Kaelar felt horrible about giving the lion’s share of the joy to the children. It wasn’t that they didn’t deserve it, but simply that there wasn’t enough to go around in the current situation. He wanted everyone to be happy. Not being able to achieve that was a new and entirely unwelcome experience for him.
“You’re a hero.” Chloe’s voice had gone soft and husky. She moved closer, caressing his antlers.
Kaelar bit back a groan. His antlers tingled as if they had just been charged with electricity and his cock leaped to attention. She couldn’t possibly know what that did to him.
“I’m just a guy doing my job.”
“You are a hero,” Chloe corrected, and this time, Kaelar didn’t dispute her opinion.
He was more interested in her soft, pink lips, which were tantalizingly close to his. He leaned forward slightly, and he could swear she did the same. Their lips were inches apart now. Kaelar moved to close the last of the distance.
A shrill ringing had them breaking apart. Chloe scrambled up from the bed to answer her phone. Kaelar couldn’t hear what the person on the other side was saying, but Chloe’s expression went from relaxed and lustful to worried and stressed.
“Okay. I understand. Yes, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Bye.”
“What is it?”
“That was the hospital.” Chloe sighed, moving to her closet to get dressed. “Something has happened. All of the children are crying—and I mean, screaming. I don’t understand it. They all have bad days, but for it to happen to all of them, at once? They’ve even got the staff checking for some kind of environmental factor, like a gas leak or something. The nurses are completely overwhelmed. They need some extra hands.”
Kaelar felt like his heart had been plunged into a bucket of icy water.
“It’s the Zalfa,” he breathed, leaning back weakly against the headboard. “This is all my fault.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
He forced himself to meet Chloe’s gaze. “I should have known—I should have protected them.”
Chloe walked back to the bed, pulling a shirt on. She put a calming hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Kaelar, just breathe. You look like you’re about to pass out. What should you have known?”
He swallowed hard, unwilling to admit the horrendous mistake he had made.
“The Zalfa are siphoning joy from the area,” he croaked. “Yesterday, I delivered the vast majority to the children at the hospital and I didn’t have much to fill up the town. Now, the hospital is the only area of town with any sort of concentration of joy—or at least, it was. The Zalfa must have hit the hospital, judging from your description. I should have known. I should’ve realized. If I’d waited there for them, this could all have been over…”
He shook his head, a feeling of desperation gripping him. The magnitude of his mistake was making him dizzy.
If Kaelar had just thought through the consequences, he could have arranged to set up the whole hospital as a trap. Santa could have sent reinforcements, or even tried to get the galactic authorities to speed up getting a taskforce to Earth. The Zalfa could have already been in custody.
“Come on.” Chloe pulled him up by his hand and pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead. “You can’t do anything about that now. Their actions are not your fault. I have to get to the hospital. Will you come with me? The kids respond so well to you, and we could really use the help.”
Kaelar smiled bitterly. “They only respond well to me because I bring joy. I don’t have any joy to give them, not now. I’d have to go collecting again…”
“No.” Chloe’s stern voice was back and she pressed a finger to his lips to hush him. “That’s not true,” she said. “You’re great with kids, Kaelar. They love you. Come with me.”
Kaelar gave himself a mental shake, trying to pull himself together. Chloe was right. He was good with children, and wallowing in his own guilt at his mistake wasn’t going to help them. They needed help now, not several hours later, which was how long it would take him to go to outlying towns and collect enough joy for the ward.
“Alright, I’ll come. Let’s go.”
He followed Chloe outside. The weather was cold, not that it bothered him much. At least it wasn’t snowing anymore.
Chloe immediately started walking to her car. “Luckily, my car was finally fixed, so—”
Kaelar stopped her with a hand on her arm. “That will be too slow. You’re too far out of town, it’ll take at least half an hour for you to drive.”
“I know,” Chloe moaned in frustration. “This is the only way out of here, though.”
Kaelar’s lip curled up in a smile. “I’ve got a faster way. Are you afraid of heights?”
Chloe blinked. “No. Why?”
She gasped as Kaelar shrugged his clothes off and transformed into his reindeer shape. His leg gave a painful twinge, but he ignored it. He wouldn’t be walking on it anyway. He carefully lowered himself to his knees next to Chloe, giving her a meaningful look.
He couldn’t talk to her in this form, but hopefully, his intent was clear.
Chapter 16
Chloe
Chloe had believed Kaelar when he’d told her who he was last night. There had been proof enough, after seeing the flying reindeer fall and finding him instead. Still, it was quite a difference, knowing he could turn into a reindeer and actually seeing him do it.
Muscles twisted and his face elongated, fur started to sprout all over his body, and he fell to all fours. Soon, instead of a dark-skinned man standing before her, there was a reindeer in her front yard.
Chloe stared, her eyes wide as Kaelar fell to his knees and invited her to climb on his back.
“Are you sure?” She reached out for his coat, stroking it reverently. “You’re still injured.”
She knew she wasn’t the fittest girl in town, and with his injured leg, she wasn’t sure he could take the additional weight. But Kaelar simply nodded, huffing at her as if to tell her to hurry up.
Chloe smiled. Hesitantly, she scrambled onto his back. Her hands clutched his fur tightly as he stood. She felt a bit wobbly, but Kaelar waited a few moments for her to get her balance as she tightened her grip with both her hands and legs.
“Okay. I—I think I’m ready.”
As soon as she’d said the words, Kaelar set off. He ran about a dozen paces and then took off into the air.
Chloe gasped as they soared into the sky. For a moment, she worried she might fall. She gripped Kaelar’s fur for her dear life, but when it was clear that Kaelar wasn’t going to let her fall to the ground, she started laughing.
The wind swept her hair back, and despite the seriousness of the situation, Chloe’s heart was light. They flew high up amongst the clouds. Although the cold pinched her cheeks, Chloe didn’t care. The feeling of flying in the air was incredible.
She could see the town and the hospital in a whole new way from here. Christmas lights shone brightly in the town. It was absolutely beautiful.
She wondered how many humans could say they have flown on a reindeer’s back.
Would Kaelar be willing to take her flying again sometime, when they didn’t have an emergency to deal with? Despite the cold wind, it was magical up here, and she already couldn’t wait to do it again.
In barely five minutes, Kaelar started his descent as they neared the hospital. He dropped down slowly behind some trees. Chloe dismounted, her legs slightly shaky, but when Kaelar turned to her, she was grinning from ear to ear.
“That was wonderful.”
“I’m glad.” Her eyes widened a little as he transformed back to human. She shied her gaze away, allowing him to get dressed.
She was still smiling as the two of them hurried toward the hospital, but her giddiness faded quickly as they arrived.
Sadie had reported the situation accurately. All of the kids were crying. Doctors and nurses were rushing between rooms, desperately trying to comfort them, but there simply weren’t enough peopl
e.
All of the hospital staff looked miserable and on the verge of tears.
“Oh, thank god, you’re here.” Sadie grabbed Chloe’s wrist and started dragging her toward Brad’s room. Kaelar followed behind. “How did you get here so fast? Don’t you live outside of town?”
“I was on my way into town anyway, to do some Christmas shopping,” Chloe lied, glancing at Kaelar. “I ran into Kaelar and he offered to come with me after you called. It looks like an all hands on deck situation.”
“Absolutely. Can you go to Hannah? Her family is freaking out, no one can get her to stop crying—not that any of the other children are any different right now. Brad’s also having a fit. I have no idea what’s upset them all so much.”
“I’ll go to Hannah,” Kaelar said at once. “You take care of Brad.”
He strode away toward Hannah’s room and Chloe was impressed to see that he was barely limping. She’d been planning to check on his wound this morning, but there hadn’t been time in the rush to get here.
Then again, he’d run a few steps in his reindeer form before taking off into the air. Clearly, he was doing better, as he’d promised. She only wished the children here could heal as fast as he did.
Chloe looked around as she hurried after Sadie, but she saw no sign of anyone who didn’t look entirely human. The Zalfa must have left already. Kaelar had said that the galactic authorities were on it, but Chloe knew that both of them would gladly try to intervene if they managed to catch the Zalfa at it.
For now, it seemed they were gone though, having sucked all the joy from the children and the hospital staff.
The misery at the hospital was palpable. Chloe decided to focus on comforting the children. If the Zalfa were still hiding somewhere, she would face them if she saw them, but for now, the children would be her priority.
Brad’s mother leaped up as Chloe and Sadie came into the room. Sadie was quickly called off to another patient, but Chloe stayed with Brad. His eyes were puffy, and he was crying and screaming. His mother’s attempts to soothe him seemed to have no effect.
“What’s wrong with him, Dr. Wilson?” Mrs. James asked, seemingly exhausted and upset.
Chloe knew very well what was wrong with him, but for show, she checked on his vitals.
“I don’t know yet.” She sat down on the edge of Brad’s bed, stroking his hair, but her attempt at comfort did as little as his mother’s had. “This isn’t just Brad. All of the children in the hospital are unwell. We’ve got people working on it.”
“You mean it’s like an epidemic? Is there something going around that makes them sick?”
“No,” Chloe said emphatically. The last thing they needed was to start a panic. “None of the children are happy to be here. It’s likely that one of them started crying about missing home and set the others off. That kind of thing happens often. Usually at night, when their families aren’t around, but it’s not unheard of in the day.”
It felt wrong, lying to Mrs. James’s face, but it wasn’t like she could tell the truth.
When she and Kaelar were next alone, Chloe was going to have a serious talk with him about how to speed up the process of letting the population know about the alien presence on Earth. If humanity had all the information, they could call in something like this just as they would any 911 call, and let the Earth police handle it rather than wait for galactic authorities.
“Brad, honey, can you talk to me?” Chloe leaned down over him, but Brad merely sobbed as he cuddled between her and his mother. “Brad, honey?”
When there was no answer, Chloe sighed. The staff couldn’t work like this, and it wasn’t good for the children to be this distressed for this long, either.
The longer this chaos lasted, the greater the chance of someone calling the Center for Disease Control or something. The hospital staff was already looking for a gas leak, and Chloe had no idea how she would even begin to answer the inevitable questions if the government got involved. She wasn’t at all keen on lying to a government agency, but Kaelar had trusted her with his secret, and she couldn’t betray that trust.
Brad’s crying picked up, and Chloe could still hear people hurrying up and down the halls. She returned to the ward and went to check on Hannah. Kaelar was trying valiantly to make her laugh, but Hannah was stubbornly miserable. At least, in the ICU, she wasn’t surrounded by the cries of the other children now.
She was just about to ask Kaelar how it was going when they suddenly heard a loud crash on the other side of the hospital, followed by loud cries. A moment later, Sadie ran into the room.
“Chloe, there’s a problem in the back loading dock. Some strange men are there, and the security is nowhere to be found. The patients are all crying and the nurses are freaking out. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Chloe looked Kaelar in the eye. His expression was grim and he seemed to be thinking the same thing.
The Zalfa were still here.
“I’ll take care of it,” Chloe said to Sadie before taking off in a run.
Followed by Kaelar, they both made their way to the back of the building, toward the loading dock where all supply and food deliveries were made. Now, Chloe could hear the cries coming from the loading dock as well and she picked up her pace.
Her heart pounded in her chest and her thoughts were running a mile a minute.
What were they going to do if the Zalfa were actually here?
Chapter 17
Kaelar
When they rounded the corner to the loading dock, Kaelar stopped in his tracks. It wasn’t what he saw, but what he heard. There was a faint buzzing in the air. His gaze followed the noise to the other side of the loading dock where a huge truck was parked. It looked like it carried medical supplies, but the buzzing told him otherwise.
“Chloe!” He grabbed her arm, stopping her before she stepped outside. Two men stood by the truck with menacing expressions on their faces. Although they appeared human, Kaelar knew they were not. They were just heavily cloaked to appear so.
“Those are the Zalfa,” he said to Chloe, nearly spitting out the word. “Can you hear that buzzing? That’s their shields making the ship look like a human truck.”
Her eyes widened. “What should we do?”
“We have to stop them.” Kaelar didn’t know how he was going to do that, but he knew he couldn’t let them go without trying. The Zalfa ship was no doubt loaded with stolen joy. If they could get that joy back, they could return it to the children and the rest of the hospital.
“Stay back,” he murmured to Chloe. Kaelar stepped forward, drawing the Zalfa’s attention to him. “Stop there, Zalfa! The galactic authorities are already on their way. Surrender now if you don’t want to be blown to pieces when they arrive.”
For a moment, he thought his bluff had worked. The Zalfa glanced at each other and seemed to hesitate, but after a moment, a third Zalfa walked from behind the truck and called out to the group, “He’s bluffing! Keep going. We need to take off.”
The two Zalfa returned to whatever they had been doing—preparing for take-off? and Kaelar saw that there were a number of humans from the hospital staff unconscious on the ground.
At least, he hoped that they were unconscious.
The third Zalfa advanced on Kaelar, holding a gun in his hands. Kaelar’s heart leaped when he pointed the gun to Chloe’s head.
“Leave, reilendeer, or she’s dead.”
The moment seemed to freeze in time. Chloe’s eyes widened in shock and she seemed to be paralyzed in fear. Kaelar froze as well. He wasn’t trained in combat and he didn’t have any weapons, but he couldn’t let Chloe get hurt. He couldn’t let his mate get hurt.
Not for the first time recently, he felt helpless, and he didn’t like the feeling.
Why had he brought her along? It was a stupid decision, one that he would now pay for. Even if he did what they wanted, the Zalfa would likely kill her anyway. They weren’t the type to leave witnesses.
The Zal
fa continued his approach until he reached Chloe and grabbed her by the arm. She yelped in pain as the Zalfa pulled her closer to him and took a step back, pressing his gun into Chloe’s throat.
Anger flared up inside Kaelar, the kind of anger he’d never felt before in his life. The threat to his mate set his protective instincts off, though he still didn’t know how best to protect her. A haze of blackness took over his vision.
The air around him was filled with negative emotions—Chloe’s fear, the Zalfa’s viciousness and cold detachment to the suffering they were causing, and his own anger. In the distance, he could even feel the hospital patients’ sadness.
Kaelar didn’t really think about it. He acted on instinct, knowing that above all, he had to protect his mate. He started pulling emotion, not from the air, but from the Zalfa standing before him.
He’d never done this before, and it felt wrong, but Kaelar kept going.
He didn’t just take joy. He took everything. There were very few positive emotions in the Zalfa anyway. Mostly it was anger, greed, and cruelty. What little happiness or satisfaction there was, Kaelar took it too.
For almost all beings in the galaxy, emotion was a primary part of their makeup. Being completely without any emotion? He didn’t know what it would do to them, but he was sure that if he could drain it all, the Zalfa would be incapacitated in some way.
Kaelar didn’t know what it would do to him either, but he couldn’t worry about that now. His primary purpose was protecting Chloe.
The Zalfa working by the ship seemed to notice something was amiss, and they started approaching Kaelar too, their weapons raised.
Kaelar wasn’t going to let that happen. He wasn’t going to let them come close enough to harm Chloe. He reached out to the other Zalfa, feeling the fourth one inside the ship, and started pulling on their emotions as well. He felt the emotion drain from them, felt it as it filled him up. All of it.
As he pulled more and more emotion from the Zalfa, their hands started to shake and their weapons started to lower.
The Alien Reindeer's Joy Page 9
