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The
Warrior s Mate Iriduan Test
Subjects 4 1st Edition Trombley Susan
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Chapter 1
Tirel
I woke up on the floor.
The tile was cool against my scaled cheek, which felt swollen and bruised as if I’d fought a battle my mind blocked from my memory. I knew if I had fought anything, it would have been myself. When I lifted my head, my neck muscles pulled painfully beneath the quills that lay flat over top of my scales. I stared blearily at the door, struggling to remember, but as always, the dreams slipped out of my mind like water from a broken dam. Only one memory remained. A memory that never left me. Theresa.
My movements felt sluggish as I pushed myself to my feet, my muscles stiff and uncooperative with my mental commands. It was like I was back in Primary Combat Training again, yet far worse, because I knew the tension in my body wasn’t from a good day’s effort and exercise.
Like many of the previous times I’d awakened like this, I was naked, though I’d retired to my cabin in my body suit, prepared—like every member of my crew—to slide into a hardsuit at a moment’s notice if there was an emergency. I supposed it was better than actually being in my hardsuit and awakening in the middle of an EVA, which had fortunately only happened once.
Once was enough. The ship hadn’t been moving at the time, but if it had… well, I wouldn’t have had to worry about the problem anymore.
My comesta—my internal shaft—ached, and I didn’t need to see the evidence of my stained bedding to know that the dreams had at least started in a more pleasant way, even if it was embarrassing to awaken to that sight, knowing that I’d gone to bed alone.
I didn’t sleep with any member of my crew. Ever. It was dishonorable to do so—especially since they were under my command and protection. I also didn’t have sex during an active mission, and I normally didn’t even allow the thought of it to distract me from my purpose.
There had only been once in my entire career that I’d allowed the thought of it to distract me, and I’d never even touched her with more intent than a comforting pat on the back, but just the memory of her scent, the feel of her soft skin, and the slide of her silken hair across her cheek, was enough to cause my shaft to push through my slit, aching for release.
I could still hear her voice, whispering softly in my ear, her lips so close to my cheek that I’d needed only to turn my head to capture them with mine.
She’d begged me for more. More than I was able to give her at that time. She hadn’t wanted what I’d offered in return, and she’d left me in the most permanent way she could have, making her rejection of me clear.
I was still angry about it, even years later, and not just because the dreams were threatening everything I held dear.
She belonged to me. We’d both felt it the moment we’d met, when our minds had linked as naturally as if she were a member of my tribe or my fighting squad. Only, the psychic connection had gone far deeper than the surface, burrowing into both of us, setting down anchors that remained even when we were apart.
I’d never had a mental connection like that with anyone. Not even with my own mother and sire. Not even in the direst battle, while tied to the minds of my squad. This had been something different. Something only the Dancer should have been able to experience with her Dark Partner. The Synergy a myth told to romantic little girls, who then told it to skeptical boys—who discounted it as the fantasy it was. In the synergy myth, those who went through it became the next Dancer and Dark Partner.
That was why they were myths that I ignored as an explanation.
I pushed aside those unwelcome memories of Theresa’s rejection and put on the discarded body suit after locating it lying crumpled by the side of the bed. This one hadn’t been torn apart by my claws, so at least that was something I wouldn’t have to explain to the quartermaster.
The lies were beginning to stack up, especially for someone who hated telling them or hearing them.
Subterfuge just wasn’t in my nature. I was straightforward in my manner, and my thoughts. I didn’t like games, which was why I’d played none of them with Theresa. I’d told her my terms, asked her to become my bride, and she’d looked at me as if I’d suggested she remove her head and hand it to me. It became clear to me that despite whatever this bond was between us, she’d only wanted sex from me, perhaps to prove to herself that it was only sexual desire that made her feel the way she did about me.
So, when she’d told me she was returning to Earth, I’d let her go, despite every instinct in my body demanding that I capture her as she walked away and carry her off to keep her as my prisoner until she changed her mind. I could have given her all she’d asked for, and a great deal more, and by the time I let her go—she would have been unable to walk away.
Those primal urges were unacceptable to a modern Akrellian —not to mention illegal—so naturally, I hadn’t acted on them.
I needed to take a hot shower to soothe the ache in my body, but I had to check the door first. It was locked from the outside, as I’d suspected, and I was unable to unlock it.
I tapped out a light knock that caused the door to slide open, the biometric panel returning to green to show that the lockout on my access was overridden.
Until the next time I slept.
As I expected, Halian was on the other side of the door—or more accurately, leaning against the wall across the corridor with the insouciant grace and effortless elegance so typical of his kind.
Halian gave me a grim smile, straightening to follow after me when I waved the Iriduan into my cabin, glancing both ways down the corridor to ensure we were alone.
The Iriduan twitched his wings as the door slid closed behind him, a little too close for his comfort, perhaps, though it was difficult for me to say. Sometimes, Halian was simply twitchy, and sometimes, he was so still it was chilling.
“It seems I am once again in your debt.” I strode to my bed to strip the bedding from it.
A low chuckle preceded Halian’s response as he watched me with curious green eyes. “I am not keeping track of a debt, my friend. You know my secrets, as I know yours. We help each other hide them from the galaxy.”
I glanced up from the bed, crumpling the bedding into a ball so it would be easier to carry to the laundry chute. “I suppose your secrets are more dangerous than mine.”
Halian shrugged one shoulder, his gaze cold and hard. “We are both being slowly killed by them.”
Not so slowly, in Halian’s case. The glitches in the nanites that filled his body seemed to be increasing, despite his attempts to fix them. Now, they would randomly turn on his body and began to attack it, before suddenly auto-rebooting. This happened so often that even Halian had changed his focus to figuring out how to remove them, rather than continue to try to correct the problem. The last time the nanites had attempted to take him apart would have killed him, without my intervention. He’d suffered so many internal injuries that it had taken the best medical equipment on the ship to save his life.
I strode to the laundry chute and pushed the bedding into the hole that opened in the wall as the small door slid aside with a touch. “This isn’t killing me. You, on the other hand, need more help than we can give you.”
Halian growled a protest. “I will never allow himto know I’m alive. I will die first—as he believes I already have.”
It wasn’t an argument I was going to have with Halian again. Despite how strange the Iriduan was—and the fact that my mission was primarily to keep an eye on him as he betrayed his own people to the Akrellians in often spectacular ways—I’d come to trust him. After all, he’d kept my secret for years without any attempt to
blackmail me or even extort favors. In fact, he dealt as honorably as anyone ever had with me, which was something I could respect enough to look past the fact that he was an Iriduan.
Halian had discovered my secret after saving me from an unscheduled EVA, where I’d been asleep and yet walking on the outside of my ship in my hardsuit and mag-boots, determined to get to Theresa, even if it meant leaping off into the vacuum of space. My dreaming mind had no concept of distance. It only felt where Theresa was, and wanted to get to her.
Neededtogettoher.
“Your sleepwalking will kill you eventually, if you refuse to retire to a safe sanitarium. I can only lock you out of your own access panel for so long before someone realizes you’re not in control anymore. If they find out you’ve allowed mesuch control, you’ll be tried for treason.”
“I need just a little more time! I can get a handle on this!” I forced my quills to remain still under my body suit, though my muscles twitched just enough that it was probably as much a giveaway to Halian as his twitchy wings were to me.
“Or,” Halian said with just a hint of impatience, “you go to Earth, and you do what you should have done from the beginning. You find her, and you must abduct her.”
“The law won’t allow the abduction of sentient species.” By that, I meant Akrellian law, and Halian knew it, but I also knew he wouldn’t let the issue drop.
“Wrong, again, my friend. Humans do not fall under the full protection of Syndicate law and have yet to be fully classified as ‘sentient,’” he said, proving my suspicion.
For Halian, Akrellian law was an inconvenience at best. Only Syndicate Law mattered on a galactic scale.
“You can abduct her at your will. And it seems to me that you must, if you don’t wish to end up losing your command once they discover any of your secrets. We don’t want that.”
Halian’s flexible interpretation of the law wasn’t something I hadn’t already considered for myself. In the last few years, I’d come to the same conclusion he had.
I would abduct Theresa from her world in a heartbeat if I could only find it. “I don’t have the star map to Earth.”
My frustrated tone won a rare, genuine smile from the alien, one that actually reached his eyes, which started to glow. “I just so happen to know where to find one.”
The fire in his eyes was almost enough to make me hesitate, since it usually meant we were about to get into serious trouble. But I was desperate at this point. My mind was being torn in two by my connection to Theresa. If I wasn’t rejoined with her soon, I had no idea what might happen.
“You help me retrieve it, it’s all yours,” Halian promised in a low, cajoling tone, “as long as you take me with you to Earth when you go.”
There were still too many obstacles. Earth wasn’t a planet one could just sneak up on. Three different alien species guarded it as they worked out who owned the rights to the world and the humans that crawled all over it like unsuspecting insects.
Including myhuman, who ran the risk of being harvested along with all the others if the Iriduans won the case they had in the Syndicate for control of their former colony and all its biological specimens.
What the Lusians would do to the humans if they won their own claim was still questionable, so the humans could only hope it was the Ultimen who won, since they would only strip away all the technology and force the humans to live as primitively as possible in the new nature reserve they’d make of the planet.
“I couldn’t sneak Star Dancer past the patrols and sentinels that surround Earth,” I said, wracking my brain for a solution, feeling more desperate as I acknowledged the fact that I hadn’t sent Theresa back home to safety at all.
It was possible Earth’s future wouldn’t be decided in her lifetime, but even that made me desperate when I thought of how short that lifetime would be, compared to how much it would be extended by our technology, if she’d only accepted my offer.
Halian waved a long-fingered hand in the air as if dismissing my words. “That’s why I have a friend with a unique ship that just
might be able to slip past the guardians to land us safety on their planet.”
Hope was the bane of the inexperienced. I wouldn’t be so easily convinced, even if I did feel it dig its claws into me and start to knead me into agreement. “I am responsible for the command of Star Dancer. I can’t just leave, even when we find that star map.”
I didn’t bother to deny that we would be claiming the map. It would be priceless to the Akrellian leadership, even if it hadn’t already been priceless to me.
Only three species in the Syndicate had the map, and they all laid claim to Earth because of that knowledge. If the Akrellians had it as well, we could make our own claim on the fledgling civilization. The Dancer would leap at the chance to claim humanity as a subordinate species and sponsor their addition to the Syndicate for protection.
I wasn’t sure how much I believed in the Dancer’s omniscience. Thus far, the council of elders who passed down her commands had not misled us, and some of her orders had shown an uncanny prescience that hinted at knowledge beyond mortal understanding, but many of our superstitions had faded with the advancement of our technology, so most of my kind viewed our Dancer as a very wise mortal leader with a vast information network at her disposal, rather than as a goddess.
That meant she might be unaware of what had happened to me, and what might happen with other Akrellians and humans. As far as I knew, the link had never happened between an Akrellian and any other species we’d encountered in the galaxy.
Halian’s voice in my ear snapped me out of my own thoughts. “Can you afford to do anything else at this point? Take emergency leave, immediately!”
My laugh of disbelief held no humor. “Why would they believe me?”
His smile this time held no amusement. “They owe you for all the non-stop missions you’ve been doing. Tell them the emergency
is that you’ll burn out if you don’t have a chance to rest on a nice, warm beach. I recommend Hierabodos this time of year.”
The colony world would be the perfect place to have Halian’s mysterious friend pick us up without being detected, since the technology on that world was kept to a minimum, due to the sensitivities of some of its ecosystem to increased electromagnetic energy.
The defensive satellite array was the biggest danger in terms of discovery, but if the ship could get past that, it could get past the sentinels guarding Earth.
“How will you explain your absence, Halian? The Dancer’s councilors don’t trust you. It’s my mission to keep you from betraying the Akrellians in our renewed war with your people.”
Halian’s sly smile made me certain I’d walked right into his trap. He set them so damned well that I’d always back myself into a corner before noticing them.
“Tell them you must take me with you on leave, because you’re the best one to keep an eye on me—and besides, what possible trouble could I get into in some pioneer cabin retreat?”
I had a bad feeling about all of this, but an even worse feeling about doing nothing and having my condition deteriorate to a point where I became dangerous for my soldiers. If anyone else had found out about my sleepwalking, I would have already been forced to resign.
Halian had me right where he wanted me. In the years I’d known him, I’d seen him perform acts of great honor, courage, and bravery. I’d also seen him act as cold and ruthless a killer as any assassin might be, and he seemed to gain a certain amount of pleasure killing his own kind, so it benefited the Dancer for him to remain that way.
I wasn’t sure who the real “Halian” was, and the worst part was that I didn’t think he knew either. Yet, he’d saved my life, and kept my destructive secret for years, and now, he’d given me the perfect solution to cure these nightmares—and find the female who haunted my dreams.
I called him friend, because he had earned that much. And soon, with Halian’s help, I would be on leave from the military and on my way to Earth for the first time ever for an Akrellian.
I should have been nervous, but all I could think about was my eagerness to see her again, and to feel the link snap back in place in our minds.
This time, I wouldn’t allow her to walk away.
Chapter 2
Theresa
I hated the Annual Phoenix Aliens Festival, and the Aliens on Parade main event, though at least people were actually thinking about aliens now, even though they were mostly thinking about how cool their alien costumes could look for the parade and costume parties that would be happening in bars and clubs all downtown after the parade.
By the time we’d been returned to Earth by the Lusians who’d taken us home after our abduction and rescues, we’d found out about another night where mystery lights had filled the sky above Phoenix.
This time, the mayor decided to pander to the witnesses and “UFO-nuts” in a way that might bring some revenue into the city, by organizing a yearly “Aliens on Parade” event to commemorate that night of unexplained sightings caught on pretty much every phonecam in the highly-populated city.
The official stance about aliens still hadn’t changed. Space was too big, and there was no way aliens could be smarter than humans and traverse that distance to Earth, because humans had all the details of the universe figured out, and practical space travel was just super impossible. All the mystery lights were aircraft or flares and anyone who seriously believed otherwise would be ridiculed.
Basically, humans couldn’t do it, so no one possibly could. I knew better and so did Tarin, but we’d never told anyone about it. Most would blow us off as “those UFO crazies.” The believers would get too excited and ask if we’d made some kind of religious, spiritual, or metaphysical connection—and those questions got even more awkward.
Especially for me, but that was something I wouldn’t even talk to Tarin about.
The truth wasn’t something anyone really wanted to hear, and we’d been told that as a last warning before the grays had dumped us in a field in the middle of the night, close to the commune where we’d later claimed we were living. We’d decided then and there not to expose the fact that three alien species were working on an agreement that could hand humanity and Earth over to one of them. They were still arguing about which one it would be. Knowing Earth’s fate hung in a delicate balance was enough to give a girl nightmares, but those weren’t the dreams that caused my insomnia.
Far from it.
It was usually the erotic dreams of an alien I wanted to put firmly from my mind—but couldn’t—that caused me to sleepwalk to the point where I was becoming a danger to myself and had to timelock my own doors and windows and install a code to override the security system.
This pilgrimage me and Tarin made every year to Phoenix’s Alien Festival of mockery was supposed to help us overcome our own encounters, but it was really more of a punishment than anything. We should have stayed behind. Coming home to Earth had been a bad idea. Neither of us had ever bothered to try to explain our prolonged absence as anything but us running off to join a commune that isolated us as part of their desire to live off the grid. Since the insular people in the commune didn’t trust anyone with “the press” or “the law,” they refused to comment in any way that would disagree with our own stories.
Our families were devastated we’d done such a thing, but now, being home safe, hale, and hearty, we also appeared to be of sound mind and body, so they didn’t need to hear claims they would dismiss as insanity.
It took quite a long time for our loved ones to forgive us for not telling them where we were and why we’d left in the first place, but eventually, they bought our story, and since we were grown adults, there was no need for further investigation. As far as anyone else was concerned, no crime had taken place.
“Bet Claire could do a better costume than that,” Tarin said from her camp chair beside me.
Her disdainful tone brought me back to the present, and the parade going on in front of me.
I shaded my eyes unnecessarily since I had a little umbrella stand attached to my camp chair. “I don’t know, the float itself is pretty cool.”
“Look at that gray! The head is enormous. It has to be Styrofoam right? How else could it avoid snapping that poor guy’s neck?”
I studied the person in question, standing at the top of the flying saucer built onto the passing float, and I had to agree that the proportions were terribly exaggerated and entirely wrong for the slender grays’ actual appearance. Far too many hoax videos had been circulated—many by the grays themselves—to obscure the truth of their appearance and existence.
Lusians loved propaganda almost as much as they loved obscurity. They messed with other civilizations—no matter how advanced—spreading lies about themselves that always contained some grains of truth.
In my opinion, I believed it was a test. One no other species had yet passed.
“I miss Claire,” I said, repeating the same thing I said every year at around this time, when the elaborate alien costumes would remind me of her, which recalled Joanie as well, and how we had failed her by allowing her to be captured, and hadn’t even been able to wait to see that she was safely recovered.
We’d both received a mysterious email months later with a single line of text.
Joanieissafeandhappy.
The sender—Mr. Gray—had never sent anything else, so we were left in the dark about the people we had come to care deeply for, even as we’d grown so distant from our families on Earth, unable to share the truth about our experiences with them.
Now, we only had each other.
I felt Tarin’s steady gaze on me and rolled my eyes behind my sunglasses. “Don’t say it, girl. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Someday, you’re going to have to deal with it, Terry.”
I shook my head emphatically, my hair brushing along my shoulders with the movement. “As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t exist. I’m not letting whatever the Iriduans did to me dictate the rest of my life.”
She sighed heavily and ran a hand over her slicked-back hair to tug on her ponytail in a nervous movement I didn’t think she was even aware of.
We both had a lot of things we refused to deal with.
What were we going to do? Talk to a therapist? Fat chance of that!
They would only confirm their own bias that we were crazy with our talk of aliens, and try to convince us we’d been molested as kids, or something equally terrible that we were “blocking out” of our memories.
“You knowthey didn’t do anything to us to make you feel that way about him,” Tarin muttered for about the thousandth time on this taboo subject.
I picked up my soda and sucked loudly and pointedly on my straw, ignoring her words. She didn’t understand, because she hadn’t been affected like I had.
Like Joanie and Claire had.
Tarin hadn’t taken one look at a male and suddenly lost her damned mind, becoming consumed by him to the point where she couldn’t tell where her thoughts ended and his began.
It was like Tirel had merged with me from the moment I’d met him, and I couldn’t escape my need for him. Even after years of being away from him, I couldn’t seem to move on from his memory, and yet, nothing had even happened between us. Not really.
Oh, I’d wanted to have sex with him. I’d wanted it so badly that I had buried my pride and practically begged him to fuck me, as hard and as wildly as the Akrellians did in their holo-pornographic videos.
Instead, he’d asked me to marry him, and I had panicked. No one makes that kind of decision in two weeks after meeting a freaking alien!
I had a home, parents and a brother who loved me, and a Mexican-Italian fusion family restaurant I was supposed to one day take over. There was no way I was going to allow some crazy sudden attraction to an alien to convince me to give up my plans to return to Earth.
Only, now that I’d returned, there was nothing I wanted more than to leave this world again and find him.
I knew the Iriduans had to have done something to change my body to make me instantly attracted to Tirel. I just didn’t know how it had worked on him as well, since I didn’t think the Akrellians had the same “instant mate” thing the Iriduans suffered from.
I couldn’t help the concern that I was a novelty for him. Something unique he could keep on his arm as a trophy. From what I understood, most Akrellians knew about humans, but only in the way we knew about rare and exotic species we might come across in a book or movie, but never in person. I couldn’t fathom why else he would suggest binding himself to me for life, instead of just taking the temporary sexual partnership I had offered.
I’d been humiliated by his offer and the implied judgement behind it, making me feel like I was being slutty for wanting just sex, instead of some kind of commitment that would require me to sacrifice everything just to stay with him. Then, he’d flatly turned me down for sex, as if he wasn’t really turned-on by my body at all, because I saw no other way that he could feel even a tenth of the need I felt and not act upon it.
The entire situation had been humiliating, and the erotic dreams that had followed me home and still haunted me to this day certainly didn’t help matters.
I glanced at Tarin, who watched the parade with an intent gaze, her brow furrowed as float after float passed by, each one more elaborate than the last, as human imagination mixed with urban legend to create “aliens” for the non-believers to “oooh” and “ahhh” over, and take selfies with.
I was holding Tarin back—keeping her from moving on with her life and her relationships. I couldn’t stay with a boyfriend past the first night in bed together, since my dreams were filled with a male no human could possibly compare to. As I pushed into my late twenties, I knew the biological clock was ticking for me, and if I didn’t beat myself up about it, my mother was always certain to remind me how she had no grandkids from me.
Tarin had become a serial monogamist, but she never moved in with any of her boyfriends, and never let any of them move in with us. Part of that could have been that she made terrible choices in men, and had come home with bruises on more than one occasion that had sent fury through me.
She’d always make apologies for them.
I made ultimatums.
We both ended up single as our fertility windows began to pass by and our families lamented.
Not for the first time in the five years I’d been back on Earth, I bemoaned the fact that I hadn’t taken Tirel up on his offer. The Star Dancer had been a marvel of artistic engineering beyond anything a human could dream up, and I could only imagine what the Akrellian civilization looked like, and what their homeworld would be like. I could’ve been on Akrellia right now, with my alien mate balls-deep inside m—satisfying my unending need for him—instead of sitting in the hot sun, sweating like a horse, as I watched people in poorly-made costumes yearning for a truth that would be denied to them until it was too late to do anything about it.
“Terry,” Tarin suddenly hissed, leaning closer to me as if there was any danger of being heard in the crowd of shouting, cheering onlookers that surrounded us to watch the parade. I stared down at her hand frantically grabbing my arm, squeezing tight enough to hurt. “What’s wrong, Tare?”
She lifted her other hand and pointed a shaking finger at the parade of people in their alien costumes following behind the last float. “That’s a real alien.”
My head whipped around to follow the trail of her pointing finger. It wasn’t just a real alien.
It was an Iriduan.
Chapter 3
Theresa
The alien looked out of place among all the costumed humans, and I had to wonder if any of them questioned his choice of costume, since it would be more appropriate at a fantasy festival than an alien one. The Iriduans had always looked a bit like fairies to me, with their pointy, elfin ears, gorgeous faces, long, flowing hair, and dragonfly-like wings. They also had iridescent, colorful skin tones.
This Iriduan had golden skin, and the warm, morning sunlight brought out the oil-slick colors of iridescence on his perfect face.
That face was turning to study the crowd, occasionally glancing down at his wrist with an impatient frown.
“We have to get out of here,” Tarin said, her grip on my arm punishing as she pulled on me.
I couldn’t agree more. The Iriduan wasn’t there for the award for best costume, and he also wasn’t trying to hide his presence from any “observers” who might be watching the show for precisely this reason. I knew that aliens like Mr. Gray were placed around Earth to keep unapproved aliens from sneaking in unannounced to their guardian ships.
The problem with fleeing was that as we stood up to go, our movement immediately drew his attention. I guess we looked out of place suddenly rising to our feet and trying to push our way through the crowd that had packed in behind us to watch the parade, but we didn’t wait around to see if he intended to follow us.
The last thing either of us wanted was to be abducted again.
“You see him anywhere?” Tarin asked, out of breath after we finished weaving our way through the thick crowds on Central Avenue.
“I don’t think even an alien with advanced technology could find us in this crowd. Besides, I don’t think he’ll abduct us in front of everybody.”
I hoped my brave words turned out to be true, because I’d rather die than go back to an Iriduan research facility. I hadn’t been a prisoner long enough to suffer like my friend Joanie did, but I still recalled what had happened to me vividly, and I definitely didn’t want to go through that again.
“Do you think he’s even looking for us?” I wondered aloud.
I supposed it was possible he was here for someone else. The Iriduans were pretty particular about genetic compatibility when they were searching for subjects—at least, in some cases.
Tarin swept her arm across her forehead to wipe away the sweat that had beaded there during our escape. “I don’t know, and I’d feel terrible if someone else got abducted by one of those bastards, but what can we do?”
As far as we knew, abductions of individual citizens were still allowed by the observers, as long as the ignorance of humanity as a whole to the existence of aliens was preserved. That meant the observers wouldn’t stop the Iriduan from grabbing a human “specimen,” if the Iriduan didn’t make his presence obvious to witnesses.
There was no governing authority we could appeal to, since going to a regular policeman and saying there was an alien bent on abduction would only earn us derisive laughter or an annoyed warning to leave the “person” alone.
“We have to stop him from taking anyone,” I said, though my heart pounded with terror at the prospect of confronting an Iriduan.
Tarin nodded, her eyes wide with the same trepidation I was feeling. “I know. We should be tracking him, not running away.”
I had no idea what we’d do once we found him, but I knew that I couldn’t sleep peacefully that night if I didn’t do anything to try to save someone else from going through what we went through. The bastard didn’t belong on our planet, and he sure as hell shouldn’t be grabbing innocent people to take them back to his world and experiment on them.
“Okay, let’s try to come up with a plan for confronting him as we make our way back to where we saw him,” Tarin said, turning back the way we’d come, facing the crowd with a dubious look.
I took a few deep breaths, feeling the sweat drip down my sides and back, and this time not from the Phoenix heat. “Let’s go get him.”
He’d left the area he’d been at by the time we were able to push our way to the front of the crowd again, leaving a wake of none-too-pleased watchers behind us, muttering angrily, or outright shouting insults. We ignored them, since we had more important things to worry about than the consequences of our rudeness.
“Some of these people will go bonkers if they think there’s a real alien in the parade,” Tarin whispered in my ear as we stared at the passing parade, searching for any sign of the fae-looking alien.
I nodded my agreement, catching the eye of a suspicious police officer who strolled along the road at the side of the parade, watching the crowd for any signs that the mood would shift from enjoyment to ugliness. We weren’t the only former abductees in the crowd, and no matter how many humans still bought the lie that aliens had never visited Earth, there was a growing number who were starting to believe. Most felt awe and excitement with their belief, but some had enough sense to feel fear as well.
We didn’t want a riot anymore than the police did. For one thing, it would make the alien far more difficult to find, but mostly, we were trying to keep innocent people from getting hurt, especially any one of the many children in the crowd.
“Let’s try to walk with the parade,” I said, noting that we had gained the police officer’s full attention and he was ambling our way.
“We aren’t in costume,” Tarin hissed as I dragged her out into the street. “They’ll stop us!”
Sure enough, the officer called out to us as we walked along next to a float, where the costumed riders glanced down at us with more curiosity than concern. No one really expected the crowd to attack them, except for maybe the police officers.
“Have you seen an alien costume that looks like a male faery?” I asked the xenomorph-dressed human strolling along beside
the float of gruesome alien eggs.
He shook his head and shrugged.
“Your costume’s incredible,” Tarin said over her shoulder to the guy as we quickly walked forward, making our way to the float ahead, before the officer decided to make an example of us.
No one at the next float had seen the faery alien either, and it was getting more difficult to blend in and avoid the notice of the watching crowd or the police as we heard muttering comments about how we weren’t in costume and wanting to know why were we in the parade.
We had to skirt around a high school band wearing Martianantenna headbands and their regular sharp uniforms, and that’s when we came across the Iriduan.
Or more accurately, he came across us.
I felt the hard grip around my arm before I saw him, and I knew it wasn’t Tarin’s, because she was behind me, her hand clenching my other hand as she scanned the crowd and the people in the parade.
Suddenly, I was pulled tight against a hard, male body and a low voice hissed in my ear. “Don’t make a scene. That’s the last thing either of us wants right now. I’m here for Tirel’s sake.”
Those words were all it took to change everything about this encounter. I gasped, but didn’t struggle, trying not to make anymore of a scene than we already had.
“Tarin,” I said in a normal voice, trying to sound calm, like I hadn’t just been grabbed by an Iriduan.
“I heard,” she said from right next to me on my other side, her hand still clenched in mine. “Can you trust him?”
We both snorted at that as I turned to look up into his handsome face, seeming so far above mine now that I was forced to walk beside him with his arm tight around me to keep me from running off.
“Not likely,” I muttered.
He was watching the crowd and not us, but his sculpted lips tilted in a rueful smile at my words. “Tirel has been captured by my people, and I suspect he’s been taken to a research facility. He is a…
friend. I would like to free him, but I can’t find him. I need your help.”
I felt the pulse of anxiety tightening my chest and burning through me at the very thought of Tirel being in the hands of the Iriduans. For them, humans were just inferior creatures they had a low opinion of, so they had no problem experimenting on us, but Tirel was an Akrellian, and therefore, a mortal enemy of the Iriduans.
They would treat him a thousand times worse than they treated us.
But could I believe the words of this Iriduan? And even if I could, I didn’t see how I could help.
“Not here,” he said, when I opened my mouth to ask those questions. “If you arewilling to save him, meet me at my hotel.” He pressed a scrap of paper into my hand, then released me, pulling his arm away from me.
Before I could say another word, he lengthened his stride and marched off into the crowd ahead of us, disappearing among the costumed people and floats.
I stopped walking to look down at the scrap of paper in my hand, but Tarin yanked me off the street and back into the watching crowd.
“Let’s go get some lunch,” she said in a voice pitched just loud enough to be heard over the crowd, clearly trying to appear normal for the sake of the watchers.
I nodded, noticing that my strange behavior had drawn even more attention, and glares from the parade-goers who’d almost run right into me.
“Lucky girl,” I heard a woman mutter as Tarin and I worked our way through the crowd. “Your boyfriend is hot as hell.”
I shook my head as I glanced at her. “Trust me, ‘Hell’ is the only word that’s accurate in that sentence.”
The woman looked surprised that I’d responded to her, then her eyes narrowed and she shook her head. “So, he’s one of those guys, hunh? Figures. The good-looking ones always turn out to be dogs and players.”
The Firebird’s Wing was a small hotel that didn’t belong to a larger chain, but it wasn’t a dumpy hotel. It wasn’t particularly luxurious either.
I heard the laughter of children at the pool as me and Tarin walked past the turquoise gate that surrounded it and up to the doors that led into the lobby.
When I requested the room number that had been written on the piece of paper, the woman at the front desk smiled widely at me, though her eyes also sharpened as she looked me up and down, taking in my rumpled, sweat-dampened clothing, melting makeup, and no doubt “air of nervousness and desperation.”
“What did you say your name was again?” she asked politely, pushing the scrap of paper back to me across the glossy, marbletiled desk with a perfectly manicured nail.
“Theresa Rizzo. He’s expecting me.”
Her smile tightened. “Of course. Mr. Halian did inform me that he would be receiving guests. I’ll just ring him to let him know you’re here.”
The name caused me to step back from the desk in shock. I’d heard that name before. It had been mentioned in passing by Joanie. She’d said it was the name of the Iriduan who had freed her mate, Nemon, from his captivity. He’d also been the one who’d made Nemon what he was in the first place. So it was still difficult to trust his motives.
It was possible that it was simply a common Iriduan name. After all, there were plenty of Theresas on Earth, but the coincidence didn’t seem to be a small one.
We didn’t have much time to ponder the coincidence, since the receptionist at the desk cheerfully informed us that he was waiting to meet us and we could proceed to his room. I noticed that her smile didn’t quite meet her eyes, which seemed to glitter with jealousy.
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