She wondered if Alastor was going to answer, and when he did, she wished she’d never asked. “They do exactly what they are told. Nothing more. Nothing less.” He slung his pack over his broad shoulders.
She felt tiny, standing so close to his imposing height. “What if they’re not told to eat? What happens if they’re forgotten?”
“Then they work until their bodies give out. They die of overwork, of disease, infections, starvation, lack of sleep. They don’t think. They just act. The Reptiles use them until they die on their feet. They use males, females, children, even infants. Mothers leave their babies to starve. Fathers leave their families to work until their bodies give out. Everything is forgotten. Disregarded. Ignored. Once the Reptiles invade a planet, they ravage any civilisation there until only the bare bones are left. They only destroy, kill, maim. There is no cure, because no one knows how to bring beings back from their mind-enslavement. That was, until recently. I can only hope that somehow, someway, we are able to free those mind-enslaved.”
She sucked in a breath, stark horror shooting through her with a certain type of knowledge that often washed though her when she read people. The kind of knowledge that people kept a secret. The kind of knowledge that was close to their heart, almost always never to be revealed. A wave of emotions washed through her solar plexus, the pressure making it hard to breathe. “Who did you know?”
His eyes darkened and he went so still, she thought he might be a statue. “Explain yourself.”
“The Reptiles took someone you know. Someone important to you.” Sometimes she wished she couldn’t read people. That way, they could keep their secrets and she wouldn’t have to know about their pain. Alastor wasn’t one to share. “I’m sorry. Just forget I said anything at all. Of course you’d know someone. You’ve been fighting the Reptiles for a long time. Let’s just do what we have to do and get out of here as quickly as possible.”
Sometimes she wished she was normal. That she didn’t know these things about people. People kept secrets for a reason. The very definition of a secret was to keep quiet about something people didn’t want anyone else to know. Hadn’t she learned that lesson?
A large palm settled on her shoulder. She tipped her head back to watch the silent storm in the eyes of his stoic face. Long moments passed and her resolve crumbled beneath her quivering exterior, but before she had a chance to speak, Alastor cut her off. “The door is the other way.”
She nodded and stepped around him without really knowing how her body moved. On automatic. She knew how it felt well.
It was how she had functioned during the months before her abduction.
Chapter Four
Alastor’s feet sank into the fine grains of sand. He took a few paces and double-checked the location of the shuttle. It was well-hidden, nestled in the middle of towering, long-leaved trees, so tall that the massive fronds created a natural shelter over the shuttle.
Marie’s dainty figure appeared at the open doorway. She was swamped in the survival fatigues designed for Hexonian bodies. Not small, fragile, human bodies. The clothing had self-regulating thermal qualities, and could administer a light does of antiseptic if she was injured. Not that Alastor would allow her anywhere near danger for the antiseptic to be administered. He took his responsibilities seriously. Especially her.
She stepped from the ladder and turned slowly. A shaft of sunlight reflected from her hair, making the platinum glow. Her cheeks had blushed with a rosy hue, and her eyes sparkled with interest, none of which he wanted to notice at all.
Alastor unzipped her collar and withdrew the hood. “Put this on. Your hair stands out too much.”
“Oh.” She fumbled behind her head, trying to work out the kinks from the material. With a sigh, he smoothed out the hood and placed it over her head. His fingers brushed her hair. It was so soft, he almost didn’t feel it. He fingered a thick strand, marvelling that something so beautiful could be soft as well.
She peered up at him, her eyes large, her lips slightly parted. Frek, they’d only been planet-side for less than a minute and his attention was already diverted. This was not a good omen. Not at all.
“You should tie you hair up as well,” he muttered.
“A girl is always prepared.” She withdrew a circular piece of elastic material from a pocket. She expertly secured her hair from her face, which only succeeded in revealing the slender length of her throat and the delicate line of her jawbone. Frek.
“Pull the hood down. Right over your eyes.”
She did as he asked. Now all he could see was her perfect, dusk-coloured lips. He made himself turn away.
“Aren’t you going to put your hood on too?”
He inwardly groaned. That was something he should have done before he’d even stepped foot from the shuttle. He tangled with the opening on his collar, trying to find the latch, fingers fumbling.
“Here. Let me.” Warm fingers skimmed the back of his neck. His entire focus was on her light touch. Her body brushed against his as she tried to get the hood over his head. His muscles locked, his cells momentarily electrified.
“Did I hurt you?”
“Of course not. I can manage from here.”
Concerned eyes stared up at him. He quickly finished adjusting his hood, so that he wouldn’t have to endure her touch. He hadn’t been affected by another female since Keira. Hadn’t wanted to. Hadn’t sought it. Still didn’t.
Yet hers did.
Made him want things he had no right wanting again.
He gritted his teeth, his jaw aching with the force. Her gaze travelled to his temple, right at that ticking muscle that jumped when she was close by, alarm spreading across her too-expressive face. There was no time to worry about the hurt feelings of a human female. Time was of the essence, and he’d wasted enough of it. He engaged the Seeker strapped to his wrist.
A holographic map of the structure and heat signatures of the land appeared above the screen. Figures indicating the typography, temperature, and humidity content of the air spiralled at the side. He adjusted the readings and the Seeker detected the energy spike that the Starlight had detected. They could follow it on foot now.
“What’s that?” The screen beeped and waves of energy flooded the diagram as Marie stepped close to him.
“Your energy pattern is spiking the Seeker.” That was highly unusual and had him questioning the working condition of the unit. He adjusted the setting, but when he passed it over her, the energy waves peaked to the highest level he’d ever monitored.
“Is it broken?”
He’d checked it himself before coming planet-side and he failed to think how it could have become defective in the short trip down. “Impossible.”
There was nothing more to do. They had to keep advancing. “Let’s keep moving. We have quite a distance to travel and I don’t know how long it will take us.”
“Okay.”
He grunted and threaded his way around the cylindrical trunks of the trees and patches of long grass. Time passed. He kept turning around to make sure Marie was keeping up. Every so often, he would find her touching a low-hanging frond, or brushing aside a blade of grass that caught on her pants leg. The way she touched things was almost reverent, as though she made the most out of every second.
He was once like that. Once. Long ago. Very early in his career, he came to dread going planet-side. Each mission meant fighting and danger and death, with a side helping of not knowing who would make it back.
“Have you been to many planets?” Her gentle voice pulled him from those memories, but the question took him into darker ones.
“Yes.”
“I knew there were planets. Of course I did. Every star is a sun and every sun has a galaxy. Everyone thought they were unliveable rocks. Not like this,” she said.
He walked a few paces, but he couldn’t overcome his curiosity. “Not like what?”
“Full civilisations. Intelligent, sentient, self-aware life. Our scientists concen
trated too much on the bacteria to focus on the bigger things.”
The curiosity lingered. Disconcerting. “Bacteria? As far as I’m concerned, there’s bacteria on every living surface. Everyone knows that.”
She chuckled and the sound slid through him like a gentle breeze and made him want to stop and forget he was on a mission on an occupied planet. “I guess that’s what they thought, too. If you want to discover alien life, cover your bases and try to find something there’s billions of. In a game of hit and miss, go for the larger number and increase the odds.”
“I’d forgotten that Earth is technologically primitive.”
“Well, when you compare yourselves against us, then yeah, I guess you’re right. Doesn’t make souls any better, though.” She snorted, a rather delicate sound. “Believe me, I know about that.”
“And how would you know that?”
“You can have all the technology in the world, all the money, own all of the houses on your street, build cities and rent them out to poor people for far more than they can afford, be the most powerful ruler of a country, but none of those things make a person’s soul burn any brighter, that’s for sure. You certainly don’t take it with you,” she said.
“And what do you ‘take with you’?” Despite his best efforts to keep his distance, she drew him in like he was a flying bug around a fire stick. He’d heard talk of this subject from elders, and those who sought spiritual life, but Marie spoke about it as though that was just the way it was. A fact of life.
“Who you are. What you’ve become. Your experiences. What you’ve learned. What you think about things. What you’ve done. What you’ve felt. How you’ve reacted. All of the intangibles.” She shrugged as though it was no big deal, but to him it was everything, especially when he expected to pay for his sins for eternity. The intangibles were all he had.
His steps slowed. “But what if you only have bad things to take with you? You’ve become dishonourable. You’ve learned to cheat. Steal. Lie. Murder. You have done the very worst that anyone can do and you never look back. What happens to a person like that?”
Her eyes seemed to see right into his soul. If she saw into him, then she’d know the very worst. The things he’d seen and done had scarred his soul for eternity. He dreaded hearing what she said, but couldn’t stop from listening when she spoke.
“I would say that the best people are often their own harshest critics. That what one perceives as bad isn’t the whole truth, and certainly not the whole aspect of the soul. And, if we want to get to the energy source, we’d better start walking.”
Chapter Five
A tsunami of emotions blasted from his stoic exterior. Marie could read people, pick up on emotions, but Alastor’s were amplified. When it came to him, she was like a receiving tower.
It was this planet. She’d never felt this magnitude of energy before. Energy that had the capacity to blind her with its power. She could now well understand why the Reptiles had concentrated their efforts here. If energy was what the entity needed to breach the interdimensional barrier, then this mission could be more important than they originally thought. It also amplified her ability to detect others’ energies. She was sensitive, but this planet brought her abilities to a whole new level and she wasn’t quite sure how to manage it.
She mentally built up a cocoon of cleansing white light around her. It muted the wash of his emotions, but only by a little. Alastor’s emotions blasted over her. He hurt so much. Held on to so much pain, she couldn’t begin to understand how he still functioned, and how he managed to hide it so well.
“Why did you send me to accompany him?” She sent the mental thought to Black Feather, but her reply was only emptiness. “Why are you so quiet?” she muttered under her breath.
“Did you speak, Marie?”
Alastor’s deep voice flowed through her. So soothing. How someone who hurt as much as he did was able to allay her nerves, she didn’t know.
“Uh. Nothing. Just talking to myself.”
“I will check the hydration level on your bio-data. We are about to walk onto the open sand and I wish to make sure that you are hydrated.”
“Oh.” She’d been so much in her head, she was surprised to find an endless carpet of sand stretched in front of her and a wall of thick lush vegetation behind her.
Alastor’s fingers brushed her sleeve where he lifted a patch of material to reveal a sleek screen embedded beneath it. “I didn’t know that was there.”
She wondered in passing what else was built into the suit. The army back on Earth would love this piece of equipment. He held her arm steady as he switched through a sequence on the screen embedded in her sleeve. Readings flashed on it, too fast for her to read, before she realised there wasn’t much point in trying as it was entirely foreign.
His grip was firm and unyielding, yet secure. His palm cupped her forearm, his fingers so long they could easily overlap around her limb. His body was all powerful muscle, honed to sculpted perfection, and yet he held her with such care.
She came to no more than his shoulder, but his size didn’t intimidate her. Instead, she felt protected. He’d made it abundantly clear he didn’t want her here, but she had no doubts that he would ensure her safety at all costs. He was intense on all levels.
Instead of frightening her, she was intrigued.
After being in the minds of so many people, she’d seen a vast range of self-absorption, but Alastor was so different. He hurt, but he didn’t want to. He suffered, but he didn’t feel sorry for himself. Something had torn his heart in two, but his concern wasn’t for himself. And she was so affected by him, she couldn’t turn it off like she’d always managed to do.
Black Feather. Protect me.
Alastor’s aura continued to curl around her, so she tried her best to think of something else. Like the suit. She could concentrate on the suit. The technologically advanced piece of equipment she wore. “Everything okay there?”
He frowned. “You are a little dehydrated. Please drink.”
He was also very bossy, but she obediently shrugged off her pack and retrieved the bottle of water. “What about you?”
“I am comfortable.” He hitched his pack on his shoulders.
“How far do we have to walk?” She peered at the endless sand. It was quite beautiful, the fine grains reflecting the sunshine with glimmering sparkles. However, hiking had never been her strong point.
Alastor checked the holographic reading from the Seeker. “It is still quite a distance. I hope before nightfall we can make it to some cover I spotted. We can make camp and I will set up our reconnaissance from that location.”
“Why did we land so far away from the pyramid?”
“It is near enough to gather data and far enough away to keep you safe.” He strode out onto the sand. She gathered that was all he was going to say on the matter.
The sun beat down on her back, warm now that she didn’t have the shady cover of the trees, as frustration rolled from him. “I don’t expect any special treatment from you.”
He glanced down at her, frowning. “Your very presence here means special treatment.”
This wasn’t an argument she was going to win. Dark colours swirled through his aura. The colours of anger and frustration. She turned her focus inward. “Black Feather, why does he hurt so badly?” She was getting unnerved at Black Feather’s silence.
She reached out her senses, searching on her peripheral, seeking her guide and master. An energy so scared, lost and frightened slammed into her so quickly her knees gave way and she slumped onto the soft sand. A tsunami of emotion howled through her, raking through her head and her heart.
“Marie!” Sand sprayed as Alastor came to his knees. “What is it? Are you hurt?”
She peered at him through watery eyes. “It’s…” She cringed. The emotions crashed through her consciousness again, screaming with its agony.
Large hands surrounded her arm. “Marie, tell me what it is!”
She planted her hands over his. “It’s not me. It’s…” She couldn’t explain. Whatever it was swarmed her mind, making thinking almost impossible.
“Tell me!”
His order cut through the blinding desperation, and her mind cleared a little. She mentally followed his voice, blinking back into the colours of the sky and sand. “It’s not me. We… we have to go that way.” She pointed in a direction that seemed to be the concentration of energy.
“There’s nothing there but sand,” Alastor said.
Desperation leached into her. “Please. I’ve never felt anything so strong. It’s not going to let me go!”
She had come across persistent entities before, usually very dark souls that latched onto the light of the living in an attempt to feel again, but this was different. There was an urgency about it that left her breathless. “Please, Alastor. If you can’t go with me, then… I just have to do this.”
The energy crashed through her, howling with despair. Her fingers clenched on his clothing. She winced, her vision flickering with pain.
He uttered a low sound, before scooping an arm beneath her knees and around her shoulders. She squeaked as he picked her up as though she weighed nothing. “I can walk.”
Even as she said it, she knew it might not be true. Her head felt as though it was splitting in two and tears streamed from her bleary eyes. His arms banded around her, supportive and strong. “It will be quicker. I can walk faster than you, little human.”
This close to him, his scent surrounded her, and the tormented presence eased away. She sighed as the vice-like grip over her temples lightened, replaced with earthy spice, unmitigated resolve, and something undeniably masculine. Her heart fluttered, and for the first time in a long, long, time, she reacted on an entirely visceral level. Losing herself to the pain-filled energy had stripped her bare of the protection she wore about her like a concrete wall. She was helpless but to feel the intense vitality that washed from him.
His heart thumped in his chest, a strong, steady, soothing beat. His mesmerising golden skin shone with a layer of perspiration that made it shimmer like gold dust. So beautiful. Entranced, she traced her thumb up the thick column of his neck, his skin sliding like silk beneath her touch. Moisture gathered along the seam made by her thumb against his skin and a drop pooled before sliding over the outside of her hand.
Alastor: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (A Hexonian Alien Romance Book 3) Page 3
