“Shit.” She looked back down and realized that even as she’d studied the problem, she’d continued to pet his face.
Feeling awkward, she pulled her hand away. He stopped her, moving faster than her eye could follow, and placed her palm flat against his cheek. “No.”
She smiled then. “Do you speak English?”
His hand heated over hers and she felt an odd pull at the top of her spine. It lasted seconds. Then he spoke. “Yes.”
She sighed in relief. “Good. Those guys are not going to be nice to you if they find you. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
He said nothing, just watched her and lay passively in her lap.
She allowed herself the oh so necessary perusal of his injuries one more time. Mostly scratches, but he had one deep cut across his neck, one across his abdomen, and four deep furrows along his thigh right above his knee. It was deep there, and she was afraid the white showing was either tendon or bone. Wet warmth soaked her lap and she had to assume his back was also a mess. God, he should be dead. “Can you walk?”
“If I must.”
Odd. “Okay. Give me a second.” She had one ace up her sleeve, one. And if it didn’t work, they were screwed.
She gently lifted his head from her lap and slid out from beneath him. This time he let her go, and she felt stupid and foolish for missing the contact. She reached into the side pocket of her right pants leg and pulled out two flash bangs.
If she was lucky, she’d get them twenty meters downhill. Unlucky? Well, she’d just throw the damn things and they’d have to move as fast as they could. It was the best she could do.
Too bad she never played baseball. Sucked at all sports, had her whole life.
She yanked the red tab out of the first one and threw it as far as she could down the rocky slope. It clanked and hopped, bounced off rocks and ground still hard as dried concrete and gained her some extra ground. She turned away and knelt over the man’s head. “Cover your ears.”
He ignored her order completely so she raised her hands to his ears and used the bulk of her arms to try to cover her own. His skin was soft as melted butter, slightly cool to her touch, and black as onyx. Her fingertips tunneled into his long dark hair and she closed her eyes as the silken strands parted, the light stroke of his hair like whisper-soft kisses to her senses.
The explosion of light and sound set off alarms and yanked her back from dreamy man land. She turned her head to peek over one shoulder at them through the cover of twigs and leaves. The soldiers below scrambled and yelled. No shots were fired. Thank God. She had one flash bang left and a two-hundred-pound man to get to her vehicle alive.
Still covering him, she froze in place as his hot breath penetrated her tank top between her breasts.
“Snap out of it.” Good Lord. What the hell was wrong with her? She felt utterly foolish for smothering him between the girls like that. She pulled back and met his heated stare, relieved that his skin appeared normal again. “Sorry.” She felt the blush creep up her neck and face, and the odd pulling sensation at the base of her skull. She ignored both. “Come on. We have to move.”
She held out a hand and he took it. She braced herself to pull his heavy body up from the forest floor but he barely tugged at all as he rose from the ground. It was almost like he held her hand just to maintain the contact with her, and not because he needed the help.
Zoey shook her head to clear it. Ridiculous. But he stood beside her. The worst of the bleeding had stopped and several of the smaller wounds appeared to be nearly healed. The white streak she’d seen a minute ago above his knee was gone. Now it was just a gooey, red mess. Healing from the inside out?
Definitely not human.
With a mental shrug, she tugged her hand free and got ready to throw the second flash bang.
“Allow me.” He held out his hand, palm up and steady as a rock.
Why not? He was a guy and she sucked at baseball. Just about anyone over the age of five would be able to throw farther than she could. “All right.” She placed the round device in his hand. “Throw it north of us, toward the northern end of the house. I’m parked southeast, just over that rise.” She pointed in the direction she wanted him to throw. “Throw it over there.”
He pulled the tab and threw the device the length of three football fields, right onto the grounds, into the middle of the soldiers’ parked vehicles.
Wow. She turned away and covered her ears until the explosion echoed through the small valley, surprised when he wrapped her in his arms and turned his body to protect her from the blast. Shouts of anger and confusion sounded through the quiet mountain air, and all she could do was stare at his broad shoulders and cringe at the deep gashes still bleeding at his neck. She found herself wanting to take care of him, to nuzzle her face against his chest, to sit him down and tend every wound, kiss every scrape, inspect every inch of him to make sure he was okay.
“Let’s go.” She turned away from the sight of his wide chest and started a light jog, hoping he could keep up with her.
When he didn’t follow, she turned back around to find him rooted to the spot, unmoving.
“Come on! They’ll be on us in a few minutes. We gotta move.”
“Who are you? Why are you helping me?” Wary eyes followed her every move and she realized he didn’t need her help at all. He could get away from here without her. He could survive alone. He didn’t need her.
But she needed him. God help her, she needed him. She needed his help. “Please.”
He stared, a predator assessing the risk of exposure, of company. She had a feeling he always hunted alone.
“Please. I’ll take you home. You can eat something, get cleaned up. We’ll get those damn chains off you somehow. I have a friend, he’s a welder. He’ll help us and keep his mouth shut.” She twirled her hand in the air, motioning for him to move toward her. “Come on. Let’s go. Please. You can’t let them catch you.”
He raised an eyebrow at that. “Those men are no threat to me.”
She didn’t doubt that for a minute. “They’re not the only monsters out here.”
Chapter 3
After centuries in the small confines of his cell, her brick home felt like a coliseum. He’d followed her to her traveling machine. Then she’d shoved him into one of the humans’ new inventions, she’d called it a truck, and he’d spent three hours gritting his teeth as she maneuvered the contraption through the dark and he’d resisted the urge to cling to her hand and the peace her touch brought his soul. They’d finally reached a large roadway and his rescuer had sighed in relief, turned lights on the front of the truck, and moved them at terrifying speed with the other odd-shaped trucks to a giant city.
Lights spread as far as he could see. She chatted away, told him they were close to a place called Lookout Mountain, a place people went to see the entire city at once. He couldn’t stop thinking about the fear he’d seen earlier in her dove-gray eyes. His soul had been granted a temporary reprieve by the touch of a glorious angel with beautiful eyes, but a strange world.
Never in his wildest imaginings had he dreamed of a place like this. Thousands of trucks passed each other like arrows on the roads. He had no idea how they kept from smashing into each other, but he didn’t want to ask her. Revealing his lack of knowledge would give her a huge advantage. That lack was a weakness he couldn’t afford to expose. And it couldn’t remain. He’d wait until later and taste more of her sweet memories.
He taken the language from her mind, and thank the gods he had. What his petite human female referred to as English was unlike any version of the language he’d ever heard.
Her touch had lessened the pain of the Triscani souls eating at him from the inside out, made it possible for him to function. How? He’d done a very cursory scan of her mind and found no memories of healing abilities or special training as a witch. Nor was she from his home world.
She told him the city was called Denver and she took him to her home. The sturdy
home was in a row with many others that looked just like it, just like the thatched huts in rows he remembered from his youth. The homes had changed, evidently people had not.
It was well into the night when she stopped the truck inside a housebarn attached to the house that she called a garage. She took a small device from the seat and pushed at it with her fingers, then waited. He heard a man’s voice speaking through the odd rectangular machine she held to her ear.
“Hello? Zoey? You okay, girl?”
Zoey. So that was her name. Strange name for a strange female. Strange, but beautiful. Her face was lovely, the perfect lines of a goddess, with soft pink lips and huge hazel eyes. He couldn’t see her hair where it remained buried beneath a green camouflage covering, but he’d envisioned a hundred different variations. Short? Long? Soft and fine as silk or heavy and thick? Curls that would wrap around his finger, or straight as a waterfall? He wanted to see her hair.
She trembled and turned off the rumbling of the truck and blanketed them in the silence of night and sleeping children. It was a sound he remembered from his youth, but there were new noises in this strange world. Trucks racing past each other on the roads, the strange hum emitted by all of the humans’ machines, and the familiar sounds of insects and tree leaves trembling in the slight breeze. It was home, and yet it was not.
“George, I’m so sorry to call so late. I’m fine. But I need your help.”
“Now?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry. But yes. Right now. As fast as you can get here.”
There was a moment of silence from the man. “Hang tight, honey. I’ll be right over.”
Honey? As in sweet nectar of the gods? Who was this man? And why was he referring to Zoey in this way? Was he her lover? She’d said he was a friend. Did friendship mean the same thing now that it had in his time on Earth? Curiosity rubbed his nerves raw at the thought of his Zoey touching another man’s face, her fingers tangling in another male’s hair as they had in his.
George. He wanted very much to meet this George who answered Zoey’s request for aid in the middle of the night and called her “honey”. Zoey closed her eyes in apparent relief and let her head fall back against the seat behind her. “Thanks, George. We might need to use your cutting torch.” She nibbled on her bottom lip for a moment, then blushed a pretty shade of pink. “And bring some of Ryan’s clothes.” Zoey glanced at him once more, apparently calculating his size. “Anything in a men’s large should be good.”
“Good Lord, child. What have you gotten yourself into this time?” The man’s voice was easy to hear in the enclosed truck.
“Not over the phone.” Zoey’s sad laugh pierced Aron’s chest like an arrow. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, anyway. Just hurry.” She moved her fingers over the machine again and then turned to face him for the first time since the side of the mountain. “Let’s go inside and get you cleaned up. You hungry?”
He watched her carefully as her small, delicate fingers wrapped around an odd handle and pulled before opening her door. He mimicked her movements and happily left the truck behind as he followed her through a door into her home.
The house had glass so clear and smooth he could see straight through them to the outside. Then she touched a switch on the wall and the house lit up on the inside, brighter than a hundred lanterns and much brighter than the muted glow from his prison walls. The light momentarily blinded him and he shoved her behind him, ready for an attack. A string of his mother’s favorite Itaran curses flew from his mouth with venom.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I should’ve warned you.” The soft apology in her voice and the light touch of her hand on his shoulder soothed his frazzled nerves enough that he relaxed his defensive stance but said nothing. She moved to his side and sighed, her eyes lightly travelling over every inch of his aching body. Her hand on his shoulder its own brand of torture. “That’s got to hurt.”
He flinched at her pity. He was an abomination, bloody and torn up, with evil humming in his veins and burning through him like molten metal, evil that wanted another taste of his dark power.
“I will heal.” It was the truth. The worst of his wounds would take the longest but he’d suffered worse, many, many times at the hands of his captors. Much worse. The sadists had taken pride and pleasure in torturing the Immortal Prince, he who healed from all wounds and never died. They’d done everything imaginable to him over the centuries. Amputations. Disembowelment. They’d had their fun and grown bored after a time, when he’d learned never to open his eyes or to make a sound. After that, they’d locked him in a cage and left him to rot without food or water for months on end. Starvation did not kill him, but it was another form of agony, and kept him too weak to summon a portal and escape them.
“I’m so sorry.”
Frozen by her soft touch and her beauty, he stared. He had no idea how to respond. He placed his hand over hers and squeezed gently, stealing information from her mind every second he held onto her. He needed to know about her home and the new inventions that surrounded him. He did not want to be taken unaware again. What he found there fascinated him, machines and tools that had nothing to do with the Itaran brand of power, but rather human ingenuity. “You did not cut me. I will heal.”
“I know. But I’m still sorry.” She turned away from him and he allowed her warmth to slip through his fingers. She led him into her cooking area. He could smell the food in the cupboards. “What do you want first, food or a bath?”
“Food.” A bath was a luxury that could wait. If more Hunters found them here, he needed to be stronger than a newborn colt barely upright on shaking legs.
“Okay. Sit down and I’ll make you something to eat.” She motioned to a table and chairs and he obediently sat where he could watch both her movements and the doors. She hummed softly as she rummaged in cabinets.
Odd beeps sounded from more machines he newly recognized as a microwave oven. He reluctantly tore his gaze from her to study her home. Shelves lined an entire wall of her living area and were filled with wondrous things…cameras, computer equipment, and electronic gear. One large cushioned sofa sat opposite a television screen nearly as tall as she was. The room looked made for work with a map, notes, and schedules for gods only knew what pinned to the walls. Nothing soft, feminine or personal filled the space. No art, no photographs, no plants or decorations, utilitarian white walls. She either lived like a monk, or she didn’t have much.
Every item in the room had a purpose. It looked like a room made for either a soldier or a spy. For some unknown reason the thought of this female living a life without softness made him angry and he wondered if her personal rooms, her bedroom in particular, would look like this as well?
Hunting and killing monsters would be his job now, not hers. She was no soldier. Her soft curves and tender gaze told him that much. But there was something in her gaze that made him long to probe deeper. She was a woman with secrets and he found he wanted to know each and every one of them.
The thought was interrupted when she set a plate of steaming beef and vegetables before him on a chipped blue plate that had obviously been broken and glued back together. The smell made his mouth water. She brought him a tall cup of clean water, another of cow’s milk along with a pronged eating tool and a knife.
Setting toasted bread on the table, smeared with butter, she sat down across from him. “It’s just a microwave dinner and some toast, but it’s midnight and I hadn’t planned on having guests.”
He had no idea what a microwave dinner was, but the food was more than he’d seen in one sitting in decades. “It is wonderful. Thank you, Zoey.”
She smiled, and the sight lifted another layer of darkness from his soul. A soft knock sounded on the door behind her, the one leading to the garage where she’d parked the truck. She jumped up, cheeks flushed with excitement. “That’s George. Eat up and then we can get those manacles off you.”
The fine meat turned to sand in his mouth as he watched her walk away from
him to open her door for another man. Fury built in his system and he had no means to combat it with her gone. Somehow, she calmed his rage and tamed the evil that tried to devour him from the inside out. The two Triscani Hunters on the hill made a total of five, five of their filth circulated in his system, eating at his spirit and his will like maggots on a dead pig’s carcass.
Zoey returned with an old man, one of the oldest humans Aron had ever seen. He placed a pile of dark cloth and a pair of strange shoes on the shelf near the door and turned. The man jumped at the sight of him, did a quick perusal with very shrewd eyes, noting the blood, the manacles, and his lack of a tunic. George turned worried eyes to their beautiful host. “Zoey, what the hell is going on here? Start talking, girl.”
Zoey bit her lip, a guilty look passing over her features, like a child caught misbehaving. She shrugged. “I followed Sykes out of the city tonight.”
The old man cursed and removed a gray hat from his head to slap it against his thigh. He walked over to the table, pulled a chair out at the end farthest away from him and sank into it with a weary sigh. “God damn it.” His knee joints and shoulders popped and crackled as he sank into the chair at a snail’s pace. He held out his hand to Aron. “I’m George.”
George waited, clearly expecting a response. Aron recognized an offer of friendship from one man to another and grabbed George’s arm in the way of warriors. “Aron of Itara, First Circle, Forbidden Son, House of Judgment.”
Zoey stared, open mouthed, as if he’d suddenly grown a second head. “What?”
Aron wanted her to understand. “My mother escaped Itara when she learned she was pregnant with us in the thirteenth century. I was born in what you now refer to as Wales. I am one of three, I believe you would refer to my brother, sister and I as triplets.”
“Why did she have to run away to Earth?” George raised an eyebrow.
“Our birth was prophesied by Celestina, the most powerful Seer on our world. Three worlds, three children born to rule them. Sons of Judgment are forbidden by all, but the prophecy caught the attention of the Queen and she decreed that my mother should face Judgment and be turned to ash to ensure our deaths.”