Alpha Alien: Abducted (2 page)

"So much for a private, uninterrupted experience that old man promised," I muttered to myself. I stood up and dusted myself off as the tiny black dot in the distance resolved into a massive black truck. I trusted the shaman and hoped he had been honest enough that this wasn't an angry land-owner wondering what the fuck I was doing.

Damn wild goose chases. This was so completely ridiculous.
But my internal
GIRL, YOU IN DANGER
warning system started pinging like crazy. All I wanted to do was barf for about a hundred days and cry into crisp, fresh linens.

But I was going to need to deal with whatever this was. Hopefully it was just a cranky rancher shooing me off his land. But I felt really uneasy, so I grabbed the shotgun I always camped with and slipped on my sunglasses.

I wanted to present strength and power, rather than the sweaty, hungover mess I currently was. So I stood with my legs slightly spread, a big-ass nine-shot pump-action shotgun resting on my shoulder and extra shells filling my pockets. I stood easily, but it was a position from which I could very easily pop the shotgun off my shoulder and defend myself as needed.

My vision went blurry for a moment and I threw a prayer to the heavens that I wasn’t going to need to do anything but stand there.

The truck shuddered to a stop, dust billowing around it. Two men hopped out of the vehicle and stood there, staring at me.

Dammit, it was the old shaman's nephew, Frank. The first time I visited the old man, I'd run into the dark-haired young man as I was leaving. My skin crawled when he held the door open for me. It should have been a nice gesture, but I could feel his cold eyes peeling me out of my clothes. If my mom hadn't vouched for the old man being the real deal, I would never have gone back.

Warning sirens blared in my head so I went ahead and pulled the gun off my shoulder and into my hands. I pumped a round into the chamber and aimed it at the skeevy nephew. There was something about that sound that made me stand a little easier.

I was okay with being aggressive. Better that than a shallow grave. I shook my head, the hangover was making me bloody-minded.

The blond man on the passenger side looked bewildered. He put his hands up and said, "Jesus! Dude, you said it was a dawn rave, not that she'd be alone, pissed off and packing heat."

The nephew shrugged. "Guess I should have brought us out here last night. Usually that shit takes them down for two solid days."

A coppery taste filled my mouth and rage ran through my veins. I thought I could trust the shaman. His eyes were full of kindness and laughter. But if that old man was in on this bullshit, I was going to string him up alongside his good-for-nothing relation. I might be a shiftless drifter artist but I was also a
very
good shot.

The blond man covered his face with his hand and sounded almost as pissed as I felt. "You stupid jackass, you didn't say anything about any of this. We should go. Unlike you, I can actually get laid without drugging anyone. I just wanted to party."

Frank shrugged. "Whatever, Len, start walking. It's not like she's gonna do anything. Holding a gun ain't the same as shooting a man." He tucked his thumbs into his belt loops and thrust his pelvis at me.

What an asshole.
I sneered at him. Frank had no idea what I was made of or what I was willing to do to survive. I sure as hell wasn't going to let some two-bit rapist I literally had in my gun-sights get away. I smiled, swung the gun slightly and took aim. I got even more satisfaction from the look on Frank’s face when I pulled the trigger. Shock and fear, then both men hit the ground as the windshield exploded.

My ears rang and the sound of the shot made my head throb. The sharp smell of cordite burned my nose and I damn near tasted vomit in my mouth as agony wrapped itself around my brain. But I held it together and pumped the action of the gun again. I let the deliciously chilling sound of a new shell chambering do all my talking.

Frank recovered quickly and popped up from the ground. He stared at the ruin of his truck and started screaming at me. "You fucking bitch! Look what you did to my new truck! You're going to pay for this. You know that no one will ever believe you, even if you manage to make it out of the desert alive, you stupid whore."

What kind of person yells at a woman aiming a gun at them, who they just threated to rape and murder? A goddamn idiot. Still, I wasn't sure if his uncle would admit to giving me a crazy hallucinogenic cocktail. However, the only one paying for anything would be Frank, so I wasn't especially worried about his hollow threats.

I admit that my less-rooted lifestyle made his threat sting. I hated the sad truth that, if it came down to his word against mine, I was a stranger. Just a drifter with no one to vouch for me in a clannish desert town.

I spit on the ground and made my voice gravelly and low. Selling that I was a threat was as important as following through. "You move toward me so much as an inch and I will put you down like a rabid possum. Get on your knees and raise 'em to the sky." It was a little hokey, but it got my point across.

His eyes bored into mine and I kept the barrel of the gun pointed at his midsection without wavering. He finally dropped to his knees and put his hands over his head.

Len had stayed pressed into the ground, but shouted over at me. "I want no part of this. I thought it was just gonna be one of those dawn raves. My momma raised me right, I swear it." His voice quavered and I could hear him struggling to finish his words. He was almost crying and I believed him. At the very least, he was completely terrified of me. I could work with that.

At that point, I didn’t care about interpreting my stupid dream, I just wanted to go home to my mommy. I wanted to get away from them. And I wanted to wash the taste of the ashes of yet another terrible idea out of my mouth.

I backed away from both of them, giving myself more room to maneuver, if it came to that. Since Len only wanted to get away from me, he was going to help me. I wasn’t leaving anything behind.

"Alright then, Len, do me a solid, would ya? I have a few things around the campfire. Put them in my car, it's unlocked."

He scrambled to his feet, pathetically grateful I hadn't shot him out of hand. It was the Wild, Wild West, sort of.  He hastily obeyed me, gathering my sleeping bag and random crap and shoved it into my car. I was exceedingly grateful I hadn't brought a ton of stuff with me. When he finished, he went back to the truck and lowered himself to the ground.

Frank glared at me the whole time this was happening. He finally said, "You know this doesn't end here. I'm headed straight to the sheriff. Two upstanding citizens' words against one stupid, trespassing junkie. Don't think my uncle will back up any part of your story. No one in town will speak against me."

Goddammit, even if the shaman wasn't in on it, he'd sent me onto private land, where I wasn't supposed to be. Assholes, all of them. But I just smirked at him and released the ace up my sleeve.

"Well, then, I bet they'll all just love the recording I'm making. Gotta love a dash cam." I'd never been more grateful to my mother. So what if she was a total free-spirit hippie; she also believed in covering her ass.

It was the one thing she'd insistent I install when I decided I was going to drift from town to town, making art. A dash cam and terabytes of memory. "Just in case anything interesting happens that you want to remember," she’d said.

So I'd recorded the whole stupid night.

"Seems like you've done this before. I'm sure the sheriff will be real interested in what I have to bring him."

I edged slowly toward my car, pausing slightly to look over at the glowering man whose face was turning red and whose hands were clenched into fists in the sand. As if he had the right to be furious that I wasn't incapacitated, that I hadn't been his for the taking, that he hadn't been able to take advantage of me. Sometimes I really hated people.

"I see that little pinhead of yours trying real hard to think,” I said. “I can't have you following me, but since your little friend Len was so good and helpful, I don't feel like killing you today."

Damn, I sounded so calm and matter-of-fact. The six months I thought I wanted to be an actor were paying off! With that said, I moved quickly, and fired off two rapid shots. The delight I felt watching that nasty little rapist’s face was pretty epic.

He was trying to figure out what happened. He wasn't shot, so what I had done? Oh, I just blew out his tires and windscreen. Chewed up the paint something fierce, the buckshot spread left a hell of a mark on that pretty new truck.

I pasted on my most pleasant customer service face and said, "When I get back to town, I'll get a hold of the sheriff, just like you wanted. Let him know where you are, so he can come fetch you."

I tilted my head and stared at the men. I was pretty sure Len had pissed himself and Frank just glared at me with hate-filled eyes.
What an asshole
. Maybe telling the sheriff could wait until I was well on my way out of town.

I'd rather just send him the footage and make sure I was not easily at hand for any revenge, if he had similarly-minded friends. This could be the kind of small town that would rather cover up trouble, than pull it into the sunlight. And I wanted no part of that mess.

And that's when everything went completely to hell.

All of a sudden Frank's eyes got wide and panicky. I stood firm, I wasn't about to turn my back on him, no matter how good an actor he was. I doubted there was anything behind me, let alone anything scary.

Until a massive shadow blacked out the sun and cast us all into darkness. Well, deep shade. For a hot minute I thought the drugs had kicked back in and sweat broke out over my entire body. Was I starting to hallucinate again? The hair on the back of my neck stood up and trickles of sweat trailed down my back.

Multi-colored lights danced on the ground in front of me, like the rave Len had been expecting, and dust kicked up, sparkling all around me. The cold trickle of fear in my spine fought against my rational side as I built up the courage to look over my shoulder. I was planning a quick glance, while keeping the gun firmly pointed at Frank.

Except my over-the-shoulder glance turned into a wide-eyed stare. The shadow and lights were not a product of my brain freaking out on drugs, but a massive metallic object hanging silently in the sky over us. It was all angles and bright lights.

My brain short-circuited and I started babbling. "This is those stupid drugs. That thing is not there. Or if it is there, it's some wacky experimental test ship from a nearby Air Force base. That thing is not just floating in front of me."

I was frozen in place, in shock, as I watched a gangplank lower from its underbelly. It was every cheesy sci-fi movie I'd ever seen, with a back-lit silhouette standing at the top.

The lights got brighter and I could see that the figure wasn't human. I mean, I guess it could have been. It was generally human-shaped, if that human was really, really tall and built like a god. He literally gleamed in the light as it glinted off what looked like topaz and bronze scales.

Icy fingers of dread tiptoed up my back. I could feel the burning hot rage emanating off the bronze god that hovered over us. There was no way the drugs were causing this, but I desperately wanted them to be.

Then the being's eyes were on me and my insides melted. The force of his gaze stole my breath away and I wanted to reach out and touch him.

That was when I finally started to really panic. I needed to get the fuck out of dodge because that thing looked like he was going to devour me and suck the marrow out of my bones. My fight or flight instinct shifted completely to flight as I tried to figure out if I could make it into my car before he flayed the flesh from my bones.

The moment of my total freak-out coincided with Frank deciding
that
was the moment he was waiting for. The shock of everything had loosened my grip on the gun and he moved way faster than I gave him any credit for. He slammed into me and pulled the gun away from me. I staggered back slightly with my hands raised.