The Dragon’s Gift

by Chase, Anastasia

  The full moon overhead illuminated the dead and empty city as their steps rang on the metal rungs. A muffled scream echoed through the library seconds before the metal door swung closed.

  Wendy reached for the handle, hoping to catch it in time before it slammed closed. Too late; it sealed itself with a loud thunk which likely echoed inside, giving away their position.

  “Run.”

  There was no need to think about being sneaky anymore as they sprinted down the fire escape, taking two steps at a time.

  It felt like forever before they got to the bottom, and even then, Jen wasn’t sure where they could go. Definitely not in the direction of the library’s front door, but the empty street didn’t really offer them with many hiding places.

  But that didn’t stop the two other women from running off ahead. It was best to get out of sight first before they decided on a place to hide. Jen followed suit, quickly glancing over her shoulder to see if they were being followed.

  A large thunk startled her, and she looked up to see the fire exit door caving outwards with a sizable dent. A lone howl, muffled by metal, sounded before there was another impact. The door buckled on its hinges this time, half-hanging off and ready to fall. It exploded out from the top of the fire escape and sailed through the air and across the street to collide with an abandoned car; almost bending the car in half as both collided with the far wall of another building. Glass shattered and splintered, and its alarm started blaring from the sudden impact.

  One of the women ahead of Jen screamed before slamming a hand over her mouth.

  Just as the creature poked its head out, Jen picked up the pace. Samantha was doing well maintaining her own pace, keeping ahead. She scrambled around the corner and kept going, though there were no shadows to hide in on this side of the block. Out in the open, exposed, they were going to have to find somewhere fast before the alien picked up the pace and caught up with them.

  Samantha sprinted up the first set of steps she came to and tried the door: locked. A quick body check revealed that it wasn’t going to open and she continued on to the next one. The second gave and the women fell inside before quickly shutting the door behind them.

  “Get back, get back,” someone whispered. Even inside, they weren’t safe because all it would take was someone looking through the uncovered windows to spot them.

  Jen was about to find a spot to hide when the front door exploded in a shower of splinters. The alien stepped into view, its large body preventing any moonlight from getting in.

  “What a lovely chase you’ve been giving me.”

  Jen could see nothing of its face as it made a grab for her. A quick swing of the flashlight — the one she’d forgotten in her hand — connected with its face and it yelped in surprised. She turned to run, hoped the two other women did as well, when she felt something grab her leg. The fall knocked the wind out of her, and she could smell blood in the air. Hers would be added to it next.

  Jen’s fingers clawed for anything and everything within her reach, hoping to gain a grip on something to halt her forced retreat. But the creature’s strength was too much for her to resist and she was hastily dragged across the street and back into the shadows of the empty buildings.

  “Please, please don’t kill me,” she whimpered, though she was convinced that her pleas would fall on deaf ears. Samantha, on the other hand, got to her feet and stood defiantly before them. The giant wolf-like creature stared down at her, tilted its head, and barked a haughty laugh.

  “This one’s brave,” it said as it turned its head. Jen followed its gaze and that was when she noticed they weren’t alone. Four others were with them, all of them smiling with toothy grins like they were sharing some secret joke.

  “She’ll make an excellent offering. They usually like them sassy.”

  That was all she remembered before everything went black.

  Chapter 3

  Jen woke to the chill of unnatural air and the sensation of being pushed down on all sides. It was unpleasant, to say the least, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to open her eyes.

  The last thing she remembered was staring into the maw of a wolf and hearing its laugh. The screams of... Samantha.

  Jen sat up too quickly and all the blood rushed from her head. It left her feeling nauseous to the point that she had to lie down again. But at least that was enough to ground her and let her inspect her surroundings.

  Bars were the first thing she noticed, made of a strange metal she’d never seen before. The second thing she noticed was that she wasn’t alone. Samantha lay across from her, unconscious and in a cell of her own. Jen dragged herself forward and pressed her face to the bars.

  There, she could see more easily that the other women were here too, each afforded their own personal “living quarters.” Wendy was the only one awake, and she was hugging her knees to her chest. She was without her glasses, likely broken even more in... whatever scuffle had brought them to this point.

  “Psst... Wendy. You doing okay?” Jen asked raspily. Her throat was achingly dry. What she wouldn’t do for some water.

  Wendy startled upon hearing the new voice and shook her head.

  “We’re screwed. We’re so screwed.”

  Jen rubbed the sleep away and made another attempt at sitting up. She went slow this time until her back came to rest against the back wall of the cell.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we’re screwed!”

  Her scream echoed dully off the walls of... whatever this place was. Still, it wasn’t loud enough to rouse the other women from their slumber.

  “We can’t get out of here! There’s nothing to go back to!”

  “Wendy, Wendy, calm down. What you need to do is take some deep breaths…”

  Wendy’s panic was only making Jen’s worse. They needed to center themselves so that they could figure things out and come up with a plan. Panicking would leave them nowhere.

  “You. Don’t. Understand. We’re in a fucking spaceship!”

  That definitely wasn’t an answer Jen expected.

  “Maybe... you were just dreaming that, right?” That had to be what it was. Because if they were in that awful spaceship she’d seen in the sky...

  Wendy exploded into delirious laughter, her head reared back as she cackled. Tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Yeah, a dream. I wish that’s all it fucking was right now. At least then I could wake up from all this bullshit and be somewhere else.” She palmed away the tears on her face and rolled away onto her side.

  “Okay, okay, okay. We just... we have to get out of these cells first...” Jen gave one a testing kick. It didn’t budge. She briefly looked around the cell and found that their makeshift weapons and bags had been taken. At least they’d been left with their clothes. That was a small comfort.

  “You think I haven’t tried that? It’s all one fused... thing. We’re not getting out of here until they want us out.”

  Jen buried her face in her hands. This couldn’t be happening. Even if they could come up with a plan, how were any of them going to get back home? Asking nicely didn’t seem to be in the cards.

  “Hey. Quiet in there,” the command came from the other side of the door, as well as a light rapping on the metal.

  “Or else what? You’ll eat us?” Wendy called out loudly.

  “Why are you tempting it?!?” Jen barked from between her hands. The last thing she wanted was for these aliens to be pissed more than they already were and decided to vent them into space.

  Wendy gave her an incredulous look over her shoulder before returning to her fetal position.

  “If they wanted us dead, they would’ve killed us already. No amount of pissing them off is going to make them wanna kill us.”

  “Heh, smart girl. Torfan was right to select the lot of you to take back. Still, the rest of us are trying to get some sleep after that debacle on your planet so... keep it down, would you?”

  It was strange to think of th
ese murderous, villainous creatures as anything but normal. Monsters didn’t sleep, didn’t take a break from their nefarious plans to induce as many nightmares as possible.

  It wasn’t long before Jen heard the approach of others. They started talking outside the door in muffled whispers, and she caught the faint sound of chuckling. She didn’t want to consider what they could be talking about, but she was starting to agree with Wendy: these creatures weren’t going to kill them.

  The chatter stopped all of a sudden and they stamped their feet in unison. By that time, the others had woken up and were groggily rubbing at their eyes. Samantha was the last to wake up and she looked pretty pissed to find herself in her current situation.

  “You let us out of here,” she demanded as she gripped the bars with both hands and shook them. Jen noticed a few pairs of eyes peering in through the small window of the door.

  Then she saw a pair of gloriously orange-yellow eyes and felt a shudder run down her spine. Those eyes... This was the same alien who had killed Dennis. The same who’d given chase that night and had dragged her out into the street. This was Torfan, and she was sure if they ever let her out of her cage, she’d lunge for his throat for all of the heartache he’d given her.

  He was massive, and in the overhead light, Jen could get a better look at him. His dark fur was streaked with grey, and there was a notch missing from the top of his left ear. His shoulders were almost as broad as he was tall and a short, chunky tail was kept close to his body as the door closed behind him once more. He turned and nodded to the others, who silently stepped away to leave them alone to their conversation.

  “And why should I? Because you asked?” Torfan said as he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

  “Because there’s no need to hold us here. What are we going to do? Steal a ship we don’t know how to pilot? Fight back? It’s obvious what you can do to us, and you kept us alive for some reason.” Samantha craned her neck to stare up at him. She was hugging her arm close to her chest. Jen thought the limb didn’t really look right and was sure it was broken.

  Torfan grinned as he sat on his haunches to get a better look at her.

  “I knew there was a reason I spared you. A smart bunch, I’ve got here.” He looked around the room before his gaze resettled on Samantha. “You consider yourself their leader?”

  Samantha narrowed her eyes.

  “They can all speak for themselves.”

  “How... chivalrous.” He turned and drew closer to Jen’s cell, his nose wiggling back and forth. “Ah, it’s you. I remember you. And that’s saying a lot given how many faces I’ve seen of those I killed.

  Jen clung to the back wall of her cell to get as far away from him as possible. He could do nothing to her from out there but that didn’t satiate the fear that ran through her. And with that fear came anger. Anger for taking the love of her life, anger for destroying her town, anger for taking her away from her home... It took all she had not to spit in his face.

  “Get away from me,” she demanded.

  “As you wish.” Torfan held up his hands defensively and did as she asked, though that smug smile remained on his face. At least, she guessed it was smug. It was hard to tell their true facial expressions with those long muzzles taking up most of their faces.

  “And where is it we’re going?” Samantha asked as she gave up on the bars. She sat back in her cell and rubbed at her ankle. She felt it was better to keep the alien distracted with questions to ease Jen’s mind.

  “Cendarth. Where our great masters live.” Torfan noticed her movement and lowered himself once more to his haunches to get a better look.

  Masters? These aliens didn’t look like the kind to be enslaved by anyone, which made Jen question what could be more feared than towering wolf-like aliens.

  “You’re injured,” he commented before standing again. “Are you all suffering injuries?”

  Jen thought that was a dumb question. After all of the running and being chased, and the very destruction of their city, didn’t it make sense that they would be injured?

  “I asked if you’re injured,” he demanded once more when he got no response.

  “My shoulder hurts.”

  “I think my head was bleeding at some point.”

  “My ankle is sprained.”

  Jen had nothing to complain about except her broken heart.

  Torfan looked around as the complaints rose around him. He looked both confused and annoyed, and pressed at something on his belt. The footsteps of his other men soon returned and they crowded into the room.

  “I thought you looked them over,” he barked at them.

  “We did.” They looked at each other in confusion, completely oblivious to any problem.

  “They’ve just told me they’re injured or experiencing discomfort. Go and get the medical supplies.”

  When they didn’t move, still frozen with confusion, he growled with bared teeth. That was enough to send them on their way. They soon returned with plain white boxes which they flipped open. Strange syringe-like devices were extracted, though there were no needles on the ends. All of the women backed away from the bars as quickly as they could, not knowing what they were for. Torfan raised his hand and took one of the devices himself.

  “You fear for nothing. It’s a simple sedative for pain.” He turned his palm upwards and pressed the device to the middle of it. There was a slight hiss but no sign of pain on his part.

  Wendy was the first to shuffle forward and extend one of her arms through the bars, her sleeve rolled up. The smallest of their numbers stepped closer to her and the audible hiss sounded. She cringed at the suddenness of it but there was no cry of pain.

  “Huh. That... uh, thank you.” Wendy stared at her arm in surprise. There was no mark left behind and within a few minutes, she could already feel her ankle getting better.

  Jen buried her head in her arms again, waiting for the room to get quiet once more. She required no treatment, but she did have questions that needed answering.

  “And what of our home?” she finally asked, once she found the moment to interject.

  “Your people? All dead, I’m afraid. You five are the only ones left.”

  A city of 50,000.... reduced to a mere five. It was shocking to think about, to the point that even Denise started to hyperventilate.

  Samantha rested a hand on her back.

  “It’s the price that must be paid for killing our young.” Torfan’s eyes narrowed, his hands folded behind his back.

  “How were we... how were our astronauts supposed to know? How were they supposed to know they were your children!?”

  Torfan’s ears flattened against his skull and his lip curled to exposed a single canine tooth. The room went dead silent and all eyes were on them.

  “Like that would have made a difference. We’re aware of humankind’s history, how you travel and conquer whatever you like, killing whatever you like for your own self-improvement. You don’t care about whatever is in your way and you bulldoze right through it to get what you want. All those centuries upon centuries of existence and you were never able to undo your basest instincts.”

  “But...” Jen hated to admit that Torfan was right. It wasn’t so long ago they’d almost destroyed themselves with their own selfish desires, ruining the planet for their own exploitations. It had taken the edge of extinction staring them in the face for the human race to choose differently and take a stance on changing. That change, however, only went so far.

  With all the wealth and resources they accumulated, there was always the desire for more and that meant journeying to the stars, beyond the limits of their own solar system. To make a name for themselves in an untouched galaxy they hoped to conquer.

  That was what Dennis was supposed to have been achieving. Only to discover that the galaxy wasn’t as untouched as they believed it to be. And this was their first taste of meeting another species. What a shitshow it turned out to be.

  “Apologies
on either side will fix nothing now. This is the fate you’ve been given. What you do with it is your own.” Torfan waved his fingers through the air and the others with him fiddled with something on their belts.

  One by one, the cells started to open. The women remained fixed where they were, undecided as to whether this was a trap or not. It was Samantha who was the first to get to her feet and stretch out her back. Torfan and his crew watched her in silence.

  “How many more days are we going to be stuck on this ship with you? Maybe we can learn something to pass the time.”

  The aliens looked at each other and blinked.

  “What do you mean? We’re only four hours from our destination.”

  “Ha, you’re funny.” Despite the situation, Wendy slipped back into her cell and hugged her knees to her chest. “We can’t even get to Jupiter that fast. And you’re trying to tell me we’re no longer in the Solar System.”

  “If that’s what you called your little gathering of planets around that star, then yes. We passed the ninth one while you were all unconscious.”

  Wendy raised an eyebrow.

  “And we’ve been out how long?”

  “A good six. We’re no longer in your galaxy either, if that was going to be your next question.”

  It was, from the look on Wendy’s face.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Torfan rolled his eyes and sighed. He gestured before heading through the door, expecting them all to follow. All of them but Jen got to their feet and allowed their curiosity to take over, to see the rest of this vessel they were being transported in.

  Jen wanted nothing to do with it, but staying here in a cell by herself, alone with her thoughts, wasn’t an attractive alternative.

  She dragged her feet as she continued through the door and down the hallway behind them. The walkways were tall and wide, just wide enough to fit the aliens’ massive size. A few doors slid open in passing and more wolf-like heads poked out to see what the commotion was. Jen tried not to pay them much attention.

  The hallway opened up in to a large circular room filled with panels and more aliens sitting, staring into screens and fiddling with controls before them. Jen didn’t even try to make sense of it since it was all written in some foreign tongue.