Human Pet Pound - Loki Renard Page 0,4
door he just walked through, and absolutely covered in muscles and blades.
“You do not kill humans. Humans are special,” the beast who is all knives hisses, his horns pricked forward with rage.
“SCYTHKIN!”
The catcher and my ex-owner scream the word in the way my ancestors might have screamed, “BEAR!”
What follows is a bloodbath, though really, I suppose it would be better described as a sanguine shower. The catcher and my ex-owner are both summarily dispatched and thoroughly decommissioned. Which is another way of saying their parts go absolutely everywhere in a very messy fashion.
I stand there, staring. At first my jaw is dropped, but I close my mouth to stop any bits of alien from getting into me.
I have never seen a scythkin before. I have heard of them. They are the bad guys of the universe, the boogeymen haunting all the other alien species who just want to live quiet lives selling humans and being generally merciless.
From what I’ve heard, they’re not prone to popping up out of other aliens and destroying alien personages, but I’m glad this one has chosen to do just that. He kills with alacrity and obvious joy, with a great smile on his fanged and incongruously handsome face.
He’s sexy as hell.
That’s what hits me first, right before a disembodied hand.
This grotesque scene does not unfold much longer. Apparently satisfied that none of the little bits are going to get up and try to defy him again, he turns to me and looks at me with eyes which blaze red with fury-fire. His extended blades drip with blood and something gooey.
I’m not sure what to say.
“Uhm. Thank you?”
He lifts a blood drenched hand and points a clawed finger at me.
“You’re mine.”
“What?”
“You’re mine.” He says it simply, as if it is a fact that I should be aware of and just accept without question, as if being his is some inevitability no sane woman would question.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m not anybody’s. I belong to me.”
“You belong to me. I just paid for you in blood. Now, come.”
Come? He talks to me like a damn dog. But I know if I flee now, I’ll be picked up and taken back to the pound, and then odds are I’ll be shot like a dog too. So I follow him. Not because I’m his, but because I want to be safe.
I catch up with him after a few rushed steps. He didn’t look back to see if I was following. He just assumed I’d be there. What an asshole. What an amazing asshole who just for sure saved my life.
“Where are we going?”
“We need to meet back up with my kin,” he says. “There’s thirteen of them waiting on the ship. I said I’d only be a minute, and that was an hour ago.”
“And then what, you got distracted?”
He gives me a dark look under razor brows. “And then I thought I’d do a good deed and rescue something from the pound.”
“I’m not something. I’m someone.”
“SpacetAto spacetatO,” he replies, getting it wrong both times.
It would be polite of him to introduce himself, but I don’t think this alien is concerned with politeness. I notice as he strides away that some of his blades are retracting into his body. He’s able to pull them in at will to avoid killing somebody if they happen to get too close to him.
I keep my distance nonetheless, but trail after him toward the dock, wondering what the immediate future has in store for me. A ship full of creatures like him is going to make for one wild ride, that I am sure of.
Back down on the docks, I find myself in the middle of a crowd. Every time the scythkin takes a step, the other aliens take several steps away. He is parting the crowds without trying, and I am right by his side, no longer needing to hide. I like this feeling. It feels like power. One could say that because I’m naked, I am lewdly displayed to those all around, but they're not looking at me. They’re looking at him, at the threat he exudes when even on a casual stroll. Nobody is going to lay a finger on me now. No catcher’s noose will find its way back around my neck with this alien by my side.
He strides confidently toward an open space between two ships and stops so suddenly I almost run into him and impale myself on a rear ridge which retracts the moment my nose gets within a