HeVan & Earth

by Lucy Kelly

  It took another two days to discover he had left HeVan entirely. Thinking he would have to pursue him throughout the known confederation of planets, Justyn was shocked when he discovered, from his inquiries at the various star gates, that Hend had headed in the direction of Earth. It was far off the track from any other known star system

  By the time Justyn had gotten word from the KowLer gate and one other, Hend’s ultimate destination was definitely known. By then, Justyn, Margan, and Trake were a full ten days behind him in their pursuit. Addie gave them the aptly named Venger to capture Hend. A thousand warriors volunteered for duty to man the ship.

  When their new Nam-Nin had proven herself by calling the women back from the past, every warrior had sworn fealty to her. It was a dark time in Nephilim history when Aruru had been taken from the throne. Had the bodies of any of the missing women been found, she would have been killed.

  As it was, a bloody war had caused the Nam-Nin's powers to be reduced, and the council to be put into place. Now the truth was known, Aruru’s actions were vindicated. All the people of HeVan were determined to make amends for the mistakes of their ancestors.

  The warriors chosen to crew the Venger were determined to make sure the Nam-Nin's home world was not harmed in any way, and not only to find Armus Hend.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Earth…

  Josephine landed in San Francisco four days after the events had taken place at the zoo. Her sister couldn’t stop talking about the two men who had saved her and many of the animals. If what Sarah had told her were true, then these men were from another planet. And they were going to try to get jiggy with her sister, both of them!

  Aimeé didn’t know she was coming, so Josephine picked up her rental car, a Jeep Wrangler, and headed into the city. By the time she got out into the avenues, near the beach, it was late and the fog had rolled in. Visibility was cut down to a few car lengths. She was looking forward to getting to her sister’s place and stretching her legs. It was after midnight in San Francisco, which meant it was after two a.m. Chicago time.

  Finally, she arrived. She could see Aimeé’s animal hospital was closed, though Aimeé had a bell for emergencies. Walking around the side of the building, she went up the metal stairs and rang the doorbell to her sister’s residence. She’d made a loft apartment in what once were the upstairs offices of a huge grocery store.

  After several minutes, she rang the buzzer again. She knew her sister was home; she’d seen her car in the garage. When she still failed to come to the door, Josephine pulled out her lock picks. Aimeé was probably sound asleep. Jo had forgotten what a heavy sleeper she was.

  The emergency bell must be really loud.

  It took less than a minute for Josephine to get the door open. She made a note to get her sister better locks for her door as she stepped inside. It wasn’t until she locked the door behind her, walked down the short hall, and opened the door into the loft, that she heard the music. No wonder her sister didn’t hear the door buzzer!

  She started walking through the various rooms as she called out. Opening the bedroom door, she saw the bed was a wreck. Over the music, she heard a splash coming from the open bathroom door.

  “Aimeé, you are such a slob! You can’t even make up your bed…”

  Josephine halted in the doorway. Instantly, she turned her back to the bathroom—trying to un-see what she had just seen.

  “Um…I’ll go back to the living room, or maybe the kitchen. Yeah, I’ll go to the kitchen and get something to eat. Airplane food is lousy. I’m starved,” she blurted out, before rushing away.

  Her sister was in her spa tub with two men! She ignored the squeak of embarrassment and splashing she heard going on behind her and made tracks. Those had been big men—what she’d seen of them.

  Were they the Nephilim Aimeé had been talking about? They must be!

  When she got to the kitchen, she realized she really was hungry. Looking in the fridge, she was pleased to see everything she needed. All the March daughters preferred breakfast food nearly any time of the day. She pulled out eggs, cheese, and bacon.

  It wasn’t very well known, but Josephine and her sisters had grown up with two dads. Their mother had fallen in love with two brothers, Ken and Woody March. Luckily for them, instead of the relationships being torn apart by jealousies, the three had been happily living in a ménage relationship for nearly thirty years.

  Their four daughters had put up with a lot of teasing and bullying while they were growing up. Even though they loved their parents, they all decided that in their own relationships, they were going to stick to one guy at a time.

  Now, Aimeé was here with two. From the glimpse she’d gotten of them, they were both really hot too! By the time she’d gotten to the kitchen and pulled eggs, cheese, and bacon out of the fridge—because she was hungry and cheesy scrambled eggs was easy—her sister had thrown on a T-shirt, shorts and slippers.

  “Are you mad at me?” Aimeé asked from the doorway.

  Josephine turned from adding milk, salt, and pepper into her egg mixture. “Why would you think I was mad at you?” she asked, as the bacon started to cook in the pan next to her.

  “You kept getting upset when I talked about Jorne and Tonne on the phone. I know we all decided we weren’t going to be like mom, but I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Please try to understand, Jo,” she said, using her childhood nickname for her older sister. “Please be on my side, even if you don’t agree with my decision to stay with them. Maybe it won’t work out in the long run. Right now, I really want to try. I think I’m in love with them both. I want to find out if we can make it work. I’m not living in the same era as our parents,” she added, attempting to convince her sister.

  “I’m always on your side, honey. There’s just a little more going on here than you’re aware. Why don’t you go see if those two are hungry? We can all sit down and get to know each other,” Jo said.

  She poured the egg mixture into the frying pan, and then put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster. She wondered how much her sister really knew about the men she’d started a relationship with. Had they given her the same story Sarah had given her? Did they think they were aliens from another world?

  Wondering what her sister meant—she was in the FBI, after all, Aimeé rushed back to the bedroom. She was happy to see Jorne and Tonne were already dressed and stepping out into the hallway. They both reached for her and gave her a quick kiss.

  “Is your sister upset with you?” Jorne wanted to know.

  “Why would she be upset? Aimeé is her sister. Surely she is pleased her sister has found her perfect mates,” Tonne stated, using a more Earthly term instead of “joins”.

  “First, she’s not upset. She wants to get to know you guys,” she said.

  Aimeé wasn’t touching the ‘perfect mates’ thing right now. All they had shared between them was still so new.

  “Everything between the three of us has happened so fast. There are things we haven’t talked about. Anyway, Jo asked me to ask you if you’re hungry. So let’s go back to the kitchen, okay?”

  When the three of them entered the kitchen, Josephine was sitting at the table eating her cheesy scrambled eggs on toast. There was a platter of bacon in the middle of the table for sharing. She hadn’t gotten a very good look at the two men before, just a flash of skin. It was a lot of skin, considering how big the two men were.

  “Why do you call your sister by a man’s name?” asked Jorne.

  “Okay—first answer: it’s common for children, especially siblings learning to talk, to mangle their older sibling’s names. We call them nicknames.

  “All the March sisters have shortened names. Josephine is called Jo; Margaret is called Meg; and Elizabeth is called Lizzy.

  “My name, Aimeé, is French for Amy.” she spelled them both. “My mom liked it better. Mom has always been a huge fan of the book Little Women. So when she married men named March, and started hav
ing daughters, it was a given she would name them after the characters. The only difference was that she changed the order of the names in the book. Well, anyway, it’s not important. I doubt if you’ve ever read Little Women. That’s why I call her Jo, and she calls me Aimeé.”

  “I was starving, so I went ahead and started eating. Have some bacon,” Josephine said.

  Jorne and Tonne sat down and each took a piece of bacon.

  The two men considered what Aimeé had said. They both decided to find a copy of this book, Little Women, and read it. To have so inspired the mother of these sisters, it must be a story of great heroic deeds and epic adventure.

  “Are you going to introduce me to your guys, Aimeé?” asked Jo, taking a bite of her food.

  “This is Tonne and Jorne Jors. They work for Kern & Walthers Software. Only Kern retired, so it’s only Walthers now. They have two older brothers named Margan and Trake. Our family is all girls and theirs is all boys,” Aimeé said.

  “Tonne, Jorne, this is my older sister, Josephine. As I explained, we, my other sisters and I, all call her Jo. She’s with the FBI, and that’s why she always gives our boyfriends the third degree. Prepare to be interrogated. Be nice, Jo,” she told her sister.

  Then each man stepped forward to shake Josephine’s hand. She had gotten up from her chair when her sister started talking. Now she sat back down again.

  “Don’t worry about making any food, Jo. I’m going to phone for Chinese. I’ll get extra crab rangoons and pot stickers, if you’re still hungry after the eggs. We were going to do that later, anyway, because I haven’t had time for grocery shopping with everything that’s been happening…and the cupboards are practically bare. It’s a good thing there are all-night Chinese restaurants or they’d starve. I can’t keep feeding them breakfast. I think you used up the last of the eggs,” Aimeé said.

  Jo went back to her eggs before they got cold. The menu for the Chinese restaurant had been found; the various items decided on, and the order phoned in, Jo was finished eating. They were all sitting awkwardly, not talking.

  “So, since I found you guys naked in the bath, I’m guessing you’ve been having sex with my baby sister. Have you mentioned you’re aliens from another planet?” asked Jo, dropping a conversational bomb in the room. She was starting the interrogation her sister had mentioned.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Jo?” asked Aimeé.

  “When I was in Wisconsin on a case, I was told our birthmarks prove we descended from aliens who landed on Earth about ten thousand years ago. These men have come from a distant planet to find those descendants—us—and mate with us, because there are almost no women left on HeVan. HeVan is the name of their planet and they call themselves the Nephilim,” she said to her sister, casting looks at the men.

  Josephine turned from her sister to look Tonne and Jorne in the eye.

  “Have I left anything out?” she asked blandly.

  “Actually, there is one more thing,” said Tonne, as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. As always, Jorne was unruffled, he was better at hiding his feelings.

  “You mean she’s not joking with me? You three haven’t gotten together to cook up some story?” asked Aimeé, her voice getting high and tight. She got out of her chair and backed up to the counter.

  Jorne turned to confront Josephine. “You’ve scared her! Why did you blurt it all out like that?” he accused.

  Tonne got up and, before he’d taken a step toward Aimeé, she held out a hand, palm out, and told him to stay away from her.

  Now Josephine’s anger came out. She stood herself. Pushing her plate out of the way, she leaned over the table to get into Jorne’s face.

  “No, you should have waited to jump into bed with my sister until everything was cleared up. You two are the ones taking advantage of her. If you cared for Aimeé, you would have been up front with her. You have hurt her and no one hurts my family!”

  “I think you should both go,” said Aimeé in a small voice. Instead of leaning on the counter, she slid down to the floor and pulled her knees up. She felt like such a fool!

  “We will not leave when you are so unhappy,” said Tonne, getting up from his chair and crouching down to Aimeé’s level.

  Aimeé was really stressed out and scared. With her pheromones flooding the room, it caused an immediate reaction in Tonne and Jorne. Both of them arched their backs.

  Jorne grabbed the back of his brother’s T-shirt and ripped it open as his wings burst forth. Turning, Tonne started to help his brother. It was harder because his wings were already trying to push through the material. While they were faced away from Aimeé, Josephine darted in front of her sister to protect her.

  Both men, arching their backs, turned to the women and found themselves facing Josephine’s gun.

  “One step and I’ll shoot,” she said in a hard voice. “I didn’t actually believe them, you know. I thought they were making up some story to cover up a cult of some kind. I mean, who would actually believe there were aliens? The sudden appearance of wings, though—that, I hadn’t expected. Nuh-uh, this is a new one,” she said. Her voice was shaking, but her gun was rock steady.

  Josephine was babbling. She knew she was babbling; she was just trying to keep it together while she wrapped her mind around the bizarreness in front of her.

  “This is the ‘one other thing’ we needed to tell you,” said Tonne to Aimeé, with a pleading look on his face. Both Josephine and Aimeé watched as the damp, slightly bloody wings stretched and then slowly wafted back and forth.

  “Our wings only emerge when we’ve met our one, the perfect mate, or what’s called a join, on HeVan. Your distress caused our wings to come forth early. It usually takes about two Earth weeks,” added Jorne.

  Aimeé was only half listening to what they were saying. She was having problems concentrating on their words when all she wanted to do was jump their bones.

  Seriously, this doesn’t feel normal.

  Her nipples had puckered into sharp points and her yoga pants were quickly becoming soaked.

  “What…what’s happening to me?” she panted.

  Granted, they had been having sex for days. But it had felt nothing like this. She needed to have them—she would die if she didn’t have them.

  Josephine wasn’t feeling aroused. But she did seem really mellow, all of a sudden. She lowered and then re-holstered her weapon.

  Jorne looked at both sisters. “The pheromones released when our wings emerge, promoting feelings of euphoria and arousal. We have a strong urge, once our wings have dried, to take our joining flight and then take our mate. We will then be joined in the way of our people. It is similar to your marriage,” he explained.

  “Whoa! That’s taking a relationship really fast, isn’t it? You’re aliens!” Josephine repeated.

  For some reason, it didn’t bother her as much as it did before. Suddenly, she was really sleepy. She started to slump over. Jorne caught her and asked Aimeé where to put her. He explained the pheromones would act as a soporific toward anyone nearby who might interrupt or try to stop a joining. Nephilim could have sex, but only a joined pair could get pregnant. Being able to continue a joining once started was critical to the survival of their species.

  Aimeé smiled and waved to the door, even though part of her wanted to protest, she needed to figure this out. Jorne could take Jo to the guest room. She looked at Tonne. The intense arousal she was starting to feel, lessened slightly when Jorne and Jo left the room.

  “So this sexy smell is your race’s way of making sure the race continues. No teenage birth control, all the sex you want and no oopsies!” she said on a giggle.

  The pheromones were making her happy and horny.

  “I guess you guys don’t get to have big weddings, then. It’s too bad about your missing the party and the presents. Though, I wouldn’t want to have sex in front of hundreds of my friends and family, either.”

  She started moving her hands up and down, as if
she were weighing scales.

  “Sex—party with presents… Sex—party with presents… Hmmm, it’s a tough one. Probably another reason why you both smell so yummy,” she said, dropping her hands to her side.

  Aimeé slowly got up from the floor when Jorne came back in. Tonne rushed to help her. She couldn’t stop herself; she had to touch their skin. She was desperate to kiss them.

  Tonne pulled her into his arms. They had kissed before. After rescuing her from the terrorist activists at the zoo, when they realized she was destined to join with them, they never left her side. Aimeé was happy to be alive and to have saved the lives of the big cats she loved. After they drove her home, she had invited them in for a drink. It may not have been wise, but she was really tired and high on the day’s events.

  She started out hugging them and giving them kisses to thank them. It had quickly escalated into their first bout of lovemaking. Now, several days later, they were still here.

  If I don’t get away in the next few seconds, I’m going to be married to Marvin the Martian, twice over!

  Her body didn’t care. She couldn’t fight the needs of her body, or, if she would admit it, the desires of her heart.

  Ever since they met her, Tonne and Jorne had treated her as if she were the only woman in the room. They completely ignored every other woman around. While she worked in her practice, one of them was always nearby, watching and willing to lend a hand. Several of her employees, and even her patient’s owners, had hit on them. They hadn’t noticed; they only had eyes for Aimeé. Who wouldn’t fall at least a little in love after so much attention?

  “Will you join with us?” asked Jorne.

  “Will you watch us fly?” asked Tonne.

  In that moment, Aimeé’s mind was clear. She knew she would have sex; the wicked pheromones were taking care of that. She also knew they hadn’t affected her mind. She was still able to think clearly. She wasn’t drugged and without inhibitions. These two gorgeous men weren’t trying to trick her. She wanted this. Pressed to the point, she knew she would regret it for the rest of her life if she turned down this chance at happiness. She would go with the flow, but they had to do some things her way.