She nodded her head decisively. “Yes. Down. You see that narrow slit in the metal, about two feet in front of you? It is not a drain. That is an access panel to the Undercity below.”
I shifted forward and crouched down when I saw what she was talking about. I brushed my fingers over the pencil length opening. It wasn’t any wider than my pinky and I saw no indication that it opened.
“Lift it, silly human.”
I grumbled but did what she told me, sticking my fingertips into the slit and pulling upwards with force… and almost fell on my ass when a square two by two section of the road lifted and slid backwards like it was on tracks with minimal effort. I let go of the door and looked down into the hole.
It was dark, but not dark enough that my new and improved eyesight couldn’t pick up what looked like an abandoned subway tunnel complete with old train tracks roughly twenty feet below me. I glanced back up at the helpful cat lady. “Thanks. Any tips on which way to go?”
She shrugged one elegant shoulder and gave me a look of disdain, her muzzle wrinkling. “How should I know? Do I look like someone who would go crawling about in the Undercity?No. Only the slithering ones live down there. Ask one of them.” And with that she ducked back into her home and shut the window with a decisive snap.
“Slithering ones? Sure. That doesn’t sound ominous at all. I’ll just pop on down into the creepy abandoned tunnel and ask one of the lizard people for directions. Nothing bad ever happened to people who do that,” I grumbled while sitting and scooting over to drop my legs into the hole. “Ah hell this is the dumbest shit I’ve ever done in my life.”
I took in a deep breath and dropped.
eleven
Callie
Icursedmyownstupidity as the soft soles of my new slippers smacked into the hard metal with a burning jolt of pain that traveled up my legs, into my spine, and stopped to rattle the fillings in my teeth.
“Ouch,” I gasped and then promptly snapped my big fat mouth shut as the noise reverberated down the darkened tunnel with what seemed like a thundering boom.
It smelled stale down here, dry and unused like no one had walked these tunnels in years. There was a layer of undisturbed dust over the tracks. I had just taken a step forward when the light shining down from above abruptly cut off when the door shifted back into place with an ominous clank that echoed down the shaft and plunged me into cave darkness. I crouched low, widening my eyes in a vain attempt to see anything in the pitch surrounding me.
Great. Just great. I was running from a horny god and now I was trapped in the dark with the ‘slithering ones’. Like thatwasn’t the most ominous shit someone had ever told me. This is why white people died in horror movies. I’d done the dumb shit and gone looking in the basement of a goddamned space station and now I was going to die the dumb shit death. I hated it. I hated space. I hated Rathal. I hated pirates and space stations and aliens and stupid ass failed escape attempts. Hate. Hate. Ha—Oh. The lights came on.
Pale yellow pill shaped lights flickered on at the base of the wall at even intervals, lighting the dusty tracks up enough for me to navigate. I rose from my crouch slowly, brushing dust off my thighs calmly like I hadn’t just been freaking out. I started down the middle of the tracks cautiously, my ears straining to pick up every little sound but my soft footfalls and the slight buzzing of the lights was all I heard. Not even the sound of the city above me could be heard. It was just me and whatever the fuck the slithering ones were down here.
I sighed. As far as dates go, today with Rathal hadn’t been the worst of them. Not even with me being an unwilling participant and him being a kidnapping pirate alien asshole. In fact, even with negatives, I’d put this “date” at the top. It had been one hell of a kiss, and as crazy as Rathal was, he at least asked me questions about myself and listened to my answers with real interest. The bar was in Hell. My kidnapper had shown more interest than all the dates I’d been on back on Earth before my abduction. How sad was that?
I grimaced remembering the last man I’d wasted my time on. I’d matched with him and he hadn’t sent me a sexually explicit opening message or a dick pic so I’d agreed to a dinner date with him. He had suggested a nicer restaurant down on the strip and I’d dressed accordingly. It hadn’t been a super fancy dress, just a simple black short sleeve that fell to my ankles. It had hugged my body just enough to be sexy without it being molded to me. The guy had still made a comment that I’d over dressed in that halfjoking/half insult way men liked to do so they could fall back on it being a light hearted joke if you defended yourself.
The dude had mostly talked about himself the whole night, throwing out here and there things he didn’t like about me disguised as compliments like how he didn’t like women with short hair but I pulled it off, or that he usually didn't date black women, but I spoke well and seemed educated. Like I didn’t have a Masters in Engineering and fly fucking fighter jets for a living.
Oh, you got a steak? I like women who don’t worry about their weight. You’re healthy.
Nice try, asshole.
Rathal might be a dead god walking, but he’d told me I was beautiful, smart, loaded my plate down with a pile of meat, and he asked me a thousand questions about myself. I was still going to stab him in the throat but had he not resorted to kidnapping and extortion, I’d have totally been down to fuck him. Well… before I’d gotten a good long look at the fucking monster cock he was just walking around with. What was it with aliens and huge dicks? What kind of evolutionary advantage did that give them? Did the female aliens only mate with the swinging cocks and thus bred out all the small ones and now we were dealing with the genetic third legs of selective breeding?
Maybe humans should do the same. If the man isn’t kind, smart, and able to dick you down so good you walk funny for twelve hours afterwards—don’t fuck him. We will breed them out, ladies. Mediocre men will be a thing of the past.
A softshh shhsound echoed faintly from a bend a few feet in front of me and I stopped dead, ears straining and heart in my throat.
Please universe, I don’t need this haunted tunnel shit. Please just be an alien rat. I can handle a rat.
I tiptoed across the distance, keeping to the inside wall so that I saw whatever it was before it saw me but there were only emptyshadows and my own imagination. I let out a shuddering breath and kept walking, trying to keep my steps as quiet as possible. I made it to the next curve in the tunnel before I realized something was following me. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment before gritting my teeth and turning.
My heart did its best to run out my ass when I saw the massive male alien who stood less than six feet behind me, his scaled bald head cocked to the side in curiosity, the wide slitted pupil of his orange eyes regarding me steadily. His upper body was mostly humanoid, though where skin would be on me, on him it was tiny navy colored scales that in the low light looked almost black. He was heavily muscled in his arms, shoulders, and chest, and had a neck thick enough I wondered how he breathed normally. He had a barely perceptible nose with slitted nostrils and a lipless mouth that was too wide and stretched farther back towards where ears should be. Knowing what I knew about aliens so far… behind that mouth would be rows of sharp teeth and seeing as how his lower body was a massive snake's tail that started at his hips and ended with a glowing orange striped tip he could probably unhinge his jaw wide enough to eat me. See? Space was an insane carnival ride in Hell and I wanted off.
My eyes widened as he crossed his muscled arms over his wide chest and rose on his snake half until he was well over eight feet tall and grinned at me, exposing long narrow fangs sandwiched between dozens of backwardly curved conical teeth.
Called it.
“I’ve never seen your kind before. What exactly are you?” His voice was a deep timber and it hissed along my nerve endings until my flight or fight reflex didn’t know which way was up. I backed up a few steps and held my hands, fingers spayed. “Just a tourist that got lost.”
You know what was weird? Most aliens didn’t have nipples. Sure, they also had extra limbs or eyes or fur but for some reason the lack of nipples—and in this particular snake alien's case, a belly button—jarred me more than four arms and wings. Or maybe I was just stressed and rambling and my mind had finally cracked because I was in a goddamned sewer confronted by a huge snake man and I didn’t have a fucking gun. My eyes narrowed into slits and my old friend rage slithered up my spine as I pictured bashing in Rathal’s face with a tire iron until all that was left was pulp and blood.
