10. Mia

MIA

I’d expected I could overpower old Wyre but within his wiry frame, he concealed a stronger physique than I imagined.

He handled me like a babe and was quick to tie my hands behind my back and my ankles together to ensure my chances of escape were essentially zero.

When he hustled me into the back of his shuttle, he dumped me unceremoniously on the dirty floor more rust than metal. It stabbed the soft flesh of my hands and bit into my bare ankles. He hopped into the pilot’s chair and prepped for dust off. He didn’t bother to look back to check I hadn’t managed to shuffle out of the hatch.

I turned toward the hatch door. It was already slipping shut. I looked through it to the larger ship that had incapacitated our escape pod.

I doubted there was much of a reward open for me as we’d stolen whatever Wyre might have used for such purposes.

It begged the question: just what had he offered to those in charge of the large ship with the tractor beam that had waylaid us?

And who were “they” anyway?

I spotted a figure standing at the blast door leading into the larger ship’s loading docks. Although I wasn’t intimately knowledgeable of them or the Ulsen culture in general, I thought I recognized which group the figure belonged to. I knew how dangerous they were based on the sporadic information Rivvac had shared with me about them.

They were the reason we were together, after all, why Rivvac had been willing to give me almost anything I asked in his suite just one week earlier at the beginning of his Steyatt. I also recalled just how pleased I was that I could finally get my own back on the “elite” class…

And now I saw the same Siren staring back at me through the hatch’s window, her expression calm and serene, distant, paying as much attention to me being taken away as she would if the garbage men had come to take out the trash…

And perhaps that was a fitting metaphor as she had appraised me with the same look of disgust when I’d taken Rivvac from her and her precious “Sirens,” along with whatever opportunity it was they thought they could use him for.

But she was revealing more about my importance to her plans than she likely wished.

Because she was paying attention to my withdrawal. She had torn herself from whatever important things she had on her plate just to watch me being taken away.

It seemed my original feelings of getting revenge on them were founded. If I was worth taking up this much of her time, I must have been a successful fly in her ointment.

Until now, at least.

And now I was zipping through space at the speed of sound—or was that light? (science had never been my strongest subject)—toward some unknown location.

I felt the tears stinging my eyes before they had even really begun to form. They ran down my cheeks in twin tracks of disappointment.

I knew our time had been coming to an end but I could still hope there was a chance we might see each other one more time…

And now that was never going to be.

I didn’t weep for the loss of never seeing my parents’ farm again, didn’t weep for finally getting the time off I so desperately needed…

Instead, I wept for him.

And the likelihood of never seeing him again.

* * *

Wyre was known as an Argoporc—akind of lizard creature with extended finger-like claws and a long tail—although Wyre’s appeared to have been cut off or removed at some point leaving an ugly stub—likely as punishment for his earlier exploits leading to him being expelled from his own culture.

He mumbled words heavy on the “s” every few seconds. I couldn’t tell if he was hissing or laughing privately at a joke he made. Either way, the sound never failed to travel the length of my spine, all the way down to the soles of my feet.

When he finally brought his shuttle down, it was to land as softly as anything Rivvac had been capable of.

Rivvac.

I wondered what state he was in, especially now that the Sirens had their claws buried deeply in him… and I wondered even harder at just what diabolical plans they had in store for him now.

There were still a few hours before the Steyatt passed, so they could still use him for their own purposes.

The thought of them with their disgusting (to me) faces with their bizarre makeup arrangements seducing him, pressing their lips to him and his body, taking him in their mouths and worse yet, sliding him inside their hideously voluptuous bodies… writhing and tossing their heads back and screaming in ecstasy, their stinky perfume stuffing his nose and forcing his senses to succumb to their own desires and infecting his mind so they could use him for their own purposes…

I felt sick to my stomach. Even when I tried to console myself with the fact that he wouldn’t have been in control of himself, that he would become nothing more than a puppet for their own sadistic sexual pleasure and wouldn’t be acting of his own volition… I felt sick.

The sight of his naked form, always so exciting to me, now broke me out in hives. To think he would be sharing his incredible body with them…

Wyre stepped from the cockpit’s console and braced a railing that ran the length of the shuttle. He used the leverage to force a deep (and disgusting) series of cracks that erupted up the entire length of his spine.

He shook his head and stamped his scaly feet toward me. He bent down and picked me up, hurling me over his shoulder like a bag of spuds and carried me down the hatch steps.

“What… What are you going to do with me?” I cried.

He didn’t respond and simply shut the hatch door behind himself.

Wherever we were, it was now the dead of night. Lumps of something I couldn’t identify emerged from the darkness but only remained shadowy forms. Only when Wyre threw open a door, emitting a flash of light, were the lumps illuminated. It allowed me to see them for what they were. And I realized with dawning horror where we were:

We were back in old Wyre’s shack.

The floor tiles had been put back in place. Without the added padding of the sacks of money and items underfoot, the wood creaked loudly as Wyre moved over it.

He threw one shoulder forward. He caught me in his surprisingly powerful arms and placed me on the floor.

His thick tongue sipped from between his lips and came within inches of my face. I noticed one of the forks was missing. I hastily flinched away from it.

He considered me for a moment before turning away and fixing something to eat in his kitchen.

“W-What do you w-want with me?” I asked.

“You? Nothing.”

“Then what do you want?”

He slammed his fist on the kitchen counter. “I want what is mine.”

“The money? But it’s not yours!”

“You ought to learn to not take things that don’t belong to you!” Wyre hissed.

I would have burst out into laughter at the ridiculousness of his statement if it wasn’t for the fact he held me tied up as a captive.

Who knew what a merciless creature like him was capable of when he saw red. I already knew he was capable of kidnapping me. What other horrors was he capable of?

Anything, a terrified voice said from deep within me.

I really had no idea. But I had seen the kind of psychological trauma he was capable of inflicting on the innocent. It wasn’t too hard to imagine the physical harm he might also be able to inflict too if left to his own devices. And who was going to stop him from doing what he wanted right here in his own home?

In his eyes I saw the red glint of madness that had not been present when he came to the poor old woman’s house all those years ago.

Then, he’d been all smiles and warm touches of affection and understanding.

As I had been nothing but a lowly human servant, he hadn’t bothered to maintain his persona when the old lady was out of ear and eyeshot. I had seen the truth of what he truly was in those quiet moments in the house’s entrance hallway, or when the old woman had turned to focus on something else, or reached for her bag to send him another payment, his long forked tongue licking his broad wide lips and sharp teeth in excited expectation like a shark.

Not once had he noticed me. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t recognize me now.

“What would you know what is mine and what is not?” he snapped at me. “What is under my home is mine!”

“What about the contents of the bank accounts of those you scammed?” I said, glaring back at him. “That was never yours.”

Wyre squinted at me, his liquid yellow eyes curling, as if trying to place me.

He tossed a butcher’s knife to one side and marched toward me. I shuffled back, fearing I’d gone to far in stoking his anger.

He dropped at the last minute, making disgusting snake-like slithering movements along the floor as he drew up to me.

“Have we met before, child?” he hissed, his tongue making indecent slurping movements across his lips. “I have seen many over the years but I cannot place you among them. And a delicious little thing like you… I should be able to remember…”

He ran his claw over my face, drawing my hair away from my face.

“No!” I screamed, pulling back from his touch. “I don’t know you! We’ve never met!”

He’d always seemed old and decrepit and I had assumed he wouldn’t have any sexual interest in a human like me… But I had felt his strength and there was no reason to suggest he couldn’t mate with me if he wanted.

My entire body quivered at the thought.

He chuckled. “Fear not, little one. You are not my type. I do not pleasure myself with the help.”

He paused a moment, his attention shifting to one side as his mind accessed his memories. A thick-lipped smile curled his mouth.

“Ah, yes. The help. Now I remember. The assistant.” He fell back on his haunches and used the stub of his tail to hold himself up in a sitting position. “And what would a morsel like you want with my riches?”

He remembered me. I couldn’t believe it. Not only was he stronger than he looked but he was sharper too. Perhaps that was how he had been so successful all those years. He had a knack of making others underestimate him.

I shrugged. “I knew it was here… so I took it.”

He scratched his chin. “But that isn’t the whole of it, is it? That was some years ago and you could have taken my treasure at any time. So why now?”

He gazed into some imagined distance and shrugged his green-scaled shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you are here now and you will help me get it back.”

“I don’t know where it is,” I pleaded. “It was stolen from me.”

“Amusing,” Wyre sniggered. “I hope that isn’t the case or it may turn out to be the greatest misfortune you’ve ever experienced.”

“W-What are you going t-to do with me?”

Wyre returned to the kitchen and picked up the butcher’s knife he’d tossed aside. He wasn’t preparing something to eat after all, I realized, and instead took out a whetstone and began sharpening the blade’s edge.

“Because your business partner—I do not believe you could have done this alone—will have one chance to give me every part I lost in exchange for every part of you.”

I gulped. “And if he can’t give it all back to you?”

Wyre raised the butcher’s knife and hissed triumphantly. “Then you must decide which part of your nubile young body you no longer wish to keep. A piece for a piece.”