The Watchers

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  “Oh my god! It is another one!” Madelyn gasped.

  “Oh my god! I was touching his—him—it!” Claire exclaimed.

  “What?”

  “His …. Never mind!”

  Galen frowned, struggling to follow the conversation. What language are they speaking? What are they saying?

  Obligingly, the overlords streamed the information to his memory chip and he abruptly understood their conversation.

  “You’re sure it isn’t the other alien?” Madelyn said doubtfully. “Maybe he just beamed in here?”

  “Of course I’m sure! No! It isn’t Dante.”

  “Why would there be two of them here …? What I mean is why would one be here? A different one? Hell! I don’t know what I mean.”

  “What are you doing here?” Claire asked shakily.

  Galen focused on her, still mightily confused himself since he’d just been awakened from stasis and had no idea what was going on. Since he had no choice in the matter, he tried to bluff his way through the situation by forcing the woman named Claire into a position of self-defense. “I belong here. I am the guardian of this city. What are you doing here?” he growled.

  Claire gaped at him and then turned to look at Madelyn questioningly.

  “Wasting your time,” Madelyn said, shaky, but determined to act nonchalant about the situation. She’d spent years tracking this place down! No way was she going to let a damned alien claim her discovery! “We know you’re alien. So you damned well don’t belong here and it isn’t yours!”

  She’d barely gotten the words out when the floor beneath their feet began to shake. It was only a slight trembling at first, but it quickly intensified until it felt like it would liquefy everything. Claire and Madelyn both screamed.

  Rolling over onto her belly and then struggling to get her knees under her, Claire spied Madelyn, still frozen by the door, as she tried to get to her feet. She screamed the first thing that popped into her mind at the top of her lungs, “Sinkhole! Run!”

  The order seemed to release Madelyn from her paralysis. Instead of instantly dashing for safety, however, she whirled away from the door and raced back to the clay containers she’d discovered. Grabbing the first she came to, cuddling it to her chest like an infant, she turned and ran toward the outer room, stumbling across the ‘map’ room behind her team, the last of whom had just made it out of the structure through the main entrance as she reached the door leading into it. Thankfully, despite the bucking floor, Claire had managed to get to her feet by that time and ran from the room only a few lengths behind Maddie. Shielding themselves the best they could with their arms from the pebbles and sand that was raining down on them, the sisters hurried to save themselves before the structure could collapse on top of them.

  Abruptly, something hard and unyielding slammed into Claire from behind. Her first thought was that she’d been hit by a falling rock, but even as she lost her balance and pitched forward, she was gripped and carried toward the entrance so swiftly behind Madelyn that she knew even before she whipped a look toward the source that the angel had swept her into the shelter of his arms in his own rush to reach safety.

  Madelyn had beat them to the outer door, the structure’s entrance, and out of it. When Claire and the angel made it out, Claire saw that Maddie had paused just outside. She stared at Claire as the angel swept the two of them out, as if struggling to decide whether she should try to fight the angel for custody or if she should just run and hope for the best.

  All Claire could think was that neither of them were safe yet. “Run!” she yelled at Maddie. “We need to get out of here!”

  Thankfully, Maddie turned and fled.

  The angel was struggling to stay upright and take flight with her when Claire suddenly felt the ‘stinging ants’ sensation she’d felt before when Dante had beamed her down to the ground from his ship. She looked down to confirm and then up automatically and spied the ship just before everything went black.

  Chapter Nine

  It was not mere chance that Dante discovered the human soldier, Dominic DiCarlo’s, plan to join Claire and attempt to convince her to return with him but fate certainly had a hand in it.

  He’d been ordered to oversee the aftermath of the disastrous collapse even though the overlords were fairly convinced there would now be no way to recover anything from the site, which meant that the humans were not likely to learn what they had feared the humans would. The assignment required very little of him, however, beyond patrolling the perimeter to keep track of relief efforts and that left him with a great deal of time for his thoughts to wander.

  Mostly, they wandered to Claire.

  In a sense he was very satisfied with having removed her halfway around the world, for, despite the great advances humans had made while he had been in stasis, they still traveled very slowly over great distances when they could cover the distances at all. And he was reasonably confident that he had removed her completely from the human male’s grasp.

  It was a sacrifice for all that since he also could not see her or be with her himself, but he reasoned that he would have been forced to similar circumstances even if not for the human rival he perceived. The overlords had brought him out of stasis for a purpose and they would expect him to serve that end. He could not afford the distraction Claire would represent if she were close by. The overlords might then discern his interest in her far more quickly than he anticipated, giving him no time to come up with a plan to protect her from them.

  He would carry out the wishes of the overlords, he decided, remaining on watch until the humans turned their thoughts and energies to other matters, and then he would be able to join Claire with more time to devote to engaging her affections and less worry of interference.

  It had occurred to him that he might safely keep her in one of their strongholds. They had discovered long ago that the communicators they had allowed to be implanted were not merely communicators. They were surveillance devices they did not agree to. They were fairly certain the devices also allowed the overlords to monitor their telepathic discussions and, they suspected, their thoughts. No one had ever been completely certain of the latter, but the former was enough—they had no way to communicate with one another without inadvertently ‘sharing’ information with the overlords that they did not want to share.

  It had been decided to make use of the shielding the strongholds and their ships offered until they could come up with a way to circumvent the gods from probing their private communications and/or thoughts. The shields had been augmented and tested and he knew that a stronghold was one place that he could keep Claire safe from them.

  Unfortunately, there were two problems with that. First and foremost, it was forbidden to take humans into the fortresses—a breach of every covenant agreed upon by every species that had taken part in the treaty of Hibrildaese. The only exception that had ever been allowed to that particular law was when the gods had been allowed to use their knowledge of genetics to revitalize the species after they’d nearly been wiped out.

  Actually they had been ordered to because they were responsible for nearly wiping the species out.

  A breach of that particular law at this stage in development could well be disastrous for the entire species, not just for him and Claire—unless he could come up with a reason to remove her there for safety that the assembly would find acceptable?

  Secondly, and just as important to him, he didn’t believe that Claire would find it acceptable, especially when she discovered she wouldn’t be allowed to come and go as she pleased. In fact, could not leave at all since that would involve yet another breach.

  He could not allow her to have the knowledge and the ability to spread it.

  And he could not think of an alternative that would allow him to take her as his woman and still protect her from the wrath of the gods.

  Mostly this was due to the fact that Claire had aroused his mating urges as no woman had since the mate he had lost—the one who had betr
ayed him with another and landed him where he was today—one of the fallen, condemned forever to live out the remainder of his existence on Earth. And he was no longer able to focus his entire mind on anything else. A part of him—mind, soul, and body—had been tied to Claire from the moment he had joined with her and now he could think of little besides trying to manufacture a way to join with her again.

  Yearning was very quickly becoming desperation.

  Then he happened upon the human—Dominic DiCarlo—and his team working with one of the recovery crews—not so much by fate as it was almost an inevitability given the circumstances.

  It was no accident, however, that he heard Dominic’s plans. DiCarlo looked him dead in the eye as he told his team members that he would be using his leave to collect Claire and that he planned to marry her as soon as he could convince her.

  Dante didn’t wait to hear more—didn’t wait to see more. If DiCarlo knew where Claire was, and he seemed to, he would see that she was removed to a place where DiCarlo could not reach her!

  Smiling triumphantly at DiCarlo, with deliberate provocation, he abandoned his ‘disguise’ as Father Moreno and unfurled his wings even as he telepathically summoned his ship. He didn’t worry about all of the humans standing around within view. He’d already deduced that he didn’t have to concern himself about being seen any more now than he had when humans had been far less sophisticated. In this day and age anybody that claimed to see angels or UFOs were considered crazy and dismissed. It didn’t matter if it was one witness, a dozen, or hundreds. They wouldn’t be taken seriously even if they repeated the story—or photographed it or filmed it and posted it on their internet.

  No doubt the overlords would be enraged, but there was very little they could do beyond being angered and he was actually beginning to enjoy frustrating and infuriating them.

  It might be a petty revenge, but it was pretty much all that he could do at this point by way of retribution, and some, he’d decided, was better than none.

  * * * *

  Claire hadn’t regained full usage of all of her facilities when she heard a loud, meaty smack close enough to her head to make her ear ring. Almost simultaneously she felt a jerk at her waist and the armband of steel that had gripped her went abruptly slack and then disappeared. Her vision cleared and the blackness that had dominated it parted barely a split second before she slammed into the deck. She heard an echoing sound not far from where she landed.

  Rolling, Claire stared at Dante and the angel she’d discovered inside Madelyn’s temple, locked now in violent struggle, trying to make sense of what was happening. If either of them said anything that might have explained the situation, however, beyond the grunts and growls of effort and anger, she didn’t hear it. And she certainly couldn’t tell anything from their battle itself beyond the fact that neither of them appeared to be using any weapon except their bare hands and it looked like Dante was trying to choke the life out of the other angel.

  What the hell?

  Transferring her attention to Maddie, Claire bounded up. Even as she scanned the room for her sister, though, she remembered Madelyn had been some distance from them when she’d felt the tingle that told her she’d been caught in Dante’s particle beam.

  A different sort of fear and horror washed over her then. She didn’t know whether Madelyn had made it to safety or not!

  She recalled then that she’d seen viewing ports on the command deck. After scanning the room for the exit, she dodged the two angels, who were still busily bouncing each other off the walls and floor and slinging punches at one another, and dashed towards it.

  The door didn’t open automatically for her as it had when Dante had brought her to this room before and Claire slammed into the panel and rebounded. She immediately picked herself up and tried again. When the door failed to open to her charge the second time, Claire, still a little stunned, merely crawled to the door and began to pound on the frame around it with her palm. “Open, damn it! Open!”

  Either she found the door release or the computer responded to her voice command. She fell through and then scrambled to her feet and, after glancing both ways, took off in the direction of the command center—she thought. Thankfully her memory of the layout of the ship didn’t fail her. She arrived in the command center, fought briefly with that door and then rushed inside and to the ports that lined the outer perimeter.

  The ship appeared to be hovering directly over the chasm the Earthquake—not another sinkhole—had opened. Below Claire could see dark figures racing up the nearest hill/dune, but there was no way to count the heaving, chaotic mass even if Claire had known how many people there were on the dig. She did see one figure near the back, however, that seemed to be wearing the colors Maddie had been wearing.

  She couldn’t be certain at that distance, unfortunately, but her mind instantly identified the figure as Madelyn and that comforted her whether true or not. Shaky with relief, she transferred her attention to Maddie’s ‘find’ to determine the damage.

  “Oh my god!” she gasped. It looked like the Earthquake had opened the ground above the city, exposing it instead of burying it!

  Briefly, Claire enjoyed both a sense of profound relief that her sister was safe and a thrill of excitement that the ‘disaster’ seemed to have unveiled the city rather than sinking it or completely destroying it. Then she saw a strange circumstance—the water in the bay seemed to be receding.

  Puzzled and vaguely alarmed, she simply watched the outward flow for several moments, trying to figure out why the wave only receded. As the water vacated the basin, however, the remnants of a city wall were revealed and what appeared to be an enormous, intact structure and that discovery momentarily distracted her from the strange behavior of the water. She scanned the remnants of city wall, trying to mentally calculate the size of it. As she traced the walls with her gaze, however, she discovered the water had ceased to retreat and was rushing back toward shore.

  It looked like a mountain of water!

  “Oh my god! Tsunami!” she gasped, whipping a look back in the direction she’d seen the workers and researchers disappearing. They were standing in a knot at the top of the dune they’d been climbing when she’d spotted them before. Apparently they spied the wave about the same time Claire did because they whirled en masse and charged down the back side of the dune they’d been standing on, trying to put more distance between themselves and the wave and possibly gain higher ground.

  “Maddie!” Claire exclaimed, abruptly pounding on the port as if she could catch Madelyn’s attention. “Run! Maddie run!”

  “The particle thingy!” she gasped as that thought popped into her mind. Even as she acknowledged that there might be some possibility of rescuing the people on the ground below, however, the wave engulfed the ancient city and swept toward the dune where the crew had been standing. About half had managed to make it to the bottom on the backside and begun to climb the next. The rest were part way up the second hill when the wave crested the first. They ran faster. The people in the ‘valley’ also ran faster. Most of them managed to gain enough ground to plow onward and upward.

  Claire saw at least three swept away, however. “Oh god! Oh my god! We’ve got to get them!”

  She ran into Dante as she charged toward the exit to the command center. He caught her.

  “Wave! There’s … They need help!” she babbled, desperate to get help and explain the dangerous situation at the same time.

  Apparently, Dante managed to grasp the garbled cry for help. Setting her aside abruptly he rushed to the viewing portal and looked down. “It is too late,” he said flatly. “The wave has swept over them.”

  “No! You can still help them!” Claire cried, rushing to him and pulling at his arm.

  “They do not need help. The others managed to pull them out,” Dante said.

  “They did? Maddie? Is my sister alright?”

  Dante glanced toward the window again and then back at Claire. “Yes. I have scann
ed their minds. She is with them and worried about you.”

  Overwrought, Claire promptly burst into tears. “You aren’t just saying that?”

  To her surprise, Dante pulled her against his chest and stroked a soothing hand over her hair. “I am not just saying that. I would not lie to you about such a thing. They are all safe.”

  Believing him, relieved, Claire gave vent to her emotions, enjoying being held and cuddled and comforted for the first time she could remember.

  She supposed her parents had when she’d been very little, but they’d wanted her to be self-reliant and they hadn’t been prone to coddling—expressing their love for her instead by trying to teach her to stand on her own rather than relying on others for the things she needed, emotionally or otherwise.

  Dante and Galen exchanged a look over her head.

  “You have claimed her as your lover,” Galen stated flatly.

  “As you see,” Dante responded coldly, then added in a low growl, “So mayhap you can explain why it is that you are not wearing so much as a fucking loincloth when I found you with her.”

  Galen’s lips tightened. “I was in stasis. The overlords only just awakened me.”

  Dante eyed him skeptically. “And you were instantly overcome with lust for my woman? I saw the images in your mind! Explain why she would have had your cock in her hand.”

  Galen felt his face heat with discomfort—because he had entertained lustful thoughts! But anger surged through him, as well. As tempted as he was, though, to point out that Dante should ask the woman why she had had his cock in her hand, he had no reason to suspect that it had meant anything at all and could not see that blaming Claire would benefit anyone. Likely, Dante would simply launch another attack upon him and they did not have time to devote to pounding upon one another. There were more important matters that they needed to focus on first. Later they could settle the issue of whether Claire was Dante’s woman or not. “You have dealt far too long with the overlords and the humans if you have lost respect for the privacy of others!”