Matchmaker Abduction: Aliens In Kilts, Abduction 1

by Donna McDonald

  Erin sniffled and rose. She put a restraining hand on Toorg’s arm. “It’s okay, Toorg. Don’t hurt the bastard. Angus is always a fecking arse to me. I didn’t expect anything less.”

  Angus barely held steady when Toorg leaned down to him and narrowed his gaze. He thought he felt a beam of something enter through one of his eyes. The man made a throaty growl sound and in it was a warning.

  Angus nodded as he held the boy’s gaze. “Okay, lad. Yer meaning is clear enough. I’m sorry I made her cry.”

  After hearing the apology, the guard eased away and turned to look at Erin who was wiping her eyes.

  Erin sniffled as she wiped her eyes with her hand. “It wasn’t ya that made me cry, Angus. I’m actually glad to see ya made it after all. It’s the stress of this place that makes me want to curl up in a ball and bawl my eyes out every moment, but I don’t because that won’t change anything. We’re stuck here in this oblivion between life and the great ever after.”

  Angus shook his head. “What in bloody hell are ya going on about?”

  “Nothing you’d understand yet.” Erin looked around. “Did Nate say ya could leave?”

  “He said I could when ya came to get me. Since when are ya the boss of me, Erin O’Shea?”

  Erin nodded, too emotionally tired to take offense at Angus’s unfair chastisement.

  “I’ll show ya our quarters and have some dinner brought to us. We’re fecking celebrities here with all kinds of help at our beck and call. Once you have some food, it might improve yer disposition enough to listen to me. Ya won’t believe half of what I got to tell ya, but ya need to listen so ya won’t be caught unaware.”

  “How long was I in that glass box they cooked me in until I was skinny?” Angus demanded.

  “Just over a month,” Erin replied.

  “I don’t like it here. I’d like to take a walk and get the lay of this place before I settle in anywhere.”

  Erin shook her head. “Toorg and Berg—our guards—won’t let ya wander around just yet. I wouldn’t challenge them in yer weakened condition if I were ya, they have those same devices Agent Black used on us. Nate explained how it worked to me, but I still don’t really get the idea. I just know the device works on aliens too. Apparently, we’re to find that reassuring. Since the aliens are perfectly nice to me, I don’t understand that either.”

  Angus huffed. “Ya seem awfully cozy with old Nate.”

  Erin lifted her chin. “The man’s been kind and helpful. Without him, I’d have gone insane by now. Are ya ready to leave or not? Medical places always give me the willies.”

  Angus frowned. If he didn’t get hold of his temper, Erin would soon stop being kind. He’d pushed her past that point before. “I heard about yer missing beau dying in some military field hospital.”

  Erin huffed as she moved to the door. “He wasn’t missing. I knew exactly where he was. I just gave up on that fecking jack the moment he told me he was leaving. I hate medical places because I lost a baby in one once. I can only think of loss in places like this.”

  “Ya lost a babe? When was that? I don’t remember it,” Angus declared.

  “Of course ya don’t,” Erin said snidely. “Mary and ya were cranking out yer own still. Why would ya know about my losses? The father didn’t even know I was carrying his babe. Instead of staying to see what became of us, he left me to fight in his precious army for causes he couldn’t explain to either of us. He died for his fecking army too. Not all of us find happily ever after like you, Angus. Not even real matchmakers.”

  The guard glared at him when Erin walked ahead, her neck bowed with the weight of memories she probably didn’t allow herself often. He now felt like a right bastard for bringing all that up, especially when he had no idea what she’d endured while he’d been in the box. He glared at it as they left and then cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry for upsetting ya, Erin. I’m cranky from what I went through and mad that I let them take us from our home. I don’t like feeling this helpless, but that’s no reason to be mean to ya.”

  Angus glanced at the man walking beside him. Toorg, the guard, nodded once, obviously approving of his tone. He had no idea if the man understood his words or not.

  Erin nodded, but kept her gaze focused on where they were going. She well knew the way by now and didn’t need Toorg to guide her.

  “I don’t like feeling helpless either, but you’re going to encounter a lot of that here. Director John, one of those in charge, told Nate to tell us he’d explain the situation to us both when yer healing was done. One thing is certain though, whatever they have to say, they won’t be discussing us going back. Nate said our journey here was a one way trip. He said we were needed here more than back home. He quit talking to me about the subject when I accused them all of playing God with us. For a pagan, I guess it was a cheap shot, but I was ripe to get back at them for making me feel like this.”

  Angus touched the back of her arm to slow her walk. Erin turned to look at him, but in her face was defeat and she did not wear it well. “I’m awake now, Erin. We’ll deal with the reality of whatever it is they say.”

  Erin rolled her eyes before she glared. “What the feck do ya think I’ve been doing since I woke up here without ya, Angus? Not all of us got to sip from the fountain of youth for a month. Some of us had to get by the same way we always do. For yer information, I’ve made my own fecking way here.”

  Pulling her arm from his, the woman who never failed to churn him up, walked away from him mumbling Gaelic curses under her breath. Probably some pagan shit too. Angus frowned at her back.

  “I am Toorg,” the man beside him said sadly.

  Angus nodded. “Pleasure to meet ya, Toorg. I guess I’m a horse’s arse, but ya can just call me Angus.”

  Chapter Five

  Their quarters turned out to be a multi-room suite with a private showering room all their own. Though he didn’t feel dirty, Angus still indulged in the ritual of getting clean—the only normal thing he’d noticed so far.

  He wrapped himself in a towel when he was done, careful not to look in the fogged up mirror over the sink. It was hard to enjoy what he’d become when he endlessly recalled what too friendly Nate had said about all the diseases he’d been carrying around.

  How many years would he have lived in illness and pain if he hadn’t been intending to end things with his pistol? Not too fecking many, he’d guess. Talk about getting a second chance.

  But what kind of price was he going to be expected to pay for becoming the youthful man he was again?

  There were two bedrooms in their quarters and Erin had laid an early claim to one of them. Angus suspected she was sitting in the small common area at the table he’d spied earlier, no doubt waiting for the food she’d ordered to arrive. He grudgingly admitted it was a comfort to him that Erin knew her way around this strange place already.

  In his room, he’d found some clothing resembling pants, but they had elastic around the ankles and cloth fasteners that wrapped at the waist. Nothing seemed to need buttons or zippers to stay closed. The shirts were soft and comfortable. He didn’t find any underwear, but that was no hardship to a man used to a kilt. His naked cock lounging lazily against his leg felt more reassuring anyway.

  When he came out, Erin was sitting exactly where he’d imagined. Her eyes were closed, but they popped open at his approach. Her gaze swept up and down him, and up again before looking away.

  “No matter how hard I fecking look for the mature man I knew, you still look younger than even me,” she said tiredly.

  “What is yer problem with the way I look? I look about yer age now,” he answered.

  Erin scarcely nodded before there was a knock on the door. Angus watched as she rose and went to answer, opening it wide for a white coated fellow rolling in a cart. He spoke in a language he’d bet Erin didn’t understand a whit of, but nevertheless, there she was nodding and smiling like she understood everything.

  The man kept b
owing over and over. He put his hands together like he was praying and bowed again. Erin imitated his praying hands gesture and bowed back, never once betraying herself for the confessed pagan he knew her to be.

  A corner of his mouth tilted as he smirked. Ya had to give the woman credit for making the best of things. He’d long ago pegged Erin for a complainer, but now he wondered if he’d been too hasty in his assumptions. She’d managed to adapt to their capture and to keep tabs on him. If all it had cost her was bowing to cooks and being friendly to giants with small brains, they should both probably count themselves lucky.

  Erin leaned her head out the door as the food deliverer left and called to someone he couldn’t see at first.

  “Hello, Berg,” she said.

  “Berg is here,” the giant said succinctly, leaning around the doorway and smiling down at Erin.

  Angus swore under his breath, keeping it to where Erin wouldn’t hear. Like Toorg, this guard seemed no dummy either, even though his words made him sound more than a few marbles short of a whole bag. The giant’s gaze briefly darted across the room to him, so Angus nodded once to acknowledge him male to male.

  “Thank ya for guarding me, Berg. I feel very safe with ya around,” he heard Erin say.

  The giant couldn’t have beamed any harder at Erin. Angus snorted, but kept the sound mostly to himself. He wasn’t sure what kind of hearing the big bastards had.

  Friendliness done at last, he watched as Erin closed the door gently. She let out the frustrated breath she’d been holding in and then pushed their food cart over to their table. Lifting some sort of metal cover off one of the two containers on it, she put the dish beneath it in front of him. It smelled good at least, but then he was about as hungry as it was possible to be. They hadn’t provided any food the entire time he’d been awake.

  “It’s all vegetables and strange plants, but tasty. Nate said their plants were propagated to be high in protein. Eating animals is not done here except by the extremely impoverished because they’ve known for a long time that eating meat shortens yer life. That’s all fine and well, if ya ask me, but I think I might be willing to sacrifice a few years for a nice leg of lamb now and then. I’ve been a month on this food and not once gone to bed with a contented belly.”

  Angus chuckled at the first genuine bitching Erin had done. Yet it was only at the small things, not the big ones, like having to tolerate the giants following her everywhere. He wouldn’t burden her with his thoughts about them yet. He’d save that for the mysterious Director John or the conniving Nate.

  “Anything to eat is welcome at the moment. But I probably need to go easy on the food until I know what they’ve done to me.”

  Erin nodded. She sat down with her own plate. “Nate said I would see a change in myself once I’d consumed enough of their diet. He said to allow six months before I come see him about things. Whatever it was they did to ya, they could have done it to me as well, but didn’t because I was not advanced in age enough. He said I would start to age more slowly here in Universe 1 anyway. I suppose that’s a bit of a silver lining to our cloud.”

  “Are they that invested in having long lives?” Angus asked.

  “I believe they are. Their population is a lot smaller than you might imagine. Bad aliens attacked Universe 1 some 500 years ago and they brought with them a sickness that wiped out two-thirds of all the people on the planet. So now they take very good care of themselves and any children they have. And apparently, they take care of where we come from too. No universe connected to the Earth is allowed to end because no one quite knows what that kind of change will bring. Agent Black, and those like him, police the balance on behalf of some group they refer to as the Guardians. They do their policing work through the same machine the aliens use to come and go. I get the impression the aliens don’t know about how the agents are using it. That’s one of just many secrets here in this strange place.”

  “Ya must know that all that sounds like some big story ya are spinning.”

  Erin nodded. “I well know it. It sounds like one to my own ears, even after living it for a while.”

  She drifted off in her storytelling and Angus let it happen. His mind was on overload anyway.

  They ate in silence while he thought hard about why they were being treated well when it was clear from Toorg outside the door that they were prisoners. Instinct, combined with the guard’s massive size, sent a clear message that Toorg wasn’t going to let them do anything they weren’t allowed to do.

  Someone Toorg’s size could easily enforce anything he needed to. Angus was no small man himself, and in his youth had made extra money tossing drunken buggers out of Paddy’s. All pondering the size and girth of their guard brought him was the clear thought that Erin had taken the proper course in playing along.

  “So what have ya been doing with yerself while I was cooking in the box?”

  Erin shrugged and continued eating. Finally, she rested her fork. She dreaded the explosion her revelation would cause, but she couldn’t handle lying to Angus the way she did to everyone else. “I’ve been matchmaking,” she finally said.

  Angus’s fork froze halfway to his mouth. He stared at her and blinked.

  She rolled her eyes over his reaction. “Do ya really think I would fecking make that up just to see that stunned look on yer face? And don’t be getting pissy at me for being the messenger either. Eat yer food and take it in, because every word is the fecking truth. That’s what they brought us here for, Angus. The old matchmakers who used to do the work are both dead.”

  Perhaps he’d get angry later. For the moment, surprise had rendered him mute. Angus let the fork with the food on it find his mouth, but he tasted nothing. He even lifted another bite and chewed that too. Then he sat the fork down. He’d honestly thought Nate had been telling him a tall tale.

  “Who the feck are ya matching up?” Angus asked tightly, trying not to yell the question. Erin’s glare said she knew him too well. She knew what was under that irritated tone.

  “I’m matching up shirtless, muscled aliens with troubled women this group is exploiting. The women’s stories are dire and every single one of them would be dead if they hadn’t put themselves in this fecking program. Instead of fixing the real problems of the women, these power mad peckerheads are bartering them to aliens as brides. This bunch has woven quite the story about how wonderful being abducted is, so the women in the program are mostly jubilant. I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Are the aliens all like Toorg and Berg? I can’t imagine having a conversation with someone who answers in the same sentence over and over.”

  Erin snorted. “Those two are more eloquent than they appear. Toorg has an emotional range as wide as yers. Berg doesn’t bother with much inflection, but then he seems to have a few more sentences in his vocabulary.”

  “Erin… I’ve seen ya resist a helping hand to carry a load of peat to yer fire. If ya think they’re doing something wrong, why are ya helping them?” Angus asked, going back to his food.

  “Because I’m not sure this isn’t all normal here,” Erin explained, spreading her hands. “Plus those girls are so green about men.” She thought of sad Prudence. “Well, most of them are green. There is the occasional one who’s just here because life has dealt very poorly with her.”

  “And I can see ya are attached to those already,” Angus concluded, seeing determination in her eyes. “Ya never were neutral about yer customers, Erin.”

  “No, I wasn’t, because I actually gave a shit about who they ended up with… unlike some I know. If it hadn’t been for me, ya would have matched yer own daughter with that married pervert from Dublin. The ghost of Mary MacNamara would have come back for me if I’d let ya do that to her first born girl.”

  Angus grunted. She had a point about that one, but she didn’t have to keep rubbing his nose in his worst mistake. “He wasn’t all that bad as a person. He just wasn’t right for my Lorrie.”

  “He was already ma
rried to another, Angus. It doesn’t get much worse than that for someone of yer religion, now does it? The Dubliner wanted a young girl to play with until he’d ruined her. Not all fecking men are as good as ya. I’ll not be having matched those kind up on my conscience. Brighid strike me dead if I ever start going that way.”

  Angus nodded solemnly. He’d forgotten about the Dubliner being married. It had happened years ago.

  “Had I ever thanked ya for finding Joshua for her? The lad has made her very happy over the years. They were the first to get with a babe. I remember he was over the moon with joy about it, and the same with the babes that followed.”

  Erin snorted. “Thanked me? No. Ya never thanked me for anything I did to help, Angus. All ya ever did was accuse me of meddling in yer important affairs.”

  “Have I always been a contrary bastard to ya?” Angus asked, wincing when he realized he’d opened himself to be flayed with her answer. Erin surprised him by ducking her head.

  “No,” she said. “At times, I thought ya were the kindest man ever to walk the Earth in any universe, but…”

  Angus blinked hard as he took the last bite of his strangely filling dinner. He set down his fork for good. “What am I hearing at the end there? But… but what?”

  Erin lifted her chin. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot because everyone here has memories of the ones like us who’ve now died. The Angus here died of old age, which apparently no one can fight forever—cooking box or not. His Erin died within the week that followed of nothing they could identify. It’s assumed she died from grieving his loss. Our other selves weren’t just matchmakers. They were the perfect match. They were legendary lovers that inspired those in this universe to find love themselves.”

  “I’m not so far along in my strangeness that I think I’m the man who died here. Whoever he was—he wasn’t me. And ya are not the woman, Erin O’Shea. I can’t speak for ya in the matter, but I will never forget that most of my life happened somewhere else and with different people.”