Fayn took the blow on the chin. It knocked him sideways. As he turned back to Trayem, another spin came, loaded with another vicious strike to the face.
Fayn grunted painfully, staggered, and hit the floor. He landed on his hands and knees and lost his grip on his blades. They skittered across the floor and out of reach. He spat out a wad of blood and turned to look up at Trayem.
“Who are you?” he said.
In response, Trayem drew back his foot and smacked the leader across the chin.
Fayn slumped to the ground. Two, maybe three, teeth came loose from their moorings and danced across the floor and struck the opposite wall.
I just stared, my chest heaving, my breath heavy. As fearful as I might have been, I was less afraid of a single alien than a gang of them.
I watched him and didn’t move a muscle. I fully expected him to claim what he had fought for—what he was entitled to.
He rounded the bed and stood facing me. His eyes drilled into mine. His breath was heavy with exertion, or perhaps it was desire. His face was cut from Fayn’s blades but they were already healing.
Then his eyes moved down my neck to my swollen breasts. I was ashamed to admit the fight had excited me, turning my nipples hard and alert.
His eyes swept down my flat stomach to my sex. He must have noticed how excited I had become at watching the fight, how unembarrassed I was to lie there before him.
Was this any different from the fighters coming to claim their Prize in the Pool?
Not so far as I could tell.
I wondered if he was going to take me right then and there. He had every right to, by the prison’s rules.
Okay, so the fights usually took place in the pits and not in a cell but he was still entitled to me.
If he wanted me.
With a single great wrench, he tore his eyes from me and bent down to pick up the clothes Fayn had stripped from me.
He handed them over.
“Get dressed. You’re coming with me.”
I’d been in Ikmal prison for the past five years. Like the other girls, I’d been abducted. There had been no bright lights, no flying saucers, no broken-down old truck in the middle of nowhere. I had gone to sleep one night and then awoken the next in this place.
This hell.
When I arrived, I was surrounded by female aliens, each stranger and more bizarre than the last. One had the skin of a snake that could change color on demand. Another had googly eyes that spun of their own free will in their sockets. Another had hair that changed depending on her mood.
They had all been abducted and now, for better or worse, we were sisters.
The most terrifying thing was the reason we’d been brought there.
“You’re to pleasure the fighters victorious in battle,” Lily said.
Lily was the madam of the Prize Pool. It was a small domain, but it belonged to her. She was human like me. I thought the fact we came from the same planet had to account for something, so I asked her for help in escaping this place.
“There is no escape,” she said shortly. “And the sooner you put it out of your mind, the sooner you can get to learning to survive.”
Survive? I thought. What was there to put our lives at risk in this place?
The klaxon sounded and I pressed my hands over my ears, it was so loud.
“Follow the other girls,” Lily said and proceeded to march away.
I did as she said. They were busy dressing up nicely, with perfectly primped hair and makeup.
It turned my stomach.
The clothes we wore were little more than single-ply tissues. I wore more when I went to bed at night. But I followed the others through a doorway and stepped onto a raised dais.
I felt like a fraud standing there among the other girls, who smiled and pursed their lips, turning their bodies to their most favored angles.
I shivered. The sheer negligee I wore gave me little protection and even less warmth against the persistent prison chill.
Or maybe I was just shivering with fear.
And if I wasn’t afraid enough already, I was when I saw the “victor” who would be choosing from us, the Prizes.
The fighter was big, brash, and smothered with scars. There wasn’t an inch of his skin that hadn’t been kissed by a blade. Two enormous tusks jutted from his bottom jaw. They curved inwards and almost met two feet in front of his face.
“Congratulations on your victory,” Lily said, bowing low to the tusked fighter. “Come check out my wares. And I have something new that might interest you.”
I knew without a doubt the huge creature was going to pick me. There was a sense of morbid destiny about it.
He was going to claim me and there was nothing I could do about it.
The tusked one snorted as he ran a fat finger along my jaw. His crooked nail scratched the tip of my chin. He grinned at me, his huge teeth chipped and rotten. I could smell the haggard breath on my face.
I emitted a high-pitched squeal like a child confronted with a feared and dreaded clown.
“This one,” he growled.
“No—” I managed before he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me toward the hallway.
Lily and the others just stood and watched.
I beat at his arm and kicked at his muscular calves but it was no use. A gnat would have the same effect on him as I was.
He marched me through the hallways, turning this way and that.
Prisoners nudged each other in the ribs and glaring at me and gave chase, pinching my ass and cupping a breast when they got close enough.
The only thing holding them back were the guards armed with their heavy bolt rifles. They alone could put these animals down with a single twitch of their trigger fingers. I doubted the hairy, smelly tusked one would lift
