Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 350(@200wpm)___ 280(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“What? That’s ridiculous,” I spat out, hardly even thinking about how obvious I was being.
Roger winced. “Yes, it is. So why are you having a hernia over it?”
He’s right. Get it together, Twink…I mean, Charlie!
“Sorry, think I’m just ready to be on my break.”
“Mmmkay. Well, hit me up later. We need to hang at some point this week. Daddy doesn’t get to keep you all to himself.”
“Yeah, yeah, man,” I said. He wasn’t wrong. Since Daddy had come to town, I’d spent so much time with him that I was neglecting my best friend, which really, was probably why he was so engrossed in this UFO conspiracy stuff to begin with.
17
DADDY
As Twink played the video for me, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The object tearing toward Earth, that could’ve been my spaceship during the crash, but what I saw in the gas station was something far worse. Something that made goose bumps prick across my human flesh.
Standing in the living room Twink had created in the Kaylog, I audibly gulped. This was truly the last thing I could have expected when Twink told me he had something important to talk to me about after work.
“Do you know what that thing is?” Twink asked.
“Yeah… That’s my ex.”
His eyes bulged. “Wait, huh? What is she doing in Harmony Springs?”
“That’s the billion-black-holes question. What day was that costume store robbed?”
“About two days after you got here.”
Just as I feared. “I assumed she’d just sabotaged the Kaylog, but she must’ve put a tracker on it too, so she could find me and force me to keep mating with her. We must find her.”
Twink’s brow creased. “It sounds like we need to keep you away from her.”
“No, Twink. She’s a monster. She won’t care about humans. She only cares about her needs.”
“A trait both our exes share,” he said playfully. “Sorry, weird time to make a joke.”
“This is very serious. She’ll do whatever she must. Kill anyone who stands in her way.” I said the words without really considering how they may weigh on Twink’s conscience, but as I felt the shift in his temperament, I quickly worked to mitigate his response. “She can be stopped, but I have to find her immediately, before she has a chance to hurt anyone.”
“Can’t she hurt you, though?”
“Yes, she can kill me. Easily. She’s a very powerful creature. She has certain hypnotic abilities as well. She can put creatures in a trance. It’s how she kept me under for so long. After I managed to escape it, I programmed my cuff to prevent it from working on me again, but it’s bound to work on others she encounters. It’s probably why she hasn’t been detected yet.”
“That explains how she’s been able to get away with walking around in a really fake-ass costume without being caught.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t come out much. She likely has already found a few drones to do her bidding, searching around town to find out where I am.”
“You’ve been around town, though, and she hasn’t—Oh, that’s right. You don’t look like your Furker self…or…would you have looked like a Furker with her?”
“I would have taken the form of her species, the Vorcons, when we first met, but she didn’t mind me in my Furker form either, so she would know both. I’m sorry. This is all my fault. If I hadn’t left…”
“Your fault? That you escaped a psychotic, manipulative creature who was keeping you just so she could breed babies that wanted to kill you?”
“Please don’t bring our kids into this,” I said, perhaps more defensively than I should have, but I would never hold her actions against them. Not when I didn’t even hold their desire to kill me against them.
He shook his head. “Sorry. That was wrong. I meant, you had every reason to escape, and it’s not your fault you landed here. She’s the one who damaged your ship. This is all her fault.”
I couldn’t argue with him there, but… “If only I hadn’t been so blinded by her beauty.”
“Hey, trust me. I know what it’s like to get lured in by an asshole. And she sounds like a real big one.”
“She would seem very big to a human, I guess. I imagine she would be nine feet.”
“Um…that wasn’t what I…never mind. Now’s not the time.”
Judging by his confusion, it seemed there’d been another misunderstanding, but I had too many things to consider to fixate on correcting it. “Sheila is here, and I must find a way to track her down and keep you safe.”
It was one of the more concerning parts of this, and as I said the words, Twink’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, keep me safe?”
“If she realizes what I feel for you, her kind do things to their rivals…”
This intensified his concern. “What kind of things?”