Alien Breeder's Bond: A Scifi Alien Romance, page 4
She eyed it uncertainly, glancing once more at the creature on the floor.
She took my hand in hers.
Her skin was so soft, so smooth.
I smiled and nodded comfortingly at her.
“We need to leave right away. We don’t have time to pack your things—”
I stiffened my arm to help pull Emma up onto her feet but she pulled me forward.
I leaned over to cater to her movement.
She raised her other hand.
Moonlight winked off something sharp and metallic in her hand.
I said, “No—”
I barely managed to turn my head as she swung the blade around and sliced me across the cheek.
I released her hand and pressed my fingers over the wound that spurted blood.
Emma bolted up onto her feet and ran for the door.
“Wait! Emma! Wait!”
She didn’t so much as turn to glance back over her shoulder as she disappeared down the hallway.
I ran to the door and caught sight of Emma as she slipped on a pair of sneakers and disappeared into the night.
“Emma!” I bellowed.
I was too late.
She was gone.
Emma might have slipped through my fingers but at least part of my plan had come to fruition.
I wanted to get her out of this apartment.
It might not have happened the way I had hoped but the important thing was she was getting as far away from here as possible.
As far from him as possible.
It had been close.
Too close.
Within inches of him claiming her for himself.
Then the bond between us would have been broken and she would have belonged to my Shadow for all time.
Then I would have been doomed to a life of solitude for the rest of my days.
Just the sight of him naked with her was enough to make me sick to my stomach.
My Shadow must have given her a powerful dose of poison for her to fall so hard for him the way she had.
But it wasn’t real.
They were fake emotions, cultivated for the demon to use her this one time and make her supplicant to him.
Then, once he had spilled his seed inside her, she would belong to him.
That hadn’t happened.
And it wouldn’t, so long as I had anything to say about it.
I turned back to the bed.
I had to finish off the creature.
If I was quick, I could slow down the threat to her right here and now.
There was no way to kill the beast, not armed as I was, but I could give it enough wounds that it needed to heal from before it could give chase once more.
I checked the plasma readout on my blaster pistol.
More than enough to disable this monster.
I would finish him off and then go find the girl.
I could sense her out there now, running into the night, zigzagging through the streets.
Panicked.
Scared.
Confused.
I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to have witnessed what she had and not know what was going on.
I aimed my blaster at the floor as I rounded the bed.
If my senses had been a little sharper, had been less full of Emma, I might have noticed the leg that’d lay flopped over the corner of the bed was no longer there.
When I lowered my blaster pistol to the figure, I found the space empty.
Iav wasn’t there.
A fist slammed into the back of my head, sending me sprawling.
I shoved myself off the wall and collapsed on the bed.
My Shadow struck at the wall where I should have landed.
The concrete gave way to his powerful fist.
I rolled over, my blaster pistol still clutched tight.
I took aim at the thick shadow in the corner and fired.
A hand swung from the darkness and knocked the pistol from my hands.
I didn’t lose my grip.
The blast of plasma illuminated the room for a fraction of a second before the pure energy burnt a hole in the wall.
I spotted the dark humanoid shape, pressed against the ceiling.
It ducked and spun to one side as I unloaded my pistol at it.
The bolts crackled as they zipped through the air, missing the creature by inches.
I kept firing.
In each millisecond of flashing light, the creature slithered, as graceful and terrible as water.
In many ways, Iav and I were the same.
He had a good idea of what I was going to do before I did it, just as I knew the same thing about him.
He would either go for the door to escape and chase after Emma or throw himself at me and attempt to wrestle the pistol from my grasp.
I rolled from the bed and onto the floor, placing myself between him and the door.
Any second now I would see a tiny movement of the shadows and open fire.
A second came.
Then went.
He knew I knew what he would do.
And that didn’t give him much incentive to do it.
Smash!
The window exploded, the shards of glass glinting like snow as they sailed toward the ground.
The creature perched in the window frame, grinning back at me the way he had moments earlier when he prepared to plunge into Emma.
The creature leaped out onto the street below.
I ran to the window and took aim with my pistol.
I appraised the shadows for movement but the creature had already gone.
He moved like the wind in the shadows.
Darkness was his home.
It would be hours yet before daylight warmed the skin of my face and I would have the advantage.
My Shadow would take after Emma.
She’d gotten some distance from us already.
It was a head start but not much of one.
My Shadow could sense her every bit as much as I could.
This world was alien to me.
Where would she run?
Who would she go to for help?
And could I reach her before the creature did?
I leaped from the window and landed in the shadows.
I rolled up onto my feet and immediately spun around, looking for the attack I knew could come at me from the darkness.
None did.
Not yet.
That didn’t mean it wouldn’t—only when I least expected it.
My Shadow might look like me but he was anything but.
He was my opposite, my darker side, identical to me in every way but where it mattered.
I was birthed in the light, he in the dark.
Similar and yet so different.
The same ingredients were used to make us but his soul had been twisted and morphed into something darker.
And more deadly.
I ran for the low wall that marked the small front garden of the property.
I jumped over it and entered the small circle of golden streetlight.
I felt stronger already.
I peered at the fringes of darkness and the trail of breadcrumbs that drifted in either direction down the street.
No sign of the monster.
No sign of Emma either.
My Shadow had a head start and it was more than he needed.
I took off at a run toward the throbbing light of Emma in the distance.
“Computer,” I said. “I need you to help me get to the girl.”
“You misplaced her already?” Computer said.
I could imagine him rolling his eyes—if he had eyes to roll, that is.
“Will you just get on with it?” I snapped.
“No need to be so grouchy.”
I made a mental note to alter Computer’s personality settings when I returned to my ship.
I bolted around a corner and almost flew headlong into a couple taking a midnight stroll.
“Computer. Gauge Emma’s speed and direction. Triangulate where she might go for help. I can’t afford to waste a single second.”
Being born and raised in darkness provided my Shadow with certain strengths.
His senses were stronger than those born in the light and could likely smell Emma and the trail she left in her wake.
If Iav was to reach her first, he would not be as patient with her as he had the first time.
“Affirmative,” Computer said. “Processing now.”
The Shadows’ naturally aggressive demeanor made them good hunters but poor researchers.
The light gifted us with wits able to develop advanced technology that was beyond the Shadow.
But that didn’t stop them from stealing every piece of technology we had and backward engineer it for their own purposes.
We’ve been at war with each other for as long as we existed.
There had never been peace and never would be.
We were two halves of the same coin, darkness and light, and could not exist peacefully in the same galaxy.
“Location detected,” Computer said. “The humans often seek help from a place known as a ‘police station.’ She appears to be heading toward one now.”
“Find me a shortcut. I need to reach her faster than my Shadow.”
“Calculating.”
Please let me reach Emma before my Shadow, I prayed.
I was the only chance she had.
Both me and my Shadow were driven to mate.
Unfortunately for Emma, she was both our fated mate.
He would stop at nothing to take her.
We born in the light could never take without permission.
She had to give herself freely.
And if my Shadow succeeded, it would be over for me.
I would never mate again.
I would never love again.
And the fate that would befall her…
It was a thousand times worse than the one that would befall me.
Emma
Oh my god. Oh my God.
Oh my god. Oh my God.
I tried to force a coherent thought into my consciousness but it wouldn’t materialize.
All I was capable of was those three words stuck on auto-repeat.
Oh my god. Oh my God.
I didn’t understand what’d taken place in my bedroom.
I mean, I was there.
I saw everything.
I was even part of it.
But none of it made sense.
I kept on running.
I didn’t know where I was heading or what I would do next.
My feet slipped and slid inside the oversized sneakers I’d snatched from the shoe rack.
They belonged to Olivia.
Her large duck feet made running in the sneakers difficult.
But it didn’t matter what I wore at that point.
I could have run in clogs and I could set a new world record.
I ran because it was what my instincts told me to do, because I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do.
Nothing like this had ever happened in my boring life before.
This was why you should never pick someone up from a club, I thought.
But even I couldn’t have predicted something as crazy as this happening.
Iav was a nice guy.
He turned me on more than anyone ever had before.
The effect he had on me when we kissed…
It had to mean something.
But he was dead now.
Someone had kicked down the door to my room and filled him with bullets.
No, not bullets.
With shards of light.
White-hot light that left purple cigarette burns in my eyes.
How did I explain that?
What sort of weapon was it?
I shook my head.
I must have imagined it.
The moonlight, I decided.
Moonlight must have bounced off the bullet and made it look like it was a bolt of light.
That made sense.
Didn’t it?
My breaths grew horse and heavy in my throat, rasping like I’d been smoking ten a day.
I couldn’t keep running all night.
I needed to stop somewhere.
Help.
I needed help.
But from who?
My friends.
They would probably still be at the club.
I changed direction and trotted down the street and came to a slow stop.
Did I really want to go running into a crowded place?
I might cause a panic.
And the loud music and flashing lights weren’t going to help.
And let’s not forget that was where I’d met Iav in the first place.
No.
I needed to go somewhere else.
The police.
I would go there.
I had only ever gone to the police station to pick up our dog, Scruffy, after he ran away from home on one of his adventures.
Only now I was the one on the adventure.
I shifted direction again and turned another corner.
The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and for a while I had thought someone was on my tail.
I checked over my shoulder and was pleased to find Iav’s twin wasn’t following me.
Twin?
Was that right?
I’d only seen the figure with the pistol once, and that was only with the aid of a thin shard of moonlight, but what else did you call someone that looked identical to the guy I was about to fuck?
He had the same smoky eyes, the same square jaw, the same broad shoulders, and muscular frame.
I gulped.
Did they want to share me?
Was this whole thing part of some horrific game?
If it was, it’d ended in tragedy when one blew the other away.
Why?
Why would he shoot his twin in the chest?
None of this made any sense.
It made going to the police station an even better idea.
I needed to explain my side of the story.
I didn’t want to go to prison for murder when it had nothing to do with me.
There was some freaky shit going down and I wanted no part of it.
Except they had already made me a part of it.
When the stranger had turned up, I was both horrified he had shot Iav and relieved at the same time.
How messed up was that?
It was beyond comprehension.
He had touched a part of me so deep, so primitive, that it had laid dormant all these years.
I would extricate myself from this twisted story as soon as possible.
I didn’t want to know what was going on.
Tears spilled unbidden down my cheeks as I sprinted for the warm beacon of light that stretched across the sidewalk toward me as if reaching out to welcome me into its warm enfolds.
Safe and secure.
A nightmare had come and I couldn’t wait for it to pass.
I leaned back in my chair and the relief hit me all at once like a sledgehammer.
It was cathartic to tell the police officers everything that’d happened to me over the past few hours.
They were trained listeners and felt the weight of each word as I unloaded them.
I considered holding back some of the more… unusual aspects of my story but decided not to.
I told them everything.
After all, when they got to my room and noticed the scorch marks on Iav’s body, they would assume I must have left something out, so why not tell them everything upfront?
The recording machine whirred quietly between me and the female cop, Officer Rodriquez, on the other side of the table.
Her partner was Officer Ducard, who stood with his arms folded over his chest, listening but letting his partner ask most of the questions.
I didn’t have to wait longer than ten minutes before the officers came out to meet me.
Some of the others in the waiting room glared at me as they took me away.
I guess being a witness to murder was a higher priority than someone who only needed to report a missing phone.
They brought me into this interrogation room but at no point did they interrogate me.
They let me tell my story and never interrupted except to clarify certain details.
I told them everything, beginning with setting my eyes on Iav in the club and how we proceeded to my apartment.
I was a little embarrassed when I came to the sex part but the cops didn’t push me to go into intricate detail.
I felt relieved I wasn’t the only one who had to know this damn story.
At least now I wasn’t alone and they could help me get to the bottom of it.
Better yet, they could take the entire thing off my hands and deal with it themselves.
Rodriquez and Ducard shared a look before turning back to me.
No doubt they were used to hearing strange stories but surely even they had to be surprised by the turn of events?
Rodriquez bit her bottom lip and ran a finger over the chain that held the badge around her neck.
She looked at me carefully before leaning forward.
“Who put you up to this?”
It took a moment for her question to permeate.
“Put me up to what?”
“This. Your story.”
“No one. I just told you everything that happened.”
Rodriquez turned to her partner, her chair squeaking beneath her hefty weight.
“This has your fingerprints all over it, Ducard. I refuse to be punked again.”
Ducard raised his hands in surrender.
“I swear, this has nothing to do with me. But whoever came up with it sure has got a vivid imagination.”
I peered between the two of them, my shining knights in white armor, and the blood drained from my face.
My hands were pressed to the tabletop and turned so hot and sweaty they left marks when I removed them.
“Are you telling me you don’t believe me?”
Rodriquez turned back to me, her eyebrow cocked.
“I believed every word… until you got to the part about his twin showing up. And you lost me completely when you brought up the light gun.”
“Plasma pistol,” I said quietly.
“Right. Plasma pistol. I haven’t heard a story that crazy since Ducard put a guy up to pretending he was Elvis Presley reincarnated.”
Officer Ducard shrugged.
“What can I say?” he said, spreading his hands. “I’m a sucker for the classics.”
