Alien Mine E-Book

Marie Dry

• Herausgeber: Marie Dry
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

In a bleak future where government systems are breaking down and lawless bands of men terrorize the country, botanist Natalie Hanson fears for her life and hides in a cave in the Rocky Mountains. When she is captured by human raiders, a fierce alien appears and slays her attackers. Natalie is now held captive in her own cave by the sexy and striking alien commander, Zacar, who informs her that she will be his breeder. Natalie soon realizes that these aliens worship strength. So what will happen when Zacar finds out she has severe asthma?
 

Leseprobe

In a bleak future, where government systems are breaking down, and lawless bands of men terrorize the country, botanist Natalie Hanson fears for her life and hides in a cave in the Rocky Mountains. When she is captured by human raiders, a fierce alien appears and slays her attackers. Natalie is now held captive in her own cave by the sexy and striking alien commander, Zacar, who informs her that she will be his breeder. Natalie soon realizes that these aliens worship strength. What will happen when Zacar finds out she has severe asthma?

Kudos for Alien Mine

In Alien Mine by Marie Dry, Natalia is living in a dystopian world where government systems are breaking down and bands of “raiders” roam the world, looting, pillaging, and raping women. Their leader is a particularly vile man named Murdock, and he is after Natalia. When she is captured by a group of raiders, she is sure that her life is over, but she is rescued by aliens set on conquering Earth. They are planning to conquer it by mating with human women and breeding warriors who will be ready to fight in five years. And you guessed it, the alien leader Zacar wants Natalia for his “breeder.” But Natalia fears the aliens almost as much as she fears the raiders. They worship strength and kill the weak in their society, so Natalia is terrified of what Zacar will do when he finds out that she has a serious case of asthma. Alien Mine is my type of book. Not only is it a page turner, but there are plenty of hot love scenes. Dry’s characters are well developed and her plot is strong. And if you like lots of steamy love scenes, you can’t go wrong with Alien Mine. — Taylor Jones, Reviewer

Alien Mine by Marie Dry is a steamy romance/science fiction where the aliens come to Earth and try to conquer the planet through sex. And I suppose if all aliens were the hunks these guys are, at least half of the world’s population probably wouldn’t mind. Natalia, our heroine, is a biologist in a dystopian world, trying to replant a mountain. When she is captured by a band of rebels called raiders, she is rescued by aliens who have come to conquer Earth. They plan to do this by breeding warriors with Earth women. And since Natalia tries to knock the leader out by hitting him with a club, he assumes she is a strong human woman and therefore fit to be his mate and breed his warriors. However, Natalia fears that when he sees her have a severe asthma attack, he will discover that she is weak and kill her like they do the weak on their home planet. Dry’s characters are three-dimensional and her storyline has enough fast-paced action to keep you turning pages from beginning to end. And for those of you who want some hot sex with your action-packed science-fiction, Dry does not disappoint. — Regan Murphy, Reviewer

Alien Mine

Marie Dry

Copyright First Edition © 2014 by Marie Dry

Copyright Second Edition © 2020 by Marie Dry

Cover Design by Dar Albert

All Rights Reserved

EBOOK ISBN:

Excerpt

She had to get away from the aliens, but running down a mountain in the snow and freezing temperature probably wasn’t the best idea either…

Her muscles ached and her hands felt like frozen claws, even with her gloves, as she tried to grip the rocks and pull herself up the slope. In spite of her need to hurry, she stopped every now and then to scan the area behind her for aliens.

Tired and cold, fed up with constantly feeling afraid, she wanted to just lie down under a tree and forget about everything. Forget that aliens had landed on her mountain. Forget that Zacar was probably hunting her.

Maybe being a breeder wouldn’t be that bad.

A shiver snaked through her at the thought, spurring her on. She tried to pull herself up by holding onto a bush, but she couldn’t feel the branch. Her hand was too numb and weak and it kept slipping from her grasp.

Her feet were cold, and her mind had trouble commanding them to move, to climb. She knew she was risking developing frostbite, but she continued to move on, sluggish and cold. She had to get to town. She just had to.

She fought the nagging desire to lie down on the soft snow and go to sleep.

Just another half an hour and you can rest, Natalie.

Even her own thoughts were starting to sound strange, slurry. She lifted her tired arm in slow motion and gripped the rock above her.

Her glove made contact with something. Even with her numb fingers, it didn’t feel like a rock or a bush.

Confused, she lifted her head, and stared up into Zacar’s frighteningly emotionless face.

Dedication

To Corna, thank you for sharing a pizza with me all those years ago and listening to me talking about my dream of becoming a writer, and the unstinting support from you and Jackie ever since.

Table of Contents

Kudos for Alien Mine

Excerpt

Dedication

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

About the Author

Genre: Science Fiction/Romantic Suspense/Steamy Romance

Chapter One

Her captor’s overwhelming stench of old sweat, booze, and bear scat assaulted her nose. Her arm throbbed where he gripped her with fleshy fingers, jerking her along the rough mountain path. Natalie stumbled over an exposed tree root, but he continued to drag her, only stopping to raise the dirty bottle of alcohol he clutched in his hand for a long swallow.

“Move, woman. Ain’t got all day.” He slurred the words, belching them in her face before taking another swig. The carcass of a tiny bird was sandwiched against the bottle, beneath one fat finger, its stick like legs bouncing around with his movements in an obscene dance. Natalie gagged.

Goose bumps followed the creeping sweat, down her neck, beneath her thin sundress. She’d chosen a bright yellow dress this morning, well aware that the unpredictable weather could turn cold within minutes. The cheery color mocked her earlier optimism and did little to ease the fear coursing through her.

A faint, strangely chaotic humming threatened the mountain’s usual peaceful atmosphere, silencing all other signs of life. As they moved closer, it morphed into boisterous singing.

Oh dear God.

He’d brought his friends, all of them drunk, by the sound of it.

Her pulsating heartbeat hammered louder in her ears, in rhythm with her heavy breathing.

Just ahead of them a plume of gray-white smoke reached toward the sky, like a snake lazily uncoiling. She stared at it in shock. Making fires in any of the sparse forests left on Earth had been outlawed ages ago in the year 2350. A fire large enough to cause that much smoke could easily spread over the parched mountainside, killing her beloved trees and every living thing in this part of the Rocky Mountains.

This morning she’d checked on the trees she’d planted for the Forestry Department as she’d done every day for the last two years, and for the first time, she’d seen a tiny bird that had fallen out of its nest. She’d cried as she held it in her hand and tried to soothe the quivering little fledgling. Few bird species had survived the drug-resistant chicken flu of the 2380s. Now, almost a century later, the earth was mostly bare of feathered creatures.

The stinking drunk, his hand still locked in a vice around her arm, had stumbled upon her while she’d tried to put the baby bird back in its nest. Natalie cringed at how easily he’d disarmed her and dragged her off. Her father would turn over in his grave if he knew she’d froze, unable to pull the trigger of the shotgun he’d given her on her sixteenth birthday.

“Let go of me,” Natalie said through gritted teeth. “I’m an official of the Forestry Department.” While being paid by the government agency to plant trees didn’t give her any kind of official title, she’d use any edge she had.

His grip around her arm strengthened as he jerked her toward the ominous singing. The wind must’ve changed direction, for she could smell the warm, ashy fire now.

“Please let me go. I have to make an emergency call. Can’t you smell the fire? Look over there—it’s smoke.” Natalie pointed frantically with her free right hand.

“Yeah, I smell the smoke.” He smirked and almost lifted her off her feet when he tightened his beefy grip on her arm further. “Move, woman.”

She winced then screamed. Hunched over from the force of his grip, she was sure he’d break her arm. How was it possible that a drunk could be this fast and strong?

The murmur of male voices, mixed with the singing, penetrated her terrified senses. Her body began to shake so much she could barely stumble along behind her drunk captor.

He was taking her to his friends.

What would they do to her?

Would they even care about the fire? Surely one of them would have a TC with them. The Touch Cell Communication Device, TC Comm, or TC for short, was invented by Soft Cell a century ago and it allowed the user to make calls. It also functioned as a holographic device for watching movies and news programs. Even vagrants like these wouldn’t dare allow a mountain fire to go unreported. She refused to believe that they’d deliberately started the fire.

The breath in her lungs stuttered as she watched the smoke plume grow ever bigger. If she didn’t get to a TC to call for help, the trees, and what little vegetation was left on the mountain, could burn to nothing in a matter of hours. It’d happened once before and she never wanted to witness it again. Centuries ago the vegetation would come back stronger than ever after a fire. But now the mountain struggled for life even at the best of times.

“Why did you come up the mountain? There’s nothing here.” Natalie gasped, out of breath. He’d dragged her over what felt like half the Rockies, drinking steadily from whatever was in the bottle he lugged around, while she grew more and more thirsty.

“How did you get through the pass?” she asked. Years ago, her father had blasted the only road into the mountain. Now the only way to reach the mountain was on foot.

He didn’t answer, just grunted and walked faster.

She tried to wriggle the fingers of her left hand, but they had long since gone numb from his cruel grip on her arm. Her heartbeat thundered louder in her ears as they abruptly entered a clearing surrounded by pine trees. The smell of smoke intensified, rising from a crackling fire right in the middle of a crude camp.

Natalie peered through the mass of brown hair, hanging over her face, and staggered. Pale yellow flames were eating away at one of her precious pine trees with obscene efficiency. The crackling of the fire sounded like gunshots in her ears, each time startling her to the point her bladder threatened to embarrass her. Never before had fear invaded her body so completely.

Through the haze of smoke, she saw men lying around in the dirt in drunken stupors. Her stomach reacted to the smell of roasting meat, and she gagged when she saw the same type of small bird her captor carried, speared on a stick stretched over the fire. She wanted to scream at them for their senseless cruelty. Didn’t they care that they burned a dying species? Burning a pine tree meant jail time, but the penalty for killing an animal or bird meant incarceration for life.

“I caught me two more birds,” her captor said, laughing uproariously at his own joke as he lifted the bottle where he still clutched the carcass of the baby bird he’d killed.

Natalie closed her eyes as the foul-looking bunch of men leered, whistled, and made obscene gestures. Her captor hurled her forward and she fell with a painful thump, scraping both knees raw. A soft groan slipped past her lips without her permission.

She knew she should try to run, but the orange-yellow fire mesmerised her. She stumbled upright and something dripped down her leg, but it hardly registered as the dancing flames held her gaze.

“It’s against the law to burn wood and kill animals,” she murmured, as if making dinner conversation. Her mind screamed out against the atrocity in front of her, but her vocal chords simply wouldn’t cooperate. Even so, her softly spoken words seemed to cut like a bullet through the chaos around her.

“Shurrap about it, bitch. No one wanna know.” The slob who’d brought her here pushed against her back with his dirty paw, and she stumbled into the midst of the group, each man looking as though they would make her sorry she’d ever been born. Every horror story she’d ever seen on the Touch Cell News flashed through her mind. If her ears weren’t ringing, she’d probably hear her knees knocking together.

Never show fear to predators.

Her father’s words, one of the many lessons he’d drilled into her head before he’d died.

She took a deep breath, pressed her trembling lips together, and lifted her chin.

“See? Told you we won’t have to go look. She was just walking on this here mountain.” Her captor swaggered to where a bottle of yellow liquid sat on the ground. Grabbing it, he took a swig then belched.

“This is private property, and you’re trespassing,” she said, injecting as much authority as she could into her voice. “As the designated forestry official for this area, I order you to put out the fire and leave the mountain.” She was proud of how firm she sounded, though she doubted it would make a difference to this bunch.

A month ago, a group of men had come up the mountain and raided her house before burning it to the ground. Natalie had watched, helpless, from the cover of the trees, while they destroyed the only home she’d known. She’d thought she would never be that frightened and helpless again, but she was wrong. This was much worse.

She had to find a way out of this, but her legs trembled so much she doubted she could take even a single step. And if she did manage to get her legs to run, they’d just catch her again anyway.

She stared at the fire, watching the bird’s flesh slowly char. Disgust rose up her throat even as her mouth watered from the smell of roasting meat.

Did they think they were above the law? That they wouldn’t get caught? Sure, the police were slow to react these days, but they dealt swift justice to anyone harming plant or animal life.

“The penalty for burning wood and killing animals is a lifetime in jail.”

The massive hand of her captor made contact with her jaw and a dull crack echoed around the clearing. The force of the blow jerked her head to the left with such violence, it slammed her to the ground. Her ears rang and black spots stole her vision.

It took a moment to realize he’d slapped her so hard she’d almost lost consciousness. Dazed, Natalie shook her head and tried to focus through the thin layer of black spots still flashing in front of her eyes. Slowly, the scene around her came into focus. The men were closing in, leering down at her. She bit her lip raw trying to suppress a moan of fear. The mountain was isolated. Even if she screamed her lungs out, no one would come to her rescue.

“You don’t stop yer preaching, there’s more where that came from,” her captor threatened.

Her body jerked with harsh shudders as the raucous laughter of the other drunks turned ominous.

“Bet she’s the tall bitch them townsfolk said live in that house we gone burned a while ago.” A man with a coarse accent ambled closer. “Shoulda come afore Murdoch sent us.”

“Told ye she was here,” another man slurred.

“You bastards!” Natalie screamed. They had gotten what they wanted, looted her house of everything of value. What purpose had it served to burn down her home? What kind of monsters would do that?

As the first man came closer, fear forced her to focus on his feet, crunching across the dry earth. Her heart stopped beating for a moment. Breathing became torture, her lungs too frightened to contract and expand.

Army boots! He wore army boots.

Natalie jerked her head around like a baby bird searching for its mama. They all wore army boots.

They were raiders. Murdoch’s raiders.

Her body frozen with horror, she tried to move, to do something, anything, but her muscles had locked down.

For two years now, the TC Comm news had been showing reports of bands of homeless and jobless men going around the country, looting and killing. Ruthless, with sickening cruelty, they killed women and children, anyone that resisted them. One newscaster had called them raiders and the name had stuck. Their merciless leader, Murdoch, had only two requirements for his men. They had to kill and loot without mercy. And they had to wear army boots. News programs on the Touch Cell frequently speculated on the reason for Murdoch’s requirement for the boots, though the only thing everyone could agree on was that it must be because he was crazy.

Her lungs continued to ignore the desperate commands from her brain. She needed to use her inhaler, but she still couldn’t move. Her body shook uncontrollably and a cold sweat coated her skin, gluing her sundress to her abdomen and legs. She forced herself to take long, deep breaths.

Slowly, the ringing in her ears faded and her sight cleared. No longer burdened by tunnel vision, she watched the Murdoch scum surround her and couldn’t stop the shivers from rattling through her body.

Are they going to kill me here?

Natalie didn’t want to die, but she’d seen on the news what happened to the women they brought to their camps. And she would rather die than go through that. The graphic news photos of their unfortunate victims, their eyes vacant and empty, still haunted her. She whimpered, “Let me go.”

“Shut yer trap, you bitch.” The beefy man who’d captured her raised his hand, as though preparing to slap her again, and she flinched.

“Look, she’s gonna cry,” one raider taunted, mimicking her by curling into a ball and shaking dramatically. The others laughed, showering her with spittle.

Natalie blinked to force back tears of fury and fear. Animals. No, they’re worse than animals. Animals only killed to survive. These monsters looted and killed their way around the country, preying on the helpless. Natalie lowered her head, refusing to allow scum like them to see her tears.

“Ooh, lookee! She’s a right obedient one.” Another raider appeared from among the trees. He swaggered toward her cringing figure, and bile bubbled up into her throat.

There are more?

She’d counted at least seventeen drunks—seven surrounding her and the rest sprawled around the camp, watching her with rapacious hunger. How many more were lurking in the trees?

High in the sky, the autumn sun burned down on the pale skin exposed by her sleeveless sundress. Her palms scraped over the ground as she tried to inch backward, but a raider casually stepped on the hem, trapping her in place. More monsters drunkenly lumbered closer, no doubt anticipating a show.

Panicked, Natalie tried to scramble back, tearing her dress in the process. The sound of rending fabric cut like a laser through their jeering. All the men froze, their faces darkening with hunger as they focused on her now exposed thigh. “Let me go,” she repeated. “How can you do this?” The moment the words left her mouth, she regretted them.

Aroused from their carnal daze, they began to move in again, rampant lust etched on their faces. “Ooh, a goody-goody. Show the bitch how we can do this, Dan.”

Terror raced through her body. She couldn’t breathe. Please, not an asthma attack on top of everything else.

“Hey, she’s smotherin’ or somethin’,” one of them slurred.

Gasping, desperate to breathe, she sucked in the stench of old sweat and rotten breath, only to gag and cough as her body convulsed in dry heaves.

“So? We don’t need her breathin’. Without air, she won’t irritate us with her bitchin’.” The man standing over her sneered down at her as he spoke.

She opened her mouth but couldn’t get any words out.

Her captor licked his lips. “Speak fer yesself. I like me some fight in me women.”

She scanned the area around her, desperate to find a means of escape. She was trapped, surrounded by these animals, and choking on her own breath.

I can’t die like this. She balled her fists. I have to get away from them.

Her captor bent, grasped a fistful of her long, brown hair, and pulled. Hoarse sounds gurgled up from her throat and fresh tears welled in her eyes as they laughed and mimicked her.

“That’s right, pant fer me,” her captor slurred, his foul breath hot on her face.

“Ye can’t keep her to yerself, Big Joe. We want some fun, too.” The raider they’d called Dan fell down on his knees in front of her and wrenched her legs apart. Others grabbed her arms, holding her in place, their drunken laughter echoing shrilly around the clearing.

She gasped, opened her mouth to scream, but the sound remained painfully trapped in her lungs. Humiliation and disgust burned through her. Frantic, she kicked savagely, trying to pull her arms from their grip.

Hands groped, jerking her bright yellow dress up to her thighs. Mouths bit and tongues slobbered over her exposed flesh while fingernails clawed at her underwear.

Dear God, no!Please! I don’t want this! She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed that her asthma attack would kill her before these animals could rape her.

When a raider grabbed her left leg and wrenched it to the side, a painful scream forced the trapped air out of her lungs.

Suddenly, a bright light pierced through her eyelids. Natalie opened her eyes a fraction, afraid of what she’d see. Off to her right, the light flashed, fast and glaring, a good distance away. As though oblivious to it, the raiders continued to paw at her, their fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs and abdomen.

Desperate to detach herself from her horrifying reality, she focused on the light, but it was like staring at the sun. Her eyes watered and she blinked repeatedly, the excess fluid streaming down her face. Even squinting did little to keep the light from burning her pupils.

Perhaps it was a hallucination. Never before had she seen the sky sparkle as though it had turned to diamonds. But if it was an illusion, why did her eyes hurt?

Am I dead? Had they killed her already? And was this the portal to the afterlife?

No. She could still feel the raiders’ groping hands and hot breath.

Natalie focused on the strange light again and to her surprise, a strange sense of peace came over her. If dying meant being enveloped by this light, then she welcomed it gladly.

The sparkling faded and the sky returned to normal, revealing a tall, masculine figure, dressed in military-style combat clothes made from the strangest fabric she’d even seen. Standing where the source of the light had been, he appeared human, but something about him made her suspect otherwise.

He towered over the drunken raiders like a giant, observing the scene in front of him, his face expressionless. Sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw jutted through bronzed skin, giving him a lethal look. A sharp ridge bisected his bald head, stopping above his nose. His eyes bored into hers, red eyes that terrified her.

The bottom of her stomach dropped out, as though she was falling into an abyss. She tried to free her hand from the raiders’ grip, tried to raise it in supplication to the strange being before her. He could be the devil himself, but right now, she’d take help from any source, even a red-eyed devil.

Both her hands were pinned down, away from her body by her attackers. Still, she opened her balled fist, her palm held out in a silent plea.

Time seemed to stop as he looked from her hand to her face.

Please! Please help me!

Chapter Two

Natalie infused all the desperation she could into her mute appeal, her eyes pleading.

Please! Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Please.” She tried again, this time in a desperate whisper that disappeared beneath the grunts of the men assaulting her.

Panicked shouts rang out from the raiders as they belatedly noticed the intruder in their midst, and some of the weight lifted off her. Only her captor remained, too focused on groping her to notice or care about the commotion around him.

Natalie winced against the pain. Even drunk as he was, his grip was too strong for her to break free.

He looked up, startled, when the man next to him fell away screaming, his arm severed, almost to the shoulder.

The stranger advanced, his copper skin glistening in the midday sun. Bloody claws, she hadn’t noticed before, extended from the tips of his long fingers.

As her captor stared, frozen with horror, the stranger ripped the guts out of another man with one swipe.

The raiders scrambled for their weapons. When her captor released his grip on her wrists to reach for the shotgun he’d taken from her earlier, Natalie rammed her boot right into his family jewels.

“You bitch,” he grunted, curling into a fetal position.

She hastily scooted away from him, but not fast enough. He grabbed her foot and pulled her back then raised his balled fist, ready to strike her again. Before she could even throw her arms over her head in defense, a strange, knife-like object pierced his fist, gleaming in the harsh sunlight. He screamed and fell forward, desperately trying to pull the thing out of his hand.

Momentarily dazed, Natalie glanced around at the screaming, panicked raiders. One man fell to the ground with a high-pitched howl, his gaze glued on the stranger who was gutting another raider.

When the gutted man no longer writhed in agony, the stranger disappeared, only to appear again in the same spot where he’d stood minutes before. Once again, his red gaze trapped her, as though he was looking straight into her. She pushed down her torn dress in a futile attempt to shield herself. She wanted to move, to run, but his heavy gaze weighed her down, pinning her in place.

The screams of the raiders faded to silence and she watched, half-terrified, half-enthralled, as the creature’s appearance slowly began to change. His skin rippled, green mixing with copper, giving it a tough, armored look. Fangs lengthened from beneath his full upper lip. And that terrible ferocious gaze bled a deeper crimson.

What would that skin feel like if I touched it?

Every time he moved, muscles rippled under his clothes in a beautiful display of masculinity. She gasped, horrified at herself for finding something so deadly seductive. She broke her gaze away, but couldn’t keep her eyes off him for long.

His strong arms hung at his sides, blood dripping from his taloned claws, their quiet menace scarier than a war cry. The copper-green of his skin sparkled, catching rays of sunlight as he killed two more raiders, moving so fast the men didn’t even have time to react. Their lifeless bodies fell to the ground in pools of blood, their innards spilling from their torn abdomens.

Natalie scooted back then froze, hoping she hadn’t drawn his attention to her, when once again he appeared in the same spot where she’d first seen him. The same stance—feet braced apart, claws held loose at his sides—the same stare.

How does he disappear and reappear like that?

He turned his head with slow, deliberate movements.

Oh, God. Please let him be searching for more raiders.

She cringed when his gaze settled on her again, his stare pinning her still-sprawled figure to the ground with more fear than a horde of raiders.

How did he hold her captive with just a look?

Time seemed to slow. The groans of the raiders as they slowly bled to death faded into a dull hum, like static from the TC, until the only thing she was aware of was the stranger, still standing as though ready for battle.

A few raiders had managed to escape his earlier attacks by hiding behind boulders and trees. Now, in desperation, they opened fire.

He didn’t even flinch. Bullets whizzed past him; a few seeming to ricochet off his clothes and copper-green skin.

Still holding her gaze, the crimson-eyed devil flexed his clawed fingers and a large silver sword appeared in his hand as if by magic.

Natalie blinked. He swung the sword in intricate, graceful arcs around his body, as though warming up, his muscles rippled and bulged in an impressive display of strength.

He suddenly roared, the sound echoing off the mountain in a clear challenge to the raiders.

Why is he taunting them, inviting them to attack him?

Natalie wasn’t sure who was more foolish. The stranger, brandishing a mere sword against an entire arsenal of weapons, or the raiders, still desperately trying to kill the creature that had easily taken down so many of them.

The red beams of the raiders’ illegal laser guns made a dull buzzing sound. She’d heard laser guns were so scarce even the military had trouble outfitting their soldiers with them, so how did the raiders get their hands on these?

Natalie recoiled in disbelief as the beams bounced off the stranger’s skin. Though only designed to stun, the beams could still penetrate nearly anything.

What in the world is he made of?

When the stranger took a heavy, silent step forward, two of the raiders tossed their weapons aside and ran for the trees, stumbling down the mountainside. Another poor fool crawled up a tree, his movements frantic and crablike. The others, after failing to get a bead on their attacker, scrambled for heavier artillery.

The devil quickly killed another man with a savage lunge.

Natalie scuttled away, never taking her eyes off the stranger, as she tried to take cover. She’d almost reached the safety of the tree line when he abruptly turned, pinning her with his stare once again.

Keeping his gaze glued on hers, he swung his sword as though it weighed nothing, lopping off two heads with one savage sweep of his blade. One sightless head rolled to a stop between her legs.

Natalie wanted to scream—tried to, but the lump in her throat prevented it. Breathing in short, painfully dry gasps, she scrambled backward. Her palms were scraped raw as she dragged herself away from the carnage in front of her. Her lungs refused to expel the air trapped inside them.

The stranger lopped off another head. She edged farther back, terrified her head would be next.

With clumsy, frantic movements, the raiders managed to get a few shots fired, but none of them appeared to have any affect, and one by one, each raider lost his head.

Her gasping breaths stalled. With no air entering or leaving her lungs, she reached for the inhaler in her pocket, but her hands trembled so much she had trouble gripping it. After a few attempts, she finally managed to bring the pump to her mouth, and forced her locked lungs to inhale a swift puff of medicine.

Inhalers were considered obsolete after asthma injections came on the market years ago. But the injections cost so much she’d never been able to afford it.

Taking the first deep breath she’d had in what felt like hours, she wanted to laugh at the irony. What did an inhaler or an injection even matter when she could lose her head at any moment?

With each new kill, the devil roared ferociously, the eerie sound echoing down the mountainside like a warning to those who’d tried to escape.

I need to get help! She rolled onto her hands and knees. That blasted emergency function better work this time, or I’ll haunt those government bastards for the rest of my days!

She gripped the hem of her dress between her teeth, to keep from tripping on it, and crawled toward the tree line. The sparse vegetation didn’t offer much in the way of protection but it was far better than the complete exposure of the clearing. Buzzing sounds, screams, groans, and roars continued behind her.

Ducking behind a bush, she looked back at the clearing. Only six raiders were left.

Amazingly, her captor was one of them. Aiming an antique machine gun at the stranger, he yelled, “I’ll send you back to hell, demon!” He pulled the trigger.

Natalie hunkered lower, covering her head with her hands as bullets flew about the clearing, some lodging in the trees just behind her.

When the man’s clip was empty, the alien advanced on him.

Natalie got up and ran farther into the trees, only to stop abruptly when her spine tingled. Slowly, she looked behind her to find those glowing red eyes piercing her again. With difficulty, she broke the connection and willed her body to move. Behind her, her captor screamed then fell silent.

Only five left. She prayed they would keep the devil busy long enough for her to get away.

The way he always seemed to keep her in his sights terrified her. Was he just toying with her? Letting her think she could get away when in fact he was just saving her for last?

She wasn’t about to stick around and find out.

She was glad she’d been smart enough to don appropriate footwear when she left her cave that morning. With her leather boots protecting her feet and ankles, she ran easily over the mountain’s uneven terrain, dodging the struggling pine trees she’d managed to replant over the last five years. She loved each one, but right now they were a hindrance as she tried to avoid trampling them in her flight down the mountain.

The cold mountain air hurt her lungs and she couldn’t breathe. But she refused to stop until the sound of slaughter no longer reached her ears.

Desperate for air, she stumbled, her legs collapsing beneath her. She forced herself to rest, leaning her back against a tree trunk. The bark scraped her bare shoulder blades as her chest heaved, her gasping breaths the only sound on the eerily still mountain.

In her race down the mountain, the inhaler had gotten twisted inside the pocket of her dress, and she struggled for a few precious moments to get it out. She took two puffs, sucking in the medicine hard. Her breathing eased, but her fear and exhaustion remained.

The sharp scent of pine teased her nostrils. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she swiped them away, angry at her weakness.

Crying won’t solve anything, she reminded herself.

Ignoring the sting of pain from her raw palms, she clutched the rough bark of the pine tree and dragged herself upright. She looked around, knowing instantly where she was. Though she’d run down the mountainside, she’d still covered almost a third of the distance to her cave, which was hidden higher up the mountain behind a jutting outcrop of rock.

No wonder I’m so tired.

She leaned against the tree, taking slow, steady breaths to calm her racing heart. She gazed up at its stubby branches, remembering how worried she’d been when this crop of young trees had almost died the first winter after she’d planted them.

As a teenager, she’d griped when her survivalist father had forced her to learn every inch of the mountain. Now she was grateful she could find her way around blindfolded.

Shaking off her longing for her father, she gathered her strength and deliberately headed away from the cave. Only when she was too tired to continue did she start the climb back up the mountain. When the Forestry Department approached her five years ago to replant the pine trees decimated by beetles and blister rust, she’d started to use the cave as her workspace, nursing the trees from seedlings. Her father had, with typical survivalist paranoia, already begun to prepare the cave as a backup residence. After the raiders had burned her house to the ground, she’d moved into the cave, grateful it had been stocked with emergency provisions. After losing nearly everything, those provisions had kept her alive.

But why had the raiders even bothered coming to this isolated spot in the Rockies anyway? She could see them getting lost and stumbling upon her house, plundering it then burning it in a crime of opportunity. But twice? No, it didn’t make sense. With the house gone, there was nothing left for them to loot.

She stopped and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to keep the cold from invading her body. Despite the harsh sun shining overhead, the high altitude made the days perpetually cool, and she berated herself once again for her poor choice in clothing.

Though she didn’t know the reason, she had no doubt the raiders’ presence on her mountain was intentional. Which meant that if Murdoch, their leader, hadn’t ordered his men there, he at least knew where they were.

What will he do when he learns his men have been murdered on my mountain?

She gasped in horror and at the same time, a hysterical giggle scored her sore throat. After she’d lost her house, she’d stayed up here to escape the violence happening in town. Now in one miserable day, she’d had two invasions on her mountain. While that devil had dispatched one threat, he remained, and another, Murdoch, was sure to follow.

Her body ached. Every bruise and scrape came to painful life as she forced herself to continue the short climb to the cave.

She desperately wanted to believe the events of that morning were all a hallucination, an invention of her overactive imagination. But, no. There was no way she could have imagined such brutality, so much blood. Not to mention that devil. She’d never seen anything like him. It was as if he was from a completely different planet.

She stopped, her eyes staring in shock at the ground as the odd thought struck her. Could he be?

Last week, when she’d talked on the TC to her friend, Julia, for her weekly update on the happenings in town, they’d giggled over the rumors of a spaceship that had supposedly crashed in the woods. Normally, most people ignored such outlandish rumors, except that this time, the rumor was started by the librarian, James Stocks. The pompous man was the last person Natalie would expect to believe in the existence of aliens; yet he swore he’d seen an alien ship crash in the mountains.

What if Stocks is right and the ship belongs to that devil?

The idea that the stranger was an alien didn’t surprise her in the least, considering the inhuman things she’d witnessed. Wait, does that mean there are more of them? It seemed unlikely that he would travel so far across space by himself.

She glanced around anxiously. Having one of those things after her was bad enough. What would she do if she ran into others like him?

Part of her wanted to believe he was her saviour, that he’d shown up at the exact moment he did with the sole purpose of saving her from the raiders. But no one that skilled, that efficient at killing, could know mercy.

She started running again, remembering the way the raiders’ bullets had bounced off his body. That was something her father had never taught her—how to protect herself against an invincible predator.

She stopped twice, just long enough for a quick puff of her inhaler each time, then sprinted the last quarter of a mile to the cave. Out-of-control giggles bubbled up in her throat as she ran. Who would’ve thought all this could happen in one day? She’d been captured by raiders, almost raped, only to be saved by an alien who may or may not be after her right now.

“Run faster, Natalie,” she muttered, but her legs refused to cooperate. The stitch in her side hurt and she couldn’t stop the soft wail coming from her mouth. She sobbed in relief when the huge monolith that hid the entrance to the cave came into view.

Skirting around it, she staggered inside and finally allowed her legs to give way, collapsing against the entrance wall. She closed her eyes and leaned her hot forehead against the cool stone, her breathing raspy.

Even behind her closed lids she could still see the alien lopping off heads, blood spurting everywhere.

Her sore fingers dug into the rough stone.

No. Everything’s okay.

She was safe. But for how long? Sweat ran down her back and she shivered, the thin tattered material of her summer dress offering little protection from the cool damp of the cave.

As much as she hated the idea, she’d have to move into town. Her captors had confiscated her shotgun, but she still had the various other weapons her father had stockpiled in the cave. Unfortunately, they would prove useless against the alien’s bulletproof skin.

But I’ll come back here, she promised herself. Once it’s been declared safe. Her mission to restore the forest was far from complete and she had every intention of finishing it.

The air behind her stirred, and all the hair at the nape of her neck crawled upright. Afraid her worst fear was about to be realized; she reluctantly lifted her heavy eyelids. A giant shadow loomed on the cave wall in front of her, growing smaller as the source of the shadow approached.

Without moving her head from the wall, she looked down at the club she kept at the cave’s entrance for emergencies. Adrenaline pumping through her system, she grabbed the club and swung around, aiming high and hitting the intruder as hard as she could. The club struck his head with a sickening crack.

His gaze locked on hers, and she took a nervous step back. Is that satisfaction in those crimson eyes?

The alien stood there for a moment before toppling to the ground, falling with such force she almost expected the cave to shake.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The old saying popped into her head, repeating over and over.

Was he friend or foe? There was a small chance he really had come to save her from the raiders before. Though, after she’d just clobbered him, she was pretty sure he’d exact revenge the moment he woke up.

“I’m so dead,” she murmured in horror.