Abducted Read online

  But it was too late. Somewhere in the darkness in front of me I saw two fiery red spots appear. After a moment, I realized they were eyes. Freaking eyes staring at me from out of the pitch-blackness.

  And then something growled.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sarden

  “Zoe? Zoe?” I shouted as I jogged down the pitted road as quickly as I could. I kept my eyes down, following her scent and the drops of blood I saw every few feet. She was going to need some serious medical attention by the time I found her.

  If I found her.

  But I wouldn’t let myself entertain that thought. She was out here somewhere—I just had to get to her before whoever was chasing her did.

  The droplets led into a narrow alleyway. Down at the end, I saw a dark figure swathed in a cloak doing something to a door. Something that made a lot of sparks, glowing golden in the darkness.

  I crept quietly down the alley but it wouldn’t have mattered if I had been playing a Grobian fizzween and doing the Yakitan stomp dance. The dark figure was completely engrossed in his work. As I got closer, I saw that he was using some kind of hand-held blast laser to try and cut through the hinges of the door. Such tools are highly illegal but also quite useful for getting into places you’re not supposed to go. I’d been guilty of using one a time or two myself during a few of my dicier smuggling runs.

  Over the smell of the melting, scorching metal, I could still catch Zoe’s scent, now with a tang of desperation. Had she held him off down here and somehow gone through the door he was trying to get into? Was she inside the dark building it led into?

  “Who in the Frozen Hells are you and what have you done to Zoe?” I demanded, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around.

  I grabbed for his wrist, meaning to disarm him at the same time but before I could grab it, the laser flew from his hand, narrowly missing my crotch but burning me just the same.

  I got lucky—he didn’t have it collimated, so only the outer edge of the beam hit me. It left a long, burning trail down the inside of my left thigh, parting my tough Byrinian leather flight trousers and sending a line of blazing pain through my flesh. It could have been worse though—if I’d been hit by the full force of the beam, I could have lost a leg. Another flit to the left and I would have lost my balls as well.

  Of course, just because it missed my more delicate areas didn’t mean the laser didn’t hurt. It did—it burned like fucking hell.

  “Ah!” I snarled and lost my grip on the unknown assailant’s arm. He whirled away from me, cape swirling so I couldn’t see his face, and pounded back down the alleyway.

  He turned once for an instant to look at me but all I could see were his eyes shining with a strangely metallic glitter in the dim light.

  “You may have stopped me this time but I’ll get her,” he shouted in a thin, angry voice. “Her or another like her and then the Last Day will be the First!”

  Then he sprinted away.

  I wanted to go after him but I doubted I could catch him with an injured leg. The good thing about being burned with a laser is you don’t have to worry about bleeding out because the laser cauterizes the wound. The bad thing, as I said before, is that it hurts like hell.

  But I had more pressing business to attend to than my own pain. The unknown male had almost finished cutting through the door’s hinges. I picked up the hand-held blast laser—very, very carefully—turned it back on and finished the job. Then I kicked open the door (with my uninjured leg) and shouted her name.

  “Zoe?” I yelled into the echoing blackness. “Zoe, where are you? Please, sweetheart—answer me!”

  Zoe

  I heard someone shouting my name and I was pretty sure it wasn’t Count Doloroso—mainly because they were calling my name instead of “young lady” or “bitch.” I hoped against hope it was Sarden but I didn’t dare answer back. That was because any loud noise on my part seemed to make the red-eyed growling thing in the darkness angry. At least, it growled louder, which I assumed wasn’t a friendly greeting filled with joy.

  “Easy now…easy,” I whispered to it, trying to make my voice low and soothing as I took a step backwards. “I didn’t know this was your territory so I’m just going to back up really, really slowly. Okay?”

  “Grrrrrrrr,” was my only answer. Apparently Mr. Red-eyed growlypants didn’t like me moving backwards any more than he’d liked me moving forward.

  The eyes got closer and I took another step back and gripped my metal pole with both sweating palms. If it came at me, I was going to go down swinging. But we know how well that went last time, when I swung at Doloroso and I had actually been able to see him. In this case, all I could see were the red, animal eyes coming towards me and I had no idea how large the animal attached to them might be. From the sound of the rumbling growl coming from its throat, though, I’d say it had to be pretty big. Maybe the size of a grizzly bear?

  Immediately I wished I hadn’t thought that. Now all I could imagine was a huge alien grizzly bear coming at me in the dark.

  I had seen a documentary about how a grizzly savaged and ate an entire group of campers when I was little and watching supposedly “kid-friendly” shows on Animal Planet. The images of human bones with all the flesh gnawed off had given me nightmares for months.

  The nib-nibs in my hair had gone completely quiet. I got the feeling they were frozen with fear—the same way I would be if I let myself get hypnotized by those glowing red eyes.

  Suddenly I heard echoing footsteps running down the hallway.

  “Zoe? Zoe?” someone yelled. I felt a surge of relief when I recognized the voice—it really was Sarden. I dared to look over my shoulder—though what I expected to see in the pitch-blackness I didn’t know. Surprisingly, I did see something.

  Sarden’s golden eyes glowed in the dark too. And clearly he could see a lot better in the blackness than I could because he said,

  “Zoe! Thank the Goddess!”

  “Don’t thank her yet,” I told him in a low, trembling voice. “We’ve got company.”

  As if on cue, the growling started up again and the red eyes started moving closer and closer in a slow and deliberate way. Then I knew for sure—the damn thing was stalking me.

  And it was about to pounce.

  Sarden must have seen it too because he shouted at me, the tension in his deep voice near the breaking point.

  “Zoe!”

  I whipped my head over my shoulder again and saw an incredibly bright beam of golden light suddenly appear in his hand. What the Hell? How did he get his hands on a lightsaber? my frozen brain demanded.

  “Zoe,” he shouted again, breaking my train of thought. “Zoe when I say, you have to jump to the left! Do you understand me? Jump to the left!”

  “Why?” I gasped. The eyes were getting closer and now I thought I could feel a hot, damp wind blowing against my exposed skin. It had a horrible smell, too. You know how your cat’s breath reeks after you feed it a can of the really stinky fish-flavored cat food? That was what it smelled like—a rank, fishy odor mixed with the stench of rotten meat. It was enough to make you gag.

  I felt my insides turn to ice water as I realized what was going on. The thing was breathing on me. It had its mouth open, ready to take a bite!

  “Just do it!” Sarden bellowed. “NOW!”

  At that point, several things happened at once.

  The red-eyed growling thing jumped at me and I threw myself to the left. A beam of light flashed over my head and the growl rose to an unearthly pitch—it was like the scream of a wildcat mixed with the roar of a tiger and the screech of some other creature I couldn’t even name. Something alien and hungry and angry, anyway.

  But I soon had other things to worry about.

  I had jumped as far as I could and had expected to hit the ground pretty hard. Instead, I found myself falling—falling and flailing wildly through the air as the nib-nibs screamed and chattered in m