I held my breath, waiting for the servant’s steps to die away completely. The bathroom I was in was right beside the coats and the entrance to the elevator that led downward. What if, instead of hiding the whole time Sir talked to the Baron, I snuck down in the elevator and went to find the human girl I had seen earlier?
I knew it was a risky plan, but I also knew this might be my only chance to see her and find out if she needed help—which I strongly felt that she did. Plus, maybe I could get some of those yummy snacks I had seen the merchants selling. I didn’t have any Naggian coins, but I could pay for them with blood. I had already pricked my finger once tonight—I was more than willing to do it again to get my hands on that bacon-on-a-stick.
I stuck my head tentatively out the bathroom door and looked up and down the long hallway—it was totally empty. After I was sure the coast was clear, I came all the way out and closed the door quietly behind me.
I pressed the button to call the ice elevator and was waiting impatiently for it to come, when my eyes happened to fall on the thick fur coat Sir had synthesized for me. It was made of long, luxurious brown fur that made me think of mink and I still had the Baron’s sigil in the pocket, which might come in handy.
I had almost thawed out completely, sitting so close to the fire in the dining room, but now I remembered how cold it was downstairs. I snagged the coat off its hook and pulled it on. I was only planning to go down briefly and come right back up again but it was better to be prepared for everything, I told myself.
The elevator arrived with a ding! and for a moment, I froze. Had anyone heard? What would I say if Sir came out and asked what the hell I thought I was doing?
But no one came. I was able to slip quietly into the elevator and push the button for the bottom floor without attracting any attention. After a moment, the doors closed and the ice elevator began to descend.
Since the elevator was made of see-through ice, I could see what was happening as I descended. The floors below the Baron’s living quarters seemed to be devoted to businesses. On my way up with Sir, there had been a bee-hive of activity on every floor we had passed. But it must be getting near the end of the workday because I saw hardly anyone as the lift went slowly down.
At last I reached the bottom floor and found myself in the central area that led to the various tunnels. I stepped out and looked around, noting that there were far fewer people down here than there had been earlier as well.
To my disappointment, the merchant selling the bacon on a stick had apparently closed up shop, because his stall was vacant. But the stand with the multicolored pies was still open and so was the one selling the hot, steaming drink that smelled like mocha.
I was trying to decide which one I ought to approach first, when I saw her again—the human girl with warm brown skin and big, brown eyes. She was talking with a Naggian man—possibly a potential customer—and I saw her shaking her head adamantly.
Drifting closer, I caught their conversation.
“No—I only sell my blood—that’s it,” the girl was saying. “Talk to R’xs if you want a girl who’ll give you a fuck and suck—I only do the suck part.”
“It was R’xs who sent me here!” the Naggian man protested. “He said I could get a bit of hsh’frux pussy in front of the love tunnel from one of his girls. Now, I don’t see any other hsh’frux girls here, so he must be talking about you.”
“You’re mistaken,” the girl insisted, backing away, an uneasy look on her face. “R’xs knows I only offer exotic blood.” She extended her arm and pulled back the sleeve of her ratty, bright green fur coat. “If you want some blood, I’m your girl. But I can’t do anything else for you—I only sell blood and only from the wrist—not the neck or the thigh or anywhere else.”
“That’s not true!” The Naggian man was getting angry now. He came at her and grabbed her extended wrist—which was covered in old bite marks and bruises, I now saw. “You’re a Blood Whore, so act like one!” he shouted in her face. “I want the hsh’frux pussy I was promised!”
She was in trouble—I had to do something, but I wasn’t sure what to do! I ran forward anyway, coming to a stop beside the startled girl and the would-be customer.
“Oh my God, girl—I haven’t seen you in so long!” I exclaimed, putting an arm around her. “What are you doing here? We need to catch up!”
“I…uh…” The girl looked at me uncertainly.
“Can you let my friend go, please?” I asked the Naggian man politely. “We haven’t seen each other in ages and I have so much to tell her.”
But the Naggian man refused to let go of her wrist. He looked down at me, an angry frown twisting his pale face.
“I don’t know who you are, hsh’frux, but I’m a paying customer so get the hell out of my way,” he growled.
“Well, I’m a friend of Baron Vik’tor,” I snapped, glaring up at him. “So you’d better let her go—now!”
“You’re lying,” the Naggian man said, but I thought I saw some doubt on his face.
I reached in my pocket and pulled out the Baron’s sigil. The wire felt cool against my fingers but the end of it was still emitting bright red sparks like a sparkler on the fourth of July.
“Would I have this if I didn’t also have the Baron’s favor and protection?” I demanded. “You’d better leave my friend alone now or you’re going to wind up sleeping with the fishes tonight!”
I was betting on my hunch that Baron Vik’tor was more like a Mafia Don than a business man and, to my relief, I seemed to be right.
The man who had been harassing the girl dropped her arm abruptly and backed away.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he muttered, holding his hands up in front of him. “Please—don’t tell the Baron!”
“I’ll tell him everything…unless you swear to never bother my friend again!” I snapped. “And spread the word—nobody else better bother her either!”
But to my surprise, the girl shook her head.
“No—don’t tell him that,” she exclaimed in a low voice. “If you scare away all my customers, I won’t be able to make a living! I’ll starve.”
“Okay, uh…spread the word that she’s only selling blood, not her, um, booty,” I called at the man, but he had already turned and was walking swiftly in the other direction with his shoulders hunched up around his ears.
“Great…” The girl sighed and slumped down against the brick wall beside the tunnel the man had been trying to force her into. “I’ll be lucky if I can sell enough blood to eat once it gets around that I’m supposedly under the Baron’s protection!”
“I’m really sorry,” I said awkwardly, crouching down beside her. “What’s your name, anyway? You’re from Earth, like me—right?”
“Yes, I’m from Earth. Not that I’ll ever get back there.” The girl looked up at me and there were tears in her big, brown eyes that nearly broke my heart. “I’m Natalie,” she said. “Natalie Hale, from Tampa, Florida. Who are you and how did you get here?”
“I’m Ellie from Harrisonburg, Virginia. And the Commercians—those little blue wormy guys—sucked me up through a mirror. The next thing I knew I was being sold to a huge alien from another galaxy,” I said. “You?”
Natalie sighed.
“Same story. I was looking for my cousin, Rylee, who disappeared awhile ago. I was searching her apartment for some kind of clue when I heard some weird music like trumpets coming from the bathroom mirror. I went to see what it was and…” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that, I was sucked through. The blue worms sold me to an Eloin merchant. But he only bought me because they told him I was a ‘La-ti-zal’ and had some kind of ‘special powers.’” She shook her head in disgust. “What a load of bullshit.”
“Oh—they said the same thing about me!” I exclaimed.
Natalie looked at me.
“So do you have powers? Because I sure as hell don’t. The minute my new ‘owner’ figured out I was nothing special, he dumped me here on O’nagga Nine to fend for myself.” She shivered and a miserable look came over her pretty face. “Been freezing my ass off ever since and barely scraping by. I was a graduate student getting my Ph.D back home you know—now I’m nothing but a Blood Whore.” She hung her head dejectedly.
“Hey, you do what you have to in order to survive,” I told her fiercely. “Don’t be ashamed of that—ever.”
“What have you had to do?” she asked, looking up at me. “And you never answered my question about powers.”
“Well…I seem to be really good at alien languages—especially my Master’s language,” I said.
Her eyes opened wider.
“Your Master?”
“That’s what I’ve had to do to survive,” I said. “Sir bought me to be his ‘pet.’” I shrugged. “So that’s what I am now—though he’s promised to bring me back home again after he takes me to his home world.”
“Sure he will,” Natalie said bitterly. “I don’t believe a word these alien bastards say, anymore.”
“I believe Sir is on the level,” I said earnestly. “And as for being his pet, I really can’t help that. I mean, he’s ten feet tall and he can break things with his mind. So I guess I’ve just kind of…accepted the situation.”
Natalie shook her head.
“No, no—don’t get me wrong. I can’t talk about you being a ‘pet.’ Hell, I’m nothing but a Blood Whore. I have a pimp and everything,” she added darkly. “Though I never should have agreed to that.”
“Is he hurting you?” I asked, feeling anger bubbling up inside. “Hitting you?”
Natalie looked uneasy.
“No…not yet, anyway. R’xs is the kind who likes to ‘talk things out’ before he gets physical. When I first joined his ‘stable,’ he agreed that I would only have to sell my blood, not my body.” She lifted her chin. “I can stand being bitten twenty times a day but I don’t think I could live with myself if I had to be a ‘fuck and suck’ girl instead of just a ‘suck girl.’”
“Of course,” I said quietly. I had the feeling she needed to talk about this to someone—maybe had been needing to for a long time. “How long have you been here?” I asked.
“How long?” She passed a hand over her face and I saw a bracelet of bite marks around her slim wrist. “Oh sweet Jesus, months I think, but it feels like years. Every day here is the same—freezing my ass off and just praying I’ll get enough customers who want to taste ‘exotic blood’ to make enough money to eat and pay R’xs his cut.” She shivered miserably and I felt so bad for her I wanted to cry.
“Well, you don’t have to live like that anymore,” I said, frowning. “You’re going to come with me and Sir—we’ll take you away from all this.”
Natalie shook her head fearfully.
“I don’t dare go with you. R’xs had me implanted with a chip that will track my location. No matter how far I go, he’d come after me and bring me back. And then…” She shivered. “He’d do horrible things to me! I know, because one of the other girls, Ger’tha, tried to run away with a customer she liked. They got as far as O’nagga Nine’s fifth moon before R’xs caught up with them.”
“He chased them that far?” I asked, frowning.
She nodded.
“He killed the customer but he brought Ger’tha back and he…” She swallowed hard and I saw raw horror in her big brown eyes. “He made an example of her.”
“Made an example of her?” I asked, frowning.
Natalie shivered but I could tell it wasn’t from the cold.
“I don’t want to tell you the details.” Her voice was raw. “She…has to wear a hood that covers her face now—she’s so disfigured that the customers wouldn’t come near her if they could see what she looks like.”
“What an evil bastard!” I exclaimed indignantly.
“That’s R’xs,” Natalie said bleakly. “Like I said, he told me I only have to sell my blood, but I’m afraid he’s going to change his mind if he gets many more requests for ‘hsh’frux pussy.’”
“I still think you should come with me,” I told her. “Didn’t I tell you that Sir can break things with his mind? He can protect you. Plus, we’re going all the way to another galaxy—I’m sure your pimp couldn’t follow you there.”
Natalie sighed.
“It’s not like I don’t appreciate the offer, but this sounds like it might be an ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’ type situation, as my Granny used to say. How do I know that being a ‘pet’ will be any better than being a Blood Whore? And besides, I just want to go back to Earth and it sounds like you’re going in the opposite direction.”
I opened my mouth to argue with her…and closed it again. I vividly remembered Sir saying that Natalie might “belong” to another male and that he couldn’t take someone else’s property. As much as I liked my Master, this idea that people could be bought and sold was a serious flaw in his character. He might very well refuse to take Nathalie away from her pimp and then she would be worse off than before if the pimp found out she was trying to get away.
“Is there anything I can do for you, since you won’t come with me?” I asked, feeling terrible.
Nathalie gave a broken little laugh.
“Huh—I guess I could ask you to take a message back to my folks—if you ever get back to Earth. But what are you gonna tell them? ‘Hey, Natalie’s fine—she’s just working as a Blood Whore on a frozen planet fifty thousand light years away from Earth?’” She snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure that would go over just great.”
“But Natalie—” I began. But just then a deep, tolling sound began to boom out, echoing through all the tunnels. Gong…gong…gong…
“Oh my God—is it that late?” Natalie jumped up, her eyes going wide.
“Why? What time is it? What’s happening?” I looked around and saw that the area was almost completely clear and the only people around were hurrying away, making their way to different tunnels as fast as they could.
“It’s almost time for the Sweepers to come out.” Natalie’s eyes were full of fear. “We can’t be caught in the Central Hub when they do or we’ll get chewed up or pushed out into the night. And as cold as days are on O’nagga nine, nights are ten times worse.” She looked around frantically. “I have to get back to my hole. You better come too—or else go back to your ‘Master’ right away!”
“I’ll go back to Sir,” I told her. “But I have to do something, for you before I go. I can’t just leave you here!”
Natalie shook her head.
“There’s nothing you can do for me, though I appreciate you wanting to. I’m stuck here, freezing my ass off, probably for the rest of my life.” She sighed. “However long that might be.”
Her words gave me an idea. She might be stuck here, on O’nagga Nine, but there was no reason she had to feel like she was freezing all the time.
“Here,” I said, taking off my coat and holding it out to her. “Take this, at least.”
Natalie looked at me in disbelief.
“I can’t take your overwrap! You’ll freeze to death.”
“No, I won’t,” I said firmly. “I’ll go right back upstairs and ask Sir to synthesize another for me. He can bring it across before we have to go back to his ship.”
Of course, this meant admitting to Sir that I had left the Baron’s living quarters and gone downstairs by myself—I was betting he wasn’t going to like that one bit. I might even get punished for it. But I couldn’t leave Natalie with nothing at all! It would be worth the punishment, I told myself, to know that she was warm.
“Take it,” I told her, when she still hesitated. “It’s nice and warm and I won’t need it again after we leave here.”
“Well…if you’re sure.” I could see the hunger in her eyes—the desperate need for warmth.
“Positive.” I shoved the bulky fur coat into her arms and hugged her impulsively. “I hope I see you again,” I told her. “And that we both get back to Earth someday.”
“I hope so too.” Her eyes were bright with tears as she pulled away with the coat in her arms. “Thank you, Elli. I won’t forget you.”
“I won’t forget you either,” I promised. “I’ll come back to help you, if I can.”
Her face filled with sadness.
“Nobody can help me—this is my life now. I—”
But just then the booming gong, gong, gong, sounded again. Natalie’s eyes widened.
“Got to go!” she exclaimed. “And you’d better get back to where you came from fast! Sweepers will be here any second.”
“Okay.” I nodded and watched as she turned to run to the mouth of a far tunnel. She disappeared inside it and suddenly I heard a whish, whish, whish sound coming from over my head.
I looked up and saw, to my dismay, something that looked like a cross between a spider made of ice and a vacuum cleaner. It had eight shiny, clear legs and a fat, round body. Its head looked like one of those rollers covered in bristles. You know, the kind you see when you turn your vacuum over because you’re trying to unclog it? It’s the bristles that pick up the dirt and debris and sweep them into the vacuum’s sucking hole.
The weird spider-thing that Natalie had called a “Sweeper” had a similar arrangement, though the bristles on its roller mouth were clear, just like the rest of its body. It was like it had evolved to blend in with all the ice on this frozen world. It scuttled over the ceiling above me, its roller brushing crumbs into its open maw, which was located right below it and ringed in long, needle-like fangs.
It was a horrible shock—seeing a giant spider on the ceiling right over my head—and I couldn’t forget Natalie’s warning about being “chewed up” when I saw those deadly fangs. Was it going to try to eat me? Although it was the size of a Doberman Pincer, its mouth wasn’t big enough to suck me in…unless it ground me up with its long, sharp bristles, that was. Whatever its intentions, I had no wish to have a close-encounter with it. It was time to get the Hell out of there!
I ran for the ice elevator as fast as I could, throwing a look over my shoulder to be certain the weird spider-like ‘Sweeper’ wasn’t following me. It wasn’t, but now I could see more of them—a lot more, scuttling across the high ceiling. Oh God, I hated bugs—especially big ones! I needed to get out of here fast.
Anxiously, I pushed the call button for the elevator. Then I pushed it again…and again.
I looked up, trying to tell if the ice lift was coming, though it made me wince to see all the Sweepers scuttling over the ceiling. But for some reason the lift appeared to be stuck at the top on the Baron’s floor.
“Come on…come on!” I muttered, jamming my thumb into the button again and again.
Suddenly a little lighted message appeared over the button.
End Service it said.
“What?” I muttered, jamming the button some more. “What the hell does that mean? Come on—please!”
But no matter how much I pressed the button, the same message just kept appearing.
End Service, End Service, End Service…
Suddenly one of the Sweepers—a really big one, the size of a Great Dane—scuttled down the icy elevator shaft and came right at me. I gasped as it rushed towards me, pushing me away from the elevator and towards the doors at the front of the building.
“Hey! Ouch!” I protested, as the sharp bristles on its roller-mouth pierced my leg. They went right through all those layers I was wearing like they weren’t even there and my skin stung like fire where they stuck me.
“Hey, leave me alone! I don’t belong down here! I need to get back upstairs—to the top of the building!” I shouted, trying to keep away from the huge Sweeper as I was herded away from the elevator.
If the Sweeper understood me, it gave no sign of it. I thought of waving the Baron’s sigil in its nightmare of a face, but then I remembered I had left it tucked in the pocket of the coat I had given to Natalie. So there was no help there.
I thought of trying to get to one of the tunnel mouths, but the Sweepers were rushing at me from all directions now. I didn’t want them touching me again with there horrible roller-brush mouths or their long, chitinous legs and claws, so I turned and ran in the only direction I didn’t see any of them—towards the double doors at the front of the building.
Before I knew it, I was through the first set of doors and into the small area where Sir and I had taken off our face coverings. Thankfully, I was able to get the doors shut before any of the Sweepers could get into the small, enclosed space with me.
But then I was trapped there, wondering what to do?