Greta and the Gargoyle Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Author’s note

  Greta and the Gargoyle

  Alien Abduction Book 3.5

  Honey Phillips

  Copyright © 2018 by Honey Phillips

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author.

  Disclaimer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Pro Book Cover Studio (probookcoversstudio.ecwid.com)

  Edited by Nikki Groom @ Indie Hub Editing services (www.indiehub.co.uk)

  Dedication

  To Bex McLynn, who goes above and beyond every time! Thank you, my friend.

  Chapter One

  Greta huddled in the corner of her cell. In many ways it was preferable to the last few places she had been imprisoned. The first, a dirty, overcrowded spaceship, had been followed by a slave auction where she was stored in a small holding pen that bore an uncanny resemblance to a barn stall, even down to the sawdust on the floor. Finally, and most horribly, an actual cage belonging to her new master. Her now deceased new master. Despite everything, a small smile crossed her face. That slimy – quite literally – bastard would never try to rape another unwilling woman. Standing over his dead body and watching as green blood mingled with the yellow ooze covering his skin, she had expected to feel at least a hint of guilt for taking a life. Instead, she felt only triumph.

  Unfortunately, that triumph was short-lived. The bastard’s guards had rushed in, too late to save him, but in time to have her locked up here, although she had no idea exactly where here was located. She only knew it was not Earth. Sighing, she returned to contemplation of her cell.

  White metal walls, a metal shelf for a bed, and a metal toilet were the sum total of her present existence. At least it was clean. A mist came down from the ceiling once a day, washing down everything, including Greta, and leaving everything immaculate, if somewhat damp. Perhaps it was just as well that she was still naked; at least she didn’t have to worry about wearing damp clothes.

  A panel opened soundlessly in the wall across from the bed, leaving a wide opening out into the hall. She watched it suspiciously but made no attempt to run for freedom – she had made that mistake the first time it happened, and the resulting shock had left her unconscious. Her fingers went to the shock collar that was her only adornment, once again searching uselessly for a way to remove the symbol of her slavery.

  As she fumbled with her collar, a huge figure filled the opening and she almost allowed another smile to cross her face. The guards in this place were, for the most part, brusque, efficient, and uninterested. Even the ones that had eyed her with obvious lust hadn’t laid a finger on her. This guard was different from all the others. From the beginning he had treated her respectfully, even gently. When she had made her ill-fated attempt to escape, he had been there when she regained consciousness. She had a brief impression of warmth against her face but when she opened her eyes, he had been standing across the small cell.

  Now he stood just inside the entrance, his huge body dominating the space, while the wings furled tightly against his back made him appear even larger. He made an intimidating picture and she wondered why she felt no fear. Thick, stone-colored skin covered a bald head with pointed ears, and two large tusks curved up from his lower jaw. He didn’t meet any of the standards for human attractiveness, but she didn’t find him repulsive. His most appealing feature was a stunning pair of emerald green eyes surrounded by thick, dark lashes. And his body… Her gaze traced over the most spectacular display of male strength she had ever seen. The pristine white uniform did nothing to disguise the width of his chest, his massive arms, or his heavily muscled thighs. Her cheeks heated as she realized that her eyes had come to rest on the area between those thighs and the very impressive bulge accentuated by the tight uniform and she hastily looked away.

  He stepped forward, one stride taking him halfway across the cell, and offered her a tray of food. Despite her fear that she wouldn’t be able to eat the food, she sat up eagerly, only to shudder as she got a glimpse of what he was holding. Bright blue worm-like things were actually writhing in the bowl while an unmoving one oozed black blood. Her stomach curled at the horrendous smell coming from the horrible things and she tried to wave him away.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Pushing the tray forward again, he gestured for her to take it, saying something she couldn’t understand. She scowled and looked away. The inability to communicate was one of the most frustrating parts of her whole abduction. The aliens who had taken her originally had simply placed the collar around her neck, then trained her with a series of hand gestures. If she didn’t obey, she got shocked. Apparently, they felt no need to communicate with their captives beyond the basic sit, stay, go type commands that one would use with an animal.

  The guard spoke again. He had a nice voice, deep and gravelly, like rocks tumbling over each other, but it made no difference when his words were meaningless. She sighed, knowing he was just trying to be helpful.

  “Look, I appreciate the effort, but I can’t eat those. I’m not that desperate.” Yet. The standard fare of both captives and prisoners was a type of bland gruel which made her horribly sick. On the first ship, she had received a cracker type thing that she could eat, but none had been offered since she had been imprisoned, and she had no way to ask for them. At least this guard had noticed that she wasn’t eating and had tried to find an alternative. Turning back to him, she put a tentative hand on one of his giant forearms. His skin was warm and leathery under her fingers, stretched taut over bulging muscles, and she felt a brief flash of unexpected arousal before she firmly suppressed the feeling.

  “Thank you,” she added. “I’m grateful that you’re trying to help.”

  He froze, bright green eyes focused on her hand, and she snatched it away, afraid she’d made a mistake. His eyes flicked up to her face and his mouth opened, revealing a gleaming upper row of white fangs, before he shut it again with a frustrated snarl. She flinched, but he only shook his head and turned away. The huge wings furled against his back fluttered as he left her cell. Greta sighed and went back to contemplating the walls, trying to ignore just how good it had felt to touch that warm, hard body.

  Mikaroz closed the cell door and growled in frustration. The female still wasn’t eating. He knew she was hungry – he had seen how eagerly she had looked at the tray – but then her beautiful face had fallen, and she had gestured it away. If only she could have explained what was wrong. Most Gods damned slavers at least inserted a low-level translation bug. Whoever had taken her hadn’t bothered, but perhaps he should purchase one for her…

  “What’s straightening your tusks, Mikaroz?”

  He only just managed to avoid jumping when Jervoc came up behind him and started talking. Cursing silently at his abstraction, he turned to his fellow g
uard. “The female won’t eat.”

  “What do you have there? Bargan blood worms?” Jervoc raised his brows. “That’s not standard food for a prisoner.”

  “She hasn’t eaten since she’s been here.”

  “So, you went out and spent your hard-earned credits on such a delicacy? For a prisoner?”

  “We are charged with their care,” he said defensively, even though he knew it was a feeble excuse.

  “That doesn’t mean we have to make sure they eat.” Jervoc shrugged. “If they want to starve themselves to death, that’s their problem.” He eyed the tray. “Are you going to eat them?”

  “No.” He found it hard to eat knowing that his fe…the female was hungry. “You can have them.”

  Jervoc eagerly grabbed the tray as the two of them walked to the guard post. “Why are you so concerned, anyway?”

  “She is a female.”

  “We’ve had female prisoners before.”

  “I also suspect she’s the same race as Lord Kievan’s favorite.”

  “A favorite he took to sell,” Jervoc reminded him. “Or do you think he’ll be interested in this one when he returns?”

  “No,” he growled, immediately rejecting the idea. He refused to consider the idea of his – the female becoming one of Lord Kievan’s playthings. Although she was certainly beautiful enough. His mind drifted to clouds of dark hair, eyes in a shade of green so much softer than his own, a slender graceful body. His shaft stiffened at the memory of her small, soft fingers against his arm, but he ignored his body’s traitorous response. No matter how desirable he found her, she was a prisoner and under his command. He couldn’t take advantage of that.

  Jervoc didn’t return to the subject as they entered their small office, too focused on his treat. Mikaroz paced, unable to sit down.

  “I thought I might get her a translator,” he blurted out finally.

  “What?” Jervoc looked up at that, black smearing his chin as a half-eaten worm wiggled, caught half in and half out of his mouth. He sucked it in with a satisfied sound before he continued. “You’re going to spend more of your own credits on a translator for a prisoner?”

  Mikaroz looked away, studying the bank of monitors with feigned interest. “If we could communicate, perhaps I could figure out what to feed her.”

  “Uh huh.” The other man raised a brow. “If you want to fuck her, just go ahead and do it. I won’t say anything.”

  “No!” Outrage filled him, even as his cock responded to the fleeting vision of her slender body clinging to his as they soared in the mating flight. Mating flight? What was he thinking? She had no wings to dance with him. “How can you even suggest such a thing? It is forbidden to have sex with a woman who is not your mate.”

  “On Dhalgroll.” Jervoc shrugged. “We no longer live there – why should we be bound by the rules of our ancestors?”

  “You mean you have broken the commandment?”

  The other man grinned. “Of course. My second day on the station. You don’t know heaven until you’ve sunk your cock into a wet cunt. And she’s just a prisoner – if you want this woman, then take her.”

  Despite his disgust with Jervoc’s callousness, his shaft jerked again at the image. Once more he forced his body, and his thoughts, under control and tried to respond in an impartial voice. “Even if I did decide to part from our ways, I would never take an unwilling female. And you know Lord Kievan forbids any interference with the prisoners.”

  “He’s not here,” Jervoc pointed out.

  “No, but he’ll be back. And he’ll find out. He always does. Remember what happened to Shutcur?”

  Both men shuddered. Shutcur had been castrated – publicly, slowly, and without anesthetic – before being ordered to leave Sigrast Station within one cycle. Fortunately, a slave trader had taken him, happy to have a eunuch in his employ, or Shutcur would have found himself being pushed out of an airlock.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Jervoc conceded before giving him a curious look. “Don’t you get tired of being such a high flyer? It’s not as if any of the prisoners are Dhalgroll.”

  “We get hired as guards because we’re loyal and trustworthy. Do you want to lose that? Do you want to go back to Dhalgroll?”

  “Gods, no.” Jervoc didn’t hesitate and Mikaroz understood why. Their home world consisted of a number of small rocky islands in an endless expanse of ocean. It was stark, beautiful, and completely lacking in the types of luxuries and entertainment that could be found even in the restricted environment of a space station. He missed it occasionally, but he had left no family behind and, like Jervoc, had no desire to return.

  Jervoc licked the last drop of blood off his fingers and stood. “Come on. Time to feed the prisoners who will eat.”

  Chapter Two

  Another day passed before Greta saw the kind guard again. In the interim, another tray was shoved through an opening in the door panel, this time with the gruel she couldn’t eat, but she simply ignored it. Her latest distraction was to try and calculate how long it had been since she was taken. She had been on a brief trip over the border from Texas to Mexico with several girlfriends, when she’d decided she needed a break from the party scene and had gone for a walk on the beach. The sand was deserted but she was within the confines of the resort and didn’t worry as she walked along the edge of the water, enjoying the warm ocean washing across her feet. The only warning she had was an unusual smell, like sour pickles, before something stung her neck and the world went dark.

  When she woke up, she was in a barred room with a collar around her neck. The room was crammed with strangers, none of them human, but all of them apparently female. Several of them could speak to each other but no one spoke to her. Most of her fellow prisoners seemed just as shocked and distraught. There were no beds and the only sanitary facility was a trough along the back of the room with an anemic flow of liquid running through it every so often. Unable to communicate, she staked out a small corner of the limited space and waited.

  Now she tried to calculate how long she had been on the slave ship, but all she knew was that food had been passed out ten times – the gruel which she had rapidly discovered made her sick and the crackers she could tolerate. She’d used gestures to work out a trade of crackers for gruel with a slim blue female and managed to keep herself fed.

  When they were finally herded out of their cell, she had foolishly hoped for an improvement. Instead, they were stripped, passed through a cleansing room where they were buffeted with jets of astringent liquid and blasted with hot air, and then finally subjected to a humiliating, invasive exam. For the prisoners like her who didn’t understand their captors’ language, there had been a brief training period where basic commands were demonstrated, and enforced by the shock collar, before they were placed in small individual stalls. A variety of aliens paraded by before she was chosen by the evil bastard.

  All in all, she suspected she had been missing for at least two weeks. Her friends would have reported her missing but in a foreign country, with jobs to return to, they couldn’t have pursued it for long. She wondered if she would become another one of those tragic tales you saw on the news and promptly forgot. Mainly she worried about her dad, who would be all alone now. He hadn’t been much of a father, but she loved him anyway. Slow tears trickled down her face. She was still crying when the door opened and her guard appeared.

  The sight of her tears brought a distressed sound from his throat and she tried to smile. She was half-disappointed and half-relieved that he didn’t have a tray of food with him. Moving slowly, he crossed the cell and perched next to her on the metal bed shelf. He was so big that he took up more than half the space. Unsure of his intentions, she huddled back in her corner, but she could still feel the heat coming off his huge body. Her hands trembled, fully aware that if he intended to force himself on her, she had no defense. Only the barest chance had enabled her to kill her former master. The slime that covered his body had allowed her to slid
e free as he fumbled with his weird looking cock. Before he could reach the control for the collar, she’d grabbed a large decorative vase and smashed it down over his head. To her shock, his skull had simply crumpled, green blood and other disgusting substances spreading across the floor.

  Now when her prison guard extended his arm, she flinched, but then she realized that he was only offering her his open hand. In the center of an enormous palm was a small black object.

  “Is that supposed to be food? Or some kind of vitamin?” She mimed putting it in her mouth and he shook his head, closing his fingers – his clawed fingers – around the object. He pointed to his hand and then his ear.

  “You want me to put that in my ear? Why?”

  With a frustrated grumble, he repeated the gesture, then opened his hand once more. She gave it a doubtful look, but so far, he was the one nice alien she had met so she shrugged and reached for it, only to drop it again immediately when the little black oval pulsed against her fingers.

  “Oh, hell no.”

  Incredibly fast reflexes caught the object before it hit the bed. He looked at it and looked at her. She shook her head and tried to back further into the corner. Her knees trembled when he frowned but she stared at him defiantly. Another grumbling noise came from his mouth then, before she could react, her head was cupped firmly but gently in one giant hand and the object was pressed into her ear. He had returned to his position before she even realized what was happening.

  “Ooh, gross. Why did you do that?” She probed desperately at her ear, shuddering at the warm pulsation that met her finger.

  “Only so you could communicate. It will not harm you.”

  “But it feels – ” Shock held her motionless, then her hand dropped away. “Wait a minute. I understand you!”