Finding the Jewel Read online

“Oh Amanda…” Chloe shook her head in mock disappointment. “After all these years you’re still Team Edward? No thanks, I don’t like getting holes poked in me while my other hole gets poked.”

  “Beast Kindred then.” Amanda gave a shiver of delight. “They’re so big and shaggy and scary and sexy with those golden eyes like an animal’s.”

  For a moment Chloe felt an odd dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach, as though she’d just gone down a roller coaster. A picture flashed across her mind’s eyes—golden eyes, just like Amanda had described them—eyes that were looking at her hungrily… She pushed the strange image away quickly. What was it anyway—some half remembered dream? It made her feel strange and unsure of herself which she didn’t like a bit. She was a girl who knew her own mind and she didn’t like feeling uncertain.

  “So?” Amanda said. “Beast Kindred?”

  “The worst of all,” Chloe said decisively. “Haven’t you heard they have some kind of extra man-meat around the base of their…you know.” She mimed pointing to her crotch and Amanda giggled.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope.” Chloe shook her head solemnly. “Afraid not. Think how stretched out you’d be! And once they get that in you, I’ve heard there’s no getting it out again for hours. Ouch! Huh-uh…definitely not for me.”

  “Well, if you’re not interested in Kindred and you’re not interested in human guys, where does that leave you?” her friend demanded.

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested,” Chloe defended herself. “I just said I can’t find the right one. And lately it seems like it’s too much trouble to try.”

  “Oh come on—try one more time. Please, for me?” Amanda begged. “Just try this app and put exactly what you just told me, okay? You can even use regular pictures. No false advertising—just you.”

  “Well…” Chloe could feel herself weakening. She was about to turn thirty and she wanted to find someone as much as Amanda did. All their friends had paired off by now and plenty of them were filling her Facebook feed with baby pictures. Why did finding the right guy have to be so hard?

  Why can’t I find a guy who wants me for who I am and doesn’t think he’s God’s gift to women? she wondered. Someone who isn’t constantly trying to change me or make me thinner?

  “I can see you’re about to give in,” Amanda said, grinning. “Hold that thought—I just want to change my top for one more shot and then we’ll start working on your profile.”

  She ran into other room, presumably to change her clothes, before Chloe could protest. Chloe opened her mouth to call after her friend…but that was when things got weird.

  First of all there was a blaring noise from somewhere—the glass maybe? Chloe stared at the mirror, frowning. What the hell? From the other room, Amanda yelled,

  “What was that? Someone blowing their horn outside? Is there a car out there?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t think so.” Chloe didn’t bother to look out the small bathroom window though—her eyes were glued to the mirror which was shimmering and swirling in a strange way. It looked almost like someone had melted it and it was beginning to run like silver paint. Chloe leaned closer. What was going on?

  “Well, don’t—” Amanda’s voice started but Chloe never heard what else her friend said. Because at that moment she found herself being sucked into the swirling, melting silver mass where the mirror had been…

  Sucked out of her world and into a different life forever.

  * * * * *

  “This is not the right one.” The blue worm staring down at her seemed very upset as it spoke to another blue worm, also staring down at her. Both of them were about three feet tall and had multiple arms. “You were meant to bring the other female—she is closer to the ideal.”

  “It cannot be helped—we can only afford to bring one,” the other worm said. “And do not blame me—it was your shoddy second-hand equipment which caused this error—not mine.”

  “I could not afford any better and buy a dimensional shift stabilizer,” the first worm snapped back. “If only Char’noth and his band had not monopolized the Earth in our own dimension such expenses would not have been necessary. But we must harvest the Earth females of this dimension and so our resources are necessarily limited. We must make do with this one.”

  “Put her in the construct then,” the other worm advised. “By the time the first buyers arrive to bid on her, she may be altered enough to attract a good price. Then we can afford the energy necessary to bring another female—one closer to the ideal.”

  Finally, Chloe found her voice.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, wishing her words didn’t shake so much. “And what do you want with me?” She looked down at herself and gasped. “And why am I naked?”

  “None of these questions are of any concern,” the first worm said to her. “You are our first product and we intend to sell you for a good price—though first you must be closer to the Earth ideal of beauty.”

  It snapped the fingers on two of its skinny, knobby blue hands and suddenly a door appeared in the air between them.

  “What the…how did you do that?” Chloe demanded. She could feel her eyes getting wider and wider—she must look like something out of a cartoon. But this felt like more of a nightmare.

  “This is a construct drawn from your own mind which will help you to achieve the ideal,” the head worm told her—which made absolutely no sense. “Now, in you go,” it said.

  The door in the air opened smoothly, revealing what looked like the entryway of a richly appointed mansion. Chloe was pulled to her feet and what felt like hundreds of scratchy claws—the alien worms’s fingers she supposed—were pushing her roughly through the doorway.

  Later she wished she had done anything at that moment—fought and screamed and kicked and pushed—anything but let the blue worms push her through the doorway in the air. But she was still in shock—everything was all so unreal it was hard to believe it was happening at all.

  And so she stumbled through and the door slapped shut behind her, trapping her in her own private hell.

  Chapter Two

  Present Day

  “This has to be it,” Tark thought to himself as he eyed the blinking red sign hanging above the doorway of the small round space station. It was nicely camouflaged in the layer of space junk which encircled the Earth. He was willing to bet not even the Kindred of the Mother Ship knew it was here.

  “Dimensional Doors Discount Females,” read the sign in Standard. It had to be the place the priestess had mentioned in her prophesy.

  “Through a door between worlds

  A jewel will be found.”

  The words rang in his memory, as though they had been spoken yesterday. The next part of the prophecy made less sense, however…

  “Both high overhead

  And close to the ground.”

  Tark frowned when he thought of them and squeezed the metal gauntlet which covered his right hand nervously. That part of the prophecy had almost sent him in a different direction.

  The Commercians’ Discount center wasn’t the only place balanced on a Dimensional rift. There was also the Resort of Resonant Oneness, located deep in the caverns of Fet’lkk Three. But since he would have needed a partner and a whole hell of a lot of credit to get in there, Tark had decided to try this place first.

  Hopefully it held the jewel the priestess had told him to find.

  Bringing his ship closer, he sent out a grappling arm and dragged himself forward until the accordion-linked ship-to-shuttle walkway could get a magnetic lock on the side of the Commercians’ station. The blue worms from another dimension were expecting him. They ought to open the airlock as soon as they felt the vibration of the walkway connecting.

  This was it, he told himself as he walked through the gray accordion, made of flexible plasti-steel, and waited at the door. This was when his life was finally going to change.

  He squeezed the metal gauntlet on his right hand a