by Marie Dry
In a bleak future, where government systems are breaking down and poverty and violence reign, on an abandoned farm in Montana, Susannah had a simple plan. She’d capture an alien, sell him to the resistance, and use the money to save her son.
Instead, Susannah had an arrogant alien trapped in a pit who acted as if she was the prisoner. He wanted to kill her dog and insisted she should care for the wound he sustained when he fell into the pit she dug to trap him. On top of that, she had no way to know if the resistance got her message. Every day that passed, she doubted her decision to hand Azagor over to the resistance.
But her son, her baby, was being held by people who considered him unclean because he was conceived out of wedlock--and time was running out.
KUDOS FOR ALIEN CAPTURED
In Alien Captured by Marie Dry, Susannah’s infant son has been taken from her by religious zealots who believe she is evil because she has black hair and Japanese ancestry. To punish Susannah even further, they abandoned the farm where she had lived her whole life, taking everything of value with them, and left her behind on the farm to fend for herself. But Susannah has a plan. She is going to capture an alien and sell him to the resistance for enough money to pay someone to find and rescue her son. So she dug a pit and trapped an alien name Azagor...or did she? The arrogant alien seems to think she is the weaker one and he is the one in control. Now he wants to take her to his home and take care of her, but can she trust him? And if she tells him the truth, will he find her son for her, or will he abandon her like everyone else in her life has? As always, Dry handles a difficult subject with sensitivity and compassion, creating characters that are as endearing as they are unique. Her books are truly a pleasure to read. ~ Taylor Jones, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy
Alien Captured by Marie Dry is the fifth book in her Zyrgin Warrior series, in which aliens come to Earth to conquer it through sex--a unique concept if ever there was one. In this installment, Susannah is an abused young woman who was raised on a farm run by evil men who force their women to do all the work and beat them if they don’t obey the men’s every whim. But the Zyrgin warrior Azagor has chosen Susannah as his woman, and when he finds out the abuse she has suffered at the hands of the men, he vows to exact vengeance on them. The only thing that Susannah wants is to have her baby son back, so she tries to capture Azagor and sell him to the resistance to get enough money to hire someone to find and rescue the baby. But her plan backfires when Azagor captures Susannah’s little dog instead, turning the tables on her. Now she has to hope he will care enough for her to both not kill her little dog, which he calls a rat, and also find her son before the farmers kill him. But is Azagor really strong enough to take on a handful of armed men by himself? She has to hope so--otherwise, both Susannah and her baby will die. I have always enjoyed Dry’s books very much, and this one doesn’t disappoint. With marvelous characters, a solid plot, lots of action and suspense not to mention the spicy love scenes, Alien Captured is an excellent addition to the series. I can wait to see what happens next. Regan Murphy, The Review Team of Taylor Jones & Regan Murphy
Alien Captured
Marie Dry
A Black Opal Books Publication
Copyright © 2018 by Marie Dry
Cover Design by Jackson Cover Designs
All cover art copyright © 2018
All Rights Reserved
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626949-28-7
EXCERPT
She thought she had everything under control until her little dog fell into the pit that held the alien captive...
Susannah jumped up, and Killer, who had sat next to her, yipped and jumped away. Everything slowed around her, and while she stood, horror freezing her veins, Killer fell into the hole. His small paws scrabbled at the rusted iron of the trapdoor and then he fell. She saw his mouth move, knew he was barking and yipping, but she couldn’t hear him.
Susanna stood petrified, her heartbeat slowing, seeing the world around her through a tunnel. The only other time she’d felt this strange sensation was when she realized they’d taken Noah, and she’d never see him again. At the end of the strange twisting tunnel, she saw the alien’s green savage face staring up at her.
He held her tiny dog in his hand, and he and Killer stared at each other, Killer frozen and obviously not knowing what to do. At least the fall didn’t seem to have injured him. His bones were very fragile, and Caine had warned her they broke very easily. Azagor lifted his hand until he held Killer in front of his face and pulled his lips back from his teeth.
Abruptly life rushed back into her frozen limbs. “Don’t you dare eat him,” she screamed while praying Killer didn’t pee on the alien’s hand.
The alien looked at the dog and then at her, and his hand closed ever so slightly. Five claws pointed at Killer’s fragile head. He held her dog up to her like an offering, while his vicious claws slowly lengthened.
Alien
Captured
Chapter 1
Susannah slammed the trapdoor over the crudely dug pit she’d caught her enemy in. “I’ve got you now, devil. You won’t be haunting innocent women in these mountains again,” she crowed. She caught a glimpse of a stick protruding from a muscled green shoulder as the door slid into place with a metal screech.
The trapdoor was designed to slide over the pit with a lock to keep prisoners in. The lock slid easily in place, and she frowned down at it. Did it used to be this clean or easy to slide over the pit? She shrugged. There wasn’t time to think about it now. From inside the pit, something scraped against the dirt wall, and a growl rumbled up from the depths of the dark hole.
Susannah inched out of his sight, half convinced the devil would try to climb out. He might be trapped inside the pit, but he could reach through the gaps in the trapdoor and grab her.
“Female.” He sure didn’t sound human.
Susannah sank down on her knees and cautiously crawled to the edge of the pit, trying to see in without the creature inside noticing. Pebbles scraped her knees through her heavy black dress that kept tripping her. “Kick off, already.” She whispered the forbidden words defiantly.
Brother Joseph had said it was a sin to use those words, but she couldn’t see how it was a sin to say the same thing with different words. And she wouldn’t feel guilty for wishing the monster dead.
“Show yourself, human.”
Again, goose bumps spread over her body. His voice, from inside the pit, sounded like a shovel when she shoved it into the dry rocky ground on the east of the farm. It scraped over her skin, invaded her body. It should make her want to run away screaming, but instead, she leaned closer to hear more.
She shook off the strange feelings and answered him. “Why should I?”
Never before had she dared be this openly defiant and it was good. Blood rushed through her veins. Large green hands gripped the iron grid she’d locked over the pit and shook it. For one horrendous moment, she thought he would break through the iron. She’d dug the pit deeper, day after day, until she thought her arms would fall off. And this green man with the horn on his head could still reach it.
Susannah jerked upright. Her heart hammered so hard she couldn’t hear her own ragged breathing or any of the everyday noises on the farm. She breathed deeply until most of the panic subsided. His hands had disappeared inside the pit again, and she sagged. She’d thought for sure he’d break that door and get to her.
“I said show yourself,” he ordered again.
He spoke English with a slight accent, his rough voice grating against her nerves. She’d believed that he was a demon come to haunt her when he appeared before her almost four years ago. Then last year, Caine, a brother who moved from farm to farm, had told them about the aliens. She wouldn’t presume to know
better than Caine, the man she’d come to love, but she couldn’t see how an alien that supposedly came from high up in the sky, could speak her language like this one did.
“Don’t order me around, ungodly creature.”
This time it would be different. No one would punish her for seeing him, like they did four years ago when he’d first appeared before her. Instead, she’d use him to get off this farm and find Noah. She fisted her hands in the clumps of grass growing sparsely all over the farm. It had cost her everything, and he had no right to talk to her in that know-it-all way. Ghostly little legs crawled over her skin, and she tightened her grip on the grass blades until her knuckles ached. It was over, the whippings, the punishments in the pit with the creatures coming at night to crawl into her hair and over her body, the endless sermons. She still woke at night, her body sore from her frantic slapping at creatures that came out at night, in her dreams, to crawl all over her with scratchy little paws. She brushed her hand over her braided hair and then forced herself to stop, to lower her hand and rest it on her knee. No insects crawled over her.
An exaggerated sigh from inside the pit. The rough ground scraping against her knees, she carefully crawled closer and peered over the edge of the hole. Straight into eyes that looked exactly the way she always thought evil satanic eyes would look. Her body vibrated, as if she’d hit an unyielding rock with a pick axe. Those eyes had haunted her dreams. He stared up at her out of a face with sharp cheekbones, a big jaw. All those years ago, when he’d suddenly appeared before her, she’d been too scared to notice anything beyond the fact that he was green and large with unholy red eyes. She’d thought him evil incarnate, the devil come to take her for her sins, and had run screaming. She gripped the edge of the trapdoor until her nails tore. If only she hadn’t screamed. If she could go back and change her reactions that fateful day, maybe she’d still have Noah.
“I am wounded female.” He sprawled against the dirt wall of the pit, like a brother newly given his own farm and women to supervise.
He wore a silver uniform, but the skin on his hands, neck, and face was green and gold. It reminded her of the skin of the snake Joseph showed them once when he did a sermon on the serpent in paradise. The being in front of her had the evil beauty that fascinated and repelled at the same time. Worse than those eyes was the horn growing out of his head and into his forehead. She’d never thought demons existed, but that horn almost convinced her. Her demon. No matter that Caine said he was an alien, in her mind she’d called him that ever since that day he’d appeared and destroyed her life.
During one of his trips to the farm, after they’d become close, Caine had given her a TC. A wonderful box with a button you pressed, and then moving and talking images of wondrous things appeared. Next to the gifts from her mother, that was the best thing she’d ever been given. She’d kept it hidden from the others. It told her about the aliens, and still, in her mind, she called him a demon. He’d appeared to her that one time, long ago. One moment she was alone and the next he stood in front of her. Big and mean and glaring at her with red eyes straight from hell.
That was when Brother Joseph’s punishments had gotten worse. Turned more evil than this alien creature. He’d drawn the others into his hatred for her. A hatred that never made sense to her. How could you hate someone because of the shape of their eyes?
After that time four years ago, the evil red-eyed creature never showed himself again. But she knew he watched. Had felt his gaze burn over her. Branding her. She didn’t dare mention this to the others, but she feared the creature wanted her. That he wanted to have relations with her.
She’d almost gotten used to feeling his gaze on her every few days when, a year ago, he’d disappeared. She didn’t even want to admit it to herself, but she’d almost missed feeling his presence. Then, last month, her personal demon had returned. She never saw him, but she knew he was there. Watching her. Always watching her.
Caine had told her that aliens came from the sky and claimed they now ruled Earth. The brothers who ran the farms in Montana didn’t recognize outside authority and had ignored the fact that aliens now walked on Earth. She didn’t know if she believed anyone could fly through space in something like a car. Even if it had wings, she didn’t think it could fly that high. And how did they breathe up there? The only reason she discounted Brother Josephatus’s theory, that they crawled out of hell, was that she refused to agree with the man who took Noah from her. About anything.
She frowned down at her prisoner. “Your wounds are not my concern.” He was frighteningly big, but not close to the size the alien on the TC had been. That one had easily gripped a human with one ugly claw.
“Are you a baby alien?” Was it right to keep a baby alien trapped? Even a scary looking one? It was difficult to judge with him sitting down, but she thought maybe he’d grown since she last saw him.
The alien jerked upright from being hunched over. He didn’t look wounded or weak anymore, even with the blood stained stick protruding from his shoulder. The breakfast she didn’t have scrambled in her stomach. Death stared up at her out of acidic eyes.
“You call me an infant?” He reminded her of the way coals smoldered red when you blew on them. She should’ve dug the pit deeper. Her muscles still ached from climbing in and out of the hole, clutching a bucket of dirt, for hours every day. It was ironic. The pit, where she’d spent so much time being punished, meant she was lucky that she had an existing pit to use. If only she’d dug it much deeper.
“You’re smaller than the alien on the TC, the ones that ate the humans.” The Lord help her if he was a baby alien. What if he grew some more while she waited to hand him over and the trap wouldn’t hold him anymore.
The alien slammed his head back against the dirt wall, and she winced. Whatever rumbled in his chest didn’t bode well for her.
He straightened, seeming unaware of the stick protruding from his shoulder. Did demons, no aliens, even feel pain? “Zyrgins do not eat humans.” He managed to convey his low opinion of her intelligence.
He might say they didn’t, but she didn’t have to believe him. “How fast do you grow?”
“I. Am not. A baby.” He thumped his head against the dirt wall with each word. His neck arched and veins and muscles moved under his tough looking skin. She’d never seen anyone so muscled. Not even the Space Ranger she’d seen on the TC before it broke.
She leaned over farther, grabbing her long black braid before it could hang down into the pit. “If you’re not a baby, how come you’re so small? And you’ve grown since that first time you came here.” She’d thought this one scary big that day, until she’d seen that horrendous monster eating a human. She shuddered. Blood and pieces of meat had flown everywhere when the alien had bitten off a human’s head, crunching on it with big spiky teeth.
He seemed at a loss for words. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and he eyed the trap door in a way that caused her heartbeat to go all crazy again. “I just came out of my third change,” he gritted out.
She had the strong impression that he wanted to keep thumping his head against the wall. Or jump out and choke her. She eyed the steel grid. Parts of it were rusted. Even if he was a baby, he was still bigger than her. Who knew how strong their young were? “I don’t know what you mean by your third change.”
He glared up at her. “We go through three changes and shed our skins.”
She recoiled. “Like a snake?”
He bared long ugly incisors, and she recoiled farther.
“I am a grown Zyrgin warrior.” He snarled at her, and she retreated far enough that she could still see him, but not so close that he could jump and grab her through the grid.
He was trapped, she reminded herself. She was safe from those teeth. She hoped. “I saw one of you eat a human with my own eyes. He held a man in his claw. So if you’re not a baby how come you’re not big enough to hold someone in your hand?” Never in her life did she expect to see something that awful. She w
as lucky she’d run into a smaller alien all those years ago, or she might’ve been eaten. At least it would’ve been over with quick. Joseph’s punishments had been never ending.
She inched forward again and peaked over the rim of the hole. This alien sitting in the pit of atonement, muscled arms over his massive chest, fascinated her as much as he scared her. He was built a lot different than human men. Even the space ranger didn’t have that many muscles. Everywhere on his body, they bulged and rippled, and she had to remind herself that evil sometimes came disguised as beauty. Because, despite his snake-like skin and evil eyes, he had a wild, almost hypnotic beauty.
She’d dug the pit deeper and planted sharpened sticks at the bottom. One of the sharpened spears had gone deep into his shoulder. Her stomach turned. It had to be painful. He slouched down every now and then, and she had the awful feeling he had to remind himself to appear weak and wounded. “Where did you see a giant Zyrgin eat a human?” he asked her. He absently wiggled the stick in the wound.
Susannah’s stomach turned again when blood spurted out of the wound. She gritted her teeth. She wouldn’t feel sympathy, she wouldn’t. Because of him, Brother Josephatus had put her in the pit of atonement. What was wrong with the alien? Didn’t he feel pain? And why did he act as if she didn’t know anything that happened in the world?
“On the TC.” It was strange, being able to admit that she had a TC without fear of punishment. It showed this creature that she was modern and informed and not a backward person. Before it stopped working, the TC had been a treasure trove of information about the outside world. She’d been inconsolable when it just died. After everything had been taken from her, it had felt as if she was left naked and bruised.
