MERCILESS : Alien Sci fi Romance (Invasive Species Control Unit Book 1)

by Kelly Goode

  ‘I had to secure the data,’ Malone said, his blue eyes appearing haunted.

  ‘What data?’

  ‘Data on the girls. The victims.’

  ‘Liv, Tisha, Amy, and Bonnie.’

  Like always, their names seemed to leave Carson’s lips almost lyrically and she fought back the memories of finding their desecrated bodies. Only now there was one more to add to the list – Sage.

  ‘Yes, those girls, but there are more. More girls to protect. Like Sabrina.’

  His eyelids fluttered and she tapped him gently on the cheek.

  ‘Stay with me.’

  ‘I can’t. My only regret is that I’m not going to see this through to the end.’

  Malone’s head rolled to one side and his face drained of any remaining colour.

  ‘Don’t give up. You can fight this,’ she said, wiping the sweat from his brow with her hand. ‘You need to explain yourself to the chief.’

  ‘I’m the doctor. I know the prognosis. The internal damage is too great. I won’t be explaining anything to anyone apart from the Lord.’

  ‘Don’t say that, damn you. You patched me up when I was in worse shape than this.’

  Malone laughed, but that caused him to cough and droplets of blood mixed with the spittle at the corners of his mouth.

  ‘You’ve always been stronger…stronger than the other agents…I don’t have much time.’

  His eyes slid shut, and Carson shook him by the shoulders.

  ‘Don’t go to sleep.’

  ‘I’m tired. I did my best. I tried to stop them, but I ran out of time. Protect the data. Tell the others.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why did you keep that alien locked in your basement?’

  This caused him to open his eyes suddenly.

  ‘Sabrina,’ he cried out. ‘Where’s Sabrina?’

  ‘Why was she in your basement?’

  ‘She was helping me.’

  ‘She was starving.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ he said, shaking his head and coughing once again. ‘I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t mean to leave her alone for so long, but I couldn’t let them get to her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The desquamaters. Sabrina is special.’

  Carson inhaled deeply, hating that she had to deliver such bad news to a dying man.

  ‘She’s dead. I’m sorry.’

  Malone’s face crumpled, as tears fell freely down his cheeks.

  ‘My Sabrina. My darling Sabrina. I’m sorry I failed you, but we will be together again in the next life.’

  Carson squeezed his hand. ‘Tell me about the experiments.’

  ‘It’s all in my head.’

  ‘That’s why I need you to tell me while you still can.’

  ‘The data is inside my head. I trust you, Carson.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘You’re special. You’ve always been special - like Sabrina. My precious Sabrina.’

  His breathing slowed and his eyes slid shut for the final time.

  ‘In my head,’ he rasped on a fading breath. ‘Protect the data in my head.’

  Carson let Malone’s hand slip from hers as the front door suddenly slammed open so hard that the hinges nearly splintered away from the wood.

  53

  ‘Next time, just use the key,’ Carson said, as a small sob escaped her throat when Blake appeared in the hallway. He was wearing dark jeans and T-shirt, and his tangled hair was secured in a band making him look semi-presentable if not for the small patches of mud on his neck that looked a little like a hand print - her hand print – and the blood splatter on his cheeks.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, and she immediately got to her feet and rushed out of the kitchen He gathered her into his arms and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

  ‘I heard someone’s heart stop beating. I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘Malone is dead.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Carson pulled away from Blake so she could look up into his green eyes. ‘The desquamaters had him. They tortured him and left him here as bait. I tried to save him.’

  ‘How many did you kill?’

  She shrugged. ‘Only one. Most of them I just restrained with those paralysing bullets we were testing last month. Guess what, they work.’

  ‘I took out at least seven, before they gave up their stronghold and withdrew.’

  Carson rubbed her forehead. Maybe she’d imagined the howl earlier, but whatever caused the aliens to retreat, she was grateful for.

  ‘Thank you for having my back.’

  Blake’s response was to crush his mouth against hers and she savoured the feel of the scruff against her chin and his hands in her hair before he released her.

  ‘You need to call this in,’ he said, as he left her and crouched beside Malone’s body with a disheartened look on his face. ‘Did he tell you why he left the safety of the team?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If he was worried, he should have come to one of us. We would’ve protected him.’

  ‘He seemed delirious from the pain so a lot of what he said didn’t make sense. He just kept going on and on about the data and how I needed to protect it.’

  ‘What data?’

  ‘He said it was inside his head.’

  ‘That’s probably what the desquamaters were looking for at his house.’

  ‘Yeah, the alien’s smashed up the lab and broke into the chief’s office. They must have been searching for the data there too. You don’t know anything about that, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  Carson swallowed deeply. ‘They killed Ted too.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I liked the old man.’

  ‘Me too. The security log shows my key code was used to access the building.’

  Blake’s jaw clenched as he frowned. ‘It was probably a glitch. You weren’t anywhere near HQ.’

  ‘That’s what I told the chief.’

  ‘Did he believe you?’

  Carson nodded. ‘Yeah, but Sheridan and Finch aren’t convinced.’

  ‘We’ll figure it out,’ Blake replied. ‘Did the doc say anything else?’

  ‘Only that he never meant to leave the jaktten alone for so long in his basement. Said her name was Sabrina. He was upset when I told her she was dead.’

  Blake flinched at the mention of the dead alien and turned his attention back to Malone’s body. He studied the doctor’s face and then inhaled sharply.

  ‘Hey, Carson, come and take a closer look at this.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ve seen enough dead bodies this week. Human and alien.’

  Blake pointed to Malone’s ear. ‘I’m serious. Look at this behind his ear.’

  ‘What is it?’ Carson asked, as she knelt next to him.

  ‘Looks like an incision.’

  ‘It’s been closed with crude stitching. Think the desquamaters did it to him?’

  Blake shook his head. ‘I think he did it himself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think he cut the skin and sutured it himself.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’ Carson replied, and then it clicked. ‘Shit, he told me the data is in his head.’

  ‘You said that already, but as he died without passing that data to you, we’re screwed.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. I think he meant it’s physically inside his head.’

  Blake’s eyebrows shot up in surprise as he felt the skin behind Malone’s ear.

  ‘You’re right. I can feel a lump,’ he said. ‘Could be a microchip of some sort.’

  ‘Maybe we could unpick the stitches to get to it.’

  ‘No, we don’t want to risk corrupting the data. Call Chief Melman and tell him about Malone. Ask if Doctor Peters will come and assess the body.’

  Carson retrieved her phone and selected Tom’s number from her contacts. It rang a few times before he answered.

  ‘You better have a damn good excuse for waking me from the only sleep I’ve had
in the last few days,’ he barked.

  ‘I found Malone.’

  ‘That’s good enough. I’m awake. Where is he?’

  ‘My house, but…he’s dead.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘The desquamaters had him.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘I took out a few of them. Blake got the rest.’

  Tom cleared his throat. ‘Is Blake still there with you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Tell him not to leave until I arrive.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I also need Doctor Peters.’

  ‘Shit, are you hurt again?’

  ‘No, but I think Malone hid something beneath his skin. Blake thinks it might be a data chip or something. I think it’s what the aliens were searching for at HQ. The same thing they trashed his house and tortured him for.’

  Tom exhaled. ‘Carson, you know this is just the beginning, right? Whatever is on that data chip, Malone was prepared to die to protect. You need to be careful where your quest for knowledge takes you.’

  She looked at Blake and felt her stomach constrict. His green eyes locked onto hers and she felt a jolt of something hit her firmly in the chest.

  ‘I know, sir.’

  ‘Good, I’ll be there with Doctor Peters in twenty minutes.’

  54

  Blake stared at Carson. He had an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with the dead body in the room, but everything to do with the woman he loved. It was a strange mix of regret and fear. Regret because he’d lied to her about using her key code, and fear because he still hadn’t worked up the courage to tell her who he was yet.

  ‘The team will be here soon,’ Carson said, putting her phone down on the kitchen worktop. ‘We need to get our stories straight. How did it go with the jaktten council?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Another lie - it seemed as if once he started he couldn’t stop. He took a step closer to her and was grateful when she didn’t move away. He took her hand and rubbed his thumb across her knuckles.

  ‘Why were you meeting the aliens alone?’ she asked. ‘Why is it such a secret? I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ve been pursuing the jaktten you shot,’ he replied. ‘The council had information they were willing to share, but not through official channels.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘Mainly that the injured jaktten wasn’t the one that took that last little girl.’

  Carson’s expression changed to one of distress. ‘Her name was Sage and she’s dead. Another victim to add to the list, damn it. They left her body with her father’s bones near our warehouse. Are you sure the jaktten had nothing to do with that?’

  Blake thought about Erik’s betrayal. He was a twisted, sick son of a bitch but he wasn’t killing kids. His concept was to turn humans into half-breed warriors to fight the desquamaters, which hadn’t worked so far.

  ‘Before you captured the jaktten, he was planning to conduct his own interrogation of Malcolm Plummer,’ Blake said. ‘He knew the desquamaters were hurting little girls and he was trying to stop them.’

  ‘Do you believe him, this jaktten I shot? Is he trust-worthy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Blake trusted Viktor even if he didn’t share his beliefs about living amongst the humans or falling in love with one of them.

  ‘So that leads us onto what happened between us earlier. What do we do about that?’ she asked, her blue eyes hinting at the vulnerability usually concealed beneath her tough exterior.

  Blake cupped Carson beneath her chin. The bruising and burnt skin on her face was slowly healing. He loved his warrior with all his heart and soul, but they couldn’t move forward until she knew who she was getting involved with. He pressed his lips softly to hers and she responded, opening her mouth to deepen the kiss. Just the slightest sweep of her tongue against his brought back memories of her naked body in the mud.

  ‘I don’t regret what we did, and I can’t seem to stop kissing you,’ he said, when he finally pulled away. ‘And it’s going to be a really big fucking problem at work.’

  Carson took his larger hand in hers and Blake felt the surge of possessiveness in every fibre of his being. She meant everything to him and yet there was something holding him back from revealing he was really a jaktten.

  ‘Well we need to figure something out,’ she said, ‘as I don’t want you to stop kissing me either. There’s always the option to transfer teams.’

  ‘No way, you’re too good at this. ISCU needs you.’

  ‘I was talking about you,’ she replied, as she smiled sweetly. ‘I’m sure the team could cope without you for a while.’

  Blake loved seeing her smile, genuinely smile, and he vowed to make her smile every day for the rest of her life.

  ‘Oh, so it’s like that, is it? You’d push me out of the unit so we could be together.’

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and stared up at him.

  ‘Yeah, it’s like that, because I love you,’ she said, before shaking her head. ‘Wow, admitting that was so much harder than killing aliens.’

  ‘It shouldn’t be,’ he replied. ‘Because I love you, too. Crazy, singed hair and all. But there’s something you need to know about me before we take this any further.’

  Blake removed her arms from his neck and took a few steps backwards. He’d faced armies of desquamaters, killed thousands of enemies, suffered countless injuries but this was harder. He couldn’t find the words to explain his deception, so he would just show her instead. Carson could make up her mind what to do once he transformed and if she decided to shoot him, at least he wouldn’t have to live knowing that she hated him.

  ‘What is it, Blake?’

  He pulled his T-shirt over his head and her eyes widened.

  ‘Woah, hold on a second. As much as I would love to recreate our time in the mud, I can’t do it two feet away from Malone’s dead body,’ she hissed, her cheekbones turning crimson.

  ‘I don’t want to have sex. I want to show you something.’

  ‘Put your clothes back on. The chief will be here any second, and I am definitely not ready to tell him about our relationship yet.’

  Carson licked her lips and it took all his will-power not to let his inner-beast take over, but she was right. They were out of time. He scented Chief Melman and Doctor Peters closing in and quickly shoved his T-shirt back over his head.

  ‘Damn it,’ he growled. ‘We’ll continue this later, Carson. You have to understand that what I did, I did because I fell in love with you. It’s important.’

  ‘Nothing is more important than beating the aliens, Blake,’ she replied, ‘and once we get the data from Malone’s head, the desquamaters will feel my retribution.’

  Blake reached out and slid his hand around the back of her neck.

  ‘Show no fear, show no mercy,’ he said.

  ‘Show no fear, show no mercy,’ she repeated. ‘A reckoning is coming, and they are going to feel my wrath.’

  Thank you for reading Merciless

  I hope you enjoyed it and will leave a review on Amazon

  The series continues with

  Fearless

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  Kari Stillwell Series

  #1 – Wild Side

  #2 – The Kindler

  #3 - Water Hazard

  #4 – Come Undone

  #5 – Play Dead

  Ember Lane Series

  # 1 – First and Only

  # 2 – Second Alliance

  # 3 – Third Promise (coming soon)

  The Invasive Species Series

  # 1 – Merciless

  # 2 – Fearless

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sp; # 3 – Coming Soon