The tighter denim jeans he wore to blend in and attract Carrie, once comfortable, made his usually fluid movement slow and lethargic as they trapped his muscles and would inhibit his fighting abilities should the need arise.
Back on Bravon, Kal had sparred with some of the planet’s foremost fighters, some of which had gone on to represent the Killian people in the intergalactic games. Fighting for a living never interested Kal, but he did love the sport of it. Plus, he enjoyed arguing over intergalactic teams with his comrades over a beer after a full day in the mines.
Some of the men in suits had joined the savant who’d been scoping him by the money machine. They carried themselves like men who’d practiced sparring on a regular basis.
The sign above the junction where the manager had reached read, The High Summit, with an arrow pointing in the direction from which the savant’s men were coming from.
“The High Summit is on your right, sir,” Stephan said. “Feel free to head on up. I’ll signal that you’re coming.”
“Kal!” came Sev’s voice. Kal instantly scanned the floor for his cousin only to find him rushing down the steps into the casino. Security guards instantly swarmed Sev as if growing out of the woodwork. Kal clutched his chips tight to his chest.
“Fifteen,” Kal counted the enemy before he stopped at the intersection.
The guard on his left walked straight into his shoulder. The human probably thought it would be an intimidating move. That was until he collected Kal’s elbow in his face. The cracking sound sent a shock through Kal’s system.
Kal quickly spun on his right foot and pushed the chest of the other guard, pulling his gun hand through and under his right arm while dislocating the man’s shoulder. He then brought his forearm down hard shattering the man’s hip. The move caused Kal’s chips to fly over his head onto the nearby crowd.
The sound of screams filled the casino as chaos flooded his vision. Sev disappeared from view as people scrambled to grab as many of his winnings as they could before running away from the fight in a combination of fear and greed.
“Stop,” Kal demanded. “Those are for Carrie!”
The crowd did not listen.
The savant was making his way quickly up the stairs. His arms lifted as if he were about to be attacked at any moment, even though no one was near him or seemed to note his departure.
Men rushed Kal from his left.
“Sev,” Kal yelled, catching sight of his cousin as he dipped down and swept his leg to stop the attackers charging in from his right. Two of them tripped over his limb before he came back up and extended his right leg in the air. Kicking it twice at lightning speed, he caught the last two men square on their chins. They landed on a few stragglers still trying to gather up his chips.
Kal turned to face the next batch of attackers. The savant had made it to the top of the stairs and seemed to be waving for his attention. When he had it, he pulled Carrie before him. For a moment, Kal couldn’t move. That instant of hesitation was enough. A fist connected with his jaw, sending him stumbling to the side. As he pushed up, it was to find Sev launching a man over the nearby slot machines.
“Now this is a vacation,” Sev said in approval. He turned, ready to take on yet another guard. “What did you do this time?”
Kal didn’t share his cousin’s excitement. “Let’s go. Follow me!”
Sev didn’t hesitate. “Usually it’s Vin who gets us kicked off a planet. He’s going to be so mad that he missed all the fun. That will teach the blister head to overindulge.”
“It’s not fun. They have Carrie.” Kal bowed his head and looked at the floor as he began to charge through anyone who might try to come at him. He didn’t have time for one-on-one combat. The area was nearly empty as most of the patrons had cleared out when the fight began and he only had to dodge the machines. Within a few steps, he had become a blur, a streak of light that shot a path across the casino floor and when it stopped, there was a line of bodies strewn in his wake.
Kal glanced back over the wrecked casino to make sure Sev was behind him. “This way. She’s up here.”
They took the steps two at a time, moving so quickly it would be hard for the humans to follow them with their eyes.
Chapter Twelve
“Carrie!”
Carrie lifted her head, pulling in a deep breath through the tiny hole that yellow eyes had cut for her in the tape. Kal’s worried voice flowed over her like a rush of pure adrenaline. She stiffened, wanting to run to him, but unable to move very fast with her loosely bound legs.
“Don’t hit,” yellow eyes said, standing behind her and petting her head. He’d given up on his kidnapper’s mask and looked more like a college student than a hardcore criminal. He had a childlike quality that made it hard for her to hate him. He was incredibly eager to tell her that his friends called him Knower, and she should too, and he was an alien-human hybrid.
Knower’s hands stopped her from going forward. The men who bossed him around treated him like a servant, telling him what to do and belittling him when he didn’t do it fast enough. Even though she couldn’t answer, he’d spent the last several hours talking to her about everything and nothing.
“Step away from my woman,” Kal demanded. Sev appeared behind him to block the doorway.
“You can’t hit me,” Knower said, rocking back and forth on his feet. “If I move, you have to promise you won’t hit me. I saw you fight. I don’t like it when they hit me.”
Carrie moaned, nodding her head to indicate Kal should agree. Her eyes still burned from when the alien man looked into her mind, but the tension in her temples had lessened, and the light no longer sent sharp pains through her head.
Kal stepped cautiously toward her, watching Knower carefully to make sure he didn’t try anything. When he was close, Kal peeled the tape from her mouth. The adhesive stung, but as she could finally part her lips to breathe deeply, she didn’t care.
“Kal,” she gasped.
“Did they hurt you?” Kal demanded. “Does he have a weapon on you?”
“I’ll be fine, but you need to be careful,” Carrie warned, more concerned for his safety. “This might be a trap. They want to kidnap you and sell you. They’re alien traders. They—”
“No, they want us to pay for you. It’s a kidnapping,” Kal said. “I was winning the money in the casino, but I only made sixty thousand today, and I don’t think they wanted me to get it all because they kept stopping my game. It doesn’t matter now because I found you.”
“It was a kidnapping, but need you to understand. They looked inside my mind. They know who you are and where you’re from. I didn’t want them to know but—”
“Humans minds are spongy,” Knower inserted. “Easy to squish around and squeeze things out.”
“They want to sell you.” Carrie hopped away from Knower, and he let her go. Seeing her captor didn’t hold a weapon to her back, Kal pulled her into his arms and drew her to the side to keep her out of harms’ way as he faced Knower.
“My bosses want to sell her for seventy-five thousand to cover a debt, but I don’t like that. She didn’t do anything wrong, not like the men who count the cards and cheat the tables. We’re only supposed to go after bad people. Carrie isn’t bad. She is good. I saw her goodness inside.” Knower cowered as he talked as if positive he was about to be smacked.
Kal stiffened against her.
“Don’t hurt him,” Carrie said.
“You might be good, or bad, I don’t know. You play cards too well, and that’s bad, but you want to save her, so that’s good.” Knower inched away. “Please don’t tell them I let her go. They don’t like it when I make friends.”
Kal began tearing at the tape holding her hands together before setting to work on her legs. When she could freely move, she threw her arms around him and held on tight.
“Kal,” Sev said. “We should get back to our new hotel room. Galaxy Brides is sending a transport. I was coming to take you back and tell y
ou that we have been moved.”
“Yes, you should go so they can’t sell you to the men with the funny guns,” Knower agreed.
“You were telling the truth,” Carrie whispered, looking up at his metallic-tinted eyes. She’d assumed they were special effect contacts, but now she saw them for what they were. “You’re not from here.”
Her happiness in being with him was confused by the fact a very core belief, one that had been rooted in all she knew to be sane, was proven false. Everyone but a few loons knew aliens were not real. It turned out, everyone but the loons was wrong.
“Go,” Knower insisted.
“Wait, whose debt?” Kal asked. “You said she was taken to cover a debt.”
“Probably Greg,” Carrie stated. “I have given it a lot of consideration. There is something about him that creeps me out. He’s always trying to hover where I am, wanting to know what I’ve been doing, and he gets twitchy when we’re in the casinos like he can’t wait to play.”
“I do not know if she is called Greg, but she said taking you would make someone pay her debt plus interest,” Knower said. “I don’t like her, but I like her pointy shoes with the shiny square buttons that she always wears. They click, click, click.”
“She?” Carrie gasped. Could it have been Missy? Carrie tried to remember what her cousin wore.
“The savant is right. We have to go. More men are coming,” Sev warned. “Earth authorities. I don’t want to end up in a wax prison.”
Knower crouched down and pointed to a far door before covering his head. He rocked back and forth.
“Come with us,” Carrie told him.
Knower shook his head. “I know my place. I get the bad ones.”
“Leave him,” Sev put forth. “He’s a savant. They’re tied to their keepers. There is nothing you can do for him.”
“Thank you, friend,” Carrie placed her hand on the alien man’s head.
Knower looked up at her and smiled before turning his head down once more.
Kal swept Carrie into his arms and carried her toward the door Knower had indicated.
“I can walk,” she said, even as she held onto his neck.
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Kal said, not setting her down as they ran through a long hall before shoving through a door and dispersing into a crowded walkway.
“Where’s Vin?” Kal asked as they blended into the masses.
“He had a reaction to ice cream, and I have him tied up while we wait for our transport back to the ship,” Sev said.
“Allergies?” Carrie asked.
“No. I think it was called Chunky Road,” Sev answered. “Dangerous stuff. I’m surprised they even allow it to be sold to the public.”
Kal was finally forced to set her on her feet as more and more people began to take notice of him carrying her. He wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her close.
“Do you think they’re following us?” Carrie asked.
“No,” Kal and Sev answered in unison with such surety that she didn’t think to question how they knew.
They stepped out onto the dark city street. Carrie tried not to let all the science fiction horror movies she’d seen as a teenager go to her head. “Are humans in trouble? What was that back there? Knower said he was an alien-human hybrid. Are there aliens here now?”
Kal and Sev looked at each other.
“You’re all aliens to us,” Sev finally answered.
Carrie glanced suspiciously at the people they passed. The woman in bright orange spandex and yellow hoop earrings could have been an alien. Or maybe they were more subtle like the limo driver or the woman walking up and down the strip selling water bottles out of her cooler. “So what are you doing here on Earth? Moving in? Infiltrating our government? Are we test subjects? Do you abduct people for experiments? What’s up with the probing?”
Kal gave her a sheepish look and said, “We’re on vacation.”
“Vacation?” she repeated with a relieved laugh. “That’s it? You’re not trying to take over Earth and become our master race or anything?”
“What would we do with an entire planet?” Sev laughed at the idea.
“You seem…” Carrie furrowed her brow as she eyed Sev. “Different. Happier.”
“He always gets like this after a fight,” Kal explained. “We should check on Vin. Just in case someone tried to track us back to the hotel.”
“I told you, Galaxy Brides moved us to a new suite. It’s why I came looking for you,” Sev said. “Vin is fine. I tied him to a bed, and he’s sleeping off the ice cream.”
“So this Galaxy Brides is your travel agent? Your mother ship? What?” Carrie tried to process what was happening. Whatever they’d given her was finally clearing from her system and the walk in fresher air helped to focus her mind. She was in Las Vegas, on the strip, with aliens. Aliens. Kal was an alien.
Carrie glanced to her side, seeing his handsome face. Heat radiated off of him, like a beacon calling her to him. When she looked at him, touched him, she didn’t feel fear. From the very beginning, there had been something about him that filled her thoughts and attracted her body. He was gravity, pulling her in.
“Technically, to get the free vacation I had to sign a contract that I was coming to Earth to look for a bride. A new intergalactic company is trying to offer mating services to the parts of the universes that are in need of companionship—like the settlement where I live since it’s small.”
“He means our people are small in number, and none of us are interested in dating someone even remotely related to us,” Sev filled in less delicately.
“Make sense,” Carrie said.
“Thus, this new company. Apparently, my people would make good endorsements for them.” Kal grinned. “I honestly did not think I’d meet someone like you when we signed up. We were coming to have fun.”
“When you signed us up against our will,” Sev corrected.
“Yeah, he’s still a little sore about the fact I made his mark for him when he was passed out,” Kal admitted.
“Did you say universes? As in there are many, many more aliens?” Carrie looked up at the night sky, searching through the bright city lights for what might lay beyond the stars. Her heart pounded in her chest. “I didn’t think about that. So the lizard men, and the gray big-headed men, and the—”
“There are many different beings up there,” Kal agreed, keeping her from spiraling into a small panic attack.
Carrie’s world suddenly felt insignificant. “I’m not sure how to handle all of this.”
“What is to handle? It is the same as before.” Kal stopped walking and cupped her cheek. “Look at me. I am the same man you followed to the hotel suite. I am the man who can’t stop thinking about you. I am the man who spent days trying to find you after we first met and after you were taken. I am the man who would come for you anytime you need me. I love you, Carrie, and I like this planet. My ride is leaving soon, but I want to stay here with you.”
“Kal,” Sev stated. “You can’t possibly stay on Earth after what just happened back there. What about the mines? Your job? Your family?”
Kal ignored his cousin. “Carrie, may I stay with you?”
“The corporation won’t agree to this. They want us to bring the women back,” Sev insisted.
“Shut up for a second, Sev,” Carrie quipped. “I want to hear what he has to say.”
Sev looked shocked that she’d dared to yell at him, but then nodded in approval. “Perhaps I was mistaken about Earthlings. You may not be as weak-willed as you appear.”
“You can hardly judge us by Vegas. Now shut it.” She turned to Kal. “You were saying?”
“Shut what?” Sev looked around the strip in confusion.
“I love you,” Kal said. “I want to be wherever you are. The home I have to offer is no place for one so delicate. I would never ask you to live in an ash mine settlement, but I would gladly stay here with you.”
“There is so much
we’ll have to see to. No one will believe you’re from Canada with that accent. Maybe New Zealand? Or a Pacific Island? And then there are citizenship papers, and—”
“We can see to all of that,” Kal assured her. “I love you, Carrie. The rest are just details.”
She took a deep breath, confident about what she wanted. “You did sign a contract that you were coming here to marry.”
“I did.” He nodded.
“This is crazy,” Carrie whispered, “but I’m all in. Yes, stay, be with me, love me. I love you, Kal. We’re probably both insane, but I love you.”
Kal grinned, lifting her off her feet as he hugged her to his chest. He spun her in circles, dancing around the sidewalk. Passersby laughed at them, but Carrie didn’t care. She was in love with an alien.
Chapter Thirteen
“Oh, thank goodness, you’re all right,” Missy exclaimed, rushing forward. “We were so worried. I tried not to let anyone know because they said they’d hurt you, but the bodyguards called daddy and when we didn’t receive notification on how to pay them, we… I thought you were dead.”
Carrie eyed her cousin warily as Missy unexpectedly wrapped her arms around her. Missy’s tears wet her cheek. She was pretty sure her cousin had never hugged her before this moment.
“So you did it?” Missy asked Kal when she finally released her. “You came up with the money? You saved our Carrie?”
“He’s my hero,” Carrie said.
“So what happened to you? How did you escape?” Pat asked.
“Did they hurt you?” Missy demanded. “Did they say why?”
Carrie leaned over, eyeing the shoes of the other bridesmaids. “Ms. Pointy Shoes with the shiny square buttons. Click, click, click.” Finding a pair of four-inch heels with three straps adorned with pointed metal studs, she drew her eyes up to the blonde-headed Lexie, or Trixie, or whatever her name was. The woman made a small noise and couldn’t meet Carrie’s gaze. “Hello, Trixie, or should I call you Pointy Shoes with a gambling problem?”
Spark: Galaxy Alien Mail Order Brides (Intergalactic Dating Agency) Page 8
