Holiday Abduction (Alien Abduction Book 6) (4 page)

Collector rule number two. “Let nothing, especially not morals, stand in the way of you and your needed treasure.”

“What the hell do you mean it’s temporary?”

The human female didn’t quite yell at him, but her tone was not docile, or soft. Nor was her expression at all happy.

“Mental manipulation is only a short-term tool. Eventually, those with any kind of intelligence will realize they’ve been tampered with and override the commands.”

“So that means those dudes will find out you screwed with them, and come back.”

“Probably, but by then I should be long gone.”

“Well la-di-da for you. What about me?”

“What about you?”

“Are you truly so self-centered? That’s great that you get to walk away, or should I say zoom off in your flying saucer, but I still have to live here. I’d prefer to do so in my house and not behind bars.”

“They would incarcerate you, a female, for what? Merely being here?”

“For being an accomplice to whatever it is you did to them. For lying about you even being here. For everything.”

He made a moue of distaste. “Barbarians. Only female criminals who’ve done truly heinous things are ever placed in prison. The ratio of males to females in the galaxy is too great for us to punish them at any length.”

“Well, on Earth, if you do the crime, you do the time, and they don’t care if you swing a dick or not. Fuck.” She turned away from Vhyl and paced before a garishly decorated tree, which was, to his shock, not in a proper pot with soil but cut!

“What is that?” he said, pointing to it.

“It’s a Christmas tree. And don’t try to change the subject. Because of you, I’m going to be in deep shit.”

“I see it’s a tree, but it’s been severed from its roots. Why would you do that?”

She frowned at him. “Because how else would I decorate it?”

“How about by transplanting it first? Or, even better, decorating it where it grew?”

“The guy with no morals is getting pissy over me cutting a tree. Oh, get over it. Thousands of people do it every year. It’s tradition.”

The shock of her admission almost made him gasp. Barbaric! “It’s tradition to kill your plant life?”

“Not kill. Okay, so maybe the tree dies, but it is part of the holiday. And the tree farms plant new ones to take their place. Did you not study our planet at all before just deciding to drop in?”

What he did when going on a mission was known as reconnoitering, never something so emasculating as study. He arched a brow. “Studying is for scholars, not warriors.”

“Hence your ignorance. You know, being smart doesn’t make you a dumb warrior.”

“It’s a waste of time that could be spent practicing my skills or indulging in debauchery. Now stop diverting the topic away from yet another sign of your unenlightened nature. I do not grasp why you would massacre a tree and do this…” He gesticulated to the gaudy items hanging from the branches.

“We do it because it’s pretty. See?” She leaned over, presenting her luscious backside and, for a moment, easing his incredulity.

The tree lit with dozens of small lights. It made the ornaments twinkle.

She stood back and a pleased expression crossed her face as she stared at the garish display.

He angled his head, left then right. “I fail to grasp the appeal.”

“Your loss. I think it’s pretty. Although it would be even prettier with a giant mound of cash sitting underneath.”

Before Vhyl could reply, a golden glint caught his eye. He leaned closer and grasped a dangling disk, etched with symbols and hung on a branch with a red ribbon. “What is this?”

“A decoration.”

Not given how it made his fingers tingle. “No. It’s not.” He plucked it from the tree and held it aloft, spinning it so it caught the light. “If I am correct, this is the XiiX.”

“That ugly thing? Grandma says Grandpa gave it to her, claimed it was some ancient Mayan treasure he picked up when he was in the army…” As Jilly spoke, her voice trailed off. “Holy crap. I guess that could be it.”

“I will require my detection device to make certain, but given it emits a certain hum, I’d say it was a foregone conclusion.”

“And mine.” She plucked it from his grasp and tucked it against her protectively.

“A moment ago, you declared it was ugly.”

“It is. Very much so. But it’s still mine. So if you want it. Cough up.”

“You wish me to expel air?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s an expression. Forget it. What I meant is how much are you going to pay me for it?”

Pay? Did she jest? Judging by her countenance, no.

He humored her. “What type of currency do you accept? Ghurian gems, galactic credits. I’ve got a cargo full of goods you can choose from.”

She shook her head with each suggestion. “None of those are going to work. My bank only understands one thing. Cold, hard cash. If you want this XiiX thing, then you’re going to have to pay me for it in American dollars.”

“Or I can just take it.” He reached over to grab it, but she hid it behind her back and shook her head.

“No way. The least you can do since you’re going to be the possible cause for a lot of grief is compensate me properly for it.”

“How about I pay you in pleasure?” He smiled.

She laughed. “If I need an orgasm, I’ll touch myself.”

The statement shocked him. “A female shouldn’t masturbate, especially if a male proves willing to ease her arousal.”

“Dude, just how repressed are the women in your world?”

Honestly, he wouldn’t know. He didn’t pay much attention to the females in his household, and his bedmates were just that, bedmates. Nothing more.

But perhaps he should revise his stance. He’d never before had such a stimulating time with a member of the opposite sex, at least one that wasn’t related to him.

The fact he’d found a woman unafraid to defy him and, at the same time, aroused him was a heady combination. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to share the same intrigue.

She rejected me!

Vhyl, turned down by a female?

The universe that revolved around him ground to a halt. He needed to regain control.

I could kill her and take the artifact.
But only cowards killed females, and Vhyl was renowned for his bravery. Surely he wasn’t about to let a female, and a barbarian one at that, best him.

So if he didn’t kill her, what option did that leave?
With my strength, I could just take the XiiX, and she couldn’t stop me.
He could, but again, it didn’t seem sporting. He was easily the stronger, faster, and more aggressive of them. Not to mention she might get hurt and, for some reason, that bothered him.

What about seduction?

She had said no, more than once, and claimed herself immune to his charms, but, after having observed her in a few different scenarios now, Vhyl had to wonder.

Perhaps she lied. Perhaps she did feel some of the same arousal as him but sought to deny it. A perverse characteristic of her kind perhaps.

Only one way to find out.

Since she’d tucked her hands behind her back, she could do nothing to stop him when he invaded her space with a few quick steps and wrapped his arms around her.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking.” Although he couldn’t have said what exactly he took—advantage of the lips, which parted as she gasped, or the ornament he could feel clasped in her hands?

The kiss stole any thought but one.
More.

The taste of her proved exotic. Intoxicating. He might not have much experience in lip meshing—most sexbots didn’t invite that kind of intimacy, and his bedmates often weren’t of the most pristine sort, so he tended to avoid such contact—but with Jilly?

Luscious Jilly not only made him crave a taste, he wanted more. He plundered her mouth, leaving no part of it untouched. He took advantage of her parted lips to glide his tongue in and engage in a wet duel with hers.

He kissed her deeply, passionately, and hungrily, a male starving.

Despite her previous protests, Jilly did not fight him. On the contrary, her hands crept up his chest and draped around his neck, the warm metal of the artifact clasped in her fist pressed against him as she clung to them both.

To his delight, she didn’t remain passive in his arms. She was an active player in their embrace, greedily sucking at his lower lip when her tongue wasn’t engaging his.

Her aggressive takeover of the kiss both shocked and delighted him.

A female wanting control of the tryst?

A first for him. While females often invited him to their bed, once there, he did all the work. Did it well, too. And he found his pleasure, just as he gave them pleasure.

But to have a female so fervently throw herself into a kiss? To have her press herself against him, her lush body molding to his, her panting hot breaths and racing heart an indication of her ardent desire?

Vhyl was well and truly intrigued—and immensely aroused.

His hands roamed her body, cupping the fullness of her bottom, squeezing, weighing. Their roundness would prove inviting when he took her from behind and pounded into her flesh, but only once he got rid of their latest round of visitors.

With a loud curse, he pulled from the kiss as a bright light shone through the window.

He wasn’t alone in his disappointment.

“Dammit. They’re back already,” she grumbled.

“No. This company is worse than anything your government or planet could send against us.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Her house began to shake.

“What the hell?” Fear widened her gaze as her home trembled. From outside, he could hear the rumble of anti-impact thrusters as a vessel came in for a less-than-subtle landing.

“We need to leave,” he announced.

“Why? Who’s coming?”

“My enemy,” was his ominous reply.

“If ever the farm comes under attack, don’t forget I keep extra shot gun shells in the front hall candy bowl and a few spare guns in the trunk in the attic.” – Grandma’s philosophy on always being ready.

Lips tingling, pulse racing, Jilly initially thought the shaking under her feet was passion induced, until his words penetrated.

“What do you mean it’s your enemy?”

However, Vile wasn’t answering. Instead, he tugged her away from the window and twirled her so her back faced it. Just in time, too.

Glass shattered as a wave of force smashed into them. The impact sent her to her knees, and she grunted, mostly because a giant purple dude threw his body around hers, forming a protective cocoon. Good thing given the tinkling shower of shards that blasted past them.

When the house stopped moving and the only thing they could hear was the rumble of the alien craft outside, he rose and yanked her to her feet.

“I can see why they outlawed that ancient thruster design,” Vile complained.

While Jilly had emerged mostly unscathed, she noted her alien shield hadn’t. Dark blood dripped from his left hand, and glints of glass sparkled in his hair. “You’re worried about their engines? What about the damage? And I don’t just mean to you.”

The carnage around her—from the knocked over Christmas tree to the overturned furniture and shredded drapes—would have sent a normal woman fleeing in terror. It only served to piss Jilly off.

As Vile, a hand in the middle of her back, propelled her from the destroyed living room to her kitchen, which had fared only slight better with its broken windows, Jilly uttered a nasty curse word.

“Exactly how,” he asked in a conversational tone, “is encouraging my enemy to fornicate with thy mother an appropriate response to this situation?”

It took her a moment to once again realize that modern slang wasn’t part of his handy-dandy translation gadget. “Think of the nastiest thing you can call a person. What I just said is the Earth equivalent,” was her retort.

“Noted. Even if I don’t grasp it. Of more import than your odd Earth sayings, do you still have the artifact?” he asked as he peered through a window into her backyard.

Surprisingly enough, she did, clenched in her fist. “I do.”

“Excellent. In that case, we will vacate the premises while my enemy is disembarking. The gravity on your planet will give us somewhat of a lead. Do you have a terrain vehicle at your disposal or one nearby we can acquire?”

“No need to steal a car. My truck’s parked out back by the barn. You can borrow it and run if you want, but I’m not leaving.” This was her land. If these space invaders thought they could just bust up her farm, then they had another thing coming. Like Hell was she letting them get away with it.

Was facing down someone Vile recommended running from bright? Probably not, but Jilly had too much of her grandma in her to flee without a fight.

Jilly snagged her shotgun from the floor where it had been knocked over. She checked the chambers to ensure they were loaded. She also swapped her bunny slippers for the boots by her back door and shrugged on a coat. If she was going alien varmint hunting, then she’d probably want to make sure she didn’t lose any body parts to frostbite in the attempt.

“Your weapon won’t prove effective against the one coming,” he informed her.

“How can you know? You’ve never seen me use it.” It punched a decent sized hole.

“Unless it spits high temperature flames or an extremely corrosive acid, then projectiles will just pass through its gelatinous mass.”

“Jelly? Your enemy is made of jelly?” She tried to imagine what such a creature would look like as Vile dragged her out the back door.

He grabbed her free hand as he ran from the farmhouse, his long stride forcing her to huff and puff to keep up. The barn loomed in the distance, a ramshackle structure that hadn’t seen use in at least a decade. Jilly kept waiting for a strong wind to blow it down.

Parked about a dozen feet from the barn doors was her vintage, 1980’s Dodge Ram pickup truck. Diesel of course. It chugged, blew smoke, and was anything but discreet, yet it did the job getting her around. When it started.

Given her remote location, and the fact she kept hoping someone would steal it, she always left the keys in the ignition, which proved handy right about now given their need for a hasty getaway.

As Vile made a beeline for the driver’s seat, she barked, “I don’t think so, purple dude.”

“I am a renowned combat fighter who has driven vehicles through some of the harshest conditions. I’ll program our escape route.”

Confident words, which he soon ate.

He slid into the driver’s seat and stared at her dashboard in consternation. “What the frukx is this archaic technology? There is a circle on your dash. Where is your control panel? Your keypad for programming coordinates?”

“It’s called a steering wheel and if you don’t know that this thing is driven by the pedals on the floor, then you need to move your ass over.”

To her surprise, he didn’t argue. He slid over the bench seat to the passenger side. She hopped in, gun first, which he snagged from her and placed between his knees.

Jilly didn’t waste time. She turned the key in the ignition and muttered her standard magical chant. “Come on, baby. Start for me. Let’s go. Mama needs to get her butt moving.”

“What are you doing?”

“Praying to the gods of trucks and automobiles that my baby here,” with over a million miles clocked and still ticking, most days, “will start.” She slapped the steering wheel and pumped the gas a few times to prime the carbureted engine. “Come on, you big bastard. Start.”

Chug. Chug. Rumble. Gasp. Choke
.

“Is that sound normal?” he asked.

“Depends on your definition of normal. My truck sometimes has a bit of a temper when it comes to starting.”

“This is not a good time for it to get angry. We need to get moving. Things are about to get hot.”

“Things are about to get slapped if they don’t shut up and let a girl do what needs to be done,” she muttered.

“Duck!”

Before she could ask why, he was shoving her head down, just in time, too, as a massive explosion rocked her vehicle. Something hard hit the windshield, and when Vile allowed her to raise her head, she blinked at the smoldering shoe on her hood.

That’s my shoe.
Which she’d last seen in her bedroom closet on the second floor of her house.

Slowly her gaze rose, and in her side mirror, she caught sight of a red/orange flicker before the acrid stench of smoke hit her nose. She turned her head and gasped. “My house!”

More like her ruin.

Her home, the place she called her own—or would have until the bank took it away—no longer existed. A smoldering ruin sat in its place, the jagged remains made of century-plus old wood dancing with flames while black smoke billowed into the sky.

“That bastard blew up my house!” Shocked, she turned to Vile and yelled. “This is your fault!”

“How is it my fault? I am sitting right beside you. You should be thanking me.”

“Thanking you for what?”

“If it weren’t for me, you’d have been inside. And,” he said with pursed lips as he perused her, “you would have probably died given your fragile nature.”

“Oh, that’s priceless,” she snarled. “Blame the victim. This happened because of you and that stupid artifact. It’s your fault your jelly friend—”

“Enemy,” he corrected.

“—followed you here and destroyed my house.”

“He will also destroy us if you don’t move this vehicle. If I am not mistaken, which I rarely am, Mo is approaching.”

That claim managed to stem her tirade as she drew her gaze away from Vile and focused it outside. Sure enough, coming down the drive, waving tentacles, some of which held what she could only surmise were weapons, was an honest-to-goodness jellyfish on land.

“Holy fuck.” She breathed the expletive as she wrenched the key one last time and jammed her foot on the gas.

Chugga. Chugga. Vroom
!

This time the engine caught and held, its noisy motor revving high. She took her foot off the brake, slammed the truck into first, and the truck lurched forward.

So did Vile’s head, but he managed to brace a hand on the dash and prevent a concussion.

“You might want to buckle up,” she advised, having already drawn her own seatbelt automatically upon getting in.

Being a male, he, of course, ignored her to instead point out the obvious. “You’re heading right for him,” Vile yelled over the rumble of the engine.

“Yup.” Forward was the only way out of her farm. The fields at their back only went for a few acres before the land dipped sharply into an impassable ravine.

“Are you insane? He’s aiming his weapon at us. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“You’ll die, too, if you don’t use that teeny tiny thing you call a gun to distract him.”

“Actually, my jumpsuit will protect me from most impact.”

“Stop being a smug jerk and shoot,” she hollered as she floored the gas and weaved her way towards the tentacled shape, which had stopped moving and now appeared to be taking aim.

“Bossy barbarian,” he muttered. Despite his complaint, he took aim, and shot—right through her windshield.

Dammit!

But she couldn’t really give him too much hell since the beam of light, which punched a neat hole through her windshield, streaked ahead of them, hit Jelly dude, and sliced a limb clear off. Stroke of luck or on purpose, it happened to be the one with a weapon pointed at them.

She slapped the steering wheel. “Woo!” she crowed. “Nice shot.”

An unearthly—and she meant that quite literally—squeal erupted, and the remaining tentacles waved wildly. Jilly flashed Mo—which had to be the universe’s stupidest name for an alien—the bird as she flew by in her rattling truck.

Energized by their small victory, she exclaimed, “Dude, we should stop and turn around. I take back all the nasty things I said about your little gun. It’s amazing. Do it again.” Maybe they wouldn’t have to flee after all. Vile could just keep shooting the other alien dude until it had no waggling arms left.

“That wouldn’t be advisable,” was Vile’s dry reply. “There is a reason we advocate strong flame or acid when dealing with Mo and his kind.”

Peeking into her rearview mirror, Jilly’s eyes widened, and her mouth closed on her “Why?” as the severed limb on the ground jumped.

And wiggled.

And rippled.

Why, it jiggled itself into a second mini jelly dude.

“What. The. Hell!”

“Congratulations. You’ve just seen the birth of a new Gelabli. Now do you see why I advocated we flee?”

“That’s insane.”

“No. It’s how they reproduce.”

Startling and disturbing. “Wow, given how easily they can multiply, have they like taken over the galaxy?”

“They’ve tried. However, given we know their weakness, they had to give up. Also, they are covetous and violent by nature, even with their own progeny. To lose a part of themselves means weakening until they can ingest enough material to regain what they’ve lost. And since they don’t like to share, many younglings don’t survive.”

“That is seriously messed up,” she muttered as she careened down the rest of her long driveway and fishtailed onto the country road. In the rearview mirror she could still see the glow of the fire consuming her home and see the dark cloud of smoke in the sky.

It hit her then.

I’m homeless.

The fact that she probably wouldn’t have found the money for the bank before the bank’s foreclosing date didn’t hurt as much as knowing, even if she did encounter a miracle, she had no house to go back to.

Nothing. Just what she wore, her truck, and the stupid artifact she’d stuffed in her coat pocket.

It was a lot to take in. A part of her wanted to cry. A part of her wanted to rail at the injustice. A part of her…found it strangely exhilarating, which was why, instead of blasting Vile, she said, “What next, purple dude?”