Page 13 of Prison Moon
Chapter Five
He was following her. Sara looked over her shoulder at him and wondered if she should be running. Staying with him wasn’t a smart thing to do, was it? Sure he was nice to look at but if he was here, on a prison moon, he was here for a reason and what that reason was should have her reevaluating her decision to be his travel buddy. Not that she thought she’d have much of a choice in the matter. The way he’d thrown her over his shoulder like a caveman told her he had no intentions of letting her go anytime soon and the way he’d looked at her when he helped her off the bank made her wonder exactly why he wanted her around to begin with.
Alien he may be, but she wasn’t so dimwitted not to have seen the look in his eyes when he looked at her in her ridiculous excuse for a dress. It was damn near see-through and she knew he’d seen everything God gave her. The fact he hadn’t thrown her to the ground right then and there was the only reason she’d let him pull her down the riverbank to where she’d last seen the dragon without fighting back.
She glanced up at the sky. So far she hadn’t seen or heard the dragon since it’d flown off into the trees. The fact this guy walked straight to where the thing had dropped her had caused her stomach to crawl into her throat. Thankfully it hadn’t taken much to persuade him to leave. It might have been the fact the cow-like sheep thing the dragon had dropped by the water’s edge was being devoured by what looked like some mutated pig-dogs. The slick-skinned pink creatures hadn’t looked friendly, especially when one lifted its head and showed its teeth.
The mysterious guy that had been following her stepped into her line of sight. He was walking on her right side, in step with her now. She gave him another quick look and noticed his skin looked different than it had under the trees of the forest. The markings she thought were tattoos were darker in the full light of the sun and his skin—she stared at him, trying to tell herself it really didn’t have a pale blue tint. It had to be a trick of the light because when he moved a certain way, his flesh looked as normal as her own but there, along the top edge of his shoulders, when the sun hit him just right, it looked pale blue.
She shook her head. Why him having blue-tinted skin felt odd was beyond her, especially when half the things she’d seen were so far from normal she would think she was crazy had she not come to terms with the fact she’d been kidnapped by aliens. Like it or not, she was no longer in Kansas and she didn’t think there was a magic wizard waiting to send her home. This was it and if this guy ended up killing her in her sleep, then she hoped he did it quickly.
They walked in silence for some time before the things left unsaid were itching at the back of her skull. She glanced over at him again and said, “So, do you know if there’s a good bed and breakfast around here anywhere? I could use a hot bath and a cheeseburger the size of my head right about now. A change of clothes wouldn’t hurt either.”
He glanced at her, one corner of his mouth ticking up a bit into a half smile. “I do not understand you. The language you speak—it is not one I recognize. I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“You don’t understand me?” Sara stopped and looked at him. “Why not?” He didn’t reply. Why didn’t he understand her?The translator.The words whispered through her head as she looked at him. The Big Heads had given them a translator so they’d be able to understand the aliens on this planet. Did the aliens not get one too? Was that why he didn’t understand her? “Do you not have a translator?” When he continued to stare she tapped the still sore spot behind her ear. “Translator—do you not have one?”
He looked to where she pointed then shrugged one shoulder.
Guess not, then. “Well, damn.” She loosened a breath and studied the swirling tattoo on his chest. “This language barrier is going to make things awkward.”
A deep, guttural howl-like noise filtered through the trees. Sara jolted. The almost-blue alien took her arm and motioned up the river. “Let’s keep moving.”
They walked along the river until her knees felt ready to give out on her. The sound of rushing water grew louder and when he reached out a hand, blocking her path, she froze. “Please tell me it isn’t something going to try and eat me.”
He made a “shhhing” sound at her and cocked his head to one side as if listening. Long minutes ticked by before he took a step and motioned her forward. She let him lead the way, surprised he wasn’t worried she’d run away. Not that she had anywhere to go. If this guy was a local, then he’d know more about this planet than she did and having a guide in this strange place wouldn’t hurt. With her luck, she’d pick a fat juicy berry for lunch and her flesh would rot off. She shuddered at the thought. If nothing else, she didn’t think this guy would let her starve or eat anything poisonous and as of yet, he hadn’t tried to kill her, eat her or fuck her, so odds were in her favor he was one of the good guys. She hoped.
They reached a fork in the river, each channel narrow compared to what it had been. The entire river seemed smaller here, the bank on the opposite side not more than half a football field away.
Her alien travel guide stopped and looked in both directions the river flowed, deciding which way to go, she assumed. She hoped he picked the path on this side of the river because the bank on the other side was terrifying.
The landscape beyond that fork in the river looked different from the forest she’d been running in when trying to escape the dragon. On the other side of the river, the forest didn’t look—normal. The trees casting the river in shadow were tall, their height staggering. Sara stared up at the treetops as they soared into the sky impossibly high. They reminded her of the great sequoias and redwoods in California, except these trees had trunks that were slim stalks of wood with inky black bark. The leaves hanging off spindly limbs were enormous man-sized fronds of deepest purple that provided so much shade it cast the entire area into shadows so thick she could see nothing moving through the trees. It was a dark forest, one like children had nightmares about that held monsters waiting to eat you only this was no dream and she was pretty sure, whatever monsters lay in those woods, probably would eat her.
The thing that howled a few minutes ago was nothing compared to the screech of a creature that now screamed through those trees. Every hair on her body stood on end and the alien-man stiffened, his head whipping around.
“What was that?” she whispered.
He scanned the trees, his back stiff. Not a single emotion showed on his face but something in his eyes looked—predatory. Like something besides a man was peering out of those violet eyes.
The howling thing on their left let out another cry, the screecher answering as if they were talking, and as wary as she was of this strange almost blue alien, she took one large step closer to him.
“We have to go,” he said, taking her arm and leading her to the water, away from the bank and closer to those dark woods.
“What is it?” she asked, already knowing he had no idea what she’d asked. When they reached the water’s edge, she dug her heels in and jerked on her arm until he turned to look at her. Something old and ancient stared back at her from his eyes and she wondered if staying with him was a stupid move after all.
She swallowed the fear trying to choke her and pointed up the river in the direction they’d been heading. “Let’s go this way,” she said, giving a nervous glance at the dark forest before trying to tug him to the left. She wasn’t going in that forest, she didn’t care how much her life depended on it.
The howling thing was closer and the sound of things running reached her ears. Something was coming. Many somethings from the sound of it. The thing they’d been hearing wasn’t alone. She didn’t have to see them to know the others were coming and from the sounds of it, they were on this side of the river.
Panic filled every ounce of her body, her lungs seizing as she tried to breathe through it. The screeching of whatever it was hiding in those dark woods echoed through the trees again, the sound of those things running through the forest getting louder. Sara turned enough to look into those trees, her heart skipping a beat as she saw a blur of red flying through the air. “Look out!”
A red skinned alien slammed into her sometimes blue alien and both went down snarling. Sara sucked in a breath as they rolled, growls and grunts filling the air before her new friend slammed the red guy to the ground, grabbed him by the head and twisted.
The sound of cracking bone was sickening.
Sara gaped at the now dead alien, his head twisted at an odd angle. The alien who’d found her stood and looked her way. Her first instinct was to run. Anyone who could kill a man—or alien—with no more effort than he’d exerted probably wasn’t the sort of person she should be around. Movement beyond his shoulder drew her attention and all thought of how smart it was to stay with him vanished. The red alien’s buddies had arrived. They varied in size and height, most humanoid in appearance—some terrifyingly not. “Emma was right. We’re going to die here.”
The alien-man grabbed her and hoisted her into the air so fast, the air in her lungs whooshed out when her stomach hit his shoulder. Once again, she couldn’t do anything but brace her hands against his back as he took off running. The ground beneath them passed by in a blur, the sound of the water a dull rush of noise in her ears before she felt the body underneath her tense, the arm around her waist tightening before he made a running jump for the river. Sara screamed, then sucked in a gasp of air moments before they hit the water. Her head went under, the water deep and dark. She felt the shift of muscle underneath her before water sluiced over her skin so fast it felt as if she was being dragged through the current by something larger than life.