Holiday Abduction (Alien Abduction Book 6) by Eve Langlais

a problem though with his plan.
    Someone got to her first.
    Someone dared to take his human.
    SOMEONE. TOOK. MY. FEMALE.
    In other words, someone had declared war on Vhyl and was about to die.

Chapter Eleven
    “Who cares if it’s Christmas morning, Jilly-bean. Those cows ain’t going to milk themselves.” – Grandma, who always acted tough, yet always left a present in the stall with Bitsy their cow .
    As Christmas mornings went, Jilly was probably having the worst one ever.
    And I thought the year Grandma gave me a Barbie instead of the crossbow I asked for sucked.
    Abducted by a space pirate, which she might add looked like a cross between a crocodile and a man, with stubby arms and an actual tail, who seemed to think he could use her as leverage to get Vile to trade the artifact—not likely given his mercenary code of ethics—or, if that didn’t work, sell her as a rare delicacy to some race who craved human flesh, Jilly was really regretting her wish on that false star.
    Yeah, her life had changed. Yeah, she didn’t have to worry about the farm anymore. But she couldn’t say her situation had improved.
    My own fault for turning down my purple hunk.
    How she wished she could go back in time and replay that decision. However, there was no use crying over spilt milk. Get out there and milk the damned cow again, her grandmother would say. Except, in this case, she didn’t have a cow to squeeze, and she certainly wasn’t about to cozy up to her captor.
    Seven-foot, talking crocs, with plain evil yellow eyes, just weren’t attractive.
    And her second impression of Snaggle Tooth, her name for him since she couldn’t pronounce the gibberish he’d introduced himself with, didn’t improve. Ordered from her cell by a gang of pigs, or at least descendants of pigs with their snout noses, black beady eyes, and tusks growing from their mouths, Jilly wondered at her fate.
    Will they keep me alive until they deliver me to those aliens who want to eat me as dessert?
    Freeze dry me to keep me fresh?
    Fatten me up to charge more per pound?
    Nothing wrong with her imagination.
    Yet she would have never imagined what she’d see when she entered the command center of the ship. While replete with fascinating Star Trek -type displays and equipment—lots of flashing lights, dials and buttons, all begging for her to push them—what really caught her attention was the huge view screen on the wall. A live video feed of none other than Vile.
    Sigh. How she missed his handsome, purple presence. How she hated him for putting her in this predicament. How she wished, once more, she’d not been such a freaking idiot.
    His placid expression only twitched for a millisecond when he spotted her.
    Was he happy to see her? Mad? Worried?
    She couldn’t tell. Nor did she dare guess. As far as she was concerned, he wasn’t there out of any concern for her. He was only making an appearance because Snaggle Tooth had called him.
    He doesn’t know how to love. He said so himself. But did that mean he didn’t care?
    Despite his nonchalant demeanor, she noted Vile’s fingers drumming the armrest to his chair. Unlike what she’d expected, his seat resembled more of a La-Z-Boy recliner than any kind of captain’s chair in a spaceship.
    Snaggle Tooth grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her until she stood right in front of the large screen. “As requested, here is my proof I am in possession of the human female.”
    “So I see. And?”
    “And, if you do not give me the artifact, I will kill her.” Snaggle Tooth said it with way too much relish.
    “You do know who I am?” Vile asked, again seeming so calm, but was it just Jilly, or did his eyes harbor a hint of rage?
    “I know of you.”
    A sigh and a roll of Vile’s eyes made his next words almost comical. “Then you should already know how this conversation goes. You make demands I trade the treasure for the girl. I remind you that she is simply an expendable female. You try to