The Last Queen

by Christine McKay

  He frowned. The high psi presented a challenge but they were so rare the possibility could almost be dismissed immediately. Almost. He had killed a high psi once, paid her lover to drive a blade into her heart. The shock of betrayal wounded her as much as the kiss of steel. His bloodless lips stretched into a smile.

  When he and his kind were birthed, it was for the sole purpose of the eradication of the Dragoon. Like vermin, the Dragoon multiplied, conquered and spread. Then they chose to challenge the Shindar. His maker. The Ancients.

  He was the last of his kind, a fact that did not escape his notice. A Dragoness possessing all the psychic gifts would require him to be at his peak. He was not. He hungered. His hunger made him weak. That needed to be remedied.

  The universe spread out before him in an infinitesimal number of burning specks of light. As he watched, one began to burn brighter.

  The second heartbeat in the chamber strengthened.

  The light in the sky blazed, swelled to the size of a small star, then shrank. There. She lived there.

  He stood.

  His hounds crept forward on their bellies, then crouched at his feet. Black as a starless night, their collars were tanned bits of dragon flesh spiked with gruesome trophies—teeth, finger bones, claws. His cell was a mere bubble of air on a dead planetoid, nestled and camouflaged in a crater. Two strides to his left was his ship. The irresistible urge to be off, to find her, grew. As did his hunger.

  The Hunter stroked the bravest hound’s head. He needed to feed first, to regain his strength. Only then could he extinguish his ancient enemy.

  He felt her heart beat like it was his own. When he held it in his hands and watched it take its last beat, his job would be done. Until then, the craving for the last Dragoness’ blood was impossible to ignore.

  Chapter Four

  Adrianne drifted. She vaguely heard someone shout, “Damn it all, this one’s alive. Help me.” Too many hands touched her. She tried to push them away. Tried to speak too, but she couldn’t find her voice. It came out as a croak. Straps were laid over her body. Her arms were bound flat to her sides. She fought, twisted, screamed in that croaking voice she didn’t recognize as her own. A cool hand touched her forehead. Soothing words surrounded her like a mantra of prayer.

  Time blurred. Harsh lights, the antiseptic glare of what she guessed were surgical lights greeted her. Her senses seemed hyper-alert. She could feel her heart beat within her, the scratchy fabric of the gown against her skin, the whispered breath of someone beside her.

  “Not a thing wrong with her. Not a mark.” More murmurings, more awe, the pulsation of an X-ray machine tickled her senses.

  “Minor smoke inhalation. Shocky.”

  “You’d be in shock too if you were buried beneath a pile of burning bodies.” A brusque voice. “How did she escape? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Not a clue, not a frickin’ clue. I think, gentlemen, we just witnessed a miracle.”

  Someone snorted. “Let’s keep that out of the media, shall we?”

  “Too late for that. It’s already on the news.”

  All the voices paused. She could even hear the scrape of their feet as they turned to watch the television. She opened her eyes. Four men or women, she couldn’t tell, dressed in scrubs, faced away from her. A police officer faced the television as well.

  And on the screen, the smoking ruins of her plane. The all-too-cheerful face of a reporter smiled back at her. She despised how they could talk murder in one breath and switch to teasing about the weather in the next.

  “And here it came to a sudden stop. Mrs. Alice Sebring was an eyewitness to its amazing, and some say, miraculous halt,” the reporter was saying, her bright yellow ski jacket flecked with snow.

  An older woman, her hair heavily sprinkled with gray, clutched a red purse in one hand, a rosary in the other. Her face wore a beatific expression. “A miracle,” she said, raising her hands and looking upward. “The plane was heading right for us.” She gestured to the terminal behind her. “Then it stopped. Like the hand of God swooped down and stopped it. It didn’t hit anything. It just stopped.”

  “A miracle,” the reporter repeated. “Even more amazing, we have reports that there is a survivor.”

  Adrianne’s photo ID from her work badge flashed onto the screen. They would have to pick that picture, she thought. Her only chance of ever being on the news and they had to pick a crummy photo. Her shoulder-length blonde hair looked washed out, limp, her skin sallow instead of cream-colored. The picture was taken shortly after her dad died, before she met Nikki. When she felt there was no one in the world left for her. It didn’t show the slash marks on her wrists.

  The film cut to the wreckage. The plane had split in two. Its roof buckled from the intense heat of the flame, the sleek hull flattened. The wings were bent like an origami crane’s. Fire trucks were still dousing water on the smoldering ruins. Adrianne began to shake. The surgical stainless steel equipment on the table adjacent to her rattled. Five heads turned to her. She couldn’t meet their eyes.

  The bile rose in her throat. A sickly sweet metallic odor filled her nostrils. She retched. The nurse closest to her rolled her onto her side even as she choked. Her throat burned.

  The flesh dripped from the man in the seat behind her, dripped off the gurney she lay on. She screamed. Screamed until there was no air left in her world and she slipped into blackness.

  Someone called her name yet again. Not just her first name, her full name, Adrianne Benedicta Harris. Few knew her middle name, taken from her adoptive grandmother. She hated it. What name had her birth mother given her when she lay cradled in her arms? She wondered that many times. Names seemed to hold so much power. It defined one as a person. Billy Bob would never make president but William might. Now she was being pulled back to awareness by the sheer power of her name.

  Around her, the world rushed by in shades of gray, a stream of soundless motion, dizzying to watch. She was tugged beyond the cities and towns then, a part of the very cosmos, with the stars and the moon she knew so well blurring by until she felt as if she were nothing more than a streaming bit of light herself.

  “Erifydal.” She felt recognition of the word deep inside her, but did not know what it meant. At its calling, though, the rush of the world around her froze. She held herself like a glimmering orb, suspended in space, stars mere streaks of light beside her. Her hand reached out to caress one of the bits of light, fingers closing around nothing but warmth.

  Whatever drugs the doctors had given her at the hospital created some frighteningly vivid hallucinations. Nikki would be so jealous.

  Someone approached. She heard his footfalls as if he walked down an empty linoleum hallway. Click. Click. Click. Then a pause. She craned her head. Nothing but blackness and the tails of streaming stars greeted her.

  When she turned forward again, he stood before her. Quiet and unassuming, as if he were simply waiting for her to notice him.

  The man before her wasn’t human. She knew that by casual glance. His presence spoke of ancientness, while his body held the mask of youth. She focused on his feet, tried to clear the sludge out of her mind and willed herself back to her hospital room.

  “Please don’t.”

  She flinched at the sound of his voice and kept her gaze lowered. Black leather boots caressed his calves, slid over his knees and ended mid-thigh. A pair of dark gray breeches met the boots and from there, a tunic, belted at the waist with a belt that shimmered iridescently like snakeskin. Everything was filled out by an incredibly well-built body. She stopped her gaze. If she was hallucinating—or worse yet, dying—she couldn’t have conjured up a more exquisite angel to meet her than the man standing before her.

  “Don’t go,” he repeated. She held herself still, hugging her body with her arms. Her hair draped over half her face. He took a step closer.

  His perfect body, coupled with a smooth deep voice, made her want to melt in place. She sighed. Wait a second. Her
head jerked up. Somehow he’d closed the distance between them. She had but to stretch out her hand to touch him.

  She had the irrepressible urge to reach out and pinch him, just to see if he was real or not. What if he was her guardian angel? Well, then, he should be slapped for not being able to unlock her seat buckle. Of course, she might not be dead. She kept her hands to herself.

  Their eyes met. His face was oddly familiar, his look patient. His eyes were disquieting. Brilliant green with flecks of shimmery gold, his pupils were slit like a cat’s, his eyes framed by brows arched more sharply than any other person she’d known. High cheekbones outlined those tanned features. The sweep of his blond hair, a shade like deep burnished gold, caught her eye. He tipped his head. Light struck copper highlights in his hair.

  “Have I met you before?” What a stupid question. Yes, she met aliens or angels every day.

  He looked startled. It was satisfying to see a crack in his self-possession. “I think not. Do you recognize me?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never seen an alien or an angel before.”

  “Do I frighten you?” He held out his hand, as if to touch her.

  She pulled back. “No.” Liar.

  “I cannot hurt you here.”

  Okay then, he’d neither confirmed nor denied that he was an alien or an angel. Nor had he tried to reassure her that he would not hurt her. “Just where is here?”

  He glanced around, surveying the nest of space she’d cocooned around herself without really knowing why. “A place of your own making.”

  “And you, a dream?” What a delectable dream, at that. Why couldn’t she meet a real man possessing this much charisma? She felt a sharp stab of guilt at that thought. Doug just didn’t measure up.

  “A dream here, real elsewhere.” He paused. “Erifydal, I must warn you. We do not have much time.” Then he reached out and touched her lightly on the shoulder.

  The touch was so achingly familiar she felt as if some lost piece of her had finally found its way home. It was her father’s touch, full of strength. It was her mother’s touch, sympathetic and reassuring. She resisted the inexplicable urge to fling herself into his arms.

  She took a step back, breaking the contact before she broke down and wept. “I don’t recognize that name, this Erifydal.”

  “It is what I called you here with.”

  “Excuse me? Aren’t you in my hallucination?”

  He looked puzzled. “What do you call yourself in your world?” The tone was commanding. She was unable to not answer.

  “Adrianne Benedicta Harris.” She frowned, felt some sort of pressure release when she finished speaking. “I heard you call me with that name. Who are you?”

  He hesitated a moment. “Navarre.”

  Navarre? Just one name like Cher or Madonna? Well, Michael the archangel had but one name too. And look at all he accomplished. She shook her head. If he was her guardian angel, he would have known her name, wouldn’t he? This Navarre only confused her. She was afraid if she let him touch her again, though, she’d lose all sense of her self.

  “Well, Navarre. It’s been nice talking to you and you aren’t bad to look at either, but my delusional self and I need to move on. Either I’m dead or I’m in a hospital room somewhere probably wishing I was dead.”

  “Erif…Adrianne,” he fumbled and she had the satisfaction of seeing him lose his serene mask again. “This is no dream, just a meeting place between worlds. You are in danger. The Hunter and his hounds have been awakened by your activity.”

  Adrianne threw her head back and laughed. It felt so good. She crossed guardian angel off the list. “Right. Okay, let’s go with that. So, I’m between worlds. Tell me, why would you, obviously an alien, be contacting me?”

  “Because you are our Queen,” he said simply, clearly dismayed by her flippancy.

  Her world shattered yet again.

  Chapter Five

  Adrianne opened her eyes. Nikki Kitzerow, her roommate, sat beside her in the hospital room, stroking her hand. Despite running a bar called The Beast and having a rampant sexual life, forty-five-year-old Nikki had a motherly, down-to-earth air about her. Her black hair was closely cropped, tucked behind her triple-pierced ears. Normally she wore contacts, but today her dark brown eyes were framed by a tiny pair of gold-rimmed glasses. Never without makeup, her eyes were lined with thick chocolate color, her lids smoky with hints of silver, her eyelashes long and black-tipped. She had a bad girl aura about her, but Adrianne knew her better.

  Nikki walked a pretty straight line, kept her checkbook neurotically balanced and her underwear color-coordinated in her drawer as well as on her body. She was the only woman Adrianne knew with enough colored underwear to match a sixty-four-piece box of crayons.

  Her secrets were safe with Adrianne.

  Nikki’s voice was light, but her eyes worried. “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

  “Morning?”

  “They drugged you up pretty good.”

  Nikki had no idea. The scent of Adrianne’s alien angel still lingered in the air. Musky, wild, with an underlying current of danger running beneath the surface of his cool gaze. She reluctantly banished him to her dreams. “How long have I slept?”

  Nikki gave her a guarded look. “A week.”

  “A week!” How could that be? She’d been in the emergency room. She closed her eyes for just a moment. Then came the alien dreams. Where had she lost a week?

  “I came as soon as the police called. I drove,” Nikki added. “No more flying for me.”

  “Oh thank God.” Adrianne pulled herself up into a sitting position. “When can I go home?”

  Nikki hesitated. “There’s nothing physically wrong with you. The doctors are more concerned about your mental state.”

  She thought about the wild dreams and secretly agreed with the doctors. No way was she going to voice those concerns. They’d never let her go. “I freaked out. You would too if you’d seen what I have.” Just how badly she slipped she didn’t know. Had she talked in her sleep, spoken to her alien angel out loud? How far back had these doctors dug into her past medical records?

  “I know. I know. You hallucinated pretty bad. They had to tie you down.”

  Adrianne glanced at her wrists and arms. They were bruised, perfect chocolate brown circles ringing her arms like bracelets. She’d seen those marks before too.

  “Your blood work is all over the chart. Your heart rate is so slow it’s frightening but they can’t find anything wrong.” She said everything in a jumble, paused for air and promptly burst into tears. “I saw the news. I saw the plane. I thought you were dead. Nobody lives through that. No one.” She buried her head against Adrianne’s chest.

  “It’s okay. I’m still here.” She rubbed Nikki’s back awkwardly. She’d never known Nikki to break down like this. She tried to keep her tone light. “I’m not letting you off the hook, even if I did miss Thanksgiving. I still want the annual shrimp and cookie food-fest.”

  Nikki sniffled, pulled back with a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that to you.” She smiled through her tears. “I smuggled sandwich cookies in, although their numbers have rapidly dwindled each day I’ve been here.” She lifted up her oversized purse and patted it. It made a crackling noise.

  “How about clothes? Help me get dressed and we’ll get out of here.” She started tugging at the wires attached to her.

  Nikki glanced over her shoulder, then leaned forward. “There’s a police officer posted outside your door.”

  “Why?” She paused, mid-tug.

  “For your own safety,” she added hurriedly. “You’re the sole survivor of the crash. The reporters are crawling all over the hospital looking for a photo op or a chance to talk to you.”

  “Wanna make a few bucks? Take my picture.” Adrianne struck a pose, arm flung across her forehead dramatically.

  “I’m serious!”

  “So am I. How much will they pay you for o
ne?”

  “Adri!” Nikki stood and strode to the window. The blinds were drawn. “Sole survivor, did that part sink in?”

  “I saw the crash on television,” Adrianne said quietly. “I just don’t want to think about it right now, okay?”

  Nikki turned back to her, eyes softening. “Okay.”

  “Does Doug know?”

  Nikki dropped her gaze so Adrianne wouldn’t see the anger warring there. “Yes. He had a bowling tournament, said the team needed him and you had me.” She kept her voice neutral.

  “The bastard,” Adrianne said mildly. She was hurt by his indifference, no doubt about it, but she wasn’t about to let Nikki see that. Nikki already disliked him.

  Nikki chewed on her lip, but kept silent.

  She didn’t want to think about Doug at the moment. Her thoughts kept straying to the blond sweep of hair her dreamy alien possessed. “Let’s go home.”

  “Now?”

  Adrianne swung her feet over the side of the bed. Whoa. Just a little bit of vertigo. She pulled the heart monitor off her finger. “Now.”

  “You can’t just walk out of a hospital.”

  “You said there wasn’t anything wrong with me.”

  “The police want to talk to you.”

  She followed Nikki’s gaze and saw movement in the hallway. “Busted.” A nurse rushed in, a plainclothes police officer two steps behind her. “I need to use the bathroom.” Apparently the heart monitor she just pulled off was wired to some central desk.

  “Stay put. I’ll get a bedpan,” the nurse instructed.

  “Like hell.” Adrianne stood wobbly, gripping the side table for support.

  The nurse grabbed her arm in a viselike grip, her strength cleverly disguised by her petite frame. She reached Adrianne’s shoulder, maybe five foot two, and wore her blonde hair in a spiky cut. “Stubborn, aren’t we?”

  “You have no idea,” Nikki muttered.