by Nina Bangs
“Broadcast?”
“Let my emotions get away from me. They’re strong enough for someone else to feel. Sorry that happened.” Not sorry. He wanted to share more than just some sexual emotions with her.
Her gaze skittered around the room, never resting on him once. Not surprising. Fin and he had turned her world upside down to night. She was handling it a lot better than he’d expected. He hadn’t had much experience with putting people at ease, but that’s what he wanted to do now. He didn’t want her to jump up from that chair and run from the room. He wanted her to keep talking to him.
“You never finished telling me why you can’t write your story.” Fin had probably threatened her. But it wouldn’t be with violence. Fin was more subtle than that. And he wasn’t stupid. Kelly was married to Ty. A threat to Kelly’s sister would impact Ty and through him the rest of the Eleven.
“He’d probably take away my memory of what happened. Can’t write about what you don’t remember.”
Al stilled, every instinct telling him something important was about to happen. “What makes you think he can do that?”
She looked surprised he’d have to ask. “He gave me a demo. Very impressive. One minute I remembered what happened to night, and then I didn’t. And since he can jump into my mind and root around, he’d know if I was thinking about putting out a story. I’ll keep my memories, thank you very much.” She sounded like she was taking Fin’s demonstration lightly, but her eyes said something else.
He couldn’t imagine what his eyes were saying. Rubbing his hand across his forehead, he tried to think. All those times when bits and pieces of memories started to surface and then wham, the headache struck and the fog rolled in. Everything gone. Had that been Fin? Could the bastard have done something like that to his own men? If so, why?
“I still have some questions.”
You’re not the only one. Al pulled himself from the brink. Racing off to confront Fin wouldn’t achieve anything. He had to think things through. Uncontrolled rage had already gotten him into trouble. “Ask away.”
“Why does Kelly have to be with Ty? He doesn’t need her. I saw that to night. He can drive himself.”
Al forced himself to concentrate on the answer. “Eight can sense us when we’re alone, but his signals don’t work when we’re close to a human. Solution: keep a human near in the form of a driver.”
Jenna nodded as though she’d added his answer to some inner notebook. “One last thing. Fin said you guys got rid of Nine back in Houston. He’s immortal, so you just tossed him out into the cosmos. Why doesn’t he come back?”
Al didn’t want to talk about Nine. The only way he could push the bone he had to pick with Fin under the rug for the moment was to concentrate on something just as powerful. And that meant Jenna. He wanted to know more about her. Wanted to get closer to her. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t good at getting close to anyone. Not since Fin had taken him from his pack.
He shrugged. “I don’t have a clue. Guess they have a boss somewhere pulling their strings, because these guys only seem to get one shot at the end of each time period to mess with Earth. Once they’re here, they stay until the start of the new period and then they have to leave. If they leave before that, it must count as an official visit. They won’t be back until the end of the next period.”
“Nine must’ve been totally ticked.”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t help it; he smiled. He’d never thought of it from the immortal’s viewpoint. “I didn’t see the actual event, but Ty said Kelly kicked butt that night.”
“Kelly?” Horror filled her eyes. “She was there? She was in danger?”
Uh-oh. “She was the key.”
“The key?” Jenna didn’t like the sound of that. Up till now, she’d been running on adrenaline and emotion. Most of the emotion since she’d entered this room had centered on the man sitting across from her. With that intriguing braid she itched to undo so she could slide her fingers through all that hair, the strong hard face with those hazel eyes that bled sadness when he wasn’t guarding his expression, and the muscular body exposed by the clingy sweater he wore, he was a major distraction.
The things Fin had told her, along with the holes Al had filled, gave her a picture of life that could only exist in some alternate universe. She was in shock. That’s the only reason she was still here.
No, you’re here for Kelly. And what Al had just said about her sister needed expanding. But she wouldn’t ask him; she’d ask her sister. “Well, thanks for answering my questions. Guess I’ll head to my room.” She stood, swaying a little from exhaustion.
“It isn’t real to you yet, is it?”
His voice was warm and husky, with a sensual pull that softened her insides like bread dough ready for baking. But there’d be no baking going on in her life as long as she was here in Philly. Because everything still had a crazy feel to it, and she didn’t intend to cozy up to her insanity.
“No, it doesn’t.” She met his gaze directly. “Will you make it real for me?”
Wariness crept into his eyes. “How?”
“You know how. I only saw a shadow to night. I can’t believe in shadows.”
He stared at her for a long time and then nodded. “Come with me.”
Be careful what you wish for. Dread stalked Jenna as she climbed the ornate staircase with him. She hadn’t been up here before. “How much condo does Fin have?”
“As much as he needs. I don’t know where he gets his money, and I don’t ask.” He turned to smile at her. “The guy’s saving humanity, he deserves his perks.”
There was only one door at the top of the stairs. Al pulled it open. He motioned her into the room. Inside, all she saw was one towering space—several stories high and spacious enough for a marching band to practice in. No windows.
Al led her back outside. “Fin makes sure every condo he buys has one floor he can remodel. We use it as a cooling-down area. Anyone whose soul gets out of hand is kept in here until things return to normal.”
The rest was obvious to Jenna. No dinosaur—it was hard to even say the word—would be able to escape from this room to tear up Tokyo. She’d watched all those corny monster movies; she’d just never thought she’d be playing a part in one.
Monster. She slid a glance at Al. Big, hard, and so sensual he made her teeth hurt. Did she think of him as a monster? Jenna hoped she was more rational than that. But her job had taught her that sometimes seemingly rational people could act in weird ways.
“Okay, I’m going into the room. Close the door behind me and keep it closed. No need to lock it. I can’t get through it when my soul’s running the ship.”
She could only nod. What was she doing? What in the name of God was she doing?
For the first time, Al reached out to her. He rested his hand on top of hers. She closed off all thoughts, only allowing herself to absorb the heat and texture of his skin.
“Everything will be cool.” Turning, he strode into the room and didn’t stop until he reached the middle. Then he turned to face her.
Drawing in a deep breath for courage, she shoved the door shut. Then she stared through the small window at the man still standing in the middle of the huge room.
Deep inside where small hopes still lived, she prayed it wouldn’t happen, that this whole thing had been one gigantic hoax. A stupid hope for someone who chased the impossible on a daily basis, who made her living by giving people something wild and weird to read with their morning coffee.
When the change happened, it was so fast she would have missed it if she’d blinked. One minute Al was standing there and the next an Allosaurus filled the room.
For a few too many heartbeats, Jenna didn’t breathe at all. And when she finally did resume breathing, it was with hard gasps of panic she tried to hold down and control.
Big. He was so damn big. From head to tail he had to be almost forty feet long. With a massive head, S-shaped neck, and short arms that ended in long claws, he wa
s a primitive killing machine. Then he opened his mouth and roared. She stared in unblinking terror at his lethal serrated teeth. Every primal instinct in her body screamed, “Run, run, run!”
She fought down the need to flee and looked, really looked, at him. There was something strange, something not quite right. Then she spotted it. Within the body of the animal was a faint human form. She couldn’t make out features, but she knew it must be Al.
“Do you believe now, Jenna?”
Fin’s voice behind her drew a startled squeak. She didn’t take her gaze from Al though. “Don’t ever creep up behind me like that again.”
“I don’t creep.”
It wasn’t worth arguing the point with him. “Yes, I believe. That’s Al inside the dinosaur, isn’t it?”
She sensed rather than saw his nod. “His soul isn’t strong enough to completely overwhelm his human form.”
“He has to have a human essence. A dinosaur couldn’t act human, even with a human body.” Jenna turned over all the impossibilities of Al’s existence.
“When Zero and his immortals returned to Earth sixty-five million years ago, I took the souls of the Eleven from their bodies and placed them in safe places, places of great power. Al was beneath Machu Picchu in Peru. They remained there until a few months ago when I called them forth again. I gave them all the knowledge they’d need to function in this time.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question. No matter how much knowledge you gave them, it wouldn’t do a bit of good if they had the brain of a dinosaur.”
“Maybe I gave them a new brain too.” His words were a soft murmur, and she didn’t imagine the humor in them.
She didn’t believe the brain claim. It was just too great a leap of belief for her human mind to grasp. “You know, you sort of give me the creeps.” Okay, so he was her host. “In a good way, of course.”
His quiet laughter was really scary. “Your intuition serves you well, Jenna Maloy.” Something about the cadence of his speech seemed wrong, not the same as his usual way of talking.
Now she did turn to look at him. Chills danced along her nerve endings. “What are you, a god? Or maybe you’re not one of the good guys at all. Do they think you’re one of them?”
His expression never changed, but Jenna got the feeling that danger stood only inches away.
“Not a god. If I were, I’d get rid of the immortals and be done with them. Good? Bad? Who knows? It’s all in your perspective.” Fin shook his head and walked away.
Bemused, Jenna turned back to the window in time to see the Allosaurus body literally dissolve in a cloud, and then Al was standing there. He started walking toward the door.
At that moment, Jenna snapped. Al was literally the last straw, or in this case, the last dinosaur. Events and voices from the past two nights were a kaleidoscope of mind-blowing, panic-inducing sights and sounds in her head. She pressed her palms against her temples to keep her brain from exploding.
He was coming. She stared as the door opened, saw him standing there, watching her, waiting for her response. Then he reached for her hand.
No, she wouldn’t let him touch her. To let him touch her was to admit that everything was true, that he harbored the soul of a millions-year-old predator, that immortals were planning to destroy mankind as a preholiday treat, that vampires and other assorted things that went chomp in the night really existed.
Jenna backed away from him, shoving her hands out in front of her to stop him from touching her. Shaking her head, she wordlessly turned and hurried away from him. This was the second time to night she’d fled. It was becoming a habit. Instinctively, she took refuge in her room. She locked the door. Not that it would stop anyone in this condo from getting in.
Time crawled. Kelly called Jenna from her cell phone, and Jenna calmly lied and said she was fine. She spent some time Googling all she could find about the Allosaurus. Her journalistic mind turned up one discrepancy in Fin’s story. He said he’d taken the souls from his dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Sure, that was the right time for the extinction event, but the Allosaurus had disappeared from Earth 145 million years ago. There was a bit of a time lapse between those two dates. Out of habit, she wrote it down in her notebook for future investigation.
She spent some more time trying to match up the names of the Eleven with their dinosaur counterparts. After all, time used on research was time not used thinking about the unthinkable.
Then she sat by her window gazing out at the real world until Kelly rapped on her door. She’d barely gotten the door open before Kelly rushed in and yanked her into a bone-crushing hug.
“I’m so sorry this all happened to you at once, sis. I should’ve stayed here, but I had to go out to night with Ty.” Something in her sister’s eyes said whatever had happened to night had been bad.
When Jenna was able to disentangle herself from Kelly, she wandered over to plunk herself on the sitting area couch. Someone had started the fire in the fireplace before she got to the room. It should’ve made her feel all cozy, but she couldn’t look into the flames without seeing the Allosaurus staring out at her, its eyes dark and predatory. She tried to see Al in those eyes, but he wasn’t there.
Kelly sat beside her but wisely remained quiet.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Sighing, Jenna finally looked at her sister.
“How, sis? How could I say that I’d fallen in love with a guy who had the soul of a T. rex? And that he’d risen from some sort of stasis so he could save mankind from a group of murderous immortals who intended to kill all humans on December twenty-first of 2012?”
Jenna nodded. Kelly was right. She wouldn’t have believed her.
“I wanted to tell you and the rest of the family, but I didn’t know how.” She looked away, her trembling hands the only clue to her emotional state.
“Al said you were the key in Houston. What did he mean?” Jenna had an idea what it meant, but she wanted to hear the full explanation from her sister’s lips.
Kelly looked at Jenna. “I don’t know how much Fin told you, but I assume it was enough for you to get the general idea of what’s at stake.”
“Yeah, between Fin and Al I know pretty much everything.” Jenna wasn’t sure she believed her own statement. Even though she worked for a tabloid, she was a good journalist, and her intuition was telling her there were still secrets to be uncovered. For example, she could’ve sworn that Al didn’t know anything about Fin’s power to wipe her memory before she’d told him. Why would Fin not tell his men that little fact?
“Back when the men were dinosaurs, Fin had these visions.”
Jenna nodded. “He told me.”
Kelly looked surprised, but then she went on. “In each vision, he saw a possible way to defeat the immortals.”
“Where did the visions come from?”
“I don’t know.” Kelly looked impatient. “Now let me finish.”
Jenna subsided.
“One of his visions showed me playing my flute, and he knew that was the way Nine could be defeated. He wasn’t sure what tune I was playing, but he knew it was music from inside me, not an ordinary tune. He finally realized it was my brain music.”
“Brain music?” Okay, this was officially at the upper end of weird.
“I had a scan made of my brain waves, and Fin had someone make it into music. Only that music would send Nine back into the cosmos.” She smiled. “In the end, it didn’t play out exactly the way Fin saw in his vision. Anyway, I was the key to Nine’s defeat. I guess there’s a different key for each of the immortals. Fin’s heavy into the power and symbolism of numbers, so each key’s success is bound up with a certain number pattern.”
In a night filled with breathtaking events, this newest revelation left Jenna speechless.
Kelly filled the silence. “The only thing that worries Fin is that his visions didn’t show the outcomes. Plus things didn’t work out with my flute exactly like his vision predicted. Fin’s a control freak�
��he doesn’t like the unpredictable.”
“I feel for him.” When in doubt, resort to sarcasm.
Her sister sighed. “What’re you going to do?”
Jenna countered with a suggestion. “Come back to Houston with me, Kelly. Stay with me until Ty gets this immortal problem straightened out.” Her plea would probably fall on deaf ears, but she had to ask anyway.
“I love him, sis. No way would I run and hide when I might be able to help him.” She bit her lip in concentration. “But I think you should go home. There’s nothing you can do here. And I’d feel guilty knowing you were in danger.” She offered Jenna a shaky smile. “I have Ty to protect me. It doesn’t get safer than that.”
Jenna nodded. “I’ll think about it.”
Kelly rose, gave her another hug, and walked to the door. She turned. “Tell Mom and Dad I’m happy, because strange as it may seem, I am.” Then she left, closing the door quietly behind her.
Jenna turned off the lights, got undressed, and climbed into bed. “Sixty-five million years ago, I had a series of visions. You were in one of them. You’re very important to the Eleven, Jenna.” She spent the few hours left of the night staring into the darkness and thinking about Fin’s words.
Just before dawn broke, someone banged on her door. She crawled out of bed to answer it. When she opened the door, Al stood glaring at her. He’d pulled on a T-shirt, and his jeans rode low on his hips. She sighed. This wouldn’t be a happy visit.
His hair was a tangled glory falling over his shoulders, and those hazel eyes had a wild look to them. “I’ve done some heavy thinking, and I’ve come to a conclusion.”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me what it is.” No, she wouldn’t invite him in.
He leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms over his spectacular chest. “You need to go home.”
“No.”
“You won’t be safe here.”
“No.”
“We can take care of your sister.”
“I’m sure you can. But the answer is still no.”
He was all frustrated male. “Why the hell would you want to stay?”
