The Melier: Prodigal Son Read online

  The skin on her neck tightened, remembering how he’d licked her there, like an animal about to devour its prey. A last shiver curled through her before sleep was too hard to fight any longer.

  TWELVE

  Dania huddled against the wall beside her bed, her hands covering her face. She could feel the trembling of her fingers against her forehead. Terrified wasn't a strong enough word to describe her current state of mind.

  I'm going crazy.

  She bit into her bottom lip.

  I must be going crazy.

  Once more, her tear ducts began to leak as her emotions hit a ceiling. What was real and what wasn't?

  For days she’d been seeing things. Horrific, hair-raising, disgusting things. Crawling creatures that shouldn’t exist, and non-human men covered in gore or half alive and in the throes of death, or already lifeless upon the ground or pinned to the walls.

  She’d seen the feathered man again too. Sometimes he was clean, other times he was covered in... fluids. So many different things—chunks of flesh, multicolored slime, entrails, or blood.

  A shaky exhale jittered her lips.

  Dania had never seen his face. He was always turned away from her. Sometimes she caught glimpses of him walking past the doorways—it didn’t matter which one.

  He moved too fast—the kind of unnatural swiftness monsters in horror vids moved with—and it startled her. She’d only ever seen a faint side profile, and even that was blurred in her mind’s eye.

  He’d been there when she woke only minutes ago. An inhumanly tall, dark figure standing at the foot of her bed, facing the wall, hands occasionally gesturing as if he were silently speaking to someone she couldn’t see.

  There was the instant clenching of all her muscles as she screamed and scurried over the side of the bed to get away from the dark stranger—no one should have to experience that powerless panic.

  The only thing she could think to do was huddle down and cover her face like a scared child. What if, after all this time, he was real? Really here?

  Last night was the worst because she saw someone she’d met once before. Him. The businessman. The one-night stand. He was different somehow, and it wasn’t just the gore that clung to his half naked body.

  Dania had the overwhelming feeling he was dead—they were all dead—and she was being haunted by tortured ghosts in their afterlife. Never had she believed in the paranormal, but she couldn’t deny how bizarre this was.

  She took a deep breath, bolstering herself up. She had to know if he was still in the room.

  One...

  Two...

  Three!

  She parted the fingers over her right eye, the one she was born with, and frantically glanced around.

  Gone. She was alone again.

  Dania exhaled and dropped her other hand.

  There!

  He was back!

  Dania shrieked and ran.

  At the last second, he turned to walk into her path. Dania’s feet were already carrying her too fast to stop and she ran right... through him.

  Her bare arms crossed over her chest, clutching at them, preparing for a ghostly chill to zip through her, but none came as she watched the alien man walk purposefully right through her bedroom wall.

  Dania’s heavy panting broke the silence as she stood there, hugging herself.

  He didn't come back.

  ****

  Dania clutched her comm in her clammy palm. Stress was making her stomach ache.

  "No, I need the soonest opening you have," she pleaded with the booking admin for Dr. Ullem. "Something is wrong, and I can't go another night like this!"

  "Ma'am, the soonest is—"

  "I'm begging you." It was the seventh night seeing the feathered alien and every other vile thing. Her only comfort was that they weren’t real—yet that was almost just as frightening. Dania had gone half out of her mind.

  It was her eye. Her new eye. Whoever he was, wherever the monsters came from, she couldn't see any of it with the eye she was born with. Only the synthetic one.

  It had to be a glitch, but she’d already been petrified of her own shadow by the time she’d figured it out.

  After a long sigh, the booking admin replied, "I could book you in tonight, but there will be an after-hours f—"

  "Done!" Dania exclaimed. "I’ll take it!”

  The hours couldn’t go by fast enough, and by the time she was entering the silent lobby, she’d already seen three mutilated alien bodies, one of which was crawling toward her with its guts dragging against the ground.

  Dania hugged her red coat tighter around her body to stave off the chill that had nothing to do with the frigid bite of the cold season.

  She glanced around when the doors shut behind her. The place was empty, but the lights were on. The snooty receptionist wasn’t there at the desk to her right.

  “Hello?” she called.

  The door to the examination room opened and Dr. Ullem stuck his head out. “Dania,” he said and smiled, opening the door wider. “Come on back. Talnys already went home.” He gestured toward the desk. “Sorry about the confusion.”

  Dania exhaled with relief and rushed across the small lobby, brushing past the graying doctor. “For a minute I thought I got the time wrong.”

  He closed the door and took a seat on his waiting hover-chair, waving his hand toward the examination table. “Please, sit.” Dania did, not bothering to take off her jacket. “Talnys said you’re... seeing things?”

  She nodded, hoping none of the gory creatures would show up while she was stuck in the small room. The sharp scent of disinfectant stung her nose and she rubbed it.

  “Awful, disgusting things,” Dania confessed. “I... I thought I was going c-crazy,” she stammered, talking excessively with her hands as she usually did when she had a hard time making sense of something. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” she momentarily covered her face with her palms, then tucked a frizzy curl behind her ear. “I’d... I’d rather be half blind than see these—these things the rest of my life.”

  Dr. Ullem nodded, his mouth tugging down at one corner, his expression giving Dania the impression he empathized with her.

  “You believe it’s the synthetic eye?” he asked, donning a pair of latex gloves, grabbing a palm-sized tool, and moving closer to her.

  “If I close my left eye when I’m seeing these things, they disappear.”

  “Lie back and let’s have a look.”

  Dania scooted back and lifted her legs onto the table, trying her best to relax and lie back as instructed. “You don’t understand what it’s been like,” she murmured, eyes watering.

  Dr. Ullem paused and cleared his throat before leaning over her, holding up his tool to examine her eye more closely. His fingers were warm, even through the latex, as he gently held open her eyelid. She fought the urge to blink against the bright light.

  The light turned off and he backed away, moving to his station and opening a drawer. “It’s probably a mild malfunction,” he told her, but he didn’t sound entirely confident. “I’m going to inject you with medical nanos that will help break down and replace the tech inside your eye.”

  “I’ll stop seeing things?” She couldn’t keep the hope from her voice. She was at her wits end.

  “Yes,” he nodded, pulling two syringes from the drawer before punching in a code on the cabinet below it. It popped open, cool mist swirling out from the blue-white light. He grabbed two, short glass bottles that made a musical tink-tink when they touched. “Roll up your sleeve for me.”

  Dania quickly obliged, exposing the skin of her arm to be swabbed with alcohol. A heavy breath rushed from her after Dr. Ullem administered the shots, and with it, tears.

  “I just—I can’t believe it was that simple this whole time.” She blinked through a short laugh and wiped the back of her hand along her temple to brush away the moisture. She accepted the tissues he offered and dabbed her eyes.

  “You shouldn’t have
come here,” Dr. Ullem whispered, almost to himself. Dania’s gaze darted to him as she blinked repeatedly, her tear ducts refusing to stop their waterworks. His skin was pale, and that small frown had dipped farther, as if something heavy weighed on him.

  “Doctor?”

  A wave of nausea hit her. Stomach clenching, she dry-coughed, her head spinning. The lights took on a hazy sheen and the table below her felt unstable.

  “I’m sorry, Dania,” he hastily apologized, and cleared his throat, scrubbing a hand through his peppered hair. “They threatened my family if—if I didn’t—”

  The door swung open, the knob banging into the wall. It echoed through the room and pounded against her ears.

  Dania’s heart leapt into her throat. She was choking on it. She was sure because it certainly felt as if the organ was clogging her esophagus while it pumped overtime when her eyes laid upon the newcomer.

  The alien creep from the bar.

  So easily recognizable by his sickly yellow skin and large warts that pimpled his face and hands. Dania thought he’d gotten bored of being ignored. She hadn’t seen him at Revolution 5 in... she couldn’t remember when.

  “Good job, doc,” he grunted, his flat lips tugging up to reveal blunt, yellow teeth the same color as his skin. A waft of hot, rancid breath blew over her when he got close. “Credits will be transf—”

  “I don’t want your money,” he pushed off his hover-chair and slammed the cabinet shut. “Take what you were after and leave my family alone.”

  The creep chuckled, his bumpy knuckle curling against Dania’s cheek. A frustrated whine escaped her when she couldn’t move. She could only lie there and accept his revolting, clammy skin against hers.

  Her stomach roiled and she wished she could heave.

  The creep moved his hands underneath her, lifting her to his squishy chest. Her head lolled to the side. She couldn’t control her body—it wouldn’t listen to her—no matter how hard she tried to flail and fling herself away from him.

  Her muscles rippled as she wanted to scream and kick and cry for help, but all she could do was lie there, nearly paralyzed.

  “I’m sorry, Dania,” Dr. Ullem confessed again, and by the miserable slant to his features, she believed him.

  Me too.

  THIRTEEN

  A tapping on glass echoed like a hammer through Dania’s brain, and it kept on going.

  Tap, tap, tap, tap.

  She found the strength to groan her displeasure, which only drew more tapping. Her limbs felt heavy and her mouth was so dry it hurt to swallow, as if a wad of fabric had been shoved halfway down her throat. A cough ripped up her esophagus, bringing with it a modicum of moisture.

  “Wake up, my dearest.”

  She knew that voice.

  She willed her eyes to open and, little by little, her lids separated, bright light causing her pupils to painfully shrink.

  “There she is,” the creep chuckled, sounding like someone whistling with a blade of grass. Eerie. “The stasis fog will wear off soon.”

  She lifted her throbbing head, eyes dashing around once they adjusted further. She was in a transparent cage, holes drilled around the sides, cool air from the room drifting in.

  A cargo crate. She was in a glass cargo crate.

  Goosebumps rippled over her body, tingling her arms.

  There were more crates with more women, all unconscious, most of them naked. Dania looked down at her own body then, noticing her clothes were gone as well. She straightened herself as quickly as she could, her limbs feeling clumsy and heavy.

  “Where am I?” she croaked.

  “On our ship.”

  “Whose ship?”

  “The Rustlers.” He grinned, yellowed teeth making her skin tighten.

  Ice slithered through Dania’s veins, her lips parting as she exhaled roughly.

  The Rustlers.

  One of the most notorious flesh trading gangs across all five trade planets. Dania didn’t need to watch the news to know who they were. People talked.

  She’d heard Dor Nye’d cracked down on planet customs in cooperation with the Intergalactic Coalition, but anyone with sense knew that wouldn’t happen overnight. It would take... decades most likely.

  It seemed hopeless to her. The universe was so vast—Dor Nye being one of the busiest trade planets—that she couldn’t envision slavers ever stopping.

  The idea was noble, and maybe the laws would reduce the amount of abductions, but it would never end. There weren’t enough resources to accomplish such a behemoth feat.

  “I don’t have much in savings, but you can have it if you take me home.” She pulled herself to her knees and leaned on the glass. The crate was too short to stand up in. To her disappointment, the stranger laughed.

  “Oh, my dearest, you are too much.” She shuddered, revolted at his endearment. “Whatever you have in savings is measly compared to the millions we’ll make off you.”

  Dania’s jaw sagged. “What?” she breathed.

  His beady eyes traveled over her naked flesh and she immediately tried to cover herself once more. His knuckle curled and dragged down the glass as if he wished to stroke her. “I saw you first.” His tone was soft, longing, before his forehead wrinkled. “I don’t want to give you to them.”

  “Them?” Dania tried to remain calm. “Them who?”

  “Trepnils,” he sneered. She didn’t understand.

  “What do they want with me?” Dania was no one. A bartender, and an average one at that. She had no important family members either. An insignificant nomad. “This must be a mistake.”

  “Who knows the ways of those dry-scaled lizards?” Creep chuffed and lightly drew circles on the glass, seemingly wallowing like a child who didn’t get his way.

  Dania knew how to deal with younglings. They normally just wanted to feel like someone was listening to them—they wanted to be heard.

  “Hey,” she whispered softly, trying her best not to retch when he looked directly at her. She peeled her arms away from her body, hating how his gaze eagerly roamed her, and placed her palms against the glass. “What’s your name?”

  Almost too quickly, he said, “Walbinophibahkinlup.”

  Jesus.

  “Can I call you Wallie?”

  For a handful of seconds, his eyes narrowed, and Dania thought she blew the whole thing, but then he shrugged and nodded. “Yes, my dearest.”

  Ugh.

  “I don’t want to go with them,” she confessed with the utmost sincerity because she didn’t—she wanted to go home. “If you saw me first, why do the Trep... Trep—”

  “Trepnils,” he supplied.

  “Thank you, Wallie,” she forced a small smile and his breath fogged up the glass with his longwinded sigh. Dania was so fucking happy she couldn’t smell the rancid air, else she would surely vomit. “Why do the Trepnils get me?”

  “They paid us to capture you,” he groused, clearly miffed. “Their leader wanted us to keep tabs on you, and mess with your head.”

  Dania’s brows drew together, and she hoped he believed her to be frightened, because it was certainly true. “Mess with my head?”

  “Paid us to break into your apartment a couple times,” he admitted. “Made the Doc give up serial numbers to your optical nanos so they could be hacked.”

  Dania’s gut shivered and she withdrew her hands from the glass to cover herself. Months of being paranoid about burglars, and then that awful week of heinous creatures and beings haunting her everywhere she went...

  It was all orchestrated.

  “I’m sorry, my dearest. Forgive me,” Wallie hurriedly beseeched.

  Dania’s knees trembled with her mixed feelings and the aftereffects of the drug as another person walked through a sliding white door, camouflaged into the expanse of the wall. Everything was blinding white or glass, except the humans within the crates, making everything almost too bright.

  “Ahh, our cash cow,” the newcomer said. He looked like Wallie, ex
cept larger, older.

  Her arms tightened around her breasts, and she drew up her knees. “Who are you?”

  “The boss,” he smiled, teeth even more of a gunky mustard yellow than Wallie’s. “Did you think our group was run by this little idiot?” He hitched a thumb toward Wallie, who scowled, and rasped a chuckle. “My son might be in my position one day, but he’s still got a lot of learning to do.” He glared at Wallie.

  Silence.

  “Go check on the others,” he said to his son. Wallie grunted, running his eyes over her one last time before he made his way to the other side of the room.

  I’m gonna be sick.

  “I like you,” his old, thin lips whispered. If he locked up the people he liked, Dania didn’t want to know what happened to those he didn’t. “Most Therran females cry and whine and try to barter when they wake up,” he shook his head, chuckling, making that same grass whistling noise as Wallie had. “My son would be all over you if I let him—obsessed if you ask me.”

  He stood there in silence, large warts darkening when Dania didn’t say anything. It became uncomfortable, like he was expecting gratitude for the favor of keeping his disgusting son from pawing her flesh and doing god knew what else.

  “Thank you?” Her eyes drifted to Wallie as he leered at the other locked up women before landing back on the father. “What happens next?”

  Watery saliva flooded her mouth and she gulped it down, jaw clenching. An uncontrollable tremble jittered her entire being and she couldn’t make it stop.

  “Auction you off.”

  Auction?

  “But I thought...” Dania’s blood pumped faster. “I thought the Trepnils—”

  “I can make more off your hide in the auction.” He cleared his throat and Dania had to bite her bottom lip to stop from gagging at the gurgling sound of phlegm and the subsequent audible gulp when he swallowed it.

  Dania didn’t know how much more she could take

  “Almost our entire client list is coming to see all these Therran’s we’ve rounded up.” His gaze swiveled around. “We have a few bets on who will fork over the most credits to win you.” Just like Wallie, his eyes greedily traveled over her huddled body, making her feel cheap and dirty. “You have more fat, and there are many species who enjoy such rich delicacies.”