Seared [Pain & Love 1] (BookStrand Publishing Romance)
Page 4
When she eased her car to the end of her driveway, Reyna noted that her neighbors to the right had visitors. She looked at them curiously, feeling somehow that they were important.
There were three men and two women. They were well-dressed and non-threatening, attractive from what Reyna could tell and mostly unassuming. The only curious attribute any of them sported was the hair coloring on the taller of the two women looked as though it should be hot to the touch. It was the beautiful, smoldering red of campfire coals.
Two of them held what looked like strange electronic devices that to Reyna invoked more of a threatening feel than the entire group combined.
“What are those?” Reyna asked Tyler, but he didn’t answer her question. He simply said, “Drive.”
Reyna drove.
She sought not to attract the attention of the group on her neighbor’s porch, but she felt she couldn’t have been more obtrusive if she’d attached a siren to the hood and peeled out like a drunk on ice.
“Are they following us?” Reyna questioned worriedly. Her heart was stampeding wildly. The organ beat against the inner wall of her chest like it was furiously intent on forcing its way from beneath her skin.
Tyler watched from the passenger side mirror, though he wanted to turn in his seat and crane his neck to see the group that he instinctively knew was searching for him.
“They’re going to your house,” he informed his mate. “They didn’t see us leave.”
“Good thing we did,” Reyna said in a dark tone. She realized that she was speeding and checked it back. “I don’t like this, Tyler,” she continued angrily. “Who are those people? Are they the bastards who were shooting at us last night?”
She suddenly found herself wondering how on Earth she’d forgotten that. If there had been any reason in the past twenty-four hours to call the cops, assholes shooting at civilians in her woods should have topped the damn list.
“Why did I forget about being shot at last night?” she asked in an accusatory tone. “What the hell, Tyler? What is going on here?”
Deciding Reyna needed a different approach than what he’d been offering her, Tyler sucked in a deep breath and then began powering through the speech he’d been preparing for her all morning.
“You don’t just like it when it rains,” he started coolly. “You feel better. You seek out the rain because it improves your mood, even your health.”
Reyna felt a tingle of concern about the fact that Tyler knew that.
“How?” she began, but pushed onward.
“Radios react strangely around you,” he said. “They give bursts of static or play stations the dial isn’t on. Batteries die quicker when you touch them. All electronic devices seem to act strangely around you and have ever since you can remember.”
Reyna interrupted him, saying, “Those are all explainable things. They aren’t that weird.”
“You’ve had multiple near-death experiences and no one knows how you’ve survived so many times.” Tyler continued quietly, instead of responding directly to what Reyna said. “Also, at night, street lamps react strangely when you drive under them. Some shut off, some that are off turn on. Others dim or brighten.”
“SLI phenomena,” Reyna concurred a little nervously. “Yeah, I’ve looked into that. It isn’t a super rare thing.”
“Well,” Tyler said calmly. “We aren’t a super rare race on this planet.”
“You’re still on about that,” Reyna noted in a sour tone. She was glad her heart had stopped trying to climb its way up to her tongue, so she sounded less like she was afraid and more like she was just grumpy.
“It is why I’m here,” he agreed dryly.
* * * *
While Tyler and Reyna drove, another life was already being affected by the traveler from a distant world.
Mallory Wright was deep in her meditation, as focused on nothing as Reyna was on her driving. Mallory breathed in and out in a measured rhythm she’d practiced for years to master. Meditation was necessary for her because she would otherwise be driven insane by her talent.
She didn’t need to invite the visions. She merely lowered her defenses against them and they swept into her, taking her from the large pillow she leaned against and the scent of mild incense and transporting her to a world she didn’t know.
Wandering through the vision like a dream, as she always had when her psychic talent delivered a message to her, Mallory found herself fully captivated by what she saw. This was a unique experience even for her. She’d seen the afterlife, she’d seen inside the minds of killers and criminals, innocents and the insane. But this was a whole new world. Aliens were definitely a first for her.
Mallory walked over warm sand. The path had been worn into the golden dirt by thousands or millions of pairs of feet since the city had been constructed on the sand. Short buildings stood close together. They were all colored brilliant, and Mallory found herself suddenly appreciating the wide variety of shades she found herself surrounded by.
The sky, she realized with delight, was pink. Pink like crystallized apple blossoms. The cotton candy colored sun was sinking behind the city and three pearly moons of varying sizes and each in different phases were rising to take its place.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful,” Mallory murmured to herself. She didn’t know why her vision had taken her to an alien world, but she wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
As she passed through a city square, Mallory saw lovely but obviously inhuman entities milling about, working or hustling on their way to important destinations. None of them saw or sensed her. She hadn’t expected them to.
When there was a break in the line of brightly colored buildings, Mallory’s heart clenched in her chest and she gave a gasp of wonder. She saw a far-stretching ocean that cradled the coast with gossamer white foam and gently lapping cerulean waves. She’d seen the sea from Florida and California. No ocean on Earth compared in beauty to the body of water she saw from the center of the alien city.
With her next step, Mallory was inside a building. Apparently her vision had become impatient with her meandering and was determined to get her to the important information. Mallory saw two men, both remarkably handsome even though they were obviously not human. She listened as they spoke.
“I will not, Your Highness, and I apologize for my refusal.” Mallory could understand the words, but only because of her psychic abilities. Confronted with the alien language in her actual life, her human ears would be incapable of deciphering the lovely, flowing sounds.
“She needs me,” the other man muttered. He was frustrated but Mallory sensed a feeling of wearied defeat emanating from him. This was a conversation he’d had many times before.
“Earth has become more and more dangerous for our kind,” the other man offered. He said the words in a tone that indicated it was not the first time they’d passed his lips. “We cannot risk you, Highness. You are our Prince and will soon ascend the throne of your father. What would become of our people if we were to lose you?”
“My line ends with me if I cannot reclaim her, anyway,” the Prince reminded his companion. Mallory saw a flash of him presenting the same reasoning in a much more violent and confrontational way. She was glad she didn’t have to experience the screaming, heartbreaking scene that had surely passed between these two before.
“We will figure something out, Tyris. I swear to you, we will. Just continue to be patient.”
Tyris touched a collection of crystals on the stone table he stood beside, facing away from the other man. He touched them with the intention of calming himself, and Mallory watched with interest as each of them glowed with individual light at the contact.
“I won’t wait much longer,” Tyris declared with finality before leaving the room.
Mallory rushed to the window on the far side of the room as the Prince’s companion gave a deep sigh. She wanted to see that amazing ocean once more before the vision concluded.
“Past.” Mallory
heard the feminine whisper and nodded as she accepted the information. What she’d seen had already occurred.
Without warning, Mallory found herself back home on Earth. Instead of the ocean, she saw one of the houses she’d recently procured. As her bare feet landed on the street, she looked curiously at the house. A man she didn’t know but who had an aura similar to the Prince she’d just seen stood with a woman she’d never met. He tried to embrace her and she pulled away. Mallory watched the interaction closely, knowing that this vision would send her down the path to help someone as so many had before.
When they separated and the woman began to walk away, the house burst into flames. Mallory stumbled back from the intense heat, forgetting that what occurred in the visions couldn’t hurt her. The hungry pillars crashed over the two who were strangers to Mallory and consumed them before they could run.
Mallory screamed, and her screams drowned out the whispered word, ‘future…’
Chapter Four
Reyna pulled into the mall, which was a typical boxy construct with a substantial number of cars in its widespread parking lot. She found a spot between two larger vehicles—a truck and a van—and slid her car in between them. She felt safer when they couldn’t be seen from the street.
“We’re being hunted by the Men in Black and we’re going to stop for a jaunt through J.C. Penney’s,” Reyna proclaimed with a shake of her head. “Unbelievable.”
“I doubt they know where we’ve gone,” Tyler assured Reyna as he opened his door. She frowned darkly at him.
“They knew you were in my woods,” she pointed out as he got out of the car and shut the door. When Tyler closed his, she hit the lock button until the car chirped, happy in its security.
“They shot me down into your woods,” Tyler retorted as they walked toward the entrance together. Reyna fought not to look too closely at how normal and natural the two of them felt just walking together. Her hand itched to reach out to his and she closed it into a fist to keep the damnable impulse at bay.
“And how did they know where to aim?” she asked in an irritable tone.
Tyler hesitated as they reached the door. He held it open for Reyna while he thought about how to respond to her question.
“I was never officially taught how to operate the ship that brought me here,” he admitted as he followed Reyna inside. Reyna blinked slowly at him, pondering what he’d said.
“You…stole it?” she questioned incredulously. For the time being, she’d just decided to suspend disbelief and talk to Tyler as though she was fully convinced what he’d said about being an alien was true. Her alien soul mate, though, not so much. Her flexibility didn’t stretch quite that far.
“I had to,” he insisted. “I couldn’t stay away any longer. I denounced the throne, but my council still refused to risk me. A human mate cannot come back if not linked to her male counterpart. But our males risk their souls dissolving into the energy of the Earth and becoming stuck. Recently, more and more of our males have failed to return. I was forbidden early on from even making the attempt, but for the last hundred years, I have been hounded and stalked, hardly left alone for any amount of time, lest I chance the journey. It got to where I simply did not care to live my life without you. I poured all of my energy into the endeavor, and I made it happen.”
Reyna didn’t comment about what he’d said regarding his connection to her or the apparent sacrifices he’d made in order to get to her. She did, however, find herself compelled to ask, “The throne?”
“I am the prince of our world,” Tyler acknowledged as they took a right turn and headed toward the J.C.Penney’s at the end of the wing.
“Quaint,” Reyna responded as they entered the store. She watched him and almost smiled at how out of place he immediately seemed. He visibly steeled himself, read the signs, and made his way toward the men’s clothing section with no incident, but when he read the garment sizes, he became perplexed.
“What size am I?” he asked aloud, and Reyna silently responded, “Perfect” before she could help herself. She vanquished the thought ruthlessly, picturing the word as a bug and squashing it without mercy.
“Try a large for the shirts, because you’re broad through the shoulders,” she suggested as she pulled a dark blue button-up off the rack and paired it with a lighter blue undershirt. “And for pants,” she continued as she perused another selection of merchandise. “Jeans and khakis in…Let’s try thirty-two by thirty-eight and thirty by thirty-six, maybe. If not, we can always try others.”
As Reyna loaded him up, Tyler began to look more and more overwhelmed until she almost wanted to laugh at him. Taking pity on him, she led him away from the rack with a small smile.
“Try them on,” she instructed.
“Should I model them for you, as well?” Tyler asked, and though his tone was serious, the question raised Reyna’s defenses marginally. She lost her smile.
“No,” she said firmly. “Just take what you like and leave the rest.”
Perplexed, as he feared he always would be when it came to his closed-off and enigmatic mate, Tyler took the armful of clothing toward a section of the store labeled fitting rooms. He pushed aside a red curtain and entered the small space, which had hooks to hang clothing on the wall and a small black, cushioned shelf. The shelf was perhaps to sit himself or additional items upon, he mused. Though he knew the basics of life on Earth and had been granted human appropriate talents—he was good with math, he could play both piano and violin, and was proficient with guns and welding work—some of the basics would still have to be discovered upon his own devices or taught to him.
Though he sincerely doubted even human males knew the true perhaps of those shelf-benches.
He found the proper fit for his clothing—it was indeed a large for shirts and thirty-two by thirty-eight for his pants. The clothing Reyna had chosen for him made him look dashing. He didn’t know if it had been intentional or not, but she’d selected shades that brought out his eyes and coloring fantastically.
After compiling a set of at least four different outfits, Tyler returned to Reyna, who gave an approving nod to his choices.
“I grabbed boxers and undershirts,” she informed him with the slightest hint of a blush coloring her cheeks. “Do you think you’d prefer something different?”
“This should be fine,” Tyler responded, trying to smile. Reyna didn’t want to return the expression, but had to fight her body for the refusal. She was upset that Tyler had talked her into this little venture. She hadn’t shopped with a man since she’d been married, and those hadn’t been altogether unhappy times. It made her miss things she had no right or reason to miss.
Tyler felt a surprisingly strong surge of pain from his mate. Though the memories of her life that he’d been involved in as a watcher were becoming fuzzier the more time he spent on Earth, he had a fair assumption the pain came from something to do with her ex-husband.
He hated that she’d been married, and hated the man who’d hurt her and caused her to experience the worst event she could have been required to face. He couldn’t remember the name, the name most precious to Reyna. It caused a swelling of panic and pain in his own chest. Before, he’d known her intimately and entirely, the good, the endearing, the tragic, and the terrible. Why was it all fading away?
“You all right?” Reyna asked him. Her disinterest in him could only extend so far, and he currently looked like he might faint.
“I just,” he began, but he trailed off with a perplexed frown. “I’m forgetting you,” he murmured in a tone that rang with heartbreak.
“You can’t forget me—I’m right here,” she pointed out as she gestured to the checkout line.
Reyna couldn’t possibly understand, Tyler thought morosely, unless she allowed him to touch her and open her mind with his.
“Pay the lady,” Reyna commanded softly as she nudged him forward.
Tyler hadn’t even realized his purchases had been scanned and bagged.
After they were handed the two bulging bags and Reyna had folded and slipped Tyler’s receipt into his wallet before handing it back to him, they left the store.
“Can we stay here for a while?” Tyler asked hesitantly. He didn’t want to anger Reyna further, but he also didn’t want to leave the relative safety the mall had to offer them quite so soon.
“We could get some lunch,” Reyna replied easily. She then tipped him a sardonic grin and said, “You’re buying.”
“I wouldn’t have it another way,” he assured her as relief spread through him.
Reyna suggested a Chinese food venue and Tyler readily agreed. He also mentioned that he’d have to go back for a giant single slice of pizza and vowed to try ice cream for dessert.
“You’re going to get fat,” Reyna warned him as she sat her tray on the table he’d chosen. It was a perfect one for people watching, she noted. Tyler had already eaten his eggroll on the way to the table and was plowing through his rice and noodles as she spoke. He happily ignored her admonition.
Reyna couldn’t help but chuckle a bit as she picked up her own eggroll and took a bite. The crunch and heat were both pleasant to her.
“We need to talk about what’s going on,” Reyna admitted in a low voice. She’d noted that there were several people around that could hear their conversation if they spoke loud enough.
Tyler, who’d been in blissful food obliviousness, frowned a bit at her words before shoveling in another bite. It didn’t taste as good to him as the previous ones had.
“Yes, I suppose we do,” he agreed. “But you don’t believe anything I say. What would our conversation accomplish at this point?”