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Buylinks above
Intimidator, Preyfinders series Publisher: Cari Silverwood Release date: May 7th, 2014 Length: Novel of 61,000 words Genre: M/f contemporary, alien abduction romance Cover Art: Cari Silverwood Willow has her hands full scraping out a life in a grungy neighborhood where drugs and crime are the norm. Life is hard, but it’s about to get harder. Being transformed into a sexual pet for an alien warrior may be her only way out. But Stom, the man she’s been awarded to as a battle honor, has no use for a female, not when his heart is still in a million pieces. Though the need to be Stom’s mate is overwhelming her, mending his heart isn’t going to be enough. His enemies are searching, looking for the women who are more than they seem, and she’s in their hands before she discovers she’s more-than-human. Sometimes it sucks to be a chosen one. |
Intimidator, Book 2
The epilogue from Book 1, Precious Sacrifice, with Brask and Talia, actually begins this story too, so reread that to see how it will be in the book.
Chapter 1
On the planet Grearth.
The wind came from where the sun bleached the horizon, fluttering the ashes higher off the scorched ground, a bitter flock of blackness that clouded the sky for miles. Stom sucked in a breath through his mask. Unlike the trail of ten fighting men who swept out to his left and right, he’d removed his helmet – the goggles and the mask with a breathing filter was it. He needed the touch of the breeze on his face, no matter how acrid.
On his retinal map, there was a tiny green triangle at this spot. This had once been his home.
Nasskia, little Bon, and her older brother Septis would lie here, somewhere, buried underneath the ash at his feet. Unless they’d been unlucky and the Bak-lal had taken them, changed them; if so, they could be anywhere on Grearth. Their nerves hard-wired. Their skin armored, their brains pumped with instructions from the nearest factory queen. Their personalities gone. Even the little ones like Bon. His throat tightened, his eyes stung, and a small muscle beside his eye twitched.
Despite the tight-held ball of emotions inside him, Stom treated his environs to another careful visual sweep. Nothing moved.
Elger’s voice buzzed in his ear comm. “It’s clear, Stom. We haven’t seen a Bak soldier for days.”
With their leader dead three days ago, Stom was filling in. He grunted affirmation to Elger. Other patrols had been ambushed; theirs had been relatively lucky for three days running. “Rest. Keep your eyes up.”
He hunched down onto his heels but kept his mech rifle in his hands. The last Baks on this part of the continent had been a weedy, damaged force. Maybe they could cleanse the whole planet. Never been done before, but gods, they needed to.
There’d never been a starfarer home planet invaded before. How the Bak-lal had achieved this was a mystery. In one night, the Bak-lal had appeared in armies of converted people and insect beast machines.
Once, above his head would’ve swayed a tangled canopy of trees. Grearth, forest planet.
He felt his hand move on the padding inside his glove. His skin was striped with black, his color the mark of the Feya, a people born under trees.
When it had happened, he’d been off planet. A few million had been evacuated. Some higher up had held off using the Planet Breakers and instead ordered Grearth razed by flame. The difference had seemed miniscule. Turn the planet into dust, or burn it. He’d watched from holoscreen as they’d detonated the bombs, the firestorms rendered in deep reds, oranges and black. The superheated carpet of fire had crept silently across the world, burning everything to nothing.
Yet the evidence before his eyes had meant zero. He hadn’t believed, not until they’d been dropped in to clean up remnants.
At least someone would have a future here, maybe not for a hundred years, but the world would recover. He stared bleakly outward, vision blurred. Nasskia was gone. His bond mate. His heart. His soul. His one and only Nasskia who could never be replaced, and his little ones. May demons take the Bak-lal; his little ones were gone too.
His eyes stung with wetness again, but he refused to blink, sniff or show weakness. Someone would make this land green and well again, just not him.
Slowly he stood, with a handful of his burnt land in his left fist. He opened his hand, and let it fall away. The acrid smell penetrated his mask.
Before him, on the ground, among the fragments of burned earth and wood and perhaps Feya, the black grit stirred. An eye blinked up at him.
A creature surged upright in an eruption of black, its arms reaching for him. The ashes whirled. To either side, other scorched figures flew up, uncovering themselves and lunging at his armored warriors. Without hesitation, he shot the one in front of him, then swung his rifle and shot those fighting his men when he could. Pieces of Bak-lal soldier splattered and joined the dark floating flecks. At least none of these had grown weapons from their limbs. Those ones were difficult to kill.
As always when they met the converted, he repeated the words in his head. Not people. Not people, not anymore.
Screams began.
His men were dying.
A new thing. Some of the enemy planted glowing hands on his men.
“My armor’s melting!” While the soldier staggered back, a second Bak speared the soldier’s chest and slaughtered him.
Stom shot that one too. The crack and whiplash whistles of homing rounds drummed in his ears. The jerk of the rifle jarred his arm, as he fired and fired and thumped the stock into the Baks that rushed in close.
By the end he was panting, sweating, his rifle empty, his armor scarred by yellow goo that still bubbled and hissed. The last Bak-lal he’d shot lay before him, nerves dangling from its shattered neck in loops of glinting wire. A small one, this. Tiny.
He swallowed then turned and walked away.
Elger flicked his gaze across the body and said the obvious. “A child.”
“Yes.” Then he whispered more words to himself, as if he could make them true by pure force of will. “Not mine. Not. Mine. No. Kak, no.” Choking, he splayed his gloved hand over his face. “Please, god, no.”
The barrel of his abused rifle steamed, smoke curling from the end. For a second he swayed, dizzy.
His comm came alive. The Baks were rising again all over the planet. They’d been buried and factory queens were somewhere deep under the ground, waiting, replenishing from stored bodies, remaking their soldiers deadlier than before.
That was the last day his planet existed. He became an orphan. Adrift.
He left with the survivors. They brought in the Planet Breakers. The command ship showed the destruction of Grearth on screen for anyone who wanted to see the planet break apart, but he hadn’t watched. Instead, he’d been in his bunk room cleaning weapons and armor. If he couldn’t be the giver of life, he would be the bringer of death.
For many battles, he threw himself into the very worst of the fighting. He didn’t pray for his death because he wanted to live so that he could kill more of them. But the day came when he did too much and they awarded him some paltry thing, and they took him away from his game with death. Diplomacy said he must accept the accolades. And so he smiled and shook hands and said yes.
When the ship carrying him emerged from warp space, he beheld the blue-and-green planet Earth.
“This will not take long.” Once they matched him up, he’d find this pet, like they wanted him to, lose her, leave. What did he want with females? An honorable Feya male took one and only one partner in his lifetime.
He’d play this game, and accept this battle honor, only as far as he had to so as not to insult anyone.
Nasskia. His Nasskia. He wept for the first time.
*****
With the woman leaning on her, Willow had to struggle to get the keys out of her handbag. Whatever drug Kasper had given her wasn’t wearing off. Not surprising really. Poor thing. As long as she didn’t get worse...
She kept her arm around the girl’s waist and kept rummaging. One day someone would make keys that wormed through all the other crap in your handbag and leaped into your hand. Then she’d probably die of a heart attack.
Using her arm, Willow nudged the opening of the bag wider. She peered in. If she could see past her nose it would be a bonus too.
She really should get the porch light fixed.
“Where the hell are you?” she muttered. “Ah!”
The girl made small moaning noises as she inserted the key in the lock and jiggled it, searching for the angle that would engage the frickin’ stupid damn lock.
Kasper would have found out someone had stolen his victim by now. She’d seen him touch the girl’s drink. He’d spiked it. Must have. While he was talking to someone, the woman had slowly slumped into the corner at her seat near the ladies’ restroom. She’d heard through the gossip at the pub that Kasper had done this before. Dope ’em, get them back to his house, rape them, party on, let the boys do them again, then let them go miles away.
No one around here seemed game to tell the cops when they came investigating. Or if they had, there’d been no evidence found.
Lucky for this girl... Was her name Monique? Luckily, it’d been the end of her shift. After three rum and cokes, nobody was this knocked out, and it was definitely three. She’d served two of them herself.
Breathe slowly.
“Hey, girl, Monique? Is that you? Maybe you can tell me a number I can call?”
Just as she found the spot for the key, a car pulled up behind them, headlights blazing across the neighborhood. Loud music cut off and a door slammed.
She swallowed, feeling the scrape as the key rotated against metal. Once inside, she’d be safe. The house repelled angry people like it was anti-matter for angry. Crazy but true. Boyfriends with their knickers in a twist never made it through the door. If they got angry while inside, they never stayed long. It had to work on Kasper too, didn’t it?
This old house of her aunt’s was Castle Freaky. It wasn’t normal but she’d given up trying to figure out how or why, years ago, soon after her aunt died.
The key turned all the way. Click. The door swung open.
“Hey. Where the fuck are you going?” The low, menacing voice carried yards in the night air. She’d heard Kasper talk like that to a man lying gasping on the ground, two seconds before he kicked him in the guts. “That’s my girl you’ve got there. Did you ask her if she wants to go in?”
From the sounds, they’d leaped over the gate and there were too many footsteps to be from only one man.
Copyright Cari Silverwood 2013. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.
Chapter 1
On the planet Grearth.
The wind came from where the sun bleached the horizon, fluttering the ashes higher off the scorched ground, a bitter flock of blackness that clouded the sky for miles. Stom sucked in a breath through his mask. Unlike the trail of ten fighting men who swept out to his left and right, he’d removed his helmet – the goggles and the mask with a breathing filter was it. He needed the touch of the breeze on his face, no matter how acrid.
On his retinal map, there was a tiny green triangle at this spot. This had once been his home.
Nasskia, little Bon, and her older brother Septis would lie here, somewhere, buried underneath the ash at his feet. Unless they’d been unlucky and the Bak-lal had taken them, changed them; if so, they could be anywhere on Grearth. Their nerves hard-wired. Their skin armored, their brains pumped with instructions from the nearest factory queen. Their personalities gone. Even the little ones like Bon. His throat tightened, his eyes stung, and a small muscle beside his eye twitched.
Despite the tight-held ball of emotions inside him, Stom treated his environs to another careful visual sweep. Nothing moved.
Elger’s voice buzzed in his ear comm. “It’s clear, Stom. We haven’t seen a Bak soldier for days.”
With their leader dead three days ago, Stom was filling in. He grunted affirmation to Elger. Other patrols had been ambushed; theirs had been relatively lucky for three days running. “Rest. Keep your eyes up.”
He hunched down onto his heels but kept his mech rifle in his hands. The last Baks on this part of the continent had been a weedy, damaged force. Maybe they could cleanse the whole planet. Never been done before, but gods, they needed to.
There’d never been a starfarer home planet invaded before. How the Bak-lal had achieved this was a mystery. In one night, the Bak-lal had appeared in armies of converted people and insect beast machines.
Once, above his head would’ve swayed a tangled canopy of trees. Grearth, forest planet.
He felt his hand move on the padding inside his glove. His skin was striped with black, his color the mark of the Feya, a people born under trees.
When it had happened, he’d been off planet. A few million had been evacuated. Some higher up had held off using the Planet Breakers and instead ordered Grearth razed by flame. The difference had seemed miniscule. Turn the planet into dust, or burn it. He’d watched from holoscreen as they’d detonated the bombs, the firestorms rendered in deep reds, oranges and black. The superheated carpet of fire had crept silently across the world, burning everything to nothing.
Yet the evidence before his eyes had meant zero. He hadn’t believed, not until they’d been dropped in to clean up remnants.
At least someone would have a future here, maybe not for a hundred years, but the world would recover. He stared bleakly outward, vision blurred. Nasskia was gone. His bond mate. His heart. His soul. His one and only Nasskia who could never be replaced, and his little ones. May demons take the Bak-lal; his little ones were gone too.
His eyes stung with wetness again, but he refused to blink, sniff or show weakness. Someone would make this land green and well again, just not him.
Slowly he stood, with a handful of his burnt land in his left fist. He opened his hand, and let it fall away. The acrid smell penetrated his mask.
Before him, on the ground, among the fragments of burned earth and wood and perhaps Feya, the black grit stirred. An eye blinked up at him.
A creature surged upright in an eruption of black, its arms reaching for him. The ashes whirled. To either side, other scorched figures flew up, uncovering themselves and lunging at his armored warriors. Without hesitation, he shot the one in front of him, then swung his rifle and shot those fighting his men when he could. Pieces of Bak-lal soldier splattered and joined the dark floating flecks. At least none of these had grown weapons from their limbs. Those ones were difficult to kill.
As always when they met the converted, he repeated the words in his head. Not people. Not people, not anymore.
Screams began.
His men were dying.
A new thing. Some of the enemy planted glowing hands on his men.
“My armor’s melting!” While the soldier staggered back, a second Bak speared the soldier’s chest and slaughtered him.
Stom shot that one too. The crack and whiplash whistles of homing rounds drummed in his ears. The jerk of the rifle jarred his arm, as he fired and fired and thumped the stock into the Baks that rushed in close.
By the end he was panting, sweating, his rifle empty, his armor scarred by yellow goo that still bubbled and hissed. The last Bak-lal he’d shot lay before him, nerves dangling from its shattered neck in loops of glinting wire. A small one, this. Tiny.
He swallowed then turned and walked away.
Elger flicked his gaze across the body and said the obvious. “A child.”
“Yes.” Then he whispered more words to himself, as if he could make them true by pure force of will. “Not mine. Not. Mine. No. Kak, no.” Choking, he splayed his gloved hand over his face. “Please, god, no.”
The barrel of his abused rifle steamed, smoke curling from the end. For a second he swayed, dizzy.
His comm came alive. The Baks were rising again all over the planet. They’d been buried and factory queens were somewhere deep under the ground, waiting, replenishing from stored bodies, remaking their soldiers deadlier than before.
That was the last day his planet existed. He became an orphan. Adrift.
He left with the survivors. They brought in the Planet Breakers. The command ship showed the destruction of Grearth on screen for anyone who wanted to see the planet break apart, but he hadn’t watched. Instead, he’d been in his bunk room cleaning weapons and armor. If he couldn’t be the giver of life, he would be the bringer of death.
For many battles, he threw himself into the very worst of the fighting. He didn’t pray for his death because he wanted to live so that he could kill more of them. But the day came when he did too much and they awarded him some paltry thing, and they took him away from his game with death. Diplomacy said he must accept the accolades. And so he smiled and shook hands and said yes.
When the ship carrying him emerged from warp space, he beheld the blue-and-green planet Earth.
“This will not take long.” Once they matched him up, he’d find this pet, like they wanted him to, lose her, leave. What did he want with females? An honorable Feya male took one and only one partner in his lifetime.
He’d play this game, and accept this battle honor, only as far as he had to so as not to insult anyone.
Nasskia. His Nasskia. He wept for the first time.
*****
With the woman leaning on her, Willow had to struggle to get the keys out of her handbag. Whatever drug Kasper had given her wasn’t wearing off. Not surprising really. Poor thing. As long as she didn’t get worse...
She kept her arm around the girl’s waist and kept rummaging. One day someone would make keys that wormed through all the other crap in your handbag and leaped into your hand. Then she’d probably die of a heart attack.
Using her arm, Willow nudged the opening of the bag wider. She peered in. If she could see past her nose it would be a bonus too.
She really should get the porch light fixed.
“Where the hell are you?” she muttered. “Ah!”
The girl made small moaning noises as she inserted the key in the lock and jiggled it, searching for the angle that would engage the frickin’ stupid damn lock.
Kasper would have found out someone had stolen his victim by now. She’d seen him touch the girl’s drink. He’d spiked it. Must have. While he was talking to someone, the woman had slowly slumped into the corner at her seat near the ladies’ restroom. She’d heard through the gossip at the pub that Kasper had done this before. Dope ’em, get them back to his house, rape them, party on, let the boys do them again, then let them go miles away.
No one around here seemed game to tell the cops when they came investigating. Or if they had, there’d been no evidence found.
Lucky for this girl... Was her name Monique? Luckily, it’d been the end of her shift. After three rum and cokes, nobody was this knocked out, and it was definitely three. She’d served two of them herself.
Breathe slowly.
“Hey, girl, Monique? Is that you? Maybe you can tell me a number I can call?”
Just as she found the spot for the key, a car pulled up behind them, headlights blazing across the neighborhood. Loud music cut off and a door slammed.
She swallowed, feeling the scrape as the key rotated against metal. Once inside, she’d be safe. The house repelled angry people like it was anti-matter for angry. Crazy but true. Boyfriends with their knickers in a twist never made it through the door. If they got angry while inside, they never stayed long. It had to work on Kasper too, didn’t it?
This old house of her aunt’s was Castle Freaky. It wasn’t normal but she’d given up trying to figure out how or why, years ago, soon after her aunt died.
The key turned all the way. Click. The door swung open.
“Hey. Where the fuck are you going?” The low, menacing voice carried yards in the night air. She’d heard Kasper talk like that to a man lying gasping on the ground, two seconds before he kicked him in the guts. “That’s my girl you’ve got there. Did you ask her if she wants to go in?”
From the sounds, they’d leaped over the gate and there were too many footsteps to be from only one man.
Copyright Cari Silverwood 2013. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.