Merrick's Maiden (2 page)

Present Day:

Merrick Ta’Duran gritted his teeth against the pain as he felt another blow to his back. He refused to release his grip on the male’s throat he held in his hands. His body suddenly jerked as a powerful bolt of electricity ran through it. Two probes, attached to long strands of wire, dug into his skin. With a last twist, he heard the satisfying sound of bone breaking.

“Shit! That’s the third guard he’s killed,” a voice yelled. “Hit him again!”

Merrick released the body, collapsing down onto the floor on one knee as another surge of electricity hit him. He fought against the debilitating assault, but one after another struck him. It took five this time to bring him down. He was building a tolerance to it. It was either that, or the rage and desire to finally be free of the constant pain was driving his resistance up.

“Chain him,” the voice of the male said in disgust. “And get rid of the body.”

“Are you just going to let him get away with killing Ray?” Another voice asked in astonishment.

“Ray killed himself when he disobeyed a direct order not to enter the cell,” Weston Wright retorted in disgust. “We need him alive. Now, do what I ordered or I’ll lock your ass in here with him.”

“Fuck that,” the man grumbled as he pulled the chains toward Merrick as several men stood holding him down with long rods filled with an explosive charge. “I don’t fucking get paid enough for this.”

“You can always be replaced, Mr. Crawford,” Wright replied. “Everyone in here can be replaced except the creature you’re chaining, remember that.”

Bradley Crawford grunted a response. He knew what the word ‘replace’ meant. It meant dead, just like it had for Ray and the other two men.

Brad snapped the locks back around the wrists of the huge male lying on the floor. A shiver ran through him when the man’s eerie silver eyes turned to look at him. He swore it looked as if there were tiny flames in the center of them.

“He’s secured again,” Bradley said, tripping over Ray’s body as he tried to get away from Merrick.

“Get rid of the body,” Wright said turning away. “And hire another guard.”

“Damn it,” Bradley grumbled as he pulled Ray’s body out of the cell by the arms. “I fucking hate this job.”

*.*.*

Merrick watched dispassionately from where he lay on the hard, cold floor as the door to his cell was closed again. He had been moved to a new one late yesterday. This one had thick bars all the way around it, allowing them to see him visually without the use of their cameras. The only thing in it was a long, narrow bed bolted to the floor, a toilet, and a sink.

He had been moved from the one with solid walls after he broke loose from the chains holding him and destroyed the cameras in the old cell that were monitoring him. When the guards came in, he had been ready. He had killed two of them before the others rushed him with their stun guns and sedatives.

He had managed to kill this male when he came in alone. The male’s taunts had died on his lips as Merrick wrapped one of the chains used to hold him around the human’s neck. A nasty smile curved Merrick’s lips as he thought of the dead human.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of you,” Ray had promised as he tapped the metal rod in his hand. “You killed Bill. I liked Bill. I can’t kill your ass, but I can make sure you wish you were dead.”

Merrick had already wished that a hundred times over the past four months. He lowered his face to the cold floor and rested his cheek against it. His muscles were contracting and releasing in reaction to the powerful charges he had been struck with. Even his heart stuttered for a moment as it tried to find the correct rhythm again.

“Goddess, help me,” he whispered as he closed his eyes. “Give me the peace of death if you will not give me a way to release myself.”

It was not like him to wish for death, but the continued testing was slowly draining his resolve. His body and mind had been tested over and over. There were two men and one woman he would kill if given a chance.

Never in his life had he thought he would want to harm a female, but the old human was one he would not think twice about eliminating from this world if he got the chance. Terif
f
‘Tag Krell Mano
k
, leader of the Prime, might have thought that the human males were untrustworthy, but they were nothing compared to the female. The tests she ordered were far worse than the beatings he received from the males.

He had all but given up hope that he would be found. No… if he was to survive, it would be by his own resources. Pushing away his earlier weakness, Merrick twisted and pushed himself up on trembling arms. He forced himself up into a sitting position in an effort to push back the fatigue crushing him.

Wincing as he slid along the slick, concrete floor, he rested his back against the narrow bed frame. His eyes swept his new location. This one was different from the others. The room wasn't very large. The cage he was in took up almost a fourth of it.

There was a long, stainless steel table against the far wall and a row of cabinets on the far side with a sink. It looked like another exam room. This time, it might be his last one.

The humans holding him never stayed in one place for more than a few weeks. He had lost count over the past months how many times he had been drugged and awakened in a new holding cell.

Merrick closed his eyes and thought back to the night he had been captured. It had only been his promise to his clan, that he would find women capable of being bond mates, that had brought him to this world. Now… now, not only had he failed to help his people, he had endangered them by being taken.

He had been helping the human male, Cosmos Raines, try to protect Tansy Bell and two other Earth women. Tansy was an agent for her government. Personally, Merrick thought that Mak ‘Tag Krell Manok, the huge middle son of Teriff, should have just tossed the small female over his shoulder and returned to their world with her. The same thing should have been done to the other two women involved, as well. It was too dangerous to let the women who were bond mates to a Prime warrior be involved in such dangerous work.

Instead, Mak had allowed the female to continue on her dangerous assignment. His mind drifted, replaying the night once again as if it were just happening. He knew that Tansy was trying to protect her own leader, President Askew Thomas, from being assassinated by his Vice-President. Unfortunately, something had gone wrong during the mission.

*.*.*

Four months earlier:

“You shouldn’t allow the females of your world to take such risks,” Merrick muttered as he stared at all the equipment glowing in the van. “Mak should have tied Tansy up and taken her back to our world.”

Cosmos glanced over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “You saw Tansy. Do you really think she would have just stood by while Mak tried to tie her up? Hell, he would have been the one needing help. Tansy, Helene, and Natasha are not the kind of women you tie up unless they let you,” Cosmos replied with a twisted grin. “Shit, any one of them could take my ass out in a heartbeat before I even knew it and I’m no slouch when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.”

Merrick scowled. “Why do the women of your world take such risks? Why do the males allow it?” He demanded, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned against the inside wall of the van.

“Dude, didn’t you just hear what I said?” Cosmos asked in exasperation. “It’s not like this in every country, though we are working on it, but women have a right to make their own decisions and choices about their lives. Tansy, Natasha, and Helene chose to protect those that can’t protect themselves. They fight beside men and women around the world who are trying to make this a better place to live. Hell, I’m just glad we have the Tansy’s of the world. We sure the hell need more like her.”

Merrick frowned as he listened to Cosmos explain that Tansy’s work had brought down some of the major drug and slavery rings around the world. Helene, and her sister, Natasha, did the same type of work in Russia. Without them, many of the Organized Crime Gangs would have been impossible to infiltrate.

“If I found my bond mate, I would keep her safe,” Merrick muttered under his breath as he watched one of Cosmos’ men adjust a camera showing Tansy talking to a male. “I would never allow her to do something that was so dangerous.”

Cosmos glanced over his shoulder again and shook his head. “Why don’t you stretch your legs outside for a few minutes? You can scan the area for us as well to make sure it is clear. Just looking at you folded up in here is making my legs hurt.”

“Good idea,” Merrick grunted with a relieved nod as he reached for the handle of the door before he paused to look back at Cosmos. “I don’t know why you don’t just kill the men you are after. You know that they are trying to harm your leader. Wouldn’t that make more sense than endangering the women?”

“Yeah, it makes more sense. Unfortunately, our laws are a little different than yours,” Cosmos replied, before he turned back to look at Tansy smiling seductively at her target. “Not that Tansy gives a rat’s ass about that if she is given half a chance to take out the bad guys.”

“You live in a strange world, human,” Merrick muttered, shaking his head as he opened the back door of the van and stepped out.

He had barely closed it when two black vehicles suddenly appeared at the far end of the narrow alley. Men poured from the vehicles and began moving toward the van. He knew immediately that something had gone wrong.

“Cosmos!” Merrick growled in a low voice, jerking the door open again. “Men are coming down the alley.”

“Shit! We’ve been compromised! All units, take cover, we have been compromised,” Cosmos warned into the headset he was wearing before he jerked it off his head and nodded to the other three men in the van with them. “Keep Tansy, Helene, and Natasha in your sight,” he instructed one of the men. “How many?”

Merrick glanced around the side of the van. “Ten,” he replied. “I’ll take out the ones on the right. Can I kill them?”

“Leave one alive, if you can,” Cosmos responded, checking his gun as he climbed out of the van. “We need to know how they knew we were here.”

“I will try,” Merrick said before giving Cosmos a short nod of warning. “Now,” he muttered, turning and running toward the five men on the right side of the alley.

Gunfire had lit the night. He had taken three bullets, one in the arm, one to his upper thigh, and one had grazed his left side. While they hurt, none of them had been life threatening.

He cursed the primitive weapons Cosmos insisted that he carry. They were clumsy and unfamiliar in his hands. He had finally abandoned them. Chasing the lone man down the alley, he had rounded the corner only to find he had run into a trap.

He had fought, leaving more dead than alive as another group of men surrounded him. His eyes flickered open as he remembered the image of one man who stepped out of the darkness as he collapsed. The man had been shorter than him, but was thickly built. He carried a long gun that shot darts, instead of the pieces of metal the others used.

The darts contained an agent in them that paralyzed his muscles. The man, Markham, was the first man he wanted to kill. The ugly, but satisfied, smile on the male’s face burned through his mind.

“I heard the reports of an unusual man in Russia who had helped my target escape,” Markham had commented as he knelt beside him on the hard ground. “My employer wanted to know who could kill like that. It would appear the elusive Ms. Bell has more than her family and Cosmos Raines up her sleeve. I think my employer will be very interested in keeping you alive… for a short time, at least.”

*.*.*

Merrick remembered reaching out in a fit of rage to kill the man. The last thing he remembered of that night was Markham striking him with the butt of the gun in his hands. Since then, he had seen the man on three other occasions. Markham’s gloating gaze built his resolve to kill the man before he returned to his world or die trying.

He leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling as exhaustion pulled at him, making him want to give into the need for sleep. Another shudder wracked his body as the after effects of the shocks he had been hit with ran through him. He desperately needed to escape.

His thoughts turned to his home world of Baade. Sadness coursed through him at the devastation that had been wrought by the declining birth rate of Prime females. Most of the eligible women on Baade were spoken for as soon as they came of age.

He and the other males were matched to their mates through a mating rite’s ceremony held twice a year. The ceremony was a gathering of all the unmatched males and females. They were presented to each other in small groups, rotating until the markings appeared, proving they were destined to be together. If in cases such as his, no match was made, the warrior was left with one of two choices; continue to attend the ceremonies in the hope he would find his bond mate or resign himself to a solitary existence.

The chemical change that occurred when a Prime male came in contact with a female genetically ideal to them, could not be fraudulently recreated. The powerful chemical caused a physical and emotional reaction in the male, that bonded him to a female. The males become overwhelmed with feelings of possessiveness, protectiveness, and sexual desire.