Heart of Stone Page 6

  “People are going to see us!” I exclaimed in a whispered voice.

  “No, they won’t. I have my stealth module active,” Alkor said, sounding smug. “But keep your movements to a strict minimum. It’s normally only meant for one person.”

  “So, you mean, I could be standing buck naked up here and people would only see empty air?” I asked, looking at him over my shoulder.

  “No. If you were naked right now, we’d be giving everyone an eyeful. I wouldn’t be able to resist your charms, and the camouflage wouldn’t be able to sustain that kind of intensity,” Alkor said, his voice dipping almost an octave lower.

  He stared at me, his eyes darkening, and desire spreading across his features. My nipples hardened at the thought of all the things he could be doing to me, right here on this roof. It felt odd finding myself in his embrace and becoming aroused, while his human disguise eyed me with such blatant lust. Even knowing my lover lurked beneath that mask, the thought of kissing him when he looked like someone else, would take a bit of getting used to.

  “Well then, it’s a good thing I’m fully dressed,” I whispered.

  Alkor grunted his agreement, then looked down at a loud group of people approaching the pagoda along the left side of the path. My gaze flicked to them before roaming over the garden. The view was amazing from up here. I almost felt like a Greek goddess on Mount Olympus, looking down at clusters of human cities and the unaware mortals who dwelled within.

  “Are you cold?” Alkor asked.

  I shook my head. “No. It’s a little cool, but not unpleasantly so. Any chance we could do a flyover?” I asked, already suspecting what his answer would be.

  “That would be ill-advised,” Alkor said in an apologetic tone. “The risk is too great, especially with so many people around. But we can drive out of town to a more rural area, and I’ll take you on a flight if you wish.”

  “I would love that!” I said, silencing the inner voice reminding me of my fear of heights.

  His arms tightened around me, and he nuzzled my nape before giving it a gentle nip. A shiver of pleasure ran down my spine. The prickly feeling of his fang scraping over my skin had me hot and bothered in seconds.

  “Then we will go this weekend, if you wish,” Alkor said, his hand streaking over one of my breasts.

  “Okay,” I said breathily, my pulse picking up as his thumb teased my nipple.

  “We should get back down before you make me lose control,” Alkor said.

  “Hey! I’m not doing anything!” I exclaimed. “You’re the one doing things to me!”

  “It is your fault for being so irresistible,” he said, unrepentant. “You summon highly inappropriate thoughts to my mind considering our current venue. You must learn to behave.”

  I gaped at him only to have him smirk at me.

  “Brace yourself, little temptress,” Alkor said.

  Before I could say a word, he took off flying again. This time, despite the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, I kept my eyes wide open as we crossed the short distance to the trees.

  “Grack,” Alkor muttered.

  “What is—” I started asking when his hand suddenly covered my mouth.

  Alkor interrupted his descent only to climb back up. Pressing his lips to my ear, he whispered in an urgent voice. “Remain quiet, as still as possible, and as tightly aligned with my body as you can.”

  The hard edge to his voice betrayed his tension. Something had happened, but I didn’t know what. Did someone take over our landing spot? I hadn’t seen anyone in the trees, but then I’d been mostly focused on catching the last bird’s eye view of the scenery. His hand released my mouth and wrapped around my waist, giving me greater support. My heart pounded, a million questions going off in my head as we flew alongside the trees towards a darker, less crowded area.

  Alkor eventually seemed satisfied with one spot by a pond. We landed by tall bushes barely two meters behind a group of people fawning over a flock of lantern cranes propped up by the pond. It struck me as an incredibly risky location, but Alkor no sooner landed than he tucked away his wings and drew me by the hand closer to the group. One woman in the group turned to look at us, no doubt having heard our footsteps. She smiled politely then turned back to admire the scene.

  Still reeling, I followed numbly as Alkor pulled me after him along the path towards the exit. I never felt when he disabled the camouflage. From the tension in his jaw, something had frazzled him. Curiosity and worry gnawed at me, but I didn’t dare ask him any questions. Were we being followed? I didn’t even dare to look behind or around us, not wanting to give away that we knew we had a tail if that were indeed the case.

  In the end, we didn’t leave the garden, but Alkor kept us in the midst of the largest clusters of people. I knew then beyond a doubt that he was trying to hide us in the crowd.

  “Do you want to go home?” I asked, softly.

  His golden eyes flicked towards me, guilt and worry mingling within. “You haven’t seen everything,” Alkor said sheepishly.

  “No, but I’ve seen plenty. I don’t mind,” I said in a soft voice. “I have enough pictures for the project, and we can grab a few more on the way out.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded and smiled. Alkor smiled back, a grateful glimmer in his eyes. He gently kissed my forehead, wrapped an arm around my waist and then we headed toward the exit. As we passed a giant set of battling Samurai lanterns, the sudden impression of being observed hit me hard. The nervous tick along Alkor’s jaw told me he felt it, too. Forcing myself to focus on the scene, I took a couple more pictures, and then we moved on.

  The sensation of being followed remained with me until we reached the parking lot where I’d left my car. While I retrieved my keys from the clerk, Alkor looked inconspicuously around us. I couldn’t wait to get inside the car to ask what the hell was going on. By the time we entered the vehicle, he seemed livid.

  I opened my mouth the minute we each closed our doors.

  “Not yet,” Alkor whispered, trying to look discreetly through the rearview and side mirrors.

  I bit my tongue, annoyed, stressed, and very freaked out. I started the car and drove off. Alkor launched into small talk about the exhibit we’d just attended, although he kept glancing at the mirrors, looking increasingly frustrated. My own irritation at not knowing what the fuck was going on had me on the verge of screaming. It was almost ten minutes into the drive before he finally seemed to relax.

  “I’m sorry, Brianna,” Alkor said, looking deflated. “This is not how I had envisioned our first evening out.”

  “What happened?” I asked, casting him a sideways glance, wishing I weren’t driving right now.

  “I believe members of the Rose Syndicate were following us,” Alkor said in a somber tone. “They are a fanatic organization—almost a cult—that are determined to capture me and my people, to study us, experiment on us, and of course, to steal our technology.”

  “The Rose Syndicate?” I asked, even more freaked out.

  “They have been hunting us for centuries. While it had been easier to avoid them in the past, the more that human technology evolves, the harder it becomes to fool them.”

  “Is that why you never leave the club?” I asked.

  “Among other things.”

  “But…” I couldn’t think straight. Too many questions battled to take control of my tongue. “What makes you think it’s them? How do they know who… what you are?”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve tangled with them. They had captured two of my brothers before, and almost caught me on a few occasions. They’ve left me alone for a few years. It cannot be a coincidence that they show up now.”

  For the first time, I welcomed the light turning red on my approach. I stopped the car and turned to look at him.

  “Why?” I asked. “Why are they showing up now? Does it have to do with whatever you’re after in that room?” I’d taken a wild guess, but the way he stiffened con
firmed I’d struck a nerve. His reluctance pissed me off. “Listen, I realize you’re careful about revealing your secrets and shit, but I’m kind of involved right now. I think you owe me some explanation. Why am I really clearing that room for you? What do these guys want? What are you really? I mean, where do you come from? Are you sure you’re not from the Underworld or some other dimension? And where does that camouflage technology come from?”

  The light turning green only angered me further. I resumed driving, itching to just pull up somewhere and park the car to give him the third degree. But until I had a better understanding of how much of a threat those Rose Syndicate people were, I wanted to get our asses off the street.

  “Like I previously told you, I’m a Khargal. And no, we do not come from the Underworld. As far as I know, there is no such thing,” Alkor said cautiously.

  “So where do you come from then?” I insisted.

  Alkor took in a deep breath and exhaled loudly. “I come from a planet called Duras.”

  My jaw dropped, and I turned to stare at him, disbelieving.

  “Look at the road!” Alkor exclaimed, straightening the wheel.

  The car in the right lane honked at me. My stomach dropped, and my head snapped back towards the road. Heart pounding, I moved the car back to the center of my lane and focused on driving, my knuckles going white from holding the steering wheel so tightly.

  I wanted to pull over, to get a grip on myself, and to gather my thoughts. But with the entrance of the Tunnel Ville-Marie looming ahead, stopping was no longer an option. Taking a few deep breaths, I flexed my fingers which had started hurting from clenching the wheel.

  “I heard you say you came from some planet,” I said, my voice trembling. “As in, you’re an alien?”

  “Is it that much more fantastic than the idea I could come from some kind of hell or underworld?” Alkor asked softly.

  No. I guess not. But aliens didn’t look like gargoyles. They looked like little grey men, with big ass eyes. Like E.T. or Thor… Well, okay, Thor and Superman were just pretty humans with godly powers. But aliens didn’t look like gargoyles. Everyone knew that.

  “But… How did you get here?”

  “I’m not sure we should discuss this while you’re driving,” Alkor said, carefully.

  “TELL ME!” I shouted, slapping the steering wheel.

  Yeah, I was freaking out big time. And he was probably right about waiting until we got back to the club because I just knew he would drop another crazy bomb—or two—on me.

  Alkor sighed, but complied. “Our spaceship crashed. My home world, Duras, was stuck in a never-ending war over the resources of a small, neighboring planet. Our government had sent us out on an exploratory mission to find another source for them. Our long range scans had indicated that one of the planets in your solar system might have what we needed. But when we came out of the wormhole that brought us here, we were hit by a solar flare.”

  Alkor rubbed his horns, a nervous gesture I’d seen him perform a couple of times before. Due to the human disguise his perception filter still displayed, he appeared to be rubbing thin air.

  “So you were coming to plunder Earth’s resources when you got struck down?” I said, my voice rising in pitch, already picturing some crazy alien invasion.

  “No,” Alkor said with a soft laugh. “Earth was never our destination. Mars was. The Prime Directive forbade us from landing on Earth to begin with. If not for that accident, we would have never made contact.”

  “Oh wow. You mean Prime Directive like in Star Trek?” I asked while taking the downtown exit ramp of the tunnel. “Like no talking or showing yourself to primitive species?”

  Alkor chuckled again. “I wouldn’t have worded it quite that way, but yes, that’s the general idea.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, suddenly struck by a thought. “Was your crash what started that whole Roswell, Area 51 business?”

  Alkor burst out laughing. “No, definitely not. Although many Khargals have grey skin, it was a different race of grey men that started that mess.”

  “So aliens do come to Earth? I mean, besides you guys,” I added.

  He nodded. “Well, besides a couple of crashes with no survivors—as far as I know—we are only aware of a few other alien species doing flybys, but also observing the Prime Directive.”

  My mind was reeling. I’d never believed humans to be alone in the universe. It always struck me as pretty egotistical to think that, out of hundreds of millions of stars, each with their own set of planets, ours would have been the only one to have produced life. But to have it confirmed, to be sitting next to an alien and, worse still, to have had wild, monkey sex with one…

  Good God!

  But then, come to think of it, Roswell didn’t make sense. That incident took place in the late 1940s. Alkor would be ancient if he had arrived then. I cast a subtle glance in his direction, giving him a quick once over before turning my eyes back to the road.

  Despite his disguise, which changed his face and the color of his skin, his body was the same. And what a body he possessed! Firm and muscular, he was a prime example of a fitness model. The memory of his hard skin against mine, his strong, bulging arms embracing me while he took me with unbridled passion had me hot and bothered in a blink.

  Definitely nothing ancient about him.

  “If you didn’t crash in Roswell, when and where did you get here?”

  Alkor shifted on his seat, his slight hesitation making me instantaneously suspicious.

  “A while ago,” he answered noncommittally.

  “What does that mean specifically,” I insisted, confused as to why he would dance around something like that. What could be more shocking than him being an alien? “I know it’s been at least twenty years since you saved my life.”

  “Indeed,” Alkor said, his voice taking on a wistful edge as he reminisced. “You were just a wisp of a girl. According to the Prime Directive, I shouldn’t have interfered, but I couldn’t just sit by while you died.” He turned to look at me, an apologetic expression on his face. “I’m sorry about your mother. She was already beyond help.”

  “It’s okay,” I said with a stiff smile. “I know there’s nothing you could have done. They said she died on impact, so at least she didn’t suffer.”

  It wasn’t okay. It would never be okay. Even after all this time, the loss of my mother still hurt. She’d been too young, too full of life to have been taken so brutally from us. But I didn’t want to dwell on that now. Mom was never coming back.

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you changed the topic,” I said, pulling up to the underground parking near the club.

  “Right,” Alkor said. “I apologize. I do not mean to be evasive. But I would rather we be back home to discuss this, without you being distracted by driving and away from prying eyes and ears. I will tell you everything. Just not here.”

  Fair enough. We were home already anyway.

  Did I just think ‘home’?

  This wasn’t home, but his place. And after this talk, I didn’t know where our relationship would stand, if at all.

  7

  Alkor

  Brianna sat on the three-cushion couch, her gaze weighing heavily on me as I paced the room. It wasn’t just the Prime Directive that made me uncomfortable revealing all to her. I’d already trampled all over that, but the more I revealed, the more I put her and the others in jeopardy. However, if I wanted her to come with me, I had to tell her everything.

  “We crashed here a very, very long time ago,” I said cautiously.

  “As in?” she asked.

  “As in a thousand years ago.”

  Brianna’s jaw dropped, and her eyes bulged as she stared at me, speechless. “You mean your ancestors crashed which is why your numbers have dwindled so much, correct? Not you crashed, right?”

  “No Brianna. I was part of the original crew.”

  She stared at me for a beat longer then jumped to her feet. She marche
d towards one of the windows overlooking the park behind the church and hugged herself.

  “Just how old are you?” she whispered, her back to me.

  “I’m 1348 years old.”

  She slowly turned to look at me, flabbergasted. I shrugged, an apologetic expression on my face—although I didn’t quite know why I felt the need to apologize.

  “At least I don’t sparkle in the sun?” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

  She gave me ‘the look’ and shook her head. “Are you immortal?”

  “No,” I said advancing a couple steps of towards her. I hated the distance between us. “Khargals have an average lifespan of 3000 of your solar years.”

  “Fuck me…” she breathed out, running a nervous hand through her hair.

  I almost said ‘sure, right away’ but thought better of it.

  “You are way too old for me,” Brianna whispered.

  That struck a nerve. “No, I’m not. If we compare our overall lifespans that would make me about 45 years old.”

  “That’s still a bit old compared to my 28,” Brianna mumbled, although she seemed to be coming to terms with it. “Anyway, go on.”

  “Our ship crashed in the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of France. We couldn’t have stumbled on a worse place; the seas are extremely rough over there and Khargals aren’t exactly great swimmers. We’re stone. Two-thirds of our crew died—including all of the females on board—some on impact, others from drowning. Unfortunately, our arrival didn’t go unnoticed,” I said, resuming my pacing. “The humans took us for demons and naturally sought to eliminate us. It became clear that remaining together would draw too much attention so we decided to split up and go into hiding while waiting to be rescued.”

  “A rescue that never came,” Brianna said, with an air of sympathy.