“Why?” Jax asks in confusion.
“Err...you’re all uber-man types,” I falter. I’m not going to tell them that they’re eye candy.
A composite sketch of Jax flashes up on the screen with the name “Trey” written beneath it. Jax’s mouth drops because it looks almost exactly like him. “He only saw me for something like five or six seconds,” Jax says.
“And yet he managed to capture your smoldering eyes,” I reply grimly, trying to quell the tears forming in my eyes for what Enrique is doing to help me.
“You told Enrique about us?” Jax asks, and I shut up again, refusing to answer his question. Seeing the fear in my eyes, Jax says, “We’re not going to hurt him. We were just following him to find you. I promise, he can’t come where we’re going.”
“He’ll know that we have you now. He’ll follow us,” Trey says with satisfaction, looking at the television.
“Enrique?” I ask.
“No, the knob knocker,” Jax says absently. “Do we wait for him?”
“No, we finish our mission,” Trey says with a hint of reluctance in his tone. “If he manages to catch up though, then it’s really not our fault that we had to take him out, is it?” Trey smiles at Jax.
“No, we’d just be protecting our prisoner,” Jax grins back.
“We’re here,” Wayra announces, slowing the car in an empty parking lot in what looks like the middle of absolutely nowhere.
CHAPTER 5
THE POOL
Trey’s eyes lock with mine. There is anticipation in them and…happiness. I glance at the window, seeing that we’ve pulled up to some kind of defunct tourist attraction—a “mystery spot,” as the falling down billboard indicates. It’s also closed for the season.
Parking the car, Wayra unlocks the doors. Trey and Jax exit the limo, along with Wayra. I can hear them pulling things out of the trunk. Not moving from my seat, I wait, figuring that they want me to get out because they left all the doors open.
The smell of gasoline assails me as I watch Wayra through the window take a gas can and spill the liquid over the front seat.
“Kricket,” Trey says in a gentle voice, bending and peering at me from outside the car. “We’re going to burn the car. You might want to get out before we do that.”
Fear and confusion prey on me. I drop my chin, shaking my head.
“You want to stay in the car?” he asks, frowning.
I shake my head no again, looking at him.
“Listen, Kricket…I just want to take you home and finish my mission. If you comply with me, I promise that I won’t hurt you,” Trey says truthfully, extending his hand to me.
“Do I have a choice?” I ask, looking at his hand warily.
“No,” he replies. I deliberate for a few moments, but he’s right. There’s really no choice. The gasoline is making it almost impossible to breathe. Reluctantly, I ignore his hand and slide to the opposite side, getting out of the car and walking toward where Jax is standing by the hood.
Stuffing my hands under my armpits and feeling the frigid wind on my exposed arms, I hunch my shoulders against the cold. Trey carries a black duffle bag with him to my side. Standing close to me, his body heat radiates out, making me inch closer to him. He’s really tall; my head only reaches to his shoulder. He didn’t bring his coat with him. His dark gray, woolen dress pants and tailored, white button-down shirt would make him look corporate if the thick, black tattoos on the left side of his neck didn’t make him look like some kind of ancient gladiator.
“Why are we here?” I ask Trey, while Wayra lights a match, tossing it into the cab of the car. Flames burst to life as Trey grips my upper arm, ushering me up a wooden plank walkway, leading to another wooden causeway.
“Was that a question?” he asks, raising his brow. “That’s funny because I thought we agreed that neither of us were answering questions.” I grit my teeth while Trey pulls me along next to him through the deepening snowdrifts.
Approaching a gated wooden fence, secured by a padlock, Wayra jogs ahead. Pulling wire cutters from his duffel bag, Wayra easily removes the lock, pushing open the gate leading to a limestone cave. The sign outside the cave says that while surveying this spot years ago, workmen discovered that their equipment could not be leveled as the plum-bob needle seemed to always skew to the right. It was theorized that gravity does not affect this particular spot in the same way that it does elsewhere.
Fear threads through me. Until now, I’d been hoping that this was going to somehow turn out to be a horrendous reality show prank, but now, I’m beginning to fear that this is far from staged. Pausing for a moment, Trey, Jax and Wayra each don a headlamp before Trey grasps my arm again, leading me inside the cave.
Wayra jogs ahead of us, deeper into the winding, dark tunnel. When we finally catch up to him around several twists and turns, he’s securing climbing ropes over a sheer drop. He flashes his light over at the wall, saying, “Alameeda. They came through this way. The wackers didn’t even have the decency to use decomposing lines.” Pulling the Alameeda lines out of the wall, Trey lets them fall over the edge. I wait to hear them hit the ground, but I never hear a sound. Paling, I look at the inky darkness where the world seems to just fall away.
I begin to back up, putting my hand against the wall. Looking over my shoulder, I can’t see anything behind me. It’s completely dark. I won’t get very far without a flashlight or a headlamp. Turning back to them, I’m nearly blinded by their lights as they all focus on me. Putting up my arm to shield my eyes from the light, Trey says, “Kricket, come here.”
“I’m not going down there,” I reply quickly, taking another step back from them.
“Yes, you are. Come here now,” Trey orders sternly.
“I want to go home!” I demand, hearing my voice echo off the wall and feeling like I’m going to burst into tears, which is something I never do. I rarely allow anyone to see me cry, especially strangers.
“This is the way home,” Trey replies.
“NO! I want to go to MY home—Chicago,” I retort, taking another step back and feeling cold, rough stone against my fingertips.
“You cannot thrive under the wrong stars, Kricket,” Trey says in a calm, soothing voice. “The stars here are in opposition to you…can’t you feel it? You are foreign to them. You have no ancestry here—no lineage. Let us take you home.”
“Where I can ‘pay for my crimes?’” I ask with a scowl. “No thanks!” I turn and run blindly for a few steps before the light behind me tells me I’m caught. Trey picks me up, swinging me over his shoulder again. Carrying me over to the edge, he says, “We’re going down there, Kricket. I can tranquilize you and take you or you can come willingly, the choice is yours, but you will go.” He drops me from his shoulder and stands me in front of him, angling his light up so it isn’t shining in my eyes. “Which will it be?” he asks in a soft, deadly tone.
Knowing that if I’m tranquilized, there will be absolutely no chance of escape, I look at the ground, saying, “That’s not really a choice because the result is nearly the same,” I argue. Seeing Trey reach for his pocket, I straighten. “Okay, I’ll go!”
Wayra steps nearer to me and begins strapping me in a rock climber’s harness, securing a line to it. I’m sure he notices that my entire body is shaking, but I’m hoping he’s attributing it to the cold and not the fact that I’m completely terrified. “Have you rappelled before?” Wayra asks, his violet eyes looking concerned.
“Yeah…at the Y a couple of times,” I say, thinking of the comfortable, fake rock wall in the comfortable, urban environment.
“The Y?” His brow arches in question.
“Never mind,” I growl, shaking my head. “I just hold this line loosely, letting it slip through and the tension gathers here, right?”
Wayra gives me a crooked smile, saying, “That’s all there is to it. That…and stepping off the edge.”
“Is that all?” I ask.
Trey nods. “Jax will go
first. Then you and I will follow. Wayra, you cover our eight,” Trey orders, stepping into his harness.
“You mean our six?” I ask, giving him a funny look.
“What?” Trey asks, not looking at me.
“Wouldn’t it be our six? If Wayra is covering our back…our rear, then it’s our six,” I say, seeing him grin. I blink, completely distracted by the way his eyes tilt up appealingly when he smiles.
“On a human clock, it would be six. On an Etharian timetable, it’s eight,” he answers, and my mind whirls with the implications of what he just said.
“Thirty-two? Are there thirty-two hours in a day there?” I ask, “Or, do you just have cycles of sixteen? Is it even hours? When you say eight, what do you mean?”
“Those sound like more questions,” Trey murmurs, looking at me smugly. “Did you misplace your anthropologist’s hat?”
Narrowing my eyes at him, he just grins wider. Jax cuts in then, saying, “See ya at the bottom. Baw-da-baw,” before he steps off the edge of the precipice.
“Can I at least ask what ‘Baw-da-baw’ means?” I ask Wayra, seeing him grinning, too.
“It’s military…Cavars say it before going into battle—it’s a war cry,” Wayra answers. I nod to him, feeling my knees go weak as Wayra guides me to the edge of the crag.
Placing my heels over the edge, my stomach twists as my hands tighten on the line strapped to my harness. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and say, “Well then…Baw-da-baw…”
Several moments pass before Trey clears his throat. I open my eyes again. “You can go now, Kricket,” Trey says, looking like he’s trying really hard not to smile.
“I know,” I shoot back. “I’m going.”
“Do you need me to hold you?” Trey asks with a smirk. Seeing that he’s making fun of me, my spine straightens.
“Baw-da-baw,” I bite out, stepping off the edge. I immediately begin to rocket towards the bottom of the abyss, because the ratchet on my harness is failing to tension the rope; it’s sliding through too quickly.
Sliding past Jax on his rope, I try desperately to hold onto my line as it pulls through my fingers, burning them through my gloves. Looking up, light blinds me again as Trey reaches out, clasping me to his huge body and squeezing out what little air is left in my lungs.
Wrapping my arms around his chest, I almost lose my grasp on him when the tension in his line catches, slowing us down. “Don’t let me go!” I try to scream, but it comes out as a raspy whisper.
“I won’t,” Trey promises in a low tone by my ear, squeezing me tighter. “Hold tight. We’re almost to the bottom.”
Hitting the ground softly at the bottom, Trey doesn’t let me go right away, but continues to hug me to him as I shake in his arms. “Are you hurt?” he asks as my cheek rests against his neck.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, right?” I ask, hearing the quiver in my own voice.
“No,” he admits grimly, setting me on my feet and checking my harness. “You’re too light. This harness is designed for someone with more weight than you. I should’ve checked this myself. You need a smaller ratchet…how many turks do you weigh?” he asks me seriously.
“What’s a turk?” I ask, hearing Jax touch down behind us.
“You trying to stop her heart, sir?” Jax asks in a concerned tone, coming to me and checking me for injuries.
“No, she’s stopping mine,” Trey replies softly, watching Jax examine me.
Swatting Jax’s hands away, I say, “I’m fine. Just my hands hurt.”
Trey reaches out, taking my hands in his. He pulls off my gloves gingerly and turns my hands over. His face darkens at the bloody marks left on my palms from trying to hold the rope.
Wayra hits the ground hard behind us, releasing his clamps and running to me. He stops when he sees my hands. His mouth goes slack jaw for a moment and I try to pull my hands back from Trey to hide them. “I’m fine,” I murmur quickly, seeing the fierce look that Trey is giving Wayra.
“She probably weighs less than a hundred turks,” Trey says in a low voice, piercing Wayra with a scowl.
“I should’ve used a smaller ratchet. I’m sorry, Kricket,” Wayra says before grasping the back of his neck with his hand as he frowns grimly.
“Uhh...okay,” I say softly, not sure how to handle an apology from one of my kidnappers who almost accidently killed me, but is still going to hold me against my will. “Next time, we’ll make sure I weigh more turks,” I stutter, nodding my head like I’m not still freaking out inside over what just happened.
Jax begins to laugh beside me, while pulling a pouch out of his duffle bag. “We’ll make sure Wayra takes you to Sequelle’s with him. That ought to put some turks on you.” Opening the pouch, he extracts a spiky plant limb that looks like aloe. “Hold out your hands for me palms up,” he orders.
Doing as I’m told, I flinch when Jax squeezes the plant leaf over my palms, extracting its salve and rubbing it onto my cuts. “Ahh, that burns!” I hiss, pulling my hands back from him.
“Does it burn more or less than pepper spray?” he asks with an ironic twist of his lips.
“You so deserved that pepper spray, and if I had anymore of it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, Jax,” I reply, entirely unrepentant.
“You have the confidence of someone who is at least a couple of crikes old,” he says, pulling my hands back to him and beginning to wrap them in soft bandages.
“How much is a crike?” I ask, watching him.
Squinting his eyes, he says, “Hmmm, about fifty years or so.”
“How old are you?” I ask suspiciously, gauging him at around 23 or 24, like Trey and Wayra.
“Two crikes and a floan,” he replies casually. Hearing me choke, he looks up in question, “What?” he asks, not understanding why my eyes are so wide. If a crike is fifty years then he’s over a hundred years old. “Oh, you think I’m too young to have been given a mission like this one. Well, you wouldn’t be the first to say that,” he grins.
My eyes widen further. “How old are they?” I ask, nodding toward Trey and Wayra who are packing the harnesses back in their bags and winding up the lines.
Jax shrugs, “About the same as me…give or take a speck.”
“How long do you, I mean, do we live? On average?” I ask, feeling completely weirded out.
“A few jamarch, and before you ask, a jamarch is about a thousand years, give or take.”
“So, like three thousand years?” I ask, my mouth feeling really dry.
“More like four and sometimes, if you’re really lucky, five.”
“Five…thousand,” I breathe, having a “holy crap” moment. Jax nods, unwrapping the bandages he had just wrapped around my hands. Pulling them off, I have another freak out moment, seeing that my palms are almost completely healed.
“Ready?” Trey asks, examining my hands and touching my skin gently.
“How did you do that, Jax?” I whisper. Putting one hand to Trey’s cheek, I turn his head so that his headlamp shines on my other hand more brightly. I stare at my hand in fascination.
“I didn’t do it. It was the hordabus plant,” Jax gives me an ironic smile.
“Did you see this?” I ask Trey in awe, still resting my hand against his cheek when I look in his eyes.
“Yes. It’s better. Let’s go,” he says gruffly, looking at me strangely while reaching up and pulling my hand from his cheek. Taking my arm again, Trey begins ushering me toward the mouth of another tunnel. A golden, luminescent glow shines from the tunnel as we near it. Stalactites, towering above our heads, drip condensation into the vast underground pool below them, making the pool ripple from thousands of tear-like drops.
The pool itself is aglow, as if it’s being lit from far beneath its surface. The light is reflecting off the walls and ceiling in jewel patterns, making everything seem enchanted.
Nearing the edge of the water, Trey removes his shoes, shoving them in his duffle bag. Next, he reac
hes up, unbuttoning his shirt and shrugging it off. Sitting down on a huge rock, I ask, “Taking a swim?”
“You could say that,” Trey replies, his eyes twinkling in the glow from the water.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I breathe, casting my hand lamely toward the incandescent water, avoiding looking at Trey and his bare abdomen. I can feel heat flushing my cheeks, not at all used to being around men like Trey…or any half-naked men in general.
Glancing around, Wayra and Jax are also taking off their shirts. I avert my eyes from them, too. “You’re all going swimming?” I say rhetorically, feeling really uncomfortable now.
“I wouldn’t call what we’re about to do ‘swimming,’” Jax says, frowning. “It’s more like…” he trails off, thinking.
“Trying not to drown,” Wayra fills in the blank.
“WHAT!” I shout, my voice reverberating throughout the enormous space.
“This is the way home,” Trey says, watching me look from him to the water in front of me in complete horror.
“But, I can’t swim,” I say, paling.
“WHAT!” All three of them shout at once, making me cringe.
“Of course you can swim, Kricket,” Trey says exasperatedly. “Everyone can swim.”
Shaking my head, I croak, “I can’t—no one ever taught me—I grew up in the city,” I jump up from the rock and pace along the waterline. “I’ve been to North Beach a couple of times, but we basically just wade along the shore! You don’t actually expect me to go in there, do you?” I argue, fear entering my voice again.
“A Rafe that can’t swim. It’s unfathomable,” Wayra utters, looking completely shocked. “Those humans should be flogged—how could they not teach her to swim—it’s like robbing one of one’s soul,” he rants, grasping the back of his neck with his hand again in agitation.
“We’ll go together,” Trey says, looking at me in an assessing way. “I’ll hold you. You won’t drown.”
Jax’s eyebrows knit together. “Trey…there’s force, you cannot be expected to successfully hold her.”
“Then bind us together,” Trey replies, looking at me. “She weighs less than a hundred turks. It’ll be less than my gear.”
Under Different Stars Page 5