by Kelly Goode
‘You know what I am and what I am capable of,’ he snarled, and she nodded in reply, but that only made the rope tighten around her throat.
‘I can’t breathe,’ she managed to gasp and he finally released his hold on her. She drew in a shuddering breath, trying to fill her depleted lungs.
Helen closed her eyes, so her captor wouldn’t see her cry. She needed to stay strong for a little longer. Help was coming. Chief Melman would notice she was missing and send a search party – she was sure of it.
10
‘How is Erik?’ Viktor asked, but the healer’s reply was crackled. He really shouldn’t have slammed his phone against the wall earlier, as the screen was now smashed and he’d damaged the internal connection between the earphone and speaker.
‘Say that again?’
‘The wounds to Erik’s chest are superficial. There was no need for medical intervention, so I left. He said he was going to find you.’
Viktor ended the call with a growl. His frustration felt like a storm swelling inside his stomach. If Blake had killed Theo and Sebastian in the rage that Erik described, why would he leave the final council member alive with only minor injuries? Nothing made sense. Least not his fascination with the redhead tied to a chair in the corner of the room.
He knew she was watching him warily out of the corner of her eye. He’d scared her a little too much earlier because anytime their eyes met now, she immediately lowered her gaze to the floor, and he hated the way that made him feel.
Feel.
He hadn’t felt anything for years. No emotion apart from the need to survive and protect the colony. The pretty doctor was proving useless as far as information went but for some reason, he was reluctant to get rid of her. The colony was on lock-down until he was sure Blake was not a threat, so he decided to play nice until Erik made contact and he could question him further about the councillors’ deaths.
‘Are you hungry?’ Viktor asked, and the woman flinched at his question, which made him angry again. He stalked towards her and knelt beside the chair. ‘Answer me, damn it.’
She shook her head, but the rope twisted against her throat and she coughed.
‘Thirsty?’
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Need the bathroom?’
‘No.’
‘Are you in pain?’
This time there was a slight pause before she shook her head. Viktor tried to ignore the panic reflected in her eyes when he examined the small bump that was protruding from the side of her forehead. Her skin had taken on a purplish hue from bruising and when he pressed lightly against her head, she groaned and gritted her teeth.
‘Does that hurt?’
‘Only when you poke it.’
Viktor felt his anger fade at her deadpan retort and he reluctantly smiled.
‘I admire your spirit,’ he said. ‘Most prisoners would have crumbled by now, but not you. You’re strong, like one of my guards, but you don’t have to be strong all the time. I can take the pain away.’
‘So can two paracetamols,’ she replied. ‘Don’t think for one second that you’ll get the better of me by pretending to care.’
His smile dropped. ‘I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to scare you. Please let me make it better.’
‘If you really want to make it better, loosen these ropes.’
Viktor eyed her with suspicion. ‘Are you going to bite me again?’
‘Depends if you try kissing me again.’
The thought of plundering that smart mouth of hers made his cock harden. Her pupils dilated and he scented her arousal when she shifted in the chair. Maybe kissing him hadn’t entirely been a ruse to escape. Maybe she’d felt the spark between them too - a crazy, foolish spark that had the cruellest possible timing. Viktor carefully untied the knot at the back of the chair and lifted the rope away from her neck.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
The fact his actions caused the angry ring of chafed skin around her pale neck weighed heavily on his mind. Viktor lowered his head and licked the swelling at her temple. Her skin tasted salty on his tongue, and she tensed when he moved his mouth against her neck.
11
Helen’s captor licked her broken skin as an animal might. His tongue felt hot against her neck and she groaned involuntarily. She heard his breath quicken, as he moved his mouth into the sensitive hollow of her collarbone. He continued to lick wherever the rope had rubbed against her skin and the burn began to gradually ease, which was medically impossible, but that didn’t stop her throwing her head back so he could reach the other side.
‘Jaktten saliva causes human cells to mutate,’ he mumbled against her skin. ‘As long as I don’t bite you, a small amount will encourage your skin to regenerate and repair without causing any further harm to your nervous system.’
She didn’t understand what he meant about jaktten, as she’d never heard the word before. Just as she couldn’t reconcile her longing for a man who was holding her against her will, but she didn’t try to stop him when he pushed her grubby white coat off her shoulders. Instead, she squirmed in the chair, trying to relieve the fire that pulsed between her legs.
As if sensing her submission, his mouth suddenly closed over hers, evoking desires she had no right to feel considering the circumstances. He was her abductor and she didn’t even know his name. Helen only realised she was untied when she lifted her hands to slide through his hair and met no resistance. God knows when he’d managed to do that, but she wasn’t complaining as her feet were unbound too.
She was finally free.
Helen twisted his long, dark hair between her fingers and tugged sharply, so he’d look at her, but he didn’t comply. Instead, he eased her thighs apart and fell to his knees, circling her waist with his arms. His hard chest pressed against her aching breasts, as he kissed her collarbone, her neck, her mouth - anywhere and everywhere. She dug her nails into his shoulders, as he fully removed her coat and she heard it land on the floor behind her with a soft whoosh, then his tongue delved inside her mouth.
Helen’s brain was frazzled. That was the only reason she was making out with the enemy and not fighting him off. She vaguely remembered reading something in her medical papers about a syndrome where a relationship formed between the kidnapper and hostage. That’s all this was - her body’s natural reaction to a frightening situation. That’s why she groaned softly when his large hands moved through her hair, releasing the pins that held it up, instead of picking one of them up and jabbing him in the eye. As her long hair fell against her shoulders, he inhaled against her hair and then against her neck.
‘What is this damn smell?’
His voice was husky and made her stomach tense with desire.
‘Someone bought me perfume for my birthday. I…I can’t remember the name.’
‘Is this someone special to you?’
He actually sounded jealous, which was absurd, but she shook her head, feeling a strong need to reassure him that she was single.
‘Not anymore,’ she replied, thinking how Philip had never kissed her with as much passion as this stranger had.
‘Whatever the perfume is called, it’s beautiful, doc. And so are you.’
‘My name is Helen,’ she said shakily. ‘You can call me Helen if you want to.’
‘I’m Prince of Jakttera.’
‘That’s a bit of a mouthful. Didn’t your parents like you?’
He laughed and lifted his head so he was looking straight into her eyes.
‘I like laughing, Helen. It makes me feel happy. I think that’s the best word to describe these emotions. For some strange reason, being around you has made me realise I have not felt happy in a very long time. My name is Viktor.’
He traced his thumb over her lips and she swallowed deeply.
‘What do we do now, Viktor?’ she asked, more than a little nervous about his answer. She needed to carefully consider just how far she was prepared to go in order to gain his trust again
and make her escape.
‘If you tell me what I want to know, you’ll be home by the morning.’
Helen nodded to the window behind him.
‘That doesn’t give us a lot of time.’
He looked taken aback as he checked the sky, which had once been dark and inky and was now streaked with warm pink and orange hues.
‘You’re right. You have proven to be an unexpected distraction. How is your head?’
‘Better.’
‘And your neck?’
‘Better, but my wrists are still sore.’
Helen held his stare, as he lifted one of her hands to his mouth. He licked from her fingers down to her wrists and her toes curled inside her shoes. The throb between her legs sparked once again, taking on a life of its own. She needed to put a stronger barrier between her and her kidnapper - for her sanity, as much as her security.
‘Ouch,’ she said when Viktor’s teeth scraped against her sensitive skin. She yanked her arm back, as the door to the room burst open and the tallest woman she’d ever seen strode through the splintered frame. She was wearing leather trousers and a small black vest. Her ginger hair was like a springing halo around her head, as she smiled cruelly.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you were eating breakfast,’ she drawled. ‘May I join you?’
12
Helen blinked several times, as Viktor seemed to move faster than humanly possible. He grabbed the woman around the throat and lifted her into the air as if she weighed nothing.
‘You will not touch her,’ he roared, and in that moment, she was glad the lunatic was on her side for once. ‘Who let you in? Where are my guards?’
The woman struggled like a worm on a hook, but Viktor kept a firm grip on her neck. She scratched his arm and kicked his stomach in an attempt to free herself from the strangle-hold, but he didn’t waver. Helen felt utterly helpless as the woman’s face turned a dangerous shade of red. She couldn’t allow Viktor to kill an innocent woman, but she also conceded she wasn’t strong enough to stop him from crushing her windpipe.
‘Let her go,’ Helen said, hoping it sounded like an order and not a request.
Viktor turned to face her, as if only just remembering she was still in the room and the woman took the opportunity to sink her teeth into his hand. He howled in pain and launched her across the room, where she hit her head against the solid stone fireplace and crumpled to the floor with a sickening crack.
Helen winced. She knew that sound well; it was the sound of bones breaking, but even with potentially life-threatening injuries, the woman scrambled to her feet again.
‘Helen, get out of here now.’
She heard Viktor’s warning, but wasn’t quick enough to react before the woman bounded across the room, snarling and snapping. She only had the chair for protection and instinctively held it in front of her with the chair legs pointed outward. The woman lunged and with a sadistic cry, impaled herself on one of the legs. Helen screamed, as even this did not slow the woman down. The wooden leg disappeared deeper inside the hole in her stomach and it wasn’t long before Helen was backed against the wall with only the seat of the chair separating them.
‘Viktor, help.’
Viktor appeared beside Helen, as the woman began wailing like a banshee. She coughed and spluttered, as blood oozed from her mouth and stomach. Helen’s medical training kicked in and she began cataloguing the damage to the woman’s internal organs. There was no way she would survive if the wooden chair leg had perforated her stomach, intestines, or liver.
‘Look away, Helen.’
Viktor took the woman’s head in his hands and twisted it backwards. The snapping sound made Helen gag, and the woman fell forward against the chair - her eyes now still and lifeless. Viktor dumped her body to the floor, leaving the chair leg impaled in her stomach.
‘When I asked for your help, I didn’t mean for you to kill her,’ Helen said, tasting bile in the back of her throat.
‘Well she meant to kill you, so it seemed only fair,’ he replied matter-of-factly.
Helen felt her knees buckle and she slipped to the floor. She dry-heaved until her stomach felt raw and her eyes burned with tears.
‘There’s no time for this,’ Victor said, as he pulled her roughly to her feet again. She felt like a rag doll, unable to control any of her limbs.
‘You’re a murderer,’ she whispered, barely able to get the words out. She’d known this man was dangerous, and yet she’d allowed him to kiss her – touch her – she’d felt a connection to a cold-blooded killer. She felt sick again, and the room spun as if she’s stepped onto a merry-go-round. Her eyelids flickered open and closed, as she felt unconsciousness beckon.
‘Not yet, I’m not,’ Viktor replied.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She was going to kill you and she still might if you don’t get your shit together and move.’
‘How can she hurt me now?’
Helen forced herself to look at the woman’s corpse. From her time spent working at the accident and emergency department, she knew most people didn’t die instantly from a broken neck as they did in movies. The spine contained a multitude of nerves and connectors. Trauma severed those connections to the brain, and without the brain’s ability to control movement, breathing, or the heart, death was an eventuality. It just came quicker in some cases than in others. Mercifully, the woman had died quickly.
Helen suddenly felt the proverbial hairs on the back of her neck prickle with awareness, as the woman’s body twitched. Viktor grabbed her arm and dragged her towards the door shouting for someone called Brandon or Jared.
‘She’s moving,’ Helen gasped.
‘Of course she’s moving, which means I don’t have enough time to get you out of here.’
Viktor pushed Helen behind the floor-length red velvet curtains at the front window.
‘Stay out of the way if you want to live,’ he said. ‘And I really want you to live, doc.’
Helen grabbed his hand, as fear filled her chest like icy cold water.
‘I don’t understand any of this,’ she said, and Viktor stared down at her for a few seconds, as if searching for answers that she still didn’t have.
‘I believe you, which is something we’ll deal with later.’
He pushed her to her knees, so she was hidden behind the curtains.
‘Do not come out from behind here, Helen. Whatever you hear, whether you think you can help me, just know that you can’t.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘That’s good, doc. Being scared just might keep you alive.’
Helen flinched, as she heard a sickening explosion from the centre of the room which sounded like something bursting in the microwave.
‘Don’t look,’ Viktor instructed, but it was too late. The woman’s body was gone and all that remained was a puddle of red slime around the chair. What stood in the middle of the goo defied belief – a humanoid shape with sharpened teeth and claws. Its skin was a pale pink and covered in what resembled snake scales.
‘What the fuck is that?’
Viktor didn’t answer her question. He crouched on the floor; his head hung low as his body contorted. His skin sprouted fur and she trembled when he howled like a wolf.
This was a dream – one giant nightmare that she’d wake up from soon.
Helen pulled the curtain around her and put her hands over her ears, trying to block out the cries coming from the creature and the growls coming from the animal that had once been Viktor.
She needed to wake up.
God help her - she needed to wake up fast.
13
Viktor felt his muscles relax as he shifted forms. It felt as if the fire that raged inside his stomach finally extinguished as he welcomed his true form to the surface. He growled and dug his claws into the soft carpet, as he faced off with the desquamater. Although the alien had worn a female human’s skin, it was genderless in its natural appearance. The desquamaters had forced
his people to flee their planet – their home – and were now trying to do the same thing to Earth.
‘I’ll enjoy bragging how I took down the Prince of Jakttera,’ the desquamater said, as a sharp grin split its scaly face.
‘Your confidence will be your downfall,’ Viktor replied, readying for an attack, but the desquamater just looked towards the red curtain behind him.
‘I sense her hiding behind there and once you’re dead, I’ll take my time peeling the skin from that woman you’re so keen to suddenly protect.’
Viktor growled. ‘I’ll kill you before I allow you to touch her.’
‘I’ll touch her and more. I’ll scrape the flesh from her bones and then wear her skin to infiltrate the ISCU department. Our scouts reported that she works there. Her death will prove an invaluable asset to our cause.’
Viktor heard enough. He launched himself at the desquamater, connecting a solid blow to its chest. The aliens usually attacked in groups for safety, so he wasn’t surprised when another creature entered the room. What caused him to howl was the fact he was carrying Brandon’s severed head in its claws.
The distraction trick proved effective and Viktor felt a slice to his neck. Thankfully, the claws didn’t cut deep enough to cause any real damage, as his fur provided an effective barrier, but it still hurt like a bitch. Viktor recovered quickly and using his powerful hind legs, leapt onto the desquamater’s back. The aliens were inferior in one-on-one battles. That’s how a little woman like Carson managed to beat them. Their segmented bodies, although plated, were still vulnerable. Viktor fastened his jaw around the creature’s neck where there was far less protection.
‘This is not the end. You may kill me, but ten others will take my place. The next phase of our invasion is imminent. We will wipe the jaktten from this planet, along with any humans who stand in our way. You can’t win.’
