Chapter 4

A smooth, hot tongue slicks up the inside of my inner thigh, causing me to writhe and dig my fingernails into the sheets. Holy crap, that feels amazing. I almost praise my ex, Mack, for his newfound skills with his mouth, but then I remember that we broke up because he cheated on me and … fuck that guy.

I move to kick out at him, but he stops me by grabbing onto my knees and forcing my legs even further apart. His claws dig into my—

Wait.

His claws?

My eyes flutter open, and I’m greeted to a sight that I’ll likely remember every day for the rest of my (probably short) life.

The dark cloud batwing alien whatever-he-is crouches before me, the hands on the ends of his wings clamped around my knees and keeping them spread wide. His other hands are braced on the grass between my legs, and his tongue is … his long-ass, two-foot in length alien tongue is lapping at the wound on my right thigh.

He’s staring at me, too, with these enormous purple and gold eyes. They glow faintly in the shadows of the woods, but at least this time, there’s a semi-normal looking pupil. There’s no white to his eyes, but the darkness in the center is at least round in shape.

I can’t move.

Is he eating me or …. is he eating me? I wonder, trembling and fighting back a wave of revulsion at myself for not being completely and utterly freaked-out by this moment.

“Fuck,” I whisper, and for whatever reason, that word puts the alien dragon thing into a rage.

He releases me and then slams his clawed hands down on either side of my face, coming in far too close for me to do much more than lean back.

“Little,” he growls down at me, the darkness of his face splitting to reveal his mouth once again. When he closes it, it seems to disappear, leaving this enigmatic shadow in its place. He has two eyes, slits for nostrils, and massive purple striped horns that spiral up from his forehead.

With a grumble that quite literally shakes the ground beneath me, he draws back again and turns away, folding his wings in and stalking across the ground on four limbs. As I struggle to sit up, he sheathes the claws on his front feet and stands up.

Holy shit, he’s huge.

His legs are thick and muscular, but shapely, with large, clawed feet caught somewhere between a human’s and a canine’s. Only, he’s entirely covered in scales. Other than some sort of mane on his head and down his neck, there’s no other hair (or fur?) to be seen. A large muscular tail twitches behind him like a cat and, as I move to stand up, a row of spikes lifts down the center, like an animal raising its hackles. His mane rises along with it, and I realize immediately that he doesn’t have hair, just more of those strange spikes on his head, neck, and spine.

He turns a look on me over his shoulder, and I exhale sharply. He ate the Tusk Guy, after all. My gaze slips down to my inner thigh, and I see that the wound there has stopped bleeding and actually seems to have knitted together. How? From his saliva?

Dragon Dude—because that’s what he looks like to me—turns and drops back down to all fours, offering up a feline-esque stretch before he saunters off, muscles rippling beneath his shimmering scales. A quick look around tells me nothing but for the fact that we’re in the woods I’d glimpsed from the seat of the wagon.

I’m on an alien planet with no clue where I am or where to go or what to do.

Fear strikes like lightning, and I find myself scrambling up and trotting after the alien dude with the swishing tail. He’s prowling through the trees like he’s looking for trouble, but if he is looking for it, surely it won’t find him? I tell myself it’s better to stick with the devil I know than risk the shadows of the woods by myself.

“Excuse me,” I call out softly, reading the agitation in the creature’s body. He doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t look back at me either. He just keeps padding along through the underbrush, but he spoke to me in English before, so why couldn’t he do it again? No. Little. What the hell does that even mean? I guess to him, I am fairly small, but why bother saying that? “Wait.”

I jog a little quicker, shredded black slacks flopping around my legs. Somehow in all the chaos, I ended up barefoot, and my shirt appears to be missing. I hadn’t even registered until just now that I was only wearing a bra. Maybe the medics used it for something? Not that it matters.

Who cares about modesty or shirts in the middle of an alien forest?

“Can you help me?” I ask, ignoring the way my vision cracks and wavers. My new dragon friend might’ve licked away the bleeding, but he can’t replenish all the blood I’ve already lost. I need water, food, and sleep, but how do I know what I can eat here? Even if I were on Earth, I wouldn’t know the first place to start looking for food in the woods. “If you could just point me in the direction of the market …”

I trail off and come to a stop, hope flaring in me and then dying just as quick. There’s a massive hunk of metal on my right. A building? A spaceship? Whatever it is, it’s a sign of civilization. I stop walking and creep toward it, parting the fronds of an oversized fern to peer past it.

“Fuck.” The thing I’m looking at is huge, three times the size of my mother’s SUV. It’s also busted up and dented, as if it crashed here once upon a time. There are so many plants growing around and over it that it’s nearly obscured.

With a surge of panic, I jerk back to see if I’ve lost the alien dragon man.

Only, I haven’t. He’s right there, looking over his shoulder at me with those huge purple eyes. He curls up his lip, revealing that hidden mouth of his, lets out a low, rumbling growl and turns away again. He pads off at a quicker pace, and I struggle desperately to catch up.

I can’t decide if he’s waiting for me or if he just finds me amusing or … what.

As we walk, I see several other downed ships. Some of them are the size of small cars while others soar up toward the canopy above us and disappear beyond the limbs of giant trees. None seem to be operational, as if they all crashed here and were left. There are dozens of them, too, in various states of deshabille. One looks brand-new, its sides shiny and silver and scuffed only from the force of the crash.

Sunlight peeks in through the destroyed trees around it, creating this halo effect in the shadowed underbrush. Strange pink flowers strain upward from the forest floor, taking advantage of the break in the heavy canopy. One of them turns to look at me as I pass, and goose bumps rise all over my exposed skin.

“Gross.” I keep following the dragon man until he comes to the base of yet another downed ship. This one has an open cargo hold about fifteen feet up in the air, a space that the alien guy clears with little effort, bunching up those powerful legs and landing softly on the metal surface up above. “Um. Hey.”

I wave my arms around, but he doesn’t come back to the edge, leaving me standing there beside the twisted trunk of some bamboo-esque tree with a curve in its trunk that acts as a seat. I climb up onto it, but that doesn’t get me any closer to being able to scale the side of the massive ship.

Panic starts to set in then.

I’ve been winging it from one moment to the next, so absorbed in the immediacy of every move that I was making that I haven’t had time for existential dread to kick in. What if this is really happening? What if I’m truly alone, stuck in an alien forest while Jane … becomes something’s freaking wife?

“Goddamn it.” I start to pant, sliding down to sit on the tree’s curved trunk. Looking around, I can see that the already dusky shadows are growing even darker. Night is coming. How long does night even last on this planet? Better yet: what comes out at night on this planet?

A sound echoes through the woods, like the scream of something fighting for its life.

I squeeze my eyes shut and clamp my hands over my ears, struggling to control my breathing. I’m so weak right now, it wouldn’t take much for me to pass out yet again. And down here, all alone on the forest floor? I’d be easy prey.

I force my eyes open and drop my hands to my lap. Thankfully, the screaming’s already stopped. Probably whatever it was that was crying out for help is dead. I wrap my arms around my mostly naked upper body and wrack my brain for a plan. If I have a plan, something with clear steps that I can execute, then maybe I can get through the night without having a full-on panic attack.

What did I say I needed? Water, food and sleep, right? I had some of the former during the wagon ride with Tusk Guy. As for food, I’m shit out of luck unless I learn to identify alien flora and fauna in the next few hours. But the latter? I can do that. I can sleep right here, as close to Dragon Dude as possible. He’s scary enough—clearly he’s dangerous enough, too—but he doesn’t seem to want to eat me.

“Unless he’s saving me for later …” I mumble under my breath, looking up at the sound of rustling from inside the ship. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was looking for something. I scrub both hands over my face. Right. I’ll sleep here and hope this guy’s protection enough against other predators. When the sun rises—or suns? I never looked—I’ll try to get back to the road, to the market, to Jane. I’m concerned about the others, too (not Tabbi though, only Madonna), but Jane comes first.

If I can find her, maybe we really can figure out a way to get home? Tusk Guy implied that it wasn’t so difficult to come and go from Earth, right? He’d been there enough times to speak fluent English. Somebody in that market knows how to get back, so all hope isn’t lost.

I just need to avoid giant slugs when I get there. Oh, and Trevor. Fucking Trevor.

An item comes tumbling over the side of the ship, crashing into the grass just in front of my feet. I look up to see the dragon guy standing there on his hind legs, arms crossed over his chest, tail thrashing angrily behind him.

My gaze moves from him to the item on the ground.

It appears to be a headset of some sort, this neon pink pair of noise-canceling headphones with a mic attached. It honestly looks like something my youngest brother, Nate, might wear during a raid on his favorite MMO game.

Cautiously, I slide off my makeshift seat and make my way over to it.

The item is far heavier than it appears, and such a bright and cheerful Barbie pink that it seems out of place in the creepy woods. Looking back up at the dragon guy, I see that he’s waiting for something. For me to put this on?

With a gulp and a prayer, I do, dragging it over my head and positioning the mic in front of my lips.

“Testing, one, two,” I murmur out of nervousness. Nothing happens. I feel around on the headset for a button of some kind, an on-switch that I might’ve missed. There doesn’t seem to be anything. “What is this?” I call out, but the dragon guy just crouches, curling his fingers around the edge of the ship. I hadn’t even realized he had fingers at all. When he was walking earlier, he appeared to have paws.

He stares at me, tail swaying lazily, and then growls something out in what’s obviously another language. These aren’t the meaningless sounds of an animal; the guy is trying to talk to me. I hear what he’s saying, but it means nothing to me. It’s as alien a language as I’ve ever heard, like trying to understand the snarls and growls of a wolf.

Then something happens. The headset lights up, glowing pink around my head like a halo, and I hear words delivered in a stilted, staccato voice.

“You … want …”

I blink in surprise and then point at myself with a single finger.

“Are you asking me what I want?” I query, but the creature doesn’t respond. He tilts his head slightly to one side as I tap a finger on the end of the mic. This stupid ugly headset seems to be a primitive translator of some sort. It’s nowhere near as nice as the one Jane bought me as a gift before my trip to Portugal; I was able to enjoy a two-week vacation with few mistranslations. “I thought aliens were supposed to be technologically advanced,” I accuse in annoyance.

The mic—which I guess might’ve been able to translate my words—doesn’t seem to be working. Maybe it’s just as busted as all these downed ships?

The dude growls something else out, his mouth splitting the endless black on the lower half of his face. I shudder at the sight of his tongue, sweat beading on my skin as I shift from one foot to the other in obvious discomfort. Just don’t think about it, Eve. Don’t go there.

“Understand … doesn’t.”

Alright.

He can’t understand me, but he knows the word little as well as the word no in English? Fine.

“Fuck,” I curse again, and the guy lets out this horrific snarl that doesn’t require translation for me to comprehend. I take a stumbling step back, slamming into the base of a tree. Nuts fall from the limbs, scattering to the ground at my feet.

“No.” There it is again, the dragon speaking my language. I look up at him, blinking in surprise. He adds something in his own language, and I wait for the 1995 AOL dial-up internet sounds in the translator to gurgle their way through the words.

“Small … are … you.”

“Alright then,” I reply with a murmur, rubbing at my face again. I point at the nuts and mime eating one. “Are these poisonous? Can I eat these? I’m starving.”

The dragon cocks his head to one side, claws sliding from his knuckles as he curls his fingers under to make a fist. When he does that, I see why I mistook his hands for paws. That’s what they look like right now. He turns away and disappears into the ship as I curse under my breath, slumping to the ground to sit in the scraggly grass. If I look too closely at it, I might realize that it isn’t grass at all, but what appears to be millions of tiny green antennae sticking up from the dirt …

Gritting my teeth, I watch as a cricket-like creature with dozens of legs digs itself out of the ground and hops off. With a shriek, I shove up to my feet and take refuge on the makeshift tree-seat, watching as the ‘grass’ comes to life in the rapidly falling darkness. The pink glow of the headset becomes the only light, offering me an unwanted view of the bugs as they bounce off in search of food. Or mates. Or whatever else.

I hug the smooth surface of the tree trunk and lean my cheek against it, closing my eyes and forcing my mind away from what-ifs and endless possibilities. Okay, so the guy gave me a translator. That’s a good sign, right? He probably isn’t going to eat me. Is that why he keeps calling me small? I’m not even big enough for a snack?

Tears prick my eyes, but I refuse to acknowledge them. I’m not going to cry. I’m going to do the only intelligent, rational thing I can do right now: sleep.

It’s a task that, at first, seems impossible, but as soon as I give my body permission to conk out, I’m gone.

Oddly enough, my dreams are invaded by the image of that moth guy, his endless dark eyes digging a tunnel straight into the depths of my very soul.