Dredge Read online

  DREDGE

  Lula Monk

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Lula Monk

  Cover design © 2019 by RebecaCovers

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The author is not responsible for any reviews written concerning this book. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other persons. If you would like to share this book with other people, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you for purchasing Dredge, Book One of the Alien Abduction Romance Series Galactic Seduction.

  Thank you to my family for giving me ample time to squirrel away in the laundry room to write.

  A special thank you goes out to my Beta team. You guys rock!

  And thank you, reader, for giving this book a chance. I hope you come to love Samantha and Dredge as much as I have.

  Lula Monk

  Chapter 1

  Samantha

  “What the hell, Simon?”

  Samantha wrinkled her nose, the nauseating smell of ammonia piercing the fog of sleep. The cat must have pissed in the bedroom again. She groaned. The thought of keeping her eyes shut and going back to sleep was tempting, but she knew she would regret it later if Simon’s urine soaked into the carpet.

  Rubbing her eyes, she sat up. Her head banged on something hard and cold. Metal.

  “Shit,” she said. Her hand flew to her forehead, and she felt something warm and sticky. Blood.

  She squinted at the harsh blue light rising from the floor at the edges of the large room she was in. Her hands stretched toward the light.

  “Simon?” she said again calling for her pet, her voice hoarse and raw.

  A loud, resounding bang sounded above her head. She flinched, her arms rising reflexively to protect her body. But she couldn’t raise her arms. Not very far, at least. Something stopped them, the same something upon which she’d banged her head moments before. Her heart pounding, she felt along the hard metal sheet floating a few inches above her head.

  Heart hammering wildly now, she skimmed her hands along the cool surface until she reached an edge, her hands trailing down onto . . . bars? Then, lower still to feel the bars disappear into the cold stone floor.

  Her breath quickened. Her eyes felt dry, irritated. And it was so damn hard to see anything because of the glaring blue lights surrounding her. “Hello?”

  The bang sounded above her head once more, this time followed by a gruff voice whose words she couldn’t understand. She pressed her body flat against the stone floor, trembling. With one hand shielding her eyes, she could just make out two large black boots on the other side of the bars before her. On the other side of her cage.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, her raw voice now thick with the flow of unspent tears threatening to flow down her cheeks.

  The man shifted his feet, and the banging noise came again above her cage, this time in triplicate. He spoke once more, his voice now raised, his anger clear even though she could not understand his words.

  She cowered against the opposing wall of her cage, the bars of the cage pressing through her thin nightgown and digging into her back.

  “Just stay quiet,” a weak voice whispered behind her. “Just stay quiet, and it will go away.”

  It?

  Samantha rolled over onto her belly, shielding her eyes like she had done before. If she squinted, she could make out a black shape just past the bars. Was . . . was that another woman?

  Samantha nodded her head, not knowing if the gesture was pointless or not. Chances are the woman couldn’t see Samantha any better than Samantha could see her.

  After a long while, the man left, his heavy footfalls retreating in a strange stomping shuffle.

  Several labored heartbeats later, when Samantha was sure the man had truly gone, she pressed her face against the bars on the side near the woman who’d spoken to her. The woman moved to do the same, and the tears Samantha had been refusing to shed began making wet streaks down her cheeks.

  “What happened to you?” Samantha asked the woman, for in the glare of the blue lights the woman’s face looked caked in something smeared and dark. Blood?

  “Same thing that happened to you,” the woman replied.

  Samantha brought a trembling hand up to her own face, and sure enough felt the rough texture of dried blood beneath the warm blood still oozing from the gash on her forehead. Perhaps banging her head on the ceiling of her cage had not caused a wound but reopened one.

  “Where are we?” she asked the woman.

  “Don’t know. But there are more of us.”

  Samantha’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “Listen.”

  And she did. Shutting her eyes tightly, Samantha put all her attention and energy on listening. All around her, soft and easy to miss if she’d not been trying, were the sounds of light whimpering and sniffles from other people. Other women.

  Something warm and pungent began to seep under her head, dampening her hair and making her wound burn. She brought her hand to her nose and sniffed. Urine.

  “Gross,” she whispered, wiping her hand on her gown and shifting so she was no longer lying in a puddle of someone else’s urine.

  “At least no one is scared shitless. Yet,” said the woman beside her.

  If Samantha hadn’t been almost scared shitless herself, she might have laughed.

  “Do you know what that man was saying?” Samantha asked the woman, hoping for some clue as to where they were and why. “I couldn’t understand him.”

  The woman breathed in sharply. “Did you see it?”

  “See what?”

  “It.”

  Samantha drew in a ragged breath, frustrated. “See what? All I saw where his boots. What else was there to see?”

  “It’s not a he,” whispered the woman, her soft voice nearing on panic.

  “A woman is doing this to us?” Samantha could hardly believe it. Why would a woman kidnap and cage a bunch of other women? She shook her head. No. She couldn’t follow that line of questioning, because following that line of questioning meant acknowledging why a man would, and she couldn’t bear to consider that possibility.

  “That thing isn’t a woman.” The woman’s voice was wavering, her fear a palpable thing, as if Samantha could reach out and touch it.

  The sound of her own heartbeat pounded in her ears, washing out the soft cries of the women surrounding her. If the person who’d banged on her cage wasn’t a man and wasn’t a woman . . . what was it?

  The ground beneath them began to pulsate, the vibrations traveling up through Samantha’s body, making her teeth buzz against each other.

  “What is that?” asked the woman beside her, her hand snaking between the bars, reaching for Samantha.

  Samantha clutched the woman’s hand in her own. “I don’t know.”

  The pulsations intensified, the vibrations now pounding through Samantha’s body, filling her head and making it ache. She felt like her brain would explode, forced from her skull by the sheer power of those vibrations.

  The women around them began to scream.

  There was a loud boom, and Samantha’s body was thrown back against the opposing wall of the cage. She scrambled back to the woman, searching for her hand. This woman was the only link she had to something sane, something rational. Something that made se
nse. And Samantha didn’t even know who she was or what she looked like.

  The woman gripped Samantha’s hand. It seemed like she was trying to talk, but Samantha couldn’t make out the words. Though the vibrations had stopped, they lived on in Samantha’s head, rolling and crashing into each other, drowning out even the sound of her own heartbeat.

  “What’s your name?” the woman screamed.

  “Samantha.”

  “I’m Debra,” the woman said. She squeezed Samantha’s hand so tightly that, though Samantha could not see it, she knew it would be white. The woman steeled her voice, repeating herself. “Debra.”

  Samantha nodded. Useless. They still couldn’t see each other. And then, like some gift, bright white lights flickered on overhead.

  Samantha looked frantically at the woman in front of her. Debra was small, her skin light brown. Dark, inky curls spiraled densely around her face. Her wide eyes were green, afraid, and past the crusted blood on her face, Samantha could just make out a smattering of tiny freckles across her nose.

  Somewhere behind her, a metal door banged open against a wall. The same strange shuffling stomp she’d heard before beat its way into her ears once more, but this time it wasn’t alone. This time, it had company. Three, if the cadence of the stomps were an accurate representation.

  She locked eyes with Debra, their hands gripping one another’s as if the other woman were a lifeline. No, as if the other woman were an anchor. Because Samantha knew, despite not knowing how she knew, that lying here in this cage soaked in someone else’s piss and covered in her own blood was better than whatever awaited her once she was out there. Once her kidnappers removed her from the cage.

  As if on cue, the ceiling to Debra’s cage slid open, and long, thick . . . were those tentacles? . . . slithered in, wrapping around the woman’s small waist.

  Debra screamed, still clinging to Samantha’s hands.

  Samantha reached through the bars, her other hand desperately gripping Debra’s forearm. She planted her bare feet against the side of the cage and leaned back with all her weight, refusing to let that thing . . . that creature . . . take Debra.

  But the ceiling of her own cage slid back with a bang, and suddenly moist slimy tentacles were assaulting her from above, wrapping themselves securely around her waist the same way they’d done to Debra’s. Terrified, she released Debra’s arm, her nails frantically clawing at the thing pulling her through the hole at the top of the cage. Its suction cups pulsated through the thin material of her gown, the small circles of its appendage flexing and releasing against her stomach, securing itself to her.

  Samantha screamed. Mistake. Huge mistake.

  A tentacle slithered up to her mouth, wrapping around her head to muffle her screams and obscure her vision. She breathed frantically through the small slit the tentacle had left just under her nose. Her mouth had been open when the thing coiled around her head, and she could not close it now. Thin slime crept over the threshold of her lips, filling her mouth with a salty, foul taste.

  She wanted to vomit; her body demanded it, demanded to expel the disgusting fluid from her mouth. But she swallowed down the urge. The vomit would have nowhere to go, and she’d be damned if this is how she died, aspirating on her own puke in the arms of some . . .

  No.

  There was no way. No way this creature who held her captive, who was carrying her across the room right this moment, was an . . . alien.

  But as the creature planted her on the floor and released her head, even before she opened her eyes, she knew it was true. She, Debra, and all the rest had been abducted, by freakish fucking squid aliens.

  Samantha’s entire body began to tremble, and she finally allowed her body to do what it wanted. Her eyes still squeezed shut, warm vomit spewed from her mouth, coating her feet.

  As her stomach emptied itself, she felt ashamed. Not because she was standing here like some pathetic idiot retching her guts out, but because she’d been so judgmental of the woman in the cage next to hers, whose piss had slid down to saturate Samantha’s hair. For as Samantha began to dry heave, she felt the slight trickle of urine creeping down her own legs.

  The screams of the other women filled the air around Samantha as they too were extracted from their cages. But their screams contained fear a shade darker than hers, for she’d yet to open her eyes and behold the faces of the creatures who had stolen her from her bed.

  The creature in front of her spoke, the sound a harsh and sticky bubbling, like carbonation bubbles bursting in a freshly poured soda.

  Samantha kept her eyes shut. If she kept her eyes shut, it wasn’t real. If she couldn’t see it, it didn’t exist. Her mind rebelled, telling her the screams around her and the smell of her own puke and urine made it real. She ground her teeth, willing that little annoying voice in her head to go away, to let her have a moment of blissful ignorance.

  The creature in front of her spoke again, and a tentacle wrapped around her waist, drawing her forward. Her hair lifted from her neck, and she could feel the presence of something hovering just above her skin.

  Her eyes flew open, panic heightening her awareness of all that she saw.

  The creature before her had a black sphere where its head should be. Its torso and legs were clothed in a grey jumpsuit, an emblem with strange symbols stitched onto its left breast pocket. She looked down, seeing that the tentacle that coiled around her was salmon-colored, thin veins of white branching through it. Her eyes floated up to the thing hovering above her neck, the thing that had caused her survival instincts to kick into overdrive, forcing her to open her eyes.

  Even though the thing looked vastly different than any she’d ever seen before, Samantha knew a gun when she saw one.

  She struggled against the creature, trying desperately to break out of its grasp, to put distance between the gun and her body. Something hard struck the back of her knees, forcing them to buckle. She sank to the ground, and the creature placed a third tentacle – how many did this thing have? – on the crown of her head, wrenching it to the side to expose her neck. The cold barrel of the gun pressed into her flesh. The gun hummed. Then a sharp pain pierced her neck, and the creature removed the gun.

  Samantha lifted her hand to her neck. There was blood, but only a few drops. It felt like something was under her skin, something small and square and hard. The gun hadn’t been a weapon; it’d been an implantation device.

  “What did you do to me?” Samantha asked the creature before her, even though she knew she wouldn’t understand the answer.

  To her surprise, the voice that came from the creature no longer sounded like sticky soda fizz but actual English.

  “Universal Language Translator chip,” it said. Then, “Move.”

  Samantha squinted her eyes at the creature’s jumpsuit, the emblem that had held nonsense symbols before now clearly reading “Galactic Continuity.”

  With one brisk shove, the creature pushed her through a doorway.

  Samantha shuffled to stand in line with the other women, all of them in various forms of sleepwear. One poor woman was naked, her hands struggling to cover her breasts, buttocks, and genitals. She kept swapping between the three, as if deciding which was least horrible to leave exposed.

  Another tentacled alien paced the hallway, the gun in his hands much larger and more menacing. When it passed, Samantha cast her eyes downward, not wanting to provoke the creature. No point in finding out what this gun did sooner than she had to.

  She peered to her left and saw Debra three women down. Debra looked up, and when their eyes met, Samantha’s heart dropped into her stomach. Debra had a look in her eyes, a stupid, foolish look. A brave look.

  “Don’t,” mouthed Samantha.

  Debra set her mouth in a firm line, her eyes pleading with Samantha. “I have to,” she mouthed back.

  Samantha shook her head, longing to reach out to Debra, to stop her from doing whatever it was she planned to do.

  When the alien passed
Debra again, this time walking toward Samantha in its continuous pacing of the hallway, Debra gave Samantha one last look. Then, the woman with light brown, freckled skin and eyes as green as spring grass broke the line and ran.

  The creature turned around, a guttural scream coming from the mouth Samantha still could not see. Instead of chasing after Debra, it merely lifted the weapon in its tentacle. A series of blue lights illuminated on the weapon, starting at the tip of the barrel and working down to the grip. Then, a bright beam of light shot out.

  Samantha’s hand flew to her mouth in horror as she watched Debra’s ashes settle into a pile on the corridor floor.

  Chapter 2

  Dredge

  The Hub was bustling with activity. Dredge wove his way between creatures, careful not to brush against anyone. His corporeal form was fragile, his ability to maintain a solid state weakened because of his distance from his home planet, Brillar. That issue aside, he hated crowds. Too many bodies occupying too little space.

  Sometimes, in those dark moments when the weight of his situation pressed hard and heavy against his chest, he wondered if perhaps his distaste for all beings was the reason his species began to dwindle all those annum ago. As if he willed the disease that destroyed the inhabitants of Brillar into being.

  Foolish thoughts. Not even kings were gods, and Dredge was no exception.

  The invitation he’d received from Galactic Continuity had promised the opportunity to acquire a mate close enough to his species’ genetic code that the offspring of their coupling would likely survive and be able to inhabit Brillar.

  He’d stared at that word — ‘likely.’ It was just as unlikely that whatever relations he had with any of the creatures from some foreign galaxy would not result in any offspring.

  His mind pulsated with thoughts and figures, crunching the numbers and attempting to determine the precise probability. He willed his mind to silence. Members of his species were known for their ability to solve puzzles, unravel mysteries, and shed light on the truth. Dredge chuckled to himself at that little joke. To shed light on the truth. Yes, his species was crafted from the lights themselves, a simple series of photons categorically and divinely arranged into sentient beings.