Folding her arms, she held the phone to her chest. Her life had been exhausting but it was hers. Now it was weird, and she didn’t think she’d find a way back to the status quo, or if she wanted that again.
The phone vibrated and she nearly dropped it in surprise.
Don’t keep her waiting, the message read.
With a gasp, she powered down the device and slid the back panel off. Her fingers shook as she removed the battery and flung it down to the floor.
Her instincts told her to hurry, rush in and save her sister. Ignoring that instinct tore her up, but Juniper knew that she needed to be cautious and keep her cool. It sucked. The whole situation sucked.
Staring at the pieces of the phone, Juniper thought to call Mrs. Cannella. The older woman wouldn’t mind, probably, if Juniper borrowed the cabin for a few days, but she couldn’t vanish without saying a word. For years, she babysat Chloe after school and when Juniper had to work, and never took a dime. Driving her neighbor to the grocery store or shoveling her walk in snowy weather seemed the least Juniper could do.
Mrs. Cannella would worry, and that made Juniper’s heart hurt. She owed her a phone call.
But not from her cellphone. If anyone tried to track Juniper down, they’d check her call history and one quick property search would give up the cabin’s location. The burner phone, then? No, she didn’t want any old connections associated with the new phone.
She needed a payphone, but those were extinct. With a sigh, she went back into the store and asked to use the phone. “I’m out of minutes and my car won’t start. I need to call my boyfriend,” she said.
The clerk gave her a bored look before sliding over a desk phone. “No long distance. Keep it short.”
The phone rang twice. “Mrs. Ca—”
“I went for coffee this morning,” the older woman started, not even pausing for breath, “and my favorite blue-haired waitress wasn’t there. Some great blundering lummox spilled coffee all over the table, but everyone knows you got yourself into trouble, so no one wanted to complain. Such a pity.”
“So you know,” Juniper said.
“Everyone knows.”
“I didn’t—”
“Child, you did not execute four grown-ass men. No one believes you did it, but I understand if you want to lay low for a minute.”
“I want—”
“Don’t tell me! You do what you have to do, and you know the key is under the flower pot.”
Juniper smiled. Mrs. Cannella always seemed to know what Juniper needed before she said a word. “I remember.”
“And don’t call here again. It’s not smart.”
“I know.”
“But I appreciate it, honey. I’ll water your plants until you come home.”
The call disconnected. She returned the phone to the clerk, unsure if she could ever return home.
“Your boyfriend, huh?” the clerk asked, suspicion on her face.
Juniper shrugged. “He knows my car is crap.”
Back in the van, Juniper counted out the cash in her wallet, disheartened by the meager amount. They weren’t coming back to Philadelphia, she knew that much, but where, exactly, was up in the air. Maybe she’d just keep driving until the van ran out of gas.
Which wouldn’t be far, she recounted, just to confirm. What would she do if they ran into trouble?
She slumped over the wheel, closing her eyes for a moment. Money wasn’t the solution to everything, but stuff went a whole lot easier with it. She remembered Mickey coaching her on greasing the wheels if she ever ran into a problem on a catering job. Tossing stacks of cash at a problem had been his fix for everything.
An idea jolted her upright.
She reached under the driver’s seat and felt around blindly.
There.
Her fingers brushed against a plastic bag taped to the underside of the seat. Mickey’s solution.
She never had to use it before and had no idea how much money the bundle contained. Counting it out now in a gas station parking lot seemed foolishly reckless. It would wait. Just knowing the bundle was there helped eased some worry.
Juniper went over the list again and again, making sure she covered the basic supplies. She had a first aid kit, a bottle of pain reliever, soap, shampoo, deodorant, even that super girly one Chloe liked, toothbrushes, and toilet paper because not having that would be a disaster. She had ice for the cooler and drinks. She spent a small fortune that morning in less than an hour, but that was a problem for after. Future Juniper could worry about the credit card bill.
Running over the list kept her mind occupied, made her feel as if she had some control over the nightmare situation she found herself in. Lord knows, once she got behind the wheel to drive for hours, she’d have nothing to keep her from worrying about worst case scenarios.
“You up? I have breakfast,” she announced, unlocking the motel room’s door.
Tas exited the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. His wet torso glistened under the lights. She licked her upper lip, wanting lick up the droplets of water clinging on his pecs.
What was wrong with her?
Her sister was kidnapped. Now was not the time to freak on a gargoyle. Khargal. Tas.
He sniffed the air, growling with approval.
For the bagel. Had to be the bagels he smelled and not her soaked panties.
“Black coffee. Garlic bagel with plain cream cheese,” she said, shoving the bag in his hand. “Sugar and cream are in the bag.”
Tas sat at the comically small, round table and arranged the sugar packets.
“Do you want me to do that?”
“I am capable,” he said, tearing the packets open and dumping the contents into the coffee. He used all the packets and still frowned when he sipped the brew. Her prickly gargoyle had a sweet tooth. “When will we depart?”
“Soon.” Juniper glanced at the new phone. Check out was at ten o’clock, but it was only eight-thirty now. Morning rush hour wasn’t the best time to hit the road, but she gained nothing sitting around, watching a gargoyle drink coffee. “I don’t like the idea of handing you over like this.”
“Like what? Blind? Broken? Do not concern yourself with my welfare. You have your Chloe to consider.” Frosty disdain laced his words.
Wow. She almost bought his put-upon, superior tone. “Well, yeah. Obviously. I know you need to get,” she waved her hand, searching for the words he used last night but found nothing, “your thing, but you’re still doing me a solid. I don’t like letting you go back to those Rose people when you’re weak as a kitten.”
“I am not a kitten.”
“You’re a Khargal, I know.”
“And I freed myself once from them. I will do so again.”
She wanted to scream in frustration. Now was not the time for his macho, alpha male posturing. She didn’t want to point out that he was blind, starved, had no weapons, and had only one pair of shoes because she bought him shoes that morning. How was he fighting his way out of anything? Let alone against a professional organization that expected his arrival.
She took a calming breath and let it out slowly. “The point is, you’re hurt, and I don’t want you to get more hurt. You need to rest up and heal. So if I found us a place to do that, to rest, would you?”
He huffed, as if turning over the idea of her compassion. “You would delay retrieving Chloe?”
She bit her lower lip. Yeah, letting Tas rest for a day would delay getting Chloe. Her choices sucked, but she hated the idea of sending him back hurt to the people who caused that hurt. “Is a day enough time?”
He scratched at the base of a horn. “If I can go into stone sleep, I will be healed when I wake.”
“Perfect. I know a cabin we can use. It’s up in the Poconos, so it’s on the way to the Rose facility.”
“I am amenable to this plan,” he said at length.
“Great. I want to wash my face and brush my teeth before we go.”
In the bath
room, she noticed a sweet odor, almost like salted caramel. That definitely wasn’t the soap the motel provided. She dug out the new bottle of moisturizer and tore open the packaging. Her dry and itchy skin thanked her.
Teeth brushed, deodorant applied, hair brushed into something other than a complete mess, and no longer feeling gross, she was ready for whatever crap the universe would fling at her today.
tas
The female played with the radio. Morning chatter drifted into fast-paced popular music. None of it was familiar to Tas, but he enjoyed the wildness and speed of it. Music was one of the few pleasures he had on Earth. When he closed his eyes, a vibrant piece swelled; he felt it in his chest, as crisp and clear as if he plunged from a tall aerie and caught an updraft with his wings.
Moreover, he enjoyed the easy access. At the time of his capture, commercial radio was still in its infancy. Static filled the airwaves more than any actual broadcasts, which frustrated him. He found little enjoyment in huddling around the wireless, trying to pick out the music from the noise. To enjoy music without hindrance, he had to attend a performance hall or concert. During the Blitz, he even attended public concerts meant to improve civilian morale. He particularly enjoyed the lunchtime performances at the National Gallery, when the music reverberated off the empty walls of the museum. He attended each one without fail.
That, unfortunately, was how the Syndicate captured him and Frelinray. He had grown complacent. Overconfident.
He sat in the back of the vehicle, on the cushion the female provided, and listened to her hum with the music, butchering the melody. Siren she was not.
“Must you?” he asked. “You are ruining the music.”
“Wow. I know I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but ruining the music? You’re crushing my dreams, Tas.”
“I am sensitive to sonic vibrations. Discordance is irritating.”
“Sonic… Is that how you’re able to get around?”
“Along with my other senses, yes.”
“That’s pretty cool,” she said.
Tas observed that the female had an agreeable speaking voice, as loath as he was to admit it. The pitch was neither too high nor too deep and, last night, her voice developed a burr when she grew tired.
“I have questions,” the female said.
Questions designed to pump information from him. “Of course you do,” he said sourly.
“You’re from another planet.”
“I said as much.”
“And you disguise yourself as a gargoyle?”
Tas snorted. “Hardly. This is my natural appearance. Your gargoyles are an imitation of my crew.”
“So there’s more of you?”
He hesitated, not sure how much to share. If she were from the Syndicate, then she already knew of the Khargals and had a rough estimate of their numbers. If not, her natural curiosity would make her continue to ask until satisfied. “How far are we traveling today?”
Juniper gave an inelegant laugh, snorting through her nose. Tas grinned at the sound of it. “Two hours if we took the turnpike, but I don’t want a record of the van in a database, so we’re taking the slower route. So—three hours.”
What a belabored way to answer a simple question. Their journey would be an arduous three hours. Tas got the basic facts of his history out of the way but glossed over the long war in which his home had been embroiled for so many decades.
“I am from a planet called Duras. I am a scout in the military. Our ship malfunctioned and crashed off the coast of what is now France, nearly a thousand years ago. Most of the crew did not survive. I cannot give you a specific number as I did not count heads at the time.”
“You were in the crash?” She paused. “How old are you?”
“My people are long-lived.” The average Khargal lifespan was three thousand years. Tas had barely been more than fledgling when he joined the military. With extended periods of duramna, the aging process could be slowed dramatically. He knew of several Khargals who waited out the years in duramna, deep in slumber.
“So you’ve been hanging out in France since the Middle Ages?”
“We spread out and hid. Our stone forms blended well with the buildings in large population centers.”
“Cities. You mean cities, don’t you?”
She was exhausting.
“As you say.”
“But you have a spaceship and super advanced tech. Why didn’t you take over the place? That’s what I would do,” Juniper said.
“Less than fifty soldiers conquering a planet?” He snorted derisively. He’d read human books where such preposterous plans worked, but the fact remained that humans vastly outnumbered the Khargals. The captain of the ship, Skot, swam to shore only to find himself in the hands of a mob. The idiot violated protocol and tried to initiate contact. The frightened and superstitious mob took it as well as could be expected.
“We have a directive that forbids contact with primitive cultures, so we hid and waited for rescue,” he said.
Juniper whistled. The trilling sound hit him with unexpected delight, stroking the sensitive parts of his ears. A shiver spread through his body.
“You’ve been waiting a long time,” she said.
Tas said nothing. Weeks ago, when his captors sent him over the ocean, his sigil pinged him with a new message, the first message since the crash. A solar flare had disabled the Khargal ship and the rescue beacon. Somehow, improbably, the beacon had been repaired, and the call for aid answered.
At long last, rescue was coming.
He needed his sigil. Not only did it contain a message with the retrieval time and location, but it was the key to be teleported aboard the rescue ship. The Syndicate still had his sigil, necessitating that he march back into the enemy’s den to fetch the device.
“Those people, the Rose people…” Her voice drifted off, as if collecting her thoughts. “Look, I have to say it. You’re a hot mess, just an absolute wreck.”
“Thank you. Did you have a point or is this merely abuse?”
“We only missed them at Mickey’s by minutes. They probably watched us pull up.”
“Nothing probable about it. They were watching,” he said with certainty.
“So why didn’t they grab you? Why this farce of having a chick bring you in like a bounty hunter? I mean, I’m awesome and all, but I got zero combat skill. If you didn’t want to come along, there’s nothing I could do about that.”
“I would not be so certain,” he muttered. Her breath hitched in her throat, as if she caught his words. “They have an item of mine that I need to retrieve,” he explained, lest she infer his words to mean something other than the need to retrieve his sigil.
“And they have it where we’re going?”
“Perhaps.” A vague sense of direction pulled him to the north. “At this distance, my link with the sigil is weak, but I believe we have the correct heading.”
“Okay. That answers my next question. Why are you willing to just waltz right back to the people you escaped from?”
Tas felt no need to reply. Let her believe the sigil was the only reason. The attraction his body felt, the urge to mate and the swelling of his mating gland, had nothing to do with his willingness to follow the female. He did not want to rescue her youngling. He did not want her gratitude or odd human kisses.
In the centuries he observed humanity, he’d seen the affectionate pressing of mouths to the face, or mouth to mouth. Such a practice was unheard of for his people, but humans seemed to enjoy the experience. It probably had more to do with nerve receptors in the mouth than anything else, and it looked unhygienic.
He did not fantasize about kissing Juniper that morning when he stroked himself. He was only interested in retrieving the sigil.
“The Syndicate hunts you. Hunts Khargals.”
“Indeed.”
“And you guys are the basis for gargoyles?”
“Yes,” he said. He found it baffling the way humans had easily accepted the
ir stone forms, perched on top buildings, as if they had always been there. No one questioned where they came from and soon more, human made gargoyles joined the original Khargals.
“Is the Syndicate the basis for the Illuminati?”
“No. Do not be ridiculous.”
“It was an honest question. You’re telling me about this secret organization that hunts aliens, so it’s not a stretch,” she snapped. She turned up the volume on the radio, apparently done conversing.
Tas grinned and settled onto his side, letting the hum and rattle of the vehicle lull him into a light sleep.
10
Tas
Tas expected a full contingent of Rose Syndicate agents waiting when the vehicle reached their destination. He tensed, ready for the betrayal, as he leaped from the back of the van.
Gravel crunched underfoot as he landed. He snarled, baring his fangs.
No response, just birdsong.
“Dude, what was that?”
“Nothing,” he said. He stood at his full height, chin up, his posture conveying that he did not want to talk about it.
The isolated cabin Juniper had promised turned out to be nothing more than that. The simple structure sat back from the road and had no nearby neighbors as the property shared a border with a state park.
He headed into the woods, needing to distance himself from the female. Three hours in close quarters with nothing to distract himself from her pheromones put a strain on him.
He walked until he could no longer hear noise from the road and the distant hum of electronics, along with the murmur of human voices, vanished. As he traveled deeper, he approached a large body of freshwater. A lake. He kept his distance and remained under the cover of the trees.
The scent of dampness and recent rain clung to the leaves, dripping on his head. Finding a relatively dry spot under a tree, he sat and tried to meditate.
If he could shift into a stone slumber, into duramna, once he woke he could fly away and be done with the tempting female. He’d find another Khargal. The unexplored wilderness of the New World had tempted some of them centuries ago, and recent urban growth in the last two centuries also drew some away from Europe. New York would be a good place to start. In London, the Khargals there had a safehouse. If any of the old crew were in New York, they would doubtless have something similar.
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