Alien Tower (Alien Wolf Tales #7)

Prologue

The jungle surrounded Baylin like a living thing.

The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth, rotting vegetation, and something floral and sickly sweet that clung to the back of his throat.

Everything was green—variations on a theme so overwhelming that it felt as if he were drowning in chlorophyll.

He pushed through another curtain of hanging vines, sweat trickling down his spine.

The journey had taken longer than he’d anticipated.

A week by horseback to the nearest outpost, then ten days of hiking through terrain that resisted every step.

The jungle didn’t want him here. Everything about it was designed to entangle intruders and swallow them whole.

But he was Vultor. The jungle was merely an annoyance.

He paused at the top of a small rise to study his surroundings.

All he could see was more jungle, a thick canopy of trees that stretched towards an ocean he couldn’t see but could sense in the faint tang of salt underlying the heavier scents of the jungle.

The air shimmered with heat and humidity, and insects buzzed around his head with lazy persistence.

According to the coordinates, he was close, but it was already too late in the day to travel much farther.

Instead of making camp right away, he chose the tallest tree he could find and began to climb.

By the time he broke through the canopy, the branches had thinned to the point where they swayed dangerously beneath his weight, but the climb was worth it.

The glittering expanse of the sea stretched out in front of him, streaked with red and purple by the setting sun.

And there, on a rocky outcropping at the very edge of the jungle stood the tower.

A weathered stone structure the color of the rocks, somehow both ancient and timeless, with several smaller buildings clustered around the base.

He’d found it.

A light suddenly spilled out into the deepening twilight from one of the windows carved into the stone. An artificial light. Technology in a place where technology should not exist.

Someone was there.

Night was rapidly creeping over the jungle.

He should return to the ground and make camp.

Instead, he stared at that distant light and wondered who had been hiding here for twenty years.

The mystery called to him, pulling at something deep in his chest as if it held the answer to the restlessness that had kept him traveling for so long.

The tower had secrets.

And he was going to discover exactly what they were.