Paired Objective: Matched Desire, Book 2

by Clare Murray

  “Should we be?” Russ retorted.

  “Weapons aren’t allowed in the ring, per long-standing rules.” Snake Eyes jerked his head to motion them after him as he began to walk. As they caught up with him, one gold-capped tooth glittered as he opened his mouth again. “Outside the ring is where it’s really no-holds-barred. Ought to keep my mouth shut about that, but…I hope you’re coming prepared.”

  * * * * *

  Abby couldn’t figure out whether Snake Eyes was trying to be helpful or intimidating. As they walked, she settled upon his message as a friendly warning. She didn’t miss his almost imperceptible nod to Katya as they passed her in the courtyard. A scrawny boy ran by, herding the last of the hens into their coop for the night.

  Katya was on her knees tending to a potted plant—radishes, by the look of it. As they passed, she stripped off her gardening gloves and threw them atop a small pile of other gloves. Most were in small or medium sizes—certainly none would fit Russ or Cam, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to assume that women and children did the gardening around here.

  Other people were migrating across the courtyard in the same direction, including two men carrying a case of what looked to be recently scavenged beer. Abby remembered drinking a Corona with a lime, her first sneaky beer as an underage drinker. Limes were pretty much a thing of the past now. So were beer snobs.

  One of the Twins placed a hand between her shoulders as they exited the courtyard, propelling her forward when she would have balked at the sight before her. Evidently, the fights were hosted smack dab against the boundary wall. It reared above them in concrete glory, studded here and there with exposed rebar. Barbed wire gleamed atop it. Two sentry towers, simple, wooden affairs, already had guards inside who were scanning the horizon for impending alien attack.

  And yet life went on down here as if the threat outside barely existed. Abby rolled her eyes to the night sky. Humans were so stupidly self-absorbed.

  “Get yourselves seats if you want,” was Snake Eye’s parting shot to them. He strode off toward the makeshift ring. Behind it, in prime viewing position, lounged Uther. The man hadn’t missed their appearance—he’d chosen not to acknowledge it. Abby narrowed her eyes. Asshole behavior clearly wasn’t limited to Headquarters.

  Also, she figured the leader’s lack of greeting didn’t bode well for them. Had she been alone, she would have found a way to hightail it out of here. With the Twins at her side, however, she felt fairly secure. They were two of the most dangerous-looking men she’d ever encountered. When Russ had peered at her inside the wrecked control room at Headquarters, she’d instantly known that he was nobody to tangle with.

  It was almost daunting to know they lusted after her.

  Abby hadn’t lied though—she needed touch, had always craved it. Not necessarily sexual touch either. She missed being able to lean against a friendly shoulder while watching a movie, go for a walk holding someone’s hand, or enjoy a simple hug. Sure, she and Callum had done their fair share of making out, finally consummating their relationship in a fortified basement. He’d been a fine young man, solid and dependable.

  Still, he couldn’t have held a candle to the Twins.

  Abby swallowed guiltily. That was enough of that line of thinking. Callum had died five years ago. He’d deserved more than a roadside burial and a makeshift cross.

  When Russ put his arm around her to guide her to a seat, she nearly jumped. Why must their every touch provoke her? She couldn’t seem to get enough of both men, and that meant things were moving downright fast, because she barely knew them. She perched on a rough-hewn seat in between both men, feeling absurdly taken care of despite their surroundings.

  She leaned into Cam as he shifted in his seat, and he put his arm around her waist. Near them, seats were filling quickly. People came quietly out of the woodwork, looking wary as opposed to excited, although there were smiles here and there. Nobody sat directly in front or behind them, and the seats right next to the Twins went unfilled.

  One of the men behind Uther went over to fetch more beer from a stash kept carefully away from the general public. A few heads turned, watching him refill Uther’s glass, and some people muttered under their breaths. There was a keg of what looked and smelled like low-quality moonshine. Most of the crowd had availed themselves of that. Still—moonshine versus quality beer? Us versus them?

  No wonder the mood was tense, restless.

  “All right, fuckers!” Uther stood, brandishing his half-empty glass like a sword. He swayed a tiny bit but quickly shored himself up as every head turned to him. A strategically placed solar light illuminated his face, revealing yellowing teeth as he grinned at the crowd. Around the ring, four oilcans held burning wood, sending smoke spiraling into the sky. It was full night now, no trace of sun.

  “All right!” Uther repeated. “We came for fights, and we’re gonna get that, you dig? But first, one of the fights I been having is with myself. I been thinking the government’s looking at what we have and coveting it for themselves!”

  His henchmen erupted in a loud roar, easily eclipsing the anemic cheering from the general crowd. Uther looked around, calculating. Then his gaze settled upon the Twins.

  “Twins!” he barked. “They sent Twins to scope us out! Now tell me the government don’t want no piece of what I got!”

  Another roar, an oddly rumbling one this time. Abby frowned at the sky, wondering… Meanwhile, Uther gulped his beer and bellowed over it, pointing in their direction.

  “Two spies, you dig? What do we do with spies?”

  “We kill them!” The shouts went up from Uther’s men, but there were a few pumped-up people in the general crowd as well. Faces reddened by the rapidly dying sunlight looked toward them in a frenzy of excitement. Only Snake Eyes seemed reserved, still hovering directly behind Uther.

  “We make ’em fight, first.” Uther waved a hand in the air for quiet.

  He got none. The air itself was vibrating. “Who left a fucking generator on?” he demanded.

  “That’s not a generator,” Russ said, his baritone voice carrying easily over any murmur. “That’s the sound of magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters heading our way. In other words—there’s a spaceship coming.”

  Only the tightening of his hand on Abby’s knee gave away the man’s stress. He continued to survey the crowd while Cam scanned the skies.

  Abby didn’t know where to look. The encroaching darkness at the edges of the oilcan fires seemed oppressive. Fleeing into it no longer seemed a viable choice.

  “Bullshit!” Uther shot back. “Conspiracy bullshit.”

  But even his gaze was drawn to the sky as a squat gray ship broke cloud cover to sail directly above them. It flew so low it would have grazed tall buildings—had there been any nearby. Fortunately, it was on course to touch down outside the walls. That knowledge—and shock—held everyone still. Waiting.

  With a loud hiss and a distant thump, the ship landed. Abby couldn’t tell where, only that it was nearby—probably in the fields just beyond the wall. She rose, every muscle knotted with fear. No spaceships had flown since the first battles of the Invasion. And that one wasn’t a human ship. What the hell was going on?

  Were the rumors true? Abby gripped the rough edge of her seat, stomach roiling. Had someone managed to wake several ships of dormant aliens? Even worse, could they be female Barks?

  “Hey! We have a fight to witness.” Uther slurred the last two words, then recovered, shouting even louder. “I challenge one of the Twins to fight my champion, Snake Eyes!”

  The crowd, on its feet now, warily turned its attention back to their drunken leader, who held that attention by dint of the gun in his hands. He leveled the weapon on Russ.

  The Twin’s gaze turned deadly as he stared into the slightly wavering black muzzle. Abby drew breath to suggest they run, but before she could expel it, a shot rang out, whi
ning near her head.

  “Down!” Russ scooped her up and hit the ground, rolling so that she was cushioned against him. Two more shots split the air. Abby swore, trying to claw her way from under Russ, but the man was unyielding—and far too strong for her to break away from. She was trapped.

  “Stay down,” he snapped through the screaming of others. His command froze her for a short time—perhaps a minute, but her stuttering mind couldn’t seem to count past thirty. When a fourth gunshot cracked out, she was done being still.

  The smell of smoke and dirt hit the back of her throat. Panic struck her in the gut, hard enough to send her struggling blindly against the man holding her. She had to get away from here, had to find somewhere safe from both bullets and aliens—if that were even possible.

  The moment before she truly lost it, Russ lifted her into his arms. The change of perspective was so dizzying that she flung her arms around his neck out of reflex. Over his shoulder, she saw two forms slumped at the foot of Uther’s erstwhile throne.

  One was Uther himself. The other corpse wore boots she recognized as belonging to Snake Eyes.

  Holy shit, how had all that happened in the space of a few minutes?

  Someone was shouting about aliens, loudly and urgently. Abby wrenched her head around only to find Russ preparing to charge up the steps to the wall. Cam was right behind him, face grim.

  “Oh no. No way,” Abby said. “Put me down right now.”

  “It’s safer up here.” His tone brooked no argument.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a spaceship nearby,” Abby retorted, jouncing against his shoulder as he mounted the steps. “Most likely it’s full of aliens.”

  “In this case, aliens pose less of a challenge than the fucking idiots running amok down there.”

  He was probably right on that count. The oilcan fires illuminated multiple forms, most clustering around the makeshift ring. The ugly mood had been broken, but what had replaced it was an incoherent lack of structure. A few people joined them on the wall, uncertainly wielding weapons. A large subset had fled entirely.

  That left a good twenty or thirty people to hash out who they wanted their next leader to be, with both Uther and Snake Eyes off the list—and aliens on their literal doorstep.

  Human hubris. Abby had seen enough of it.

  I just want to get back to Grammie. She wanted to scream it into the night. Instead, she took a deep breath and counted the stairs Russ was climbing.

  Russ set her down when they reached the top, his eyes burning with what looked like eagerness to fight. And probably, she reflected, fury at Uther’s attempt on his life.

  Now that she was done panicking, Abby tried to mentally piece together what had happened. The first gunshot had gone over their heads. It had probably been meant for either Cam or Russ.

  Or her…

  She shoved that thought out of her head. The three of them had hit the ground so fast there’d been scant time for Uther to pull the trigger again. So the second shot might have been from Snake Eyes and the third from someone else. Katya, maybe. She’d seen the blonde lurking nearby.

  The fourth shot…well, who the hell knew at this point? People were dead. Thinking about it was making her dizzy.

  Standing atop the crudely built concrete wall didn’t help the dizziness much. At least the builders had included a metal rail along the top and the walkway was wide enough that she didn’t feel as if she’d tip off the edge if she dared to move. Still, this particular wall seemed like more of a deterrent to occasional roving aliens than a place designed to actively defend against attacking Barks.

  Russ scanned the horizon while Cam kept watch in the opposite direction, guarding his back. Abby peered into the night with a kind of sick fascination. There was a spaceship less than a mile away—a fairly big one, too, likely capable of carrying quite a few aliens.

  Alien technology was a relatively unexplored topic. There were no journalists on TV endlessly speculating, no published interviews with acclaimed scientists, and Internet access was all but impossible to get these days. A combination of alien attack and friendly fire had knocked out most of the major satellites. The world had gone from information-overload to the Dark Ages in a matter of days.

  “Into the sentry tower. Let’s go.” Cam took her elbow, still searching the darkness with quick, side-to-side movements of his head. The way his pupils were dilated, Abby supposed there was truth to what they said about Twins being able to see in the dark. Well, that was a relief—she’d get some warning before aliens showed up.

  She followed him with one hand trailing along the metal railing, although she sensed he was more than capable of catching her should she slip. Were this not a life-threatening situation, she might have been tempted to stumble and let him sweep her into his arms. It was too bad she couldn’t have an hour on her own to digest what had happened between them earlier.

  Not that she regretted it at all. Damn, that had been hot.

  Abby followed the Twins up a short flight of steps into the watchtower. As its occupant came toward them, Russ shoved her behind him, but the guard showed no signs of aggression.

  “Twins, are you?” he babbled. “Oh, thank God. Thank God. You saw the spaceship, right? That wasn’t just a hallucination, it couldn’t have been. But they haven’t sounded any alarms—”

  “UV light sources?” Russ barked.

  “Oh—oh yeah, we have a small cache over here. We’ve only used the lights a few times. They’re not heavy-duty or anything, but we don’t see much action here… I mean, we didn’t used to…”

  Russ was already rifling through the store, hefting what looked like a lamp and propping it against the wall. After a few moments of dithering, the guard rallied enough to pitch in as well.

  “What communication systems are in place?” Russ knelt to study the lamp.

  “Landline. We’re a civilian patrol. We’re supposed to keep vigil on the wall at night and report anything out of the ordinary to the regular soldiers at the gates.”

  “Have you reported in?”

  “No, but I’m sure someone else—”

  “Make the call,” Russ interrupted.

  The young man went for a phone in the corner, dialing hesitantly. Abby listened to him stutter through an introduction and wondered if it might actually be possible that some people had missed the spaceship’s passage overhead. Perhaps a few had mistaken the engines’ distant roar as the sound of a generator, as Uther initially had.

  In any case, the guard seemed to have contacted a very disbelieving superior. “No, sir. Yes, sir. I saw it with my own eyes—”

  Shrugging off Cam’s restraining arm, Abby walked to the side of the tower and surveyed the supposedly safer human-inhabited side of the wall. With the chaos dying down, people were gravitating in various directions. Some walked deliberately toward the wall, weapons in hand; others seemed to be mere onlookers drawn to the action out of sheer curiosity.

  Cam’s arm snaked around her waist again, and she let him draw her to the opposite side of the tower. The night air was cool but not uncomfortably so, with a hint of summer’s end carried on the edge of the northerly breeze. Abby stared into the darkness. There was no evidence of humans outside the wall, no nearby tents or other temporary structures, no vehicles parked at its bottom containing travelers who’d eschewed the safety of a City for some reason or another. She raised her eyes to the horizon, then to the stars.

  A few years ago, she and Callum had scavenged an old, battered library book on astronomy. Since electricity was heavily rationed, stargazing was easy, even in the middle of a City. Right now she could see the Big Dipper and Cygnus.

  The Barks, with their translucent skin and sharp-edged teeth, had originated somewhere beyond the constellations humans had dreamed about for centuries.

  “Hey. You okay?” Cam drew her close.


  “Do you think the Barks came up with their own constellations?” she blurted.

  “Nope. They don’t strike me as thinkers. They have a kind of hive-mind thing going, or a strong pack instinct, like very intelligent dogs.”

  “Yeah, I guess they’re not the type of creature to envision gods and goddesses in the sky.” Abby shrugged.

  “Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven/Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels,” Cam quoted.

  When she looked up, their gazes tangled. “What’s that from?” she whispered.

  “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Evangeline. I memorized it when I was a teenager because the words…well, they resonated with me. So did the poem’s premise.” His eyes left hers to search the night again, but he’d instilled in her an absurd kind of hope. If words written so long ago could live on, couldn’t humans?

  “Sir, if we could get some backup over here—” The young guard was cut off for the umpteenth time. He paused with a frown, then rallied. “No, sir. No signs yet, but the ship was flying low, and it must have touched down nearby.”

  “Provisions on this particular wall are goddamn sketchy at best.” Russ grimaced as he came to stand next to them. “A few UV lights, a couple lasers, a set of flash bombs. That’s it.”

  “There’s no guarantee that we’ll even see—shit, incoming!” Cam stiffened.

  The young guard nearly dropped the phone. His voice cracked, soaring an octave. “Sir, aliens are here—”

  The rest of his sentence was swallowed up in shouting from the crowd. A man turned on a UV light and waved it around before his more level-headed companions restrained him. Once the glare had leached out of her eyes, Abby saw movement in the distance.

  She tensed against Cam’s side. The urge to flee was strong, but her second emotion was curiosity. These particular aliens were vastly different from the Barks she’d seen from afar. For one thing, they were larger and didn’t move as fast. Their eyestalks swiveled as they came close, but their six legs moved sluggishly. Were they sick?