Rodu chuckled at her description. Then his face settled into a frown. “Regretfully, I have not. My son is not here. He returned to his human lair the same day he brought you here.”
“Oh, I see,” Sugar said, walking away to hide her disappointment. “Guess Axel relocated my body while I was sleeping off the last fight.”
“You’ve slept for nearly a week. He said he wanted to wait until you woke but could not. He said potential abductors were coming by his property every day.”
“A week? I was out for a whole week again?” Sugar repeated, her eyes growing wide. “Wow, that’s… it feels like it happened yesterday.” She ran a hand through her hair and sighed heavily.
“I know how disconcerting that can be,” Rodu said gently. “I remember how it was to wake up and not remember anything that had happened for days. The longest I slept in recovery was a month.”
“A whole month?” Sugar let loose a sigh that would have had her father frowning over her bad manners.
Axel’s father now looked frustrated and concerned about what he’d said to her. She couldn’t let that continue. This man had answers that would help her understand her situation. He deserved her gratitude, not her angst.
“My daddy is probably rolling over in his grave right now at how ungrateful I’m sounding.” Her laugh was rough, but at least full of genuine mirth over her situation. “It’s fine, Rodu. Really. I totally understand Axel sending me away. At least he helped me. That’s far more than anyone else did. And I guess he was successful at saving me once again because here I am.”
“Axel brought you somewhere where he knew you would be completely safe.”
Sugar nodded. “Sure. I guess I was a lot for him to worry about by himself. That whole symbiosis thing and all.” She looked around. “So where I am?”
“In the palace of Queen Nyomi. You could not be anywhere safer. My presence here goes completely undetected.”
“Palace? We’re in a castle?” Sugar looked around and smiled.
“Not exactly a castle, but close enough to a proper description. These are Axel’s old quarters. He put you here, stocked your closet with new clothing, and left mumbling to himself.”
Sugar looked down at her clothes. “Axel bought me new clothes?” She laughed about her new underwear. Nice to know her lecture had gotten through. “If he were here, I’d thank him. They fit very well.”
“Of course, Axel’s very good with…” Rodu stopped and then shifted uncomfortably.
“Body math?” Sugar suggested lightly, letting Rodu off the hook.
His father visibly relaxed. He was like an older, more sedate version of Axel. But his looks? Uncanny.
“It’s okay. I know your son is very good with women too. And before you ask, the answer is yes, I knew our brief connection was never going to last. Axel was honorable and warned me from the beginning. I wasn’t in the market for a relationship anyway. I’m sure I don’t have to explain why to you. I have enough to worry about now.”
Rodu sighed. “Yes… well… may I take you to find food? You must be starving.”
Sugar nodded. She let him open the door. “Your eyes are brown. Axel’s are green. I didn’t notice that the day we met.”
“He inherited green eyes from his mother.”
Sugar nodded again. “I was thinking that knowing your eye color would give me a way of telling you two apart. I mean, in case you both were ever in the same place as me at the same time.”
When Rodu looked off again, Sugar instantly knew what his glancing away meant. Axel wasn’t coming back. There was no use pretending otherwise. Her temporary guardian had brought her here and then passed responsibility off to the host of the other sentient blade.
In other words, Bad Panther had lived up to his reputation after all.
18
Six months later…
Sugar still hadn’t adjusted to not knowing where she was, but over the months she’d been at the Lyran palace, she had come to realize that ignorance about her location was a small price to pay for what she got in return. Her days were now spent unconcerned about attacks. Feeling safe was precious enough for her to honor Queen Nyomi’s and Rodu’s insistence that she not ask anyone to reveal the location of her sanctuary.
Her days had fallen into a rhythm Sugar couldn’t complain about. She spent her mornings physically training with Rodu and her afternoons in deep study going through the Ancient Earth artifacts and records Queen Nyomi had accumulated.
She was living an archaeologist’s ultimate dream to be able to even look at what she had access to now. Yet it was also her worst nightmare to learn what she was learning because the world wasn’t ready to know the information.
It hadn’t taken long to realize why the Lyrans were keeping all the pre-history information a secret. Even modern humans weren’t open-minded enough to hear they weren’t the first evolution of humans on the planet to be intelligent and create technology. They weren’t ready for aliens either. Even she was still struggling with why they’d been hanging around Earth since the beginning of humankind.
But she was learning. Her days were filled with it. She went to bed tired and it helped her not to miss the prowling panther who’d abandoned her.
One thing she absolutely loved about her new life among the Lyrans was discovering how right she’d been about Athena the Ancient. That long-ago alien visitor had created the blades when she’d grown concerned that Earth would one day be nearly wiped from existence by natural disasters and the human reactions to such calamities.
Athena had been right about her predictions and right about the blades who had helped ensure humanity survived enough to flourish again and again through every age.
Sugar was starting to develop her own theory about why two of the blades had chosen hosts again after so many millennia had passed, but that was a trail of clues that needed more research.
Too bad nothing in the historical records she’d read so far talked about how Athena had helped the blades achieve true sentience. That was still a mystery to everyone as far as Sugar could tell, and not something Athena had even attempted to explain in any of her writings.
With the help of the Protector blade she was now sixty percent merged with, she’d been busy translating a bunch of metal plates with a strange, undocumented language written on them. It was a language she soon discovered that both Rodu and she spoke when the sentient blades were in full control of them.
The language was not from Earth at all. The language was alien which had done much to convince her Athena had been one. She finally believed Axel and his family were aliens too.
Queen Nyomi’s theory was that Athena was from some other ancient race who eventually passed the ‘protect the Earth’ job to Nyomi’s people. She said the legend of Lyrans being Earth’s guardians had existed for longer than she had been alive which was over three thousand years, if you chose to believe the feline queen.
And she did.
Sugar believed in many amazing things these days and coincidences no longer seemed accidental to her. She’d picked up an inscribed metal plate one day in her searching, and the sentient blade inside her had gone crazy until she’d started transcribing. It was more like taking dictation to hear translated computer speak in her head after listening to the blade read it in the language on the plate.
Sometimes she got the feeling that both the awakened sentient blades were looking for something that they hadn’t shared with their hosts. Rodu had said he’d often felt the same.
But today Sugar had discovered exactly what it was… or rather who.
“Your archeological background must please your blade greatly,” Rodu said.
Sugar nodded and set down her pen. She rubbed her writing hand. She hadn’t heard him slip into the room with her, but Rodu’s stealth didn’t alarm her. No… she wanted to learn to do it herself.
“I feel like the proverbial ghost in the machine doing this translation work.”
“Ah, I see you’re a st
udent of human philosophy,” Rodu said.
“Yes. Rene Descartes. Have you studied him?” Sugar asked.
“Some, but I actually heard Gilbert Ryle giving his ‘ghost in the machine’ lecture at Oxford on Descartes’ view of mind-body dualism. Think that was the late 1940s or early 1950s. Keeping track of time is something I don’t bother with anymore. After a few centuries pass in your long life, time tracking in mere years doesn’t seem to matter as much.”
Sugar chuckled. The man didn’t even look thirty. “Now I’m curious. How old do you tell people you are when they ask?”
“Whatever human age Nyomi tells me to tell them. The number seems to mean a lot to her. It is a small thing to concede in my relationship,” Rodu answered.
Sugar laughed genuinely. Females would always be females. And males would always concede to their wishes to keep them happy. “Being young forever doesn’t sound so bad to me now that I’ve gotten used to the blade.”
“It’s not bad at all—not when I have Nyomi to enjoy my youth with each time. The process of aging cannot be eluded, but love has taught me to appreciate the journey,” Rodu answered.
Sugar sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair. “That’s the secret to everything, isn’t it? Love is the only reason any of us have to stay alive. All the rest of our activities on this big blue marble of a planet are just distractions to push the boredom away.”
“Do you get bored easily?” Rodu asked.
Sugar smiled and shook her head. “No. Not since I was a child. My studies keep me busy and happy for the most part. When I get lonely… well, I look for company. I’m a lot like your eldest son in that regard. It’s why I understand him.”
“I’ve noticed my younger son, Caesar, likes your company.”
Sugar crossed her arms. “Like his emperor namesake, I fear Caesar’s royal status has gone to his head. You may think your younger son is charming, but I’ve had to tell his mother on him twice. How old is he? Twelve?”
Rodu chuckled. “Caesar is one hundred and forty-five. He merely acts as a youth. There is no shortage of arrogance in any of my children. They have been raised to be true royals.”
Laughing, Sugar tossed her head and her now much longer hair over a shoulder. “Dealing with your eldest offspring was more than enough challenge for me, Rodu. I will not be taking yet another bed partner from your brood, charming as both your sons are.”
“Not all of your admirers are my offspring. Nubian seems very fond of you. That’s highly unusual for a Lyran male. But then you are not an average human female. I think he knows that on some level.”
“Nubian reminds me of my father. I find his company pleasant and undemanding. He’s not even in the running,” Sugar said sharply. She narrowed her gaze. “Why are you suddenly so concerned about my non-existent love life?”
“Because I do bore easily and it entertains me to tease you,” Rodu offered. He smiled when she laughed. “Okay, I jest. I’m concerned because I wish you to feel happy here as well as feeling safe.”
Happy? Sugar sighed as she leaned forward to her work again.
“I’ve learned to live with feeling content instead of constantly seeking what is blissful. Contentment is a much easier state to maintain.”
Rodu nodded. “Yet another thing on which we agree,” he said. He started to leave, then stopped. “Did you say you’d figured out what the Protector blade is looking for in your research?”
“Not that I recall. Perhaps I might have projected my thoughts loudly.” Sugar waited for Rodu to respond to her teasing, but Rodu, like his eldest son, went dead serious in an eye blink. “Okay. Yes. I may have figured it out. I believe my blade is looking for the other two that are still sleeping. Mine seems to want all four to be awake. I believe yours does as well.”
“Oh,” Rodu said, considering it. “Well, I guess that makes sense. The four of them are like their own species, aren’t they? It makes sense they would want to find each other.”
Sugar nodded. “In a way, they very much are their own species. The records I’ve found said they were designed to all be awake at once. Mine was in a glacier for over ten thousand years. Yours was sealed up in a pyramid. It seems to me that someone went to a lot of trouble to separate the four of them.”
“Do you think you’ll find the locations of the other two sentient blades in your research?” Rodu asked.
Shrugging, Sugar smiled at him. “I found the one inside me through it. It seems like knowing where the others are would be better than not knowing. So yes, I’m planning to look so long as my Protector blade wants to keep searching.”
Nodding, Rodu turned away. He got to the door of the room before turning back. “Nyomi has asked that you join us for dinner this evening. She has an alien visitor coming that she wants to impress with your humanness. You must dress to be presented to him.”
Sugar nodded. “Well, the queen did give me two beautiful gowns to wear. Tell her I graciously accept her invitation to be her prize human.” Rodu’s raised eyebrow made her chuckle. “I know I’ve turned down a lot of similar invitations in the last couple of months, but tonight I’m…”
“Feeling bored?” Rodu offered.
Sugar laughed. “Yes. I’m feeling bored.”
“Well, we can’t have you lingering in that uncomfortable state,” Rodu said sincerely, and then promptly left.
Sugar went back to her work but couldn’t seem to focus. She actually was bored. And as she told Rodu, it wasn’t like her to be that way.
Query. Creator blade located. Information withheld. Understanding requested.
“Our job is to protect,” Sugar said the word firmly. “I will share the information with Rodu the Destroyer when I feel it is the proper time for him to know. Until then, you must trust me and not share it with the Destroyer blade. I don’t want to go charging after the Creator blade before I locate and wake the other Protector blade. This is the preferred order of awakening.”
Understanding assimilated. Judgment accepted. Host worthy. Trust granted.
“Thank you for all those wonderfully geeky compliments,” Sugar said, amazed at their now truly symbiotic relationship. “It’s like when we fight and I have to trust you to take over. This is a similar situation.”
Reference understood. Trust reciprocated. Host not to be harmed.
Which was correct about all the fighting and training she did. From the more significant wounds to the smallest of scratches, the artifact repeatedly healed her physical body. Sometimes it only took a single afternoon for her injuries to be erased.
Too bad the sentient blade inside her still didn’t know what to do about her broken heart. She had no clue about that one either… or why she kept turning down bed partners who weren’t related to Axel in any way at all.
She told herself she just wasn’t ready to move on yet. She’d start to think about doing the deed with someone new and then she’d imagine the not-so-Bad-Panther’s confused face in her mind.
She thought about having to explain indulging her urges to him, and then would realize anyone but him would probably be inadequate anyway. He was a nearly irreplaceable male.
But it wasn’t like she hadn’t had plenty of offers. There was a remarkably diverse and exciting group of people residing in Queen Nyomi’s pseudo-queendom—a group with many eligible males among them.
Her blade kept asking her about them. She kept refusing to discuss her abstinence.
Soon—she promised herself. Soon she’d move on.
Sugar sighed and began clearing away her work. “Query. Am I on some sort of ship in the atmosphere surrounding Earth? Like the ones in the movies I like to watch?”
Negative.
“Drat,” Sugar said, rising from her seat.
She kept guessing where she was, but mostly for fun. If she guessed accurately, then she wouldn’t have to get any creature on the ship to tell her.
Not asking anyone was the one rule Queen Nyomi had made about her being here. However, the qu
een had not said she couldn’t consult the artifact inside her.
“Query. Are we under the ocean or any other large body of water?”
Negative.
Sugar grunted. “Fine. New Query. Should I wear the blue dress or the red one tonight?”
Investigating mood setting. Standby for result.
“Mood setting? Well, that’s a new one,” Sugar mumbled as she put her things away.
Red recommended. Seduction protocol approved for immediate use.
Sugar giggled at the answer just before she opened the door to leave the library. “And who the hell will I be seducing at dinner? You know, I’m not into all the half-cat aliens around here. Now maybe those visiting werewolves from last week might have been fun because I know they turn into full humans. I saw them do it. Bet they like it a little rough in the sack too, huh? Maybe that would erase him from my memories. God… listen to me. I’m pathetic.”
Shaking her head at her goofy sex conversation with the sentient but sexless entity inside her, Sugar picked up her pace as she headed to her quarters. One of Axel’s sisters had done some permanent cosmetics on her eyes and changed the DNA of her hair to be slightly curly. She looked pretty good without trying hard these days so there wasn’t a lot she needed to do to get ready for dinner.
Maybe she’d take a long, relaxing shower.
Seduction protocol activated. Pheromone levels rising. Attraction imminent.
“No,” Sugar called out loudly, scaring two Lyrans passing nearby. She ducked her head and laughed softly about how crazy they likely assumed she was. Sugar hissed her commands quietly. “Deactivate all seduction programs. I will not be seducing anyone tonight. Do you know how much trouble I could get into? Not only no, but hell no.”
Sexual tension rising. Release recommended.
Bad Panther (Alien Guardians of Earth Book 1) Page 12
