Human Pet Pound (Possessive Aliens) Read online

  Then the alien’s gray skin just sort of splits, like an insect emerging from a chrysalis, except instead of a cocoon he appears to have been wearing another alien. What comes out of the chrysalis is fucking huge. Nine or ten feet tall at the very least, as broad as the door he just walked through, and absolutely covered in muscles and blades.

  “You do not kill humans. Humans are special,” the beast who is all knives hisses, his horns pricked forward with rage.

  “SCYTHKIN!”

  The catcher and my ex-owner scream the word in the way my ancestors might have screamed, “BEAR!”

  What follows is a bloodbath, though really, I suppose it would be better described as a sanguine shower. The catcher and my ex-owner are both summarily dispatched and thoroughly decommissioned. Which is another way of saying their parts go absolutely everywhere in a very messy fashion.

  I stand there, staring. At first my jaw is dropped, but I close my mouth to stop any bits of alien from getting into me.

  I have never seen a scythkin before. I have heard of them. They are the bad guys of the universe, the boogeymen haunting all the other alien species who just want to live quiet lives selling humans and being generally merciless.

  From what I’ve heard, they’re not prone to popping up out of other aliens and destroying alien personages, but I’m glad this one has chosen to do just that. He kills with alacrity and obvious joy, with a great smile on his fanged and incongruously handsome face.

  He’s sexy as hell.

  That’s what hits me first, right before a disembodied hand.

  This grotesque scene does not unfold much longer. Apparently satisfied that none of the little bits are going to get up and try to defy him again, he turns to me and looks at me with eyes which blaze red with fury-fire. His extended blades drip with blood and something gooey.

  I’m not sure what to say.

  “Uhm. Thank you?”

  He lifts a blood drenched hand and points a clawed finger at me.

  “You’re mine.”

  “What?”

  “You’re mine.” He says it simply, as if it is a fact that I should be aware of and just accept without question, as if being his is some inevitability no sane woman would question.

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m not anybody’s. I belong to me.”

  “You belong to me. I just paid for you in blood. Now, come.”

  Come? He talks to me like a damn dog. But I know if I flee now, I’ll be picked up and taken back to the pound, and then odds are I’ll be shot like a dog too. So I follow him. Not because I’m his, but because I want to be safe.

  I catch up with him after a few rushed steps. He didn’t look back to see if I was following. He just assumed I’d be there. What an asshole. What an amazing asshole who just for sure saved my life.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We need to meet back up with my kin,” he says. “There’s thirteen of them waiting on the ship. I said I’d only be a minute, and that was an hour ago.”

  “And then what, you got distracted?”

  He gives me a dark look under razor brows. “And then I thought I’d do a good deed and rescue something from the pound.”

  “I’m not something. I’m someone.”

  “SpacetAto spacetatO,” he replies, getting it wrong both times.

  It would be polite of him to introduce himself, but I don’t think this alien is concerned with politeness. I notice as he strides away that some of his blades are retracting into his body. He’s able to pull them in at will to avoid killing somebody if they happen to get too close to him.

  I keep my distance nonetheless, but trail after him toward the dock, wondering what the immediate future has in store for me. A ship full of creatures like him is going to make for one wild ride, that I am sure of.

  Back down on the docks, I find myself in the middle of a crowd. Every time the scythkin takes a step, the other aliens take several steps away. He is parting the crowds without trying, and I am right by his side, no longer needing to hide. I like this feeling. It feels like power. One could say that because I’m naked, I am lewdly displayed to those all around, but they're not looking at me. They’re looking at him, at the threat he exudes when even on a casual stroll. Nobody is going to lay a finger on me now. No catcher’s noose will find its way back around my neck with this alien by my side.

  He strides confidently toward an open space between two ships and stops so suddenly I almost run into him and impale myself on a rear ridge which retracts the moment my nose gets within a hair of it. He’s aware of me, even when I’m behind him.

  “Where the…” he utters a sound which hits my ear like a curse.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “It was right here…” He looks around, bewildered for a moment. He’s almost cute when he’s confused, like a big sharp teddy bear.

  John

  I have been distracted by this human with the blonde hair and the dark eyes and the face of sweet ferocity and now the ship is missing.

  It was docked here. I am certain of it. Just as I am trying to come to terms with the absence, a messenger comes skittering up to me.

  “There’s a message for you, sir.”

  He hands me a scrap of metal with two words scratched into it. It’s from the first hatched of my broodkin, a scythkin of few words. I’m surprised he bothered to leave a note, but I guess he wanted to make his point:

  TOO LATE

  “Ass,” I growl, crumpling the note in my hand, metal folding in on itself so quickly it liquifies at the joins and drips out of my fist onto the dock.

  They’ve threatened to leave without me before, but this is the first time it has ever happened. Tahrek told me they’d go if I wasn’t back on board in twenty minutes. I guess I should have listened this time, but saving humans is more important than keeping to some completely arbitrary schedule to go ruin some lives somewhere else in the galaxy.

  I saw the human being captured and I had to go after her. Tahrek wanted to leave her be. He said that there were many captive humans on the station and there was no point getting behind schedule for just one of them. I did not agree. I don’t think he really agreed either. Tahrek is just eager to spread his seed on some freshly-laid eggs. He has a matriarch to impress.

  We usually destroy every planet we encounter, leaving it a brood site for our matriarchs to fight over. We’ve been trying a new strategy lately, only destroying every other planet. The idea is to conserve some planets so we have something to colonize later on. After we turn a planet into a brood site, it can take decades for it to begin to regenerate new life, and what we destroy never returns in its original form.

  It has been brought to our attention that this is an ethical issue.

  Itch

  “So, the ship’s gone?” I ask a question which does not really need to be a question at all. It’s pretty obvious that the ship is gone, by merit of the fact that it is not here.

  “Bastards,” he growls. “I’ll teach them to try to teach me a lesson.”

  “Are you telling me that we’re stuck on a planet where you just murdered a couple of somebodies? Because I am really very much not comfortable with that at all.”

  “We’re going to get off the planet, don’t worry about that. All you need to worry about is behaving yourself.”

  “Behaving was never my strong suit.”

  “Well, it’s going to have to be,” he says. “Unless you want me to murder everybody on this planet.”

  “I could live with that.”

  He barks a snarling laugh. “So could I, but we’re under orders to only slaughter every other planet. This is a station, technically. A neutral zone. I’ve already killed more than my allotted number of victims.”

  “I don’t care. Everybody here deserves to die.”

  “I like the way you think,” he smiles, those fanged teeth and sharp brows, hard lines of face and jaw making his expression fierce even though he seems happy. I have a flashback to when he was massac
ring the catcher and my ex-owner, how thrilled he was to be tearing into them, and how much I loved seeing it happen. There are so many who deserve death. I hope I can be there when this one brings it to some more of them.

  “Fierce little thing,” he purrs, reaching out with his clawed hand. The sharp spikes on his fingers retract, so when his fingers make contact with my skin, they are gentle. “I like you, human.”

  “You’re alright,” I tell him. I owe him my life, sure, but I’m not keen on aliens who believe in owning people, and he clearly belongs to that group. “What’s your name?”

  “You may call me John.”

  I look at ten feet of muscle, sharp edges, and fury. “John?”

  He nods.

  “Alright, John. I’m Itch.”

  “Itch?

  “That’s what I’ve been called most of my life, as far as I can recall.”

  “It doesn’t suit you,” he says.

  “Suits me better than John suits you,” I reply.

  “Is this what we’re going to do? Insult one another?”

  “Probably.”

  “Sir, you’re going to need to put your pet on a leash.”

  Our bickering is interrupted by the arrival of an official. He is furry and wearing a sash which marks him as a personage of authority. He walks up behind John and somehow doesn’t notice that John is a scythkin warrior dripping with the blood of his enemies. Maybe it’s not so obvious from the back. Or maybe the only thing the official is looking at is me, a human who is not in the process of being humiliated and treated like an animal.

  Aliens hate humans. Except maybe the alien standing in front of me, defending me.

  John answers without turning around. “My pet doesn’t like leashes.”

  “Leashes are mandatory for pets, sir.”

  My scythkin owner rounds on the official with a snarl and the official takes several steps backward as he takes in the sheer horror of the visage and body of a scythkin who has yet to hide himself away in some socially acceptable suit.

  “My pet. Does not like. Leashes,” John repeats, slowly and deliberately, each and every word containing a multitude of unspoken threats.

  I find myself grinning broadly. Hell yeah. For the first time since I was born, somebody is fully on my side.

  “Make sure she’s under effective control,” the official stammers.

  “I could have this entire planet under effective control if I so desired.”

  The official replies with helpless stammering, a sort of series of sounds that are probably supposed to mean something but stop just shy of actually making sense.

  “I need a ship,” John says. “Class 2 or better.”

  “Yes, sir, of course, sir. Right away, sir.”

  “That is how I am used to being addressed,” John says with a fanged smile at me.

  “I am not calling you sir,” I deadpan.

  “Maybe not today,” he allows. “But soon, I think.”

  “Never.”

  “Come on,” he says, changing the subject with remarkable tact for a creature whose primary method of interacting with the world is destroying it. “We have a ship to catch, and some broodkin to track down.”

  I have no agenda. Freshly freed from the people pound, anything could happen and I guess I’d have to be okay with it. I tell myself that’s why I’m following him. Not because he owns me, but because I’ve got a spare ten minutes or maybe ten years. Who knows.

  A ship is procured for him with frankly astounding haste. Getting the murderous scythkin off the station is apparently worth sacrificing a ship for. I am jealous. Nobody fears me. Reality shifts to accommodate John. I wish I were ten feet tall and sharp enough to destroy any who opposed me.

  Before he allows me to board, he spends a short, but thorough amount of time inspecting both the exterior and interior of the vessel.

  “Have to make sure they haven’t rigged it to explode within a few light years of this place,” he explains. “There have been attacks of that sort on our kind of late.”

  “I guess not everybody is a fan of having their home worlds turned to a scythkin spawning zone.”

  “Hardly anybody is a fan,” he replies, missing my attempt at humor. “Aside from those we turn into fans.”

  I look at him, deadpan. If he’s not laughing at my jokes, then I’m not laughing at his either.

  “Come, human. We must depart. I would like to rejoin my broodkin as quickly as possible.”

  “My name isn’t human. It’s Itch,” I remind him, pointing to the frayed old collar around my neck.

  “It’s really not,” he replies.

  “Your name’s not John either,” I say as I step into the shuttle and the door is closed behind me. Here I am, about to blast off one shit hole nasty little planetoid on my way to probably help watch another one be ruined. This is what my life has come to. It’s kind of awesome.

  “Yes, it is. We will find your name once we find my brood.”

  “Where were they headed?”

  “A small planet which mostly grows grass.”

  “Your war band was going to attack some grass?”

  “No, we were going to have a picnic.”

  I snort with laughter, very much against my will, thereby losing the battle of jokes.

  “Kidding,” he says. “We were going to erase all traces of life and prepare the field for the matriarchs to lay.”

  The scythkin are not the good guys in any story. I know that much. They’re the ones we’re supposed to be afraid of. Ruthless killers, merciless marauders, they take no prisoners and they leave nothing standing.

  I may not be safe with him. I would be shocked if I was safe with him. But for some reason I feel safe anyway. Probably because he properly murdered two aliens who were trying to kill me.

  “Why did you save me?” I ask him the question as I trail after him through the innards of the ship, trying not to admire his massive, muscular, sharp physique too much. Am I supposed to be attracted to something this dangerous? He has so many masculine characteristics I don’t think I can help myself. A scythkin, I am discovering, is like a human, except much bigger, much more hostile, much sharper, much stronger, just much more muchier in general.

  “Scythkin are sworn to defend humanity.”

  “Why?”

  “We share a common ancestor. You are like us in many ways. Expansionist, you turn environments to your advantage. You conquer and you breed and you…”

  “I do none of those things. I have been bought and sold more times than I can count. I have conquered nothing, and I haven’t bred even once.”

  I realize that I sound as though I am complaining about those things, and maybe I am. Would it be so awful if I were to conquer something small?

  “When your species was at its height, it did those things. Of course, that is difficult now.”

  “Now that we are at the bottom of the food chain, kept as captive pets?”

  “Yes. Exactly.” He points to the chair beside the captain’s chair, which he has just taken for himself. “Sit down and put your seatbelt on. The acceleration of this vessel exceeds your body’s capacity for being slammed into a wall.”

  I don’t want to do what I’m told, but I also don’t want to be flung into the hull, so I take a seat next to him. There are only two seats on this ship. I’m betting they match two bunks in the back.

  He’s going to want something from me. Nobody gets anything for free.

  “So you’re not taking me to be a snack at your scythkin picnic? You’re not going to feed me to a matriarch?”

  “Matriarchs don’t have a taste for humans,” he deadpans.

  He might be joking. I can't tell.

  “You’re mine,” he repeats what he said earlier. “I’m taking you with me because you are mine. You don’t have to worry about being eaten, because you…”

  “… are yours. So you keep saying.” I settle into the seat and wait for the queasy-making spaceship zoomy zoom stuff to start
happening. I’ve never been a fan of acceleration. I usually feel it while I’m locked in a small dark cage. This is the first time I’ve been in a seat next to the pilot. Things look different here. Lots of buttons and shiny things. Some of them go bwoop in a way that I find very reassuring.

  John the scythkin takes his seat next to me and places his massive, dangerous hand on the controls before glancing over at me with his hot gaze.

  “Ready, human?”

  “Ready.”

  He pushes a lever forward and the ship zips out of the bay, skating across reality with a smooth hum. One moment we are looking at a great spray of silver stars, the next everything is a very pretty blur.

  “Wow! I didn’t know the stars could do that.”

  “The stars aren’t doing anything. Your perception is too slow, human. That’s what makes them look what you call pretty, and what I would call blurred.”

  “So you’re kind of a jerk, huh.”

  He laughs. “Again, that is a trick of your perception.”

  “Oh, so I’m just imagining you’re being a jerk?”

  “You should go back and check out the sleeping quarters,” he says, changing the subject. “You seem to be irritable. You may need some rest. Or some food. The ship should be stocked.”

  “You’re going to let me wander around by myself?”

  “Sure.”

  “Huh.”

  I’ve never been allowed off-leash like this before. As long as I can remember I have been chained or leashed or caged. But John doesn’t seem to feel the need to control me that way. He lets me roam the ship at will. I suppose there’s no way off it, but there’s plenty of trouble a rogue human can get into.

  I hook my thumb underneath the collar around my neck as I walk around. It’s become a habit from all the times I tried to get it off. Now I play with it almost unconsciously. I’ve gotten so used to tugging at it I think I’ve started to hold onto it like a security blanket, kind of.

  The ship is fairly simple. There’s the cockpit where John’s flying the ship. There’s a general feeding area, sort of kitchen thing behind it, and then a bathing area behind that, and then behind that is the bedroom. There might be two chairs up in the cockpit, but there aren’t two beds here. It’s just one big bed with a bit of floor. I guess that’s where I will be sleeping.