Protected

  “You—you’ll do!” she hissed at Verrai. That fleshy tube that came from between her spidery legs spasmed again and a length of white webbing wrapped around his thighs.

  “Ugh!” he gasped and lurched forward as she tugged at him.

  “Here.” Without thinking, I grabbed his arm and yanked him back before he could be pulled out onto the web. He was holding a blaster in his hand and it discharged with a flash of light and a sound like thunder in the large, echoing room.

  I don’t know if he meant to aim for the Widow—I don’t think so, honestly—but he couldn’t have made a better shot if he’d tried. The blast of energy hit her directly in the center of her swollen, writhing belly and a sudden, gaping hole appeared, eating away her white flesh like fire eats away at paper.

  “No! No!” I heard her wail as she fell backwards, her massive body splayed like a ruined mountain in the middle of the web.

  And then I saw a sight that I knew wouldn’t leave me for years.

  The wound had opened her belly but it hadn’t killed her—-or most of the eggs inside. They were mounded up like insect eggs, white and pulsing but I thought I could see red eyes inside them as they writhed frantically in the open air.

  As we watched, I saw them breaking open, the thin white membrane around them tearing as if their occupants were particularly eager to come out. And come out they did, pushing their little bald heads into the world, looking around eagerly with the same bulging, ruby-red insect eyes their mother had.

  From the waist up, they looked like babies. Ugly, bald babies with paper-white skin and bulging red eyes, true but still—babies. From the waist down, though, they were spiders. I saw them scuttling around, their tiny limbs flailing as they tried to get free of their egg membranes. If the Widow could be believed, all of them were female but it was hard to tell from here. All I could see was the mutant spider-babies were extremely active.

  And apparently, extremely hungry.

  I don’t know which one was the first to take a bite and I don’t want to know. I saw one open its mouth revealing tiny pointed teeth. At first I thought it was yawning and then I saw it duck its head and sink those sharp little points into the Widow’s white flesh. Another spider baby looked up with a red-smeared mouth…and another, and another. Soon they were all feeding while the Widow thrashed feebly and cried out in agony.

  It was a fuckin’ nightmare.

  “No! No, stop them—stop them!” the Widow wailed to her spider minions. But they only shifted from leg to leg uncertainly. I thought they were probably genetically programmed to protect the spider-babies at all costs and so were unable to come to the aid of their mistress.

  “This is sickening,” Verrai said in a low voice. For once we were in total agreement. He raised his blaster and aimed it this time. There was an echoing blast, a burst of silver light, and the Widow’s head suddenly exploded in a spray of crimson.

  I didn’t have long to admire his marksmanship. The sound drew the attention of the spider-babies. As one, they looked up, their cherubic white faces smeared in red, their bulging ruby eyes trained in our direction.

  There are some kinds of animals—herd animals and insects mostly—that share almost a kind of telepathy. It’s like one has a thought and it transmits to all the rest in a flash.

  In this case the thought was obviously, “Fresh meat!”

  They came at us in a swarm, spilling over the blood-soaked carcass of their mother in a flood of long, slender legs and gnashing teeth.

  For a moment, we all stood frozen. And then I turned to Verrai and shouted,

  “Run! Fucking run!”

  “I can’t!” He pointed down at the webbing still wrapped around his upper thighs.

  I started to grab my knife to cut him free but there was no time—the tide of spider-babies was getting closer, rushing towards us in a flood of blood-soaked death.

  There was only one thing to do—with a grunt, I leaned down and tossed him over my shoulder. Then I ran as hard as I could with the other Imperial Guards right behind me and the mass of swarming spider-babies right behind them.

  Let me tell you, if you’ve never run flat out for your life with an Imperial Guard thrown over your shoulder, well, I don’t recommend it. There are easier ways to get your cardio in.

  Verrai wasn’t quite as broad as me across the shoulders—then again, I’m built like a Xerusian tank—but he was at least an inch taller and every bit of him was solid muscle.

  What I’m saying is that it wasn’t nearly as easy to run holding him as it had been to run the same way holding Leah. For all that she thought she was too curvy, my little Earth girl was light as a feather—I could carry her all day. Not so with the Captain of the Imperial Guards.

  Luckily, just as I was beginning to feel winded, one of the other guards pointed to a wide silver door off the main corridor.

  “There! Air lock! The shuttles!” he gasped.

  I ducked in along with the other guards, Verrai still slung over my shoulder like a wounded Terran buck. As I got in, I turned to look and saw the white and red swarm of Spidier~o young was right on our heels. They were skittering along, not just on the floor but on the walls and even on the ceiling as well—coming as fast as they could, their tiny arms outstretched, their mouths gaping to show the bloody, jagged points inside.

  “Shut the door! Shut the fucking door!” I shouted and one of the Gold Skins—who was more pale than gold at the moment—started hammering on the door-close mechanism as hard as he could.

  Just as the writhing swarm reached us, the metal door slid down with a bang. I heard the disappointed hissing from the other side as well as the sound of thousands of tiny claws scrabbling at the metal.

  I couldn’t help thinking that it could have been me instead of the Widow. Or me and the widow, that the wicked little cannibals ate. Hadn’t I thought to myself that her bulging abdomen made the perfect target? And yet, if I had slit her open, all those eggs would have come pouring out and hatched on me instead of inside her.

  I never would have gotten away in time if I’d been in the web instead of up on the platform when they broke out of their eggs. Those hungry spider-babies would have had Braxian for dinner. Only my vow had saved me.

  It pays to keep your vows. And I had another to keep right now.

  “Make sure it’s locked,” I growled, finally lowering Verrai to the ground. “And then fire up your shuttles—I’m going to need one. I have to find my females before it’s too late.”

  “You saved my life,” Verrai said as I cut the webbing from his legs with my knife. “Why?”

  “It’s not my way to watch a helpless male die—even if he is a pain in my ass,” I told him, rubbing my shoulder. “You’re a heavy son-of-a-bitch—you know that?”

  “Yes, I know,” he said absently. “Now where did you say your female is?”

  “None of your fuckin’ business,” I growled. “I’ll find her on my own.”

  “Be reasonable, Braxian,” he said, frowning. “I wish only to help you—not to bring you in or arrest you. I swear it on the legacy of my beloved Empress, Sundalla the 999th.”

  I looked at him for a long moment while the spider-babies scrabbled and hissed and mewled outside the thick metal door. It was a strong oath—the strongest a Gold Skin could make. Verrai held my gaze, his own eyes making a strange, shifting rainbow pattern which was unique—even in a Majoran.

  “All right,” I said at last. “I’ll let you tag along but the kill is mine. You got that?”

  “I agree.” He nodded and pointed to one of the two small shuttles parked in the large airlock area. “Come on we’ll take my ship and you can tell me what to look for.”

  “What we’re lookin’ for is the son-of-a-bitch who stole my female and my ward,” I growled. “And when I find him I’m going to kill him…Again.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Leah

  “Now you see! Now you can see my new bo
dy’s virility!” crowed Doloroso proudly. He was strutting back and forth in front of the cage where Teeny and I were huddled together in the corner, proudly displaying his erection.

  His member, which was still sticking out from the front of his trousers, was fully engorged now. Honestly, though it had lost its sad, shriveled, Vienna-Sausage appearance, it still wasn’t anything to write home about. I estimated it at around two and a half or three inches long and not much thicker than it had been before.

  Still, it was hard enough to get the job done, which worried me considerably.

  “You see?” Doloroso bragged again. “Behold my splendor! My—what did you call it? Ah, yes—my bratwurst. Behold my bratwurst!”

  He put his hands on his hips and did a grotesque bump and grind that would have been funny if I wasn’t in imminent danger of being raped. Why hadn’t any side-effects kicked in yet? What about the story Charlotte had told Zoe and me?

  I thought hard. I seemed to remember she told us that the patient she saw in the ER had been in his, ah, tumescent state, for a number of hours before he finally went to the hospital. By that time, he was in severe pain from a hard-on that just wouldn’t go down. What was that called again? Something with a P…priapism? Yes—that was it—priapism. Somehow I had to delay Doloroso’s conquest of me until priapism set in.

  But how?

  “I am ready!” Doloroso announced. Reaching in his pocket, he got out the key and began unlocking the cell door. “Ready to be the father of a whole new race.”

  Teeny whimpered and pressed against me and I squeezed her thin shoulders comfortingly. Okay, Doloroso was a bastard—a bastard who now had a fully functioning dick—but that didn’t mean I had to let him use it on me.

  “Um…don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself?” I asked as Doloroso unlocked the door.

  “What?” He frowned at me. “What are you talking about?” He pointed down to his shaft, which still jutted ridiculously from his trousers. “Just look at me—I’m huge!”

  I pretended to stifle a laugh.

  “Not by Earth standards you’re not. Sorry, sweetie, but you’re not quite ready to, uh, sow your seeds just yet.”

  “How can that be?” he demanded. “I am tumescent—hard as a rock! In fact, I am so hard it is almost painful.” He frowned. “But in a good way, of course.”

  “That pain feeling just means your, uh, equipment isn’t done growing yet,” I said quickly. “See, Earth females have extremely deep va-jay-jays. Unless you wait until you get at least three or four more inches in length, you don’t have a hope of getting your swimmers where they need to go.”

  “You’re lying!” he exclaimed, but I saw the uneasy, uncertain look in his eyes.

  “You think so?” I said, trying to make my voice as skeptical as I could. “So then you honestly think that’s as big as you’re supposed to get in order to get the job done? I mean, it’s not exactly a micro-penis but you’re no King Kong, either.”

  “Fine,” Doloroso grumbled, putting the key back in his pocket and taking a step back from the cell door. “How do I make it grow?”

  “Rub it,” I advised. “Really hard and fast—that helps activate the medicine you took.”

  He looked at me suspiciously.

  “Why should you wish to help me?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t. I just think it’s pathetic to see such a small piece of equipment.”

  I didn’t know where I got the nerve to talk like that—it was more like something Zoe would say, honestly. But the longer I stayed away from Earth, the stronger I felt. I was no longer the shy, timid girl who let people walk all over her. I was alive and awake and I was damned if I would let some ridiculous alien with delusions of grandeur and an orange-skinned billionaire suit get the better of me.

  Luckily, the slight to his pride seemed to get to Doloroso.

  “Fine,” he muttered again. “I will do as you say. Soon you will know the power of my phallus!”

  “Um…yeah.” I bit my lip. “I’m sure I will.”

  As he fisted himself and began wanking his crank like a maniac, I turned Teeny firmly towards the wall. When she started to protest, I shook my head.

  “No—this is absolutely nothing you need to see. I want you to stand here and study the wall and do not look. Understand?”

  “All right, Leah.” She sighed. “I’m just scared—you know?”

  “I know, sweetheart.” I gave her a quick hug. “I am too. But somehow we’re going to get out of this—okay?”

  “You’re right.” Her face brightened. “Grav will come and rescue us.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that but I didn’t want her to lose hope.

  “I’m sure he’ll try,” I said carefully.

  “He’ll do more than try—he’ll come for us!” she insisted. “I’ve been kidnapped twice—did you know that? And both times Grav found me. He’ll find me again. And you too.” She looked up at me shyly. “Because he loves you.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t help thinking of Grav’s bellowed confession while we were trapped in the Widow’s web—the fact that he had admitted to killing his own father. How did I feel about that?

  Honestly, I hadn’t had time to process it yet—what with being kidnapped by Doloroso and threatened with rape by his tiny, pink penis—but I was betting when I did get a chance to think it over, my reaction wasn’t going to be all hearts and flowers. I mean, I guessed I could understand him killing some people while he was escaping from prison—that was probably unavoidable. But to kill his own father…?

  “Arrrgh!”

  The anguished howl of Count Doloroso cut off my line of thought abruptly. Putting a hand on Teeny’s shoulder to make sure she stayed facing the wall, I turned my head to see what was going on.

  Doloroso was down on his knees, clutching himself, his face maroon with pain.

  “Ahhh!” he moaned. “It keeps swelling but it won’t grow any longer no matter how much I stroke it! And it hurts!”

  I would have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t been planning to rape me and impregnate me with his alien babies. As it was, I didn’t have much sympathy.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That happens sometimes.”

  “Make it stop!” he groaned. “The pressure is too much—make it stop!”

  “Let us out of the cage first,” I told him. I had an awful vision of him dying or becoming incapacitated while he was still in possession of the only key to our prison. I didn’t want to be stuck in here, condemned to die because Doloroso’s pocket was too far away to pick through the bars.

  “And if I do, you promise you’ll tell me how to stop it?” he begged.

  I swallowed hard. I don’t like to lie—even to assholes.

  “I have a friend who’s a medical professional,” I told Doloroso. “She’s treated, uh, males with this condition before—it’s called priapism. I’ll tell you how she said to treat it if you let us out.”

  “All right…all right!” He fumbled the key out of his pocket and shakily inserted it into the lock. It chattered around—metal-against-metal—until he finally pushed it home with a click. He turned the key and the barred door swung open.

  I felt a surge of relief, but we weren’t in the clear yet. The first thing was to get past Doloroso who was still kneeling in the doorway, blocking it.

  “All right,” he said. “It’s open—now tell me!”

  “Let us get past first.” I kept a firm grip on Teeny, keeping her at my side, as far from Doloroso as was humanly possible. I sidled out past him, making a little running jump to get outside the cell, pulling Teeny with me as I went. Even so, he managed to get a handful of the green dress I was wearing.

  “Please!” he begged.

  “Let go!” I yanked my dress out of his hand and took several quick steps away.

  “You promised to tell me what to do,” he groaned. “You promised!”

  “Fine??
?like I said, it’s called priapism when your, uh, equipment gets hard and won’t go down. My friend, Charlotte, says you have to drain the blood out.”

  “Drain it?” His face went pale. “How?”

  “With a needle,” I said matter-of-factly. “Charlotte says it’s the only way.”

  “You…you want me to put a needle in my phallus?” His eyes bugged out and he clutched himself protectively with both hands. “No! No!”

  “I’m sorry but it’s the only way,” I told him. “And don’t ask me to help because I’m not a medical professional. I’m just a daycare worker—sticking needles in your dick isn’t part of my job description.”

  “You did this!” His face went from pale to purple with rage in an instant. He was still on the floor but he knee-walked towards me, his grotesquely swollen member still jutting out from between his thighs. Right now it looked more like an eggplant than the tiny Vienna Sausage he had started with.

  “Stay back,” I warned him, backing away. I wasn’t sure but I thought he still had the blaster in his pocket. I just hoped he didn’t remember it.

  Unfortunately, my hope was in vain.

  “You did this to me!” he roared again, fumbling in his jacket pocket. “You tricked me into engorging my phallus to outlandish proportions!”

  “You were the one who took ten Viagra at once!” I shouted back. “If you hadn’t been trying to rape me maybe I would have warned you it was too much. But since you—”

  “Shut up, Earth bitch!” he snarled, pulling out the blaster and pointing it at us. “This body wasn’t in the best shape to start with and now it is in excruciating pain—that is your fault! So now I will make certain that you are in pain as well.”

  “Teeny, get behind me!” I said, shoving her to my back. “And run as fast as you can when you get a chance.”

  “I don’t want to leave you, Leah!” she whispered.

  “Don’t worry about me—just go!”

  Doloroso’s finger was tightening on the trigger and at this range there was no way he could miss. I couldn’t get far away enough in time to avoid the blast—especially not while still shielding Teeny.