Star Catcher (12 page)

Its snout pressed against her skin, sniffing. The drooling face rubbed her entire body searchingly, scenting her before it sprang after another victim. The process was repeated again and again.

After the animal rejected six people, it found one who must have smelled good enough to eat. It tossed the sleeping girl onto her back with its snout, and she revived with a wail. Her affronted yell morphed into one of chilling dismay, and she scrambled to her feet and began to run. Stella wanted to flee as well, but couldn’t seem to pull her eyes away from the creature as it drove the crying woman in the same direction the first beast had gone.

Another overgrown shape materialized to Stella’s left. It sniffed the air and turned alarmingly in her direction.

It was all the impetus she needed. Stella turned and ran from the hounds of hell.

The stalks beat against her. They stung her bare skin and grasped her hair like bony fingers as she forced her body through the canes. She dug a path through the dry material, raking the plants with her hands to make way for her body, only to be slapped in the face as she split the rows. Stella ran like never before. In high school, she had competed in plenty of races on the track team. The act of pushing her body to the limit was not foreign to her.

This race was far worse, though. The stakes were life or death.

Fire speared through her chest as she sprinted between the scratchy vegetation with nothing more than moonlight to guide her. Rising hysteria made her breathing more labored than running alone. The thing could hear her crashing through the corn and could detect her scent. There was no point in trying to be stealthy. All she could do was move as swiftly as possible.

The pale moonlight grew brighter up ahead, and she forced herself not to slow.

Nearly safe. Get out of this nightmarish maze. Almost there.

Stella broke from the corn. A breath of unbelievable freedom nearly choked her, cool and remarkable, before she slammed into a wall of glass. Her arm had been pumping upward and took the brunt of the blow, but the barrier was completely unexpected. The breath gushed out of her like a released balloon.

She lay stunned in the damp grass, shaking and hyperventilating. The blades rose tall around her, and she was tempted to stay down; to hide. Who could see her here?

But that thing could smell her.

She wasn’t safe until her car door closed, and she was locked inside. Then she could relax. Stella managed to pull up on all fours and crawl over to the invisible wall. She reached a hand into what should have been open air and was met with ice-cold resistance.

What the hell?

It felt like plastic. She noticed a faint give and recoil as she pushed hard against the wall. It was like an invisible force field. Her stomach did a somersault.

Stay calm. If you lose your head, you’re done. Get to the entrance of the maze. Head right, follow the wall. You can get out of this, but you need to move now.

The voice in her head gave the command and she obeyed. Stella sprang up. Fight-or-flight hormones surged through her, and she began to run at top speed along the edge of the field. Her hand trailed along the smooth, cool barrier, waiting for a break in the enclosure. Sooner or later she would find the exit—that, or a dog-monster. Or maybe she’d run straight into the freaky sideshow chicks who had imprisoned them. Whatever happened, she wasn’t going down without a struggle.

If she was bound for Hell tonight, she wouldn’t be the only one.

But the invisible wall seemed to be never-ending.

How had the wolf-mutants gotten in if there was no way out?

As she wheezed and pushed herself harder, she didn’t even begin to contemplate what the barrier was made of or where it had originated. To do so was to question everything she held as truth. It would slow her down and scare her more than she already was, if that was possible. The crunching sounds of demolished corn stalks trailed in her wake and seemed to be amplified in her ears.

The monster was getting closer.

She peeled around a corner to the front face of the enormous plot. The entrance, and hopefully the exit to this deranged labyrinth, was in sight.

Nearly there now. Keep going, Stell.

If she had been worried about Rayna never asking her to go out again, she sure wasn’t now. She’d be beyond relieved to be permanently removed from that invite list.

There was no way Noth was involved in this. The knowledge was a small comfort. If the weird transvestite women had trapped them all in here for some nefarious reason, Noth had nothing to do with it. He couldn’t. If Stella was going to die tonight, she didn’t have to leave this world hating him. She could imagine he had gotten a flat tire, or was mugged, or had been the victim of a traumatic brain injury and was in the hospital with amnesia right this second.

He hadn’t stood her up to orchestrate a colossal gang bang behind her back. He hadn’t planned some twisted human-hunting scenario involving mutant wolves or whatever the hell they were.

She had that, at least.

Stella neared the front of the maze, her breathing harsh and hard, and there was still no break in the wall. The voices of her would-be captors remained audible but muffled, farther inside the corn. The rhythm of their speech was calm, controlled. They didn’t sound like they were meeting much resistance from the women. Maybe they didn’t realize she was missing.

Stella caught a movement in the dark, to her left beyond the invisible barrier. Immediately, she dropped to her knees to shelter in the tall grass. Who or what was that? A shadow passed across the moon, blocking out what little light there was. Stella looked up to see an enormous circular shape hovering above the field. It was blacker than the night sky it blotted out, silent and ominous as a tomb. It actually could be her casket, hers and that of all the other girls in this godforsaken maze.

A low, rumbling growl came from behind her a millisecond before the weight of the beast slammed into her. The animal flattened her to the damp ground as it hurled itself against her back. Stella’s temple smacked against hard earth. The smell of soil, rich and familiar, met her nose before being snuffed out by the fetid breath of the animal that pinned her down.

It was the last thing she noticed before she passed out.

Chapter 10

Artanian Medical Transport Ship

Earth’s Atmosphere, Human Collection Site

Noth absently fingered his human timepiece. The device was critical for getting to his classes at the college. The Embassy had insisted a signal transmitter be placed beneath the watch. It vibrated when he was summoned. The face also flipped open to reveal a miniature teleportation screen, developed by Artanian scientists solely for this mission. He used it to travel to the docking station that served as his temporary work area.

Right now, the craft waited above Earth’s atmosphere to shuttle the surrogates to the medical satellite orbiting Artanos.

No doubt everyone on his planet would be wearing the wrist devices in a few years. The portable mechanism was substantially more convenient than the larger, stationary teleporters currently in use.

Noth planned to keep the watch once he returned to work on Artanos. That way, he would always have a sense of Stella’s day while they were apart. He could look at the timepiece at noon and picture her sitting in the cafeteria, laughing with her friends. The melodic sound of her voice rang in his ears as he visualized the scene.

At three o’clock Stella would be playing with the small humans, teaching them how to grow into intelligent, caring adults.

His abdomen clenched. The human textbooks called it nausea when a meal threatened to be expelled from the digestive tract. The thought of Stella continuing her daily activities without him to see her, touch her, taste her, was nearly more than he could bear.

Perhaps he should remove the watch after all, as if its absence would stop him from remembering.

She must know he was not coming at this late time. Did she worry that he suffered an injury? Or did she curse him for deceiving her?
Scrion, why does it have to be like this?
He had invested everything to receive this assignment. Assisting his kind while ensuring the human surrogates were treated with mercy had always been his sole focus.

Remarkably, he had no taste for the mission now. The fate of his fellow Artanians depended on him, and he planned to fulfill his obligation, but it would be anguish to be apart from Stella.

He stood at the docking port and awaited the captives with growing trepidation. The women should be rounded up by now.

Noth paced from one end of the quarantine suite to the other.

“Why does Krael not arrive with the captives?” He spoke in a voice rough with frustration.

Noth’s medical assistant Uryu simply shrugged in answer.

“The beverage served at the gathering site will make the Earthlings compliant so there should be no trouble,” Uryu finally offered.

“Yes,” Noth agreed. “But Krael insisted her team have electron bolt dischargers for emergency situations.” The weapons were designed to temporarily paralyze skeletal muscle. “I fervently hope the soldiers have no cause to use them.”

Krael wanted complete control over the human collection process, and the Embassy had granted her appeal. Before the collection date, Noth had demanded a meeting to discuss Krael’s plan. He worked tirelessly with the project scientists, and together they produced translator buds for the Artanian staff. The tiny chips delivered the translated English directly to the neural pathways of the user’s brain. The wearers only had to form the Artani response in their heads, and the translated version would be silently fed to them. Noth hoped the improved communication would ease the fears of the women.

Noth stooped over a cart and rechecked the needle-free syringes prepared with
Tristayl
. They were lined up and loaded with premeasured doses. The substance was used to blot out recent memory. The larger the amount used, the further back the erasure.

“We will perform the bloodless, rapid system screen as soon as they enter, Uryu. Any females deemed unsuitable for surrogacy will have the abduction memory eradicated and will be returned to their home planet, as per protocol.”

“Yes, Doctor Zobor.”

Noth was certain Krael understood this as well. Her team had received training and subsequently signed off on the plan. To release rejected surrogates without
Tristayl
administration could be fatal to the operation. Noth saw no evidence that the humans were capable of extragalactic travel or warfare, but all precautions must be enforced. The Embassy was adamant there be no future alien attacks on Artanos as a result of this project.

He stared into the blue mist of the strontium beam, willing Krael to appear with her unharmed captives.
Soon. Now!
As each second ticked by on his watch, Noth became increasingly convinced that something unplanned had occurred.

His only shred of relief rested with the knowledge that Stella waited safely, although angrily, at the restaurant.
Thank Scrion she is far from this place.

“They are taking longer than expected. Perhaps something has gone wrong.” Uryu stood with thick arms crossed over his chest, and his implanted eyebrows pinched with unease. The other Artanian’s misgivings only fueled Noth’s.

Blast Krael to Procyon! What is happening?

Noth made up his mind and walked into the teleportation beam.

In a heartbeat, he materialized amid a clump of trees on the border of the field. The bonfire cast its eerie light above the corn, and he made his way toward the wavering orange glow. Maybe the women arrived later than expected? Krael might be waiting for greater numbers to enter before closing down the charged plasma field and teleporting the females.

The music stopped and the flames disappeared. The rushing sound indicated the electrostatic wall had sealed to encompass the entire site. Krael
was
delayed, but why? Noth stopped, vacillating between moving closer to watch the scene unfold and returning to the platform to avoid Krael’s inevitable anger at his interference.

A terrified scream ripped through the night, like that of an animal fatally wounded. The sound forced his decision. Noth took off at a sprint toward the mouth of the maze and the human who was undeniably injured. He was a healer first, and every instinct in his body propelled him toward the sound of distress.

Krael was behind this. He knew with absolute certainty.

At the maze opening, Krael’s post was empty. Her hairpiece was sprawled across the ground in a tangled heap. It was the only sign of her, but Noth recognized the wig from the docking port before Commander Krael and her crew had departed. The soldiers had all been wearing false hair as Krael preferred females for her military staff.

In truth, the fake hair was more believable on the females. The males at the pre-mission test site looked exceedingly odd, both without eyelashes and with false ones, and Noth had recommended a female team for the collection. Not only did they look more like humans, but he thought they would have more compassion for the abducted women.

Now he had his doubts. The soldiers were trained to obey Krael’s every order, but unfortunately Krael did not seem to possess the capacity for sympathy, at least not for species she considered beneath her own.

Noth spun in a circle, indecision clouding his brain. And suddenly a flash of silver caught his eye. A shape sprang from the grass that marked the far corner of the containment field. A long, flowing mane streamed behind like a molten mercury flag as the girl ran. She was magnificent, graceful, and bounding like an apparition, a figment of his starved imagination.

His heart stopped its frantic beat. The crushing sensation in his chest nearly dropped him to the ground.

Stella.

It could not be! He had made sure she would be far from this place tonight. And yet, that silvery-white hair was distinctive. Noth had been unable to keep from comparing every other female he encountered to that one, his female. Somehow, Stella had found her way to the collection site, and she was now locked in Krael’s prison.