ARMOR [New World Book 2] (4 page)

Amy threw the basket at him
and ran. She didn’t get far before Talsk crouched in front of her blocking her
escape. Amy backed away. Her neck turned from side-to-side watching them while
trying to find a new route to take. Her body began shaking as they closed in on
her. Cobra had told them that if they caught a female to return to the ship at
once. On Earth it wasn’t safe for their armor to come down. The females
couldn’t see them in their flesh until safely aboard. Cobra warned them that the
females would find them terrifying. It would be hard for a Castian male not to
react to the musky scent of terror. No matter how great their scent of fear, it
was imperative to remain armored.

“Go away,” Amy demanded.

Her words were stern but
shaky and Dasks smiled. She wouldn’t see his smile.

“Don’t be afraid,” he soothed
her. “We won’t hurt you, Amy.”

Her eyes widened at his use
of her name. She blinked in confusion. Her emotions changed so fast, Dasks was
bombarded with a variety of scents until his head reeled. Fear, frustration,
anger, sadness, longing, hurt—it erupted from her. Lord of Dargon, but he
wanted so badly to drop his armor and comfort her. He was drawn toward her. His
long razor-sharp talons reached for her wanting to hold her. Amy shied back.
The scent of terror was thick in his nostrils urging him forward. Perhaps if he
dropped the armor on his hands…

Just then a small blur jumped
at Dasks. With surprise, Dasks flung it off with an easy toss. The little being
screamed, went sailing, landed with a thump onto its behind and fell to its
side and lay quietly.

Amy howled for Dasks not to
hurt it. Amy raced toward the human—it was the male.

Dasks’ talons clicked
together as he approached his cowering female. Amy had her arms wrapped around
the dazed little male as it lay on the ground. The small being looked up at him
with a mat of unruly hair and blue eyes the likes of which he had never seen.
Great Lord of Dargon, the being was tiny for a male—even a human male.

On all fours, Dasks sniffed
at it. His fangs grew longer with the musky male scent and he growled deep
within his throat. The little male howled in fear. It cowered deeper into Amy’s
arms and Dasks snarled.

Amy hit at Dasks with her
fist and cried out when she struck his armor. Undeterred, she struck again.

If she were to hit his armor again
she would be hurt; he knew this.

When she struck, a small
piece of his armor disappeared and her tiny fist hit flesh.

Dasks felt her, her terror.
It was hard not to lower the rest of his armor. As it was, that small area
snapped immediately back into place—he doubted she had even seen his skin. But
his armor reacted to her already. She was his. Dasks looked at the male human
with loathing.

“Is this your mate?” Dasks
asked angrily.

“What?” Amy stammered.

“Is this male your mate?”

“He’s only a little boy,” Amy
said.

Her words were tinged with
desperation for his understanding. But Dasks didn’t understand.

“A little what?”

“He’s a little
boy
,”
Amy cried out when Dasks moved closer.

“Leave him alone!” someone
else howled.

Dasks watched with
fascination as one of the small smelling female humans attacked Talsk. He had
thought Amy to be tiny, but this little being was half Amy’s size.

Talsk picked the tiny female
up by the scruff of clothes on its neck and held it before him dangling it off
the ground. The female continued to kick and yell. Flailing limbs the size of
Earth twigs banged against Talsk’s armor until he moved her away from the
danger of harming herself.

“What an odd little thing,”
Talsk claimed, twisting it forwards and back. “No weight, no fangs, no
strength, no armor. Where is its defense? What a poor little sweet creature. No
wonder you keep it as a pet.”

“For the love of God have you
never seen children before?” Amy cried out.

Earth children?
Dasks smelled the male again; there was definitely something
he had missed with his hasty annoyance. It was male, but not a grown human man.
Neither Dasks nor Talsk had ever seen a female child, and they hadn’t seen a
male child in four hundred years, since they themselves were small.
Were he
and Talsk really once this tiny?

Amy was afraid for the little
male child. Dasks sensed it was even more helpless than his female. To kill it
would be cruel.

Talsk lowered the female
child onto her feet and she slumped, spent, in the dirt. Amy gathered her into
her arms.

“Please let us have the
food,” Amy said quietly.

“You can have the food and
the children can return to the cave unharmed but you are coming with me,” Dasks
said.

“Where?”

Dasks frowned, she looked
horrified and the stench of fear wafted to his nostrils. “You and at least one
other woman will accompany us back to our ship.”

“What are you?”

“A Castian warrior. Talsk is
my warrior mate. I have chosen you to be my female. It would be best if the
woman Meg came with us as well,” Dasks said.

“What will you do with us?”
Amy whispered.

“Mate with you.”

Chapter 2

Amy could hear the others in
the cave crying. If these creatures took her away, the others would have no
hope for survival. What would three children be able to do? Leah, their mother,
was on a mound of rotten blankets dying. The other four women banded together only
for survival. With Meg and Amy gone, the other women would have no reason to
help Leah and her kids. Already the others grumbled they were too much of a
burden. They didn’t mean to be cruel. The children were too young to hunt and
were of course concerned for their mother so the two littlest cried often. All
three of the youngest battled colds and were miserable from it. If Amy and Meg
were gone, who would heat water for the children to sip at night to quiet their
coughs? Who would rock them when they were scared? Their mother could hardly
move.

“I can’t leave,” Amy
whispered desperately.

What did these creatures mean
by they would mate? Couldn’t they see they were too different? The thing before
her had to weigh hundreds of pounds. Amy would be crushed by it. She knew it
was male but nowhere on it could she see any sex. There was just a large
rounded bump where a human man’s dick normally sat. Both creatures’ behinds
were well defined and looked rock-solid. Neither wore clothes nor did they
shiver in the cold air. If by chance humans and these things could actually
have offspring, the creature-baby would rip her apart when she gave birth with
its talons and claws. If she survived a birthing, it would rip her breasts off
with fangs.

“I can’t,” Amy stuttered.

“Your world is all but dead,”
said the one who had killed the other men last night. “If you come with me, you
will be safe. You will never go hungry. I will offer you my protection against
anything. I swear I would never hurt you. You’ll like my world. It’s filled
with color, not this gray nothingness. Two suns shine, and you will never be
cold again. I sense your worry and confusion. I’m in my armor—we aren’t so
different. I know I am larger than most Earth males but there are similarities
to our anatomy. We are compatible. You may even find me pleasing once I can retract
my armor aboard our vessel.”

“I’ll go.”

Amy looked over at Danni as she
emerged from the cave hesitantly.

Danni stood for a moment
assessing the situation with caution. She then walked tentatively to the basket
of dropped provisions. Neither creature stopped her. Her hand shot out to
snatch at the food and she bit into a hunk of bread. She devoured it, choking
it down in eagerness then grabbed a large chunk of yellow cheese. Danni was a
petite blond. Her face was pale like alabaster. Danni’s green eyes were an open
book of longing and desperate need. She would be beautiful when cleaned up. Her
look was optimistic when she settled her gaze onto the fare before her.

Amy realized then just how
hopeless life had become when women were willing to go anywhere on promises
alone with strange-looking beings.

“You may come,” the armored
creature said, sizing Danni up. “There will be another who will mate with you
as long as you are fertile. If you are not, there may be an older Castian who
will take you regardless, but may not mate with you. Either way you will be
safe from any harm on our home planet, Bagron. We will be heading to Dargon
first.”

Amy shook her head sadly.
Danni was young and no doubt fertile. Danni had been scheduled to leave on a
shuttle, but her mother had grown ill and she refused to leave her. After her
mother had died it was too late. There would be hope for Danni if these
creatures spoke the truth. But Amy was dying. Once they found this out, she
would be dumped back on Earth and again abandoned. The creature who offered his
protection against the unknown wouldn’t want anything to do with her. He
specifically claimed to want a mate. What other older male would want anything
to do with a dying woman?

“Who among you females wants
to live and leave this hell?” the creature bellowed toward the cave.

He knows. How does he know
there are more in the cave? How does he know they are all female?

One-by-one the women slowly
crept from the cave until all but one was seen. Amy could see the youngest of
their brood, Lisa who was four, peer from inside the crevice. The child eyed
the food on the ground the other women were devouring. She was too frightened
to go forward. Amy looked at Meg, her friend.

“We’re dying here, Amy,” Meg
said quietly. “There is no hope left here. None at all. We’re alone. No one
will ever come for us.”

Amy could see Meg had given
up and yet was grasping at promised straws. There was a seducing power in just
the feeling of wanting to be wanted. Meg too had been left behind, abandoned by
the human race. Only the perfect of body or the wealthy had left on shuttles.
By the time it came to the rest of them, their time was up. Like the planet of
misfit toys. Meg had only one kidney, enough to declare her imperfect.

“What about Leah and her
children?” Amy asked.

“Let them come, too,” Meg
asked one of the armored beasts. “Please, there is a woman inside the cave who
is ill. It’s pneumonia. If you have medicine she can be cured. She’s had three
children, so she’s definitely fertile.”

Bitterly, Amy knew it to be
the truth. Leah was fertile. Her and her three illegitimate children were left
to die on the planet to hide a senator’s dirty little secret. Amy couldn’t
imagine the woman’s feelings of betrayal. It had been bad enough for the man to
leave Leah, but sentencing his own children to death was abhorrent. Amy hoped
the man had crashed in a shuttle and died.

“What’s your name?” Amy asked
the creature before her.

“Dasks.”

“Please, Dasks. I will go
quietly if you let the others come.” Once they found out it was too late for
Amy, the others could be away. Away to where she didn’t know, but anything had
to be better than this hell. Meg was right, there was nothing left for anyone
here. Earth was all but dead. Even the circle of men were no more, so there was
no one left to steal from. If these creatures wanted their demise, they would
already have been killed. One by itself had ripped through fifteen men; what
were two capable of? It was obvious the creatures had food from what she could
see in the basket. All of it was fresh. Perhaps there would be more.

Dasks looked to be thinking
it over. It was hard for her to tell because the thing was devoid of facial
features.
Oh God it’s so ugly.
How could she have sex with something so
hideous?The only remote thing close to decent about it was its tattoo.
Amy had never seen such a beautiful intricate design. It lit both sides of its
face from temple to jaw. The other creature had the same type of glowing
tattoo, but it was decidedly different. Amy wondered if that was how they could
tell one another apart—perhaps like snowflakes, no two were the same.

“All but the male may come,”
Dasks finally said.

“He’s a child,” Amy raged and
jumped to her feet. She hadn’t expected that. They couldn’t leave the little
boy all alone to fend for himself; it would be cruel.

“He’s a male. We have no need
of more males on our planet.”

“He’s only a little boy,” Meg
wailed. She limped on her sprained ankle to the other warrior and placed a
pleading hand high onto his arm. The creature towered over her. “Please, he’ll
die out here all alone.”

“Why don’t we let Cobra
decide?” the other armored beast said.

Amy noted the way the
creature inhaled Meg’s scent. The being moved closer to her and strangely Meg
didn’t pull away or appear to be afraid. She looked somewhat confused.

“Talsk, Cobra said no males,”
Dasks ground out.