This sounded very sensible, and I nodded. “You’re right. And don’t give me that look, Jeff. I don’t think it’s safe at the condo for you. It’s the farthest west of all our houses, and closest to, well…you know.”
The scowl disappeared from Jeff’s face as he appeared to chew on that piece of data for a few seconds, and he almost looked afraid. It was pretty obvious to me that he hadn’t thought about the downsides to crashing at Lance’s condo.
“Okay,” I went on, “I’m not saying we all have to turn into hermits or anything — in fact, it’s probably safer to be in public places as much as possible. Shopping, the movies, whatever. But Kara, I won’t be able to go back to the store until this is all over.”
She gave me a look of outright consternation. “But — ”
“I can’t babysit the UFO Depot and train to confront the aliens at the same time. No way in hell. And I think the survival of the human race is just a little bit more important than your receipts.”
As I said it, I almost wished I could take the words back, because the anger in her face melted away, to be replaced by something dangerously close to embarrassment. It really wasn’t her fault; she’d lived and breathed the UFO Depot for the past six years, and stressing about keeping the business going had to be a constant background noise in her head.
“You’re right,” she said. “We have more important things to focus on.”
I could tell the rest of the group was a little uncomfortable at watching this exchange, and I didn’t really blame them. But at least now we’d gotten that out of the way. I had a feeling the “closed for family emergency” sign was going to have a repeat engagement on the front door of the shop real soon.
“All right,” I went on, trying to sound as brisk and matter-of-fact as possible. It felt weird for me to be the one addressing the whole group, being the person in charge, but that’s what appeared to have fallen to me on this particular go-‘round. “Michael, can you go with Jeff to pick up his stuff at the condo and bring it back here?”
He nodded.
“Kara, Lance, just hang tight as best you can. You need to be watching out for Grace. Some goes for you guys,” I added, looking over at Paul and Persephone.
He leaned forward a little in his rickety folding chair. “It’s okay if we have people over, though?”
It seemed like an odd question to me. Paul and Persephone weren’t exactly the partying type. “Um…you planning on throwing a wild bash or something?”
At my question Paul looked almost embarrassed, but Persephone spoke up then, pride clear in her tone. “Some scouts from the Discovery Channel are coming into town tomorrow to talk to Paul. They’re interested in having him host a show about the paranormal.”
All at once the room got very noisy as everyone started offering their congratulations. Paul waved them off and said, “It’s very preliminary. I really didn’t want to say anything until things were a little further along in the process. And a TV show definitely takes a back seat to what’s going on here.”
Despite everything, I couldn’t help being excited about the possibility of knowing a real-life celebrity. Okay, Paul was certainly well-known in UFO circles and had a lot of dedicated fans, but that still wasn’t the same thing as having your own television show.
“That’s awesome, Paul,” I told him. “I don’t think you need to cancel your appointment or anything. I mean, I’m pretty sure the aliens aren’t going to do anything if there are people hanging around your house with TV cameras and stuff. You know how publicity-shy they are.”
He nodded, and both he and Persephone couldn’t hide their relief. I couldn’t blame them. Talk about your once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
I’d just have to make sure they’d be around to enjoy their fame.
The gathering broke up soon after that. Kara and Lance insisted on walking me to the van, as if they thought the aliens were going to swoop down at any moment and beam me right up. I kind of doubted that would happen, but I wasn’t going to argue. Michael’s street was only lit by the lamps on the houses themselves, so it was pretty dark outside.
“This Agent Jones,” Lance said abruptly, just as I was turning my key in the van’s door lock. “Can you trust him?”
Trust him? I thought. I think I’m falling in love with him.
Since I knew that answer would only open the mother of all cans of worms, I settled for what I hoped was a nonchalant shrug. “I’ve got no reason not to. It’s pretty obvious he’s doing all he can to help me defeat the aliens.”
“‘Everything’?” Lance repeated. “Doesn’t sound like he’s doing much to get his own hands dirty.”
“Because it’s not his fight!” I retorted, then realized in my haste to defend Martin, I’d let something slip that I really shouldn’t have.
“Not his fight?” Kara asked, tugging the hood of Grace’s tiny sweatshirt farther down over her forehead as protection against the chilly night air. “He told me once he was on our side. So how can this not be his fight?”
“Well — ” I floundered for a second, then said, “I mean, he knows he doesn’t have the powers to take the aliens on. So the only real ‘fighting’ he can do is train me. That’s all I meant.”
Even on the dimly lit street I could see how dubious both Lance’s and Kara’s expressions were. Neither of them seemed too inclined to push it, though.
“Okay,” Kara said. “We need to get Grace inside. I guess we can talk about this later.”
“Sure,” I replied, thankful for Kara’s motherly hovering. At least this way I’d have enough time to come up with a better story, should she decide to push it the next time we talked. “Be safe. I’ll send you a text when I get home, just so you know I’m okay.”
“Great.” I could tell she was relieved by that small olive branch. “’Bye, Kiki.” And she gave me a quick hug, sort of squashing me against Grace, who made a tiny mewling sound of protest but didn’t cry, because she was just that good.
They headed back toward Lance’s Jeep then, and I got into the Night Tours van and wheeled it around so I was pointed in the right direction to get back to the highway. By then both Persephone’s and Jeff’s vehicles had disappeared from their parking spaces. Thank God Jeff was coming to stay with Michael. He’d probably bitch and moan about it, but at least he’d be safe.
For now, anyway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’d barely let myself in and locked the door behind me when I heard a knock. Although I wasn’t expecting him, I knew right away who it must be.
“Lurking again?” I asked as I let Martin in, then locked up once more.
He didn’t crack a smile. “We prefer to call it surveilling.”
“Whatever.” I did grin, just a little, but hid it by looking down to unbutton my coat and remove my scarf. And if I smiled more because I was glad to see him than because of his maybe-quip, well, who could blame me? Around him I didn’t feel as if I had to hide anything. “Just couldn’t stay away, huh?”
“No,” he answered, watching me steadily “Also, I felt it would be safer if I were here.”
I hesitated. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? For all the attraction I felt toward him, I didn’t know if I was quite ready to take that step.
“On the couch,” he added, and although he didn’t exactly smile, I could tell from a certain light in his eyes that he was amused by my assumption.
Oh, man. I hoped he couldn’t see me blushing; I’d only turned on the torchiere lamp in the corner, so the room wasn’t all that well lit. Hanging up my coat and scarf seemed a good way to cover my confusion, so I did that before turning back to him and saying, “Why don’t we just go back up to the cabin? I’m off the hook for sales duty at the UFO Depot, so my schedule just opened up.”
“That’s good. But I think it’ll be okay if we stay here tonight. Then in the morning we’ll head back into Oak Creek Canyon.”
“Sure, if that’s what you want to do.” Truthfully, it did seem a lot more appe
aling for me to catch a decent night’s sleep here, then pack up any necessities in the morning and head out to do…well, whatever we ended up doing. More mental gymnastics, sounded like.
I wasn’t about to let myself consider the other kind of gymnastics we might get up to, if we were sequestered together for any amount of time. Oh, sure, my brain was telling me I wasn’t ready, that I had about a million other things to do before I could even consider jumping in the sack with Martin…but my body told me something different every time I looked up into those eyes, the color of a sea I’d never seen.
If he caught anything of my mental turmoil, he didn’t show any sign of it. “How’d the meeting go?”
“Fine. Jeff’s going to bunk at Michael’s, just to be safe, and, as I said, I got Kara to release me from Depot duty so I could concentrate on more important things.”
“All good. I’m glad everyone is taking the situation seriously.”
“Well, they were all here for rounds one and two, so they already know the aliens aren’t messing around. I think the biggest problem is that they all wish they could be doing more.”
“They’ll do enough, when the time comes.” His eyes searched my face, and he moved closer to me. “What about you? Are you holding up all right?”
I closed the gap between us and pressed myself against him, felt his arms encircle me and hold me tightly. Just being there, hearing his heart beating and letting his warmth envelop and fill me, was enough to bring some energy back to my weary limbs. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how tired I really was, as if I’d spent all day hiking around the red rocks instead of mostly just sitting quietly and using my mind instead of my body.
“I’m okay,” I murmured. “Probably because so much of this doesn’t even feel real to me. Except you,” I added. “You feel very real.”
He bent and kissed me then, gently, the touch of his lips so tender it almost made me want to cry. I wasn’t used to being treated like this. Maybe it was because he was a man, not a boy like all the guys I’d dated previously, or maybe it was because his race was so much more advanced than mine…half of mine, anyway.
Or maybe it was simply because he was Martin, and nothing else really mattered.
At some point we sank down onto the couch, with me leaning into him and his hand stroking my hair as we lengthened the kiss into something I’d only imagined up until then. That hand moved from my hair to my neck, fingers brushing against my skin, sending shivers all through my body.
It was crazy. How could I feel this way, react this way, toward someone I’d only known for a few days? Okay, technically I’d met him back in August, but our interactions then had been extremely brief. His focus had been elsewhere.
Whereas now….
He finally lifted his mouth from mine and regarded me carefully. “You don’t feel that I’m pressuring you, do you?”
I chuckled. “Are you kidding me? I was having impure thoughts about you from the first time I laid eyes on you.”
“Really? You hid it well.”
“Mostly because I didn’t want to look like a total idiot.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
Another kiss then, and I wondered if we really were going to give the couch a workout. But Martin pulled away and said, “I really didn’t come over here for this.”
“You could have fooled me.”
He did smile then, and shook his head, before he moved away from me and stood up. “It’s getting late. I think the best thing for you is to get a good night’s sleep. We have much that needs to be accomplished tomorrow.”
I didn’t know if I really liked the sound of that, but I did know that playing kissy-face on my sofa, while infinitely enjoyable, was not going to do much to defeat the aliens. So I didn’t bother to argue, but said only, “You’re seriously going to sleep on my couch?”
“It’s not exactly sleeping. We don’t need sleep the way humans do. More like a meditation that refreshes, but still keeps me aware enough…just in case.”
Obviously I took after my mother when it came to the whole sleeping thing. Any time I had to roll out of bed before around seven-thirty, I got cranky. Whether having a not quite sleeping/sort of meditating Martin Jones on my couch was weirder than having him passed out and rolled up in some borrowed blankets, I didn’t quite know, but I decided to let it pass for now.
“Okay,” I replied, wondered if I should tell him about the bathroom facilities, and decided to let that go for now. I really didn’t want to know whether his physiology was that different. “Then I guess I’ll go ahead and get ready for bed, since you’re probably going to want an early start tomorrow.”
He nodded, and I went back to the bathroom and did my usual washing and brushing and flossing, and pulled my big flannel sleep shirt off its hook on the back of the door. If Martin thought he was going to catch a glimpse of me running around in a flimsy nightie, he was going to be very disappointed. Come August it would be a different story, but now I cared more about warmth than titillation.
Speaking of which —
I called out a goodnight to Martin, and he said, “Sleep well.” And that was it. I knew going back out to him would only lead to more snuggly-times, and even if I was wearing a “Little House on the Prairie”–style nightshirt, there still wouldn’t be any bra in the way if we started kissing…and that could set off a whole series of events I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with right now.
So I crawled into bed, noting that he’d switched off the torchiere in the living room and instead had turned on my little Moroccan-style light over the dining table. That light was even dimmer than the torchiere, and sent a soft reddish glow down the hallway toward my bedroom.
It could have been because I was so damn tired, or simply because the lighting created a womblike atmosphere conducive to slumber, but I fell asleep a lot faster than I thought I would. The blackness surrounded me, sucked me in, and I fell into it gratefully, glad for a chance to rest.
At first my sleep was so deep that I dreamed of nothing, thought of nothing. But then at the edges of my subconscious I seemed to feel a wrongness, a red-tinged glow at the edges of the blissful black all around me. Something in my brain tried to tell me to wake up, but I couldn’t seem to move or do anything except lie there as that blood-colored light flooded through my mind, somehow paralyzing me while at the same time making me painfully wakeful.
The voice was like acid dripping through my veins. You will not defeat us.
Somehow I knew who — what — that voice belonged to. The enemy. The alien leader.
It could have been because of the connection I’d created earlier that day, when I truly saw them for the first time with that mysterious mind’s eye that Martin had helped me to open. I didn’t know. And although some part of me was whimpering, “Oh, God, oh, God, let me wake up,” I knew it wouldn’t be that easy.
Somehow I managed to rally myself. You go on telling yourself that, buddy.
I don’t have to convince myself of something I already know. You are a child. You know nothing.
Apparently I could add “raging assholes” to the list of sterling qualities the aliens seemed to possess. I know enough. I know that you have no place in this world, and I’m going to make sure you get sent back to whatever hole you crawled out of.
I heard something that might have been the alien equivalent of a laugh, although it sounded more like the shriek of metal against metal. Shivers rushed up and down my spine at the horrible noise.
So sure of yourself, when you have nothing to be certain of. You cannot imagine what we have in store for you.
Oh, really? my sleep-self challenged him. Try me.
And then…it was as if unseen hands were moving over my body, touching me, in a way I wished I could say wasn’t sexual, but somehow, nauseatingly, was, clawed hands trailing over my flesh as if to show that they could possess me, take me, and I would be powerless to stop it. In my sleep I writhed against that touch, knowing some
how that he — it — wouldn’t let me escape, would hold me down, violate me in a way I’d never thought possible —
Moans of protest rose in my throat, a scream of negation. No — no — no — NO!
Hands were touching me then, human hands, warm and reassuring. “Kirsten! Kirsten!”
My eyelids flew open, and I looked up into Martin’s face. I managed to get out, “Oh, God!” before I buried my face in his shoulder and began to cry hysterically.
“What was it?” he asked, his tone far more urgent than someone merely inquiring about a possible nightmare. “What happened?”
At first all I could do was shake my head and continue to cry. After a minute or so, I recovered myself enough to whisper, “It was them.”
“In your sleep?” His tone was bleak, revealing little, although I somehow sensed he was more disturbed by this facet of the situation than anything else.
“Yes. I heard him. It. Whatever. At first it was just your usual Bond villain threats.” I gulped back my tears and began to cough. In silence Martin let go of me, went to the bathroom and filled the cup there with water, and brought it back to me. I took it from him and drank greedily, not even caring that the water tasted faintly of toothpaste. “But then — ” I broke off. It was too horrible. I didn’t want to tell Martin what the alien had done to me, even if none of it had been real.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and waited. Maybe he knew what was coming, or maybe he was just trying very hard not to push me.
I swallowed the rest of the water, then set the empty cup down on my bedside table. Reaching out, I took his hand in mine and clutched it, trying to reassure myself with the touch of his warm fingers. “He — it — was touching me. Touching me, Martin! It was vile.” His fingers tightened around mine as I whispered, “Why would he do that? They’re aliens. I mean, alien alien. Not like you.”
Grim-faced, Martin pulled me against him and held me close, his hand stroking my tangled hair. “You know that rape isn’t about sex. It’s about domination. He was trying to strike you where you were vulnerable.”
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