The Watchers

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  She found the coin under the foot of the bed.

  Excitement flooded her even before she’d raced with it into the kitchen to get something to use as a tool to remove some of the hard minerals encrusting it. In better light she could see there was some kind of design etched into it.

  She thought it was a gold coin.

  After struggling with the temptation to keep chipping at it until she could see the design better, it occurred to Claire that she knew somebody she could trust that knew far more about such things than she did. After a fairly prolonged search, she found her cell and dialed her sister’s number. She got her sister’s voice mail three times before her sister actually picked up.

  “Madelyn?”

  “Claire! How are you doing? I’ve been trying to break loose and get down there to see you ….”

  “I’m fine, Maddie,” Claire said, sparing Madelyn the awkward attempts to try to explain why she hadn’t come after the accident.

  “They said you were …. I’m sorry, Claire. I just …. Well, I’m right in the middle of something really exciting and I just lost track of time. They said you were ok,” she finished weakly.

  “It’s ok, Maddie. Really. Do you think you could come now, though? I’ve found … I found something I need you to look at.”

  “Really?”

  She definitely had Maddie’s attention. “Really. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Call me paranoid but any time I think about talking about something … sensitive—on the phone I think about Prince Charles’ phone sex conversation with his girlfriend that everybody got to hear because somebody picked it up and broadcasted it.”

  Madelyn was silent for several moments. “Won’t it keep? I mean, not that I don’t want to see you or anything, but I think I’m on to something big here and if I leave and somebody else makes the find ….”

  “I think you’ll think this is worth the trip. I’d come to you but ….”

  “No! I don’t think you should be traveling yet even if they seem to think you’re ok. I’ll see what I can do. I can’t promise, Claire, but I’ll do what I can.”

  Claire realized abruptly that her need to hand the piece over to Maddie was more than a desire to see what Maddie could determine about it. “You could spare a couple of hours, surely? Just fly in and out again? I could meet you at the airport.”

  Madelyn must have heard something in her voice. “I’m coming, Claire. I’ll have to see what I can do about flight times and I’ll let you know, ok?”

  Breathing a sigh of relief after she’d broken the connection, Claire sat staring at the gleaming piece of metal in her hand for several moments, considering whether she ought to just sneak back to the sinkhole and throw the damned thing in. How dangerous was it to have it, she wondered? Would she be passing the danger to Maddie if she gave it to her sister? Was she just being paranoid? Or was there a real danger for anyone with any knowledge arising from the sinkhole? Shaking those thoughts after a moment, trying to convince herself that her decision to hand it over to Maddie was the right one, she got up and began searching her apartment for a place to hide it.

  The piece was important. She was certain of that and Maddie would be the first to insist that protecting it was of the utmost importance.

  It was small—roughly the size of a silver dollar. There were a number of places she found to squeeze it in, but she discovered each time that she just wasn’t satisfied. She moved it over and over and finally sat down with her sewing kit and a scrap of fabric she had cut off of an old shirt and made a small pouch she could pin to her clothing.

  It was actually scary carrying it around, she discovered, but as unnerving as that was, she couldn’t be easy in her mind trying to hide it in the apartment. She had a feeling that it was quite possibly the most important thing she would ever find. She didn’t know why she felt that way ….

  Actually, she did know. She just couldn’t remember it at first.

  It was what he’d said—Dante.

  He was no priest. She didn’t know what he was, and she would’ve been afraid to tell anyone what she thought, but she didn’t think he was even human!

  He’d called her a ‘child of man’.

  She hadn’t been dreaming and she hadn’t been hallucinating! For a little while, she toyed with the possibility that that part, at least, was either a dream or a hallucination, but she knew in her heart that it wasn’t. She also knew she hadn’t lost her mind.

  She didn’t know exactly what had happened and it took a great deal of effort to dredge it up from buried memory, but she knew it was a memory, not the product of a fractured mind.

  Dante had come out of the darkness and had confronted her for being down there. He’d … transformed.

  He wasn’t human.

  God only knew what he really looked like! But he’d looked like an angel—just like a human man except with wings.

  He’d looked just like that statue, she realized abruptly!

  So the ‘statue’ hadn’t actually been a statue? She’d seen him—down there—which would explain why she thought he’d moved and flexed his wings.

  Because he had!

  She’d been pacing her apartment living area, but at that thought she moved to the couch, sat down, and started massaging her aching head. What could she make of that, she wondered?

  After a few moments, she decided to set aside disbelief and questions about logic and her sanity for a few moments and try laying out what she believed she had witnessed and heard. Getting up again, she located a writing tablet and pen and sat down at the kitchen counter with a glass of chilled sweet tea.

  As painful and scary as it was to try to recall the night of the collapse, she struggled to put her fears aside and remember every detail that she could. She finally remembered that she’d heard what she’d thought was the sound of fluttering wings. She’d feared it might be shifting debris instead, or possibly bats, and she’d strained to see what it was.

  And she had. There’d been very little light to see by, but she’d seen what she’d first thought was a statue of a man and then he’d spread enormous wings, stretched them, flapped them and then folded them against his back.

  And he’d looked directly at her!

  And she’d nearly had a heart attack!

  In fact, she remembered that he’d seemed to come straight toward her, but then he’d stopped—because he’d heard the rescuers shouting from above—specifically Dominic. And then he’d stepped back into the shadows and disappeared.

  She was never going to know why he’d approached her—what his intention had been, but, given the threat, it certainly occurred to her that his intentions hadn’t been good.

  She didn’t think he’d been in the apartment complex before the collapse. He’d been inside the caverns.

  She considered that for a few moments, trying to make sense of it and realized there was no way to make sense of it unless he lived down there—ludicrous!—or he knew of an entrance at the surface.

  She decided not to worry with that detail at the moment.

  She did not believe for one moment that he was a demon! She didn’t believe in magical beings at all—any of them!

  So what did that leave if he wasn’t some magical being and he wasn’t human?

  Alien.

  Deep down, she knew there was a very real possibility that there were other intelligent beings in the universe. The odds that there weren’t were astronomical! But an alien being on Earth? Well, that was almost as ridiculous as gods or any other magical beings!

  He’d pretty much told her that was what he was, though, hadn’t he? And those wings weren’t fake.

  He’d called her ‘child of man’, clearly indicating that he was not a child of man. He’d said there were things they weren’t allowed to know and that she would die if she was determined to find out what those things were.

  A shiver skittered down her spine.

  He had looked truly terrifying when he’d said that. It wasn’t just
what he’d said, it was the way he’d said it. If she went back down, nosing around, she was going to die.

  A cold sensation washed over her abruptly as her mind connected the dots.

  “There are things, child of man, that you are not allowed to know! Do not come to this place again … unless you seek death, because that is what you will find—not answers.”

  She surged to her feet. The threat hadn’t been to her—not directly and not certainly not exclusively. They were going to die down there! They were all going to die if they kept digging!

  Discovering that she never had dressed after her shower, she raced into her bedroom, flinging off the bathrobe she’d been pacing in. She was shaking so much it took twice as long to find clothing and put the things on than it would have ordinarily. It took her far longer to find her purse and keys, as well.

  She was so wobbly when she left the apartment that she almost fell as she galloped down the stairs.

  The first quake hit just as she reached the car. It began subtly but intensified very rapidly. At first, she thought it was just her that was shaking so badly she couldn’t ring the keyhole with the key. Then she heard ‘the sound’. It was like nothing else she had ever heard or ever wanted to hear again, indescribable and as the volume swelled, so, too, did the shaking intensify until she fell to her knees.

  It seemed to go on forever.

  When it stopped there was dead silence, complete and utter quiet, as if she’d suddenly gone deaf.

  * * * *

  The instant recognition dawned, Claire burst into tears and flung herself at Dominic. Far from being stunned or dismayed at the display of emotion, Dominic’s arms tightened crushingly around her.

  “My god, Babe! I’ve been going out of my mind with worry! I didn’t know if you were ok or ….” He loosened his grip on her but instead of pulling away, he waltzed her back into the apartment, nuzzling his face against her neck. The moment Claire lifted her head to look at him, he covered her lips with his in a kiss filled with want, need, desperation.

  Warmth and pleasure immediately flooded her. With gratitude that he’d sensed how desperately she needed human contact, she returned his kiss with a matching intensity. Unbidden, memories filled her mind as quickly as her body recognized Nick’s chemical signature and determined that it wasn’t Dante she was kissing, though. She struggled mightily to close her mind to comparing Nick’s kiss to Dante’s, but it was a losing battle.

  The comparison was certainly not willful!

  It was unwanted.

  She’d tried her best to put the entire incident out of her mind as soon as she’d concluded that it wasn’t a dream and that Dante couldn’t be human and he had to be up to no good! But the moment she felt the pressure of Dominic’s mouth on hers, the instant his taste and scent invaded her with his intimate touch, her mind, her senses began a search for Dante and failed to identify him—because it was Dominic kissing her!

  And in failing, her mind produced a flicker of guilt, a sense of wrongness.

  His kiss thrilled her, excited her, flushed her with welcome heat.

  Neither his touch nor his essence made her feel as she had when Dante had made love to her.

  NOT made love, she corrected herself. It had been nothing like that for him. He’d used her as a pawn, used sex to manipulate her.

  She wasn’t going to fall for her mind and body’s attempts to convince her it had been an emotional connection they’d forged.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her mind to silence, determinedly focusing on Nick.

  He felt good! She enjoyed the pressure of his mouth on hers, liked his taste and scent, found his essence as appealing as the hard form he’d pressed so tightly against hers.

  There’d never been any doubt in her mind that she found Dominic extremely sexually attractive. The doubts had been reserved as to whether or not he could possibly feel as physically attracted to her. And she needed to feel like she was sexually appealing to him to have the confidence necessary to enjoy being with him.

  She was so focused on enjoying Dominic’s nearness to the fullest and ousting errant, flickering memories of Dante’s touch that she inadvertently communicated a message she hadn’t meant to send.

  Her enthusiasm impressed Dominic with a desperation to find the bedroom—which wouldn’t have been difficult since he knew exactly where it was except for the fact that he was curled tightly around Claire and he didn’t want to loosen his grip. She needed to feel alive and safe as much as he did. He wanted to make her feel safe.

  He was afraid that if he let up—at all—she might rethink things and back off, push him away, tell him his timing stunk.

  He knew it did.

  The whole world was falling apart—their piece of it anyway. Sex shouldn’t be on his mind!

  But he needed her to exorcise his demons and bring himself a sense of calm and peace. He hadn’t been able to shake the fear that he’d lost Claire without ever getting the chance to know her like he’d wanted to since the disaster.

  The first disaster—as if the sinkhole that had almost killed her the first time hadn’t been bad enough! The sinkhole had become a trench, abruptly spreading from the original point of collapse all the way to the sea—nearly five miles long and almost a quarter of a mile wide in some places and no telling, yet, how deep! They had no idea, yet, of how many lives had been lost but were expecting it to be staggering in such a densely populated area. And people were terrified that the worst wasn’t over yet. They feared the entire peninsula was going to fall into the sea. He was terrified it would!

  It seemed likely they were going to declare the whole of Florida a disaster area. People were in a dangerous state of panic, in such a frantic rush to evacuate that they’d clogged every road out of the state with vehicles, making it nearly impossible for emergency personnel to reach the disaster site.

  Making it nearly impossible for him to reach Claire and he hadn’t been able to contact her by phone. Communications were down everywhere … or as clogged with activity as the roads and failing for that reason.

  “I was worried about you, too,” Claire gasped when he finally pulled away and peeled out of his shirt, realizing his declaration was as much a prompt for a response as a statement of fact.

  She had thought about him, but she hadn’t had much trouble convincing herself that he would almost certainly have been on base when the collapse happened and as sketchy as the information was, she knew his base was miles from the disaster area and unlikely to have been affected. She was in a far more precarious position herself—within a half mile of the new trench and fearful it might spread her way and try to swallow her again—like some kind of mammoth, prehistoric living thing.

  She didn’t resist as he caught the hem of her knit top and peeled it over her head, realizing that although she was far too tense to feel any kind of mating urge at the moment he clearly needed her. And he had been there for her—over and over—not only rescuing her from certain death when the building had collapsed on her, but keeping her cheerful and her mind occupied while she was in the hospital, and coordinating relief efforts for her.

  They were barefoot and naked from the waist up by the time they reached the bed. Claire shimmied out of her jeans and panties and dove in, but she discovered Dominic hadn’t waited to discard his own trousers. He’d merely unfastened them.

  Briefly, discomfort wafted through her—to be completely naked while he was only halfway there—but he distracted her, warmed her up again with kisses. She liked that his lips were as firm and hard as he was.

  Don’t think about Dante!

  She liked that his kisses were neither too wet or too dry.

  What had that man done to her?

  He wasn’t even a man! Wasn’t human!

  Enough foreplay!

  Ignoring Dominic’s pull on her breast as he moved from her lips to finesse the nipples of her breasts, Claire began alternating between grinding her pelvis against him and trying to shove his pant
s down. Thankfully, he got the message since she was having a hard time reaching the waist of his pants. He rolled away long enough to discard them and then rolled back into the cradle of her thighs since she’d spread her legs for him.

  Thankfully, she was wet, because either her hole had shriveled from so little usage or he was damned near as big as Dante!

  She resolutely refused to think about how the distracting thoughts she couldn’t keep at bay might be affecting her natural lubrication, grinding her teeth when he tried spearing her with his dick several times before he backed off and checked the hole.

  Apparently, it wasn’t wet enough to satisfy him. He decided to play with it. Claire clenched her eyes shut and tried to focus, hoping he wouldn’t decide to go down on her because she absolutely wasn’t familiar enough with him to be comfortable with having his head in her crotch!

  He moved up after a few minutes. “Babe, you’re so tense,” he murmured huskily.

  “Half of Florida just fell off a little while ago,” she said a little testily. She was immediately sorry for snapping at him, but she thought she’d royally screwed up. Instead of leaping out of the bed and growling back at her, though, he merely rolled her over, straddled her buttocks and began massaging her.

  She felt like crying! “I’m so sorry,” she muttered into her pillow. What was wrong with her? Dante had scared her witless when he’d transformed himself! He’d threatened her! And then he’d gone all caveman alpha on her and taken without asking! If he was on her mind at all it should have been in a very negative way!

  But she knew why. Deep down, she knew he hadn’t been threatening her. He’d warned her. He’d protected her by removing her from danger and he’d seduced her with his desire for her, made love to her so intensely she’d felt the power of it, felt as if she loved him—that they’d formed a mutual worship bond in those moments together.