by Erin Raegan
He laughed a low, rough sound. “Ain’t got no more bullets, girly.”
The other two men shot forward, and I pulled the trigger. It clicked. Empty.
One man plowed into me, throwing me against the wall. My head hit hard, but I ignored the throb and brought the gun down onto the top of his head. Pushing off from the wall, I fell to the side and stumbled to the door. The other man’s cracked nails snagged at my bare waist, and I brought my elbow back and up into his neck. He choked, and I ran from the shop.
My pants still down, I only made it a few feet into the street before a massive weight slammed into me from behind. The gun flew from my hand while my chin bounced off the asphalt. My stomach scraped along the ground as I slid beneath him. A hand snagged my hair and wrenched my head back, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.
More hands roughly rolled me onto my back and slapped my face. I clawed at the face above me and kicked at the legs holding me down.
“Drag her back inside,” the bearded one shouted, and the one on top dragged me across the street by my hair.
I held on to his hands to get the pressure off my scalp and dug the heels of my boots into the cracked street to slow him down. My pants hung around my thighs, hindering my ability to move my legs. I wanted to scream from the pain, but the idiots were already making so much noise. I had no idea how they’d managed to remain alive this long.
“Watch out!” one man shouted, his voice strangled with fear and disbelief.
A large shadow blocked the sun, casting darkness over us. I cried out as the hand holding my hair twisted. Olynth slammed into the ground in front of me, asphalt cracking beneath his clawed feet. Pure, unadulterated rage flared in his eyes as he took me in with one long sweep of those pissed-off orbs. He bared his fangs and roared so loud my ears rang. The hand ripped from my hair violently, tearing another cry from my throat.
I rolled onto my stomach, wincing. Everything ached, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the scene in front of me. One man dropped into two pieces feet from my face, his waist split clear through the middle. I gagged and watched as Olynth stomped toward the other men, his sword dripping with red blood.
“Olynth, no!” Fihk shouted as he landed a few feet away. “The humans are not to be harmed!”
Olynth chuckled a dark, wicked sound and lifted one man from his feet, a clawed hand wrapped around his throat. “These are not humans.” Olynth’s voice was dark and filled with fury. “They are vile, disgusting creatures. I will do with them as I wish.”
The bearded man ran from the shop. Fihk sighed and lunged into the air, lifting the man from the ground. Then he spun and dropped him in front of Olynth. Fihk’s eyes snagged on my bruised body and torn clothes and they flared with a fury that nearly matched Olynth’s. “I’m going to regret this, but I have to agree with you, my friend.”
Olynth dropped the male and severed his head from his body. I gagged again and looked away. My eyes snagged on Fihk’s feet, and I looked between them to the remaining bearded man. Fihk stopped next to Olynth.
The bearded man caught my eyes. “Help me!”
Olynth growled something low I couldn’t hear and lifted him. I breathed deeply, trying to control my thundering heart. I looked up and caught Fihk’s wrathful gaze.
“Look away, sweets,” he murmured.
I did as I was told. I clenched my eyes tightly and covered my ears, muffling the man’s high, short scream. I trembled and shook, a spastic noise escaping my throat when a warm, clawed hand touched my arm.
“All right, little warrior,” Olynth murmured in my ear and lifted me carefully.
I stood on my feet, shaking, as he kneeled in front of me and pulled up my pants. I caught Fihk’s livid gaze again as Olynth pulled down my shirt, his hand lightly caressing the scrapes there. Olynth stood, blocking my view of Fihk, and tilted up my chin. His thumb ran down my throbbing cheekbone, and he gnashed his teeth.
“Where’s Nathan?” I asked, hating how pathetic and weak my voice came out. I would not give those men another moment of my fear. They didn’t deserve it.
“Tohn is with the youngling. He is safe,” Fihk said while Olynth struggled with his rage.
“You okay?” I asked the big guy. It was clear he was fighting with himself.
He stiffened and backed away.
“Come. We will take you to him.” Fihk motioned down the street.
I kept my eyes firmly on Fihk’s back, refusing to look at the bodies on the street. I gasped and limped through the pain. “Did Nathan find you?”
I couldn’t even think about my little brother running out in the open, looking for help. It had been stupid to send him outside, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Olynth clenched his jaw and looked ahead. “Yes.”
“I thought you said you could find me?” I didn’t know why I asked, but it had been nearly six hours since we left the rooftop.
“I did.”
This guy. He was always so short with his words.
“So why didn’t you?”
“I watched you climb down the building and followed you here. We left you to rest, only leaving to patrol the area for any threats.”
“You knew where we were the whole time?” Holy cow, they could have taken us at any time in the night.
“Yes.” His eyes flashed with new fury as he looked at me. “I told you to stay.”
Stay. Like a dog. Yeah, right.
“I thought you said you were going to redden my ass when you found me?” I didn’t know why I said it, but part of me liked egging him on. Seeing how far I could push him.
His hand ran down my spine slowly, stopping on my ass. I tensed. “Do you wish for your punishment now, or when you have healed?”
I gulped and looked forward. “Later is good.”
Fihk chuckled.
Chapter 5
Bailey
“Bailey!” Nathan shouted and ran to me as we met him outside an abandoned shop. He barreled into me, nearly knocking us both down, but Olynth stepped behind us and took our weight.
“I’m okay,” I gasped through the stings he aggravated all over my body. I ignored them and clutched him closer though.
“You’re hurt,” he growled, looking at my cheek and the scrapes on my hands.
“No biggie,” I said and patted his back.
“We need to clean the cuts.” He scowled at Olynth. “Our medicine is in our pack.”
Guess his hero worship was on pause for now.
“We will retrieve it,” Fihk said and bowed his head, heading off.
Tohn followed, and Olynth gave us a light push.
“Are they dead?” Nathan asked without a hint of remorse as we followed the others through the streets.
“Yes,” Olynth growled.
“Good,” Nathan growled back and clutched my arm, guiding me like he was ready to face any threat that came at me. I hugged his arm tightly.
“I love you, booger,” I whispered in his ear.
“Love you most,” he whispered back.
It took a while, but we made it back to the house without being attacked by Vitat hungry for our brains or disgusting men hungry for something worse.
I grinned when Tohn handed over my pack without a hint of apprehension. I still didn’t think it was a good idea to stick with these guys, but I wouldn’t attack them with my spray either, unless they gave me reason to.
“We have wasted too much time here,” Fihk said, eyeing me warily. “We must find Pehytohn’s mam.”
“We’ll help,” I told him.
“We will?” Nathan said, his voice breaking with disbelief.
I looked at him strangely. I’d thought he would be thrilled. I didn’t necessarily want to, but I doubted we had a choice at this point. I wouldn’t be able to get away from the big guy twice. Playing along was our only option for now. And if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t feeling super capable of protecting Nathan at the moment. I was hurt, and that would slow us down, and for all my past
experience fighting off perverts who got a little too handsy, I couldn’t hold my own back there.
These guys had saved me.
Maybe we could use them to find somewhere safer, to at least get out of the city. Find somewhere hidden, in a less populated area.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help, they just saved you,” Nathan said cautiously, “but you were right last night. I don’t trust them not to lock us up.”
“Lock you up?” Fihk asked in surprise.
“Bailey thinks you guys are going to steal us away and make us your slaves or something worse.” Nathan scowled at them and stepped in front of me protectively.
I looked at him in surprise. I’d told him I didn’t think they wouldn’t lock us up, but I had no idea he was thinking about slave auctions like I was.
Fihk scowled back. “We would not.”
Olynth growled. “You will become no one’s slave.”
“You are safe with us, humans,” Tohn added but grinned understandably. “We wish you no harm.”
“How can we trust you?” I asked all three of them. Words meant nothing to us. We had been lied to our whole lives.
Fihk sank to one knee and bowed his head, thumping his chest. “You have my word, on my honor as a Dahk Lieutenant.”
Tohn followed him down. “As you do mine.”
Nathan looked at Olynth expectantly, as though he would really take their word for it. Just words.
Olynth knelt in front of Nathan and thumped his chest roughly. “You have my word. I will protect you and your Bahyly with my life. You will not come to harm, and you will not be taken from your home.”
“You mean it?” Nathan asked with skepticism and not a small amount of hope.
“I do, brave Nahythahn,” Olynth said solemnly.
“Okay,” Nate said gravely and nodded like an unspoken vow had just taken place and he was going to hold them to it. Then he looked at me just as expectantly as he did Olynth.
I sighed. I didn’t want to—I didn’t trust them, but they did come and save me, even if it was to protect their potential sale—but I nodded back. If this morning had taught me anything, it was that we didn’t have just the Vitat to worry about now. Assholes would be after us too.
There were only two of us, and that made for easy prey.
Nathan and I convinced them to let us gather any food remaining in the house. The non-perishables. The cabinets were surprisingly bare. Peyton’s mother must eat out a lot. But we found a box of nutrition bars and a couple bags of low-calorie snacks. We needed the calories though. There were a couple cans of soup and a few of fruit.
My pack was heavier when we left the house, but not as heavy as I would have hoped. The food would last us two days at most, then we would need to find more. The Dahk aliens didn’t seem worried about our lack of food, which made me mad—until they offered to share their provisions on their ship. Nathan’s stomach growled, but the last thing I wanted to do was eat alien food. No thanks.
They ushered us through the streets for a few minutes before Fihk lifted a little black device and clipped it to his ear. “Wyvr, ready the ship. We will meet you in a few spins.”
“Where’s your ship?” Nathan asked and searched the sky.
Fihk pointed at the water a few blocks away. I looked but didn’t see anything more than a few abandoned, bobbing boats. I would never get used to the quiet streets, the lack of chatter and laughter. The lack of horns blaring and tires screeching. Now, everywhere you walked in the city, you had to watch your step or risk seeing something you would never recover from. Bodies, blood, and gore coated the ground. It always seemed to hollow my chest.
I refused to look at the littlest bodies. They would haunt me forever.
“It is cloaked to avoid revealing our presence to the enemy.” Tohn grinned at Nathan.
“Invisible? That is so rad.” Nathan grinned back and rushed to follow behind the tall alien.
I sped up to keep close to him.
“Yes, rahd.” Tohn nodded and marched to the pier.
I heard the two of them murmuring, but I was distracted by Olynth and Fihk. They crowded me on either side. Olynth was still tense and clearly battling his rage, and Fihk watched him closely, as though he thought Olynth would blow at any moment.
I fought the urge to grab a can of spray. Part of me wanted to trust them, but the little girl who had been physically and emotionally abused then tossed aside, had learned a valuable lesson at a very young age.
Trust was not guaranteed.
It was earned, and even then, people let you down.
I’d trusted my parents for no other reason than they were the people who gave me life. But as I got old enough to realize it wasn’t normal for your tummy to hurt every day from hunger pains, and it wasn’t normal to expect nasty words thrown your way when you had an accident, and it wasn’t normal to get smacked around when you annoyed them, I learned you couldn’t always trust those who were meant to protect you.
And when I was taken away and given to my only other living relative, my grandfather, I learned the people who had taken me from my parents couldn’t be trusted to send me somewhere safe. That man had been far worse than my parents.
When I was ten years old, they took me away again, and they placed me in home after home with people who didn’t want me there for more than a little extra cash.
I grew up fending for myself. Protecting myself. Trusting only myself.
Until I met Nathan.
In my last home, with people who clearly had more kids than they wanted but took them in anyway, I saw him. He was so tiny, wearing clothes two sizes too big. He was the only little one out of all the kids. The rest of us were teenagers. He didn’t belong in a house full of jaded kids. But he grinned a mouth full of crooked teeth up at me.
I looked into his little four-year-old heart and melted. For the next two years, he was mine and I was his. He had so much love to give and learned, same as me, you could never give your trust freely. I spent those two years in that foster home earning his trust and giving him mine. Taking care of him, loving him, and always putting him first.
When I was of age and it was time for me to move on, I never broke that hard-earned trust. I stayed close, always taking care of him, always loving him.
Maybe that was why he now gave these aliens his trust. Maybe it was my fault he wasn’t so guarded, so mistrustful. If so, I couldn’t find it in me to guilt myself for it. If I had been able to give him back a little of that childhood trust that was given away so easily, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. I didn’t want him to live a life like mine. Always waiting for the betrayal. For the other shoe to drop. I wanted him to live a happy life, have a carefree childhood. A life our parents refused to give us.
I would be the guarded one for him. The pessimistic one. I would hold my distrust close for the both of us.
I watched him smile and laugh with Tohn, and a pang of angry sickness festered. He hadn’t smiled like that in so long. Not since well before the aliens came down and destroyed everything we knew. I wanted to see it more. I wanted him always to feel safe enough to feel that boyish joy. He was the best part of my life, and I would do everything I could to protect him.
What kind of damage was this new world doing to my brother’s young mind? When we walked down a street, terrified of what was lurking around a corner, what kind of psychiatric damage was all this death and destruction doing to him? At so young an age, he was inhaling sights and sounds like a sponge. His mind growing and absorbing and learning from the environment around him.
But it wasn’t something I could shield him from, and that killed me.
We reached the pier, once again not running into any dangers. It made me shift anxiously, my skin pulling tight. We were out in the open, and the Vitat were so many. I didn’t understand how we could have walked down the street without running into them. But hadn’t Olynth said they were patrolling the area this morning?
Were the three of them capa
ble of running off so many of the Vitat?
Were they capable of taking so many out?
If so, why were they wasting time on one woman and not helping to save us? They could save so many more—if there really were a bunch of Dahk waiting to start an alien war. Those thoughts did nothing but fuel my distrust. I held it close. It would only keep me on my toes.
I wanted so badly to ask them, but looking at the lost lives around me, I wasn’t sure I was ready for the answer.
“There.” Tohn pointed out into the water at nothing.
I couldn’t see a single thing that resembled any kind of ship. Nathan squinted and stepped forward, shaking his head. He flipped his ballcap backward and squinted again. Tohn grinned.
“It really is invisible?” I asked.
Fihk lifted his hand to the black device and murmured something. Then he stepped closer to me and pointed again. Olynth stiffened, but Fihk didn’t move. I watched in awe as far out into the water, the air moved. It shimmered and wiggled, flashes of dark grey and black fading in and out.
“Wow,” Nate and I breathed together.
It was huge and must have been at least a quarter mile out from the pier. Then it disappeared as though it had never been there at all.
“We travel in the skies from here,” Fihk murmured close to my ear.
Nathan made a gasping-garbled sound. His eyes shot to Fihk and lit up with that renewed joy I had just been thinking about. I hated to do it, but there was no dang way that was happening.
“No, we’ll take a boat,” I said firmly.
“Oh, Baaaails!” Nate wailed in dismay.
“A boot?” Tohn asked in confusion.
I sighed. “Dude, these translators can’t be that bad.”
“We are unfamiliar with water travel.” Fihk crossed his arms stubbornly.
“There’s a first time for everything,” I told him snottily. I was not flying through the sky clinging to one of these guys, and neither was Nate. Hell no.
Fihk’s eyes flared at my tone, and he looked at Olynth. I stiffened when the big guy stepped up to my back.
I glared at Fihk. “No.”
