by Maree Dry
John came back and, taking the child from her, handed her to Charles.
Charles was bleeding and unsteady on his feet. “I can’t leave you with him,” he said.
“She belongs to me. Help your fellow weak ones to escape and make sure I never see you again.” Suddenly John had a sword in his hand.
Julia refused to think on that. So he had a sword, one of the reverend’s men must’ve dropped it. As fast as he moved, he probably picked it up without her noticing.
“Go, Charles, I’ll be all right. I know him from before.” She had no doubt John would kill Charles at the slightest provocation.
“Be behind me at all times,” John said and moved to the stairs. He looked toward Charles. “You need to be fast. They will chase us but soon they will search for you.
“Okay.”
John went up the stairs, still dragging her behind him. At the top he stopped and angled his head, as if he listened to something she couldn’t hear.
“There are men with guns outside, waiting to kill us if we come out. The reverend has gone for more weapons.”
“How did you--”
“Stay here until I come for you.” He bent down and laid his forehead against her for a brief moment, and then he was gone.
She looked down at Charles and shivered when she heard the screams and shooting outside.
“He seems to be bullet proof.”
“I don’t know what he’s on but I’m just glad he’s here,” Charles said.
She nodded and screamed when a huge hand clamped onto her shoulder.
“We go now,” John said.
“Please, we have to make sure Charles gets away with the children.”
He cupped her cheek and his thumb rubbed over her lips. “Are you concerned for the children or Charles,” he asked gently.
“The children,” she lied, one hundred percent sure that if she admitted to worrying about Charles, John would kill him.
He nodded and motioned the other prisoners out. He killed a few more of the reverend’s men before Charles disappeared with the other captives.
She took one last glance at their retreating backs then followed John to the trees and toward her house. The reverend and his men didn’t appear to try to stop them but she knew they would come for them.
“Where are we going?”
“To your dwelling.”
“You know where I live?”
How long had he known? Did she go around her business happily convinced she was safe while he stalked her? Her heartbeat sped up until it hammered in her ear so loudly she could barely hear her own voice.
“That’s the first place the reverend will look for us,” she said. Could she convince him to let her go? How big a hold did the drugs have on him? He lifted her into his arms and ran. Everything blurred around her and she hung on for dear life. “How can you manage to run this fast,” she asked, her words disappearing in the wind whipping around them.
“I am warrior.”
John opened her back door and sat her down inside her kitchen. He turned and looked her over and she swallowed. She knew that look in his eyes, had seen it many times before she fled from her family. He made one of those strange growly noises, took her wrist in his hand, and rubbed a thumb over the purple-blue bruises covering her wrist and forearm.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “I probably banged my arm against one of the cages when we escaped.”
He kept rubbing, setting her heart to pounding. She lifted her chin while she glared at him. “So now I suppose you want a pound of my flesh?”
He cocked his head in that strange motion. An almost inhuman movement, a small voice at the back of her head insisted. She pushed that thought away.
“Why would I want to take some of your flesh? I do not eat humans.”
She felt her jaw loosen and her mouth dropped open. Well, that settled the question on how big a hold the drugs had on his mind.
“I’m not sleeping with you,” she spelled out.
The sad truth was that she would do whatever it took not to have to go back to Denver. She only prayed using whatever drug he’d used didn’t make him vulnerable to drug resistant pocks. She’d prefer death over that living hell.
“We will have many hours of sex making. Now you will remain quiet.”
He focused on her TC sitting on her small coffee table in the lounge, which Julia could see from where they stood.
“I require you to pack the things you want to bring with you.” He walked over to the window and stood just to the side of it. She knew from there he could see if anyone approached the house from the front. She’d stood in just that pose many times, trying to spot the demon coming, sometimes afraid the reverend and his crowd would come to her little house.
She hurried forward and grabbed his arm. “Where are you taking me?”
Ignoring her, he grunted deep in his throat. It was as if he was two people. The one she knew years before and then this mysterious stranger who’d looked after her during their captivity.
The grunting noises lasted a while. Who did he think he talked to?
The grunting stopped and he speared her with a look so intense she jumped. “You will stop asking questions, collect your belongings, and come with me.”
“Come where with you? If you think I’ll meekly return to the family--”
“I am not taking you to your family.”
“I can’t afford to believe you.”
“You will be safe now. I have swords on your house.”
“Wait, what do you mean you have swords on my house? Does that mean someone’s watching my house?” How long had he been watching her?
Those strange blue eyes looked her up and down. She shivered. It was almost as if he touched her with his warm hands.
“I will give you good sex making.”
“I--you--what?” Now she sounded like the drug-crazed idiot.
“You will live with me and I will give you many hours of good sex making.” He suddenly appeared right in front of her, lifted her chin, and leaned down into her. “I do not bargain with a breeder. I decide the number of hours.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about--”
“You will maintain a pleasing round appearance.”
She had to get away from this crazed madman. Julia ignored the small stab to her heart at the thought of leaving him. He’d kept her safe from the reverend. Who knew what’s going on in his drug-crazed mind?
“Why don’t I go and pack so we can get out of here?”
He stared at her and the silence pulsed with danger. The air around them thickened and she swore the sun dimmed. He nodded. She hurried to her bedroom and grabbed her modified TC. She had necessary items and money stashed outside town. That little trick she’d learned from Natalie. If she could just get away from John. Creep. How could he say that to her to her face? Just when she thought he’d improved in a big way.
“Pleasing round appearance indeed.”
She opened the window and threw her leg over the window sill, hoping John had lied about someone watching her house. Large hands clamped over her hips and drew her back inside.
Chapter 7
“Let me go.” She kicked back, aiming at his knees. “Ouch, dammit.” She wriggled her foot. “What are you made of, rock?
“No, Zyrgin genes.”
“Stop saying these strange things.” She kicked and squirmed again but he was too strong. “I’m not going with you.”
“Natalie is waiting to talk to you.”
She stilled with her foot raised for a good kick. “What? Where is she?”
In the rush to get away from the reverend and to ditch John, she’d forgotten he knew her friend.
He put her down and, for one moment, she seriously considered trying to dive through the window.
“On the TC.” He took her arm and steered her toward the living room.
“You don’t have to hold me so tight,” she told him. “I’m not going anywhere un
til I’ve talked to Natalie.”
If Natalie really was on the TC, Julia had to talk to her. It seriously frightened her that John knew Natalie. How long had he been stalking Julia?
“You have to be quick. The reverend will come soon.” He stopped in front of the TC on her coffee table and ignored her attempts to dislodge his hand from her arm.
She nodded, but she had every intention of getting away from him once she’d talked to Natalie. The TC on button was active, though no image of Natalie hovered over the table. The last time Julia had talked to her there’d been no sound either. That had been such a long time ago. Who knew what might have happened to her in the meantime? Julia had been worried sick but hadn’t been able to make contact or hack into Natalie’s system.
“Natalie?” she asked.
“It’s me, Julia,” Natalie answered. Julia narrowed her eyes at John. “How do I know I’m not talking to a voice synthesizer?”
“You do not,” John said.
“Julia, there is no time to explain. Please trust the man you know as John.”
The man she knew as John. “How do you know him?”
There was no earthly reason why Natalie, who’d been raised on an isolated mountain, should know the enforcer of the Denver Mafia.
“Please, Julia, there’s no time to explain, just go with him,” Natalie pleaded.
“How do I know it’s really you?”
Julia had been raised to be careful who she trusted. It would have been wise for her not to make friends. To stay a while and move on. In spite of that, she had told Natalie, Margaret, and Sarah more than was wise. Had stayed when she should have left years ago. They knew she ran from her family, although they thought it was simply her father’s violent job that drove her away. They didn’t know about what she’d seen.
Silence.
Natalie had warned her that she could be out of contact for long periods, and Julia had desperately hoped it was just her TC acting up. That the snow kept her holed up in the mountains.
Now Julia’s imagination came up with frightening possibilities. What if her family had somehow gotten hold of Natalie and they held her friend captive in order to force Julia back to them. Vomit surged up from her stomach. Maybe her father had told them of that day.
Another thought occurred to her. If she went with John, the demon couldn’t find her. Although now might be a good time for him to make an appearance. While he and John fought, she’d run away as far and as fast as her legs could carry her.
“How do you know what’s happening here?” Julia demanded.
Natalie was stuck on the mountain with the last of the snow slowly melting. And Julia couldn’t help but be suspicious. Very few people could resist money and, although she would trust Natalie above all others, she’d seen what the promise of credits did to people.
“The reverend contacted your family,” Natalie said.
“How did he know about my family?” she asked, fighting the urge to run.
How did Natalie know that? She hadn’t come down from that mountain in a long while.
“I don’t know, but you need to go with John now.”
“No.”
“Listen, Julia, we can talk about this later. All you have to know now is that you can trust John to bring you to safety.” The urgency in Natalie’s voice sounded so convincing.
“How on earth did you become involved in all this?” Julia asked her.
“Uhh--I managed to speak to Margaret--and she...well, she told me.”
“I see.” Julia could well believe that Margaret might have heard something. She, Natalie, and Sarah had been friends for almost five years. But their friendship with Margaret only started about three years ago. Margaret was older than the rest of them but she’d fit into their little group immediately. Lately, she’d been very chummy with the reverend and Julia would have preferred to believe she had no choice. But something in Margaret’s eyes had given Julia pause.
“Julia, please pack what you need and let John bring you up here,” Natalie pleaded.
“Tell me first just how you know John?”
He was someone she had hated and feared ever since she’d been sixteen years old. But she did not like the thought of John and Natalie so chummy. Not at all.
There was a short silence and then Natalie said, “Please, just trust John. He’ll get you here.”
Someone was standing over Natalie and telling her what to say. Julia was sure of it. Every instinct screamed at her to run. But John would catch her before she even made it to the door.
“Remember the first time we met? I asked if you ever watched the space ranger. What did you answer me?” Julia asked her.
“I said, ‘Who doesn’t watch the most handsome ranger in the galaxy?’”
John made a strange growling, almost animal, sound. Julia desperately ignored it and focused on talking to Natalie.
“All right. I’m sure it’s you I’m talking to but I’m not budging until I know how you know John.”
The TC abruptly disconnected.
Her spine tingled, as if tiny computer chips were imbedded in her flesh and digging into her bones. The atmosphere changed. The air became fraught with danger. Every hair on her body stood on end.
“Turn around, Julia.” John’s voice was different, more gravelly, that guttural sound frighteningly familiar.
Slowly she turned.
They stared at each other while she heard the old fashioned clock in her kitchen tick away the seconds to her doom. The air shimmered around him and John disappeared to be replaced by the ugly green and copper demon. She should’ve been surprised, but the moment he spoke in his own voice she’d known. She should’ve known when he said she was round.
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not possible.”
Her heart stuttered and the blood stalled in her veins. The TC article on demons flashed into her mind. His eyes boiled red as if some hell continually played out behind them. His skin glowed green and coppery with pronounced raised veins crisscrossing his muscular body. With those red eyes and the ridge on his head, he looked like a huge demon.
She stumbled back from him and held her hands out in front of her. “Stay, stay away from me.”
“You can show your disgust of me later. Now we have to leave.”
While she still stared at him, the red in his eyes faded into black tendrils until they appeared like bottomless tar pits again.
She had the absurd impulse to reassure him that she didn’t find him disgusting. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Don’t come any closer.”
He didn’t move, just cocked his head again in that strange gesture. She should’ve recognized it when he was in the John disguise. She should’ve recognized many things.
“What are you going to do with me? Where will you take me?” Now she understood his super human strength.
“Take you home,” he said.
“What are you?”
“We do not have time for questions.”
Her stomach heaved in a wave so heavy she jerked where she stood, clutching the door. “You’re holding Natalie captive as well?”
How many of them waited on that mountain?
“She is not a captive. She is...”
“What? What is it that you don’t want to tell me?’
Now she would have to go with him to make sure Natalie was okay. She bit her nails. How on earth would she manage to help Natalie escape the demons and, on top of that, rescue Sarah, too? Julia had never won any of the battles she fought with the demon. And she’d had the impression he’d been playing with her. Like a large predator playing with its food before devouring it.
He took her hand and drew it away from her mouth without answering her, and she carefully tried to take a step away from him. His grip on her hand tightened enough to stop her. Why her? Why in this whole town did he decide to terrorize her?
“We will discuss this later.”
He pocketed her TC. She frowned when she saw a pocket form on his
uniform and then disappear. Now she noticed the strange texture of his uniform-type clothes. The best description she could come up with was soft metal. No wonder his clothes had felt strange whenever she touched him.
“What are you?”
“Not a demon. I am Zyrgin,” he said with pride.
“What’s a Zyrgin?”
He’d said that before and she’d thought he’d been delusional with drugs.
“I am from the planet Zyrgin.”
“Planet? You’re an alien?” Oh great. Who knew what other powers he had besides being bullet proof? Now she’d never get away from him.
He glanced at the door. “We have to hurry.”
He moved with that blurring speed. Throwing her over his shoulder, he raced out the back door.
“No! What about my stuff?”
The breath had almost left her lungs as she’d impacted with his hard shoulder. If there were more like him, she and Natalie were in trouble.
“Your belongings will be brought to you.”
“Help, someone help me,” she shouted as loud as she could manage while bouncing on his shoulder.
She heard her front door splinter as the alien ran with blurring speed out the back, carrying her over his shoulder.
Chapter 8
“Put me down, I can run--”
A bullet laser blast singed past her.
“No, don’t put me down. Don’t stop. Run faster. Faster,” she screamed, when another blast narrowly missed her, and tried to climb over his shoulder and down his front. She only managed to hit his chin with her knee.
“Still, woman,” he grunted and tightened his grip.
“Go, go, go.”
Bouncing around over his shoulder, while he moved with disturbing speed, made speech impossible. Fear made it possible.
She frantically slammed her fists against his back. “Ouch, run faster dammit.”
Another laser beam blasted above their heads.
