Page 74 of Holiday with the Aliens

Rage poured through him and Arest surged up, launching himself at the door with a possessed madness. He screamed, the sound ripping out of his throat and scraping glass from mouth to lungs. He didn’t care, he couldn’t feel it. He barely noticed that the lights remained on, and if one of the tunnel creaturesattacked him right then, he’d end the thing in a single swipe of claws.

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t move the wall. His heart beat fast enough for him to hear and sweat beaded his brow as energy flooded him, urged him to doanythingto find Stella. He punched the wall, uncaring of the pain in his knuckles as they took the brunt of the damage and barely dented the stone.

When that did nothing, he turned to his claws, scraping and digging into the deep gouges that were already there.

That made him pause.

He looked back down at the ground and saw those same claw marks that he’d noted earlier. He placed his palm on the marks and confirmed that they were twice as big as his own hand, big enough to rip through metal and tear away the side of a building.

But not big enough to ram through stone.

At least the claw marks were onthisside of the tunnel. Arest would fight anything that posed a threat to Stella, and if there was something here, he had to find it and end it. For her.

He waited, but nothing stirred in the shadows down the hall. Nothing clung to the ceiling waiting to drop down on him. The hallway stretched down as far as he could see, and none of his senses hinted at any danger. He was alone, cut off from his woman.

A memory of the room they’d slept in stirred, and he ran his hands along the walls, looking for a control panel to the door. But this time there was nothing but solid stone. Nothing that would let him turn back and find her.

He placed his ear against the rock and quieted his body as best he could. His heart still beat a mad rhythm, but he could make out the distant drip of water and hear his own breath once again. But nothing trickled in through the stone, not even the muffled hope of a sound. If Stella was back there, he couldn’t hear.

And in his heart, he knew that this had been done on purpose. Whoever owned these tunnels didn’t want them together for whatever came next. And Arest didn’t know if they wanted him to do their dirty work, as he’d done so many times before, or if this was a more sinister game, one where he was the bystander and Stella the target.

It didn’t matter. He’d tear down these tunnels brick by brick if that was what it took to get her back.

Purpose settled over him, not quite calming the beast, but giving him a direction. He could waste the night away raging at the door and failing to get it open. He knew that if there were controls on the other end, Stella would have done her part and let him through. But since she hadn’t, he had to find another way to her.

He turned his gaze back to the hallway behind him. The light seemed to pulse to the beat of his heart, and at first he thought it was an illusion from the rush of rage he’d only started to come down from. But the pulsing grew stronger and Arest knew this was the path he needed to take.

He’d kill anyone or anything that dared to touch his woman, and when he was done, this place would be a smoldering ruin, with no one left to remember it.

Chapter Nine

Banging on the rock did nothing but bruise her hands and make her knuckles bleed. Kicking did even less. Stella wished she could say that she wasn’t panicking, but her heart pounded in her throat and every sense went on high alert. The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she couldn’t stop looking behind her, terrified that one of the monsters from the cave would jump out and tackle her.

She was alone.

She screamed.

It did nothing.

Grasping for some hint of sanity, she ran her hands along the wall, searching for a control panel to open the door back up. In the room they’d found before, lights had blinked and the controls were easy to find. Here all she saw was solid rock and dashed hopes. Still, she dug her fingers into a jagged seam in the stone and ripped at it until one of her nails tore away, making her gasp.

No hidden panel, just a useless crack.

She slapped a hand hard against the wall, the sting climbing all the way up to her shoulder, but still nothing happened.

Stella forced herself to pull back. She pressed her ear up to the wall and heard nothing from the other side, but she knew that didn’t mean anything. The door was probably as thick as her arm and made from solid rock, of course it would be silent. She needed tothink.

She and Arest hadn’t run into any of the monsters in a while, but he’d seen something that spooked him, something that made him go ahead. That meant that there could be a monster in there with him now and he had to fight it before he could figure out how to open the door. That was what happened before. Monster, closed door, fight, open door, body.

But that had only taken minutes. How long had they been separated?

Now Stella really wished she had a watch. Every second dragged on into eternity and with every imagined tick, Arest could be bleeding out. And then they’d come for her.

She looked for another panel, but even though she’d calmed down a little, nothing revealed itself to her. One, two, three, four, five, she counted the seconds one by one until a minute passed and then another, hoping a bit of patience would open the door for her. But patience did shit.

Stella forced herself to turn away and look back down the hallway. They’d been walking for a while and the hallway was just as bare as it had been when they stepped down it the first time. Except for a subtly blinking light.

She placed a hand on the wall behind her and took two small steps to it, hesitating when she reached the end of her arm. She didn’t want to get further from the door in case it opened, but the light beckoned. Stella forced her hand away, curling her fingers into a fist and pulling her arm in, even if it felt like she was moving through molasses to do so.

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