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  MONSTER GIRL

  STARGAZER – BOOK 3

  T.R. WOODMAN

  CONTENTS

  Charmed

  Lone

  Unsettled

  Pained

  Frail

  Confused

  Seeker

  Mourner

  Accused

  Shackled

  Dismayed

  Redeemed

  Prize

  Appreciated

  Enhanced

  Defiant

  Drained

  Pilot

  Dreamer

  Wanted

  Fighter

  Foolish

  Unwanted

  Scourged

  Detached

  Monster

  Badass

  Helpless

  Free

  Hunted

  Lonely

  Forthcoming

  Delusional

  Tortured

  Hopeful

  Superhero

  Freak

  Programmed

  Clueless

  Girl

  Special offer

  Special request

  Playlist (trw links)

  Dedication

  Copyright notice

  About the author

  Stargazer chronology

  CHARMED

  It didn’t matter that they weren’t on Earth. Strange was strange, and Evelyn had grown accustomed to seeing strange things in her few short months on Orsus.

  There was the fish she had speared, glittering deep blue on its back with a belly as orange as coals fanned by a stiff breeze. Its fins and tail hung off its body like fancy ball gowns draped over beautiful women that Evelyn had seen in pictures, and it was so pretty she felt bad about killing it. The size of the fish was a little unnerving, as big around and as long as her leg, but it had tasted good, so she quickly got over her mental reservations about being a hunter.

  Then there was the wolverine she and Joseph had seen near their camp, where the mountain lake met the ridge that went forever up into the gray skies of Orsus. It wasn’t really a wolverine, Evelyn knew, but that was the best way to describe it. Not only was it the size of a bear cub and just as hairy, but its black face melded quickly into a bulbous body covered in long crimson hair.

  She and Joseph had seen it slinking around a few days after they had arrived. As the nights had grown colder, their sightings of it grew more frequent. It also seemed to be getting bolder with each passing day. The first time they saw it, it scampered off into the woods, and they hardly saw more than a brief flash of red as it disappeared into the darkness of the forest. After that, they had caught it sniffing around their campfire and eating the leftover fish they hadn’t thrown far enough into the lake. Apparently, it had dragged the carcass back to the shore and had eaten what was left of it, leaving the remains to stink up the beach. The irony that such a pretty fish could smell so bad wasn’t lost on Evelyn and gave them both a laugh.

  As the days passed, they started to notice more of the strange hairy beasts, but other than the fact that they seemed to be less reclusive—and appeared to have teeth as long as her fingers—Evelyn wasn’t too worried, as they always ran off at even the slightest sound.

  And then there was the snake, as startling as the fish was beautiful and the wolverine was intriguing. Evelyn was still disgusted by the snake she had seen in the fields—the one that had tried to attack one of the gardeners. If there was ever an image Evelyn hoped she could forget, it was of that slithering rat-headed, horn-backed monster. Not only was it twice as long as she was tall, but given the footage from the agribot’s memory systems, it slithered faster than almost any living thing, she imagined, could run. If it hadn’t been for the agribot pounding its head into oblivion, the colonist would have surely been made a meal by that snake. Just the thought of it gave Evelyn daytime nightmares in moments when she was all alone under the dark canopy of the forest.

  Even with all the wildlife wonders of Orsus Evelyn had seen, nothing compared to the vision Joseph had noticed that morning, breaking over the ridge just to the west of their camp. At first, both of them thought it was merely the pink light of the rising sun casting a shimmer through the oxygen-heavy atmosphere. That is, until they remembered the sun rose over the opposite ridge.

  They stared at the rose-colored fog as it sparkled in the morning light, rising ever higher—thousands of feet into the air by Evelyn’s estimate—swirling like bubbles in a flute of champagne. It was beautiful, Evelyn thought, and the nervousness she felt in watching it grow closer was only tempered by the fact that she couldn’t take her eyes off the hypnotic dance of the fog as it slowly floated closer.

  “Let’s get a closer look.”

  Evelyn glanced over her shoulder at the sound of Joseph’s voice. He had brushed the hair out of his eyes and was gesturing for her to follow. At his suggestion, she felt torn; she wanted to get closer to the fog, she didn’t want to stop looking at it, and she wanted to hide all at once. Reluctantly, she peeled her eyes away and marched after him.

  Evelyn hiked her shawl over her shoulders. The chill in the early autumn morning was enough that she could see her breath and probably would until the sun warmed things up by at least ten degrees. She knew it was going to be cooler on the path too, and she rubbed her bare arms under the shawl to brush away the cold.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, Joseph.” The words reluctantly slipped through her lips, barely loud enough for her to hear them. It was almost as if the sensible voice of reason was being strangled by the impulsive voice of curiosity so that only a whisper of deterrent was cast in their path to see the sparkling wonder ahead.

  “What are you so worried about, Evie?”

  “Oh, I don’t know … being consumed by a giant pink fire, for one thing.”

  “How do you know it’s a fire, anyway? Maybe it’s just dust.”

  “Dust? It looks like a nuclear glitter bomb exploded on top of that mountain.”

  Joseph laughed, pulling himself over the boulder inconveniently blocking their path. In the few weeks they had been at their camp, Evelyn and Joseph had followed the natural trail into the trees and up the ever-steepening slope many times. There were several places further up where it was steep enough that they had to use their hands to scramble over the granite boulders or had to lock their feet into the base of the trees for toeholds, but the boulder they were scaling was only the first of many other minor deterrents on an otherwise gently sloped path.

  Joseph knelt at the top of the boulder and offered Evelyn his hand, which she gratefully took. A second later, he hoisted her to the top.

  “Glitter bomb?” he said, laughing again and glancing over his shoulder through the trees at the plume. “Don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic about it?”

  Evelyn laughed, reluctant to let Joseph’s hand go but doing so anyway to brush her hands off on her pants. “I can think of a dozen ways for this to go wrong, and I’m not even trying very hard.”

  “That’s what I love about you, Evie …” He laughed again, signaling for her to follow him with a nod of his head. “You’re always thinking.”

  “Not sure it does either of us any good when neither of us are listening,” she mumbled, following a few feet back.

  “You never saw any fireworks back on Earth, did you?”

  Well, my body was grown in a tube on a space station. And then I was
born, and a month later, when I had the chance to go down to the surface, I spent a grand total of twenty minutes there … Of course, there was the guided rocket the military fired at us as we left the planet … the one that detonated fifty feet behind our shuttle … Does that count as fireworks? No, probably not … so there it is … another thing I have only read about but not actually experienced.

  “No. Just seen them in pictures. You?”

  “Yeah. When I was about six, I guess. I was hanging around with some older guys, and one of them found a box of fireworks in the cellar of this old warehouse. I’m not sure how long they had been there, or why they were there, but he took the box and was showing them off.

  “So, we waited for it to get dark, and we climbed up on top of the storage building, and we started lighting the fireworks.”

  Evelyn smiled, knowing something was about to happen. Joseph rarely had a story that didn’t end with someone getting into trouble. She shook her head. “So, what did you blow up, Joseph?”

  “Now, wait a minute. What makes you think we blew anything up?”

  “Because I’ve known you for seven years, and I know how your stories go.”

  Joseph laughed, holding a tree branch out of the way so Evelyn could pass and then letting it swish back over the path behind her. “Well, for your information, we didn’t blow up anything, so you don’t know everything, no matter how smart you think you are.”

  “Okay, fine … finish your story,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  Joseph pushed past her as they started up the steeper part of the slope, the loose rock slowing both them and the pace of his story as they cautiously moved up the rocky grade.

  “So, there we were, on the roof, lighting off fireworks. Most of them did nothing. I guess they were too old. Some of them just sputtered and popped. It was pretty disappointing, really. This whole box of fireworks, and all we were doing was setting fire to the paper and watching it burn in all different colors.

  “But there was this one tube. I think it said Screaming Eagle on the side of it. I don’t remember for sure, but I feel like it was almost as tall as I was. We propped it up against the edge of the metal roofing, lit it, and ran because we were sure we were going to die if it exploded.

  “Nothing happened for the longest time, but then it started screaming, just like the name said it would. I had to put my hands over my ears it was so loud, and it seemed to scream forever. Then it stopped. We thought it was done, so we all stood up from our hiding spots just in time to see the flaming ball shoot out of the top of it. I don’t know how high it went, but it was really high, and then it exploded.”

  Joseph hauled himself up over another rock and pulled Evelyn up behind him. The high mountain lake they had found on an earlier visit was just a few steps from them, filled with frigid cold but crystal clear water, and the lake itself wasn’t so big that Joseph couldn’t throw a rock across to the other side. Because of the steep slope leading to it, and the lack of trees along one edge, the lake looked like it was suspended in the clouds.

  Both of them stopped, catching their breath, and then wandered close to the water. With no trees in the way, the shimmering plume of rose-colored sparks ascended over their heads, cresting like a tidal wave as it reached thousands of feet above.

  Evelyn was unable to form anything even resembling a coherent thought, and obviously, Joseph was having the same trouble, because they both stood silent and motionless, awestruck by the beauty before them.

  Moments passed, and then Evelyn remembered the story Joseph was telling.

  “Did it look like that?”

  “What?”

  “The firework. When it exploded. Did it look like that?”

  Joseph continued to stare at the plume. “Not even close.”

  Evelyn shook her head, unsure what the point of Joseph’s story was but laughing to herself all the same.

  “But the roof of the storage building did.”

  Evelyn laughed again and finally peeled her eyes away from the plume. She felt the fluttering in her chest as she stared at her green-eyed boy, who was still mesmerized by the same cloud.

  “The firework exploded, and we were all so focused on what was happening overhead we completely missed the fact that the tube had caught fire, and it had set fire to the roof.” Joseph turned to her, the blank look on his face quickly turning to a grin, no doubt feeding off the look of amusement on hers. “Yeah, we barely got off the roof before the whole thing caught fire. It shot sparks fifty feet into the air.”

  “That’s more than fifty feet, Joseph,” Evelyn said, pointing up but not looking.

  “Well, I didn’t say it looked exactly like that,” he added with a shrug of his shoulders, and then before Evelyn could fully cock her eyebrow, he leaned in quickly and pecked her on the lips.

  Evelyn felt her ears warm against the still cool midmorning air, knowing the unwanted blood flow to her cheeks was giving off its own rose-colored plume. Joseph’s grin grew wider.

  “You’re just full of stories.”

  “Well, I had to tell you something. You were so worried. You would have missed it,” he added, holding his hands up in the air.

  Just then, Evelyn noticed that some of the glittering sparks were beginning to descend around them, only they were much larger than she had originally thought. Each was about the size and shape of a poppy petal and appeared to be so papery thin they seemed almost too light to fall out of the air.

  Like shimmering pink ashes, they floated, and Evelyn realized she was holding her breath, the uncertainty of what was happening setting her nerves on end. Joseph held out his hand like a kid waiting for the first snowflake of winter to land in his palm, and for a second, Evelyn thought about grabbing his hand and running, tumbling down the hillside if necessary to get away.

  But then the petal landed on his palm, and like a snowflake, it melted and vanished in a second. Joseph smiled and looked from his palm to her, just as another pink flake brushed her cheek and melted away.

  For a few more moments, they stood and looked at one another, and Evelyn couldn’t help but wait for something bad to happen. But nothing did, and as Evelyn felt the tension lessen in her chest, they laughed together and twirled with outstretched arms as the plume of petals floated in the air around them.

  trw

  LONE

  For the flurry of petals, Evelyn was surprised by how few seemed to collect on the ground around her. Those that touched her melted, and that had immediately given her the impression that whatever the petals were, they were similar to snow. But as they stood on the ridge overlooking the lake with a view of the mountain ridges beyond, she realized that nearly all of the petals were swept back up into the air when they got within a few feet of the ground.

  Evelyn knelt, her curiosity getting the better of her, and watched as one petal gently floated down, slowed, puffed slightly as if it were taking a breath, and then with what she swore was a spark within it—like a flicker in a lantern—it quickly rose, disappearing from sight within seconds.

  Evelyn had never seen anything so beautiful, but just as quickly as the plume came, it passed. In less than thirty minutes, they watched the tail of the plume billow past, the wave of petals blanketing the valley below them and rolling effortlessly over the mountains and ridges in the distance, spanning miles in every direction.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” Joseph said, breaking her trance.

  Evelyn only then realized she hadn’t had anything to eat either, and the gnawing in her belly quickly brought her into the moment. A split second later, she remembered that they had very few protein bars left on the shuttle, and as if in revolt against having to digest more bizarre alien food, her stomach growled.

  “Me too,” Evelyn said half-heartedly. As they approached the edge of the ledge and started down the rocky slope, she was quickly relieved to find that, just as above, the petals hadn’t landed on the slope or the path below to make their way even more treach
erous.

  “Well, you’re the smart one … What do you suppose that was?”

  Evelyn slid down the last few feet of the boulder, feeling the smack of the granite against her tailbone as she landed.

  “I don’t have any idea,” she said, wincing. She rubbed her backside, grateful Joseph hadn’t seen her graceless landing. “I thought it was snow at first, but then, the way it floated back up, it almost seemed alive.”

  “Alive? You mean like a bug or something?”

  “Yeah, maybe … I don’t know.”

  “Well, if it was, it wasn’t like any bugs I’ve ever seen.”

  “Yeah, me neither, and that’s what I’m afraid of,” Evelyn muttered, a feeling of dread brushing past her like the shadow from a cloud moving to block the sun. She shook her head.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Nothing. I’m just thinking too much again.” Evelyn paced quickly down the trail. It was always faster going down, and she was relieved they were making good time getting back to the camp and to their shuttle. But something about being out in the open after such a strange event worried her, and she couldn’t help feeling like they were being watched. A shudder flitted up her back. She told herself it was the chill seeping through her shawl, but deep down she knew better.

  In the trees again, this time modestly brighter by having the light of the midday sun filtering through the leaves, a greenish light cast around them.

  Rounding the final boulder leading to camp, Joseph stopped, and Evelyn thumped into his back, catching herself only by grabbing his shirt collar.

  Neither said anything for a moment, and Evelyn realized Joseph was intently staring into the woods to their left. Just then, she heard the crack of wood under the feet of something coming through the brush.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You’re asking me?” No sooner had the words left his mouth than a wispy, thin animal resembling a greyhound ambled through the bushes. Its long legs lightly stepped through the leaves and native grasses. Two long horns, stacked one on top of the other, spiraled out of its crown. Its head tiredly bobbed on its long neck, and Evelyn wondered how it could even hold up its head.