Zac is in my house!
Very complex.
Finally he managed: “The Kel invaded.”
She felt her eyes widen, felt her posture change only as it was happening, a small space developing between them.
“A fleet,” he said, gaining steam now that he’d gotten those first words out. “Around the time you left.”
He dropped his hands to her armored hips, looking down into her upturned face—even as that bombshell fell over her like a lead blanket, insides going to ice. “After you left the Icon popped back. I tried to use it to follow but it didn’t work.”
She forced her thoughts to that moment. Recalling the night on the plateau, on Galfar’s world, where the most recent phase of her journey began. The old Bok shot the Icon. The Icon popped out of existence, back to Zac. The gunfire must’ve broken it.
But the images were fleeting.
The Kel invaded!
How did the Kel invade?! Where were they now?! Reflexively she jerked her attention around the living room, back toward the kitchen, over her shoulder to the windows. Why was everything the same?! So quiet, no sign of destruction.
How did—
“Where are they?” she blurted. The house was deathly quiet and it hit her all at once. The shock of finding Zac, the shock of what he was saying … Reality was crashing in and, as if a stark light had been thrown onto the whole scene …
“Mom and Dad. Are they ok? Amy?”
Zac knew exactly where her thoughts had gone. “They’re safe,” he assured her. “Safe and ok. We took them to Bianca’s house. Everyone is safe.”
Her mind was surging, fearful, a thousand new questions springing to view, overlaying the thousand things she had yet to say. But something in Zac’s answer jack-knifed everything else and she was on another tangent.
“We?” she asked.
Zac nodded. “Willet. He’s here with me.”
The information dam was cracking on both sides and all at once Jess realized the magnitude of what they both held in check. More and still more questions but Zac put up a hand, seeing it too; pleading to just finish what he’d begun. One thing at a time, he seemed to be saying. He was right. She pinched her lips and exhaled through her nose.
“The Kel fleet had already arrived in orbit when I left the castle,” he explained. “I didn’t know it at the time. I went back for Willet and Satori, but they’d taken off. Later I found out they’d gone to hide the fighter. Nani and Bianca hid in the Reaver, on one of the other planets in this system. At that point they couldn’t do anything but watch. Of course at the time I knew none of that. All I knew was that I’d lost you, I’d lost them—I lost everyone. I wandered up a mountain and sat. For how long I don’t know, but while I sat there the Kel invaded and when I came down they were fighting the Earth’s forces.”
Jess opened her mouth, wanting so badly to ask other things What happened to the Bok?! but she let him go on.
Knowing, of course, her own recap would be just as insane.
“I’m skipping over a lot,” he said, “but I came down and joined the fight. I was making an impact. I think I’ve become stronger,” he added this as an aside, introverting for a moment. When he continued he was focused. “Then Kang was delivered by the Kel to confront me.”
“Kang?!” Jess closed her mouth and held it. Kang was alive?! Delivered by the Kel?!
“I was just as shocked,” Zac nodded. “As you can imagine. Apparently, or at least we now believe, Kang was picked up by the Kel in deep space after you guys rescued me. We think they also got the Icon. Somehow Kang got himself involved in their master plan. We believe they used the information on the Icon to reach Earth. That’s how the Kel got here.”
And it hit her, all at once, just how large were the ramifications of everything she’d done. As if it hadn’t really sunk in before. That simple action, not long ago, giving Zac the Icon on the field of battle back on Anitra, when he was fighting Kang, giving him a way to rid one world of a monster, triggering a series of events that led to the discovery of the long-lost Kel, which in turn led to the invasion of Earth. Prior to that … every seemingly small decision ballooning to epic proportions. All the way back to that first encounter in the woods, right there behind her house, with Zac, right out the living room window where she now stood, when she decided to help him and not report him to the authorities. Leading directly, of course, to their time on Anitra and the Prophecy and the Shogun, the Crucible and the changing of the dynamics of that entire world, her return home and that oh-so-brief period of peace, the faux normalcy she knew deep in her heart would never last—even then she knew—things brewing all around unseen, set in motion by those simple actions, the catalyst for massive change, followed by her decision to run from the Project, the theft of their Top Secret laptop and what that uncovered, the other Icon, the return to Anitra and the delivery of the Icons to the Venatres and, in turn, the activation of the starship. Then, of course, the use of one of those Icons to save the world from Kang, thinking it might end there. Ha! Followed by the theft of a starship to rescue Zac, one decision after the next, each rushing her forward like gangbusters toward this moment, standing there with Zac in her own home. The decision to chase and try to capture the leader of the Bok, which led to her kidnapping and in turn to that other world which, to her continued amazement, led to the uncovering of a greater personal truth than she might ever have imagined existed. Opening her eyes when they might have remained closed. Cascading, all of it cascading, and right then as she stood with Zac in her own humble living room that vast connection of all the pieces, great and small, flooded over her, the sheer scale of events that had spun so wildly out of control to that point, all of it stemming directly from her.
The last year of her life had been world-shattering.
Literally.
Zac was continuing. “The first wave of the Kel invasion is over. They destroyed all military resistance. Most of the day-to-day things you recognize are the same.”
Other thoughts. Fears, crushing guilt that these same events, driven by choices she made, had likely led to many deaths—many, many deaths if the Kel invaded and destroyed all military resistance—and as the visions of that swept through her she nearly collapsed.
But Zac was charging on. “We think they’re doing it on purpose,” he said, picking his next path forward at each turn, so much to divulge, having to choose at each point what next thing was most important to say, “leaving the civilian components mostly intact. But that won’t last. No one is sure what’s coming next, but the hammer will fall. You’ve arrived at a bit of a lull.”
I’ve arrived at a bit of a lull. She almost cried. She was the harbinger of doom, everywhere she went, and now it was only getting worse. Now she’d brought it to her own world. She came running to her house with fresh hope; now … this. As if everything that had happened so far was just some ridiculously difficult, impossibly circuitous route to arrive Here. At this point. One that might even have been, somehow, some impossible way, intended all along.
What have I done?
Wave after wave of emotion pulsed through her, piling on.
Zac was still talking. “Even as strong as I’ve become,” he was saying, and she struggled to gather her mind in one place, to not be sucked into the things over which she had no control, to keep her attention on him and his words, “when they brought Kang to face me I was no match for him. He was winning that battle, same as the last. Then Nani arrived in the Reaver. They’d been watching from hiding, and when they saw me and Kang on the field of battle they coordinated a blitz. Satori and Willet came out of hiding too. Right before either could reach me, Satori was shot down.” Zac was gaining speed, unspooling the story in short form, but now paused.
Jessica’s attention snapped into the pause, “Did she …” hoping Satori survived.
But Zac was shaking his head. “Willet made it, Satori was captured,” he said, and Jessica’s heart fluttered. “We don’t know if she’s alive.
”
He regained his thoughts. “Willet got out of the crashed fighter and came to me for help,” he continued relating the things that were important to them, important to her, Jess increasingly numbed by the extent of what had happened to them both. Zac took a deeper breath. “Nani came down to pick us up but there was nothing that could be done. The battle was too hot and there was no way to get to Satori and rescue her. She was captured aboard the fighter while she was erasing its records.
“She sacrificed herself so the Kel would find nothing on Anitra or anything else we knew.”
He paused. As he did she raised her hands back to his chest, feeling the broad flatness of his muscles, the power beneath her palms.
“Willet would do anything for her,” Zac said quietly. “Nani flew us back to Anitra. We had no choice. We had to escape.” He swallowed, the next bit paining him. “Nani tried to fix the Icon that took you away. She couldn’t. At that point we had no way to know where you’d gone. I was left only with belief. I had to believe you were okay. There was no way to come for you.” She searched his eyes, feeling the hurt in him. But he was moving on. “After we went back, to Anitra, I got the other Icon from Lindin. The one that connects here. I brought Willet and we came and we’ve only just now gotten Amy and your parents to a safe place. Willet is probably still with them now. Our plan was to use your house as a sort of base. To rescue Satori. My goal was to round up any remaining Bok, to make them tell me all they knew so I could find you.” Suddenly Zac was overwhelmed with her presence all over again. “I can’t believe you’re here!” He ran his hands over her face, framing her eyes with a warm palm at each temple. He looked into them, marveling at more than just the color, his own eyes wide in wonder. “It’s like you’ve grown,” he said, “a hundred years. A thousand. You’re the same, exactly the same yet … you’ve grown. You’re you, a girl, a normal girl but … you’re not.” He became lost. “But maybe that’s always been true.”
He was so perceptive. So amazing in all ways, so sweet, so wonderful, so strong, wise … Never had one man been so many things.
Never had one man been more perfect.
How much should she tell him? Right then …
Right then she decided to keep it simple.
“I have grown,” she said. Soon she must tell him all of it, very soon, but right then, in the middle of this breathtaking reunion … right then was not the time. Not yet.
She took his hands in her own. Looked past him to the stairs. “My room,” she said, taken suddenly with the thought of it. Though it would never, ever be the same, there was something about the idea of it. Of standing in the presence of her things, a possibility that compelled her with a sudden urgency.
Hesitantly she looked toward the hallway above. Almost tentatively, as if something unexpected might be up there. As if it were a brand new place.
“I’m home,” she said. Stating the obvious right then made so much sense it actually felt incredible. Yes, there were aliens. Yes, she was on a quest for something that could change the world in ways beyond those that had already done such damage. Yes, she would never be normal again but …
I’m home.
Zac smiled, strained but feeling her impulse; that enchanting, boyish smile, the one she loved so much, and he agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment.
“You’re home.”
Tentatively she released him and went to the stairs, took a few steps, paused, took a few more, then was bounding to the top. In no time she was in the hall and down to her door, through it and …
In her room.
I’m home!
She went all the way in and turned in place, taking it in. Same as she left it. The Kel had invaded, the world was conceivably turned completely upside down—as yet she had no details—but Zac was there, Willet was coming, her family was safe and she was home. After all the incredible, amazing, impossible things that had happened … she was home.
She continued her slow turn in place. All her stuff was here, just as she left it. One of her MP3 players was on the bed, she noticed it right away, a pair of her over-ear headphones plugged in and laying to the side, thin red cord winding across the covers. Zac must’ve been listening to it.
She looked up and there he was, standing in the doorway, filling it. Broad shoulders, head near the top of the frame, dressed in his black Kazerai clothes and boots, short-sleeves exposing muscular arms. With his beard and slightly longer hair he looked like a young, dark-haired Thor.
She swallowed and turned her attention to the player. Seeing him in that setting, against that backdrop, so impressive, so handsome and in the doorway of her dainty room …
She reached for the player and checked the screen. It showed the song Cosmic Love by Florence + The Machine, paused midway through. Before she could catch it a little snicker escaped her lips and she snapped her eyes to him, worried. The song clearly held meaning for him—it held meaning for her, at one time—and she shouldn’t laugh.
He was instantly defensive. “It’s girl music, isn’t it?” His face dropped. Disappointed, it seemed—as if he’d made a mistake and it frustrated him. “I thought so. Like perfume. This is the music version of perfume, isn’t it?”
“No!” she said quickly, wanting to be reassuring but coming off too forceful. “No,” she eased her delivery. “It isn’t. Music isn’t split like that.”
He looked down. “You have a lot. A lot of really good songs. I was listening to them, looking through your lists. The Mood folder. When I saw the title of this one … It made me think of us,” he looked up. “How much more “us” could a song be? Cosmic love.”
“It’s a good song,” she agreed.
He regained a little confidence. “For me the words had meaning. Described how I felt.” He cast his eyes to the ceiling, as if feeling whatever he’d been experiencing at the time. “The stars, the moon,” he quoted the lyrics, “they have all been blown out,” trying to prop up a smile. He couldn’t. More quietly he finished: “You left me in the dark.” Then: “That’s how I felt.
“I had to keep myself distracted. It was like, the song was exactly what I was going through, losing you. And the music …
“The music made me ache. Like, really sad. The singer’s voice. So beautiful. I listened to it again and again.”
Jess snickered—this time a deliberate effort to lighten the mood. “Well no wonder,” she tossed the player back on the bed. “You big goof. You’ve been sitting here amping your emotions.”
“It felt good,” he insisted. “Like running out the grief. It all made me hurt and that’s what I wanted.” The emotions he felt were truly strong. She could see it. “I thought I’d lost you forever. The song helped me purge some of the pain.”
She thought she’d lost him too.
Then something caught her eye, atop the bookshelf, just inside the door. A shiny object she’d missed and she recognized it at once. Her gaze snapped to it and locked on, heart skipping a beat.
The Icon.
The one that brought Zac the first time. The one that took them to Anitra and the one that brought her back. And now, the one that brought Zac here, to her house.
With an effort she pulled her eyes from it and found his, swallowing down a surge of the momentous. He held her gaze from across the room, piercing it. Expression speaking volumes.
Flooding her with a suddenness of emotion that shook her.
To the core.
Their reunion had been interrupted by the epic scale of events but here they were, lost love, found—if only he knew how lost, how long—and her heart raced as he was across the room and standing against her, so tall in her vision, absolutely filling it in both shape and desire, hands on her and hers were on him and he was fumbling with the Kel armor, desire plain in his eyes.
Heat.
“How does it come off?” he tugged at the edges and her entire body rushed with the urgency of the moment. “Take it off,” he was insistent, hands unable to find a way, scaring he
r that he might actually rip it from her in his passion—certain that he could. Zac would never hurt her, ever, but right then …
He was kissing her, near delirious, and as her own desire crescendoed, a hurricane of shuddering, powerful emotions—it had been so long, their last—only—time something so completely transcendent—her own hands were up and groping, feeling of him, kissing him back, more desperate by the second, looking for ways for him to be out of the Kazerai clothes without actually having to release him even for an instant, even as he fought for her to be free of the confining armor …
Any remaining bits of her rational mind evaporated like so much smoke. Any final hint of reason, any common sense resisting this impulse toward something which was probably wrong right then, so many other things requiring their attention as her own lust swept the last shreds of that reason far and away she threw herself utterly into the moment. Zac wanted her, he would have her and …
She would let him.
Quickly she was removing the armor, weathering his impassioned kisses as her hands worked desperately to detach the unearthly metal. He whispered his desire breathlessly, kissing her again and again, strong hands roaming her freshly bare back, then her shoulders as she stepped naked from the last pieces of ancient plating.
She found the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up. He lifted his arms long enough for her to pull it over his head and off. She threw it to the floor. Free of the shirt he pulled her to him, skin on skin, the warm press of his smooth, bare chest against her breasts sending a shiver through her she could not control.
And his mouth was against hers, harder, kissing her so deeply she felt he would devour her. Eat her completely and consume every bite and they would be one. And she knew, all at once and quite definitely, she wanted him to.
It was an epiphany, crystal clear, and as she realized that—realized fully she was his, body and soul, always had been, that she would give him anything and everything—she was so thoroughly wracked by a massive, body-gripping shudder she let go any last threads of concern as to what they should or should not be doing and fell completely into him.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 2
