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  Pursued

  Untamed Warriors of Vanthae

  Book 2

  Ivy Cross

  © 2020 Ivy Cross

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  Pursued

  Being abducted by aliens was nothing compared to being unabducted by them… unabducted is a word, isn’t it?

  Let’s start with the overgrown feral rat people. Or maybe it’s overgrown feral mole men…

  Either way, let that sink in for a moment. Not a pretty thought, right?

  Not so long ago the only thing I had to worry about was overcooking someone’s steak. Now it’s all bloodthirsty beasts, brooding warriors, and being passed from one alien to another like a popular trading card.

  Did I mention brooding warriors? That’s the roughest part of all of this. Well, one particular brooding warrior, I guess. In the space of a day and a night the guy has gone from ignoring my very existence to stalking me across the face of the planet.

  And if I can’t shake him, I don’t know what he’ll do to me.

  About the Author

  Ivy Cross has been in love with science fiction since she was old enough to hold her head up through an entire episode of Doctor Who. She is a passionate reader, gamer (both board and video), and adventuress. Addictions include, but are not limited to: strong coffee, sweet wine, and sweeter desserts.

  Table of Contents

  Pursued

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  Prologue – Bailey

  Chapter 1 – Atrae

  Chapter 2 – Bailey

  Chapter 3 – Bailey

  Chapter 4 – Atrae

  Chapter 5 – Bailey

  Chapter 6 – Atrae

  Chapter 7 – Bailey

  Chapter 8 – Atrae

  Chapter 9 – Bailey

  Chapter 10 – Atrae

  Chapter 11 – Bailey

  Chapter 12 – Atrae

  Chapter 13 – Bailey

  Chapter 14 – Atrae

  Chapter 15 – Bailey

  Chapter 16 – Atrae

  Chapter 17 – Bailey

  Chapter 18 – Bailey

  Chapter 19 – Atrae

  Chapter 20 – Bailey

  Stolen

  Prologue – Bailey

  “Tal!” My scream is cut short by a hard, filthy hand that clamps down across my mouth. I snap my head back against the alien beast-thing and try to buck forward out of its grip, but despite my countless hours of working up a sweat to those Tae Bo DVDs, the creature’s grip on me is like steel.

  “You’ve gone and messed with the wrong human, asshole!” That’s what I want to say, but what comes out is closer to the muffled snorting sounds of a truffle pig. Probably not as intimidating as I had hoped.

  I watch Talia grapple with the other two aliens as my captor pulls me farther down the hill.

  I’ve seen enough horror movies to know how this is going to go. We’re either going to be raped, killed, or eaten—and maybe all three of those things to various degrees and mixed order…

  The grip on my mouth loosens just a little as my wannabe kidnapper adjusts his hold on me, apparently setting up for the long haul to wherever the fuck the thing wants to take me.

  It might be my only chance.

  I bite down on the thing’s hand like a pit bull with a squeaky toy. The guy smells like an open sewer and has a taste to match, but the asshole seems to feel pain like any other.

  The alien makes a garbled hissing sound and drops me to the dirt like a sack of laundry. I don’t waste any time. I scrabble quickly away on my hands and knees, then roll up and onto my feet when I have a little distance (thanks again Billy Blanks!). And I do not look back—something else I learned from horror movies.

  My feet pound against the soft dirt beneath me, taking me back toward the slope up the hill where I left Talia. I can’t even see her now with the two underling uglies crowded over top of her.

  A few yards closer and I start to regret making her take that club thing from the pod. I don’t know what the hell I plan to do when I get to her, but somehow I doubt politely asking the aliens to jump up their own asses and die will solve the problem.

  Unluckily, my plans matter about as much as a legless woman at an ass-kicking competition.

  On my next step, the dirt doesn’t rise up to meet me, and a long hairy arm has me around the middle. I find myself flailing in the air. The stench of sewage is back… and this time it’s angry.

  The beast-man hurls me to the ground hard enough to knock the air out of my chest. I roll, still trying to suck some air into my burning lungs, just in time to see the creature in the hideous Halloween mask swing its arm down at me like a fleshy club.

  Then it’s all bright stars and darkness.

  ***

  I wake to the overwhelming smell of freshly dug soil. And pain… lots of that. I try to move, but my arms and legs are bound tightly with something rough. It takes me a minute to figure out why I can’t tell exactly what it is I’m tied up with…

  I’m blind!

  “Fuck!” My voice echoes back at me like it’s bouncing off the walls of a cave. “You sewage smelling asshole! If you get near me again, I’ll gouge your goddamn eyes out with my fingers!”

  I’m not sure if I’m more afraid or angry. It’s a pretty even match… but being blind on an alien planet with some gross beast-thing as my only companion is right up there with my all-time worst nightmares.

  I let out another wordless scream of frustration and then something miraculous happens. I see the light!

  Well, maybe it’s not miraculous… it’s more like the slowly growing light of a dim torch down the length of a long tunnel or hall. But it means I’m not blind.

  I’m still going to gouge out the eyes of that rotten bastard if I get the chance.

  The dim orange light at the end of the hall slowly grows to reveal a figure loping in my direction. Ever so slowly, I can make out a ghastly pale mask and a set of long, hairy arms and legs. My kidnapper has returned.

  Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut. But that wouldn’t be like me at all.

  As the creature gets nearer, I can hear it making a kind of screechy warbling sound in its throat. He’s either humming the world’s most horrible tune, or he swallowed a few highly vocal alley cats on his way to see me.

  But where there is song, perhaps there is language and some kind of intelligence.

  “Hey,” I say as the creature lumbers up over me and places a makeshift torch in a tangled knot of roots protruding from the wall. The torchlight lets me see our surroundings more clearly—what little there is to see. It’s not so much a cave as a long tunnel dug right into the ground. There are some stacked stones periodically along the tunnel walls, but I can’t see any other touches of craftsmanship.

  When the creature doesn’t respond, I try again. “I’m Bailey… can you understand me?”

  The thing stands in silence, then slowly reaches toward its face and pulls off the strange mask.

  God, I wish it hadn’t…

  Underneath the mask is the perfect representation of all the nightmare creatures I ever thought lived under my bed as a child. I could almost deal with the large, perfectly round yellow eyes set too close in the middle of the thing’s face… but the teeth. The fucking teeth. They’re long snaggly things that stick out like broken and yellowed tombstones over the creature’s thin bloodred lips. Even with its mouth closed.

  Mr. Handsome opens his mouth and makes a series of low grunts and barks and then snatches me by the wrist bindings and pulls me up to my feet.

  The rope pinches and burns my arms, but it’s nothing compared to the
stench coming from the alien’s open mouth.

  “Jesus,” I gag. “The least you could have done was swallow a few hundred breath mints on your way back here. I mean, first impressions and all that…”

  He cocks his ugly head to the side, and it makes him look even more like a nightmare owl-man. After a moment’s consideration, the alien apparently finds something to dislike in my tone and shoves me hard against the tunnel wall.

  I hit the dirt wall with a soft thud, the cold soil absorbing most of my impact and pulling me in for a chilly embrace. Some of the rubble behind me shifts and rolls down over my bare feet, and I can’t decide if I’m more worried about what sewage breath is about to do to me or this tunnel caving in and killing both of us.

  Scratch that—a cave-in would be quick and it would kill my stinky friend to boot. That’s definitely the scenario I’m rooting for…

  The alien slinks in closer, pinning me to the dirt wall with its long, grotesquely hairy arms. I watch in horror as its repulsive red lips peel slowly apart, and a bloodcurdling scream echoes off the dirt wall… from somewhere at the opposite end of the tunnel.

  The alien bolts away from me in the direction of the scream, leaving the torch in its place to light my confusion and let me count my lucky stars for whatever just saved me from what might have been the universe’s most vomit-inducing French kiss.

  Chapter 1 – Atrae

  “We have to go down in there?”

  I smile, following Mayna’s horror-stricken gaze to the sinkhole-like entrance of the Valat Warren. In any other situation, whether it be single combat with a larger opponent or when facing down an enraged alderwere, I have never even seen her blink an eye in fear.

  That is precisely why I brought her here.

  “You want to serve as part of Jaha’s circle of guards? Serve under me?” I point at the hole in the ground. “This is what you must do.”

  In truth, Mayna has had to do much more to prove herself up to this point. Grueling sparring sessions with Laca and Vel, day and night guard postings to prove her stamina, running the poles after being woken from a dead slumber…

  But this is as important as any of it. Maybe even more so.

  Mayna skirts the edge of the entrance, leaning her tall frame back at an awkward angle as though she is afraid the darkness below might reach out and pull her into its maw. She notices my watchful gaze and quickly straightens her posture.

  “But why this?” she asks, not taking her eyes from the hole. “I can fight as well as any, and I will protect our leader with my life. There can be no question.”

  “And there is not,” I reply evenly.

  “Then what will this prove?”

  “You are an excellent warrior,” I say. “And you have done all that has been asked of you without a single complaint. But I have yet to witness your bravery, and that is a key component for the role you wish to assume.”

  Mayna snaps her head around and turns her deep, nearly black eyes on me. She seems to scan my face for some hint of humor or jest.

  “You cannot be serious,” she says at last. “I bested any warrior you set against me, and you watched me take down that alderwere with my bare hands! I did not even flinch when it raked its blade-like claws across my chest.”

  “Did you fear those warriors I had you fight?”

  Mayna bares her bright teeth and barks out a laugh. “Surely you jest. I fear no warrior who draws breath… no offense to you personally.”

  I shake my head and smile. “No offense taken. I know you do not fear me or the other warriors. And that is the issue.”

  “I do not understand.”

  I move to stand next to her by the opening. “There can be no bravery in the absence of fear. I have seen your skill and strength… now I get to gauge your bravery.”

  She scoffs. “I am not afraid of a hole in the ground. I just did not like the idea of getting Valat filth on my new leathers.” Her words become increasingly less confident as they tumble out, and I can see by her expression she knows she has not convinced me.

  “How did you know?” she asks after a quiet moment of staring down into the entrance.

  “I am the commander of Jaha’s guard,” I say. “There is little that goes on within our tribe that escapes my notice.”

  While it is true that I know a great deal about all of the members of our dwindling tribe, especially its warrior candidates, I am stretching the truth with what I tell her.

  Even though Mayna and I came up together, she being but two cycles my junior, it took real effort for me to suss out her greatest fear. It was not until I pieced together two stories—one involving a cave-in that trapped her overnight as a youngling, and another about her refusal to gather the glowing fungus from the low caves outside our village—that I finally understood she is afraid of being closed in or trapped.

  Mayna barks a mirthless laugh. “I always said you should have been a seer instead of a warrior. It seems as though you can pluck the thoughts right out of one’s mind. And it is not always a welcome thing…”

  “Llea used to say the same thing,” I say. “Turns out, you are both wrong.”

  Mayna gives me a pained look. “I am sorry, Atrae. That is not what I meant. What happened with her… no one could have foreseen that. You must know you are not at fault.”

  I grunt, unconvinced. But it is not the time to dwell on the past. We came here with a purpose, and that purpose was not to salve the wounds of my past failures.

  “You will take point,” I say, turning the conversation back to its proper course. “Inside, the warren is much like a maze, and your senses will need to be sharp to find us our prey.”

  “The light of the sun is already low and doubtless would do us little good down there even were it blazing.” Mayna casts her eyes to the floor of the surrounding forest. “We will need to craft torches.”

  I shake my head. “The Valat line their tunnels with crude torches—the same crude torches they use to harry our villagers in the middle of the night. You know this well.”

  Mayna considers for a moment. “Well, we will be cut off from any resources down there… it may be prudent for us to—”

  “You remember what you said about me being a seer?”

  She nods.

  “It does not take one to see that you are only stalling. You know you do not have to do this—there is no shame in continuing your work as a hunter. We all need food.”

  She shoots me a dirty look, then steps over the rim of the entrance and drops down to the shadows below with a soft thud.

  I smile to myself and join her.

  The slope of the entrance tunnel is far steeper than the ones I am used to seeing. It likely started as a gentle ramp up to the surface but eroded through constant use to its current state, which is a nearly vertical drop about twice my height—quite the drop for a Valat. But I have seen their kind scale an almost smooth cliffside, so I doubt this would even give them pause.

  “Stinks.” Mayna creeps forward into the coolness of the main tunnel. Her slouched posture gives her the appearance of some great bird and says little for her confidence.

  But she continues inside, and that is the point of all of this.

  “It is only the smell of the churned soil,” I reply, falling into step behind her. I pat the hilt of my blade and find reassurance in its presence. Mayna already has her boltbow in hand and readied.

  “I would rather smell the odor of a rancid Valat on a hot day,” she whispers back to me, advancing deeper into the tunnel with greater speed if not confidence. “This is the smell of wrong,” she continues.

  “What does that mean? How can the soil be wrong?”

  We round a curve in the tunnel and see the first of the torches set into one of the walls a little way along the path. The light is dim but better than the sucking darkness from before.

  “It is not the soil that is wrong,” Mayna says. “What is wrong is that we are smelling it from within. The only things that should be down in the
depths of the underworld are the dead. Or those soon to be…”

  That is not a reassuring thought.

  “How do you assess our hunt?” I ask, wanting to pull her thoughts from their dark path. “Tell me what your warrior eyes see.”

  “We are out of our element,” she says immediately. “This is the domain of the Valat, so they have that as an advantage. They are smaller and faster and better suited to these dim tunnels. And they outnumber us greatly, I imagine.”

  “In past times, Valat hordes could number in the hundreds, and their warrens could stretch out tens of thousands of paces in all directions,” I say. “But their kind is a shadow of what it once was.”

  “How many would you reckon?”

  “Ten warriors. Maybe fifteen, but that is unlikely.”

  “So, we are outnumbered at least five to one. Possibly seven to one.” Mayna grunts softly, indicating what she thinks of those numbers. Together, there is little question we are more than a match for them.

  “Activity ahead,” Mayna says, her words clipped and to the point.

  I unsheathe my blade and hold it at the ready. I have to admire the masterfully worked curved blade as it shines with deadly intent in the dim orange-yellow light. My father took it from a Hiiva warrior before our tribes merged many cycles before I was born, and it passed to me when he fell to a Vanthae warrior when I was still young. Its hungry edge has tasted the blood of many of my foes, and I get to see my father’s face every time I hold it before me.

  “Get ready,” Mayna hisses back at me. “And wipe that grin from your silly face. We are here to work, not play.”

  “As you say, commander,” I reply with a slight chuckle.

  Mayna shoots me a look of apology, but I dismiss it as unnecessary. She is understandably tense. We are deep within the bowels of the underworld, and most with her phobia would have run screaming long before now.

  The narrow tunnel gives way to a larger room with many shallow indentations set into the dirt floor. Four Valat warriors stand with their backs to us, prodding the body of a dead female on the ground before them. They are completely unaware of our presence.