by May Sage
“You’re up for some training, man? We’re gonna need it.”
The point of no return
“I want you to learn some self defense.”
Ruth didn’t question it, like she hadn’t questioned it when he’d asked her to move in with him, two months ago. Like she hadn’t questioned it when he gave her a communicator and asked her to keep watch.
Xander guessed that she didn’t question it, because she knew the answer. Deep down, she knew.
The New Reign had won the elections two weeks ago, and every day, Xander grew more and more somber, pissed off. Lucian had been made their Ruler, and since then, he’d done absolutely nothing. Each speech he made said and repeated that change was coming – in due time.
Xander curled his fits as he watched yet another pointless speech, until Ruth stood close to him, taking his hands in hers.
The woman was everything he’d ever needed.
“What a load of bull,” Rupert had said, and Xander nodded his agreement.
The New Reign had had one purpose, exactly, and Lucian had known it. They’d founded it to avoid the alternative.
Xander closed his eyes, wishing he could find another solution, but he saw none.
“We’re going to have to act. I think the others are ready.”
Another nod. He’d been ready for years, since they’d had the discussion, so many moons ago.
Ten years ago.
“Our system has failed,” Cornelia, the most eloquent amongst the ancients, had said. “Each decade, our descendants grow greedier, taking nine tenths of the world’s riches and letting the majority of the population fight for scraps. We’ve tried the soft approach. The Council has told them to lower the taxes, to distribute more food, to stop the inane regulations Regulars – the people we were made to protect – have to live by. We’ve told them to stop the Drafts. These were only meant as a temporary measure to repopulate our society at a time where we were endangered. And our words have gone unheard.”
“So what do we do now?” Rupert had asked. “It’s not like we can force them to listen to us. There’s ten of us left, for over two thousand Alphas.”
“Yes. Ten of us. The ten of us, who walked into the Pentagon, the Elysée Palace, and everywhere else we needed to. We purged the Earth then. We can and will do it again.”
There had been nods all around the table.
“Xander? What do you think?”
No decision was ever made without his assent, and he’d stayed silent until then.
“There’s another election in less than a decade,” he’d said. “Let’s give them one last chance. Let’s see if our race is anything worth salvaging.”
“And then?” Marcus asked. “Do you agree with Andrew? Do we have a chance against our own kind?”
Xander had just smiled.
“I made us into soldiers. I gave us the ability to bear children stronger than Regulars, too. But trust me when I say they’re nothing compared to us. There’s a reason why we’re all alive.”
Now
He’d felt immortal, then, because contrarily to what he’d implied to Ruth, he was – practically. Sure, in theory, if someone did cut his head off, he would have died. The thing was, no one could. His bones were stronger than most metals, and if anyone ever managed to wound him, his tissue would regenerate itself within seconds.
After the first ten soldiers he’d made – his friends, people he’d trusted then, and he still trusted now – he’d exerted his method on another couple of hundred volunteers, but unbeknownst to anyone, he used a very different compound. They were weaker. They were slower. They were cats, while Xander and the nine ancients were tigers.
But now, the prospect of an open battle, short as it may be, terrified him.
Now, he had something to lose.
He held Ruth’s hand tighter, his mind at war with his heart.
They needed to act, but anyone with half a brain would target Ruth to get to him. He couldn’t take her with him, fragile as she was. He couldn’t leave her alone either.
“Alexander?” Rupert prompted.
“I heard you the first time,” he snapped.
At first, Xander believed his old friend had let it be, for now, but then, he added something – something that hadn’t even crossed his mind.
“If it’s about Ruby being caught in the crossfire, you could always make her a little more durable.”
He turned to Rupert, staring at him in disbelief; and he felt Ruth do the exact same thing next to him.
Only, Ruth stared because she didn’t understand what Rupert had said, while Xander, however, was just wondering how the hell he hadn’t thought of that simple, straightforward solution months ago.
“What about me?” she asked.
He dropped his head to her ear, inhaling her enticing scent.
“How do you feel about immortality, Ruby Ruth?”
Epilogue
Five months ago.
The singer was wearing a tight black latex catsuit, and looked ready for a gangbang rather than a funeral. She stood on a platform above the altar, where the unabashed sway of her hips could be admired by all.
Xander understood why the Master of Ceremonies had done his best to make sure the Siren was seen: she wouldn't win over many hearts from being heard.
Halfway through her performance, he got up from his seat in the front row and walked out, under the shocked stares coming from the few Regulars who had been forced to attend this travesty.
Those who didn't have any direct affiliation with the Haute were having their own rituals, somewhere downtown. One Elite and fourteen Regulars had been killed. Do the math: the bodies may lay under the roof of the Cathedral, but the real burial wasn't taking place here.
The Cathedral was perched on a hill behind the royal palace, at the very centre of the Domes city and as soon as he walked out of the building, the vibe hit him like a thousand volts.
The song the Siren was butchering inside was resonating through the air, heavy, sensual and desperately painful. He felt it down to his bones and everything in him begged to run down to join the people and mourn the loss of their brothers with them.
The only thing keeping him where he was was the absolute certainty that he wouldn't be welcome.
Xander tried to turn back, return where he belonged, but after a beat, he gave up, and let his feet carry him to the town square.
He wouldn’t tell her at first; but that was the day he saw her for the first time. She was standing just in front of the fountain in the middle of the square, bellowing the melody that had forced him to leave his domain; her voice had travelled so far, but now that he stood there, it sounded so soft. Vulnerable. Precious.
Just the kind of sweetness men like him destroyed with their carelessness.
He turned on his heels and walked away. He had no room for a woman in his life, as much as he desired that one. If they were meant to be, they would meet again.
End of Till Dawn Do Us Part.
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Afterword
I hope you enjoyed Till Dawn, introducing you to my new world. The main character of book two will be Rupert, but expect to hear plenty of Ruby and Xander!
Next, I’m adding an excerpt of my second sci-fi romance novella, Beyond Time, so I hope you’ll enjoy it!
Aria
She was pretty certain the job had only opened up because her predecessor had died of boredom. Aria hadn’t believed herself prone to suicidal thoughts but right now, a seppuku sounded like an entertaining diversion.
She’d genuinely believed that working at a coffee shop right in the middle of the city would keep her occupied, and in most cases, she would have been right, but X-press wasn’t exactly what one would call busy.
Thankfully, the owner didn’t need the money; from Aria’s understanding, the cafe was just an excuse for Winny Raymond to throw money in a tax-efficient business when her
spaceship operation made her a little too filthy rich. Each time X-poration came up with a new inventive space-travel cruise that made her a bunch of billions, Winny suddenly built a dozen of brand new, sleek, luxurious X-press Coffees, and ended up paying as little tax as the richest crazy-ass lady on Earth could.
“Any customers today?” the manager asked, making her pout and shake her head.
It was one o’clock and she’d served no one. No. One.
“Oh well,” he shrugged. “We’ll see some people during their breaks.” His hand vaguely gestured towards the tall, slate grey eye sore right in front of them.
The Watchtower of the West, topping every building in San Francisco by a good hundred feet. Yep, it was as ridiculous as it sounded. Too high, too obnoxious, too… alien.
Aria turned away, refusing to look at it. It wasn’t personal, really; she’d met her fair share of decent aliens since they’d turned up thirteen years ago, but she was one of those who wished they could have stayed in the dark, completely unaware that they weren’t the only ones in the universe.
Her life would certainly have been less complicated if they hadn’t shown their face, that’s for sure.
But then again she, alongside every other human being, would either have been dead, or enslaved if they hadn’t.
The Drakerian, in a true Independence Day fashion, turned up intending to do whatever it was that evil aliens wished to do, and the human race had been humiliatingly unprepared to fight against them. No gorgeous pilot, no daring president, no great scientist had saved the day. Instead, they owed their survival to them. The Xelos.
Their armada of sleep ships arrived moments after the Drakerians’, and they pushed them back in one brutal, but short battle. Then, they set up three guard posts across the planet to prevent further attacks, the largest of which obscured her view from nine to five.
Things hadn’t changed much since. The human race as a whole stopped fighting each other for about two or three months, before resuming their merry, inconsequential quarrels. One movie out of two featured aliens rather than vampires or whatever else they’d done before. The most drastic difference was the development of their technology; witnessing real life exploration and battle ships, blasters, and holocoms made humanity realize that they were still banging stones together; copying the designs of whatever alien devices they managed to get their hands on, companies like Raymond Enterprises changed the world.
They had safe spaceships in year six AW - after the war. By year nine, space was a touristic attraction. They didn’t have a clue where they should go, and none of the cruises had reached an inhabited planet yet, but it was fun.
Of course, it would have been helpful if the Xelos had shared a spacemap. Hell, even a galactic compass would have done; but sharing was apparently not their thing. The aliens kept to themselves, and refused to answer most of the billions of questions humanity had for them. Starting with, how the hell did they look human? Was it an illusion? A coincidence?
Aria, like many others, might have liked them better if they had been forward with information. But in all honesty, her beef with them was a little more…personal.
The reason why the cute coffee place she worked in wasn’t inundated with customers despite its prime location, was that her insane boss’s boss’s boss set it up so that they were openly welcoming Xelos, and serving the beverages they were known to like as well as regular coffees. People were curious about them, but not curious enough to risk sipping a cappuccino at a spitting distance from a live alien.
And they had reasons to fear them. Aria would know.
“Hey, do you want to catch your break now? Brian’s just baked a batch of those frosty cupcakes you like so much.”
Her apron was off, and hanging on a hook before Tom was done talking. As per usual, he had her at cupcakes. Or maybe, break. Those were essential to ensure she wasn’t using one of the little forks they gave customers to poke her eyeballs out when she was desperate for something to do.
She stopped by the kitchen on her way to the break room, and stole as many cakes as her hands could carry from the boyish baker; then, she collapsed on a plush sofa, with a deep sigh of satisfaction.
Aria growled when she saw she’d left the TV on; the remote control was all-the-way-over-there. She glared at it, before redirecting her attention to the goodies on her lap and eating the first one in two bites. Turning off the boring news could wait a minute or two.
She was thus occupied, when her head snapped up, and locked on the offending screen.
“Breaking news,” the polished journalist announced, pointing to a building she was quite familiar with; it was just next door. “The tour of the Xelos Watchtower in San Francisco, open for the last three years, has just taken a sinister turn. Matthew Parker, age nine, fell to his death, right under the eye of the aliens seven minutes ago. Considering their exceptional abilities, one cannot help but wonder if they could have prevented it, and simply chose not to…”
Aria was on her feet by then.
Funny. She’d often wondered about a situation just like this one. She’d told herself that if something like this happened, she would have no issue turning her head the other way. It wasn’t any of her business. Why should she feel concerned, or responsible anyway?
But it had to be a kid. It had to be under ten minutes earlier. It had to be right in front of her.
So, she just didn’t have a damn choice.
Kaur
“We have an emergency.”
Kaur bit back a humorless laugh. It was at least the third time he’d heard that since he’d been assigned to his new post. Back where he came from, an emergency meant that an entire City had been burned to ashes, that there was an imminent Drakerian attack, kidnappings, genocides. On Earth, apparently, an emergency was a payroll inaccuracy, a misfiled document, or a shortage of toilet paper. He understood the urgency of the later matter, but calling a code red had been overkill in his opinion.
Still, he got up and stretched, rather than questioning the apprentice who’d burst into his office. He was bored enough to take just about any case that didn’t involve him keeping his ass on his seat.
Kaur was yet again on probation, which meant that he had to behave, keep his nose out of trouble, and follow directions for one cycle - about two Earthen years – or his exile to Earth might be extended.
He didn’t belong there, and everyone knew it, but his latest mission hadn’t gone according to plan. He’d come back in one piece, and he’d somehow also managed to bring back all his men; the entire galactic alliance had acclaimed his return, but his superior hadn’t liked the fact that he’d risked his neck.
Yes. Working for his mother sucked. But Kaur didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.
As per usual, whenever he came back with a new scar, he’d been given a bollocking making him wish that he was still fighting an army of Drakerians rather than lying on the hospital bed, followed up by an unfair, undeserved, and indisputable demotion.
It had happened six times since he started active service; six times.
“What’s the matter?” he asked the small, yet robust young guardian in grey.
A youngling, sent to the most boring point in the universe until he’d proven himself, no doubt. The boy belonged on Earth; Kaurin Denatas did not. He normally wasn’t one to pull rank and turn up his nose at lesser men; usually. Right now though, he wished that someone along the line he had stopped and actually thought that they couldn’t, or shouldn’t, banish him. But they had, because his mother’s orders overruled every other decisions in the entire universe.
Not quite accurate, but it felt like it some times.
“There’s a discrepancy in the video-recordings monitoring the tower, sir,” the kid replied.
Kaur rolled his eyes. Here they were, back to filing issues. Kaur was called for anything and everything because there was no real role for him on Earth; no one would carve him one, as he wouldn’t stay long enough for it to matter.
/>
“I was watching, and I swear I’ve seen a glitch. As Sir Kain was in a meeting, I thought about contacting you.”
The boy was eager; and his issue wasn’t nearly as mundane as what he’d first thought. A glitch…that would require some brainpower. It had been a while since he’d honed his skills behind a programming screen.
He entered the Control of the Watchtower, a clinically clean, sparse room devoid of any device until it was needed. The moment he walked in, the nanotechnology they’d perfected centuries ago started forming a seat suitable for his build, and a platform floated in front of it.
“Sir,” the officer in dark blue greeted him with a slight nod.
Kain; the man in charge here. He was evidently done with his meeting. Kaur might - and probably should - have left him to take care of the issue now he was available.
There was a reason why he’d chosen to occupy an office away from the Controls: they weren’t quite comfortable around each other. The tall, severe military man with light markings running along the side of his face, distinguishing him as a superiorly intelligent Xel, was supposed to be the highest official on this base. Kaur’s presence threatened that, although he’d done nothing to assert his dominance.
If they both gave an order, there was no say which one their men would listen to, and that was dangerous.
Damn, what had his mother been thinking, sending him under another Sup’s command? Xelos weren’t aggressive as a race, but the Sups were the best, and the weakest of them. Their superior powers, understanding, and strength made them arrogant. Proud. Rash. Thankfully, they were rare, and the Alliance strategically scattered them across the Galaxy.
