KEK: An Alien Romance (Pleasure Invaders Book 2) Page 5

  The pain…it was so bad…

  Just keep going.

  With a deep breath, Julia tried lifting again, and contorted her body so she could reach the tab. Just as her fingers closed around the plastic, the car slowed.

  Now! The time is now! Go!

  She tugged hard, ignoring how her nails bent as she yanked on the tab when joy flooded her at the trunk lid exploding open. But just as she rose up to peek over the edge, the car came to a sudden stop and the lid slammed shut, coming down hard on her already bruised head. She tried to hold the memory of Kek’s kiss in her mind, but her consciousness faded away, and she fell into darkness again.

  Chapter 9

  Kek

  Kek thought back to what his Julia had said. She had neighbors. Kind people. Perhaps they could help. He listened to his senses, trying to discern male and female energies close by, and after a moment, he found them.

  Trudging across the icy landscape, he slowed his steps when he sensed a dwelling, like Julia’s home, but different. This structure was larger, and he caught the scent of flowers blooming, even in this cold season.

  With his hands held out in front of him, he shuffled his feet until his toes slammed into something hard. This was a step. Like in his mate’s home. Three steps later, he found a door.

  A chime sounded as he ran his hands over the wood, and Kek jumped back.

  Footsteps sounded from inside, and then the door opened with a creak.

  “Who in tarnation are you?” an older male voice said.

  “I am called Kek. Are you the male known as Ellish?”

  “Clancy Ellish.” The male hummed. “Do you know you’re blue, son?”

  “Blue?” Kek shook his head. “I do not know what ‘blue’ is. I am here because I require assistance.”

  “Sure are formal. You want to come in?”

  “Clancy?” a female voice called from another room. “Who’s at the door?”

  “Kek.” The male called Clancy Ellish placed a hand on Kek’s arm and guided him inside. “He’s blue.”

  He sensed the female rushing towards Clancy, and her voice rose in pitch. “I told you, Clancy. I told you I saw aliens and you didn’t believe me!”

  “Well, bride of mine, that was right after you tried to microwave your socks. Can you blame me for doubting you?”

  “Of course I can—oh my God. He is blue, Clancy.”

  “Now what did I just tell you, Lonneta?” Clancy chuckled and lowered his voice. “Sometimes her mind wanders, but she’s a spitfire, my Lonneta.”

  Kek’s frustration grew with each passing moment. “Clancy Ellish, I do not have much time. Someone has taken Julia from me, and I must find her.”

  Clancy’s bony fingers tightened on Kek’s arm. “Julia’s in trouble?”

  “Yes. Someone was outside her dwelling. She thought it was your mate. But I can no longer feel her presence, and the distance between us grows. I believe whoever took her from me used a vehicle.”

  “You want to borrow my car?” Clancy let go of Kek and shuffled across the room. “I’ll get you the keys.”

  Kek shook his head. “I cannot see. My vision was taken from me long ago. Nor have I ever operated an Earth vehicle. I do not wish to put you in danger, but the only way I will find my Julia is if you assist me.”

  “Lonneta, you lock the door behind me, you hear?” Clancy said as he took Kek’s arm again and led him back out of the house. “You may look a little strange with that blue skin of yours, son. And you’re wearin’ a muddy skirt and a fuzzy purple sweater. But if you say Julia’s in trouble, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Julia

  “Yeah, you stupid bitch. You aren’t nagging me now, are you?” A man’s voice filtered through the haze of her mind, and Julia groaned.

  Her face was against something hard and cold, and when she tried to open her eyes, only one lid obeyed. Everything was blurry, and for the first few seconds, she saw nothing but log cabin walls lined with dead animals and pictures of guns until…

  Blood. It was everywhere. On the floor, on the walls. And Julia stifled her gasp. Across the room, a woman was strung up from a rafter, her body bowed, and—oh, God. Her guts spilled across the floor.

  The body swung back and forth, and wide eyes, frozen forever in terror, stared at nothing. And then a man moved into Julia’s limited field of vision. He hauled back and punched the body in its gray face.

  Julia couldn’t move as her brain caught up with the past...however long it had been. Pain. Being trapped in the trunk of a car. Then even more pain. All at the hand of this obviously insane man who was beating the corpse of a woman strung up like a dead animal.

  He continued to barrage the deceased woman with insults, even snatching a bloody knife off the table to slice at her arm. “Pick up your laundry, Brady,” he mocked. “Stop watching porn, Brady. It was always stop, stop, stop! But did you ever stop? Shut up and think maybe I just wanted to be left alone? No! No, you didn’t. Always watching. Always judging. Well, you can’t judge shit anymore.”

  He screamed in her face again, then used the knife to slice her bonds, letting the body fall to the floor with a wet thunk. Pulling a flask from his back pocket, he took a long pull with a shaky hand, then wiped his mouth, spreading blood across his cheek.

  Julia tried to stay silent and pretend to be unconscious, but the pain in her head flared, and she grimaced. Before she could relax her face, footsteps shook the wooden floor as the man stomped towards her.

  Abandoning the ruse, Julia jerked her good eye open and froze. The man’s face…it was so familiar, and his name…where had she heard it before?

  “Rise and shine,” he said, curling his lip in disgust. With crazed eyes, he spat in her face, then gripped her ankle and dragged her across the floor underneath another low hanging wooden beam. She screamed and kicked wildly, trying to loosen his grip, but she was too weak and she had no leverage bound as she was.

  “Wh-Why?” she asked weakly. Her teeth were chattering, jaw tight from shock, and no matter how she tried to hold herself together, she couldn’t stop the tears streaming down her face.

  “Why?” He let out a roaring laugh and turned to the dead woman on the floor. “You hear that, Sue? She wants to know why. Go on and tell her.”

  He cupped his ear, and Julia cried out as he jerked her closer to the woman’s corpse. “No? Don’t have nothing to say?”

  He launched his flask across the room, and as it crashed into the wall, he grabbed a nearby table and dragged it closer to her. “Of course you don’t. Because you ruined my fucking life! And this bitch got me fired.” He twisted his hand in Julia’s hair and hauled her up before slamming her body down on the table. She whimpered as pain consumed her hip and back.

  “Twenty years I spent serving the citizens of this town, and all it took was a complaint from one lying cunt for them to give me the boot.”

  “Detective McStan?” Julia asked in a tiny voice.

  “Congratu-fucking-lations, lady, you got it right. Don’t matter that you didn’t remember me before. Because after what I’m about to do to you, no one’s ever going to forget me again.”

  The floor creaked under his heavy steps as he paced back and forth in front of her mumbling about rope.

  She was going to die. She knew it. It was written all over his face. Oh God. What was he going to do to her? With her wrists and ankles bound in the tight cuffs, she couldn’t escape. She couldn’t even sit up, and if she moved, she’d roll right off the table and probably crack her head open.

  “I’m s-sorry. I didn’t m-mean to...”

  He laughed again, this time with angry tears in his eyes. “You’re sorry?” Julia cried out as he grabbed her by the hair again and jerked her head up. “You’re sorry?” he screamed. “Nah, you’re not sorry. But you will be. Just like my Sue’s sorry now.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” Julia asked, finally finding the courage to ask. Flashes of Kek’s handsome face flew t
hrough her mind, and she swallowed hard. He needed her. And she needed to get out of there alive. If she could just stall the detective, maybe someone would come looking for them. Or she’d figure out a way to get free.

  “Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.”

  Detective McStan made a triumphant sound and his smile widened as he lumbered over to a chest of drawers, yanked the bottom one onto the floor, and came up with a length of rope. When he tossed one end of it over the rafter and it came down and hit Julia in the face, she started to scream like she’d never screamed before.

  “Make all the noise you want, bitch. No one’s ever gonna hear you all the way out here.”

  Not caring anymore, she started to roll off the table, but Brady clucked his tongue as his rough hands tightened around her bound wrists.

  “Not so fast.” He tied the rope around her wrists so tightly, her fingers started to tingle almost immediately, then forced her onto her stomach. “You ain’t going nowhere.”

  Chapter 10

  Kek

  The vehicle’s ride was not as smooth as the intergalactic orbiter he’d taken from his home planet, but every rough shudder or bump brought him closer to his Julia. He could sense her. More now than when he and Clancy Ellish had first taken their seats in this car craft.

  The male talked incessantly, and even though Kek paid little attention to his words, he found the sounds vaguely comforting.

  The connection he shared with Julia flared white hot, and Kek braced his hands on what Clancy had called the dashboard. “We must go...that way,” he grunted as he pointed to his right. “She is not far. Perhaps half the distance we have already traveled at most.”

  “Well, son, we’ve gone thirty miles already. That’s far for this old Buick.”

  “I do not know the word Buick.”

  “That’s this here vee-hi-cal. She’s not much to look at, but she’s a tough old gal.”

  Kek wanted to ignore Clancy and focus solely on Julia, but Clancy’s words made no sense. “This is not a female. This is a transportation craft.”

  The male’s chuckle confused him. “You got a lot to learn, son. You listen to Ol’ Clancy now. I reckon my Lonneta’s right and you’re some fancy space alien since your skin’s blue and you’re wearin’ Miss Julia’s skirt there. So you don’t know that cars are just like women. Ya’ got to keep ‘em happy. Sometimes that means talking to her, even when all ya’ want to do is watch the Cubs play ball, and sometimes that means letting her put her stinky socks in that mi-cro-wave of hers even though you know she thinks she’s cookin’ dinner.”

  “I do not understand. What do your mate’s socks have to do with this transportation craft?” A wave of Julia’s fear coiled in his gut, and Kek curled his fingers around something Clancy had called an “oh shit” handle as the car made a right turn.

  “Everything, Kek, my boy. Everything. And if your woman ever asks you to play with her other hole, you don’t question it. Just do as she asks. Because that is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” The engine revved louder, and Clancy lowered his voice as he patted the steering wheel. “You can take this hill, girl. I know you can.”

  The male was talking...to the car. Pots of gold? Rainbows? Humans were strange creatures indeed. Kek shook his head and focused on his Julia. She was scared and in pain. That much he knew. But he could not sense anything else. If he did not find her, or worse, was too late to save her from whatever vile creature had taken her, he would be lost. The mate bond had given him the ability to remain free of his vessel, but without Julia, he did not wish to experience even one more moon cycle.

  “She is not far now,” Kek said as the car took another curve. “Are there dwellings close by?”

  “We’re up in the mountains, son. There’s nothin’ up here for miles. ‘Cept maybe the ole McStan place. But Ned McStan died ages ago. He had a son, though. Name of Brady? He’d be close to fifty. Wish I could remember more ‘bout him, but this ole noggin ain’t as solid as it used to be.”

  “Is he a large male? With poor grooming habits?” The stench of the human who took his Julia was still fresh in his mind, and Kek rolled down the window and inhaled deeply, letting the frigid air and small flakes of snow sting his cheeks.

  “Oh, he always drank like a fish. Come to think of it, I saw him drive by two days ago, real slow.”

  “He has Julia—” Kek doubled over in pain. It did not belong to him. No, this was Julia’s pain. It was as if her injuries were his. Her hip. Her back. Wrists. Ankles. Head. But all of those paled in comparison to the agony in her heart. She feared for her life. “Stop the vehicle!”

  Clancy slammed on the brakes, and the back end of the car slid back and forth on the icy road for a few long seconds before he eased the female Buick to a stop. “Any closer, and this Brady will hear us coming. I must go on foot from here.” Kek turned to the elderly male and placed his hand over his heart. “Thank you, Clancy Ellish. I owe you a great debt.”

  As he leapt out of the vehicle and picked his way carefully over the snow-covered ground, Clancy called after him, told him to wait, that he’d help. But Kek moved as quickly as he could, and soon, he heard Clancy’s own footsteps slow, and then retreat.

  Battle was no place for an elder. And as Kek caught the faint sound of a scream piercing the still, night air, he knew this would certainly be a battle. One that would end with the unwashed male in pieces.

  “I am coming, mate,” he said quietly as he picked his way over a fallen tree, the faintest outline of its shape coalescing as she screamed again. What was happening to him? He still could not see. No, this was something more than sight. A sense of the size and shape of the objects in his path.

  Was proximity to his mate healing him? Or giving him a power he had never been able to control before? Xav had been an empath. Handon would appear at will anywhere he saw in his mind. Coxto controlled the elements. Kek had always been able to heal, but this...this was new.

  He would not question it. Not now. Not when he started to move faster. To run, jumping over rocks and branches with ease. His Julia needed him, he was going to save her.

  “Please! No!” Julia’s terror bled through every word, and Kek scented the foul stench of the male who had taken her. Up ahead, he sensed a dwelling, and he pushed himself faster.

  I am coming, mate. Hold on for me.

  Chapter 11

  Julia

  She was swinging. Always swinging. The pressure in her head had tripled and was now almost unbearable. Every time she stopped swinging, the crazy detective would punch her again, then laugh as the tears streamed down her face.

  Her wrists burned, her hands and feet had gone numb, but nothing was as awful as that godforsaken swinging.

  The scrape of the blade sharpener filled her ears, and the stench of blood hung heavy in the air. “Too dull,” he muttered and pumped the foot pedal to turn the stone, then pressed the knife against it until sparks burst forth. But with the endless swinging, they blurred into diffuse trails, and she tried to close her eyes, hoping she wouldn’t throw up.

  “Please,” she begged. “Don’t do this. I’ll take it back. All of it. My complaint. I’ll tell them...I was wrong. That everyone was wrong…”

  “Too late, bitch.” With a flick of the razor-sharp knife, he sliced down the arm of her robe, exposing her all the way to her shoulder. “About time for the show.” Grabbing her hair, he yanked her head up, which just made her back bow further, and she whimpered as she tried to squirm away from him, but it was no use. “You’re going to watch every cut. I learned a lot from old Sue there. I can make this last a very long time.”

  Julia was going to die. And worse...she’d never see Kek again. Brady adjusted his grip on the knife and pressed it to the top of her shoulder, but then wrinkled his nose, let go of her hair, and stalked away, out of sight.

  The window behind her slid open, and a frigid burst of air whooshed through the cabin. “That bitch is starting to stink. And the cold will k
eep you conscious. Now, where were we?”

  Returning the blade to her skin, he pressed down, almost feather light. Burning pain consumed her arm, and the coppery tang of her own blood filled her nose. It ran down her tricep, soaking into the thin material of her robe at her armpit, and Julia screamed.

  Another cut. Then another. Both arms, her right calf, then the sole of her right foot. Through them all, she cried and screamed and begged for her life, but Brady didn’t care.

  He only stopped to return the blade to the sharpening wheel once more, and Julia’s head fell forward, her hair hanging in sweaty clumps in front of her eyes. Somewhere deep inside, she shattered into pieces, and her consciousness started to fade away into nothing.

  Kek

  His Julia’s screams drove him mad, but he forced himself to be cautious. Though the strange outlines he could now almost see allowed him to navigate the forest, he still could not discern movement—not even when the wind whipped through the trees.

  He sensed the awful creature who’d stolen her as the male threw open a window, and the scent of Julia’s fear reached Kek’s nose. He crept closer as she screamed again and again before her cries turned to faint whimpers, and another sound filled his ears. A harsh, metallic sound. What was the male doing?

  Whatever it was, he’d moved away from Julia. That much Kek knew. This was his chance. He felt along the walls of the structure, rough wood planks guiding him, until he found the door and his fingers closed around the knob. It would not turn, but he had expected this.

  Throwing his entire body against the door, tearing it from its hinges, he burst into the room and raced for his Julia.

  “Kek!” she cried.

  Her voice was so weak. Kek reached her in three steps, but then stopped, confused. She was...hanging.