by Cathryn Cade
* * *
E'ea held up one of Brynne's slender hands, palm out, and projected calm.
Grayson Stark's mouth closed and his face relaxed, the furrow smoothing out between his dark, masculine brows.
He was considered an attractive, virile male by humans, particularly Brynne. His rejection earlier had hurt the human female deeply, and bewildered her. This was E'ea's fault—she should not have attempted to bring Brynne out of her stasis so soon.
It had seemed worth it to connect with Grayson's empathy and male protectiveness, but that had failed, as had her attempt to withhold information from him. He was stubborn, intelligent and hostile.
To gain his cooperation, E'ea must reveal the truth.
"Please," she said again. "Listen. First of all ... I am not Brynne. I am merely inhabiting her body for a time."
Grayson Stark opened his mouth, scowling again. Well, on to the next stage of revelation. E'ea projected her energy, sending a pulse strong enough to emanate visible evidence of her essence from her host's eyes and even her facial pores.
This worked well. Grayson backed away, his eyes widening, mouth dropping open. He stopped only when he was forced to by the kitchen workspace.
"Y-you—" He swiped his mouth with a shaking hand. "You're glowing.”
“Yes.”
He swallowed, his throat working. “You say you’re ... inhabiting Brynne?" he croaked, his voice nearly matching hers. "What are you ... a—a ghost of some kind? That’s it, right? She did die, and you grabbed her body."
"You are partially correct," she said. "I am not a ghost, or spirit of a dead human. I am E'ea. I am from a world so far away your scientists only suspect that it supports life forms. I am a Galactic Guardian." And new enough in the role that the announcement filled her with an extra glow of pride.
"Oh, my God, you really are an alien. So you're here to ... what—kill someone?" His gaze flickered toward the nearest aperture in the walls. “Or suck brains, or something?”
Hmm. E'ea recalled from her research that females on this planet occasionally killed males for ending a relationship with them, although it was more commonly the rejected males who killed. Perhaps he believed that Brynne had returned to end his life. As for ‘sucking brains’, that she did not get at all. Was that a thing here? She had not come across it in her research on modern humans.
"No, I come in peace." She snickered. "I've always wanted to say that. But I digress. I am here as a guardian, Grayson. I am here to guard you."
He shook his head, the furrow back between his brows. "No, forget me for now. Talk about Brynne. Where has she—have you been?"
E'ea sent energy swirling across the table to Gray's chair. It slid across the floor toward him, and he winced as it struck the back of his calves. "Perhaps you should sit down for this part, Grayson."
Gray sat. "Wait. Are you ... are you gonna take her with you somewhere? Like in that old movie … Cocoon, that was the name. You can leave, but you have to leave her here.”
E'ea emanated humor again, but stopped herself before it manifested as a laugh from her hostess. That would be most inappropriate at this time.
"No," she said. "I will not take your Brynne away. This I swear to you. I have brought her back to you, and I will keep her safe until the danger passes." Or she would perish trying.
"What danger?" He shook his head, pale under his tan. “You—Topper—everyone’s warning me of danger. But there can’t be any danger to me here—I’m safe here. Brynne’s the one who died.”
E'ea focused on him, and monitored. Heartbeat heavy, respiration ragged, skin clammy, body temperature lowered. Now was not the time to tell him Brynne had died because of him. Not because of their argument, but because of something much darker.
She floated the container of enchiladas toward him. As he lifted his hands automatically to catch it in one hand, she attempted to send him an eating utensil. He caught the fork just before it whacked him on the cheek, and glowered at her.
She really must practice more—Earth's gravity was so different from her home.
"Consume a portion of nutrition," she ordered. "Your biological system is reacting similarly to Brynne's. Therefore, you must be low on nutrients and thus energy, as well."
He shrugged and shoveled up a bite. While he ate, she eyed the other container. "What is this substance?"
"Salad," Grayson mumbled around a mouthful of enchilada. "You live on the stuff."
Ah, Brynne enjoyed salad. E'ea opened her mouth to levitate a small bite. Then she caught sight of Grayson staring at her, his face tight. "Sorry. I will consume as you do."
Gray shook his head, but he took another large bite and chewed. She had been correct about that, he was hungry.
She ate more salad, using her fork the way he did. "This cold vegetation is surprisingly tasty," she said. "Your planet holds many surprises."
Gray reached for the half-empty container of yeasty-smelling beverage on the table, and took a drink. "What do you usually, ah, consume?"
He was humoring her. The look in his eyes said he did not believe her story.
"My race does not consume nutrition in solid form as you do. We absorb it from our atmosphere." She frowned at the salad. "Have I consumed enough nutrition to sustain Brynne through your rest cycle? Her digestive system feels quite full, yet I am ... unsatisfied."
"Oh, you’re—or she’s—probably thirsty," Gray said. He rose and grabbed a tall glass cylinder from the cupboard, held it under a metal tube to fill it with clear water and handed it to her. "Here. Drink up."
She eyed the glass, then his beer, then began to tip the glass up the way he had the bottle.
"No!" Gray reached forward in warning. "You'll spill it all over yourself."
But E'ea used centrifugal energy to spin the water out in a slender stream, and into Brynne's waiting mouth. She swallowed several times, and then set the glass down, sighing. "Ah, that is better. Brynne's body feels satisfied for the moment."
She looked around the kitchen, scanning the equipment, storage space, available places to shelter, and the danger zones such as thin brittle windows, easily opened door and sharp objects. "Nutritional preparation requires a great deal of effort for your people, as well as storage space. Do you procure food materials daily?"
Gray set the empty enchilada container on the table and shoved back his hair, which hung to his collar in blond disarray. "Not every day. I'll need to shop tomorrow."
She nodded. "Ah, you will gather your food staples from a storage facility?"
"Grocery store." He drained his beer, and then crossed his arms and regarded her.
"I will accompany you." Numerous other humans would no doubt be present. The assassin could disguise as one of them.
Gray gave her a look. "Not unless you've got a suitcase or two out on the porch. You can't go out in public wearing just my shirts. And with your hair all..." He twirled his fingers next to his own head, grimacing at Brynne's hair, which was now cleaner, but still not in its normal state. "What happened, they toss you in the weeds, or something?"
It was true, E'ea was uncertain she would be able to cleanse the detritus from Brynne's hair, even with repeated washings.
But he was asking for more crucial information. "Grayson, are you certain you want to know the details of Brynne’s fate?"
He scowled at her. "Of course I want to know. I thought you were dead. Ever since that night I've believed you drove your car off the road at Dead Drop cliff and into the lake. Too deep to get down and there and pull you and your car out—but the marks were there where a car went over—not to mention your bumper laying there on the verge, so we all knew you went in there."
He closed his eyes, shaking his head, and made a visible effort to calm himself. "Just ... tell me what you did. And why you'd let me—and everyone else—believe you were dead."
"Very well. I will show you. Not here, though. Let us move to your soft-surfaced furnishings."
"You mean the sitti
ng room? Why?"
"So that if you become faint, your skull will not strike the hard surface of your kitchen floor. That might cause an injury to you, and I am already quite occupied healing Brynne's body. I do not wish to add healing you to my task. It may consume more energy than I can spare." Especially with a battle coming.
Gray shook his head. “I’m not gonna faint. Not some fragile emo dude.”
“Nevertheless.”
He followed her into the sitting room, and sat where she gestured, on his Gran's sofa, a faded, burgundy apparatus that sagged in the middle. When E'ea perched beside him, she had to balance to keep from tipping into his lap. Gray leaned back and waited, his cynical look saying he expected her to speak again, and that he would not believe her.
Thus, she must do more than speak. She tucked her rapidly drying hair behind one delicate ear and looked him in the eyes. "Gray-son, Brynne is resting. She will remain so until I have ascertained she is healed enough to wake. But I have accessed all her memories. Now, instead of attempting to convince you any longer, I will take you into her memories of the night she died."
He looked even more skeptical. "Really? And how're you gonna do that?"
"Like this, Gray-son."
Reaching out slowly, she placed one of Brynne's slim hands on his forehead, palm flat. Under the hot, silky layer of his hair and skin, his skull was hard. She sent energy deeper, opened a conduit between Brynne and herself, and then Grayson.
She couldn't convince him by speaking, so she would show him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Brynne’s memories were like finding himself in a garden made of Chihuly glass formations—beautiful, fanciful and glittering with dangerous, breakable shards.
Through her eyes, Gray stared at himself. Is that really how she saw him?
He stood in the open front door of his house, lamplight pouring out behind him, gilding him with light until he looked like that dude who played Thor, all master of his castle. He wore dark jeans, boots and a gray dress shirt, the sleeves pushed up over his forearms. His hair was shoved behind his ears, and he wore the gray diamond ear stud he’d bought with his first commission.
His arms were crossed over his chest, and he was … hell, he was sneering at her, his eyes glittering with displeasure. ‘Not a good look, dude’, Gray wanted to tell himself, except that Brynne’s emotions were battering at him.
She was a tumult of anger and despair, swelling until she could no longer contain them. Tears were flowing, along with words she normally never allowed herself to say.
“I’m done, Gray,” she screamed at him from her stance in the middle of the sweep of pavement in front of his garage. “I am through, do you hear me? Through trying to please you. I’ve done everything to make us work, and you … you’ve done nothing. The great Grayson Stark, a law unto himself. Living alone because no one else is good enough to share his exalted world. You don’t need a woman, you need a—a robot.”
“Is that what you were trying to be?” Gray’s old self said. “Gotta say, you’re well on the road to success, babe. Which is why we don’t work, and never will. Christ, Brynne—no real man wants a woman who twists herself into a knot trying to be what he wants. Learn to be yourself, and then find a man who wants the real you. Maybe I would’ve liked her, if I’d ever had the chance to meet her and not a plastic facade.”
His words slashed deep, tearing like blades through the thin veneer of her self-worth, until she was reduced to the old Brynne—shy, chubby and tongue-tied. Brynne shook her head, and retreated, bumping against the side of her little Toyota sedan.
“Oh, I hope you meet your real woman,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I hope you do. And I hope she treats you exactly the way you’ve treated me—like you’re not good enough. Like you’ll never be enough man for her. And then you’ll really be alone, Grayson Stark.”
He said something else, but she didn’t hear him through the cacophony in her head—sobbing breaths, old voices and over them all the words he’d said to her earlier that evening, after they said goodbye to the other two couples who’d been there for the dinner she’d prepared.
“Brynne, we need to talk. I can’t keep doing this with you. It’s not working for me.” That's what he'd said to her—her dream man. Her one and only.
She flung herself into her car, pressed the ignition, backed around in a screech of tires and protesting motor, and then hit the gas pedal, barreling away down his dark driveway, racing down through the trees, skidding around the twists and turns in his disgusting excuse for a driveway. Not caring for once that the pretty little Camry she’d worked so hard to buy was going to be scraped on the rocks, bumps and the tree she scraped when she hit the paved road at the bottom of the hill and accelerated out onto without even looking for other cars.
Gray’s deep voice blended with the wine she’d drunk and the other voices from her past that were always reminding her she had to be better, slimmer, prettier, happier. Her father, Gray, and too many others in between.
‘You’re not good enough, Brynne … not good enough for me to stay with you and your mom … not good enough to be my date for the prom … not good enough to be my girlfriend … … not good enough.”
She was out on the road, tears streaming down, blinding her so that the eerie glow around the bend in the road didn’t register at first, until she drove around the steep turn and the glow expanded, turned acid bright and green and so bright she was blinded, didn’t know where the road was, and her car was swerving the wrong way, thumping over something that wasn’t the road and then sailing out—too smooth and easy, this wasn’t road it was thin air—and then down, down, down and she opened her mouth on a thin wail of terror as she realized what was happening. The air bag smacked her in the face, thumping the back of her head hard against the seat and dazed, all she could do was lie there, panting shallowly as water glugged and bubbled around the car and she sank down, down into cold darkness.
“No,” she whimpered as icy water flooded in around her. “No … Gray. Gray … “
"No! Brynne, no!" Gray opened his eyes and sucked in air with a huge gasp, shoving himself off the sofa.
He was halfway across the living room before he came back to himself. He stared around him at the small, familiar room full of happy childhood memories—photos of him with his family, all of them smiling, and had to brace his hands against the wall to stay on his feet.
“Brynne,” he choked, sorrow and guilt flooding him until his chest ached with the effort of holding it in. “Oh, my God. She was so goddamn fragile … such a freaking mess.”
He shoved himself upright and turned, swiping at his wet eyes as he stared at the slender, pretty woman still perched on the sofa.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, meaning it more than he’d meant anything in a long time. He’d been a royal shit to her. Gah, so self-righteous as he told her to be herself, like he had any idea who she really was, or what she'd gone through to become the woman she thought she had to be to hold onto him.
And meanwhile, she’d really believed she was in love with him.
“I’m certain you are sorry,” Brynne’s inhabitant said in her flat voice. “But I am not Brynne. Perhaps you can speak with her again tomorrow, and say this to her.”
Gray dropped into the armchair across from the sofa and stared at her—them with new eyes.
“You really aren’t Brynne,” he muttered. “You really are a—a guardian.” And she’d taken him inside Brynne’s memories, inside her heart. Her fragile, wounded heart, still so ready to give.
He gave a deep shuddering sigh and scrubbed his hands over his eyes. “So … why are you here again?”
“To save you both.”
"You saved her." He fumbled for words. "But … how did you … how did you do it?"
"Bring her back to life?"
"Yeah, that."
"I used my energy. Beings of my race are able to interface our energy with more … primitive beings and affect your l
ife force. More than that, I will not say."
"Afraid we'll use it?" he muttered, a shaft of dark humor puncturing his gloom.
She gave him a dry look.
“No. I am not concerned about you or other humans using the method, because you do not have the capabilities, nor will you at any time in the foreseeable future. Cloning and cyborg tech, yes. Re-animation, no.”
CHAPTER SIX
Gray opened his eyes and stared blankly. Where was he? Flowered pillowcase and sheets, walls of soft apricot, and a nightstand with a clock, a small bronze of a Navaho woman and a paperback mystery. Oh, right, his Gran’s house in Magic.
He stretched and then grimaced. Man, that had been one helluva nightmare. Good to wake and realize it wasn’t real after all ... Then memory flooded back and he dropped his head face first into the pillow and groaned. Wrong—it was real, and it had happened.
But how had he gotten to bed? The last thing he remembered was sitting on the sofa in the sitting room, his mind reverberating with shock, horror and grief as Brynne’s alien took her hand away after dropping him into the deep end of Brynne’s memories of the night she died.
Brynne. She was here, in this house … unless she’d disappeared as suddenly as she came.
He sat up, tossed back the covers and bolted to his feet. At least he was still clothed in jeans and tee, and his socks. He padded into the hallway, listening carefully. Quiet.
He walked to the door of the spare room, but it was empty, then turned back toward the sitting room. She was there, on the sofa … or over it, anyway. Gray froze in mid-yawn, the hair standing up on the back of his neck.
Brynne sat cross-legged, hands on her thighs in a yoga pose, her eyes closed. Floating, several inches above the sofa.
Okay, then. He was still in the weird zone, and it had all happened, the night before, just the way he remembered it.
