Page 1 of Enticed By the Alien Chef
Chapter 1
Kara
I had this dream every night without fail since it happened, but recently, it had started to fade. Maybe that was thanks to the nice, friendly girl I bunked with at the Ker Sanctuary. Maybe it was just because time healed all wounds, even trauma like a kidnapping. It was inevitable I’d dream about it now, after what I’d just gone through; it was fresh on my mind.
My breathing quickened as I tumbled into the nightmarish recollection of that night. My pulse sped up too, pounding in my chest, but it didn’t wake me—not yet. The dark street as I left the library and headed across campus, the pools of light cast by the streetlights that were placed just a little too far apart. My attention was on my purse as I tried to locate my damn keys.
In the dream, I knew what was about to happen, and I’d find myself screaming in my head to look up, to run, anything. Past me hadn’t had a clue; she didn’t look up until it was too late. The shadows loomed and lengthened, warping into shadowy monsters. I knew that’s not what they looked like, but I never recalled this moment with clarity, not in the nightmare.
The shadows always got me, even when I noticed them, and finally started running. Even when I used the pepper spray on my keychain, it was never enough. And now, it had happened again. With a surge of adrenaline, my eyes flicked open, brushing away the last lingering effects of whatever drug they’d used on me.
The smells hit me first, burning my nostrils with their tangy, acidic strength. My lungs ached, and my eyes were already watering. Confused, I wondered if dream-me had somehow managed to spray herself in the face with that stupid pepper spray. But no—when my eyes adjusted to the light, I knew it was the place that stank.
It was probably a shed, or maybe a storage unit, stuffed to the brim with shelves full of bottles of chemicals. Perhaps they were cleaning supplies, but I felt this was something else. Even in an alien world, there had to be drug labs and drugs. This reminded me a little too much of a shady meth lab to be anything else. Except it wouldn’t be meth but something else freaky, somethingalien.
I had the worst luck out of anyone I knew, but I hated that kind of thinking. I liked to make my own fate, thank you very much. I’d survived the kidnapping by the shadowy monsters in my dreams and been brought to safety on Ker, even if it meant living on an alien planet and never seeing home again. This was no different.
All that resolve was good, but I was still tied up and lying on a cold stone floor. Count your blessings, I tried to tell myself, there had to be a silver lining somewhere. No rodents, for one, possibly scared off by the pungent smells here. There were no evil kidnappers either; they were probably sitting outside this room where the air was nice. Their mistake. I was terribly good at untangling things, and the rope tying my hands together wasn’t going to be any different.
My crochet skills and experience with tangled yarn weren’t going to help one bit if I couldn’t evenfeelthe knot. My fingers were so numb, I knew circulation had been cut off. With a pained grunt, I forced my muscles to obey and pulled myself into an upright sitting position. I was definitely going to take my Sanctuary roomie up on her offer to do Pilates when I saw her next; I needed better abs if this was going to become a habit.
Then I spotted the glass vials in front of me—jars with a purple liquid, several rows of them. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what was in those jars; they looked like they might be the final product. But a glass shard? That could work… And all it took was a stretch of my leg, and I’d knocked several of them over.
Escape was within my reach, I could feel it. Okay, I couldn’t actually feel it since my fingers were numb, but that was a good thing because I wouldn’t feel it if I cut myself either. There were hazy, purple fumes coming from the liquid I’d spilled—a shocking amount of it. It began to fill the room, but it didn’t sting my eyes any worse. The pain came when the rope suddenly released, the worst kind of pins and needles I’d ever experienced.
Moaning from the agony, I stumbled to my feet and lifted my hands to my face to get a look. My wrists were abraded and red from the rope, and my fingers had several nasty cuts from the glass. Past me, the college student snatched from the library parking lot, would have screamed and wailed at the sight. The me from now, post-abduction? She barely batted an eye.
I was barefoot because this time I’d been snatched as I’d traipsed into the communal kitchen for a midnight snack. It surprisedme to realize that I actually missed the Human Compound, the Sanctuary on Ker. I’d made some friends, and I’d started to heal from losing my family. It was also a much more sensible place to return to. It was the only safe place I knew about and could actually attain. Well, maybe. I had no clue where I was, so I didn’t know if I could find my way back, or even how long I’d been out. The last time I’d been kidnapped, I’d been stuck several hundred years in stasis, but I didn’t think that was the case this time.
What I did know was that I had to get out of there before anyone came looking. It was hard to pick my way around the broken shards and spilled liquid, but once I was out of my corner and into the bigger open space of the room, I could see the door. There was a table set up between all the shelves, and on it was definitely some kind of distillation unit. I was so right about this being a drug lab; I knew it.
The room was turning really misty, a purple fog settling over everything and clinging to my skin. I blinked my eyes, pinched my nose shut, and kept walking. There was the door; I just needed to open it, step outside, and everything would be fine. A little voice at the back of my mind warned me that such thinking was stupid—it wasn’t rational—but I was pulled to that door regardless; it was the only way out.
Shouts went up as I opened the door, and at least five big aliens shot to their feet in front of me. The first one charged, a guy who looked vaguely familiar and was definitely a Kertinal, a native of Ker, where my sanctuary was located. The others behind him were less distinct to me, their shapes warping and dancing as my eyes burned.
Then the fog rolled out of the storage/drug-making room behind me. It was fanciful, but it seemed to me like it rolled over us like a big, malicious purple cloud, swallowing those big guys as if they were nothing. It gobbled them up like a huge, cloud-shaped, hungry monster. They collapsed, but it was almost as if they vanished. I kept moving to the next door, then the next. I continued right outside, into the hot, clean air, and walked until my feet ached, my head spun, and I could no longer go on.
Chapter 2
Rex
There was a pest issue. I stared at the set of bins at the back of the bar with a hint of dismay as I looked at the raised lid—a lid I’d definitely shut last night after closing up the back and throwing out the last of the trash. This was Ov’Korad, a desert planet ruled by the native species, the Ovters, and Arkod, the capital city. The Ovters liked their rules, and one of those meant very strict pest control, so this shouldn’t have happened.
Somebody was going to get in serious trouble if they turned out to be the source of this rodent problem. It wasn’t me, but I still hesitated to report it. Something about this didn’t feel right, the lid maybe. It was big and heavy, designed to lock magnetically to prevent smells, leakage, and access by those less opposable-thumb-inclined. It should be impossible for a beastie to get in, even if it was a stray pet or escaped animal…
I caught a flash of movement just as I slammed the lid shut, and I froze in place, my senses sharpening as I tried to locate it again. What was that? Maybe itwasa lost pet or something exotic that had been smuggled in. A pale, slender limb quickly drew back behind the last bin in the row, the one in the corner. Something without fur for warmth or protective scales, something exotic.
I didn’t want to deal with an animal scavenging for food, but I wanted to deal with an exterminator even less. If anyone saw one lurking out back, it could hurt the bar’s bottom line if word got out. When I went to the back door, it was with a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach, a feeling much like anticipation. Thescarred wooden table at the center of my domain called, but it wasn’t until I was slicing some nice, thick bread that I knew what I was planning.
When the tiny human waitress walked in from the bar area that I knew what I was dealing with in a sudden flash of insight. She beamed a cheerful but fake smile at me, the freckles that dotted her cheeks and nose reminding me, with a pang of longing, of my home world. “Hi, Rex!” she said, then laughed and blushed when I shoved one of the two plates I’d been preparing her way. I curled a finger and thumb around her thin biceps and gently squeezed. “Yes, I know you think I’m too skinny. I never say no to your sandwiches, Rex. You’re a good man.”
As Jenny took the weight off her feet for five minutes to hungrily devour the food I’d prepared for her, I turned with the other plate to the back door. I didn’t answer her curious question when I leaned out and placed it on the back step where it was out of sight of the kitchen should Drova take a look, though I doubted he would.
There, my stray out back wouldn’t go hungry on my watch. Now I just had to figure out what to do to lure them in so I could protect them. “Exotic” was an understatement, humans were a very desirable species. Attractive, smart, but very fragile and thus easy to control. It turned my stomach to think of what this one had gone through to get where it was; it didn’t know it yet, but things were about to change.
A wiser male would have stayed out of it and kept his nose clean. But something about this particular creature out back drew me, and I never ignored my instincts. They had kept me safe during the long, hard years on the Arena sands, and theykept me safe now, navigating the dangerous world Drova lived in. That reminded me of the shady figures that frequented the bar. Would I need to do something to prevent them from using the alley out back? How dangerous was it for this little human to stay there?
I was mulling over what I should be doing all day and nearly missed the chaos that erupted in the bar that afternoon. Stuck with my head in the stars, lost in thought, I was too late to help when I barreled through the door. Jenny was already snatched away by a yellow-skinned alien with a pair of powerful tentacles instead of hair. A Sythral lay dying on the bar floor, and the city guard was clomping inside to take control of the brawl that raged.
