Life . . . or death?
The words came to her like a ghost from the past, the voice deep and airless. Inhuman.
She hadn’t heard that airless growl in years, yet it was one she would never forget. It filtered into her head now as if the creature from her nightmarish ordeal in Alaska were standing right next to her now. She knew that was impossible. The Ancient was dead. His words were only an echo across time, like the memories he’d left planted inside her.
Life . . . or death? How it shall end depends on you.
She hadn’t understood what he was asking of her in those terrifying moments before he removed the alien bit of biotechnology from his arm, then held it out to her with an impossible choice.
Life or death? You must decide right now.
Jenna closed her eyes and slid down into the soapy water, submerging her head in the hopes it might douse the Ancient’s voice and ease the odd sensation still droning in her skull. She popped back up a moment later, sluicing the suds off her face.
She’d left a washcloth on the edge of the tub somewhere. Eyes shut, she reached out blindly with her hand to search for it.
Instead, she felt the sudsy water and tub disappear and her fingers closed around the cold grip of a four-foot blade she now carried at her side.
No, not her fingers.
Not her blade.
She opened her eyes and found herself alone in the dark, moving through the middle of a dense boreal forest. Frost-coated leaves crunched underfoot, the ground hard with the coming of winter. A frigid wind blew through the branches of tall pines and spruces, making her breath steam as it rolled through her parted lips.
Not her lips.His.
The Ancient who had altered her life completely all those years ago.
Like a video reel of his memories playing in her senses, she got a front row seat to random snippets of his life and the things he did while he lived, from the mundane to the sadistic and everything in between.
This was a new one.
He trudged through the tight clusters of trees, heading somewhere with purpose. Overhead, a thin crescent moon hung in the cold, cloudless night sky as the sound of his brisk footsteps stirred small animals to bolt from their shelters and scatter into the underbrush.
He moved deeper into the forest, his gaze trained on a peculiar formation of dark boulders several hundred yards ahead in the darkness. As he neared it, his pace slowed to a stop. Blade in hand, he pivoted to scan his surroundings, his preternatural gaze piercing the taiga, searching for signs of trouble or evidence that he was being followed.
Nothing but silence answered.
Not the halfling sons they had sired, only to have the bastards scorn them as monsters and begin to turn on them as enemies.
There was nothing around him but endless dark, and the bracing wind.
Sheathing his blade, he swung back around to approach a large formation of giant rocks that jutted out from the uneven ground. One of the boulders, the bulkiest of the group, stood taller than even his seven-foot height. It was that one he went to, pausing in front of it. He pressed his large,glyph-covered hand against the stone. A vibration hummed beneath his palm and fingers, and Jenna realized it was taking a reading of his DNA.
With only the subtlest shift in the air, the entire rock formation vanished. In its place was an enormous craft that was nothing of this Earth. One end of the huge ship had suffered severe damage. Irreparable, by the look of it.
The Ancient pressed his palm to another panel on the exterior of the craft and waited for the lock to release. A large hatch lifted. He ducked beneath it to step inside.
The interior was sleek and bare and cool, with corridors going in several directions. He followed one that led deeper into the ship. He paid no attention to the banks of lifeless controls and nonfunctioning monitors.
There was no need, after all. The vehicle that had carried him and seven other scouting conquerors from the dark planet they called home would never make another journey again. Those who had survived the crash that dropped them on this primitive rock centuries earlier were marooned here forever now.
Forced to skulk in the shadows like vermin while the sun baked the planet a full half of every day.
They should have been kings here, as they were back home.
Instead they were hostages of the light.
He moved farther inside, heading for the section of the craft where a collection of eight long containers were situated. Several of the pods were empty, their clear lids left open. The two others held the bodies of the crew mates they had lost to the killing sun’s rays shortly after their arrival.
