Page 10 of The Alien’s Cruel Starfrost Domain (Empire of Frost and Flame #1)

CHAPTER 10

LARA

S neaking out of Starfrost Manor was always harder than it seemed like it ought to be.

The first time I tried to run away, I’d been at Starfrost Manor for just less than three weeks—or two ten-days, as the Caix would say.

Back then, Kila had not arrived yet. I guess in some ways, I’m glad the attempt didn’t succeed. Because Adefina was right—the Starcaix raya would have died without my help.

But in those first few weeks, the horror of the hanging I had seen the day I arrived kept me awake late into the night. When I finally fell asleep, I sometimes dreamed about it. Inevitably, I woke in the morning sick to my stomach, weary with exhaustion and dread.

So I guess it’s no surprise I decided to get the hell out of there.

I waited until everyone was asleep, packed up a loaf of bread Adefina had cooling, and took off. I was already layered up in some extra clothing I’d cadged from Adefina, my clumsily stitched-together cloaks having not proved warm enough for the lands of an Icecaix lord .

Over my blue jeans, I wore a pair of rough woolen pants about two sizes too big for me, cinched in at the waist with a strip of leather Fintan had found somewhere and fashioned into a belt. And over my own shirt, I wore a tunic that hung almost to my knees, made of the same scratchy material as the pants.

Adefina had given the outfit to me to wear on laundry day that first week and a half— ten-day , I reminded myself—and I hated the feel of it against my skin. But when worn over my own clothes, it provided a layer of warmth against the biting cold.

Fintan had confided to me that he never bothered to lock the courtyard door, so I went out through the stable where Fintan slept with the animals he tended, tiptoeing past his giant, slightly snoring form to a door leading into part of the courtyard, and then to a gate leading out the back into the fields where I sometimes saw the goats stomping at the frost-covered grass or using their tiny hooves to kick away snow. As soon as I hit the fields, I headed toward the tree line in the distance.

As an escape plan, it wasn’t very well thought out. I had no idea where I was going, no clue what might lie beyond the lands controlled by Duke Ivrael. No real clue how I might get back to Earth, for that matter.

But I had to believe that someone out there would help me. After all, if Ivrael could bring me to this backwards-ass planet, then someone else out there could take me home. When we’d first arrived, Ivrael told his footmen to take that flying saucer of his to a spaceport and said something about a pole . If I could find out where that was, maybe I could get help there.

It didn’t matter how sketchy I was on the details of the plan. I was desperate to escape Starfrost Manor.

Though Trasq’s second moon, the small one, hadn’t yet risen, the primary moon was up and nearly full, its silver-blue light glinting off the snow and allowing me to see my first destination. I moved as quickly as I could, knowing that without a fresh cover of snowfall, my tracks would lead any pursuers straight to me.

My best hope was to lose Ivrael’s men among the trees, and I could only do that if I was long gone from the manor before anyone noticed my absence.

I hadn’t counted on how dark it would be once I was inside the forest.

And God, so silent.

Back home in the trailer park we’d ended up in after Mama’s death, our place was rural enough that we could hear the sounds of wildlife. An owl hooting at night, grackles calling to one another in the morning from their roosts in the trees, even an occasional coyote in the distance, all of it juxtaposed against the occasional car swishing past on the road.

There was none of that here—not only no cars, but not even the sounds of nocturnal birds hunting. It was pitch black, eerie and still and terrifying.

I tried to weave my way through the tall, prickly, blue-green trees covered with sharp needles, relying on my hands stretched out before me and the occasional gleam of moonlight flickering through the branches above.

It was only a moment before my hands and face were scratched and pricked from running into the trees, and I had to stop to pluck the cactus-like needles from my skin. Even after that, I hit far too many branches before I figured out to keep one hand in front of my face and the other stretched out to ward off the prickly foliage.

My hands, feet, and face quickly grew numb with cold.

So when I stumbled into a clearing, my initial response was relief.

I caught a single glimpse of the open space before me, and then a cloud scuttled over the moon, obscuring my vision for a moment.

I blinked, uncertain of what I’d seen.

The cloud blew past, and I realized my initial impression had been right—this was a cemetery.

Even at night, a graveyard didn’t scare me. I’d been around death, had touched Mama’s cold, still hand as she lay unmoving in the casket, and then pressed my lips against the marble of her overly made-up face as I said my final goodbye.

When we still lived in the house I did not yet know Roland couldn't afford on his own, the railroad tracks a few blocks from our home ran straight past the cemetery where she was buried, creating a direct route. During that first year, I often made my way along the tracks to sit by her headstone and tell her everything that had happened since the last time I’d visited.

But on my world, the dead stayed dead and buried.

I didn’t yet know enough about Trasq—or even just the Caix—to be afraid. If I had known then what I know now, I would have plunged back into the dark misery of the woods and kept walking.

I should’ve been terrified because the Caix dead don’t stay dead. Not exactly.

They’re immortal. And not TV-character-immortal, not like they live forever unless they’re killed. Literally immortal.

They live forever .

Just not always in the form they had when they were alive.

Most of the Caix who are killed are quiet. They lie in their graves, their bodies rotting until they are little more than bones and the ligaments connecting them, as they remain in what the Caix call the Eternal Dream—a sleep so much like death as to be nearly indistinguishable—and eventually crumble away into dust, still dreaming their dreams of sunlight and joy.

But not all of them sleep away eternity.

Some Caix spend their afterlife hunting the living, moving through the dark to capture their quarry, stealing the vitality offered by the blood they feed upon, like leeches.

Or vampires.

The living Caix take extra care to ensure their undead monsters can’t get free. Their cemeteries are surrounded by iron fences keeping the living Caix out and the dead in. And in the worst cases, the bodies of the living dead Caix are staked into their caskets with an iron spike.

Building the fence, creating the spikes, staking the living dead Caix—all of those are jobs for the Caix’s offworlder servants. But I didn’t know any of that yet. If I had, I might have realized that entering a Caix cemetery at night was a bad idea. Leaving the gate open behind me was an even worse one.

And worst of all, I had entered one of their cemeteries with scratches on my hands and face.

At the time, of course, I had no idea that blood called to the undead Caix. All I saw was an open space where I could rest for a moment and get my bearings. I’d heard no sounds of pursuit, so I assumed I was still safe from discovery and could spare the time to catch my breath.

Brushing a thick layer of snow away from the step of a mausoleum, I sat down and wrapped my cloak around me, tucking my numb hands into my armpits, huddling in on myself and trying to find some warmth.

My eyes attempted to drift shut, but I forced them open.

That’s probably what saved me.

At first, I thought the sound came from the forest—the creaking of branches laden with snow, the rustle of the wind through evergreen needles. I didn’t truly understand what was happening until the door behind me opened, and I fell backward.

Icy air drifted over me, and I yelped and scrambled to my feet, backing away from the doorway. The stench of rot overwhelmed me, cocooned me. I glanced around with a snort of disgust, trying to find the source of the foul smell.

A thick fog had drifted in and now surrounded the cemetery, stopping at the iron fence, as if it could not pass it, and it held in the scent, kept the smell from dissipating out into the forest air.

I turned toward the entrance where the gate stood partially open and swinging on its hinges. I intended to race out and away from whatever was causing the smell, but I froze in place, overcome with terror.

The dead were crawling from their graves.

Some of them had been buried underground, and I would have thought the earth too frozen, too hard for the creatures to dig their way out—but the dirt bucked and heaved, the monsters’ fingers scratching and scraping until they broke through to the frigid cold.

I glanced around, desperately searching for a path out, a way to that swinging gate. But everywhere I looked were horrific corpses in various states of decay.

I saw them in flashes, like images projected onto a screen. One crawling out of a crypt, its skin and clothing hanging from it in ragged strips. Another stretching out withered hands before her. Skeletons stumbling jerkily, the newer undead lurching. All of them gathering into a horde staggering in one direction.

Toward me.

I heard a low, keening noise that at first I thought came from that horde—but after a moment, I realized it was emanating from my own throat.

As they stepped into the space between me and the gate, I spun around, intending to find another way out, only to find my path blocked by yet another of these creatures. What stood in front of me could hardly have resembled whatever it had been in life. It was barely a skeleton, held together with threads of desiccated sinew.

It wore the remains of a purple coat with metallic blue thread mostly rotted away. Its long white hair hung from the patches of dried scalp clinging to its skull, held in place by a twisted gold and silver crown. Jewels of various colors glinted in the moonlight, an enormous sapphire shining blue over its forehead as if lit from within.

I took all this in with a single glance, and the words King of the Dead skittered through my mind.

The scream that had been trying to claw its way up through my diaphragm and out of my mouth finally burst free, much like the creatures crawling from their graves.

I spun away from the crypt and ran, the cold snow sucking at my feet like mud as I floundered to get away from the creature before it touched me, every instinct inside me screaming his touch meant death.

I dodged this way and that, but in every direction, more creatures appeared—some seeming to drift out of nowhere, others crawling up from the ground as I headed toward the open gate, certain I’d be safe if I could make it back to the tree line.

And maybe I would have been, if not for the hands that burst up and grasped one of my ankles, yanking me to a halt. I hopped for several steps with the other foot, still moving forward, then pulled my trapped foot toward me as hard as I could—but all I managed to do was pull the animated corpse another six inches out of the ground, freeing its knobby elbows. It took the opportunity to wrap its other hand around my ankle, interlacing its fingers for a better grip.

Unable to pull myself away from the thing, I lifted my free foot and began stomping down on the hands holding me as hard as I could. Its bones snapped and crunched under my foot.

In my desperation, adrenaline flooded my system along with a roiling wave of hot fury, and I slammed my foot down again, this time using it to hold the clutching creature’s forearm to the ground. The bones under my foot snapped as I wrenched my ankle out of its grasp, leaving the hand to flop uselessly.

But when I turned my attention back to the gate, my throat closed around a ball of pure terror.

Something enormous moved in the fog just outside the iron enclosure, blocking my exit—giant nebulous wings spreading out and casting a huge shadow over the entire graveyard, the edges of that shadow gleaming with a silver light as if lit from behind. I swallowed a scream, my jaw clenching against it, but still a tiny squeak echoed in my chest.

I was going to die here. I knew it.

Then the shape resolved itself, those shadow wings drawing inward, furling down into the figure of a man.

Ivrael.

I should’ve been terrified.

Instead, the sob that escaped me was one of relief.

I ran toward him and was about to call out his name when another of those bony monstrosities lunged out of nowhere, knocking me to the ground. I landed on my side and rolled over, only to find several of the zombie Caix surrounding me, arms outstretched and mouths open.

I really was going to die here, after all.