He started to touch the thing on his head again and then hesitated. “I am Draken. This is how I look when I assume my alter form.”
Before her very eyes, he transformed himself completely—totally—and became … well he looked like a dragon except he had tufts of feathers around his chest and his wings were feathered. Or at least covered in something that looked more like feathers than anything else she could think of.
He touched the image transformer on his head and became the Jarrod she knew again.
He didn’t try to approach her after that. “I will be back in just a little bit to let you go.”
“Back?” she gasped.
But he either didn’t hear her or just didn’t mean to devote the time to explain. He herded the family out the door and went with them.
Dismay filled Marilyn at being abandoned with the unconscious man.
She did her best to convince herself that he hadn’t hurt them and he wouldn’t. If he’d meant to, or just considered them disposable, he wouldn’t have wasted the time to tie them up. He would’ve killed them outright.
Dillard didn’t so much as stir.
Marilyn stared at him, hard. Finally, she decided she could see his chest moving.
Relieved about that anyway, although she was vastly disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to help her, she tested her bindings but found that, even though she seemed to have regained all motor functions, she couldn’t loosen the bindings at all.
Settling to rest after straining so hard, her mind immediately began turning over the information it had gathered, trying to fit pieces together when none of them were at all familiar. A yawn caught her unaware.
She decided to just close her eyes and see if that would help her recall the things she’d seen so that she could try to make sense of them.
The closet wasn’t a closet. Well, it was, because she had one just like it.
Except it didn’t emit blue light and transport aliens through space like Jarrod’s did.
So he had something like a transporter in his closet—like in that old TV sci-fi show?
It had to be something like that—even though humans didn’t have anything like that but only imagined that sort of invention. They couldn’t have anything like a mail chute hooked up in there.
Unless …. No. She dismissed the flicker of an idea that it was some sort of government run thing. They wouldn’t set up in an apartment in the middle of the city. They would hide it out in the middle of nowhere.
So it must be something like the Einstein-Rosen bridge … or maybe a wormhole?
Which didn’t actually exist—for humans, but they were considered scientifically possible so it didn’t follow that no one had them.
Assuming there was other life forms in the universe.
She snickered and then struggled with the urge to cry.
Just when she was sure she’d cried until she couldn’t anymore, that she had no more tears to shed, she started crying again.
Jarrod wasn’t even human!
Didn’t that just figure! She’d been waiting her whole life for the man of her dreams.
And he was a … dragon person.
This time she knew without any doubt at all that it was totally over between them. They weren’t going to patch up their breakup as she had secretly hoped when she’d sneaked down to his apartment in the middle of the night.
Chapter Eleven
Marilyn roused toward awareness when she felt a tugging and pulling, coming fully awake when her face was captured between two palms. She opened her eyes then, struggled to focus on the face so close to hers.
“Jarrod!” she gasped and surged toward him, hugging him tightly.
He hesitated and then put his arms around her and held her.
“I had the most horrible dreams.”
He stiffened at that and drew away from her to study her face.
“I kept dreaming you said you’d never speak to me again after I snooped. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to screw everything up. I really didn’t!”
He scanned her face a little doubtfully, wondering just how much she remembered. “How much do you remember? How much have you figured out?”
Marilyn stared at him uneasily. “Well, honestly, I don’t know what’s going on. But … it couldn’t be an invasion, could it? You wouldn’t … you wouldn’t do that.”
His throat closed. “So … you remember?”
She chewed her lip. “Ah … yeah?” she said a little doubtfully.
He did not want to know, but he needed to. “You saw me?”
She heard the doubt in his voice and instantly realized he thought she wouldn’t, couldn’t care about him if she knew he was different—which was just so far from the truth! She lifted a hand and touched his face. “You are handsome to me with or without that thing on your head … whatever it is.”
He kissed her, long and lingeringly. When he broke the kiss he was all business. “Stay put. I have to deal with that cop.”
Dismay flickered through Marilyn. “You aren’t going to … hurt him?” she asked when he moved to the cop on the floor—that she thought must way twice what she did—and picked him up without any obvious effort and dropped him on the sofa.
“You may as well quit playing possum. I know how long the paralyzer works.”
Dillard opened his eyes and glared at him. “Fing alien!” he growled. “Untie me!”
Jarrod crouched in front of him. “In time. First—I am Guardian Jarowd el-Karaket, a ranger for the Galactic Alliance—Earth Division. Cop to cop-do you want to join the galactic rangers, assuming your application is accepted? Or would you prefer to just disappear?”
Dillard gobbled at him a good two minutes before he managed to get anything out that actually sounded like language. “Murdering a cop will get you the death penalty—even if you are a cop like you want me to believe!”
Jarrod laughed. “I was not talking about killing you, cop. I was talking about relocating you where you would not be a problem. I cannot have you interfering with our witness relocation program. Or, alternately, you could undergo a memory erase if that’s more to your liking. But we will come to an understanding.”
“Witness relocation …. You’re trying to tell me that this is … an alien relocation program, witness protection like the Marshall’s office?”
“Yes.”
Dillard narrowed his eyes. “And our government knows all about it and they’re onboard?”
Jarrod gave him a look. “If they were I would not have to get an agreement from you. They would just make you disappear … permanently.”
Dillard paled. “Okay, okay! Let me think about it. I don’t think I could handle working as a ranger. I got a wife and three kids, and I’m pretty damned sure my wife wouldn’t like the school situation. But the memory thing—Can’t say it doesn’t worry me, but I might agree to that.”
Jarrod studied him for several very long moments and finally began to untie him. “I will walk you back to your car.”
Dillard chuckled uneasily. “No need for that.”
“Oh I insist. You look a little wobbly to me,” Jarrod said, patting him on the back.
“No. I’m fine.”
He barely got the word out before Jarrod zapped him with something that felled him like an ox. Jarrod caught him as he went down.
Marilyn gasped. “Oh my god! You didn’t kill him?”
Jarrod shook his head at her. “Humans are very blood thirsty. Is it common for your cops to kill people? We do not do that. No. I did not kill him. I am going to put him in his car.”
With that, he hefted the man over his shoulder and left.
Dillard came around when he was jostled as Jarrod stuffed him back behind the wheel of his car.
He turned to look at Jarrod in confusion.
Jarrod grinned at him, patted his shoulder—hard—and stepped back. “Good talking to you! Have a nice day.”
Dillard gaped at him as he strode off, struggling to recall what they’d talke
d about. His mind was strangely blank. He strained, but the last thing he remembered was parking his car to stake out the apartment building and watch for weird stuff.
He didn’t remember seeing Jarrod before he found him crouched beside his car window, let alone a conversation.
Shaking his head, he started his car. It was his partner’s shift and even as the thought occurred to him he saw the guy drive up and park. Nodding, he drove off.
* * * *
Marilyn couldn’t decide whether she should wait for Jarrod to get back so they could finish making up or if she should leave because she was still in danger and he was just stringing her along.
She’d just decided that, maybe, she knew too much to be safe and it would be better to leave when Jarrod returned.
He met her as if she was running toward him, not trying to escape, capturing her in a light embrace. “So … woman, what’s it going to be? Are you going to be my mate? Because I am pretty crazy in love with you and I am already committed. Or would you prefer to relocate?”
Marilyn was thrilled all the way to her toes.
But still skeptical.
“Well, uh .. this is really sudden. I can’t make up my mind in five seconds! Anyway, you haven’t really courted me and … well if I’m going to get married I want the whole thing, the dating and the wedding ….”
Uttering an irritated sigh, Jarrod gave her a jolt of the ‘forget me’ device, catching her as she began to crumple toward the floor.
A tiny jolt.
He grinned down at her easily when her eyes fluttered and then opened. “I did not think you would faint only because I asked you to be my woman.”
She stared at him. Slowly a smile dawned. “You did?” she asked breathlessly and then frowned. “I don’t remember …. What did I say?”
“You said you wanted me to thoroughly court you,” he responded with a wicked chuckle, sweeping her off her feet and carrying her to bed.
Marilyn certainly wasn’t against sealing the deal in the bed, but she had one caveat. “We aren’t married yet.”
“We are well and truly mated, however. You cannot back out now. I have thoroughly bred you.”
The End.
Guardian Page 8
