by Christi Snow
“Stay here and keep the bed warm,” he instructed. “It’s probably nothing.”
She just shook her head at him, got dressed quickly, and followed him with her own sword drawn. If something waited out there, she didn’t plan to let him face it alone.
He frowned, but finally gave a nod of acquiescence. As she drew alongside him at the door, he pulled her flush up against him and nibbled along her jaw to her earlobe. He whispered, “I’m letting you come with me because I know you’re too damn stubborn to stay here, but stay behind me, okay? That way I can focus on what’s out there.”
A panicked whinny from one of the horses sounded out over the empty hotel lobby, silencing Lori’s protest. Something was definitely out there. Lori’s nerves sizzled with anticipation, adrenaline, and a healthy dose of fear. If they ran into Predators, there’s no way the two of them could fight off a whole horde.
Marcus tucked Lori behind him and crept out of the room. The fire put off a low glow in the lobby. The horses pranced nervously, the whites of their eyes showing. Something had them terrified. A quick glance around the room showed everything as they’d left it when they went to bed just a couple of hours prior.
They continued to make their way around the perimeter of the room when an eerie scratching sounded at the door. Under her hand, all the muscles of Marcus’s back tensed at the sound and he raised his sword higher.
As they approached, the scratching continued. The knob rattled, but they had locked the door behind them. Lori peered at the windows. Miraculously, all the panes were still intact, but if the creature really wanted in, it could simply break the glass.
Marcus stopped by the door, examining the hinges, making sure it would hold up. From what Lori could see, it seemed very strong, but that didn’t stop the frisson of dread that pooled in her stomach with the continued scraping sounds.
He glanced around the lobby before drawing her over to stand behind the reception desk by the horses and whispered, “Stay here while I check the windows. Maybe I’ll be able to see something. I think if it were a person, they would knock. It’s either a Predator or an animal. Either way, I think we’re fairly secure in here, but I need to check if I can see anything to be sure.”
She gave a sharp nod, but her nerves jangled. She grabbed his arm. “Be careful,” she whispered urgently, and pulled him down for a quick kiss.
As he checked from window to window, Lori couldn’t help but admire Marcus’s natural athletic grace. The man moved sinuously like a cat. But the grimace on his face didn’t bode well as he came back to her.
He drew her back to the far side of the room. “There’s a Predator on the porch. It can probably smell the fire and is curious, hungry, or cold. Probably all three.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
Marcus shook his head. “Nothing and hope it’s gone by morning. I don’t think it can get in unless it comes through a window and we’ll hear that. I need to go check that the back door is completely secure. Stay here and make sure the horses stay safe while I do that.”
“Okay.” The three horses seemed to have calmed a bit, although Jasper’s ears continued to twitch in agitation. She peered through the gloom to the windows, really wanting to peek out. Edging closer to the window, she couldn’t see anything. The panes were covered in grime.
“What are you doing?”
“Ack!” She jumped and swiveled around to meet Marcus’s mischief-filled gaze. “Crap, you scared me.”
Amusement flickered in his eyes and he lifted an eyebrow. “What exactly are you doing?”
She shrugged, feeling foolish. “I just wanted to look. I haven’t gotten to really see one up close, yet.”
“You mean a Predator?” His jaw tightened.
She nodded.
He drew in a deep breath. “The windows are too grimy, so you can’t actually see much, just its back and fur. They’re dangerous creatures, Lori. You need to stay away from them.” Something more flickered in his eyes, some unspoken grief, something he didn’t want to tell her. She tilted her head in question.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
His expression clouded for a moment before he shuttered it completely and turned his back on her. “Nothing that matters anymore.” Pain laced his voice even as he tried to control it.
“Come on.” He turned toward her and extended a hand to her. “The back door is secure. I don’t think it will be able to get in. Let’s get some more sleep while we can. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
There were moments when she felt so connected to this man, but then times like this when she realized she really didn’t know anything about him. He obviously didn’t trust her enough to share the details with her. That hurt and made her question herself. Why did she trust him with her and her friends’ lives? She learned long ago that the only person she could count on was herself.
She followed him to the bedroom where they both got into bed, but stayed on their own sides, although Lori didn’t think either one of them got much more sleep.
They didn’t hear anything more from the Predator the rest of the night.
* * *
The next morning, they were up just as the sky began to lighten. It still snowed outside, but the flakes had tapered off. A foot of snow covered the ground and the Predator still slept on the doorstep.
Marcus and Lori hadn’t said much this morning and she watched him as he peered out the windows with pursed lips. Finally, he made a decision and turned to her.
“I’m going to go out the back door and fly above to see what’s going on with it. It’s not moving this morning, but I can’t tell anything through the windows. If it’s just asleep, I don’t want to wake it up by opening the door and send it into an attack.”
“Can you fly in the snow?”
“Yes, this isn’t the big wet flakes like we had last night. This should be fine. Don’t worry. I’ll stay far away from its claws.”
Apprehension knotted her stomach. “Okay. I’ll watch through the windows so I can help in case something goes wrong.”
He gave a sharp nod and then a quick kiss. “I’ll be right back.”
Lori peered worriedly through the windows, frustrated at the dirt on them which made it difficult to see. Marcus landed, his eyes wide as he approached the Predator. What if that thing attacked him? Lori gripped her sword tighter, ready to dive out the door and help him. She could see the tops of Marcus’s wings as he crouched down in front of the Predator. Something must be wrong with it or he would never get that close.
After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a couple of minutes, Marcus knocked on the door. Lori jumped at the sound and then quickly unlocked and opened it for him. His face appeared grim.
“It’s dead. I think it froze to death in the night,” he said.
“Oh no, really?” Lori’s heart sank with guilt. They should have let it in. It was a living creature, at least it had been. They were cozy and warm while it suffered and died outside in the cold. That wasn’t right.
Marcus gave a somber nod. “They aren’t used to these temperatures either, no matter that they have fur coats. The bigger mystery, though, is why is it still here? Since the Veil fell, all the dead…human and Predator…have disappeared within minutes, or at the most, an hour or so within dying. I think it’s been dead longer than that.”
“Can I look at it?”
He nodded and she stepped around him so that she could see the huge creature. His eyes were still open, frozen in death, and had turned a milky white color. He had dark brown, shaggy fur covering most of his body, matted with snow and ice. It sat, leaning up against the front of the hotel, the palms of one of its hands resting in his lap. While extremely dirty, the palms looked human, free of the shaggy fur that covered the back of its hands. Were these creatures once human? Another species of human maybe?
She considered its fur-covered groin. It looked like maybe it had a penis, but it was hard to tell for sure with the
way it sat on the porch. “Is it a male?”
“Yes, it looks like it. We’re going to take it back to Malcolm and he can tell us for sure.”
“Wait. Are you saying that not only did that thing die because of us, but now you want to take it back so Malcolm can experiment on it?” Bile surged in the back of Lori’s throat. That couldn’t be what he proposed here, right? Marcus wasn’t that kind of guy. He wasn’t just like the men that had experimented on her because she seemed different. He couldn’t be.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. We have no idea what these things are, how they survive. We have so many questions about them. Malcolm may be able to figure out some things, mainly how to defeat them. Because let me assure you, if they make it a habit of coming out during the day from here on out, they will wipe us out. We can’t compete with their size and they are just what we call them…Predators, and all that entails. They need to be eliminated.” His face had hardened. She couldn’t see anything of the compassionate, caring man she thought she knew.
She looked at him in horror. Experimentation on the poor dead creature was just one small step from caging and testing the live ones.
“What if he was alive? Would you still capture and experiment on him then?”
“Absolutely,” he said as he began to wrap the creature into a blanket to transport it. “If I could capture a live one—that would put us one step closer to figuring out how to eliminate them.”
How could she have been so wrong? Her stomach churned along with the disbelief in her mind. She dove for the side of the hotel, retching into the bushes there.
As she continued to heave, he reached for her and ran a hand up her spine which she tried to bat away, but his touch just brought on another bout of nausea.
She had sex with this man, invited him into her body. Oh God, she was absolutely the worst judge of character. Another wave of nausea hit her. When she could finally catch her breath, she hissed at him, “Don’t touch me.” She wrapped her arms protectively around her waist, tears filling her eyes. “Never, ever touch me again, you bastard.”
Part Three
Rebellion
It took the rest of the day and very slow, hard traveling through the deep snow, but finally Lori could see Springlake. She slumped in the saddle when she finally spotted those twinkling lights from the tree houses. It hadn’t snowed as much here, but a light dusting of white covering everything. It would have felt magical if Lori didn’t feel quite so dead inside.
How could she be so incredibly bad at judging men? His bringing the Predator home to study felt like a betrayal of the worst kind. Things had been strained all day between her and Marcus as they traveled. He’d tried to engage her, but she just couldn’t. Every time she looked at the bulge of the covered Predator in the wagon, bile surged, but she refused to get sick. Not again. She wasn’t weak.
She clenched her jaw against the tears that threatened. They were almost there. Just another quarter of a mile and she could wallow in a bed and escape the reality of her world for just a few hours. Then she needed to talk to Bethany. She needed to act and try to rescue her friends and she needed to know if she could count on help from the WS.
As the farm compound came into sight, Lori surreptitiously glanced at Marcus. He held himself rigid, his jaw clenched, his shoulders stiff, no longer moving gracefully with the gentle gait of the horse.
The gates opened and both Malcolm and Brooklyn came out to take charge of the dead Predator. Lori knew they’d be there since she’d heard the mental conversation between the two brothers.
She could steel her heart against Marcus, but her mind would be a bit more difficult to control. They’d gotten too close over the last few weeks and that made it too easy to slip into each other’s minds. In fact, she’d had to build walls up in her head all day to keep him out as he kept pushing at her to communicate with him. That’s probably why he was currently so angry.
As Marcus halted his horse to deal with the Predator, Lori rode to the barn. She gave a sharp wave to Brooklyn and Malcolm as she passed them. Exhaustion, both physical and mental, pulled at her and she just couldn’t deal with any more pleasantries today. Drake met her at the barn and she slid bonelessly off the saddle.
As she began to groom her horse, Drake pushed her aside. “I’ll take care of Isabelle. Go home and get warm,” he told her.
“Thanks, Drake.” She gave him a weary smile and headed out of the barn. Home. What a joke. She didn’t have a home. The option to stay with Marcus was no longer a good one. Tonight, she had no other choice because it was too late to make other plans. But tomorrow, she hoped Bethany could give her another option.
She planned to rescue her friends this week, with or without the help from the inhabitants of the WS. But it would definitely help if they had a place to stay when they crossed back over the Veil. She needed to touch base with Bethany to see how much the WS was willing to help. This was the only place they had to go, to escape. All of them would need a place to stay and probably medical care. The five of them were a close group, but William’s needs more than likely surpassed what they could handle, no matter how much control Savannah had over him.
She also needed to flex her mental muscles and test just how much stress on her power she could take. If she couldn’t get the group of them back through the Veil and to the WS safely, then she’d be sentencing them all to death.
Trudging through the snow and mud toward Marcus’s house, she tried not to let the uncertainty of it all get her down. She needed to think positively that she would get them out of captivity. If she went into the ES with this attitude, she would end up dead, quick.
Finally, she arrived at Marcus’s home and activated the pulley system to lower the stairs. Thank goodness they were finished so she wouldn’t have to wait for transport from Marcus to get to the top.
“Lori…”
Ignoring the pleading sound of Marcus’s voice in her head, she slowly peeled off her clothes and settled under the weight of the blankets on the bed, shivering miserably. If asked, she would have said it stemmed from the cold, but she really just missed his arms around her. How had she become so reliant on him in such a short amount of time?
* * *
Marcus sighed as the three of them wrestled the heavy Predator into Malcolm’s lab within the farm complex.
“What happened?” asked Brooklyn.
He dispassionately looked down at the beast that had ruined everything. “We think it died of hypothermia.”
“No,” she said softly. “I meant what happened between you and Lori?”
His vision blurred as he breathed in deep gulps. Oh Goddess, the pain in her face after he said they would bring the Predator with them. He hadn’t considered how that might affect her and now she was so hurt and angry she wouldn’t even talk to him about it.
“Marcus?” Brooklyn prodded. Malcolm glanced at him with concern, before turning back to examine the Predator.
“She didn’t understand.” His voice had deepened with unshed grief. He waved his hand toward the creature. “She doesn’t understand what these things are. And that they don’t deserve any measure of mercy. How dangerous they are.” He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. “She’s spent the last six years being experimented on in a lab and she sees us treating it the same way. Of course, she wouldn’t understand.” He punched a wall in frustration, not even feeling the pain that brought. “She won’t even talk to me, Brooklyn. She’s completely shut me out.”
“Not completely,” Malcolm said.
“What do you mean?” Marcus asked. What the hell could Malcolm know that he didn’t? Marcus was the one who’d spent the last few weeks with her constantly.
“Like I can with you, I can sense her emotions. I can also tell when she’s checking you. She does it when you’re distracted so you don’t realize, but she’s constantly checking in with where you’re at emotionally. I’m not even sure how aware she is that she’s doing it.” His brother watched
him for a moment. “There’s something different between you two. Your connection is different. I’ve never seen anything like it. When you sleep, it’s like you’re a single person. You become so entwined mentally that I honestly can’t tell from your mental threads where one of you begins and the other ends.”
A jolt surged through Marcus. This tiniest bit of information gave him a glimmer of hope. He didn’t want to believe what they had could be over so easily.
“Marcus, have you told her what happened to Audra?” Brooklyn gently asked.
He shook his head. What he had with Lori existed so different from what he’d experienced with Audra. He hadn’t wanted Lori to feel threatened by that memory, when it didn’t even compare. It didn’t matter that he and Audra had been together for five years and he’d only known Lori for a few weeks. This thing between them felt so much stronger than what he had in the past.
“I didn’t think it mattered.”
“It matters, Marcus,” Brooklyn insisted. “It matters just in the fact that you saw what one of these did to Audra the day she died. You need to tell Lori.”
“Okay, tomorrow.” For tonight, he was exhausted and heartsore. He didn’t want to think anymore.
When Marcus got back to the tree house thirty minutes later, he had to check on Lori. He couldn’t just pretend like she wasn’t there. Quietly, he stepped into her room. She lay on her side, her fine, multi-colored hair in disarray over the pillow. Shadows of stress and exhaustion darkened under her eyes. He liked to think her life had gotten better here, but looking at her now, she looked as worn out as she had when he’d found her at the edge of the bridge. Her body trembled in sleep and he needed to give her comfort. Just for one more night.
Leaving his jeans on, he lowered behind her in the bed and pulled her into his arms. She turned to him in her sleep and he wrapped his wings around her to shelter her as she relaxed into him.
Peace fell over him, even though they were far from fixed. Home, she was his home. His soul settled when they were together. They had to work this out.
