Page 7 of Chieftain
"Sure, just like Mark." At my mention of her husband's name, her eyes grew soft.
"I didn't mention that my dad's ship ran drills through the Bermuda Triangle." The tremble that ran through her made themattress shake. "He saw things. Things that bothered him. My father wasn't an imaginative man," Willa chuckled. "If you asked him to describe a sunset, he'd say it was red or orange—that's it. So, when he told us in vivid detail about the spaceships and creatures he saw—creatures he had contact with. I knew it was the truth."
Goosebumps tickled my skin. "What kind of creatures."
"Different kinds," she shrugged. "Some looked humanoid, Dad said—some didn't. The one thing he said they had in common was that they weren't friendly."
"Shit," I whispered, a knot of dread settling in the center of my stomach. "What do we do."
"I don't know." Willa's voice trembled.
In all the alien stories I'd ever read or seen, kidnapped humans ended up one of three ways—slaves, dissected, or food. None of the above was my choice.
I was no stranger to the wickedness of life. Being a prosecutor, I'd stared into the face of evil and depravity more times than I could count. At least twice I'd had a gun pointed at me, not knowing whether or not death lurked nearby. Willa's father might have been Navy, but mine was a cop, one of the good ones—and he didn't raise a coward. I would not be a victim.
"I tell you what we're going to do." I linked my arm through hers and laid my head on her shoulder. "We'll find the other girls and figure out how to get the hell back home. Then you're all coming with me when I shake my youthful ass right in Rick's face just so he can see how good it looks."
Willa's laughter was cut off at the whoosh of the door opening.
She had four boobs.
At least, I think it was ashe.The creature was over seven feet tall and, to my mind, looked like a hairless cat with human-shaped legs and arms—tail and all. The eyes were bright green with black diamond-shaped vertical slits, and the lips were cat-shaped and full, resting atop a pair of needle-sharp canines. Pointed gray ears poked through slick black hair that appeared plastic, like the old-fashioned Ken dolls. The alien wore green and purple robes covering all of its body save for its face, hands, and chest.
"She's got four tits," Willa hissed at me.
"I noticed," I said drolly. "Your dad never mentioned cat people, did he?"
Willa shook her head, eyes assessing the alien.
"Greetings, humans," the alien said in a distinctly feminine voice.
Willa and I glanced at each other blankly. The cat-woman spoke English, with an odd accent, but English.
"You feel well. Yes." The alien held something like a shiny black iPad with a hand reminiscent of a cat's paw, except the pads were extended, more finger-like.
"Where are we?" Willa scooted to the edge of the mattress. "Where are our friends."
"You are with us," the creature said, cocking her head.
"Who is us?" I slid off the bed, immediately regretting it when my feet hit the ice-cold floor. "What did you do to us."
"We healed you."
"Healed us?" Willa parroted. "I was sixty-four years old this morning, and now I'm…" she gestured at her body.
"You are at the moment of your most perfect." The alien tapped on the screen she held.
"Most perfect what?" I challenged despite noticing inch-long sharp claws tipped each of the alien's finger-paws.
Disdain was apparently an emotion shared by all species. "Your bodies were old, weak, and ugly. We processed you through a Garoot healing system, restoring your body to the healthiest point of maturity."
"Did you understand any of that?" Willa murmured to me.
"I heard her call us old and ugly," I quipped with a smirk. I leveled my gaze on the alien's face. "How can we understand you? You're not speaking English. Your lips don't match the words I hear in my head."
Full dark gray lips pulled upward. Did the cat version of ET just smile at me?
"All procured humans are implanted with a temporal translator." She tapped the side of her face.
