Creeg: The Tellox book1

Creeg

The Tellox Book I

By

Kelly Lucille

Copyright © 2017

Published at Smashwords by Kelly Lucille

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

CHAPTER ONE

Hey Darla, have the new paints come in yet?

Nope. But I'm expecting the shipment any day. Darla, the nice lady that ran the hardware store looked up and smiled. I'm sure my boy Henry will be happy to bring it up to you when it gets here, especially since I saw your sister in town yesterday. She here for the long weekend, or home to stay for a bit?

Sara did her best to hide her grimace. Her flight left this morning, she said then hurried on. Don't bother Henry with that. Just give me a call and I'll come for it myself.

Will do, but the way Henry moons over that sweet little Ariel he may not see it as a bother.

Of that Sara had no doubt. Even when Ariel was away at school he liked to find any excuse to come by, or stop her sisters on the street to dig for information on her activities.

Darla did nothing to dissuade her son in that direction, liking the idea of Henry landing the smart pretty Ariel Bird too much to let a little reality intrude on her fantasies.

She was not a dumb woman. She was forty-five, strong, worked hard and was sensible on most subjects. She had one blind spot as far as Sara could tell: Henry.

Her son took after his father, being tall, broad, and burly, with hands the size of watermelons and a brain the size of a pea. His mother thought he was perfect and should have everything he wanted. Henry wanted Ariel.

Unfortunately, it had been Ariel's decided opinion, verbally expressed on his last visit, that in any truly civilized society he would have been castrated at puberty to preserve the integrity of the species.

In the small town they lived in, he was the captain of the football team and little girls swooned when he smiled at them. Ariel did not swoon.

Henry kept trying and Sara felt a pang of pity for the poor boy, but Ariel was not your average teenage girl. Seventeen and attending MIT for her second post graduate degree, fools were not suffered lightly. And teenage boys who did not understand when she was not interested made her particularly… well, mean. The fact that Henry did not seem to take any notice when Ariel was insulting him made it that much worse for her sharp tongued and at times, bluntly cruel sister.

Ariel had told Sara once that it was like kicking a big dumb puppy that peed on your foot. You felt bad for kicking the big dummy but on the other hand you didn't want him to keep peeing on your shoe.

That's all right, Sara answered Darla grimacing at Ariel’s likely reaction to Henry’s proposed visit should she hear about it. You just give me a call and I'll come pick it up.

Without another word but with a friendly wave, Sara backed out of the hardware store and headed for the grocer. She cut across the alley and headed for Second Street where the grocery store was located without having to think about it, having trod the paths her whole life. Without paying attention to much but the long list of items she wanted to see done on her few infrequent jaunts to town, she had just turned the corner when she felt a disturbing tingle on the back of her neck.

She looked around and behind her quickly, never having felt her mental warning quite so strongly before. There was no one in the alleyway either in front of her or in the space at her back and she breathed a sigh of relief. Until she turned back around and swore she caught something in the shadows from the corner of her eye. She didn’t waste a second assuring herself there was no one there, just broke into a sprint as if rabid dogs were at her heals.

Sara got to the end of the alley out of breath and hoping no one had seen her. Not that she would do anything different if the whole town was watching. She might look like an idiot running from her over developed imagination, but she was no longer in the alley and that's what counted. Especially when she could still feel a …presence, for want of a better word, watching her from the alley.

Her adrenaline pumping and her knees rubbery she turned to look back again, but there was nothing there.

She blew out a deep breath and wondered if it was the lack of sleep that was making her crazy or the continued talk of Alien invasions. Either way, ever since the ship had been spotted in orbit five months ago, and everyone had gone insane over it, she had been having nightmares about them. No doubt like most of the rest of the world.

Once she had seen the Aliens at the peace talks and subsequent assassination attempt on the television screen, it had gotten worse. Like many people, she was happy they had left without declaring war on the human species for the attempt to kill them, especially when the bullets had bounced right off their commander before he slaughtered the would-be assassins. She shuddered at the memory.

A seven-foot cat like creature who walked and talked like a man, dressed like a barbarian marauder, and killed in an instant. Yes, that was enough to make her paranoid of alleyways.

Get a grip Sara, she whispered to herself, heading resolutely for the town’s only grocery store. They flew their crazy Alien ship away months ago, there's no one there.

***

When the female walked away Creeg was tempted to follow her, but she had looked right at him, not just in his general direction, so he stayed where he was and watched her until she disappeared into the huge ugly building that smelled of all manner of nasty things. He, himself would never understand how so many people lived on top of each other the way they did. His people might share close quarters in space, but on land and on the rare return trips to New Tellos, they all dispersed to the far corners of the planet for some much-needed personal territory. Indeed, the same genetic tampering that had combined their DNA with that of the fierce nearly indestructible hunting beasts of their old world also made it imperative that they take the time their instincts called for to hunt and explore new places. They may be a space faring race but at heart they were closer in nature to the four-legged hunting beasts of this world than the humans.

They only handled space travel by stopping at large planets like this one and running a bit when their tempers got too frayed from the endless lack of space and hunting ground on board ship.

Humans seem to like being right on top of each other. They were a queer race, these Earth humans but many throughout the galaxy were the same. Too many people in too small an area. Humans though, unlike the rest of the civilized worlds, did not seem to have any population control at all.

Yes, they were some of the strangest beings he had ever come across. Logic seemed to have very little bearing on their actions. Look how many had reacted with hostile intent against a force so clearly technologically advanced. As if The Tellox would need trickery and subterfuge to destroy the primitive Earth people if that was their intention.

Not wishing to deal with such a backward species had forced him and his men to extreme measures of stealth in their runs, but it did not change their intentions.

They had avoided most of the larger populated areas but the jungles and wild places reminiscence of the old Tellos they had not forgone exploring, simply because the population was superstitious and primitive. After convincing the inept sensors employed by the government bodies of Earth that they had departed they returned under full stealth and explored as they pleased. Nearly at the end of their time he, unlike the rest of his men, had ended his journey here, among the tall mountains and forests of the district called California, on the North American continent. It was the most populated section any of them had elected to hunt, but there was something about that area that pulled at Creeg. And a Tellox never ignored his instincts.

At least here, unlike the cities along the coast and farther inland, the air was clean and the buildings were not tall enough to try to bury you beneath steel and concrete. And here, after so many places explored, is where he had found the strange female that had so drawn his attention. He just did not know why.

Her hair, reminiscent of a Tellos sunset, all fiery reds and gold shimmer caught his eye first. Long to her waist, he wanted to touch it, to see if it and her skin were as soft as they looked. Normally he found human females to be frail looking creatures, bony and lacking in grace. She was not overly tall, at least in his eyes, but rounded and soft looking. Yes, he would like to see more of her, if only to assuage his new-found curiosity. She was by far the most interesting of the species he had seen yet. And she had seen him despite the stealth shields he employed. He was sure of it.

If she could somehow see past their technology, he would have to make sure she was not a threat to his people and their explorations of this area. The last thing he wanted was for all the humans to know they were still here.

I deceive myself, he thought, as she disappeared into the stone building, He very much wanted to touch her and had to acknowledge to himself that it had nothing to do with security.

When the small female came out with the bags in her hands she looked both left and right before stepping out onto the sidewalk. Careful to keep her eyes up and far away from the alley, she was acting very like prey that sensed a predator nearby. He could practically feel her relief when she was safely tucked behind the wheel of her transport and the locks engaged. She pulled out into the transport lanes and vehicles that were making use of it.

Creeg realized quickly that he could not chance following her during this area’s full daylight. Too many people about that he might brush up against. Nor could he hang about the populated area and hope to see her again. He was the last still on his run,