Page 5

“Guide me, Nan.” Aurora squirmed in her seat, but she knew there was no getting away. The band strapped over her hips trapped her like some malevolent seat belt. Tingles raced over her scalp, and cold sweat dampened the light, natural fibers of the dress she’d been forced into. Nothing she saw made sense.

She was seated on a long, raised platform set along a wide path. In a line stretching to her right and left, other women were seated on the platform in chairs identical to hers. Except these weren’t like any women she’d ever seen. They weren’t human.

They were demons .

Everyone she saw, in fact, had curling horns, sharp fangs, long black claws, and skin in varying shades of red. The demoness next to her caught her staring and gave her an appalled sort of grimace, then shot her gaze away.

Aliens. They’d told her they were aliens. But how could aliens look so much like demons? This might just be the kind of prank a demon would play on an unsuspecting, recently-deceased mortal. Had her father’s family been right about her wicked soul? Had she somehow died and been sent to hell?

The last thing she remembered was drifting to sleep near a campfire while on a research trip in the Smoky Mountains. Had the fire spread and killed her in her sleep? She pursed her lips. I feel like I would have woken up for that.

Desperately, she searched for a third possibility, but couldn’t think of one. Either she’d died and was now at the mercy of a group of demons, or they were telling the truth and she’d been transported through the universe to an alien planet. Her vision grew unfocused as the absurdity of those realities sank in. There was no way to tell what was real. Both options were equally unimaginable.

Two days ago, she’d opened her eyes to find two horned creatures staring back at her. She’d been in a pod, though it had felt like a coffin. Her body had been sluggish and unresponsive, but her mind had been screaming. When they’d tried to speak to her, all she’d been able to do was stare at their lips as they moved, flashing sharp fangs. Her mind had refused to process their words, though apparently the translator chip they’d implanted meant she could understand their language.

When she’d finally regained use of her body, she’d crawled into a corner and screamed every time they’d come near.

She didn’t know how long it had taken before they’d finally given up and left her in the room alone. And she didn’t know how long she’d cowered in the corner. Only that it’d felt like an eternity.

The guard positioned behind her chair now shuffled, and although she knew he was there, she jumped all the same. None of the other women had a guard or were bound to their chairs. The fact that she had one was unnerving.

When the two demons who’d woken her had initially come to see her yesterday, she’d calmed enough to hear them, but everything they’d said just confused her more. They’d told her she’d been abducted from Earth and that since Earth was designated a Class Four planet, it was illegal to send her back. Instead, she’d be expected to live here among their people and acclimate to their culture. This included marriage.

She hadn’t fought or tried to run or rained insults on them. She’s been too overwhelmed to do any of that. But she’d cried. A lot. And it was obvious her tears annoyed them. After a while, their tight lips had curled into judgmental sneers. It was as though she were being impolite by crying as they explained what they planned to do with her.

But how else was she supposed to act? They’d told her she’d been abducted. That information alone would be enough to send anyone into a spiral, but then, they’d also explained that she was to be a participant in some kind of sick marriage ceremony. One in which she’d be chased by multiple men. Multiple demons.

What had made her cry more than the information, and more than the fear, was the way they’d delivered it. Without sympathy or emotion. Their tone had been matter-of-fact. Like a strict teacher informing a child that their temper tantrum wouldn’t get them out of homework.

At a loss as to how to reason with them and in a state of desperation, Aurora had started begging. They’d only grown more perturbed. So much so that they’d stepped away and engaged in a private conversation as if she hadn’t been in the same room within earshot.

She’d never felt so small.

They’d left, telling her they’d return when she had better control over her “fever.” Aurora didn’t know what that meant, but hours later, when they’d reappeared, she’d tried as hard as she could to remain composed.

She’d failed.

Their imperious expressions made emotion bubble up instantly, and every time they spotted any kind of wetness behind her eyes, they’d refuse to talk with her anymore. Knowing that speaking was futile, she’d silently obeyed their instructions, letting them direct her in how to bathe with the strange foam shower and remaining stoic as they’d roughly styled her hair and dressed her.

Her meek compliance seemed to please them. They’d praised her in a way not dissimilar to the cooing you’d give an anxious dog at the groomer. But as soon as she brought up anything to do with her abduction, they’d make a short chuffing sound and level her with disappointed scowls.

Now here she sat, decorated like all the other women in a pretty white dress, and the only thing she was certain of was that soon she’d be sent into the forest and hunted.

A gentle breeze blew, and she blinked, noticing how dry her eyes were from her vacant stare. The road before her was decorated in a blanket of flower petals arranged in intricate designs. Some blooms had lifted into the air and floated dreamily in the breeze.

One spark of bright red caught her attention. The petal danced on the wind before coming to rest directly in her lap. Aurora lifted it between her fingers and brushed her thumb over its surface. It felt like any other flower, soft and delicate. But the shape seemed familiar. Tears welled in her eyes. The petal looked like it belonged to a gladiolus. Her grandmother’s favorite flower.

She pinched the petal, rocking it between her fingers, then lifted her thumb to her nose. Whether it was her wishful mind creating the aroma or reality, she thought she detected the subtle spice of a gladiolus, and it made her throat constrict. Her nan was sending her a sign. Suddenly Aurora didn’t feel so alone.

Her lids slid closed. Thank you for watching over me. Your gift gives me strength.

Inhaling a deep breath, Aurora opened her eyes and studied the world with renewed resolve. On the opposite side of the road from her were stands. Hundreds of people sat in them, creating a sea of fine clothing and red horns bedecked in glittering jewelry.

The juxtaposition of the demonic appearance of these people and the prettiness of their clothing, decor, and architecture was interesting. If only they treated her with as much consideration as they gave their appearances.

The high collars, richly-colored fabrics and tinkling from glittering bells tied to their horns created a celebratory aura of beauty and refinement. But hunting a bride through the woods? How did that fit?

Did they value brutality or civility? Everything about them said both, and she couldn’t understand it. Even the landscape was something out of a fairytale. Bright green hills stretched behind the stands rising in elevation until they became towering, rocky mountains. The scenery reminded her of pictures she’d seen of the Alps in summer.

Though she could make out white lines of snow on the mountain peaks, it was pleasantly warm where they were. A perfect summer day. The sun blazed a golden honey, a richer shade than the sun on Earth, which gave it a rather cheerful quality. It beat down on the ceremony and heated the flower petals, making the whole area smell sweet and fresh.

The beautiful world surrounding her only stoked her fear. Knowing the little she did about this hunt made all these pretty things feel like a deception. A trap. Like the witch’s candy house in “Hansel and Gretel.”

Someone bellowed to her left, making her jump. About six seats down, there was a woman flailing and screaming. Aurora sucked in a breath. She was human .

Two frowning guards held her in the air by her arms while she kicked and swung her feet, not touching the ground. A passing wave of shame rolled through Aurora as she recalled her own cowardly submission. Why wasn’t her instinct to fight?

With twin grimaces on their faces, the guards forced her into an empty seat and strapped the woman down the same way they had her.

“Hey!” Aurora yelled, lifting from her seat as much as the belt would allow. But the woman was still raging at the two guards and hadn’t heard her. Aurora opened her mouth to yell again, but her own guard stepped into her eyeline and glared down at her.

“The Promenade is about to start. You will not disrespect our traditions by screaming through it.” His tone was formal and cold, but his eyes held a slight red glow that had every retort dying in her throat. She shrunk back into her chair and faced forward.

Satisfied, the guard returned to his position close behind her. After a moment of restraint, she snuck a glance at the other human and her throat went dry. They’d tied something around her mouth.

Under different circumstances, she might’ve described the item as a costume mask. It was decorated with jewels and gorgeously crafted, but it was clear what it actually was. A very expensive muzzle.

Horns blared, and Aurora’s ears buzzed. The headache she’d had all day grew worse.

The demons all began gently bobbing their heads and making the bells on their horns ring in unison. Applause?

One by one, their heads stopped shaking, and they stared down the road to her right.

Musicians hidden away somewhere began playing an instrumental melody. Her heart picked up speed, cold sweat slipping down her back. Whatever this ceremony was, it was starting now.

Before long, she saw what she’d been dreading. A man, tall and determined, strode forward. He walked across the path of flowers, leaving a crumpled trail of petals in his wake.

He paused in front of the first demoness in the row, and Aurora couldn’t decide who was measuring up whom. It almost looked like he was posing for her. Especially since in her elevated seat, the man was forced to look up at the woman.

Though it might be a human association to draw, Aurora couldn’t help but see the difference in height as relating to authority in some way. The positioning reminded her of a knight peering up toward a seated noblewoman at a jousting event. But this noblewoman was scrutinizing her knight. Why? Wasn’t she also about to be hunted? Why did it look like she was deciding whether or not she liked him ? Did that matter?

Aurora huffed in frustration. If she’d only held her emotions in better. Maybe then the demons would have explained everything to her more thoroughly.

The posturing man dipped his head back, and she got the distinct impression that the movement was like a head bow but in reverse. After a moment longer, he moved on, pausing in front of the next woman in line. A new man appeared behind him, doing the same posing for the first woman.

Butting up to the platform in front of each woman, there was a stand about four feet wide. Thin wooden dowels ran in horizontal rows down the stand, and on each of the dowels, there were small fluttering pieces of colorful fabric.

Aurora had assumed the stands were decoration since the ribbons of fabric vaguely reminded her of tiny party streamers. But as the first man stepped toward the stand, she realized they weren’t just decoration.

He smiled charmingly at the woman above him, who did not smile back, then he untied a piece of fabric and tucked it into a pouch on his belt. She watched as he proceeded to the next woman and noted that he didn’t also take a piece of fabric from the stand in front of her before moving down the line again.

Aurora studied her own stand with fresh interest.

The ribbons in front of her were all bright pink and had a vaguely familiar pattern on them. What do they mean? Lost in thought, she didn’t notice that the procession of men had reached her until the first man stepped into her line of sight.

Her back welded to her chair and her unblinking stare shot to her lap. She didn’t want to give him any sign that she was a willing participant in this. Not even eye contact.

When she mustered the courage to peek up from her thighs, he was gone and another man stood in his place. One of her pieces of fabric was missing.

This new man stepped forward to also take a ribbon from her stand. Her brows furrowed. These ribbons were significant. But how?

The procession of demons continued, but rather than grow numb as time went on, she only became more anxious. Half the men who had stopped in front of her had taken one of her ribbons. A sickening suspicion crept through her gut the more she thought about it.

What if the taking of a piece of fabric indicated the intention to chase the woman it belonged to?

She’d dated occasionally back home, but she was shy when it came to romance, and it didn’t help that her body type wasn’t the preference on superficial dating sites. If the missing ribbons from her stand were any indication, the men here didn’t mind her curves at all.

Or was it some kind of alien fetish? Maybe they were only interested because she was from another planet.

Panic gripped her chest. She stretched forward to get a glimpse of the other human’s ribbon stand and was not at all surprised to see that just as many of her ribbons were gone. Fuck.

Movement from the demoness on her right drew her attention. Though the man in front of her neighbor beamed at her, the woman gave him the barest smile in return. He was handsome for a demon. A bit smaller than the others, but with the most gorgeous head of hair Aurora had ever seen.

The woman got up from her seat and descended the two steps of the platform, which still didn’t put her at ground level. Knees in line with his head, she pulled a ribbon from a hidden pocket of her dress, bent at the hips, and extended it to him. Though made of the same pale green floral fabric, the ribbon she gave the man was longer than the ones tied to the stand in front of her.

He took the ribbon and tipped his head back, holding the pose and displaying his neck for longer than normal. After pocketing the long ribbon, he moved to take his turn in front of Aurora. He paused and tipped his head back for the briefest of moments before moving on, clearly uninterested in her.

The woman next to her returned to her seat, but her eyes kept flicking back to the man she’d given the ribbon to as he moved down the line. She caught Aurora staring again and made that annoyed chuffing sound that the two demons who’d awoken her made so often.

“Sorry,” she muttered, darting her gaze away.

The sun climbed higher in the sky, and the men kept coming. Aurora tried to gauge how many women there were and how many men, but it was impossible. The platform she was on stretched far and she couldn’t properly count, but it felt clear to her that the men outnumbered the women substantially. The crowd across from her had an even larger imbalance, nearly all the seats filled by men.

Though she didn’t want this to end for fear of what would come next, Aurora wondered how much longer the Promenade could go on for. There were only two rows of ribbons left on her stand. Would it continue until everyone’s stands were empty?

The woman to her right chuffed again, and Aurora immediately took stock of her actions to figure out what rude thing she’d done to upset her now. But the woman wasn’t looking at her. She followed her line of sight until her gaze landed on the most terrifying demon she’d seen yet.

The people here were large, but this man was larger. He wore the same formal clothing as everyone else, yet where the layered lavish outfits overpowered some of the men she’d seen, his high collar and fitted jacket only exaggerated his bulk. He moved along the line the way all the other men had, but he didn’t try to smile or charm anyone and, in turn, the women didn’t look at him.

The giant took his place in front of her neighbor, but instead of focusing on the demoness, his eyes drifted away and met Auroras. He did a double take. Though he was standing in front of someone else, he stared directly at her.

Nerves hollowed out her belly. She forced her gaze to her lap, scratching the back of her left hand with her right, but she could still keenly sense his eyes on her. Aurora counted seconds in her mind, forcing herself to keep her head down until she reached sixty at least.

Is he gone? She didn’t want to peek in case it hadn’t been long enough, but some insidious curiosity made her itch to check. Waiting until she couldn’t resist any longer, she glanced up.

He was directly in front of her. Staring.

A faint red glow pulsed in his gray eyes. Every one of her muscles stiffened and her shoulders curled forward. She didn’t want this man to be interested in her. His unrelenting intensity was foreboding.

She didn’t know the rules of this event, but she knew she’d be chased. That was the one thing she knew. And if this intimidating, over-seven-foot-tall, built-like-a-tank demon pursued her, she was half-sure she’d faint in fear at the mere sight of him barreling toward her.

She didn’t have a choice, though. If he wanted to chase her, he would.

Tears welled on her lashes once again, and she chewed on her lip to keep the emotion contained.

He blinked. An angry flush traveled up his horns.

For a moment, she wondered if she should just let herself cry. It annoyed all the other demons. Maybe it’d annoy him too, and he’d decide he didn’t like her.

He peered to his right at two empty spaces. The man before him had already moved on twice, and he was now holding up the whole procession with his stare-down. He seemed to understand this, his heavy brows drawing together. When he turned his attention back to her, he looked torn.

Aurora didn’t understand.

He leaned to the right as if he were about to walk on, then hastily shot forward and tugged a ribbon free. The movement was so abrupt that she flinched. Without another glance, he walked down the line.

The odd giant man didn’t look at her again, but she couldn’t keep her attention from darting back to him. He was nearly out of view when she caught sight of him lifting the bright pink fabric from her stand to his nose. His wide chest expanded as he smelled the ribbon.

It was then that she recalled where she’d seen the pattern on the ribbon. She’d been dressed in a pink robe with that design when she’d awoken. Had they cut strips from it after they’d taken it from her? Strips that would smell like her? Tingles raced down her spine, and she sent some silent invocations out to her grandmother, asking for courage.

Her mind was still so sidetracked that she didn’t notice the Promenade had ended until rustling movement around her drew her focus. The crowds were filing out of their seats. On either side of her, the women were getting up as well.

Now empty, the flower-strewn road was trampled, the once intricate designs ran together like a melted painting. She peered at the red petal in her hand and found she’d accidentally crumpled it.

A knot clogged Aurora’s throat.

Her guard stepped to her side, the device that would unlock her belt held in his clawed hand. She looked at him in defeat, already guessing what he was going to say.

“The chase begins.”