Shadows (lux)

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  But once he got back to his house and took care of that, all he was going to do was just chill. Like everyone else in this damn world did.

  …

  God, Dawson had never felt this way before. Every part of his body burned as he tasted her kiss and familiarized himself with the way she felt beneath him. Intense white light seared his eyes. The breathy, little feminine sounds she was making were music to his ears, a beautiful melody of sighs.

  And then his song stopped.

  Beth’s hand jerked off his shoulder, and she gasped against his mouth. “Oh my God…”

  He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Oh, hell… All he saw was white glow that bathed Beth’s face, reflected off the walls, covered the entire bed…

  Oh, holy shit.

  Dawson sprang off the bed, but his feet never touched the floor beside it. He hovered, staring down at himself. He was glowing.

  Like in full motherfreaking alien mode up in her house, in her bedroom.

  Bethany skittered across the bed and pressed against the headboard. Her eyes were wide as she stared at him, her mouth working but no words coming out.

  Shock suspended time. Everything seemed surreal to him. He wasn’t in Bethany’s bedroom. He hadn’t exposed what he truly was. And this girl — this beautiful human he was falling for wasn’t staring at him like he was king freak.

  Grasping the edge of her comforter, she shook her head back and forth. Like she was having trouble processing what she was seeing, which was understandable.

  Dawson was glowing like a star.

  His heart was racing so fast he could feel it in his fingertips. Partly due to the whole kissing thing and partly because he was still in his true form. And she was glowing faintly, like someone had dipped a paintbrush into white paint and shaded her edges. Of course, Bethany couldn’t see it. No human could. The trace surrounding her was a reaction of the high EMF surrounding him when he was in his real skin.

  Crap — she was glowing.

  Bethany blinked slowly, her fingers easing off the blanket. “Dawson?”

  Do something, he ordered himself. But his control had slipped, and he couldn’t pull it back. Light radiated from him, filling every inch of the room.

  She rose to her knees little by little. He was certain he could see her heart pounding through her sweater, could smell her fear. She was seconds from bolting from the room, screaming. Bethany inched across the bed, making her way toward him.

  Dawson drifted back, wanting to say something, but in his true form, he didn’t speak like a human. Luxen used…different paths.

  At the edge of the bed, she peered up at him. In her brown eyes, he could see his reflection, and he hated what he saw.

  “Dawson,” she whispered, clasping her hands under her chin. “Is that you?”

  Yes, he said. But she couldn’t hear him.

  When the silence stretched, became unbearable, she swung her legs off the bed and stood. Instead of running for the door like any sane person would, she reached out, bringing her fingers within inches of touching his light.

  Dawson jerked back.

  Bethany yanked her hand to her chest. “What…what are you?”

  God, wasn’t that a loaded question? The whole telling part seemed a moot point now, but how could he explain what happened? Hey, honey, I’m an alien and apparently I just doused you with some radioactive loving! Wanna catch a movie? Yeah, not cool.

  So many things were rushing through his thoughts. He’d exposed his kind — his family, putting them in danger, risking Beth. There was no stopping her if she decided to scream alien or giant light bug.

  But he needed to rein it in. Her parents were downstairs, and he had a feeling the longer he stayed in this form, the stronger her trace would be.

  Moving to the far side of the room, away from Beth, he willed his out-of-control emotions to stabilize. It was hard as hell, but eventually he managed to take his human form, and the room was cast in shadows again.

  Everything except Beth — there was a soft halo around her.

  “I’m sorry,” he croaked.

  Bethany’s legs seemed to collapse beneath her. She plopped down on the bed, shaking her head again. “What are you?”

  Leaning against the wall, he closed his eyes. There was no point in lying now or keeping secrets. The damage was done. All he could hope was that he could convince her not to go public with this.

  “I’m an alien.” The words sounded thick and foreign to his ears, and he barked a laugh. “I’m a Luxen.”

  She pulled up her knees, tucking them against her chest. “An alien? Like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?” She laughed then, and it carried a sort of hysterical edge to it. When the sound trickled off, her head snapped toward him. “That’s why you like that dumb movie Cocoon so much. This…this isn’t real. It can’t be. Oh my God, I’m crazy… Schizophrenia.”

  Dawson swallowed. “You’re not crazy, Bethany. I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to know, and I don’t even know how…how this happened.”

  “What? You don’t normally light up when you kiss girls? Because that could get real awkward, right?” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Oh, God, I don’t know…alien?”

  Hearing the confusion in her voice tore through him, and he wanted to somehow make it better, but how? At least he didn’t sense any fear in her anymore. Amazing.

  He took a tentative step forward, and when she didn’t move, he was reassured. “Maybe it will help if I start over?”

  She nodded slowly.

  Taking a deep breath, he sat before her and tilted his head back, meeting her eyes. What he was about to do was unheard of. The rules he was about to break were astronomical. An image of his brother and sister formed in his head, and his chest squeezed. He knew if this went badly, it went badly for them, too.

  And it would also go badly for Bethany.

  Chapter 11

  All Bethany could do was stare at Dawson. That was pretty much all she was capable of. Alien? The logical part of her brain kept spewing things like, This is just a hallucination or a dream. Or, This is the onset of a mental disease. Maybe Dawson never existed, but then again, that didn’t make sense. Pretty sure she’d seen other people interacting with him. Unless her hallucinations were on such an epic level she believed she’d seen people—

  “Bethany.” His quiet voice intruded.

  Her heart turned over heavily. “This is real, right?”

  His face contorted as if he were in pain. “Yes, it’s real.”

  Crazy people probably did things like this all the time. Asked their imaginary alien friends if they were real, and of course, they’d say yes.

  She placed her hands against her cheeks and then ran them through her tangled hair. Did crazy people also make out with their hallucinations? Because that was probably the only upside to all of this.

  Dawson placed his hand on her knee. “I can’t even begin to understand what you’re going through. I really can’t, but I promise you that this is real and you’re not crazy.” He squeezed her leg. “And I’m so sorry for making you feel this way and for you finding out like this.”

  “Don’t apologize.” Her voice sounded hoarse. “It’s just…a lot to comprehend. I mean, I never really thought about aliens. Like, okay, maybe they do exist somewhere out there, but…yeah, I don’t know if I really did believe. And you can’t be an alien.”

  She laughed again and then winced. It sounded like a whole lot of crazy. “I just saw you…glow, but it was more than just glowing. You were light, right? A human form of light — arms and legs made out of light.”

  Dawson nodded. “We’re called Luxen. In our true forms we are nothing more than light, but…it’s not like you think. You can touch us — we have form and shape.”

  “Form and shape,” she mumbled.

  “Yes.” He lowered his lashes, and in that instant, he seemed terribly young and vulnerable. “We’re from a planet called Lux. Well, it was once called that. I
t doesn’t exist anymore. Destroyed. But that’s neither here nor there. We’ve been here for hundreds, if not thousands of years, on and off.”

  Her stomach did a twisty motion. “You’re…that old?”

  “No. No!” Dawson laughed, lifting his eyes. “I’m sixteen. We — my family — came here when we were children, very young, and we age the same way you do.”

  “On a spaceship?” She almost laughed again, but managed to keep it down. A spaceship — a freaking spaceship. Dear God, that was a word she thought she’d never utter. This was…wow.

  Dawson shifted, clasping his hands in his lap. “We don’t have spaceships. We travel in our true form. Uh, we travel as light. And in that form, we don’t breathe like you would. So different atmospheres, yeah…” He shrugged. “When we got here, we…picked our human forms, melding our DNA in a way, but we can look like anyone.”

  Bethany sat straighter. This had just gone from bizarro land into Twilight Zone territory. “You can look like anyone?”

  He nodded. “We don’t do it a lot; only when we need to.”

  Trying to wrap her brain around this, she tugged on her hair with both hands. “Okay, so what you look like now, that’s not real?”

  “No, this”—he tapped his chest—“this is real. Like I said, our DNA adapts quickly to our environment. And we are always born in threes—”

  “Andrew and his siblings — they are Luxen, too?” When he nodded, she was almost relieved. “Andrew did melt the ping-pong ball!”

  “Yeah, see, we control things related to light, which is heat and at times fire.” He still hadn’t looked at her, not directly. “I don’t know why he did that. The general population can’t know about us. So, it’s important that we don’t do anything stupid. And that was stupid. Hell, what I just did was colossally stupid.”

  She watched him. Now that the shock was ebbing away, her mind was starting to put things together. At least now she knew how such a small town could have six insanely gorgeous people. Go figure they weren’t human in nature. Then it struck her — the whole episode in the icy parking lot. “What else can you do?”

  His features pinched. “I really shouldn’t—”

  “But I already know, right?” She slid off the bed, sitting in front of him so her knees pressed into his. He jerked as if surprised by the contact but didn’t move. “What harm can it cause now?”

  His brows shot up. “It can cause a lot of problems.”

  Dread inched up her spine, sending shivers over her shoulders. “Like what?”

  He opened his mouth but shook his head. “It’s nothing. Uh, you want to know what else we can do? We can move fast. That’s how I caught you in the parking lot. We can also harness energy — our light. It’s pretty strong. A human wouldn’t survive a hit from us.”

  Her eyes widened. That wasn’t good news, but she couldn’t picture Dawson hurting anyone. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t afraid. Or she was just naive. “What else?”

  “That basically covers that side of things.”

  She knew there was more to it, and she wanted to push the topic, but there were just so many more questions. “How many are here?”

  “A lot,” he said, watching his hands. “Most of our kind live in colonies. The government is aware of us — the Department of Defense, that is. They monitor us.”

  Okay, now she was getting visions of Men in Black. Sitting back, she let it sink in. A whole other world had just opened up in front of her. One she suspected not a lot of people were aware of, even if the government had something to do with it. Crazy as it sounded, she felt…privileged somehow.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’m just soaking this up.” She paused. “Why Earth?”

  Dawson’s smile was faint. “Our kind has been coming here since humans walked the Earth, or maybe longer than that. In a way, it’s familiar to us, I guess.”

  “And your parents—”

  “My parents are dead,” he said in a monotone. “So are the Thompsons’ parents.”

  Her chest squeezed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She wanted to reach out, comfort him, but right now, he acted as if he was afraid of her, which was odd, all things considered. “I really am sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” His chest rose unevenly. “They died when we were babies.”

  “How…how do you get by without parents, though? Wouldn’t people suspect something?”

  “That’s when the changing shape is handy. One of us pretends to be the parent,” he explained. “And the DOD keeps a roof over our heads and stuff.”

  Fascinated, she started spouting off more and more questions. Hours went by as she practically interrogated him in-between her mom checking in on them. What about the colony? He wouldn’t talk about it, so she moved on. Did any other humans around here know? The answer was no. How involved was the DOD? From what she could gather from Dawson, heavily involved. They monitored every aspect of the Luxen’s lives, from where they chose to live, what colleges they went to, down to when they applied for a driver’s license. Another fun fact was they didn’t get sick. No flu. No common colds. No cancers or nerve diseases. There was no need for a doctor. If they were injured in their human form, they only needed to resort back to their true form to heal “most” injuries.

  “Let me get this right,” Bethany said, leaning toward him. “You can’t be hurt, then? Not really?”

  Dawson shook his head. “We can be hurt. The Arum are our greatest enemies.”

  “The who?”

  He rubbed the heel of his hand against his temple. “They are like us, sort of. Instead of three born at the same time, there are four. They are from our sister planet. And they are mostly comprised of shadows, but their DNA adapted like ours. They look human most of the time.”

  “And they’re dangerous?”

  “They hunted us into near extinction, destroyed our planet. They followed us here.”

  Her throat felt dry. “Why do they hunt you?”

  “For our abilities,” he explained. “Without them, they are weak. The more Luxen they kill, the more abilities they absorb.”

  “That…that is messed up.”

  He looked up then, meeting her eyes. “They are only one of the reasons why we have to be careful around humans.”

  Knots formed in her stomach. She thought of the light — the intensity and heat. “Can you harm people in your true form?”

  “No — I mean, we distort electromagnetic fields when we use our abilities. That increases them. Too much of it can make a human sick or nauseated and nervous, but nothing permanent. And sometimes we vibrate…or hum.”

  “I’ve felt that before.” She smiled a little, remembering the way his hand had thrummed beneath hers.

  Dawson’s eyes glittered. “But whenever we use our abilities or go into our true form, we leave a trace behind on the human. Like right now, you have a faint glow around you.”

  “A trace?”

  “Yes,” he said. “We stay here and in places like Petersburg, because there is a large concentration of beta quartz in the rocks. It disrupts the fields around us, blocking our detection from the Arum, but it doesn’t block traces.”

  Her breath caught, somehow knowing where this was leading. “So, these Arum can see the trace around me and…and find you through that trace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, God.” She placed a hand over her heart.

  “Your trace is very faint. I don’t think it will be any problem.” Relief flooded her, and he seemed to try to smile. “I feel stupid for even saying this, but you can’t tell anyone about this, Bethany. No one must know.”

  She laughed then, knowing she surprised him. “Dawson, no one would believe me.”

  “It doesn’t stop people, though. There have been some who have discovered the truth. Who have seen a Luxen in his or her true form and tried to tell other people.” His eyes were doing that shiny thing again, like there was a white light behind the pupils. She guess
ed there was. “Those people disappeared.”

  Ice covered the knots in her stomach. “What do you mean?”

  “The DOD takes care of them. How? I don’t know. But their main job is to cloak us in secrecy and make sure no one threatens that objective.”

  Kind of scary to think of that, but she also understood why. Humans would freak if they knew aliens were running around. Aliens who could change identities, move as fast as light, and harness whatever energy.

  And on the flip side, a human holding that kind of knowledge wielded a lot of power, didn’t she? Money would probably be involved, if one went public with details.

  Bethany shook her head. It wouldn’t be right, though, for several reasons. “I won’t say anything, Dawson. I know promising I won’t doesn’t mean much, but…I really don’t want to disappear, and I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  He exhaled loudly. “I do believe you. Thank you.”

  Heartbeats passed in silence as she studied his downturned face. God, he was beautiful. His features perfectly pieced together. Should’ve known some kind of foreign DNA was somehow involved. Then she remembered their first phone call and how he’d said he was from far away. Funny thing was he hadn’t lied to her then.

  Bethany really didn’t know what to say or think. Obviously she wasn’t crazy. Dawson was…an alien, but she had a hard time seeing it. Not that she didn’t accept what he was, but as she stared at him, all she saw was Dawson.

  Dawson who spoke to her the first day here, who followed her out into the hallway, and who skipped class to spend lunch with her. Dawson who devoted hours on the phone with her, talking until they both fell asleep like goobers.

  All she really saw was Dawson — a boy she was falling for.

  He’d stayed still while she’d been staring at him, but he looked away now, a muscle flexing in his jaw.

  Bethany rose to her knees suddenly. “Can I touch you? When you’re in your…true form?”