Freeing the Prisoner Read online

  “Your destiny was chosen for you from the moment of your birth,” Tornk snapped. “To be the wife of a worthy Goshan dignitary such as myself. And here you are—dressed in some obscene foreign get-up doing the Gods know what with an alien male! If the Monarch could see you now he would order you stoned at once, you little slut!”

  “I will not be shamed by you!” Dani snapped. “I went with Kyron because I love him—because he doesn’t treat me like a pet or a piece of property. I don’t regret my actions one bit.”

  Ignoring her completely, Tornk took her by the shoulders and stared into her face. Then he grunted and nodded his head in apparent satisfaction.

  “At least your eyes are still unchanged. Lucky for you, Princess. You have a wedding to look forward to instead of a stoning.”

  “I told you before, I’ll never marry you—I’d rather die.” Dani struggled but the two guards took her by the arms and dragged her, kicking and fighting, towards the squat, black Goshan craft.

  “You might as well relax, Princess Dannella,” Tornk said with a nasty sneer as they shoved her into the ship and strapped her down. “You’re coming home with me and then we have our wedding to plan.”

  “No…no! Let me out of here—let me go!”

  But the guards had strapped her arms to her sides and there was no getting loose, no matter how she kicked and wiggled. She had to watch as the ship rose off the ground and listen to Councilor Tornk’s evil laughter from the seat ahead of hers as the sliver ship got smaller and smaller in the viewscreen.

  “You old bastard,” Dani snapped, glaring at the back of his head. “You think you’ve won but you haven’t—Ky will come for me!”

  “I don’t think so my dear. In fact, let’s just make certain he won’t, shall we?” Turning to the pilot, Tornk made a motion with one hand. “Blast the Kindred ship to pieces.”

  “What?”

  For a moment his words hardly registered—they were too awful, too final to be believed. Dani simply couldn’t wrap her head around the concept. But she saw the pilot flipping switches on his console and finally the idea of what Tornk had ordered crashed in on her.

  “No!” she screamed as the pilot gripped his steering stick and positioned his thumb over a large, red button. “No, you can’t! He’s in there—you’ll kill him!”

  “That’s the idea, Princess dear.” Tornk turned his head and smirked at her. “This way we don’t have to worry about ever seeing him again. We can’t have your Kindred lover ruining our wedding—now can we?” He nodded at the pilot. “Fire when ready.”

  “No! N—” But her voice was cut off by a roaring sound from the engines. Suddenly, bright red beams of energy arrowed down and hit the silver Kindred ship.

  For a moment, the silver glowed red—as though it was being heated like metal in a forge. Then it burst apart in a spectacular explosion of silver and black charred fragments. They blew into the air and rained down, covering the gray, featureless landscape in a blanket of twisted metal.

  “No!” Dani tried to shout again but this time the sound was no more than a whisper. She could feel her throat closing with tears—tears of disbelief and horror. How could it have happened so quickly? How could her entire life be ruined and the male she loved killed in the blink of an eye?

  I never even told him I loved him, she thought numbly. And now he’s gone forever.

  “There—that should put any fantasies you might have of rescue to rest,” Tornk said briskly. “Now let’s go home, shall we?” He nodded to the pilot. “Mind you take the correct precautions before we go through the homeward wormhole.”

  “You…” Dani finally found her voice and she spoke in a low tone filled with hatred. “Tornk, you’d better kill me,” she told him.

  “Eh? What’s that?” He turned his head to see her again and frowned. “What did you say?”

  “I said, you’d better kill me, not marry me.” Dani’s eyes blazed and she clenched her hands into fists at her sides. “Because if you give me even half a chance, I’m going to murder you…slowly.”

  Tornk’s eyes widened for a moment, then he laughed dismissively and shook his head.

  “Very funny, Princess. Always the jokester.”

  “I’m not joking,” Dani said in that same, flat voice. “I’ll kill you and do you know what else, Tornk?”

  “What?” he asked, frowning.

  “I’m going to enjoy it,” Dani told him, glaring at him. “You got my mother killed and you murdered the only male I have ever loved. Oh yes, I’m going to really enjoy getting my revenge.”

  For a moment Tornk looked at her uneasily. Then he laughed, a little too heartily, Dani thought.

  “Threaten all you want, Princess. The fact is, you’ll be my wife by next week. We’ll see how ‘vengeful’ you feel after I chain you to my bed and change the color of your eyes.”

  Dani didn’t pay any attention to his words or repeat her threat. Instead, she watched in the viewscreen as the blackened and fragmented Kindred ship slowly dwindled to nothing.

  She felt as though her heart had dwindled with it.

  * * * * *

  Ky was deep inside the Hive’s lair when he heard the screaming. He’d been caught up in exploring the horrible place—led on by a kind of fascinated revulsion from chamber to chamber as he deployed the scanner-ball over and over, collecting images and data.

  The ground underfoot was mushy and spongy and the scent in the air was an indescribable sweet stench—like rotting meat mixed with honey. He had only intended to use the scanner ball once and then call it back to him and go back to the ship. But the strange things it showed him when he called up the 3-D holo scan convinced him to go further and further in.

  There was a stinking pit filled with rotting meat…walls lines with skulls…a chamber of horrors where ledges held the remains of the poor females who had been kidnapped and impregnated with the Hive’s grubs…

  Somehow he made his way back to the far end of the huge complex. By the time he heard the screaming and ran all the way back to the entrance, it was too late to stop what was happening. Before he could so much as draw his blaster, Dani had disappeared into the blunt, snub-nosed Goshan ship and it had lifted away, into the dank gray atmosphere.

  Dani—no! How in the seven hells did they find us and how did they get here? Thought that worm hole we went through was one-way!

  Could it be that it was actually one of the rare two-way holes that worked in reverse to return a ship to its starting origin when it entered from the end-spout? Or was there another, homeward hole he'd missed somehow? Whatever the case, Ky intended to follow and get Dani back. And if that bastard Tornk, who must be the older male he’d seen shoving her into the ship, laid a single hand on her—

  He started to leave the Hive’s lair but he paused for just a second to call the scanner ball. It was a good thing he did. The next moment, his ship exploded and the air was filled with deadly shrapnel.

  Ky gasped and ducked as a sharp-edged piece of the silver hull, now blackened and twisted, flew at him. It barely missed his head and clanked against the stone walls of the Hive’s lair.

  For a moment he scarcely knew what had happened. Then it came to him slowly but surely—Dani had been kidnapped and his only way to get her—hell, his only way home—had just gone up in a smoking fireball.

  What in the Seven Hells was he going to do?

  Chapter Seventeen

  “It’s your wedding day, my sweets! Both my sweet princesses getting married in the same ceremony this very evening! How wonderful is that?”

  Yana was trying to put a happy face on things but it probably wasn’t easy for her. Lavi wore a face of woe and couldn’t stop crying while Dani herself was still in shock.

  Over and over she kept seeing Ky’s ship being blown to smithereens—a slow-motion explosion that wouldn’t stop happening behind her eyes every time she closed them.

  Gone, whispered a voice in her head. He’s gone and I never even told him I love