3. Agatha

Iwas out.

I was actually outside the prison.

I giggled and caught my laugh for fear it might give away our position.

I still couldn't believe Egara had reached through the narrow gateway and pulled me through, risking not only his chance of escape but his life.

He had saved me from the terrible lifestyle I'd been subjected to.

I had come up with coping mechanisms that allowed me to deal with the worst of the events of the past year, but they did nothing to prevent the horrible future coming my way.

I breathed in the air of freedom and immediately coughed, sputtering around a mouthful of sand and grit that clogged my throat.

Okay, so I hoped freedom would taste a little better than that!

The sand sucked at my heels and made traversing it difficult.

Each time I lost my footing, Egara was there to pick me up and help me across the rippling plains of the endless sand dunes that stretched into the far distance.

I could still hear the klaxon of the prison riots from here and I wondered if they would continue now they knew a pair of prisoners had escaped.

I doubted they were out after us already. They had an entire riot to quell and a prison to lock down before they would come looking for us.

They might wait for the sun to wear us down first.

It was doing an admirable job of that all right.

The sun was scorching and my lungs hurt.

I puffed and panted, more than I should have been if it was only due to the exercise.

I was fit—at least, I had been before I'd been abducted—and although I got a lot of physical exercise between the sheets at the prison, I still struggled to keep up with Egara.

His strides were almost twice the length of mine and it took some doing to keep up with him earlier during the sprint through the hangar.

My lungs still hurt from that exertion and my breaths were ragged and came haltingly.

I had never been asthmatic but I had friends who were and they sounded the same way I did now.

My breaths came haggard and raw as if one of my lungs had collapsed and couldn't operate at full capacity.

Egara was there once again, his strong hand reaching out.

He pulled me onto my feet and force me onward.

For the first time since arriving on this moon, I wondered what the makeup of the air was.

Did they have enough oxygen on this moon to support humans?

I recalled the stories of other prisoners who managed to escape but were found dead outside the walls shortly after.

Was this the reason?

We had each come from different planets, different backgrounds and atmospheres.

None were native to this moon.

They wouldn't be used to the atmosphere of this strange and hostile landscape.

We descended down a sand dune and found ourselves in a narrow valley between two huge mountains.

I reached the bottom and couldn't take another step.

I bent over double and braced myself with my hands on my knees.

"Stand up straight, with your hands on your head," Egara said. "It will expand your lungs and help you recover faster."

I did as he suggested but for the life of me, I couldn't tell the difference between standing like this and collapsing on the floor the way I wanted.

Egara marched up and down the valley as if our run over the sand dunes hadn't affected him at all.

I hated him.

He peered at our surroundings, hands perched on his hips, frowning.

"I swear it's supposed to be around here…"

"What… is?" I said around gulping mouthfuls of oxygen.

"A brook. According to the map, there should be one right here."

"What… map?"

"The one my lawyer gave me before I was sentenced. It's supposed to be right here."

He stamped his foot, making a crunching sound.

Not what you would expect from very fine grains of red sand.

He got down on his front and peered closer at the rocks.

He fingered them and ran them through his fingers.

"These aren't regular rocks."

"No, they're what… you would expect at the… bottom of a running… stream."

He peered over at me, smiling, and dropping the remainder of the tiny pebbles.

"You said you were a historian. Not a geologist."

I shrugged, finally able to stand without panting.

"I was a good science student."

"Come on."

He followed the narrow trail of rocks that ran between the sandy mountains.

"Maybe if we follow this, we'll come to the stream I'm looking for."

Our footsteps crunched on the gravelly pebbles and wound through the valley.

I was only glad it sloped downhill and not up.

I let gravity do most of the work, managing to catch myself with each step and avoid tumbling over flat on my face.

"I was thinking," I said, finding my rhythm, "what happens if the guards come looking for us?"

"With any luck, we'll be gone by the time they catch up to us."

I hoped that was the case.

There were many rumors about this desert.

They called it the "Desert of Death."

No prisoner who stepped foot into it had ever stepped out again.

I sincerely hoped we would not be joining their number.

Egara came to a stop around a blind corner and I almost crashed into him.

Before us, in a shallow pool of clear water that originated somewhere further up an adjacent slope, was a single stream of water.

"Oh, thank God," I said.

I fell to my knees and placed my hand in the water.

I splashed it over my face and filled my mouth.

A hand slapped me on the back, forcing the water from me.

I coughed and glared up at the figure towering over me.

"What did you do that for?" I said, shaking off my wet hands.

"Don't drink it. There's no telling what the source of this water is. Maybe all water is clean and clear where you come from but not on this planet."

I peered closely at the water with a measure of fear.

"You're saying this water is bad?"

"I'm saying we don't know. Here. Use this."

He reached into his pocket and came out with a straw.

"How's this supposed to help?" I said.

"It's a filter," Egara said. "It will clean the water as you drink it."

I placed it to the water's surface and glanced up at him to check I was doing it right.

He nodded.

I sucked the water through the straw, and already, I could taste the difference.

I wondered what I'd almost swallowed earlier.

It was dangerous enough drinking from an unknown source back home or when you were in a foreign country, never mind a foreign planet.

What had I been thinking?

As I slurped on the water, Egara got to his knees beside me and used his own straw to drink.

Sated, I leaned back on my ass and rested for a moment.

Egara got to his feet and tucked his straw away.

"Come on. We have to get a move on."

"Can't we rest here for a minute?"

"No. We have to keep going. That's if we want to reach the shuttlecraft as soon as we can."

I sat up.

"What shuttlecraft?"

It was news to me.

"The one my gang put here for me to use to escape after I got free of the prison," Egara said.

I had no idea he had everything planned out.

By the look of him, I never would have thought he was capable of planning.

He looked much more of a fly by the seat of his pants kind of guy.

I was so exhausted, I got up in stages, as no part of my body was ready to carry out the entire movement just yet.

I rocked to one side, lifted one leg, placed a foot, and used the bent knee to hoist myself up into a standing position.

I stood up straight and wavered uncertainly before catching my feet.

I extended the straw to Egara, who waved his hand.

"Keep it," he said. "You'll need it later."

"Why would I need it? You said we should reach the shuttlecraft soon."

"Soon, but not immediately."

I tucked the straw in my pocket.

I was excited at the idea of escaping this moon.

I had lucked out with coming across Egara when I had.

Or was I?

The truth was, I'd been shot at, chased, almost raped, kidnapped and abducted, and that wasn't taking into account the situation I now found myself in.

Even if meeting him hadn't been the greatest stroke of luck, he was still the best shot I had at getting out of the prison.

What other way was there to escape than this?

And why did he decide he would take me with him?

I was nothing but a liability.

I had no fighting skills, had no resources.

I was just another hungry mouth to feed.

It was then that I heard a rushing sound.

The stream was too small and pathetic to produce that kind of sound unless it widened around the next bend and turned into raging rapids, which I very much doubted.

I peered out at the sand dunes but no wisps of sand whipped off their peaks from a strong wind.

What the hell?

"Get down!" Egara said, stripping off his shirt.

"What?" I spat. "What is it?"

Next, he stripped off his pants.

"Now?" I said incredulously. "You want to fuck now?"

He tripped me over and lay on top of me.

"What are you doing?" I said.

He placed a hand over my mouth but his attention wasn't on me.

It was on a shining white object, cresting one of the larger sand dunes.

Sunlight blinked off its shiny white hull.

The rushing sound grew louder at the machine's approach.

It was the origin of the noise.

A drone.

It didn't take me long to figure out who the drone belonged to.

By the direction it flew, it had to belong to the prison, and therefore, the guards.

They'd found us already? I thought. So much for the great escape.

The drone hovered overhead, kicking up plumes of sand from the tallest peak.

"Halt!" the drone bellowed from tinny speakers on its underside.

It must be controlled by the guards back at the prison, I thought. And if they had already found us, there was no chance of escape now.

"What should we do?" I mumbled around his hand still clamped over my mouth.

"We can't move," he whispered. "If we do, they'll see us."

"Are you kidding? They can see us already!"

"No, they can't."

It was only then I noticed how hot his skin had become, and the strange dotted discoloration of the flesh of his hand.

"Do not attempt to run!" the drone yelled through its electronic speakers.

One moment, the drone was hovering above us, and then suddenly, it dropped down on the other side of the sand dune.

My breaths were hoarse and strained through Egara's hand.

I glanced at him out the corner of my eye.

He hadn't moved, so neither would I.

His attention was still on the sky, over the giant sand dune to our left.

I wondered what he was waiting for.

Surely now was the time we ought to run?

Now, while the drone was distracted by something else?

Or was the drone attempting to flush us out?

Suddenly, there was another rushing sound high above us.

I couldn't see it without moving my head.

But the whine of its miniature engines was enough to let me know what it was.

Another drone.

It sailed overhead and descended so close it made my clothes flap.

The sand it kicked up stung my skin.

And still, Egara did not move a muscle.

I wondered what he was thinking.

Couldn't he see the drone had spotted us?

"Halt!" the drone directly above us snapped in a hostile tone.

Halt? I thought. We weren't even moving!

Another prisoner came bolting up from between the huge sand dunes, a terrified expression on his face.

He glanced over his shoulders at something on his tail.

A red light blinked on the second drone's underside.

The prisoner ran as fast as his legs could carry him, his feet churning up the stream's pebbles.

He tripped and fell to his knees.

He crawled on his belly until he regained his feet.

Panting and exhausted, he returned to running.

He saw the drone ahead, the one directly above us, and his eyes widened.

"Halt or we will be forced to fire!" the drone said, so loud it was deafening.

The prisoner heard the warning but he didn't slow, never mind halt.

He bolted to one side in an attempt to avoid the drone but it was no use.

Zaaap!

A flicker of blue struck the prisoner full in the chest.

He collapsed immediately, landing face-first in the cool polluted spring water.

His eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body shuddered with the shock fire.

The second drone approached and slapped a pair of metal cuffs on his ankles.

There was a loud whining noise as both drones activated a powerful magnet that drew the metal cuffs upwards, and each of the prisoner's feet attached to the underside of a drone.

The prisoner blinked, coming awake.

He peered down at us and saw us immediately.

He waved and pointed at us.

"Wait!" he said. "Wait! There are others! Right there! There are others!"

The drones paid him no attention as they sailed off into the sky, careening back toward Ikmal prison.

Only once the dull rushing air of their powerful propellers had dissipated did Egara climb off me.

I didn't get to my feet.

I rolled onto one shoulder and listened as closely as I could to the surrounding area.

Hearing nothing, I peered up at Egara, who pulled on his shirt and pants, covering up the sandy appearance of his skin.

"You're a shifter?" I said.

"No, not quite," he said.

"But your skin…"

"I can change it to the color of the sand, of my surroundings, but I can't form different shapes. That would be a real gift."

"I don't know, camouflage seems pretty cool to me."

"Come on," he said. "We should keep moving."

I dusted off my clothes and followed after him.

Once again, he had saved my life.

I wondered how many more times he would have to do it before all this was over.

And would I get the chance to save his in return?

The heatfrom the sun was nothing like anything I had ever felt back on Earth.

It hit me full in the face like a laser beam set to kill.

What I wouldn't give for some sunblock.

Egara had no such concern.

His skin was already bright red, used to conditions like this.

I grew up in California and was used to hot weather but nothing like this.

Egara noticed my discomfort and removed his shirt.

He did the top button up and placed the collar for the neck over my head, so it was like a veil.

Only my hair faced the sun now and it was already heating up.

At least now my face and neck were protected.

The desert was a beautiful place, but you soon got tired of it when there was no shade to protect yourself.

Even worse was the harsh breathing from my mouth and lungs.

I could hardly keep myself from exhaling one breath before I had to take another.

It was like my throat was clenching shut tight, unable to process the oxygen, which struggled to even descend down my windpipe.

Egara cast a look over his shoulder at me several times but never said a word.

Twice already, I had spotted carrion circling overhead but none showed much interest in us.

It was a good sign, I thought. It meant we hadn't yet passed the point of no return.

The twin suns crossed the sky, spinning and twirling around each other.

Now, they began to set, bringing the night's early chill with it.

Finally, Egara said the words I had been desperate to hear for the past few hours:

"Okay, I think we should set up camp."

I would have collapsed, except I knew there were probably jobs I needed to do.

I was hungry, thirsty, but more than anything, I was dog tired.

Egara took two wrapped packages from his pocket.

They were covered in tissue paper.

Before he even handed one to me, I could smell them.

I didn't care what the food he handed to me was.

I snatched it out of his hand, open the tissue, and gulped it down one hungry mouthful after another.

"A fan of Jilaxic biscuits, huh?" he said.

"I'm a fan of any food right about now."

I noticed he only ate half his meal before tucking it back in his pocket.

I realized how greedy I'd been when I wolfed down the whole meal.

He hadn't expected to have someone else along for the journey.

And so far, I hadn't offered much in the way of benefits.

Even worse, I wheezed with the effort required to consume the food as fast as I did.

"With any luck, we should arrive by tomorrow," he said.

"I look forward to it."

Assuming I didn't die from lack of oxygen during the night, I thought.

I lay on my back but that proved to be a poor decision as I wheezed even harder.

I lay on my side and that helped relieve some of the pressure from my lungs.

Still, I gasped.

Egara lay beside me and took me in his arms.

I liked the warmth his body gave off as the night chill was already beginning to seep deep into my bones.

He edged closer and pecked me on the cheek.

It felt nice, but as he pressed further and nibbled on my ear, I knew he wanted more.

I gasped like I'd been smoking forty a day for the past fifty years.

I didn't think I could survive another one of his marathon sex sessions.

"I'm not sure I can do it tonight. I can barely breathe."

"This will make it better," he said, nibbling the base of my neck.

Maybe it would, but right then, I couldn't take the risk.

I felt like an asthmatic without a pump.

I needed to be careful.

He pressed his lips to mine, gently, and without passion.

When he pulled back, my breathing ease.

It was like I'd been injected with medicine that expanded the airways.

"It is a little better," I said.

He leaned forward and kissed me again.

Once more, the breathing cleared up, becoming almost perfectly smooth.

I relished in the feeling of a perfectly operating body.

The kisses became more passionate, and this time, I responded.

The more we kissed, the easier breathing became.

Finally, I pulled back, putting a hand to his chest.

"How is this possible?" I said. "One minute I'm gasping like a fish out of water, and the next, you kissed me, and I'm breathing fine."

"This is my habitat. This is how I grew up, where my ancestors evolved. We developed systems to survive in such harsh environments."

"I understand that but why am I able to breathe easier after you kiss me?"

"Because I am passing my strength onto you."

He said it as if he was telling me the sky was blue.

"Passing on your strengths?" I said. "What does that even mean?"

"It means if I can breathe in this atmosphere, now, so can you."

Suddenly, the bruise that disappeared after having sex made sense.

Most of the species in the prison had the ability to heal quickly.

After spending the night with Egara, I had benefited from his ability too.

"How long will this last?" I said, still barely able to keep my surprise hidden.

"Kissing will last for minutes," he said, "but it depends how much we kiss. Vulcarians mate a little differently to most other species. We share our strengths, weaknesses, and once we mate, it's for life."

My breath caught in my throat.

"You're saying we're mated for life now?"

Egara shook his head and had a small smile on his face.

"No. Fated mates do not become a pair until they are both in love."

"How do you know we aren't fated mates already?"

"You would know. Trust me. So would I."

I smiled and thought back to our experience the previous night.

If that wasn't how fated mates mated, then how did I explain that explosion of golden light in my chest?

I had never felt anything like it before.

Maybe for him it was normal, but for me, a regular female, it was anything but normal.

"Are you still hungry?" Egara said.

"Hm?" I said, lost in a world of my own. "Oh. Um… Not really."

My stomach growled.

"Your stomach appears to be making the counter-argument," Egara said.

I rapped my stomach gently and shook my head.

"He's always had a mind of his own," I said. "I tell him I'm not hungry and he insists on eating any nearby chocolate."

"I'm the same when it comes to Vulcarian rice cake. I just can't stop eating it."

He got to his feet and dusted off his hands.

I peered at the desert around us.

Good luck finding any food in this place, I thought.

Egara stood up straight and his ears fluttered.

They turned from one side to the other, his left ear turning sharply one way, his right the other.

Gradually, his left ear drew around to point in the same direction as his right.

At me.

Egara approached me with that same intense look in his eyes that I recognized from making love.

He was not a big dumb animal like many of the other prisoners.

When his eyes drew together, focusing, blocking out everything else, he became a man possessed.

I couldn't help but blush.

Then I realized his eyes weren't really focused on me.

They concentrated just beyond me, over my shoulder.

I peered at where he was looking and found a wall of dull sand.

He approached it, his footsteps slow and stealthy, his eyes and ears focused on the same point.

When I made to get up, he raised his finger to his lips but didn't hush me.

He placed his fingertips to the surface of the sand and smiled, sensing something there.

What was he looking at? I wondered. What could he sense that I couldn't?

He pulled his body back.

I thought he was going to thrust his fist into the sand and snatch something from it.

Instead, he pulled his head back and snapped it forward.

His horns pierced the surface and buried themselves in halfway.

A high-pitched squeal erupted from a creature in the sand.

As Egara pulled his head back, a creature wriggled like a flailing fish on the end of a fisherman's line.

One tip of Egara's horns had skewered it.

Egara reached up and took the small creature from his horn and snapped the creature in half.

It hung limply in his hands.

"Sand Fish okay?" he said.

I just stared at the creature, my eyes bulging and wide.

I didn't know.

Was Sand Fish okay?

The creature might have beenodd in appearance but it tasted much like chicken back home.

I guess the rule that a lot of foreign food tasted like chicken also extended out here to the far reaches of the galaxy.

Egara built a small fire in a hole in the ground and cooked the creature inside it.

The moment the meal was done, he shoved a handful of sand over the flames, dousing it.

A shame, I thought, as I was beginning to enjoy the heat.

Egara must have noticed my expression because he dug the embers of fire up again.

They still glowed with heat as he placed them beside me.

I could still feel their heat.

I smiled at his thoughtfulness.

"Once the charcoal is dry, we can use it to catch larger prey," he said.

Okay, so maybe not that thoughtful.

"Larger prey?" I said. "I thought we would be getting out of here soon?"

He nodded.

"We will, but only if things go to plan. And in my experience, few things go to plan."

Egara slipped a black nail into the fish and slit it open.

He removed the bones and handed half the Sand Fish to me.

"I'm not sure I can eat all of it," I said, remembering the earlier meal he only ate half of.

"Eat as much as you can. We'll leave the rest out to dry and turn it into jerky for the journey tomorrow."

I ended up consuming my half and eyed what remained of his meal with some jealousy.

Once again, he hadn't eaten the entire meal.

"How can you get by on so little?" I said.

"Vulcarians have very slow metabolisms. We can go weeks without food, even when traipsing through a desert like this."

Vulcarians were turning out to be very strange creatures indeed.

It was pitch dark in the desert at night and there was little light save that cast by a trio of small moons.

It was beautiful, I thought. Then again, everything was beautiful when you hadn't seen anything but blank walls for so long.

I smiled and breathed in the chill night air.

I stretched, luxuriating in the freedom of space, and the fact there wasn't another creature for miles around.

At least, not if we were lucky.

"Are you sure your friends will have left the shuttlecraft where they said they would?" I said.

"I'm sure," Egara said. "They're my crew, not my friends."

"Can't they be both?"

"Not if you are an effective captain. There must always be a line between captain and crew."

"You're their captain?" I said, surprised by this piece of information.

But I shouldn't have been so surprised.

He was thoughtful, capable, and a great fighter.

Why shouldn't he be the captain?

"They assured me they would drop off the shuttlecraft," he said. "I don't have faith in many things but I have faith in my men. If they said they are going to do something, I can assure you, they will do it."

"Is your entire crew made up of Vulcarians?"

"Most, but not all. We have learned to distrust most other species. The only ones we trust are those that have also had their culture destroyed by our common enemy."

"What will you do once you get away from here?"

"Return to my ship."

He didn't seem altogether pleased with that concept.

"Have you thought about trying something different?" I said.

"My crew is depending on me."

"Someone else can't be their captain?"

He cocked his head to one side.

"You don't like that I'm a pirate?"

No, but I wasn't about to tell him that.

"It seems to me that you're better suited to… other things," I said.

"Not all of us can be historians," he said, smiling at me.

Boy, did I like that smile.

He looked like a boy, a dimple rising to one cheek.

The boyish quality clashed with his otherwise monstrous appearance—his sheer size, bulk, strength, and the twisted horns.

He was nothing like the monster I thought he was.

Except in bed.

The rumors, so often disappointing when it came to other prisoners, had certainly been true of this particular prisoner.

"How about you?" he said.

I wondered when he would ask me that.

"I'd like to return home," I said.

"Then home you shall return."

"You'll let me go?" I said, surprised at this revelation.

"Of course. You have a home to return to. And no doubt, your family and friends will be missing you."

Would they? I wondered.

I figured my landlord would be more concerned as I hadn't paid my rent in a year.

The police would have gotten involved, trying to locate me.

They might even have fingered the wrong guy, thinking I had been kidnapped by a human.

"My family's not close," I said. "We're a family of black sheep. When I moved away from home to study at college, I rarely contacted them. I let them know I was fine every now and then but they never worried about me."

"It's a terrible thing, not to feel like you belong," Egara said.

I looked him over.

Was that how he felt?

With who? I wondered.

"I never felt that way," I said. "The truth is, I never really belonged in my hometown. It was so small, so parochial. A great place to retire, but not the kind of place I wanted to spend my life. I became fascinated with history, with the pursuits and efforts of greater men and women."

Egara reached out a hand and gently rubbed my cheek.

"You are a great woman."

Then his eyes flicked over from my cheek to my eyes.

No one had ever said that to me.

No one had ever thought I was special or unique.

Just one of many.

"We should get some sleep," I said.

"Yes," Egara said. "With any luck, tomorrow we will be on our way off this planet and we will never return to it again."

That sounded good to me.

I curled up and rubbed my arms around myself.

I still felt a little awkward sleeping without a blanket.

I mashed the sand up, forming a rudimentary pillow.

It was chilly and I shivered.

Egara curled up behind me, spooning me, and wrapped his arm around me.

He would be my blanket, I realized.

My security blanket.

His warmth pressed against my back and I hugged his arm.

He couldn't have been comfortable with the position but did not complain.

Concealed within his warm embrace, I found sleep easily.

I knewsomething was wrong the moment I woke up.

The sand slipped down my collar and rubbed at the delicate skin of my lower back.

I slept well for most of the night but for about the past thirty minutes or so, I drifted in and out of sleep due to a lump digging into my back.

I took it to be Egara, growing amorous during the night.

He didn't wake me, didn't probe me further.

I suspected we were both exhausted from the previous day's activities.

I rolled over and got more comfortable.

That would last for a few minutes before I once again felt that lump digging into my back.

When I blinked and opened my eyes, I stretched and peered up at the night sky.

The stars were completely different from what I was used to.

But right then, that wasn't what took me most by surprise.

It was the fact they were moving.

Of course, that was impossible—at least, not at the speed I was watching them move now.

Another sliver of sand slipped down the back of my shirt, causing me to shiver.

Then I realized.

The stars and the sky weren't moving.

I was.

But how could that be?

I reached down to Egara's arm wrapped around my waist.

My hand came in contact with something cold and slimy.

It wasn't Egara.

My groggy eyes burst open, suddenly wide awake.

I peered down at that strong arm wrapped around my waist.

It was green.

And there were no fingers on the end of the long arm, no knob of wrist muscles.

In fact, no muscles at all.

Even if I thought it was his arms clasped tightly around me, I knew it couldn't be Egara.

I couldn't feel his muscular chest pressing comfortingly against me.

I couldn't feel his powerful heartbeat pulsing.

Or the warm sensation of his breaths pressing against my neck and the occasional kiss of his lips while he dreamed.

Then there was that mysterious sand sliding under my shirt and out the other end.

And then, of course, there was the smell.

The rancid stench of rotting eggs hit me full-bore.

The thing wrapped around me wasn't Egara's arm.

But it was an arm.

It trailed like a thick rope across the desert floor behind me, pulling me up an incline.

It was so long I couldn't make out what was at the other end as it disappeared over the rise.

It was leading me toward that disgusting smell, I thought. The stench grew stronger the closer I drew to it.

Whatever it was, I didn't want to go anywhere near it.

I placed my hands on the vine belt wrapped about my waist and pulled at it.

When that didn't work, I clawed at the slimy surface with my nails.

I scratched it and in response, it tightened its grip.

"Let go!" I said.

It squeezed harder and sucked the air from my lungs.

I could hardly breathe.

I felt those same panicking breaths I had the day before when I first came to this new environment.

I rolled over and gripped the vine.

I pulled against it and slammed my fists on it.

And still, it continued with that slow relentless journey up the incline.

I peered at the line my ass left in the sand, disappearing over the rise, leading to the sand dunes in the distance.

"Egara!" I yelled. "Egara! Help! Something's got me! Egara—!"

Another vine—smaller than the main one pulling me up the incline—snaked up from between my breasts and wound around my face.

It gripped my cheeks and pressed hard into my mouth.

I struggled and bit at the vine but it only tightened further.

Finally, fearing it might rip my head from my shoulders, I stopped biting at it.

My breaths rushed through my nose and I could barely draw in one breath before another had to be drawn in to replace it.

Angling my head up to peer at the summit, something began to emerge.

A dozen other tentacles slithered out from the hole at the top of the sand dune, shaped much like a volcano.

From the hole, the largest and most dangerous creature I had ever seen unfolded.

It had the appearance of a giant flower and angled upward, its petals opening at the dawning of a new day.

That giant flower bent over and aimed at me.

It yawned and a huge gaping hole opened wide.

And still that vine drew me up the incline.

I was going to be this thing's lunch!

Tears streamed from my eyes, more in shock than anything else

"Agatha!" a familiar voice bellowed from the lower horizon.

"Egara!" I muffled beneath my gag.

It was a mistake as the gag only squeezed tighter and made my jaw groan under the pressure.

Egara came running up the incline and drew the twin shivs he had snatched from the alien twins.

He bellowed and hacked at the vine drawing me upwards.

The vine didn't stop, didn't pause to defend itself.

One, two, three swipes, and he'd cut through the vine that'd snatched me in its grip.

I slipped slightly and the vine lost its hold on me.

I wanted to celebrate, to scream and shout in victory but I daren't do it with the vine wrapped so tightly around my face.

Egara pulled his arm back to hack through the last of the vine when half a dozen others slithered down the incline like snakes.

Two wrapped around his legs, tightening all the way up to his thick waist.

Egara looked over at me before continuing to hack at the vine attached to me.

It snapped and I slid down the sand dune.

The gag in my mouth must have been attached to the main vine as it lost its strength and shriveled from my face.

I yanked it free and spat it out.

I flung my arms and legs out and dug my heels into the sand to prevent myself from sailing further down the incline.

I spun around to face Egara, who swiped at the vines, already latching onto him thickly, completely locking down his legs and preventing him from moving.

He tried to take a step forward but the vines trapped his feet and he lost his balance and fell, hitting the ground.

A dozen other vines slithered toward him but he continued to hack at them one by one.

One snatched his wrist and held it in place.

It wasn't strong enough to stop him but it slowed him down.

And once he had been slowed, it allowed other vines to move in and catch his powerful arms.

He now only had one arm capable of defending him.

It wasn't long before his second arm was snatched along with the first and the vines wrapped up his body entirely, lashing him tight so he couldn't move a muscle.

They pulled him along the ground toward that enormous flower-like alien head and lifted him up into a standing position.

"No!" I yelled from further down the incline.

I got to my feet and stepped forward.

"No!" Egara shouted back at me. "Stay away!"

I froze and peered at the sand beneath my feet and across to the vines that snapped to attention in my direction.

My stomach turned as the giant flower flattened out its enormous petal-like protrusions, forming a giant sail that spread an enormous shadow over the area.

It turned on itself and peered down at the morsel its vines had brought for it.

The petals opened and inside were its dripping wet innards.

Tiny sharp objects I thought were teeth revolved like a churning concrete mixer.

It was going to eat him.

The same way it had been going to eat me.

I needed to do something.

I needed to help him…

But what could I do?

I was a stranger here.

I had no weapons and no knowledge of this creature.

I watched helplessly as the vines unfurled and dumped Egara inside the awaiting giant plant's "throat."

It consumed him, the petals slamming shut around him as he disappeared from view.

He was gone.

Dead from protecting me.

I couldn't believe it.

It was my fault.

I took a step forward as if I could actually do something.

The vines immediately froze and turned.

Oh, great.

I took a step back and the vines shot along the desert floor in my direction.

I ran back down the incline.

I had no idea how long this creature's tentacles were but if I kept going, I would outrun them.

I hoped.