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“Don’t you eat your trees and grass and the creatures that roam your world?”
“We do, but they’re not made of the same material. I’m not sure how my body will respond to them.”
“If I know the gods, though no one truly understands their ways completely, they’ll have ensured your body can eat whatever we do.”
“Hmm,” was all she said.
We rounded the large central pillar, and I gasped in amazement.
A circle of structures—the “pod” Van-eesa must’ve been referring to—had been placed in this section of the vast room, the tops of the long cylinders nearly meeting in the middle.
A female like Van-eesa lay inside each one.
Van-eesa snarled and before I could ask her what she was doing, she grabbed my dagger from its sheath at my waist and raced toward the pods. When she reached them, she lifted my weapon and drove the hard crystalline tip down on top of the first pod.
A loud clang rang out in the room.
I felt the gods awaken around us.
Chapter 17
Vanessa
“Damn fucking crystal gods,” I bellowed, smacking the top of the closest pod over and over with Aizor’s dagger. The weapon just bounced off. The sharp end didn’t even mar the surface. Even worse, the woman inside remained asleep. If her face wasn’t pink, I’d think she was dead. “Open, damn you! Open!”
“Van-eesa,” Aizor yelled, dismay clear in his voice. “You mustn’t do this.” He snatched the blade from my hand and held it high enough overhead I couldn’t reach it.
That didn’t stop me from jumping, trying to grab it again. “Give me a better weapon if this one won’t work. Anyone got a sledgehammer?” Tears streamed down my face. “Don’t you see? They’re trapped inside these . . . awful things. Look at them. Look at them!” I collapsed on top of the clear roof of the closest one, gazing at the woman lying inside. She looked relaxed. Like she was sleeping beauty just waiting for her prince to come and give her a kiss to release her from this glass trap. “This is Talia. Or Maggie. I’m not sure which. But see her long black hair? She has beautiful brown eyes, and no one may ever see them again.”
“You know these females?” he asked, walking around, studying each person lying on her back, dressed in the same sheer nightgown I was wearing when I arrived.
“I don’t. Not really. They were on the ship with me that left Earth. When your crystal god woke me, it sent mechanical arms to carry me to my pod. I saw them then, also being carried to these pods. I only heard a few of them calling out to each other.” I wiped the tears from my eyes and walked among the pods, pointing. “This is Maggie. She and Talia are sisters.”
I couldn’t believe they’d stolen this many women from Earth.
“They don’t appear to be in distress,” he said, coming over to stand with me, his hand dropping onto my shoulder. He rubbed, and he must be trying to give me comfort, but nothing was going to make me feel good about this.
“Not in distress?” I scowled up at him. “Would you like to be lying in a glass pod waiting for . . . who knows what?” Probably to begiftedto an alien. “What if there’s an earthquake or a big storm? They could die inside these stupid things.” I brought my fist down hard on the top of the one holding a woman with curly blonde hair. “I remember her, but I don’t even know her name. There are eight of them here and other than Talia and Maggie, I don’t knowanyof their names.” Wait. “There was a red-haired woman . . .” I looked around, but I couldn’t find her.
My knees gave out. I only remained upright because I clung to the closest pod. “She’s gone. Is she dead?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “We could ask the gods to free these women.”
She must be dead. The poor thing. “We’lldemandthey free them. None of these women deserve this.”Ididn’t deserve this. I snapped my head around, but I didn’t see anything that might be a god standing nearby to be screamed at. No statues. No altars. “Take me to your gods, because I have a few choice words I’d like to say to them.”
“Please be respectful.”
“I’ll be as respectful as they were with me when they kidnapped me from my home and everything I loved.”
His shoulders fell. “You loved someone there?”
I shook my head. “I had an ex-boyfriend, but he was a total jerk. I stole some of his money and ran away after he hit me.”
A snarl ripped up Aizor’s throat, and he tightened his big hand on his sword jutting up his spine. “I’ll ask the gods to send me to your world, and I’ll kill him. How dare he hurt you?” His fingers traced down my face. “No one will ever cause you harm again. I’ll make sure of this.”
“I appreciate your willingness to defend me, but he’s back there and I’m here. There’s no need to beg your gods for a ship to take you there to kill him. If you did something like that, you’d be arrested. They’d hustle you to Area 51 and conduct experiments on you.”
“Why would they examine me in such a way?”
