“Leave this ranch without me, and I will spank your ass when I catch up to you.”
“My god, you are incorrigible.”
“I’m serious, Allura.” His eyes never left her, not even to blink.
She bet he was, not that it mattered one wit to her.
Chapter Thirteen
Allura refused to talk to him. Even though they had traveled a leg, she remained distant and quiet. After several attempts, he thought it best to let her stew—whatever that meant. He had heard Channing use the phrase and assumed it was like simmering or calming down.
Allura’s silence gave him time to think. He contemplated since this morning on how he was going to explain why he was here. He practiced his exact words, several times, and now his explanation sounded more insane than last night when he reasoned through the explanation.
They rode past the mountains and wilderness and followed a trail that took them along the river edge until a stretch of land appeared, flat and sparse, with a few boulders and trees making up the landscape. By Texas standards, he was a city boy.
The city was fast-paced and a hub of activity. Sanguine was a continuous hustle and bustle of movement regardless of what time you ventured into midtown people were everywhere. Some set at curbside restaurants eating, others shopped, enjoyed the endless entertainment of bars and street bands, and then some merely let the walkway autotran move them along the fairway while they mingled. The city’s architecture art within itself, boasted of modern-techno buildings constructed of metallic, glass, and shiny metal buildings that rose into the pale purple sky where endless routes winded and curved between the towering structures. The ultrafreeway carried vessels whizzing them in and out through the sky, everyone going nowhere in a hurry.
Texas quietness was conducive for napping, when on Sanguine the thought never entered his mind. He normally functioned on fumes, worked to exhaustion until he couldn’t go anymore, and then collapsed into bed and slept like the dead, only to wake and start the routine over again.
Here he learned to decompress because he had no choice. With no criminals to apprehend, drug czars to pursue, or psychopaths to hunt down, one had no choice but to bask in the serenity of the simple life. It took some getting used to. He got edgy for action, anything to get his adrenaline pumping or something equally stimulating.
He glanced at Allura and said, “I apologize a thousand times. What else do I need to do?” She pretended to have interest in the bland terrain and refused to acknowledge him. He moved his mount closer, grabbed her reins, and forced the animal to stop.
As soon as the horse halted, she dismounted and made a beeline for the cluster of trees just over a small ridge. When he caught up to her, she was sitting on a large rock with a flat surface staring off toward the water. She was ready for a fight, her arms folded, chin tilted upward, and a determined expression on her face that was far from tolerant.
Everything about her said “back off.” She even went as far as to put her hand up in front of his face when he walked up. Luckily, he wasn’t deterred easily, and captured her wrist just in case she wanted to take a swing at him. With Allura, he couldn’t be sure of her reaction to anything. She looked pissed, and last night proved to him what type of woman he was dealing with. Allura would give him hell. Go tit-for-tat, and not give him an inch if he stepped out of line. It had to be madness. The thought made him immensely elated.
“This is not how I wanted to do this, but you’re giving me no choice.” She struggled. “Calm down. Let me explain…I need you to listen to me.” She opened her mouth. He pressed his fingers against her lips. “Shhh…five minutes. Okay?”
Noor stepped back, reached into his pocket, and withdrew the egg. He activated the device, held it for her to see, and then connected.
Allura’s eyes widened. She stared at the communicator as Sterns’s voice filtered through the thin air. She whirled around and looked behind her, then back at the egg and Noor, and then her mouth dropped open.
“Who said that?” she whispered, glancing over her back before examining the transmitter with curiosity.
He flipped the mute on. “The voice came from this mechanism.” Allura shook her head no. She tried to push away, as if it frightened her. He kept her beside him and motioned for her not to say a word.
“Superior Sterns, I’m checking in, sir.”
“It’s about damned time, Rynoir. You try and avoid me again by scrambling the frequency and setting privacy mode, and I will bounce you back down to a street cop so fast your head will spin.”
Noor said, “I was dealing with a situation, and it was unsafe to keep transmitting. I contacted you to let you know I’m getting close to finding the target and should have something positive to report within the next few hours.”
“You had better. The time to reenter the atmosphere is getting closer. If you don’t secure the target and get ready to bring her here, it’s no telling when you might get another opportunity. The command center is counting down—twenty-four minus one hours. Miss that window, and I return a piece of Tupperware to your family to entomb.”
Noor ended the frequency and shoved the egg into his pocket. He tried to gauge Allura’s reaction, which was bewildered and apprehensive. She just kept gawking at him. He sat down beside her to allow her a moment to process what she had just heard.
“What was th–that thing you just showed me? Where did the voice come from? I went to a circus one time, and a man was very good at throwing his voice. He called himself a ventriloquist,” she whispered.
“He was my superior who lives on another planet, in another time…the future. A place called Sanguine where I came from.”
Allura rambled, “He was very good. The entire time he performed the crowd was silent, stunned by his magic.”
“Allura, even if I were a magician, which I’m not, how would I make an egg talk? I’m telling you, I’m from the future, sent here to find you and bring you back to my planet.”
“Then there were the dancing bears, little people…clowns and juggling. It was all entertaining.”
He held her cheeks between his fingers. She tried to turn away. “No, look at me and listen to what I’m telling you. This is real…I come from a place you can’t imagine. My government sent me back in time to find the legacy to a planet called Oridus. The city is in turmoil because the current emperor is insane and needs—”
“Stop it!” She tried to run.
Noor shook her to get her attention. “The emperor killed his wife and child, who was the next Intended who could dethrone him. The only people who were capable of ending his rule unless another descendant of the Agaci lineage was found, and produced a child. You are that woman.”
Allura merely stood fixated on Noor. Then she smiled and said, “Kirby had a fondness for whiskey and sometimes he drinks to excess. When this happens, he makes up the most outlandish tales, and if you don’t know him, he can be believable.”
Noor blew air hard through his nose. “I’m not drunk.” He took out the egg and handed it out to her. She acted afraid to touch it. He opened her palm and laid it there. “It works like this. You tap here.” He showed her step by step how to activate the device. When the small wings opened, lights started swirling, and she dropped it.
Sterns’s voice sounded. “Rynoir! Rynoir!”
Noor picked up the communicator, deactivated it, and put it back in his pocket, but not before showing Allura it wasn’t a real chicken egg, even though he knew she had to realize it already. He had to continue to make a point.
“I’m telling the truth. You don’t want to believe me because it’s against everything you know. In your heart, you believe me.”
Allura covered her mouth with both hands and shook her head back and forth. “This is insane. You look…appear as human as me. You talk with an accent of some sort, but I thought maybe you were from somewhere in Europe or another foreign place I’ve only read about,” she said quietly. Refusing to blink and wide-eyed, she watched him
suspiciously. “Just because you have a toy I have never seen before, I’m supposed to believe you’re from the future. People invent things all the time. That is what science is about. A degree I mastered at the university, by the way.”
Noor moved forward. Allura took a step back. He frowned at her. Was she frightened of him now? “I would never hurt you, Allura. I’m not lying. On Sanguine, I work for the authority, which is an agency of the government. In your world, I’m the sheriff…I go after the bad people, like Sheriff Jacobs does when he rides with a possum.”
“It’s a posse, not possum.”
Noor grinned. “I haven’t got accustomed to reading data with my eyes open. It reflects off the inner-retinal and displays—the short version is before I came here, scientists uploaded a massive database of Texas history inside my head. I had two days to prepare with a linguist who tutored me on your dialect, scholars who taught me Texas customs, society rules, and everything I needed to know to fit in. There was no way for me to remember it all.” He pointed at his head. “I have a cheat-sheet in here.”
Allura didn’t respond and continued to look at him as if he clucked and barked. “I know you have no idea what I’m talking about and it’s frightening. I don’t know what else I can do to get you to trust me except take you to Sanguine, which I cannot do until the exact second where the conditions are conducive to travel. If not, I could kill use both.”
“That voice called me a ‘target.’ Why?”
Noor shoved his hands in his pockets. Having to answer the question made him uncomfortable, and he hesitated. “As I said earlier, I was given a mission by my government to time travel, find and secure you, and bring you to Sanguine. You are the only person who can save planet Oridus because you are the Deverill bloodline. Sweetie, he referred to you as a target, well, because you are, and I’m sorry if that sounds harsh.”
“So, you have been lying to me and my family from the beginning?”
He knew where she was about to go, and he would rather she didn’t. But the positive side was that she was beginning to believe him. Otherwise, why would she fight about it?
“Yes, but before you go off on me, let me explain. It was necessary. I had no idea what, who, or where you resided, and finding Channing was damned lucky. He lead me straight to you. He never said your last name, or I would have known before I arrived who you were. When I got the assignment, you were nothing but a portfolio of what little information we had. We didn’t even have your first name.”
“But, as soon as you realized I was supposedly this Deverill you are searching for, you still deceived me.”
“That had to happen. I couldn’t just introduce myself and say, oh, by the way, I’m from a place called Sanguine in the future, you are the savior to a planet called Oridus, and I need you to travel ahead in time with me. How would that have sounded?”
“About as ludicrous as you do now, although you are very convincing, I give you that. Still, just because you refuse to talk, rock back and forth all day, and are frightened by the strangest things like mother’s great-great cousin who is simpleminded, it doesn’t mean you aren’t, ah, special, as we like to say of Albernita.”
“I assure you I’m not only sane, my intellect is flawless,” he said. His eyes shifted briefly and followed movement.
He watched, using his peripheral vision, as figures moved in the shadow of the trees—something was circling them. Without alerting Allura, he kept his eyes peeled to the action, preferring to stay quiet about what he witnessed until he figured out if it was friend or foe.
Allura said, “How many are there?”
Noor pretended to concentrate on her. “What?”
“I counted at least three, but there could be more men hiding in the trees.”
She knew. There was no sense in trying to act otherwise. “Maybe,” Noor said, withdrawing a pistol. He cocked his gun and then moved her behind him. Allura returned to his side. He scowled down at her. “What do you think you are doing?”
“I carry a gun for a reason. I’m an excellent shot, probably better than those men.”
Noor inhaled, filling his nostrils with the odd but familiar dark and nefarious scent as something shifted and headed their direction.
They weren’t men—the first blast erupted through the quietness.
Chapter Fourteen
They looked like humans.
The things moved like humans.
Not that he was surprised. Txtrca’s transformation ability was superior among other transformer species. They not only altered outer appearance, they uncannily had the ability to become whatever they mimicked so precisely even a trained eye had a difficult time spotting differences.
They rarely ventured into the city—preferring to stay on their planet that was a small dot on the perimeter of Sanguine and far enough north to be called a distant-territory Sanguine didn’t rule. Rarely did he encounter one willing to go outside their zone, let alone their universe.
So why were they here?
A rhetorical question required no answer because he had a good idea of the answer. It was who sent them that burned in his mind. Something he intended to find out, if he could keep one alive to interrogate.
Constant shots hit dangerously close to where he and Allura crouched behind a rock formation. Shreds of stone burst and sparks of debris flew through the air as a continuous round of firepower barraged the area just over their heads.
He waited until they stopped and reloaded before he spotted their locations. The weapons were archaic, and the unfamiliarity gave him the advantage he needed. Txtrca fumbled on the reload. He lifted up, aimed, and picked off one assassin and left two to go. Or one, if he wanted to find out information, he reminded himself.
He dropped another one.
The remaining Txtrca moved through the brush, keeping low, and the look was that of a man crawling on all fours. But its swift movements gave it away. Humans couldn’t move so quickly, unless you viewed them on a visual display in fast-forward. Allura didn’t know, and he did not intend to tell her. As far as she was concerned, what she saw was men dressed like him who could easily blend in as locals if she ignored the fact they were trying to kill them. That was something she would definitely question.
How odd, he thought. He watched as the remaining Txtrca ran in the opposite direction, if that didn’t beat all. What spooked him?
It was a distraction. He realized a second too late, the moment he heard the gun click and realized he’d been tricked by a move a rookie should have known.
Something inside his chest pinged when he spun around and saw a cocked pistol pressed against Allura’s temple. He kept his eye on the trigger finger of the creature, then studied the eyes, naturally transparent and glossy under disguise hinted it was a transformer.
The other cretin circled back, came up beside his cohort, and joined the group. He looked smug. His expression was triumph as the other remained focused, unblinking, and staring through him. That one was dangerous, and it had nothing to do with the gun he held and everything to do with the rigid stance and utilitarian eyes void of conscience.
He considered himself a straightforward person. Keeping his eyes peeled and his gun pointed, he motioned toward Allura. “I’m not sure who sent you for her, and frankly, I don’t give a damn. The woman stays with me. Are we clear?”
The clicks and clucks of tongue unfamiliar to Noor, he couldn’t decipher what the thing said. It didn’t matter. “Kiss my ass—I’m not backing down” sounds the same in any language.
They had a perfect understanding. He could tell when the cheesy grinner raised his gun. He was faster and thorough, putting a blast through its chest and sending a spray of pukish green ooze and slim everywhere.
Then he turned on the other, ready to end things until the one with the attitude upped the ante by pulling Allura closer. He used her as a shield. Cowards really pissed him off, especially those who used a woman.
“If you persist, she is dead.”
&
nbsp; “Oh, so you do understand me. Somehow, I thought so. Good. Understand this?” He raised his weapon and pointed it at Mr. Attitude. Was there anything else to say?
Allura said, “Noor.” He saw her flinch when the thing tightened his grip.
Noor didn’t draw back. His tone steely, he said, “If you could kill the lady, she would be dead by now. So, let’s suffice to say your instructions were to bring her in alive. You want her. I want her. I guess the question is who wants her the most, and you can bet your ass it’s me. You want to test my flawless theory?”
“I don’t back down.”
“Then we are at an impasse.” He stepped closer, the gun locked and centered.
“Ah, Noor…”
Mr. Attitude shifted and jerked Allura, digging his nails into her arm until she winced.
“Noor?”
It was at the forefront of his mind to tell Allura not to worry when he realized her intentions. He went shock-still seeing her inch her pistol up and along her side.
“Don’t you dare do it.” He stayed focused on Allura, hoping she understood he was talking to her.
Mr. Attitude cocked his head to the side and squinted. He was confused, not understanding Noor wasn’t talking to him. Allura was about to do something utterly foolish, and the thought of the consequences made his heart constrict and hold inside his chest so tight he couldn’t breathe.
“No, Allura!” he roared, advancing, seeing her twist her body inward and try to get the upper hand on the Txtrca. “Damn it! Fuck!” he shouted, charging forward to stop the unthinkable from happening when a shot rang out.
Hearing the pop sound made a chill race up his spine.
Everything halted, the ground beneath him started to spin, and a morass of feelings all struck hard at once and left him unbalanced, seeing Allura’s knees wobble. The movement happened in slow motion. One minute she was standing, the next, he watched horrified as her body started a slow descent toward the ground.
Pure Desire [Pure 3] (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 11
