Spinning around, I swung the sword in a diagonal swipe. Both soldiers jumped back so fast they tripped over their own feet in their hurry. Knowing I had a few seconds of safety while they were down, I whipped back to the stocky man in enough time to block yet another bullet. Then, I heard something that terrified me in a way I’d never been terrified before.
Emily was screaming.
Her voice cut through the air, carrying over the sounds of my slashing sword and the yelling soldiers so clearly that it was as if she was beside me. I jerked around to face the ship and saw the three men who had disappeared into it now racing down the ramp with Emily in tow. She was encased between them with two holding each of her arms and one pushing her forward from the back. Her eyes were wide with terror, and they were pinned on me.
“Let go of me!” she was shrieking. Her shoulders slammed from left to right in an attempt to shake herself free of their grasp, but to no avail. “Get off!”
In all of my years as a warrior and all of my years as an Elder, I had never felt so murderous. The very blood in my veins seared with rage, and every ounce of reason I possessed evaporated in an instant. Seeing her manhandled like that, yelling for freedom and wearing an expression of pure fear, awakened a beast inside of me I hadn’t known existed. The corners of my vision became smoky and black, and a hatred unlike any I’d ever felt took me over as if I was drowning.
I let out a primal, animalistic roar of fury, raised my sword above my head, and brought it crashing down. It sank directly into the gut of one of the soldiers who had tried to sneak up on me. Immediately, a fountain of blood projected from his mouth and splattered my front. Then, he went limp. I wrenched the blade from his lifeless body and rounded on the other man on the ground beside him, who tried to scuttle away from me on all fours just like Emily had when we’d first met. This time, however, I was ruthless. Without even moving from my spot, I lunged forward and pierced right through his chest. There was a stomach-turning crunch as my blade split effortlessly through his ribs. His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, he gasped, and then he became as motionless as his friend.
“Bastard!” I heard behind me. There was another crack of a gunshot, and I dropped to my knees in a flash. I screamed in pain as paralyzing sharpness bloomed in my side. The soldiers with Emily let out cries of anger, and I watched them release her as they started sprinting toward me with their guns raised.
The pain I felt seemed to dull as I watched the men racing to me. Tugging my sword free from the dead man’s chest, I flipped backward and speared the stout shooter through the skull. His gun dropped to the ground as his fingers lost hold, and he tilted back until he collapsed. The legless man next to him, Stevens, scrabbled for the gun, but I kicked it out of the way and stabbed him between the eyes just as I had the other. He was dead in an instant.
Gunshots rang out behind me, and I spun yet again. All three of the remaining soldiers were firing round after round at me. I raised my sword in front of my body and used it to fend off the bullets, creating a song of loud clanging noises when each connected with the blade and bounced off. With a sickening swoop in my stomach, I realized I could no longer see Emily and had no idea where she’d gone. I started to run toward the ship to look for her, heading straight toward the approaching soldiers, but a bullet flew by my ear. It missed me by only an inch, and I was distracted again.
It was obvious the men didn’t want to get nearer to me than they had to after witnessing how I’d ended the lives of their cohorts, but I wasn’t going to let them get away peacefully. I sprang into the air, joining forces with the wind, and used the breeze to fly right to them. Without even going to ground again, I soared past them and sliced the head of one right off his body. The other two gaped in horror at the sight of his headless form folding at the waist and collapsing to the ground. They were unable to see me as I flew on the winds, but I could see them, and I swiped my blade through the neck of the second with ease.
The final soldier was in complete panic now. His eyes darted all around, trying to catch a glimpse of me. I watched as he raised his gun and began shooting in every direction. Then, there were no more cracks of bullets leaving the barrel, and I heard clicking as he pulled the trigger repeatedly. He was out of ammo. I swept down on him, this time landing and allowing him to see me. He shouted in surprised fright and tried to jump back, but, before he could, I sent my sword sailing into his open mouth. The blade burst through his throat and came out the other side, and then he was dead.
The eight bodies of the human men were scattered in the dirt all around me. As I yanked my sword from the last soldier’s mouth, I realized my entire body seemed to be spattered with blood. Thick, gelatinous, brownish-crimson liquid bathed my chest and patterned my abdomen, and my palm was slick with the sticky wetness. Panting, I dropped my sword to my side and sprinted toward the ship.
Emily was nowhere to be seen. I raced up the ramp into the main corridor, shooting glances into every room I passed until I finally reached the command center. The cage had been deactivated, the lever once again dangling over my captain’s chair in the center of the room. Everything she’d had for her comfort was still lying on the floor where she had been just before the attack, but she wasn’t there.
I bellowed, “Emily!” My ears pricked, listening for any sign of a response, but none came. Even the bead in my ear was silent.
She was gone.
10
Emily
There were so many emotions crashing through me that I couldn’t even think. The only thing I could do was grip the bars of my cage with white-knuckled, sweaty hands and listen to the sounds of a fight outside.
Honestly, when I’d heard the man calling to us, I hadn’t been excited. I hadn’t felt relief or gratitude for being saved. In fact, the only thing I could clearly identify feeling was panic, and I realized a very large part of me simply didn’t want to leave Duke. Plus, I knew the man—or men, as he most likely had others with him—was either going to take Duke prisoner or kill him. Both thoughts terrified me to my very core.
From my cage inside the ship, I was able to hear very faint scuffling and shouts of battle. When I heard the clanking of boots on metal, however, my heart seemed to stop beating. I knew it was the sound of footsteps on the ship’s mesh-like metal floors, and I knew it wasn’t Duke. My intuition was right. A few moments later, three human soldiers burst into the command center with guns raised and pointed at me.
I fell to the floor and scrambled back, afraid they were going to shoot me before they realized I wasn’t an A’li-uud. One of the men, however, glanced around the room and lowered his gun when he found I was the only one there.
“Lower your weapons,” he intoned to the other two.
They put down their guns as well, and all three approached my cage. The one who had spoken addressed me.
“How do we get you out of there?” he asked. He was talking very quickly like time was ticking away, and he needed to hurry.
At first, I didn’t want to answer him. The part of me that wanted to stay with Duke screamed at me to keep my mouth shut and tell them nothing. The other part of me, which was the logical, rational part, refused to bend to the whims of my heart, though. I raised my hand and pointed at the dangling lever near the window. All three men followed my finger, and one with a thick white scar over his left eyebrow trotted over to the window and yanked the lever.
The bars of the cage groaned and clanged as they unlocked from their positions. Then, they began descending into the floor until all that was left around me was open space. Though there had been nothing impeding my air supply, I suddenly felt as if I could breathe again. I drew in a long, deep breath.
“Come on,” the first man said, holding out a hand to me. “We’ll take you to safety.”
I looked at his hand. I knew I shouldn’t hesitate, that I should take it at once and flee with my armed and trained saviors, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The sounds of gunshots and yells wafted to my ear
s from outside, and they only served to steel me against the wise decision I was supposed to make.
“No,” I said. “I’m staying here.”
The man’s brows furrowed, and all three men exchanged glances. It was evident by their faces that they thought I’d lost my mind. He looked back at me and jabbed his hand at me again.
“You can’t stay here. The alien had you in a cage, for God’s sake! Who knows what it was planning to do to you?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving,” I replied. I tried to sound resolute and confident in my decision, but my voice wavered with uncertainty. The man’s eyebrows furrowed again as he picked up on it, and then he hopped forward.
His fingers closed around my wrist, and I was tugged up against him. “It must have done some mind control on her or something,” he said to his fellow soldiers. “Davidson, grab her other arm. Bellows, follow behind. I don’t want her trying anything.”
I twisted my hand as my other wrist was seized by the soldier with the scar he’d called Davidson and started to scream. “No! You don’t understand! I’m not under mind control, I swear!” I kicked out with one leg to try and strike Davidson, but he didn’t even flinch as my foot made contact with the side of his knee. They started running altogether, dragging me with them and forcing me to trip over my own feet. All the while, I continued screaming.
They forced me into the corridor toward the exit ramp, and I would have fallen flat on my face if they hadn’t been gripping me so tightly. The man behind me, Bellows, was shoving me forward between the shoulder blades, and I was rapidly losing sense of my hands because the soldiers on either side of me were holding my wrists so hard. We stumbled down the ramp in an awkward run like a many-legged, many-headed monster. As the sun burst into my eyes for the first time in a month, I was blinded, but I could see through the haze of brilliant light that Duke was among four soldiers and had his sword raised.
I stared at the sight in complete shock. One of the men appeared to have no lower legs. Another was hovering over him with a gun pointed directly at Duke and rage on his face. The other two were on the ground opposite the first two, also with guns.
Suddenly, I was shoved forward so hard I was actually lifted off the ground for a moment, and reality hit me. I started shrieking again.
“Let go of me! Get off!” I jerked my body as much as I could from side to side to try and throw them off of me, but the only thing that had anything in the way of movement was my shoulders, and they seemed unfazed by my attempts.
A soul-crushing roar filled the air, and I realized it was coming from Duke. He’d thrown his head back with his mouth open wide. The roar exploded from his mouth like rapids through a dam. Then, he started moving so quickly I almost couldn’t process what he was doing. His sword flew gracefully through the air and came to rest in the stomach of one of the soldiers, and I watched as blood burst from the man’s mouth. It covered Duke’s front like paint and spewed across the Mojave floor like vomit. Duke didn’t pause, though. He tore the sword from the man and sank it into the next, the blade burrowing right into the human’s heart. Even from a distance, I could hear the man’s ribcage cracking.
The three soldiers around me let out yells of fury. I felt their hands drop from my body, and they nearly knocked me over as they took off running toward their counterparts. All three raised their guns as they ran and aimed for Duke. My heart dropped right into my belly as I realized I could be watching the last moment of Duke’s life.
He didn’t seem to care, though. He rounded on the two soldiers behind him, and I watched his sword lift again. I couldn’t breathe. I could hardly even stand, especially now that I was without the support of the men. With my heart and my head battling one another, I watched Duke sink his blade into the head of the soldier hovering over his legless friend.
I needed to make a choice. Every fiber of my being wanted to stay, to run back into the ship, find a weapon and defend Duke. I didn’t want to kill anyone, especially humans, and I didn’t think I was capable of such a thing. The idea of Duke being killed, however, sent a streak of pain through me so thick and so unbearable it rendered me breathless. No matter how much I’d wanted to deny my feelings for him, this moment faced me with the bald truth of the matter. They were very real and very deep.
Regardless of my emotions, though, I knew I needed to recognize the moral and sensible side of the situation. I had been kept in a cage for what I assumed was around a month, and now I was watching Duke slaughter members of my race like they were nothing more than flies. No amount of feelings for him would change that. He had ventured to Earth in the first place to commit the ultimate act of genocide and exterminate every last human on Earth. To think I would be excluded from that count was silly and naïve. Even if I was, even if he had no intention of killing me, I didn’t see how I could willingly stay with someone who had kidnapped me, imprisoned me, and was now murdering people before my very eyes.
I couldn’t.
Again, my mind refused to fall victim to the desires of my heart, and I made my decision. As Duke shoved his sword into the legless soldier and the final three men advanced on him, I ran. My legs carried me clumsily around the ship to its backside, nearly sending me flying as I avoided tripping over myself several times. I ran so fast that the sound of my feet pounding on the hard, cracked dirt made me think of a herd of wild horses. My lungs started to hurt within seconds from the sheer power of my gasps for oxygen, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. If I did, I’d go back.
I raced toward one of the rocky mounds that burst up from the desert ground. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I recognized it. If I recalled correctly, there was a ranger station and a small outhouse on the other side of the mound. A stitch started on my side, which I reached down to squeeze and alleviate, but I refused to slow down or rest. There were still gunshots bursting over and over again in the growing distance behind me, so I knew Duke was still fighting. I didn’t know how long it would last, though, and I had to put as much space between him and me as possible.
By the time I reached the north side of the mound and came across the ranger station, there were no more sounds of battle. I didn’t know if I was just too far away now or if it was over, but I no longer cared. My heart was throbbing, my legs felt like jelly, and I couldn’t breathe without making a high-pitched whistling noise of wheezing. Stumbling against the station doorframe, my knees buckled, and I saw the most horrifying sight I had ever seen.
Lying on the ground next to a stained, battered office chair with wheels there was a ranger. He looked as though he was in his mid-forties or early fifties, but his mouth was open in a perfect ‘O,’ and his eyes were wide open with fear. In the very center of his short-sleeved, khaki uniform shirt, there was a broad blossom of dark blood extending from a thick, deep gash. He was dead.
Finally having regained some ability to breathe, I gasped. Instantly, I was met with the most repugnant smell I had ever encountered. My stomach rolled, and I wretched as I realized it was the odor of death. The ranger was rotting. I had no idea how long he’d been dead, but it had certainly been long enough to permeate the small, one-room station with the stench.
Gagging violently, I brought my arm up to my face and wrapped my nose in the crease of my elbow. It didn’t do much to mask the stink, but I didn’t have any other choice. I darted across the room, making sure to avoid the corpse, and grabbed the receiver used to communicate to other stations around the preserve. Pinching my nose, I turned it on and placed the mouthpiece to my lips.
“Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?” I cried into it.
The white noise of static burst from the speakers as a response, and I waited to hear someone speak back to me. Several long seconds went by, and I decided to try again.
“Please, if you can hear me, say something!” I begged. “I’ve been a hostage for a month, I don’t know what’s going on! I need someone to hear me! Please!”
Again, white noise filled the room. My thr
oat filled with a lump, and I felt tears burning in my eyes. Given what I’d learned from Duke about the A’li-uud’s mission to decimate humanity, it didn’t seem likely that Rangers would have been sitting idly at their posts, listening to their receivers. I couldn’t help but feel the sinking sense of hopelessness, though, as only static replied to my plea.
Leaving the receiver on, I left the station and breathed in fresh air. The sun was high in the sky, beating on me like fists, but I preferred its assault to the horrid stench I would have to endure if I remained in the shade of the small building. I eyed the outhouse nearby, but there was no sign of life or movement there, either.
It dawned on me, then, that I might actually be alone in the desert. There was probably no one around for miles. Perhaps there were no survivors in the entire state. The soldiers might have been my last chance at rescue.
The tears which had come unbidden into my eyes in the ranger station surfaced again, and, as the first one rolled down my cheek, I fell to my knees and sobbed.
11
Duke
When I realized Emily was gone, I didn’t bother to check my wound and treat myself. I tilted my face upward, felt the wind, and jumped into it in a split second. I had no idea where she’d gone, which direction she’d chosen, but I followed my hunter’s instinct.
The expanse of desert to my left was the direction I’d gone when I’d found her. That was where she’d had her strange wooden stand, which she’d told me was an easel for painting during her time with me. It was also where the black square was that the vehicles were on. My inclination would have been to go there under the assumption she’d return to a place she was familiar with, but I knew she hadn’t gone that way. It was a wide, open space with very few trees and no rocky hills. If she’d run in that direction, I would have been able to see her.
Duke: A Paranormal Scifi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 2 Page 7
