Protected: Alien Mate Index Book 2: (Alien Warrior BBW Paranormal Science fiction Romance) (The Alien Mate Index) (31 page)

Suddenly it hit me—we had looked all over the compound but we hadn’t seen a basement. But that didn’t make sense—in a hot climate like this, wouldn’t there be at least one subterranean floor? But where would it be located?

The kitchen!

I went back to the food prep area, ignoring the mess of dirty dishes buzzing with flies in the sink and the dried puddle of blood on the floor. It smelled awful in here—a putrid stench that came from a huge square machine that sat in one corner. Grav had opened it briefly and we had both nearly puked from the odor that emerged. It was full of raw, rotting meat, most of it in advanced stages of decay.

“To feed the Biters,” Grav had explained, shutting the door quickly and covering his nose with one hand. “Damn, that’s fuckin’ awful!”

I knew his nose was much more sensitive than mine so I really felt sorry for him. We had left the kitchen in a hurry after that, having looked in all the cabinets and drawers and found nothing of interest.

There was still nothing to see, but this time I covered my nose and looked…really
looked
around. If I was going to hide a door that led down to a cellar or basement, where would I put it?

Unfortunately, there was only one place big enough—the big square meat freezer that had gone bad. I stepped up and tried to look behind it but it was flush with the wall and bigger than a vending machine—there was no way I could budge it. I looked up and down its smooth, black sides but I didn’t see any kind of button or lever to push or pull either.

This is stupid, Leah,
I told myself as I examined it.
There’s probably nothing here. You’ve read way too many gothic romance mysteries where pulling a secret book in the library or pressing a stone carving on the fireplace reveals a hidden passage. You’re wasting your time.

But when I get an idea in my head, I can be stubborn. And somehow the idea that there was a secret entrance in the kitchen wouldn’t leave me—it buzzed around my head like one of the flies from the sink.

I knew what I had to do.

“All right,” I muttered, pinching my nose extra hard. “I’ll look just one more time.”

I yanked on the metal handle of the big black meat freezer, pulling it open and letting out a gust of putrid air I could still somehow smell even with my nose pinched shut.

“Ugh!” My eyes watered at the stench and I felt my stomach clench like a slick fist. But this time I made myself look—really
look
at the inside of the freezer.

The last time Grav and I had taken one glance at the rotting, maggoty meat and slammed the door closed as fast as we could. This time, despite the piles of green flesh, crawling with black and yellow alien maggots, I made myself stand there and study the inside of the freezer.

The thing that struck me almost at once was that the freezer didn’t seem deep enough. The outside of it looked to be at least four feet deep but the inside was more like two feet—if that. So where were the missing two feet?

A fly flew past my face, looking to get at the meat.

“Shoo!” I waved at it but it brought my eyes up to the top of the tall freezer. Way up in the top left hand corner, half hidden by a hunk of meat boiling with maggots and half-grown roach-looking creatures, was a small, black button.

Ugh…no. No, please, no!
I thought. But my eyes wouldn’t leave the button. Probably it was nothing—just some kind of temperature control or light sensor or something. But what if it
wasn’t
? What if it was the way to open the freezer and reveal a secret door?

I called myself crazy, stupid, and all kinds of other names but the feeling that I was supposed to press that damn button was too strong to deny. I
had
to do it. But in order to reach it, I’d have to lean in to the freezer filled with rotten meat and get my hand around the buzzing, crawling chunk that was right in front of it. The one that looked like it was covered in half-grown roaches.

Have I mentioned that I hate roaches? Because I do—so,
so
much. In Florida we have these big, flying ones called Palmetto Bugs that always get into the house when it rains. It’s absolutely horrifying to pull back your shower curtain and see one of those monsters sitting there, ready to fly in your face. None of the bugs I saw crawling on the rotten meat were that big but I didn’t discriminate as to size. When it came to roaches, I hated them all.

Still, there was no other way.

“All right,” I said to myself, mostly talking to that implacable gut feeling that was telling me I
had
to press the black button. “All right—let’s do it fast.”

Taking a deep breath—which I immediately regretted—I stood on my tiptoes, reached in and pressed the black button as fast as I could.

Then I jumped back, gasping and shaking my arm which was crawling with bugs.

“Eww!” I cried, shaking and grimacing as my stomach twitched and rolled. Eww, eww, e…” The last “eww” died on my lips.

Without a sound, the front part of the freezer swung forward revealing a dark space behind it.

I had found my secret door.

Suddenly Grav appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“What is it? What’s wrong, darlin’?” He looked at me, concerned. Obviously he’d heard my shouts of disgust as I shook my arm to get the bugs off.

“Grav—I found something. Come look.” My voice sounded funny with my nose pinched shut but there was no way I was going to let go and get a really big whiff of the awful odor.

“Coming.” He pulled the front of his black tank-top up over his nose and mouth to block some of the stench and came forward.

“Look,” I said, gesturing to the dark doorway that had been revealed when the shelf of rotting meat swung forward. “A hidden doorway.”

“Well I’ll be damned.” Grav looked really surprised. “That’s great darlin’—how’d you find it?”

“By reading too many gothic mysteries.” I saw his quizzical look and smiled. “I had a hunch, that’s all.”

“Looks like it was a good one,” Grav remarked. “That’s a small space though. You’d have to be a flexible as a damn
hyl’dy
to get in there. In fact—”

“Wait.” I put a hand on his arm. “Say that again.”

“Say what? That it’s a small space?”

“No…no, about the
hyl’dy.”
The words of Captain Verrai’s underling came back to me—he’d also said something about a
hyl’dy.
And for some reason, that idea in conjunction with the Ma
jor
an captain bothered me.

So what?
whispered a voice in my brain. What’s so important about a…

A
hyl’dy.
Magda’s
hyl’dy
on Sincon Delta. Suddenly her words came rushing back to me…

“You’ll meet a male…One you think you shouldn’t trust. He will ask you questions you feel you mustn’t answer… Now, listen to me child
: trust this male.
And tell him what he needs to know. The fate of the very galaxy depends on it.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered faintly. Captain Verrai and his questions about Earth—about Charlotte. I’d refused to tell him anything because I felt instinctively that I shouldn’t answer!
“Oh my God!”
I moaned again.

How had I forgotten all about what Magda had told me? How had it gone so completely out of my head?

“What? What is it?” Grav looked at me, genuinely concerned. “What’s wrong, darlin’—you look like you’re gonna be sick. Is it the smell?”

“No.” I shook my head, my hand falling from my nose. The smell of the rotting meat was as awful as ever but I barely noticed it. “I just realized something,” I told Grav. “Something I forgot—something I should have done.”

“Well, we’ll have to deal with it once we get back to the ship. In the mean time—”

“Grav?” The soft voice was so weak I could barely hear it. But Grav’s ears pricked up at once and he turned to the place the voice had come from—the dark doorway behind the meat freezer.

“Teeny?” He pulled his shirt down and peered inside, his deep voice hopeful. “Teeny, is that you?”

“Grav?” It was a soft, kittenish voice that twisted my heart in my chest—the voice of a little lost girl who’d been hurt and betrayed so many times she was almost afraid to hope anymore.

Grav stooped to look further into the dark space.

“Come out, sweetheart. It’s just me,” he rumbled. “Been looking all over for you.”

“I don’t want to come out.” There was an edge of terror to her voice now but I thought I could see something moving in the darkness. Despite her words, a pair of big violet eyes appeared, gorgeously framed by long black lashes.

“You don’t have to be afraid, Teeny,” Grav murmured coaxingly. “It’s okay—the pirates are dead. Everybody who hurt you is gone. It’s just me and Leah here and she’s all right—she helped me find you.”

“I’m not afraid of Arn and his crew—I know they’re dead.” The big eyes blinked but as yet, I couldn’t see any more of her. “I heard the Imperial soldiers shoot them.”

“Why didn’t you come out and tell them who you were?” Grav asked. “The Gold Skins can be bastards but they won’t hurt an innocent female. You know that.”

“I was afraid to come out,” Teeny whispered. “I was afraid…afraid they would shoot me too.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked, speaking up for the first time. “You’re not a pirate—you’re a little girl. Captain Verrai wouldn’t hurt you.”

“He would if he saw.” Finally, Teeny sidled into the light. Stooping, she came out from the dark hole hidden behind the meat freezer.

Her long black hair was matted and her clothes were filthy with dirt and cobwebs. There were dark circles under her big eyes and her pale green skin had a grayish cast that spoke of weeks of malnourishment and neglect.

Poor little thing! I could only imagine how horrible it must have been for her, hearing the shots fired and the sounds of dying men and later waiting in the darkness, smelling the stink of decay…

“You thought he’d shoot you if he saw
what?”
Grav asked. His deep voice was a mixture of impatience and tenderness.

“If he saw
this.”

Teeny held out one slender arm. On it was an oval ring of bite marks. Black lines like lines of blood poisoning radiated out from it, running up the length of her arm in both directions.

“He bit me—one of the Biters
bit
me,” Teeny whispered. “And now…now I’m going to be a Biter too.” Her big eyes filled with tears which ran down over her pale, trembling cheeks. “Oh, Grav,” she whispered, looking up at him. “I’m so glad you found me again but this time you’re too late.
You’re too late.”

And then she began to sob in earnest.

Leah

I hadn’t seen Grav cry before—and he didn’t exactly cry now. But his white-on-black eyes were suspiciously bright as he took Teeny in his arms.

“Hush. Just hush, now sweetheart,” he murmured, stroking her matted black hair as he held her tight. “Everything’s going to be all right. I swear it is.”

But I could tell that he was lying.

Teeny clung to him and cried as if her heart would break and I could see that Grav’s was breaking too. He held her tight, his broad shoulders hunched with misery.

At last she pulled away, her long lashes matted with tears.

“Grav,” she whispered. “I don’t…don’t want to be like the Biters.”

“You won’t be, sweetheart,” he said hoarsely. “I won’t let that happen to you.”

“You won’t be able to help it. Grav…I saw what happens when someone gets bitten. I watched it when one of the Biters got his collar off and bit one of Arn’s crew.” Teeny swiped at her eyes. “Within a week he was a Biter himself—the Hunger took him and he didn’t know anybody anymore. They…they had to put a collar on him but that only controls them—it doesn’t bring their mind back. Once the Hunger takes you, you’re gone.”

“Teeny, sweetheart—” Grav began but Teeny kept talking.

“Grav, I was bitten four days ago,” she said. “And I can already feel it growing inside me. I…I won’t last much longer. Not as
me
.”

When I’d seen Teeny on the recording her grandfather had showed us, I had pegged her for around ten years old. Now I saw she must be closer to thirteen. There was an unusual maturity in her violet eyes—a determination and understanding that wouldn’t have been possible in a younger child.

“Sweetheart,” Grav began again, but before he could get any further, Teeny was in motion.

Quick as a flash, she grabbed the ugly snub-nosed blaster he had tucked in the belt at his waist and pointed it at her own delicate temple.

“Teeny,
no!”
Grav roared, reaching for her.

She leaped nimbly away, backing out of the kitchen, the blaster still aimed at her head.

“I have to do it—please, Grav, try to understand.” Her voice was high and desperate. “You know how grandpapa is—he’ll make me wear a collar. He’ll keep me alive even after I’m not
me
anymore. I don’t want to live like
that
. I don’t want to eat raw meat and have the Hunger burning me up from the inside out all the time!”

“Teeny, don’t do this—
please,”
he begged, following her out of the kitchen. “Listen to me—just listen.”

“No,
you
listen!” She took another step back, into the living area with its broken, overturned furniture and blood-smeared walls. “Just tell grandpapa you found me like this. And tell him…tell him I…I love him.”

There were tears running down her pale cheeks again but she was keeping her chin up and I could see the determination in her eyes.

“Give me the blaster, Teeny.” Grav held out a big hand. “Give it to me,
now
. Don’t do this.”

“You know what I’m saying is true,” she whispered. “You know there’s no cure!”

“Maybe there is,” I said, speaking up for the first time.

Grav and Teeny both looked at me incredulously.

“What…what do you mean?” she asked, hope and uncertainty warring in her big violet eyes.

“I mean I’m a
La-ti-zal,”
I said, looking her in the eye. “And I’m a Healer.”

Which was probably stretching the truth a little—okay, a
lot
—seeing as how I had only healed Grav twice and both times were after we’d been intimate. I didn’t know if I could heal anyone else besides him but I had to try. It was that or watch poor Teeny blast her head off!