Alien's Bride 1-3

Alien’s Bride Box Set

by

Yamila Abraham

Cover by Archie the Redcat, Edited by Michelle Henson

Copyright © 2014 Yamila Abraham.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

DEAR FRIENDS, please don’t share this ebook online.
 
Piracy has absolutely devastated my ability to make a living.
 
I beg you to please not post this or
any of my works
online.
 
I wouldn’t go so far as to ask this if it didn’t REALLY, REALLY HURT ME!
 
Thanks so much to everyone who has supporting me with a legal purchase.
 

***

When I woke up this morning I thought I was still in
Botswana
.
 
I blinked some of the sleep out of my eyes and thought for sure I was still on that cruddy cot in the room the clinic gave me to live in.
 
Then I wondered why it was so nice and cool.
 
Why was my cot so super soft and cozy?

I still had a bit of morning amnesia going when I sat up.
 
The fact that I almost whacked my head on the ceiling reminded me I was on the bunk atop my desk area in my itty bitty apartment in
New York
.
 
At least this time my heart didn’t start to race with panic.

It’s cool, girl.
 
You’re back in the
US
.
 

I climbed down from my bunk, pondering yet again how I ended up in
Manhattan
.
 
I was supposed to be living with a friend from the Peace Corps,
Lydia
, who sold me on how awesome NYC was.
 
But then she decided to settle down with some dude in
Minneapolis
.
 

It’s all good,
I reminded myself.
 
It’s not like you had roots anywhere else.
 
You found an apartment.
 
You start work in three days.
 
You’re kicking ass as usual.

I was excited to check on the little garden I had growing in my window box.
 
Had my seeds sprouted?
 
I grabbed my watering can with a sound of glee and went to check.
 

Yeah.
 
I made happy little squeals some times.
 
Being alone gave me the license to act as goofy as I wanted.

While I surveyed my tiny little sprouts I heard a noise behind me.
 
It was just a creak of the floorboards, but my whole body tensed up.
 
When I looked back my heart felt like it dropped into my stomach.
 
There was some freaking guy in my house!

What?
 
How?
 
Where…where was he hiding two seconds ago?
 
Holy shit!
 
What was wrong with his face?

It’s hard to take it all in while I was screaming and backing up frantically against the window.
 
I had a huge hulking guy in front of me who was wearing some kind of weird Pan’s Labyrinth makeup complete with twisted black horns.
 
Maybe not Pan’s Labyrinth.
 
I had no idea.
 
The point was that not only did I have a home invader, the freak had on
Hollywood
caliber fantasy make-up.
 
Who does this?
   

My apartment was the size of most people’s bedrooms.
 
There was nowhere for me to run.
 
I was on the 14
^th
floor and the fire escape was on the other side of the building.
 

By this time I’d stopped screaming and I was staring at him while hyperventilating.
 
Was it a prank?
 
One of my Peace Corps buddies tracked me down?
 
No…I couldn’t conceive of anyone I knew going this far.
 

I screamed again when he moved toward me.
 
That’s when I realized he had something in his hand.
 
A gun?
 
No.
 
Like a laser pointer or something.
 
It had a sharp tip.
 
What the Hell is that—

He grabbed my shoulder and jabbed the thing into my neck.
 
I felt one second of pain and I heard my own scream peter out.
 
The floor just started heading for my face, but I felt the guy catch me before I connected.
 

That was it.
 
I blacked out.

***

I woke up with a crick in my spine.
 
I must have fallen asleep in front of my computer.
  
I was bent over a table with my head resting in my arms.
 
I lifted my head up slowly and rolled my neck so the painful kinks could work themselves out.

Then it was like someone turned up the volume in my heart.

Where the Hell was I?

I was bent over a desk all right, but it sure as Hell wasn’t mine.
 
I leapt up from a chair that seemed to be floating.
 
(Actually, a clear bar extended down to it from the ceiling).
 

The horror of my abduction seized my mind.
 
I rubbed where the freak had stabbed my neck.
 
There didn’t seem to be a welt or anything.
 

The room was white.
 
Narrow.
 
No windows, and nothing in it except the chair and the smooth molded terminal I’d been sleeping on.
 
I saw a door that was slightly darker than the walls (egg shell maybe?) but there was no door handle.
 
Everything had smooth rounded edges.
 
The walls curved into the floors and ceilings.
 
The door was shaped like an arch.
 

What the Hell was this?
 
A minimalist sex dungeon?
 
The urge to cry shuddered up my chest and put tears behind my eyes.
 
I held it in, though.
 
The freak was probably watching me.

I looked down at myself and got my next dose of horror.
 
That self-same freak had removed the tee-shirt and panties I’d slept in and put me in a dress.
 
It was kind of like one of those super-modest prairie dresses, except black and made out of rayon or something.
 
It was probably tighter than a prairie dress, too, but was stretchy and felt pretty comfortable.
 
A quick feel told me I did have some kind of bra and underwear below it.
 

Since there was nothing really to focus on in the white room, I looked back at the terminal.
 
It was just a rounded white desk with a black screen embedded in it.
 
There didn’t seem to be a keyboard or anything.
 
I pressed my nails under the monitor to feel for any buttons.

It clicked on.
 
The bust of the guy who’d abducted me appeared with full make-up.
 
It was such a clear image I felt like I could put my hand in the screen and touch his face.
 
The quality of his make-up struck me again.
 
His skin was light blue with some Zulu warrior lines and dots painted in violet on his forehead and cheeks.
 
He had auburn eyes that were just a touch too red to be a genuine eye color.
 
It seemed stupid to put on contacts for such a subtle difference.
 

“Maritza Santos,” he said with a weird deep voice.

No, no, no.
 
Why do you know my name?
 
  
 

“Cedquinthoma halethke cranda…”

I had to sit down at this point.
 
The spit went cold in my mouth.
 
My abductor was speaking some bizarre language I’d never heard before, and yet, I understood every word.
 

All my bile was rising up in my throat.
 
I wanted to shut it off.
 
Things had made sense up until this point.
 
Horrible, nightmarish sense, but at least I hadn’t gone insane.
 

I’d looked away from the screen without thinking about it.
 
A panic attack was building inside me.
 
The tears I held back sprang free.
 
Things had become so surreal I didn’t even know why I was crying.
 
I had no idea what to feel.

“Maritza!”

I looked back at the screen.

“Pay attention,” he said in the weird language I magically understood.
 
“You need this information, and quite frankly I have other things I need to do today.”

My jaw dropped.
 
Actually, I was glad he was rude.
 
I understood rudeness.
 
It was a familiar life preserver in a sea of nonsense.
 
If I just grabbed onto his rudeness I had a few seconds where I didn’t have to focus on the rest.

“Look, you,” I said in my normal everyday English.
 
“All I want to know is why you kidnapped me.”

The guy scowled.
 
It was a really good scowl.
 
Probably better than the makeup should have allowed.
 
(FYI, I kind of already knew it wasn’t make-up).

“I’m trying to tell you that,” he said in his language.
 
“Shut up and listen to me.”

I hugged myself in the chair.

“Today is 2,080 years later than the day I abducted you.
 
Our druids gave me the ability to travel into the past and get you.
 
There is no way for you to go back.
 
Make your peace with that fact.”

I didn’t look at the screen while I spoke to him.
 
“It—it’s fine.
 
I don’t believe you, anyway.”
  

“Your planet, Earth, was being decimated by a parasitic race called the Instajants who infected human brains to use them as host bodies.
 
My people, the Dak-Hiliah, had a vaccine that would prevent Instajant infection.
 
We provided this to Earth in exchange for your unconditional surrender to the Dak-Hiliah Empire.
 
Do you know why we did this, Maritza?”