Obviously some life form, now dead, of course—which meant she’d been right to begin with. The thing was a coffin.
Shelving that theory until she had more to back it up, she focused on trying to fine tune the program so that the computer could separate the known elements of the sarcophagus itself from the unknown. Separating the surface layer scan from the deep scan, she programmed the computer to decipher the hieroglyphs, hoping against hope that the computer would eventually be able to tell her what the symbols represented.
She was so deep in thought when she reached the mess hall for the evening meal that the buzz of voices around her didn’t even penetrate her conscious mind until she felt the warmth of a hand on hers. Startled, she looked up to discover Melanie was giving her a worried look. “Earth to Anya!”
Anya blinked. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
Melanie smiled wryly, shaking her head. “Nothing of any importance I don’t guess. You’re a million miles away. Still mad at me about earlier?”
Anya did a brief mental search. “I wasn’t angry,” she said finally.
Melanie’s brows rose. “You could’ve fooled me. I guess it was my fault, though. The strange thing is, I don’t even know why I was short tempered.”
The reminder caught Anya’s attention. Glancing around the dining hall, she saw that the other crew members were talking companionably, as if the irritability they’d all felt earlier had simply vanished. “I was just as short tempered,” Anya said slowly. “In fact, everybody was behaving uncharacteristically temperamental. It’s almost … eerie.”
“What is?”
Anya shook her head. “Everyone was angry and tense before. Now they’re not.”
Melanie shrugged. “I had a touch of hangover, I guess. Plus I was still jittery from the near collision with that thing. What’ve you found out about it, anyway?”
Anya stared at her a moment and finally shrugged inwardly. She hadn’t been told the information was classified. Of course, such things usually were, just in case the military discovered some use for it as a weapon …. “Not much. I probably shouldn’t talk about it, anyway,” she said finally.
Melanie studied her face speculatively. “You think it’s something that could have military significance?”
“It plowed through the side of the station like cutting through butter and there’s not a mark on it. What do you think?”
“Carol said there was some speculation that it was a torpedo,” Melanie fished.
“Carol’s liable to find a reduction in rank if she doesn’t watch the chatter,” Anya muttered but then capitulated. “It’s not a bomb. I think it’s a burial capsule.”
“Ugh! You mean you think we’ve got a dead alien up there?”
“Possibly. Whatever that obelisk is composed of, the scanner’s having trouble penetrating it and the readings are really bizarre because the materials aren’t like anything we’ve ever encountered. But I did get a carbon reading.”
“Alive?”
Anya shook her head. “Impossible. The thing is air tight, but the scanner would have picked up a reading if there was any sort of mechanics inside. For that matter, from what I overheard on the bridge when it was coming in, nothing at all registered—no heat, no life, no mechanics.”
“I take it you aren’t disappointed?”
Anya grinned. “Are you kidding? This thing came from some alien race—obviously advanced, possibly more advanced than our own. It’s the find of the century, and I’m getting first shot at examining it!”
“Lucky you,” Melanie said dryly. “You get to examine the corpse!”
“It’s an alien being!” Anya pointed out. “And most likely well preserved, but I won’t be able to examine it for a while. The capsule is sealed. I don’t think there’s going to be any way to get it open without a laser—And I’m not sure a laser will open it, to tell you the truth. But I certainly can’t even attempt anything that could damage it until I’ve learned all there is to learn about the capsule itself.”
* * * *
The red sun had crested the horizon, spilling shimmering light across the landscape that turned everything the dull red of clay or the deeper red of blood. Anya looked down at the vegetation beneath her feet and finally knelt to test it with her fingers. It felt cool and smooth, reminding her strongly of the velvety moss that grew along river banks back home.
Rising again after a moment, she stared at the towering trees and finally crossed the meadow of moss and lifted a hand to touch the bark. It stunned her when the ‘tree’ evaded her hand, swaying away from her touch. Certain it must have been the wind, although she hadn’t been conscious of a breeze, she tried again.
“Your touch gives them pain.”
Startled, Anya turned toward the deep, resonating voice that she’d begun to recognize.
He was standing far closer than she’d expected and a jolt went through her. Collecting her scattered wits, she licked her dried lips before she spoke, noticing that his gaze followed the movement of her tongue. “What makes you think that?” she asked curiously.
“It is not a tree—not as you think of a tree. Its skin is easily damaged by the chemicals in your flesh.”
Anya glanced at the thing again. “It has awareness?”
“Yes. Little intelligence, but awareness, certainly.”
“This is your world,” she said, suddenly certain of it.
A look of pain crossed his features. “It was … long ago. It is no more.”
Anya frowned. “Because you left it?”
“Because it died. Ceased to exist anywhere except in memory.”
“The whole world?” Anya asked, stunned, horrified to think that could be the case.
“The world and all in it—save me.”
“You are the last of your kind?” Anya couldn’t help but demand clarification, because it was just too hard to accept that he could be alone, so completely and utterly alone.
He looked away, staring pensively at the distant horizon. “I have found no others.”
She felt pain for him, felt a terrible sense of loss descend over her when she had no real reason to feel bereft for herself. Struggling with the uncomfortable emotions, a thought abruptly aroused suspicion. “You said you were a god.”
He smiled faintly. After a moment, he turned to look at her. “Your concept of a god.”
Anya frowned. “That would be difficult since I don’t believe in mythical beings.”
“No?” He moved closer. This time she was looking directly at him and she was still surprised to discover when she had blinked that he was standing toe to toe with her. He lifted his hands to rest them lightly on her upper arms and then just as lightly brushed them downwards until he could curl his fingers into her palms. “I would far prefer you think of me as a man,” he murmured.
Her shoulders, her arms, her hands tingled at the warmth of his touch. Warmth curled in her belly. Her breath hitched in her chest as it tightened. A jolt of surprise went through her when she followed the motion of his hands with her gaze, because she discovered that she was completely naked where before she’d been certain she was wearing her uniform.
More confused than disturbed, she was still trying to reason through her lack when she felt her hands settle on warm, naked flesh. Jerking her head up, she saw that he had placed her palms against his chest and was stunned to realize that he was naked where moments before he’d worn the robe he always wore. Beneath her palms, she felt the beat of his heart as it began to race as hers was racing.
Fascinated by the feel of his flesh beneath her palms, she made no attempt to remove her hands when he released them and settled his hands on her waist, pulling her closer. Swallowing with an effort when she felt the tips of her breasts brush his chest, felt her belly brush the turgid flesh that had risen between them, she lifted her head to look up at him.
His gaze moved over her face, searching for acceptance, or desire. “It’s not real,” he murmured, lowering his head until
he could fit his lips to hers. A sigh of surrender escaped her as she felt the same heated rush that she’d felt when he’d kissed her before.
His taste filled her with longing, with need. It would be so easy to give in to temptation, to seek the pleasure he offered.
Just the kiss, she thought, to see if it felt as wonderful to have his mouth on hers as it had before.
It did. It felt more wonderful than she remembered. Her head swam with the sensations that pounded through her as he explored the warm cavity of her mouth with his tongue. Her body came alive beneath the light, caressing exploration of his hands, every fiber of her being tingling with awareness, with exquisite pleasure.
Within moments she felt the last of her defenses crumble, felt her doubts and anxieties vanish. It was a dream. It was only a dream.
But the fire in her blood defied unreality. The dampness that gathered in her sex to welcome his flesh felt real. His taste, his scent, the feel of being wrapped up in his strong arms, curled against the hard muscles of his body, felt real—better than real.
She could scarcely catch her breath by the time he released her lips and began to explore her skin with his mouth and tongue. “Now!” she whispered breathlessly as she felt him carry her down, felt the soft, cool moss beneath her back as he settled her against the ground and the welcome weight of his body covered her. “I can’t wait! I don’t want to wait!” she muttered in a gasping voice as she stroked her hands over him.
He ignored her demand, ignored her clutching hands as she tangled her fingers in his long, golden hair and tugged at him, trying to draw him up to her. “Anya,” he moaned, nuzzling his face against her breasts and the valley between them, nipping lightly at each of her nipples in turn until the blood was pulsing almost painfully in the swollen tips.
Her back arched off the ground as if a current had shot through her when he covered the peak of one breast with his mouth. Every muscle in her body went taut, strained toward the source of pleasure that was slicing through her with the keenness of a knife blade.
“Please,” she murmured breathlessly when he finally ceased to torture one nipple and moved to its twin.
He skimmed a hand lightly down her belly, cupping her sex, parting the tender folds to caress her cleft with one thick finger. She lifted her hips to meet his touch, parted her legs, and when that wasn’t enough, she dragged the leg free of his weight upwards until her sole rested on the mossy vegetation and pressed her knee downward. A hoarse cry scraped along her throat when he found the mouth of her sex and pushed a thick digit inside.
Her flesh closed around him, clung.
He let out a hissing breath and moved over her, wedging his hips between her outward flung thighs, withdrawing his finger and pressing the head of his cock into her opening. The feel of his turgid flesh stretching her, entering her, sent a fresh wave of intense, fiery sensation through her and she felt her body soaring toward her goal, felt the first tremors.
Digging her fingers into his waist, she lifted to meet him when he pushed again, and then again, uttering a soft sound of pleasure when he finally slipped deeply, completely inside of her.
He was watching her face when she opened her eyes, his face taut with his own desire and his struggle to retain control.
She slipped a hand upward. Hooking it along the back of his neck, she pulled, lifting up to meet him, to press her lips to his as he descended. Almost the moment his tongue breached her mouth she felt her body begin to convulse. She moaned into his mouth, kissing him feverishly as the waves of release took her beyond awareness of anything except the glorious jolts of rapture convulsing within her.
He tore his mouth from hers abruptly, straining upward, and then began to thrust into her almost savagely until his body began to quake so badly with the shocks of his own climax that he went limp against her.
She dragged in a shaky breath, stroking her hands gratefully over his sweat slickened back and shoulders, tipping her head back to nuzzle her face against his neck.
“That was … divine,” she murmured lazily, teasingly.
He stiffened and then a chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Heavenly, Beloved,” he murmured in agreement.
She frowned at him when he lifted his head to look down at her face, all traces of amusement gone. “Don’t do that,” she said angrily. “That’s cheating.”
Anya’s chest was tight with distress when she woke. She lay still, her eyes closed, struggling to catch the dream fading into nothingness. Groaning when she finally remembered what it was that had upset her, she rolled onto her side, fighting tears that seemed to well up to choke her from nowhere.
Jeremy had called her beloved. Was that what had made her dream that? Had this man that had invaded her dreams plucked it from her memory to torture her with it?
She shook her head. It was a dream, made up, all of it. She was tormenting herself, pulling up long buried memories that hurt almost as much now as they had when they were a fresh wound.
She had thought she would die when Jeremy was killed. For a while she had willed it to be so, hoped for it. After a time, she’d finally realized she couldn’t just will her body to stop, that she couldn’t cease to breathe, still her aching heart, because he was gone.
If she’d believed she could join him, that he was waiting for her somewhere, she thought she would have taken her own life. But she didn’t believe anything except that she’d lost him forever and it was almost unbearable to think she had to go on without him.
She had, though, and in time it hadn’t hurt so much, the wound had closed, ceased to ache. She had searched desperately for someone to ease the sense of loss, to fulfill any part of what she had once had. But that was all she had found, a piece of a loaf and still more heartache whenever she managed to convince herself she was in love again, with someone new.
Because they weren’t Jeremy and they didn’t love her back. They only wanted to take, not to give.
Why was it bothering her now? She’d learned to live with it, hardly noticed what was missing from her life anymore. She had not even thought of Jeremy except in passing for years. Long ago, she’d stopped hating him for making her need him so badly and then leaving her to go on alone.
Climbing out of bed eventually, she went to take a long shower, hoping it would banish the sense of loss, revitalize her spirits. It helped. It washed away the tension in her muscles.
She skipped breakfast, not wanting to face her friend across the table, certain Melanie would unerringly pick up on her depression and demand to know what was bothering her. She jolted to a halt, however, when she reached the lab.
Carol was inside stroking the sarcophagus!
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Anya demanded.
Carol jumped back guiltily. A blush climbed into her cheeks. “I was just ….” She didn’t finish the thought. Instead, after a moment the look of guilt was replaced with a hard expression. “They didn’t understand him,” she said. “They were afraid of him because of the things he could do. They didn’t understand that he never intentionally caused harm. He was just … immature, too young and new to the powers to understand how to control them. Look what they did to him! They meant for him to die. They thought he would. And he’s the last of his kind—the last! How could intelligent beings even consider destroying another life form like that?”
Anya blinked, feeling her own anger dissipate as a sliver of cold crawled up her spine. “What are you talking about?”
Carol blinked several times, slowly, like someone waking from a trance. After staring at Anya blankly for several moments, she glanced at the gleaming black capsule and then looked around at the lab as if stunned to find herself there. “I have to go.”
Uneasiness settled in a tight knot in the pit of Anya’s belly as Carol brushed past her and disappeared down the corridor. As absurd as Melanie had thought it was, as unbelievable as she had thought it was, certainty settled in her that the strange dreams she and the other women on board had
been having weren’t dreams at all. Whatever was inside the sarcophagus was not dead.
* * * *
There was no way to open the sarcophagus that Anya could see, not even the faintest of cracks where a tool could be wedged to pry it open, but she was no longer at all certain they should consider it.
The computer had deciphered some of the hieroglyphs, not all because the markings were from two different languages—probably two different species if she was to believe the nonsense Carol had been spouting.
And what it had deciphered looked like a warning.
Laine was down in the bay she discovered when she called him. He looked annoyed—whether by the interruption or because of the mess the ship was in, she wasn’t certain. She knew, though, that he and the work crew he’d assembled had been busy unpacking the supplies that had been so hastily thrown into the ship the week before.
“What is it?”
“We need to talk.”
“Can it wait till shift change?”
Anya felt a sense of urgency, but she didn’t know how dangerous the situation really was. She decided to err on the side of caution rather than risk having her fears completely dismissed because Laine had gotten the idea she was hysterical. “I guess.”
“I’ll meet you in the Rec room after dinner then.”
Anya bit her lip. “I’d rather we met somewhere a little more private.”
He looked surprised for a moment. She could see the gears turning in his head and irritation went through her because it was obvious the dick head thought she had finally succumbed to his charm. “It’s about my findings,” she added a little testily.
He gave her a look that made her long to reach through the vid and drive her fist into his smug face. “Sure. My place or yours?”
She didn’t particularly want him in her quarters, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to his when he had a revolving door and ‘neighbors’ who counted the crew members who went in and out. “My quarters, I guess.”
“This isn’t personal, so don’t get any ideas,” she snapped when she opened the door to the captain a little over an hour later.
Lords of Mayhem Page 6
