Free Beauty and the Fleet (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 2) by Robert McKay Page A

the corner. Carefully, she dipped the broken tine of her plastic fork in the goo and then lowered it to the back cover of her book. It was sacrilege to desecrate one of her books; it was even worse to be trying to communicate with the monster that had murdered her father. But with each dip into the disgusting grey goo, her resolve strengthened and her heart hardened. This was all she could do for Gadget and the rest of her friends.
    It took an hour of painstaking dipping and scratching, but she managed to pen a note on the inside of the back cover that read simply, "Come talk to me". She let the note dry and then put it through the bars and opened the book back up with the note clearly visible.
    A while later, the guards came through and picked up their trays. If they noticed the book, they ignored it. She heaved a sigh of relief. Apparently, along with being nonverbal, her guards were completely uninterested in anything out of the norm.
    Now, all she could do was wait and hope the beast saw her message. Though she couldn't see cameras, she was sure he was watching her, somehow. Maybe he just crept in at night to watch her sleep. She shuddered.
    Waiting, as it turned out, wasn't easy. Every noise brought her attention back to the book sitting just outside her cell. Hours ticked by and nothing happened. After a while Beatrix drifted off to sleep and was haunted by random images and feelings. Nothing concrete terrorized her. That would have been easier to deal with. Then at least, she would have had something to fight. A hazy image of her father lying dead in their kitchen gave way to a dark fog that clung to her skin like a shroud. It was impossible to see anything beyond about a meter. Then voices drifted in. First, a multitude, whispering too quietly to be heard. Then just a single deep voice, snarling words she couldn't understand in a gravelly whisper.
    "Beatrix..."
    A bolt of fear shot down her spine and her eyes opened wide. Her breath was caught in her throat and she was too afraid to release it. There was no doubt that she wasn't alone. The beast had come. It seemed wrong for her name to pass those lips. How dare that thing speak her name. Her fear and panic gave way to anger. Her breath came back in short pants.
    "Beatrix..." he called again. His voice was soft, almost tender. He was standing under the light outside her cell, his muscled, fur-clad arms crossed before his chest.
    That was all she could take. Her anger boiled over into white-hot rage, suffusing her whole body with heat and the need to move. Before she could think better of it, Beatrix lunged from her bed toward the sound of the voice, a wordless scream ripping from her throat. Her chest met cold metal with a meaty thunk. Her hands reached through the bars and clawed at empty air, but she kept swinging anyway.
    "Sting," called Hands, sounding groggy. "You alright?"
    The beast hadn't fled; he'd merely stepped back into the shadows against the far wall. He still wouldn't be visible to anyone other than her. While she stared at him, her heart pounding and her chest heaving, he shook his head once. The look in his yellow eyes was calculating and then he glanced toward the exit. If she said anything, he would be gone and her chances of getting answers along with him.
    "I'm fine, Hands," she said, willing her breathing to slow, despite the rage still burning in her heart at being so close to the beast. "Go back to sleep."
    "Alright," he said softly, already drifting back off. A few seconds later his soft snores were drifting out into the hallway.
    Beatrix pulled herself back from the bars and fought the urge to rub her aching chest. She wouldn't show any weakness in front of the beast, but she also didn't want to be within his easy striking distance any more. Even if she did manage to get a hand on him, he held all the power. The only satisfaction she could get would be getting information out of him that might help her escape later.
    "Why did you come down