Alien's Concubine, The

THE ALIEN'S
CONCUBINE

By

Kaitlyn O'Connor

(C) Copyright by Kaitlyn
O'Connor, January 2007

Cover Art by Alex DeShanks,
(c) copyright October 2014

Smashwords
Edition

ISBN
978-1-60394-865-4

New Concepts
Publishing

Lake Park, GA
31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. All
characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and
not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or
events is merely coincidence.

Chapter One

He awakened slowly, reluctantly,
uncertain at first what had sent ripples through his psyche to
disturb his slumber. He had been drifting so long that awareness of
his surroundings had slowly but surely eroded until only some event
of magnitude, he knew, would have penetrated the deep, dreamless
sleep that he’d sought. It was that realization that encouraged him
to shake off the temptation to ignore the ripples, and he roused
himself to see what it was.

People, he thought, surprised, not
pleased, but it was not merely ‘the people’, he discovered, those
he had once walked among, called brother—come to despise. Others
were among them, pale skinned, pale eyed. This tribe he had no
familiarity with.

He wavered, torn between curiosity
about these others and the hate that had sent him into his
slumberous state long, long ago, so long ago that the hate had
become little more than apathy.

Rising finally, he stretched,
expanding his psyche outward, and then he walked among them,
studying the others, watching them. They were digging, he
discovered, for what he could not determine, but it answered the
question. This had caused the ripple, the disturbance that had
shaken him from his rest.

His curiosity waned. He had no idea
what they were about, but he had no real interest
either.

Then he saw her.

Intrigued, he settled to watch her and
he discovered that the longer he watched her, the more absorbed he
was. This one was different.

* * * *

“
Look out!”

“
Rock slide!”

“
Run!”

The ominous sound of colliding,
rolling, bouncing rocks rapidly built from a warning rumble to a
deafening roar punctuated by the shouts that first drew her
attention and the screams of fear and pain that quickly followed
the first shouts. Gabrielle LaPlante lifted her head like an animal
sensing danger at the first rumble, freezing as her gaze swept the
dig site and finally focused on the threat. Her eyes widened as she
saw the wave of dirt and rocks racing down the mountain side like a
black tide, but everything inside of her seized, even her breath in
her lungs.

It was over almost before anyone had
realized what was happening. Through the cloud of dust that rose
from the foot of the mountain where the debris settled, Gabrielle
saw a twisted human arm jutting skyward. Coated with dirt from the
soil dislodged by the falling rocks, she stared at it for many
moments before her brain finally registered that it actually was an
arm, not a bizarre, twisted tree root that resembled a human
arm.

Released finally from the shock that
had rooted her to the spot, she surged forward, launched into a run
as the workers that had scattered halted and turned to race back.
She was among the last to reach the downed worker, but it wouldn’t
have mattered, she saw, if she’d been the first. The man hadn’t
suffocated. A rock twice the size of his head had crushed his
skull.

As short as she was, the native South
Americans that made up the bulk of the laborers for the dig were as
short, or shorter, and she had no trouble seeing over the men that
clustered in front of her. She was sorry that was the case. The
image seemed to burn itself inside her mind. Nausea rolled over
her. She stumbled back, turned, looked numbly around the dig site
for several moments and fled to the tent that had been assigned to
her as her temporary home away from home.

A forensic anthropologist on loan from
the Dade Museum of Human History to investigate the first, and
only, skeletal remains found at the scene, which turned out to be
the body of a two hundred year old Indian who’d died while hunting
not an ancient settler of the area, she had never considered
herself superstitious. She’d learned to appreciate and respect the
customs and beliefs of various cultures and ancient civilizations,
but she didn’t believe.

She’d been uneasy ever since she’d
arrived at the dig, however.

She’d dismissed it. This was her first
field operation and a certain amount of trepidation was to be
understood, particularly considering the remote location. They were
miles and miles from the nearest speck of civilization, and even
that couldn’t be truly categorized as civilization, not in her
book, anyway. The village was a throw back, virtually untouched by
modern civilization.

She’d regretted taking the assignment
almost as soon as she’d agreed to it. She regretted it even more as
they left the tiny airstrip and set off in ancient vehicles down
narrow twisting roads, traveling deeper and deeper into thick,
twisted jungle filled with more poisonous creeping, slithering
reptiles and insects than any other part of the world.

The trip alone had been enough of a
jolt to her system to account for her jitteriness—paddling for
miles and miles in canoes that sat barely above water level and
watching snakes and crocodiles slither past. It had comforted her
somewhat when she’d arrived to find the dig well in progress. The
jungle had been cut back. The dig site was populated with a dozen
scientists and students and about twice or three times that many
native workers. A tent village had dotted the periphery of the
site—but the tents were the best money could buy and filled with
every modern convenience that could be lugged this deeply into the
jungle.

The conditions were still ungodly
primitive, and she didn’t especially like the speculative gazes of
the dark eyed natives—apparently fair women fascinated them. Not
that she qualified as a ‘real blond’ in the real world. Her hair
had darkened as she’d matured to a color closer to brown than
blond, but she still had the blue eyes, pale skin, and freckles of
a true blond and that seemed sufficient to the brown skinned
pigmies that made up the bulk of the tent village to earn her more
hungry male glances in the few weeks she’d been there than she’d
had in her entire life before.

Loathe to encourage them to believe
she might welcome their sexual overtures—and she didn’t think she
was imagining that they looked her over like a particularly choice
piece of ass—she spent most of her time pretending they were
invisible, which was another thing that made her uncomfortable.
She’d been accused of being frank to the point of bluntness—which
no one seemed to consider a virtue—but part of that frankness was
the tendency to meet everyone eye to eye. She’d been taught that
‘shifty eyed’ was a trait that spelled untrustworthy. She wasn’t a
liar, a cheat, or a fraud, and she was as good as, if no better
than, anyone. It made her feel dishonest to avoid eye
contact.

Beyond the physical discomforts,
though, beyond the uneasiness at having short, dark men staring at
her as if she was Venus incarnate, beyond the very real dangers
that lurked beneath every leaf, shrub, and tree limb, there was
something about the ancient city they’d uncovered that was just
plain otherworldly creepy.

She’d tried to convince herself it was
nothing more than the real threats she sensed around her that was
playing havoc with her imagination, but the fine hairs on her
body—those primal sensors of danger—prickled as if the dormant
animal inside of her knew something her conscious mind couldn’t
detect.

The natives were uneasy, too. Her
Spanish wasn’t all that great, but she didn’t need to understand
the language to assess the behavior.

They were superstitious, though. They
believed the tales of ghosts they scared themselves
with.

She didn’t believe in ghosts, or
spirits, or ancient gods that were going to be displeased about
having their temples violated.

She hadn’t before she’d arrived at the
grave site of the ancient, unnamed city. Now, she was trying to
convince herself she still didn’t.

And yet the death toll was rising.
More than a dozen workers had died since the dig had begun, eleven
before her arrival, two since, and three of the original party of
scientists and archeology students had come down with a mysterious
ailment that had required them to be shipped back
stateside.

They’d unearthed great segments of
what promised to be a huge city that predated anything found before
by at least a thousand years. And they still hadn’t found the
remains of a single occupant of that city.

That was almost the creepiest part of
it. They should have found something by now that would warrant her
presence here.

If they didn’t find something damned
soon, she thought angrily, she was going to high tail it back to
her museum!

“
What happened, Gaby? Who
got hurt?” Sheila Lyndon demanded as Gabrielle neared the tent they
shared.

Gaby simply stared at her blankly for
several moments. “Got dead today, you mean? I didn’t know his
name.” She didn’t know any of the natives’ names. She wasn’t
certain she would have recognized the guy.

A wave of shock crossed Sheila’s
features. “Somebody got killed?”

“
There’s a shock,” Gaby
said tightly, snatching open the tent flap and diving inside.
“Someone getting killed on this dig.”

“
Hey! Accidents happen,”
Sheila said, following her inside as Gaby threaded her way around
obstructions and flopped onto the cot assigned to her without even
thinking about checking the bedding for crawlies first.

Gaby looked at the younger woman in
outraged disbelief. “That’s callous, even for you.”

Sheila glared at her. “I didn’t mean
it that way, and you know it!”

Right, Gaby thought, but she didn’t
say it. She wasn’t up to an argument at the moment. She realized
she might has well have voiced her opinion, though, because Sheila
read it in her expression.

“
Don’t tell me you’re
starting to believe that voodoo crap the natives are always whining
about?”

Gaby felt her face reddening in spite
of all she could do. Since there was no hiding her reaction, she
glared at Shelia, trying to pass off embarrassment for
anger.

Not that she wasn’t angry!

“
This isn’t Africa,” she
said tightly, “or even the Caribbean. They don’t believe in voodoo
around here.”

“
Whatever witchcraft mumbo
jumbo they call it.”

Gaby gave Shelia a once over, taking
in the young woman’s better than average figure. “What did you say
you were majoring in?”

Sheila’s eyes narrowed. “I happen to
be in the upper ten percentile of my class!” she
snapped.

“
Yeah, but was it your
brain that got you there? That’s the question!”

Sheila’s eyes glittered. “Well, nobody
could be in any doubt that it was your brains that got you your
position!” she snarled through clenched teeth.