“What? Get the fuck outta my face.” V wasn’t listening to any more of this. A glance around the room showed him that while he’d been distracted with this weird little bastard, the female he’d been so focused on was disappearing into the back of the bar. If this bald, babbling idiot had cost V his chance with her, he would wring his neck!
He started to push past the little male but as he did, he felt a sharp stinging sensation in his hip. Looking down, he saw a tiny needle poking out of the male’s sleeve. It retracted quickly, but not before V saw a drop of something that was deep, poisonous green glittering on its tip.
“Hey, what—?” he started to ask but then he suddenly felt dizzy. As the noisy bar started to spin around him, he felt himself falling.
V hit the floor like a sack of stones, bumping the back of his head and making him see everything in doubles. How else could he account for the fact that there were now two of the little bald males standing over him? They were soon joined by another two so that now four almost identical faces were staring down into V’s own.
He frowned. Wait—was he seeing double or were there more of these weird little fuckers?
“Stand back,” one of them said loudly to the other bar patrons who were looking in surprise at the way V was now flat on his back. “We are a medical unit. We will care for this fallen one.”
This seemed to satisfy everyone and they went back to drinking. V wanted to shout that this wasn’t right, that he hadn’t fallen down by accident—that it was the little bald male’s fault. But when he tried to speak, nothing came out of his mouth. Trying to move led to the same result—nothing.
“A prime specimen,” one of the little bald mutants said to another.
“He is indeed.” The other one nodded. “My instruments indicate he has special abilities in sexual pleasure. This will lead to many inseminations.”
“Our Glorious Leader will be so pleased,” another one of them said. “But I think he is still awake—see how he watches us. Another dose of sleeping juice perhaps?”
“That is an excellent plan,” the second one concurred. “I should have doubled the dose in the first place. This male’s immense size must make him resistant to the effects.”
He leaned down and the retractable needle shot out of the sleeve of his sliver jumpsuit again.
V wanted to jerk away, wanted to shout and flail and most of all punch the little mutant bastard, but he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t do anything but lie there as the needle stung him a second time and everything faded to black.
Two
Oh my God, is that him? Is that the guy Kat was warning me about?
Penny stared in mute horror at the man with the mirrored golden eyes who was looking at her from across the crowded bar. He was huge—even bigger than a normal sized Kindred, and they were big enough already. He had long black hair which was wild around his shoulders—and what broad shoulders they were. Penny thought they had to be at least twice as wide as her own.
But it wasn’t just his size—or his eyes—that tipped her off to the strange Kindred’s identity. It was the black and gold tattoos she could see on the strong column of his neck and his muscular arms. The arms were obvious because he was wearing a black vest that showed them clearly, as well as tight black leather flight trousers and high black boots. The neck tattoo was a little more difficult to see, through the long, silky black strands of his hair.
He looked like a space pirate, Penny thought—a dangerous man who might do anything at all. And the intricate tattoos with golden ink that matched his strange, mirrored eyes marked him as V’rex—the Hybrid Kindred criminal who had been causing trouble in the Teklan sector.
At least, that was what Kat had warned her…
“Whatever you do, doll, stay away from the Hell’s Gate Spaceport,” she’d lectured as she got Penny ready for her mission. “I know it’s the biggest port in the sector and it might seem like the best place to refuel or get supplies, but they run a sex slave trade out of there that’s always on the lookout for pretty young girls. And lately it’s been getting worse.”
Penny privately had her doubts about anyone wanting her for a sex slave. Oh, she was pretty enough and relatively young, but her wide behind and childbearing hips made most guys think twice about asking her out once they saw her from the waist down. She’d tried posting on dating sites after she had broken up with Garret, her last serious boyfriend, but it just never worked out. It was easier and more rewarding, she had decided, to be married to her work—why else would she accept such a distant assignment where she wouldn’t even see another human for ages?
“I won’t be the only one there,” she reminded Kat. “Even if we were forced to go to the Hell’s Gate port, I’m sure Commander Rive would be with me.”
Commander Rive and his wife, Y’lla were the two lead Kindred archeologists on the dig they were going to. They were both Blood Kindred and very kind, if somewhat wrapped up in each other.
Penny was a little nervous about spending so much time working with a married couple—she was afraid she’d be a third wheel. But both Rive and Y’lla had assured her she was welcome and she didn’t want to pass up this assignment—after all, an archeological dig on an alien planet wasn’t something most people could put on their resume. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.
Not that this opportunity came without drawbacks. It was going to be a hazardous dig—mostly owing to the climate. They were going to the frozen world of Yown Beta, which was just barely inside the habitable zone of its yellow dwarf star sun. There were other planets in the system that were more temperate, but apparently Yown Beta had been chosen because it was a frozen waste land by the ancient Kindred ancestors who had hidden the artifact she and the other two archeologists were going to seek.
“Yes, I guess Commander Rive would be with you if you wound up at Hell’s Gate.” Kat had looked somewhat comforted at the thought. “It’s just that V’rex has been spotted in that area lately, which makes me nervous for you, doll. Because he showed up right at the time the number of abductions spiked. Coincidence?” She made a sour face. “I don’t think so.”
“V’rex? Who’s he?” Penny frowned.
“He’s a rogue Hybrid who’s been causing quite a lot of trouble in the Teklan sector,” a new voice said.
Looking up, Penny saw that Commander Sylvan, head of the Kindred High Council, was poking his head in the door of Kat’s home office. Since it was her job to get anyone going on a mission away from the Mother Ship ready to go, the curvy redhead needed her own space, as she had explained to Penny.
“Otherwise my two husbands and three sons would drive me crazy!” she’d said with a grin.
Penny had returned her smile, but she couldn’t imagine having three kids of her own. Not that she had anything against having babies, it was just that they were generally incompatible with a serious career in archeology—at least, if you wanted to do a lot of field work, which was what Penny lived for.
It was kind of hard to pick the kids up from school and help them with their homework if you were on a dig in Egypt—or in this case, on an alien planet light years from Earth.