Free Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1) by Jae Hill

they’ve done. It’s only the males that get clipped, and we just unclip. You want us to take care of that for you before you leave?”
    He chuckled and looked around at some of the others in the room. “Free of charge for our new friend!”
    “Umm….” I hesitated. “I, uh, don’t really need to do that right now.”
    “Well that’s a shame,” Ebenezer said. “One of my grand-daughters is an absolutely beautiful young woman and she wants a child. Your genes would be a welcome addition to this community. I’d pay you for them, handsomely.”
    He turned to one of his associates and said, “Bring in Georgina. She’d love to meet our new visitor.”
    Ebenezer winked at his associate, then smiled at me. I protested but clearly he wasn’t having any of it. I was utterly confused.
    The old man continued relaying his personal eighty-three year history to me until a beautiful auburn-haired woman entered the room. She was slender, tall, and pale, wrapped in a white robe, which she dropped to the floor as soon as the three of us were alone. My jaw dropped at the sight of her beautiful naked body. I was speechless. She approached me, leaned in close to me, and spoke some words gently into my ear that I just couldn’t hear. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t deny that this girl was stunning and caused a stirring inside me, so I shifted in my seat, uncomfortably.
    Ebenezer and Georgina tried for nearly an hour to get me to agree to undergo their procedure so I could mate with her. I protested. I refused. I tried to get our negotiations back on track to learn how to disable Semper’s neural web: my whole reason for being here. They wouldn’t hear it. Their request soon became a demand, and soon it became a ransom: I was told I couldn’t leave Old Vancouver until I agreed.
    I felt ill. I was being held prisoner. I was in deep over my head and I couldn’t think of anything except to run. I dashed from my chair and grabbed my bag next to the door. I threw open the door to the hallway and one of Ebenezer’s guards stepped in front of me. I punched him hard in the face—the first time in my life I’d ever hit anyone in anger. To my utter amazement, he flew against the wall and dropped like a rag doll.
    I raced down the flights of stairs to the dock where the boats were moored. I knew how to drive boats, and if I could just get aboard before anyone else got to me, I’d be home free. Maybe I’d go home and give up on this venture. Maybe I’d give up on trying to save Semper. My mind raced faster than my feet.
    I threw the door open to the floating dock, and was a scant dozen paces from the boat when the last thing I saw was a board swinging right toward my face.
    I don’t know how long I was unconscious. It couldn’t have been too long. I awoke tied to a chair, back in Ebenezer’s office. My bag was on the floor next to me. My right cheek and eye socket throbbed and pounded. I could taste blood on my lips. Everything felt funny.
    Ebenezer stood in front of me, staring disapprovingly. He growled.
    “I welcome you into my home, offer to help you, and offer to pay you handsomely, and you reward my generosity by trying to steal one of my boats?”
    “Let me go,” I mumbled.
    “No,” he said defiantly, “and now you’re definitely undergoing that procedure.”
    I stared back into his eyes, trying to burn a hole in him with my glare.
    “So now you’re forcing people to have surgeries too?”
    His face dropped all expression and he slowly took a step back. He cursed under his breath, and then told the guards to release me.
    “I…apologize,” he said quietly. “It’s just very important that we keep breeding out here. That we keep our gene pool fresh. That we keep growing and building.”
    He paused and swallowed hard. “ We ,” he emphasized, looking intently into my eyes, “don’t live forever.”
    Ebenezer turned toward the window as the guard untied me from the chair.
    “You’ll go speak to Henry, in the