Captive: Blue Barbarian Series Page 10

  I’ve lived here long enough to know when it gets dark enough for evening to approach. We stop at a cave while some of the hunters go off to capture dinner. It’s still early though, and we decide to cook outside.

  Jeroc sets up the campfire for cooking and surrounds it with logs for sitting. A few of us girls head inside to prepare the cave. It’s a small one this time, so there won’t be time for hanky panky.

  “You want to be on the far end?” Cammie asks.

  “Sure,” I say, and she begins preparing a larger than normal nest for me and the two guys. I start on the other end of the room, putting Niki and Miranda on that side. They’re nearer the bathroom, and I swear both of them have to pee all the time. When all the nests are made, she and I head outside.

  Miranda, Lucie and Niki have been collecting vegetables to have with dinner. Now that Niki and Miranda stand side by side, something is off. Miranda’s pregnancy is a lot more recent than Niki’s but the difference is like night and day.

  “Niki, are you sure you’re not further along?” I ask. “I know there aren’t any mirrors, but you seem to have grown overnight.”

  “I can’t be any further along than last summer. And remember, for six or seven months, I didn’t even show. That’s why we determined this is going to be more like a Blaedonian pregnancy. But to be on the safe side, we’re guessing I can go into labor any time from late spring to late summer.”

  It’s very early spring, but she’s…enormous.

  “I guess they’ll be huge babies,” Miranda says, rubbing her belly.

  The only other infant we’ve seen from birth is Byndi’s. “How big was Aimal?” I ask.

  Miranda and Lucie look at each other, trying to remember. Then Lucie answers. “He didn’t seem larger than a normal baby. But do any of us remember what human infants even look like?”

  “Plus, there wasn’t a scale,” Miranda adds.

  “It’ll be at least another season for me,” Niki says.

  She honestly looks like she’ll explode in another season’s time. I shrug. What do I know? The one to ask is Valencia, but she’s never shared with the others that she was a midwife. I’m not about to release her secret. If she wants to, she’ll come to Niki on her own. And I have no doubt that if there’s trouble with the delivery, she’ll step in.

  The others begin to filter in, and there’s more activity as more nests are constructed inside the cave. I head outside to help Jeroc with the campfire.

  * * * * *

  Early the next morning, we head out to the Elder’s caves. The caves of origins, or something like that. Most of the females kick-swim alongside the rafts, and as much as Drakar frowns because he wants Niki on top of a raft, we convince him that it feels good for her to be weightless in the water. We take the trip slow and swim leisurely, docking the rafts on the other side. The others begin diving to the tunnel below while Drakar and Jeroc settle us in the upper caves. Finally Drakar leaves, too.

  The upper caves have to be dealt with delicately, because everything is so old. Any furs they once had are long gone. But there’s a tiny chest of rotted wood, and it’s barely more than sticks. They’re held together with a twine woven in and out. I open the chest very gently and inside are thousands of glow-rock chips.

  “Wow, they didn’t waste a thing,” I call out. I sink my hand into the chips, and hold them up, letting them run out through my fingers like diamonds. It feels good, like magical sands.

  “I wonder what they used them for?” Miranda asks.

  “Adornment,” Jeroc says. “They wasted nothing.” He’s reading some writing on the wall, and that’s one thing we miss. While we can speak Blaedonian, the scrolling letters carved into soft things baffle us. We have discovered chalk and a type of chalkboard, though. It’s what Blaedonians use to leave messages. The chalkboards are simple pieces of smooth slate rock, rubbed even smoother by elder Blaedonian ladies. And the chalk is pieces of rock used to write on them.

  “Jeroc, if we can get a message board in the village, we can teach the babies to read and write English.”

  He nods, used to my random thoughts. Miranda grabs onto the idea and runs with it. “The next time Stargazers come, I bet they’ll bring us boxes and boxes of real chalk. It shouldn’t harm the environment.”

  “So they used to make clothing and embed the glow chips into it?”

  Jeroc nods.

  “How?”

  “Weaves,” he mutters, and then looks around. Eventually he finds an apparatus that resembles a loom.

  “What do you suppose they did?” Niki asks. “Wove patches? Inserted them onto vests?”

  Then Jeroc pulls out some long, spindly plant-things. “These. Of course.” He’s yanking them out by the handfuls as the ideas come to him.

  “What? What’s that?” I ask.

  “They are plants. They grow in the salt-water. But, unlike the maosho root that expands when it dries, these shrink.”

  “So we can weave them and twist chips in, and when it dries they tighten?”

  “Yes. Then salt is added to the pieces you wish to remain inflexible and the other parts will soften a bit with water. But not much.”

  “Are there any more of the looms?” Niki asks.

  Jeroc goes back to hunting through caves and chests, while we figure out how to weave the thread-like plants.

  “I feel like I’m in fifth grade again,” Miranda laughs.

  I grab a handful of glow chips and while she weaves, I start embedding them between the flexible pieces. When Jeroc comes back with another loom, Niki starts one.

  “What are we making?” Niki says.

  “Kind of looks like a headband,” Miranda says.

  “Try not to weave the chips so close to the end so we have room to tie the two ends together,” I suggest.

  “Gotcha,” she says.

  Miranda and I pull ours off the loom, and Jeroc takes it to a ledge, where he’s got salt rocks. He works on crushing some to sprinkle over the chip portion of the headband, and Miranda works on weaving another. I move over to Niki’s weave and start embedding the chips into hers before it stiffens. By the time we’re done, I head back to Miranda’s while Jeroc helps Niki take hers from the loom and out to dry.

  “Will they ruin if they get wet?” Niki calls out.

  “No, not once they are properly cured,” Jeroc says, sprinkling more salt.

  Eventually the others come up, making trips to take the freshly mined glow rocks out to the rafts. They poke their heads in to see what we’re doing.

  Tijar takes a break and comes to give me kisses, asking Jeroc if he wants to go below and explore. Jeroc nods and Tijar stays with us for a bit.

  Finally Drakar and Aschero come up and decide we have plenty of rocks on board the rafts to float back down the river. The rest of the gang will stay a few days, camping away from the village, while the three of us will float the rafts back down the river to the village. Once there, some of the men from the other hunting parties will unload for us.

  Eventually the rest of the team makes it up to where we have a stack of headbands for everyone. We dole them out, and everyone is tying them around their heads.

  “Good grief,” Cammie says. “Did you make enough for the entire village?”

  “Feels like it,” Niki says ruefully. “But once you get weaving, time just slips by. Besides, we had an assembly line going, and they were just cranking out.”

  I’m sitting on Jeroc’s lap as Tijar comes up and searches for me. He’s dripping wet and shiny. So sexy.

  “Did you have fun, beautiful?” he asks, kissing me with his wet lips.

  “Of course,” I say, and rub Jeroc’s hand on my waist.

  “How did it go?” Jeroc says.

  “It’s hard to get the glow rocks out without small chips falling off. I see why they collected them,” he says, eyeing the headbands. “One of the girls swept up the chips into a pile.”

  “Awesome,” I say. “We’ll have more. Maybe we can take them
back to the village for other clothing.”

  “Already ahead of you,” he says. “Someone around here has the bag of chips.”

  “You know what we could make?” I ask Jeroc, twisting on his lap. “A present for Lucie. A tiny pair of pants for her shallga-pet. Jacques. Made out of glow chips.”

  He smiles. “Not sure how we’d get pants onto him, love. But maybe a belt.”

  “I wonder if he’d leave it on?”

  “When he realizes the chips will keep away the predators, he will.” Tijar grins.

  “Okay, everyone.” Rayhaan stands in the center of the cave, Lucie’s hand in his. “We need a couple of volunteers to hunt for seafood. And a couple to swim back up and collect some vegetables. Some of us will start a fire, and we’ll eat before the rafts are dispersed back down the river to the village by Drakar, Aschero, Jeroc, and Tijar. The rest of us will head to various caves for the next couple of days. While everyone is being dispatched, some of us are loading up the rafts.”

  “That’s us,” Tijar says to Jeroc. “Loading up the rafts. I volunteered us together so we could both be near our third.”

  “Good thinking,” Jeroc says, making me giggle when he leans forward to tickle my neck with his nibbling lips.

  Chapter Ten

  TESSA :

  I’m sunning myself as the raft drifts down the river. But the red sun is sinking down beyond the trees. We’re obviously not going to make it to the village tonight, and since we had people nearly trapped outside with the predators once, we’ve learned not to push it. Up ahead, Drakar signals and begins pushing his raft to the edge of the river. There’s a small embankment with rocks jutting out, like a cul-de-sac on a neighborhood street. It’ll work perfect to park the rafts overnight.

  Following his lead, Tijar and Jeroc steer us into the embankment and behind us, Aschero comes with Miranda. When the rafts are tied, the men jump out from the rafts. Tijar helps me out while Jeroc heads over to help Drakar with Niki. I’m not the only one that thinks she’s huge.

  Miranda, Niki and I wait on the shore while the hunters make sure the rafts are secured tightly. We don’t want our precious cargo jarred loose. But the rock parking is a perfect spot.

  Still, Niki worries. “Do you think it will be safe even when the creatures come out? What if they manage to push the rafts away from the rocks?”

  “They will not get close, my queen,” Drakar assures her. “The rafts will be lit up like the sun. The predators will keep their distance.”

  “Where are we?”

  “We are close to the village. There should be first level caves set all around this perimeter.”

  We’d almost made it. If we’d have left one hour earlier, we might have been entering the village right now. But better safe than sorry. We begin to head down a small pathway that cuts through the trees. On this side, it looks a bit like a forest.

  “Something isn’t right,” Aschero says. “There is no wildlife out.”

  He’s right. The air is too still.

  Drakar looks grim. “Hurry. Let’s get to a cave.” He stoops and picks up Niki in his arms and Tijar automatically takes the lead. Aschero places Miranda up ahead with me, and he lags behind us, covering the end of our chain. Jeroc walks with us and Drakar.

  The air grows cooler, as though we’re in a vacuum. It feels…weird. But I’ve felt it once before.

  So have Miranda and Niki.

  A funny feeling hits the pit of my stomach, and I swallow, trying to dilute the contents of the bile that threatens to rise.

  “Ohmigod,” Niki says. Her voice sounds sick. She’s squeezing Drakar’s bicep in a death grip. “It’s the aliens.”

  Miranda goes pale and I feel my own heart begin to race. Just then the air around us turns red, and to my surprise, it focuses on me.

  This beam is stronger than the vessel that had taken me from Earth, as if that one didn’t have the beam on full power. This one slams into me, breaking me from the group with a speed of a blink. Suddenly, I’m swinging in the air above them—even as they reach—and I look down. It’s strangely silent in the vacuum. I watch as Jeroc climbs onto Aschero’s shoulders, jumping for me.

  He barely misses my hand, as I stay wavering indecisively. When he falls, I’m sucked up beyond the trees.

  TIJAR:

  Not our Tessa.

  Jeroc is inconsolable, as he feels he did not protect our mate. She slipped through his grasp so easily and no one can make him understand it is not his fault. Niki is trying to tell him that this abduction was even stronger than the one that had taken them from their own planet, but he wallows in self-despair.

  “We must get to a cave,” Drakar says. He is worried that this ship is more powerful than the one that abducted him from this planet so long ago.

  The darkness seems to have fallen with the loss of our mate. But just then, we realize the darkness is false. An image materializes before us, and it is of a tall woman who looks a little like our humans, but has strangely colored eyes. Her hair is unlike any human we have, not even blond like Lucie. Her long eyelashes are of the same color, a shade more metallic like the shears the humans use to cut hair and fabric with.

  “I am Persephone and I’m your Stargazer protector. We are aware of the Drurian vessel. Beyond the trees just in front of you sits our ship. Please get to it and we will lower the door for you to come aboard.”

  Aschero scoops Miranda into his arms and we run for the clearing of the trees. Several of the trees have been cut and lay on their sides. Yet, there is no Stargazer ship.

  Just then a human male comes out of nowhere. “This way,” he shouts. “We’re cloaked. We can’t have the Drurians know we’re here. We’d like to surprise them.”

  We run to where he indicates and two worlds merge into one. The ground lifts as we run onto an invisible ramp, and onto the ship. Inside, we can see their chairs and furniture, but just beyond the walls, our own world sits as if the ship does not exist.

  “I’m sorry we had to destroy a few trees to land,” the male says. “We’ll cut them into lumber for you. Perhaps you can use them later.”

  We stare at the two people, lost in our shock and grief.

  “They stole Tessa,” Niki whispers, and my chest clenches with pain.

  The male nods. “My name is Jack, and I represent the human portion of the Protection Task Force. I’m training Persephone. We encountered the Drurians and read their logs. It appears Tessa was tagged as their property. How much of her abduction did she share with you?”

  “She was trained to be a pleasure worker,” Miranda whispers. “They did things to her. Changed her body. Her mind.”

  He nods. “And then they tagged her so she could never escape. If she worked well, they planned to use more Earth women in the same way. As soon as she was lost, they came after this planet, trying to piece together what happened. They found her homing device, alive and well here. They snatched her for study.”

  I clench my fists. “We must go get her. Immediately.”

  Jack nods, and he looks sympathetic. “We will. We just need to prepare. Our vessel will tell us when they land. We assume they are seeking out their old vessel to study. At that location, Neo and Jessie wait. Tessa will not be unprotected.”

  The thought brings me some relief.

  “We’ve been monitoring their transmissions,” Persephone says. “It appears it is a mystery to them, how the previous Drurian crew died. That’s to our benefit. They may become careless and follow the same fate.”

  “If they go outside, they may take Tessa. She will be helpless,” I say.

  “She has on her glow headband,” Jeroc reminds me.

  “What?” the human asks, and he looks concerned.

  I point to Niki and Miranda.

  “Shit, are those the—“

  “Oh, yes,” Persephone breathes. “I hope the Drurians haven’t noticed.”

  She strides over to a large screen at the front of the room. “Neo.”

  Th
e image of the Stargazer we had met before appears. “Tessa wears a headband of chips of the energy crystals.”

  He exhales. “We’ll scramble their transmissions in case they discover and notify someone.”

  “How was her hair?” Jessie, his mate, comes into the picture. She holds an infant against her breast.

  Persephone looks confused. “Her hair?”

  “It was loose,” Jeroc says.

  Miranda nods. “She had enough of wearing buns in her ballerina days. She wears her hair loose most of the time.”

  “That may hide what the headbands are made of. Especially if her hair tumbled around during the abduction. There’s no other planet in the star system that would chip energy crystals. They’re too rare.”

  “Good point,” Persephone says. “Let me know when the Drurians dock so we may clear the landing.”

  “Why do you have to wait?” Niki asks.

  “The Drurian ship will read our atmospheric ripples as echoes from theirs. If we float without speed, it renders us undetectable.”

  TESSA:

  After the red beam sucks me into the ship, they turn it off. I’m locked in a giant glass enclosure, but I’m ignored. There are about six of them in the room, and they’re all manning the ship. I can’t hear anything from inside my enclosure, but I’m aware the red light is slowly filtering and becoming clearer.