissed with a mix of pain and delight.

  Agatha joined me and I led her out the door.

  I cast one last look at the obese figure in the bed and watched as he raised the candle over his body and tipped it to one side.

  I swear, I would never understand how a man could prefer to do that than use the gorgeous hot body of the girl I had at my side right now.

  On the plus side, it was better he was the one being (deliberately) violated than the other way round.

  I prayed to the God of Small Mercies as we bolted down the stairs in the direction of the hangar and the route to freedom.

  Freedom had never felt so damn close.

  The stairs were too wide for me to take in bounds of two or three at once.

  I could only manage one and a half at most.

  I clutched Agatha’s hand and together we hurried down the stairs with a leap of excitement in our hearts that could only come with the knowledge of approaching freedom.

  We would soon be out of here.

 
Still, the thought was tinged with sadness.

  Agatha wanted to return home.

  And I would want to go back to living a pirate’s life.

  Or did I?

  The idea of running down a freighter and marching on board like I owned the place didn’t seem quite so exciting anymore.

  Or as necessary.

  I had saved up a good amount of booty over the years,

  I saved it with a single purpose in mind: to get more.

  If anyone asked me what I wanted to get “more” for, I couldn’t have answered them.

  It was the pursuit of money that mattered, not what I intended to do with it.

  Now, the pursuit felt like the final few droplets of rain after a heavy downpour dripping down the back of my collar.

  She was the reason I was gathering that money.

  Agatha.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had always been waiting for her to come into my life, for her to make a nest and get comfortable inside it.

  And now here she was.

  Her hand held tightly onto mine and it was the most natural sensation in the world.

  She was my fated mate.

  There was no question about that.

  We eased around the final flight of stairs, careful to slow our approach, not knowing what we might find when we crossed into view.

  Earlier, I had left a group of armed pigs a little worse for wear and with good reason to give me a good hiding when they saw me next.

  They weren’t there when we came to the ground floor.

  A dented metal door lay in the middle of the wall and I knew with certainty I wouldn’t hear much through it even if I tried.

  I tried anyway and was disappointed I was right.

  Agatha touched me gently on the arm, concern rimming her eyes.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “You know me,” I said, returning her smile easily. “I’m always careful.”

  The dent in the door had morphed the sheer plate and made it stab into the wooden doorframe.

  A metal door in a wooden doorframe?

  Whose idea was that? I wondered.

  It stuck and I pressed my shoulder against it, pressing my weight onto it.

  My intention wasn’t to shove it open but ease it one inch so I could peer inside and get a good look at what lay on the other side.

  I pressed my weight against the door and the wooden frame splintered and cracked.

  The dented corner scratched the frame and tore a deep gouge in it.

  It occurred to me few people must come this way otherwise there would be a ton of gouge marks in the wood already.

  Or else the dent was newly formed and there was no mark because no one had opened it.