Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

are you taking me, my lord?” Maya asked. Her escort stopped abruptly and turned to face her, still cradling her hand in his.

“Please, as I said before, call me Don Luis. Soon you will be my wife. There is no need for such formalities.” He gave her a wide grin.  “I am going to show you the source of all this wonder, the Being that made this possible. I want to show you your new god.”

It seemed to Maya that he wasn’t speaking cryptically on purpose, but that he was drunk on the idea of turning and marrying her. He spoke like a poet who had become consumed by his muse. But while the exact meaning of his statement still eluded her, Maya felt that something important was about to happen, so she took a deep breath, bravely calmed her beating heart, and smiled back, knowing that she needed to be paying attention and be on her guard.

“Sounds fascinating. Please, Don Luis, lead on.”

He did just that, guiding her into the very depths of the palace, past dozens of guards both vampiric and human. She feigned giddiness and fascination as they went.

“But first, we need to stop and get something,” he explained, as though she would know any different.

“Whatever you say, good sir.”

He led her down a dead-end hallway, where a ceiling-high ornate wooden cabinet stood towering like a night’s watchman. Floral patterns, first etched, then painted, decorated both doors of the enormous cabinet. Maya decided that although décor in a monster’s castle, it was admittedly beautiful, and was a testament to fine craftsmanship.

“What is this all about?” Maya inquired, trying to sound casual.

“A little protection, just in case,” Don Luis said with a wink. Then, turning, he reached inside the wide opening of his shirt and fished out a thin string of leather, worn like a necklace. He pulled the loop off his head and Maya noticed that a small brass key dangled from it.

“Behold, one of my most prized possessions,” Don Luis said as he used the key to unlock and then open the cabinet doors.

On the other side of the curio’s double doors rested a pistol of a design Maya had never seen before. Highly polished, clad in chrome, the weapon was mounted in an open-faced shadowbox picture frame, the back of which was fitted with a deep purple crushed velvet.

Don Luis gently plucked the pistol from its mounting hooks and turned it over in his hand, admiring it.

“This was a prototype. A weapon in its infancy, developed by the American military right before the Storm. It belonged to the Cartel Don whom I worked for,” he explained, never taking his glowing eyes off the instrument.

“I’m not much of a weapons enthusiast, but it’s quite lovely,” Maya said, wondering nervously where this was headed, and what he needed a pistol for. “What, um… caliber is it?” she asked.

“It doesn’t have one. This, my dear Lily, is a laser pistol. The only one left of its kind, I’m sure.”

Maya widened her eyes in a combination of feigned and real interest but said nothing.

“It fires a single beam that can travel far straighter and far longer than any conventional bullet. When it finds its target, the super-charged electrons excite and combust whatever material it encounters, almost instantly. Had the Storm not occurred, I have no doubt this bad boy would have gone into mass production and eventually replaced most conventional weapons. Sadly, the beam has the same effect on the air it passes through, so the range is limited, for the beam will burn itself out eventually. It’s my favorite toy.”

“Why do we need it right now?” Maya asked, hoping she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt.

“As I said, it’s an insurance policy.”

“For what?”

“You’ll see. Come, follow me to the heart of my palace.” Keeping the precious technological relic in his grip, Don Luis led her back out of the dead-end and deeper into the catacombs.

The air down in the catacombs of the palace was cool and wet and smelled of decay. As they walked on, Don Luis began to tell a tale, a tale of the hell that was Earth after the Great Storm, a tale of life after death, and of how both he and New Puebla had come to be.

“I haven’t told you how old I am, Lily,” Don Luis began. “But when I tell you that I was the same age that I appear to be now when the Great Storm happened, I am not lying. Back then, before the Storm, I lived in Old Puebla, or just ‘Puebla,’ as it was called then. I wasn’t always a king, a ruler, you know. Does that surprise you?” He smirked at his queen-to-be. She smiled back coyly. “I know that is hard to believe—the suit fits me so well, you would think I were born into it—but no. I saw my chance at destiny and seized it.” He slowed his walk for a second and reached behind Maya, placing his hand on her buttocks, and squeezed halfway between gentle and firm.

“Just as you are doing now, my dear.” Ever the performer, Maya as Lily swallowed her disgust and instead bounced her eyebrows up and down and purred. Don Luis removed his hand, and they walked on.

“Tell me more.”

“Before the Storm, I grew up a poor child. At the age of seven, my father was killed. Complications from dealings with the cartels. My mother was left to take care of my three younger siblings and me. This I could not abide. I swallowed my pride and turned my back on my childhood. I went to see the very men responsible for my father’s execution. I’m not sure if this amused them or impressed them, but they took me in and gave me work. I started out as a courier, but I soon worked my way up to soldier, and by the time I should have been graduating high school in another world, I was running a