Hunger (3 page)

Evie had entered impulsively. She had been in a store, spending the last few coins she had on a bottle of water and a can of beans. When she passed through the checkout, the guy serving her had given her that look she would never get used to seeing. Evie was what was known as a “skim,” a bottom feeder, in this city. And he was right. That was exactly what she was. But it wasn’t who her parents had raised her to be. Entering the lottery seemed like a way to get back some of her dignity. A chance to
be
someone, someone more than the dirty, empty shell she had become.

Mentally she repeated that last part back to herself. The lottery was the exact reason she was lying here now with bruises over her body and her hands tied behind her back. This was not exactly
the someone
she had wanted to be.

A noise again, Right below her. Damn, she hoped they didn’t have guns. What if they were after the two guys in front of her and she got hit by a stray bullet?

Then I guess we’ll all be dead.

Summoning her courage, she moved. It certainly was a good job she hadn’t intended to run for it, because her legs were stiff, she had been lying here for a long time. Flexing her aching muscles she sat up, the attention of the two men now on her. A tremor of fear passed through her. The guy who had hit her was advancing, and his face was contorted in anger.

“I told you to lie still. Keep your head down and your mouth shut.” He raised his hand and slapped her across the face. She spat at him, a mixture of blood and saliva. “You little bitch, do you know how much these shoes cost?”

“Harley.” The other guy tried to calm him down. “If you hit her much more they won’t be able to recognise her face.”

“Idiot,” Harley hissed. “You can still see her lovely, big blue eyes, and if nothing else they can DNA-test her.” He held something up in front of her eyes. “Only they can’t use this, I cut it out of you so they couldn’t track you.”

She sobbed, trying not to picture the wound in her neck. No wonder it hurt so much; he had gouged the tag out of her flesh. As though she were a piece of trash, he placed his foot on her shoulder and pushed her back to the floor, and then he went back to the window.

“I hope you’re sure. I want payment.” The other guy sounded scared. Going up against the aliens was a dangerous game. But if the tag was damaged and the aliens couldn’t track her, who was downstairs? Humans? Someone from the lottery?

Words formed in her head, and it took a moment for her to realise she was saying them out loud. “Too much of a coward to let me take you on fairly.” What the hell was she doing? Giving the person who was now coming up the stairs time to deal with her assailants before they knew what had hit them.

Harley turned back towards her, his fists clenched, and she knew this one was going to hurt. But just as he raised his hand, a voice said, “Touch her and you die.”

So many things happened at once. Harley spun round, disbelief in his face. His accomplice took off across the room, heading back out through the door, which led to the rest of the top floor. One man, or was he an alien, came into the room. In his hand was a gun.

Evie had never seen a real gun. They were classed as antiques now; well, the one he held, anyway. But he looked as though he knew how to use it, which is exactly what Harley was trying to evaluate at the same time.

Did he try to fight his way out of it, or did he give up? Harley did the simplest, if most cowardly thing. He held his hands up and then said, “Thank goodness you’re here. That other guy was trying to kill her.”

“Shut up.” The voice was cold, emotionless, but the colours skimming across his skin told her how mad he was. It also confirmed he was an alien.

“Come on now, just let me walk out of here and you can take the woman and no police will have to be involved. I mean, do you really want to be delayed by lots of questions and statements? Not when you can take her back to your planet and fuck her until she screams. That is what you do, isn’t it?”

The alien moved so fast that Harley never had a chance to speak again before the gun cracked across his face and he collapsed to the floor.

Evie looked stunned, her eyes staring at the man lying in front of her, wondering if he was ever going to get up from that blow. The bruise had already begun to appear on his cheekbone and a dribble of blood escaped his mouth.

“Thank you,” she said, hoping she had it right and he had come to save her, not hurt her in any way. Maybe she was too beat up to go with them to Karal and they would just shoot her and dump her body. Tell everyone she had not turned up to claim her prize of a new life on another planet.

“Are you alright?” he asked, coming towards her. Kneeling down, he looked at her face, his expression telling her how bad she looked. Then he began to untie her hands. “Were there just the two of them?”

“Yes. I think so, I was unconscious for a while, but I only saw two men.”

“We need to get you out of here. We’ve arranged to leave Earth now.”

“Now,” she repeated. What did it matter? She had nothing left here, only heartache and pain, yet still she felt as though she should say goodbye to someone. Then she realised there was no one left in her life to say goodbye to. “Can I collect my things?”

“Where are they?” he asked, helping her up.

She looked into his face, seeing kind eyes, and thought it would not be so bad to go with him to be the mother of his child. “In the closet. That’s where I was hiding when they found me.”

“Be quick.”

Standing wasn’t as easy as she thought. Her legs wouldn’t take her weight, and when she put her hands out to stop herself falling, she found them numb from being tied behind her back so long. Evie felt a strong hand reach around her waist and stop her from falling.

“Careful,” he said, and then released her.

Staying on her hands and knees, she crawled to the closet and carefully packed her bag, which had been ransacked while she was unconscious. Luckily, there was nothing worth stealing and everything seemed to be there. Shoving it back in quickly, not wanting to stay in the building any longer than she had to, she pulled the straps tight to secure it and hooked it on her shoulder, wincing with pain.

The alien helped her to her feet, and she watched the colours skim across his skin. Where he touched her, the colours were converted into some kind of electric charge, and she could sense his powerful emotions, although she could not read them. It wasn’t helped by the impassive expression on his face.

They went downstairs where he loosed her arm. Evie was thankful that her feet remained steady and her legs now worked, so she could walk across the warehouse unaided. By the time they reached the outside door, the colours had gone from his skin and he looked almost human. His skin tone now matched that of a healthy man, not that there were many of those left on Earth anymore.

“Thank you again. I thought they were going to kill me.”

“Then you should have been more careful and not let them catch you in the first place.” Another alien appeared from outside, watching her critically as she walked towards him. She wanted to hide from his gaze; it contained the same dislike that Harley’s had. Evie felt vulnerable and afraid. She wanted to shrink back against the first alien and feel safe and protected again.

“Ishk, meet Evie. Evie, meet your prize.”

Evie’s world swam once more, but she held onto it. So this was the alien who would be her … what? Boyfriend, not husband, Karalians didn’t do weddings, as far as she knew. Whatever he was, he looked bad tempered.

But when Okil pulled out a gun and pointed it at him, it seemed his bad mood wouldn’t be a problem for much longer.

He was right, Okil had been sent here to kill him for what he had done to the Hier Ruler’s female. Slowly he raised his hands, but before they were above his head there was a loud bang; the female covered her ears and screamed. But he felt no pain. Maybe that was what happened when you died. Okil must have aimed at Ishk’s heart.

Then something hit the back of his neck, something warm and sticky. Turning quickly, he witnessed a would-be assassin falling towards him, his face a mess where the bullet had exploded on impact.

Surprise was the predominant emotion to hit him. Not because the man had been behind him, his senses should have told him that, it was more because the man with his face blown off had a knife in his hand. He would have killed Ishk if Okil had delayed, and therein lay the puzzle.

“I would have thought you would have let him kill me,” Ishk said, his voice curious.

Okil lowered the weapon to his side. “I thought so too.”

“Then why save me?” Ishk asked.

“Because if I did, Evie would have no prize and she would have to stay here. I don’t think that would be good for her health.”

Ishk laughed. “So you saved me, to save her. I’m surprised you don’t think she would be better off with those of her own species than with me. You know I don’t want her.”

Okil put himself between Ishk and the human, his face close to Ishk’s. “Do you have no decency, Ishk? You are being offered the chance to breed a son of your own. She is the willing vessel. Why can’t you be civil?”

“Because they are not a civilised species, Okil. It seems you are too blinded by them to see it. But I will save us from the blight of humans.” He looked at the pitiful creature standing behind Okil, her face dazed. “What did you do, choose the most pathetic of all humans for me? So that I would feel what? Sympathy?”

Okil could not control the colours; they skimmed across his face and Ishk knew he had hit on the answer. He looked once more at the woman, saw her dirty face, bruised and swollen. Then he wrinkled his nose.

“Damn it, she stinks. You might find it amusing to give me something so degrading to breed with. But it only hardens my resolve. I will put a child in her belly and then she will go to the breeding house. I am not weak like the others, Okil. And she will know that. I am strong, and she will obey me, although it seems she has no fight in her anyway.”

With that, he turned and left the building, kicking the dead man with his foot. He wanted to spit on him, but he didn’t want to leave a biological trace of them being there. Behind him, Okil went upstairs and placed the gun in the hand of the other man. Then he came back, wrapped his arm around Evie and guided her out. He didn’t speak to Ishk, and the woman did not make eye contact. His authority was intact and he still believed he would return to Karal and take over as leader.

The woman evoked no feelings, no emotions, in him other than disgust. He would breed with her, think of her as a creature whose only use was to conceive his child. There was no way she could make him feel anything but loathing.

Her ears still rang from the close proximity to the gunshot as they walked through the quiet streets. Night covered them, cloaking them as they headed away from the warehouse, back past the houses with their lights now dimmed and across town to the airfield.

With legs that became heavier with each step, she let her brain shut down and her body act on autopilot. This had to be the worst day of her life. No, this did not beat the day her parents were killed by three trespassers for the food in their garden. But it was close, and her mind didn’t want to cope with it anymore; it just wanted to sleep and wake up and have this be her past.

There was always tomorrow, but she had long since lost the hope that tomorrow would be better. And the alien who walked in front of her, so aloof, gave her no reason to expect her hope to be restored once she left Earth.

“Can we slow down?” She had to ask. They had been walking for ten minutes; the aliens had much longer legs and were not half starved, as she was. Her energy was gone and her side hurt where she had been kicked. Blood had soaked through her sweater and trickled down her back from the wound in her neck.

“We are in a hurry. I want to get off this planet as soon as we can,” the alien who was to be her prize said aggressively.

“We can go a little slower,” the one called Okil said. “Are you hurt?”

“Just bruises. I don’t think they broke my ribs.” She didn’t want to look at the bruises covering her body, but she knew they were bad and every footstep now made her wince. Her breathing was becoming more laboured.

“You forget you left a gun in the hand of those animals. We need to hurry in case they come after us.”

“The police have been alerted, Ishk. He will not leave that building alive.” As if on cue, a police vehicle could be heard in the distance.

“They will kill him?” Evie wasn’t sure how she thought about that. Life was so precious to her, even in these times.

“I hope so. He has a gun and there is a dead body. We cannot risk this happening again. They would have killed you, and possibly us if they were forced to.” Okil smiled gently. “You are safe though, Evie.”

She looked up at Ishk, his back so straight, so hard and cold. “Am I?”

Talking became harder, and she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Although that became more of a skipping action as her left ankle became painful. By the time she looked up and saw the antennae of the airport, there was not a single part of her that didn’t hurt. She wished now that they had killed her. At least this would be over.

Fighting tears, she waited, shivering, although a fine sheen of sweat covered her. There was not much of herself left to give as she walked, one small step at a time, up the ramp into the spaceship. None of it registered with her anymore. All she saw were lights which hurt her eyes and an array of instruments. What they were for, she had no idea.

Okil guided her to a seat and she slumped down, ignoring the concerned look on his face. If she looked half as bad as she felt, she was surprised they didn’t throw her back out. Who would want to create a child with her?

That just about summed up the expression on Ishk’s face. His lip curled in disgust as he made his way into another part of the small ship. There he sat down and began flicking switches, making the spaceship vibrate.