Warlord and the Waif by Chloe Parker

 

CHAPTER ONE

ELLA

THE LAST THING I remember was taking the train from Chicago to San Francisco, celebrating the first day of 1970 alone.

The overpowering smell of cigarette smoke from the man next to me. Running to the dining car to get a coffee as I tried to stay awake. Going through my notes for my speech at the protest on Sunday, my nerves firing on all cylinders as the train chugged below me.

I remember fireworks in the sky, crippling loneliness at the train station in Kansas City, missing my parents and their bookstore back in Michigan, and missing my big brother Patrick even more.

Clutching Pat’s dog tags in my hand until they cut into my palms, reminding myself why I would never stop fighting.

Then a strange light in the sky, different from the fireworks, and coming closer.

The next thing I remember is my hands and knees hitting a hard brick street.

I blink my eyes in the light, the sun blazing white. I can’t make anything out for a second, and then I see my red hair hanging in dirty clumps around my face. Next, I catch the outline of cobblestones under my palms, and a variety of different kinds of feet just ahead of me.

Different kinds of feet.

I snap my head up to look around, but the movement makes me dizzy and I collapse, gripping desperately at the brick.

This is not San Francisco.

I’ve heard there’s some freaky stuff in California, but nothing like this. There’s all kinds of feet: feet in shoes, hooves, claws, pincers. I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing, and my vision swims.

For a second, I wonder if I’m dreaming.

It’s the only thing that keeps me conscious, even as patches of black close in on me.

Someone screams scrambled words at me, and I can’t understand a thing. I look up to see a humanoid creature with long blue ears, its violet eyes glaring down at me. With a rabbit-like mouth, it throws out more language at me, and it’s all word salad.

My head tingles, then a searing pain scrapes over my brain. Don’t like that. My stomach heaves as my head spins, and I throw up.

But the thing doesn’t show me any mercy, instead spitting out more garbled words. I’m terrified, and I hold onto the street for dear life. I was supposed to be at an anti-war protest in California, not here—wherever “here” is. And now this thing is screaming at me, and I’m so dizzy and disoriented.

And then my ears ring and words finally come, scrambled at first, and then clear. The ringing doesn’t go away, though, persisting at a dull hum.

“Prisoner 128, stand! Stand!”

Prisoner?

I straighten my arms, trying to get my bearings. He’s definitely talking to me. I press myself up to kneeling, swaying even though I’m not fully standing yet.

The rabbit man glares at me.

“Get it up,” he says, his gaze going to my side, and I let out a yelp when a strong arm comes around under my armpit, yanking me upright. I look to my right and regret it instantly when I see that a muscular, many-armed creature with a massive head—something between a gorilla and an octopus—has pulled me up, just one of its many grasping appendages under my arm. It doesn’t pay any attention to me, and I gulp down my fear.

The rabbit man looks me up and down, jotting down notes on some kind of holographic notepad. I’ve never seen anything like it outside of Star Trek. The last I heard, computing technology was just getting off the ground, and I’m considered modern for my ability to even use a typewriter.

Ella, you’re not in Kansas anymore.

I try not to let myself fall, though my head is swimming and my knees threaten to buckle. Any minute I think I’ll wake up and find this is all a dream, but I’m starting to think it might be real. The pain in my arm from where the many-armed things holds me is certainly real.

The rabbit man turns, and I see that there’s a whole crowd of aliens beyond us.

Aliens.

Yep. More like Star Trek than real life.

“Item 128 is a female liberated from the Planet Earth,” Purple Rabbit Man says in a bored tone, striding away from me with his holo-pad. “Earth is a growing, but primitive world, and its people have only recently discovered space travel. Its inhabitants, known as humans, are useful as semi-intelligent species, but they are not spacefaring and thus should serve as quick-witted, yet obedient servants…”

I start laughing.

This is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had. I look around at the strangely-shaped beings in the crowd arrayed around me, and I can’t help but chuckle.

“Quiet, Prisoner 128!” Rabbit Man says.

I laugh even harder.

I look over at the weird, many-armed thing holding me up, and it makes me double over even more. It’s like I’m in an episode of Scooby Doo, and I half expect all the people around me to pull their masks off and complain about meddling kids. The Rabbit Man is looking at me like he’s about to blow a gasket, and the humor of it is too much.

I’ve completely lost my marbles.

The Rabbit Man sneers at me. “Restrain her.”

I gasp when the thing on my right grips me tighter, and I whip my head around when another one comes up to my left. Their grasp is so tight that it hurts, a pinching sensation on my left arm stopping me in my tracks.

Wake up. You’re dreaming. You’re dreaming.

But this is no dream.

The aliens hold me still, more hands grabbing me than two guards could possibly have. One of those hands goes around my neck, constricting until I stop laughing. I’m gasping when I get my bearings again, and I stagger up to kneeling. My neck is sore from where the hand went around it, and I have the feeling it’s going to bruise.

“Bidding starts at one thousand Chronos,” the Rabbit Man says, “Do we have any takers?”

Damn it.

No.

No.

This is an auction. I’m being sold.

“One thousand five Chronos!”

I look in horror at the thing that’s bid on me, a sort of snake man with a long, spiraling tail and a toothy grin.

There’s no way in hell that I’m letting myself get bartered away.

I grab at my guards, struggling to get away from them, and one of them hits me hard in the stomach, sending me to the ground. The crowd gawks at me, and Rabbit Man narrows his sparkling purple eyes.

“You will stay silent, female!” he warns, and I feel their grip grow tighter.

“Five thousand Chronos!”

Another voice, this one high-pitched and proper, above the rest of the crowd. I look up to see a stereotypical little green alien, wearing what looks bizarrely like a butler’s uniform. He’s a little shorter than I am, and his eyes glow like warm beacons of light.

“Five thousand?” The rabbit looks around. “Any higher bids?”

I glance around, wondering if this will be the person who’s bought my freedom. He doesn’t look as scary as the rest of the aliens—especially not the snake man who bid on me first—but it doesn’t bring me any relief when no one else responds.

“Sold! To Lord Calder of Kaer Idunn!”

The many-armed creatures haul me back to my feet, and I’m thrown into the crowd. I feel hands on my body as I’m tossed through the shuffling aliens, and I stumble toward the little green man before I fall at his feet. He looks down at me with a crease between where his eyebrows should be, two small antennae quirking at me.

I look around for an exit strategy as the many-armed things retreat.

“Please don’t run,” the little green man mutters, “I promise it won’t end well for you.”

I bite my lip, but I don’t say anything, no matter how badly I want to.

It didn’t go well last time I opened my mouth.

“You’ll need to walk on your own,” he says with an annoyed tinge to his voice, “Can you stand?”

I get back to my knees, and then my feet, and I give him a nod.

“I think so.”

He doesn’t make any moves to hold me up.

“Then we should go,” he says.

I follow.