Chapter 19
Ani
“Don’t kill him. You already cut off his wings and shot him... I don’t think he’ll make it anyway. And what more terrible way to die than slowly after watching the person you were supposed to protect get captured?”
It kills me to even say it. But as it stands, talking recklessly is the only way I can keep my life. Bargaining isn’t exactly an option for me since he can drag me away.
“Just let him die naturally and I will go with you,” I add.
He lets out another honk. “He will waste away on the ground and get his carcass eaten by things he has never seen,” the alien gleefully says as he aims his gun at Szhe’ka.
I continue to follow the path of the barrel, making sure it is pointing at me at all times. I have to say, it is terrifying, but I try to be brave mostly because that is all I can be.
Be the Brave Bitch, be the Brave Bitch, I chant inanely to myself.
Unfortunately, the only way I can do that is to surrender.
If the only way I can save Szhe’ka is by leaving him, then as much as I would really not want to, that is what I have to do.
This time, I’ll have to do it all by myself.
I already know that escape is possible because of Ree and I know it’ll be harder to accomplish with their eyes on me.
However, quitting might as well mean death.
I’ll survive and I will come back for him, no matter what happens.
I swallow hard, hoping as soon as I pull away from him his body doesn’t topple over, then step forward. When there isn’t a thump behind me I let out a puff of air, then shakily step toward the alien.
“Just back up until you are out of range and I will do whatever you want,” I say, careful to keep the tremble out of my voice.
It surprises me when the alien does as I ask, matching me step for step until there are enough trees between us and where Szhe’ka is slumped.
Helpless. My heart aches that I am leaving him with that injury, but another part of me feels powerful that I have done what little I could to protect him.
It helps take some of the sting out of the situation when the dance I am in with the grey blob shifts and he is walking me by gunpoint through the woods.
It was a capitulation, I remind myself. I am not completely powerless.
Still, surrender and defeat hurts. Another tear falls out of my left eye and I wipe it away quietly so that the bastard doesn’t see.
Without Szhe’ka’s intimidatingly large body to shade me, the sun burns hotter, the forest seems even more intimidating, and it just doesn’t feel right.
I don’t even know if I did the right thing by leaving him unconscious and alone in the middle of a forest. What if he dies from blood loss or an infection from his gunshot wound? Or his wing stumps getting infected?
A passing predator could use him for its next meal, or another hunter passing by could finish him off. There are too many ways, known and unknown, that this could go very wrong and honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to live with myself if he ends up dead because of me.
The memory of his mangled wings resurfaces in my mind and I look back at the alien with all the hatred I can muster. It was his kind that did that to Szhe’ka. Aliens that are capable of cruel things, more wicked than I can imagine. Aliens that see everything as inferior. It’s infuriating.
The walk is long and while I do not recognize most of the forest, since it’s all purples, greens, and browns, I am almost certain that this is not the same path that Szhe’ka and I took.
Honestly, it’s really more terrifying to realize how close to their camp we were all this time.
Almost like we’ve been running for our lives and they’ve been tailing us closely.
Going back would mean hell to pay for escaping. All my instincts are screaming at me to run but my self-preservation is vividly aware of the weapon that can take my life at any moment. I have never wished, more than ever, for this to be a dream. A vivid imagination of some sort and not my reality.
When faced with extreme stress, my body usually responds with panic.
My throat is closing and I’m doing all I can to keep myself awake, pinching my own arms to stay active.
When my feet slows, he pushes roughly, throwing me ahead so I don’t slow him down.
unlike what I’d like to imagine, there are no saviours hiding in the trees or ambushes ready to save me.
I’m truly alone, left with a fate worse than death.
“Slow down and I will make you regret it.”
There’s really no wiggle room here. A part of me wants to study his gross form some more for places I can hurt him.
He is close enough to me that if I do any of those cool movie type kicks, maybe I could knock off his head.
Except he doesn’t really have a head or a neck.
He is a blob of a thing, gray and gross, with pink goo endlessly oozing out of unseen pores and he has three short, stumpy, trunk-like legs coming out of the bottom of his misshapen body.
I can’t keep my eyes on him for too long or I’ll throw up, so I whip my head forward.
There is no fighting this thing. What’s to say he can’t just regenerate or split himself?
Two of these things? I don’t stand a chance against it.
It’s even more unlikely to pull off a stunt that would involve claiming his weapon.
As much as I am incapable, he’s capable of much more. His gaze sweeps my body at intervals, lingering on my behind.
“Such a waste that you are cargo,” he says with a leer in his voice.
“I guess I am worth more than you can touch. That is the bigger shame,” I say, the Bitch once again settled like a comforting presence.
“Soon, you will beg for death, and it will not come.”
“Funny. I know you will experience the same. I may not be a strong believer in getting what you give but I know you will not be able to run your little operation for much longer.”
He lets out a wet snort. “Nothing can save you.”
“I am not the only one that escaped, am I? There are some who have evaded you. There will be more to rise against you.”
“You speak of what you know nothing about.”
This time, I have the freedom to laugh.
“Empires fall, idiot. You should at least know that. You won’t always have the power to abduct people. When you become the weak ones, you will realize what I mean.”
I really want to be the one to put a bullet through his head, so I hope he doesn’t have time for that realization.
He shoves me forward, tripping me to the ground. From here, I can see his body towering over me, beady eyes lingering on the thin material that separates me from complete nudity. He leans down, pulling me close by my hair, close enough for me to smell his putrid breath.
“Do you want to know the wonders of technology? I am sure you cannot comprehend the kind of technology we need to make you more than just human. You are expensive cargo but I will make it so nobody knows you have been defiled. I will take my time to make you submit.”
I don’t know if it’s my body’s defensive mechanism or the technology they used but heat begins to pool in my groin. I can recognize this feeling, having experienced it several times with Szhe’ka. This irrational attraction to anything moving, whether I want it or not.
“You can’t do anything to me,” the Bitch tells him, the more rational part of my brain retreating.
He licks one side of my face, pressing a gun to my head with his free flipper hand.
“You have no knowledge of what I am capable of, and now that you have been touched, there might as well be pleasure.”
I’m not scared. I’m terrified. I’m completely at his mercy and he can hurt me.
Their disgusting shape is misleading, I realize now that I feel the strength of his grip. He can break me, worse than any other man has. He’s not the first to will my body to submit to him but he might well be the last.
Humans never managed to break me so maybe an alien will.
A harsh laugh suddenly escapes my throat. “I may be bluffing but you are too. Threats are all you are capable of.”
“Do not make this a challenge. You will lose.”
“I have nothing else to lose,” I throw back.
My life, my fame, my money, Szhe’ka, all of that is nothing but a dream of a life I used to have.
None of that is helping me here. The only thing I can hold on to is dying in a strange forest with no one to help.
With nothing else to hold on to, the Bitch rises up stronger than ever.
Her anger. Her guilt. Her pain and… her revenge.
The cleaner sense of rage I felt when I saw Szhe’ka’s wings tries to rise, but I’m too terrified to let go of the Bitch.
“Shall I teach you, human, how to properly spread your legs?”
The glint in his eyes tells me he is definitely going to do it. I’m going to feel pain beyond compare and begin a life that was previously unimaginable for me. But I’m going to fight the whole way.
“Bring it on,” I respond, baring my teeth at him.
He’s quick to pin me down, his other hand pushing the gun to my neck.
His body weight is enough to hold me down, but I know he can’t kill me so I scream.
I scream curses at him in his language, in English and Russian, ignoring the fact that I might draw in a predator.
His face is my proof that he doesn’t care about it either as he moves to show me his sexual organs.
Time seems to slow down when we both hear a separate gurgling sound coming from the west. It takes time for my brain to translate that sound as another alien calling his name. I hear more of them approach and the fucker that has me pinned to the ground abruptly stops.
He unpins me, holds on to my hair and drags me with him to meet the other aliens.
They begin to speak to each other, and I tune them out, looking around. I’m surrounded by seven aliens, some of them in what looks like ship-side gear, and others in odd fatigues. All with weapons and strange cages. They must be the hunters Szhe’ka spoke of.