“They sell us,” she says. “They let creatures with all manner of awful bodies mate with us. Sometimes several a day.”
I feel even more rage inside me so complete I can hardly handle it. I am so completely infuriated. Memories are trying to break through. I can feel their content, even though I can’t bring it to mind.
“Feisty, are we?”
Tentacle face is back, carrying a thick leather lash that looks like one of his tentacles, but it’s dead and floppy and attached to a stick.
“Come out and learn your lesson,” he says, opening the door.
I step out immediately. It’s hard to be staunch when you have a plug you didn’t ask for in your butt; however I refuse to let that fact humiliate me.
Before the tentacle face can say anything, I kick his knee as hard as I possibly can in the wrong direction. His scream of pain tells me he might be used to hurting women, but he is not used to taking damage.
Fighting, I discover, is not locked away from me in my memories. Fighting is very much at the top of my mind. Fighting can be about technique, or skill. It can be about strength and pure might. But what it’s really about is how fucking insane someone is prepared to be, and how much feral damage they are willing to do. As I hurl myself at the stumbling creature with a mind to gouge its eyes out, it turns out I am willing to do an almost endless amount.
It screams as my weak, but nasty fingers find its sockets.
“Come on!” I yell to the others. “He’s just a fucking fish!”
He’s obviously not a fish. He’s some kind of water demon, maybe. I don’t know where we are. Maybe this is what’s going on up in the floating cities. Maybe we’ve been under all of this horror the whole time.
There’s so much screaming. The creature is screaming, the women are shouting, someone is coming through the door. I knew there wouldn’t just be one, and I know there’s a chance some of us will be hurt. But everyone is already hurt.
Brrwwoaawww!
A deep bellow fills the room as a massive red-hued beast with huge horns crashes through the door, knocks me to the side as gently as a charging bull can, and gores our captor to death. His horns pass straight through the apparently quite vulnerable flesh of the octopus face and cause it to start to hemorrhage what I can only describe as green goo.
It’s a disgusting way to go, but very satisfying. The bull creature keeps the evil alien pinned to the wall until the light fades from his eyes, and some of the malevolence leaves the room.
I and the other women are suitably shocked and impressed, some more than others.
Seeker is whimpering and covering her eyes. I put myself between her and the bull man. I want to protect her. I want to protect all of us. I don’t know why, but I feel immeasurably guilty for some reason, as if this is my fault.
“Don’t hurt us,” I say. “If you do, you’ll regret it.”
The Minotaur pulls free of the wall and lets the body slide down to the floor. It’s so pathetic, how quickly it went from being our biggest threat to being nothing but a sack of squid.
“I would never hurt you, pet,” he says.
He speaks with a familiarity and a warmth that indicates he might be a friend. The fact that he just gored our combined enemy to death is also a bit of a hint.
“We got captured,” I say. “All these ladies and me. The squid things have been selling them…”
“I know. I’m sorry,” he says.
Two others come in the door behind him. One is a tall, stern male with scales around his face and hands and a sort of patriarchal air about him. Very strange. Very daddy. The other is a big beefy hunter type. Both are covered in bits of green gooey blood. They must have been doing battle with the demons… if they are demons.
This is a very confusing situation, but even a rabbit knows when it has been freed from a snare without having its neck snapped, and I have that feeling now.
“She’s safe,” the Minotaur says. “She’s okay.”
CHAPTER 9
What happens next is a mess. All of us are herded out of the place the others were being held, and into a ship of some kind. The women are scared and hurt, and most of them think they’re just being abducted again. They’re probably right.
The aliens who have us in their custody try their best to be reassuring, but once you’ve been hurt by a big evil-looking alien beast, you don’t trust one again very quickly.
I am the least hurt of all, but even I have a butt plug to remove that shouldn’t be there. The feeling of being violated by a powerful creature who wants nothing but to use you is terrible.
