Page 77 of Stealing Jia

Sariel, Zarek, Zan, Jubal and Dad didn’t seem concerned. They just watched the tornado of doom intently.

I was thirty seconds away from crawling into Trayon’s lap when two monstrous creatures slid out of the blinding golden light. Poof! The vortex vanished.

I blinked in disbelief. The Gorum resembled enormous garden slugs. They had long, white tubular bodies and two eyestalks with bright yellow orbs. Okay, our slugs didn’t have those twisty, wormy growths around their heads. What was even more interesting was the wormy things resembled the rat creature’s protrusions. Was Giovanni trying to clone them too? “Excuse me, butare you missing any of your people?”

The entire bridge crew looked at me in disbelief.

Zarek sighed.

Sariel fixed a disapproving gaze on me.

“Ooops. Sorry, I forgot about protocol,” I said, giving everyone an apologetic smile.

My dad rubbed a hand over his face as if he was trying not to laugh.

The Gorum’s orbs swiveled around to stare at me.

I had to admit the way their eyestalks moved was downright creepy.

“The Gorum are powerful psychics. They can read your mind.”Trayon warned.

I shrugged. “Why not? Everyone else does.”

The larger Gorum glided across the bridge, its eyestalks focused on me. “How do you know we are missing two females?”

“An educated guess. Giovanni and Mallox have been kidnapping different species to create their own army of genetically altered super soldiers.” I shot them a mental picture of the rat creature. “His growths resemble yours.”

Menace suddenly hung in the air, heavy and oppressive. “Show us this creature.”

“Uh, well. I can’t.” I had to say, they had intimidation down to an art form.

“Cannot or will not?”

“Cannot,”Trayon inserted.“Mallox had implanted his creation with explosives and we destroyed it before it could damage the ship.”

A wormy growth lengthened into a tentacle and before I could make a run for it, the slimy thing wrapped around my waist.

“Hey, let go!”I yanked frantically on the gooey flesh.

“No.” The Gorum lifted me until we were eyeball to eyeball. “What are you called?”

“Jia. Put me down. Now!”An energy ball formed above my right hand.“Or I’ll make you.” I hated that my voice quivered.

The Gorum brayed.“That puny thing will not harm me.”

“It won’t?”I shot a sidelong glance at Trayon.

He shook his head.“It would take multiple blasts from a laser cannon to damage him.”

“Oh, your hide is armored. That explains Mallox’s interest.”I dissipated the energy ball and patted the tentacle gingerly. “Can I talk you out of eating me?”

“Are you a Jones?”

“I am.”

The Gorum’s eyestalks swiveled around to look at the Overlord. “Zarek would be very unhappy if I ate you.”

“Jones females are hard to find,” Zarek agreed.

---