Alien Beast Read online

  Even that was nothing compared to what she was seeing now.

  Willow stared at the open park. People from all levels of the ship were walking around. A couple sat beneath a tree with their backs against the trunk. They were whispering softly. The woman was feeding the man pieces of food. He looked happy, sated. They both did.

  She pulled her eyes from what was obviously a private moment and looked around the rest of the park. There were children playing in the grass and laughing loudly. Vendors were pushing carts full of food around the area, so she could get a snack when she was ready. A bar was in one corner of the park and Willow could see the crowd already gathered there, ready to get drunk on their cruise. Trees and flowers filled the open space, but more than that, there were huge, open windows.

  She could see space.

  All of it.

  Willow found herself drawn to the windows. She walked slowly, staring, not caring if she looked silly. She’d never seen anything like this before. Hell, maybe she had been wrong in not springing for the deluxe suite. This was amazing.

  Before she could stop herself, she continued moving until she pressed her hand to the window. It would leave a print, of course, and someone would have to come clean it, but she didn’t quite care. From here, she could see Mars in the distance. Obviously, they were moving away from it.

  Far, far away from it.

  Willow’s family was on that little planet. It wasn’t little, not really, but it looked so small from here. She had spent her entire life trying to please people on that planet, and for what? What did she have to show for any of it?

  Willow was 25-years-old and she had nothing.

  Nothing.

  She had no family anymore, no husband, no boyfriend, and no children. She had very few friends and a very ordinary job and a very ordinary, normal, boring life. This trip was her gift to herself. This journey was a present to herself for working so hard for all of those years.

  Willow stared out of the window and looked at her home planet.

  She felt like she should miss it. She ought to miss it. She ought to feel sad or upset or anything at all, really, but she didn’t.

  The only thing Willow felt as she looked at Mars was relief.

  And she realized that she really never wanted to go back.

  Chapter 2

  Lukanterao the 13th of the 56th Clan was no small man.

  He was, in fact, a beast.

  That was what they called him: Beast. His muscles were large and his list of kills even larger. He was a monster. He was a freak.

  And he was a hero.

  He hadn’t meant to save all those children on Dreagle. The Dark Planet was one no one wanted to go to, not even a Reslenoau native. Lukanterao had been through a lot. Orphaned as a child, he’d grown up with the other boys of Reslenoau learning how to fight, how to hunt, and how to kill.

  This had served him well in battle.

  He’d never lost a fight in all his years. Oh, he’d come close plenty of times, but he had no interest in dying. Not yet. Not today.

  When he’d gone to Dreagle with the 56th Clan to work on a peacekeeping initiative, he hadn’t expected to find Taneyemm children being kept as slaves, as servants. He knew exactly which planet they were from. The people of Dreagle might have pretended to be interested in peace, but they weren’t.

  They had been stealing Taneyemm children – dragon shifter children – and keeping them on the planet.

  They had been building their own personal army to try to take Taneyemm.

  Only Lukanterao had found out.

  He had discovered what was happening and he had freed the damn children. Now he was being hailed as some sort of hero, which he didn’t believe. He wasn’t interested in being a hero. That had never been his thing.

  Children should be protected, though, revered. They should be cherished. His heart clenched as he thought of his own little brother. Jerementerao had died too young. The accident that had killed his parents had claimed his brother’s life, as well. People told Lukanterao he’d been lucky he was at school when it happened. They said he had been lucky to live.

  He’d been lucky his whole damn life.

  And now, his luck was running out. This was the last battle of Dreagle. He could feel it in his bones. He’d been fighting for days, weeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he slept. The Taneyemms had called for the help of the Reslenoau natives when they’d chosen to go to war over the stolen kids. If Lukanterao’s planet believed in one thing, it was loyalty.

  Taneyemm had theirs.

  The Taneyemms might be fire-breathing dragon shifters, but the people of Dreagle were pretty fucking good at making weapons. In war, weapons mattered. Even the little guys could have a fighting chance if they had a big enough gun.

  And the Dreaglans had some pretty big guns.

  Lukanterao stormed through the campsite he and his men had set up. He wished he was back on his ship. That was where he really wanted to be. He preferred to be in the skies to walking the ground any day.

  He hadn’t planned on being a hero.

  He didn’t want to be a soldier, a fighter. The war had come to him: not the other way around. Lukanterao was much more comfortable as a trader, as a transporter. He liked to fly. He liked to be in the air.

  Tonight, though, he wouldn’t get to be in his ship. He couldn’t fly around the Taneyemms, anyway. The dragon shifters all had wings and could fly much better, much more discreetly than the ships could. Their ability to change back into their human form, whether it be man or woman, enabled them to access places Lukanterao and his men couldn’t possibly get close to.

  They had saved the last group of children that had been kidnapped. They had killed a good portion of the Dreaglan population.

  The general had been elusive, though. He had been difficult to kill. Tonight, though, everything was going to change.

  He could feel it.

  Chapter 3

  Willow stared out the window on the top floor of the ship.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Ashley asked, nudging her.

  Willow just nodded. They’d been in space for nearly a week and had stopped at two different planets that were just gorgeous. Orchid, as promised, had purple water. Purple! Almost everything on the planet had been beautiful shades of violet. She had been reluctant to leave.

  Mirroean had been just as beautiful. The planet was almost completely made of water, which made real estate there insanely expensive. Although Ashley and Willow had gotten off the ship and walked around, even Ashley’s budget hadn’t afforded her any luxuries there. They had split a meal together of local cuisine, which was overpriced, but completely amazing. Then they’d gotten back on the ship with the rest of the travelers.

  This, though? This was incredible.

  They were passing close to a planet called Dreagle. Although the ship had originally been planning to stop for a few days of exploring, political tensions meant they were simply going to pass by. Willow wasn’t sure exactly what was going on down on the Dark Planet, but she was curious: probably more curious than she should have been.

  She’d read about Dreagle, long ago. Her parents had forbid her to. Dreagle wasn’t a place where respectable people went, they told her. It was the black market of the universe: the place you went to buy things you weren’t supposed to have. It was the place you went to do things you weren’t supposed to do.

  When Willow had booked her cruise, she’d been surprised to see Dreagle on the list of stops. It wasn’t that she was scared to go to a place like Dreagle, but that she’d been surprised patrons of Ship 449302 were allowed to. Maybe the rumors she’d heard weren’t true.

  Her mother wasn’t exactly the most honest person.

  “Ashley,” Willow said, suddenly wondering what her very-wealthy friend might know about the planet. “Why Dreagle?”

  Ashly looked surprised. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

  “What’s so great about Dreagle? Isn’t it sort of a bad place
to go?”

  “Oh,” Ashley laughed. “It’s definitely a bad place to go. Apparently, they’re trying to present a more appealing presence so more planets will trade with them willingly, but it’s all a façade.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning Dreagle is where you go when you’re up to no good.”

  “The excursions we had planned seemed pretty tame.”

  “Visitors aren’t exactly allowed to roam free on Dreagle. Cruisers stop in one port city, wander around that specific town, then get back on their ship after pumping money into the local economy. It’s when you get out of that port city that things get a bit sketchy.”

  “How do you know so much about it?” Willow had tried to find out information about each planet their ship was going to stop at, but she had struggled to find information about Dreagle. No one really liked to talk about it, at least not on Mars. It wasn’t considered a polite topic of discussion.

  “My brother,” Ashley said simply.

  “Eric?”

  “Yeah. He likes to buy things.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “People,” she said without hesitating.

  “What?” Willow turned, suddenly shocked. Surely she had misheard her friend.

  “You asked,” Ashley shrugged. “Eric likes to have slaves. There’s no pretty way to say it, Willow. They’re forbidden on Mars. We like to keep some semblance of humanity there, I suppose, but many of the other planets don’t feel the same need for normalcy.”

  “So if he can’t bring these slaves home to Mars,” Willow was struggling to come to terms with what Ashley was saying. “What does he do with them?”

  “He has a place on Dreagle where he stays with them for awhile,” Ashley said. “Then he just gets rid of them before he leaves the planet.”

  “Gets rid of them? You mean he sells them again?”

  “Sure,” Ashley said. “Whatever you have to tell yourself.”

  Willow stared at her friend, but Ashley didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, Ashley looked out into the blackness of space and the planet that floated beneath them. She pressed her fingers to the glass, then played with the hem of her shirt. Then she put her hands back on the glass again.

  “He’s not a bad person,” Ashley said after a few minutes.

  “I think his ‘slaves’ would beg to disagree,” Willow said dryly, still not quite believing what her friend had just confessed. No wonder people hated Dreagle. Slavery? Really? She knew about things like that happening on Earth, but that had been centuries ago. Humans didn’t do that anymore. None of them did. Slavery was an outdated and archaic concept. People should be free to make their own choices about their lives. They shouldn’t be controlled by someone else. End of story.

  “You’re naïve if you think Dreagle is the only planet with slavery,” Ashley turned back to Willow, but when Willow looked at her, Ashley didn’t look angry. Instead, her eyes held sadness.

  “Why didn’t I know?” Willow asked. “This was never taught in school. My parents never told me this.” She felt like the walls were closing in. She felt like it was getting harder to breathe.

  “Some things are not spoken of in polite society,” Ashley said quietly, and Willow wondered what else her friend knew that she didn’t. What other secrets did Ashley hold close to her heart? What other burdens did she bear alone? They were supposed to be friends, but Ashley knew so much more about the world than Willow.

  Suddenly, Willow felt like she was very much alone on this ship.

  Maybe she should have just married Anthony Weathermore. Maybe she should have opted for a simple existence. Maybe she should have just tried to enjoy as much of her life as she could where she was.

  Maybe Willow shouldn’t have wanted so much more.

  “You know why we aren’t landing, right?”

  “Political tensions,” Willow parroted quickly, but now she wondered if it was true. Was that, too, a lie?

  “Look,” Ashley pointed down at the blackness that covered the surface of Dreagle. It was dark. Did they even have water there? Was that, too, black? “See those bits of red?”

  Willow peered into the darkness. She could see what Ashley was talking about. Bits of orange and ember peered up from the depths. She nodded as she stared out the window. Her face was practically plastered to the glass.

  “Fire,” Ashley said. “There’s no political problem, Willow. They’re having a war, and we’re flying right over it.”

  “Why? What? What are they fighting about?” Willow asked. When they embarked on their journey, she hadn’t heard anything about a war. What could have happened to start something so serious so quickly?

  “People like Eric,” Ashley said coolly, as if she had hardened her heart to it. Ashley didn’t seem nearly as shocked as Willow thought she should be. If it had been Wilma who was buying people, who was hurting people, she would feel much more passionately than Ashley did.

  She would do something about it.

  Or maybe she wouldn’t.

  As Willow watched Ashley, she noticed there was more to her friend’s face than just heartlessness. There was tension. There was a tightness that hadn’t been there even a month ago. Willow had to wonder about that.

  Ashley had always been a go-getter. Yeah, she was bred from one of the richest families in Colony 12, but she’d never let that hold her back. When something was unfair or wrong, Ashley spoke up about it. She rallied. She made sure other people knew there was some sort of injustice and she did everything in her power to right it.

  Ashley had always been good at toeing the line between polite behavior and being a vicious bitch.

  So what had happened?

  “When did you find out, Ash?” Willow asked quietly.

  There was so much she didn’t ask. When did you find out he was a liar? When did you find out he was evil? When did you find out your own brother was a murderer?

  “Before the cruise,” Ashley said. “It’s why my family didn’t come, why I have the big suite on my own.”

  “They stayed behind.”

  “My brother is facing charges for his crimes on Dreagle. My parents are trying to keep it quiet on Mars,” Ashley said. Her shoulders drooped. Willow instantly felt sorry for her friend.

  “Damn,” she said quietly, letting out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

  “Yeah. Now you know about my ‘perfect’ life,” Ashley laughed humorlessly. Willow just shook her head. She had no idea. How could she not have known this about Ashley? They might not have been the best of friends, but they were pretty damn close.

  Only, maybe they hadn’t been as close as Willow thought they were. She hadn’t told Ashley about her mother and Anthony Weathermore. Fuck, did Ashley even know her family didn’t speak to her anymore? Did Ashley have any idea what a rollercoaster the last month had been? Did Ashley know that Willow had scraped together the last of her savings to be able to afford to go on this trip with her?

  If she hadn’t told Ashley all of that, what might she not know about her friend?

  “I don’t think anyone’s life is perfect,” Willow said finally, after a long silence.

  “Not so much.”

  They looked quietly out the full-length windows of the cruise ship, staring at Dreagle, watching the fires burn, thinking of the fires that raged below and the people who were fighting a very dangerous war.

  Willow hoped the good guys would win.

  Chapter 4

  The sound of sirens and bells woke Willow from her sleep. Well, that and screaming. So much screaming. She sat up in bed and realized the emergency lights for the ship were on, lighting up her floor. They were yellow, the same color her bedroom door turned when it was locked, and they lined the exterior walls along the ceiling.

  The yellow may have been meant to be calming, but it may her nervous and frightened. Willow wished she had gone to the ship’s safety briefing, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to be bothered. Well, that and she’d
been hiding from Rand, her would-be stalker from the first day on the ship. He had turned out to be just as creepy as she’d initially thought. Willow wasted much of each day avoiding him.

  She swung her legs from the bed and stood, only to fall on the floor. Why couldn’t she get her balance? She tried to stand again, but only fell.

  Again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Finally, she climbed back in bed and realized why she couldn’t get her balance. Her disoriented state did nothing to help her figure out what was going on. She was groggy and tired, but Willow finally was able to understand the message that was blaring over the loudspeakers on the ship.

  She was finally able to figure out why she could hear screaming.

  Ship 449302 had been damaged and was crash landing on Dreagle.

  The ship was crash landing on the Dark Planet.

  Willow didn’t know what would cause them to crash. She wasn’t a pilot or an expert mechanic. She had been sleeping until just a few minutes prior. Had they hit something? Had they run out of fuel? What would cause their ship to wreck?

  She wasn’t ready to die, she realized as she shook in her bed. Tears streamed down her face as she thought of the harsh realizations she’d faced this week. The universe was not as sweet or as beautiful as Willow had wanted to hope, but none of that mattered because she was going to die.

  Willow, the unwanted child of Mars, was about to die because she took a vacation on the wrong damn ship.

  Willow, the girl without a family, was going to die because she didn’t want to marry Anthony Weathermore.

  Willow, the virgin, was about to die and perhaps the very worst thing of all was that she was going to do so without ever falling in love.

  Pity.

  ***

  Lukanterao the 13th of the 56th Clan was no hero, yet it was because of him the Taneyemm empire was able to reclaim its stolen children and end its war with Dreagle. As the last enemy soldier was killed, Lukanterao was filled with confidence and satisfaction. They had blasted the fuckers and they were dead.