“Are you ready?” Angela asked.
She reached forward to take Jem’s hand in hers and as soon as he felt the soft comfort of her skin against his he knew that everything was going to be fine. As long as she was standing beside him, things were going to work out exactly as they were meant to be. Even if he got back to Uoria and found that his clan had turned their back on him and that he no longer had his place there, he knew that he would still have his mate and that they could return to the planet that they had shared and make their permanent home there. He squeezed her hand and offered the best smile that he could.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Alright,” Jacob said, stepping up to them. “Then let’s go.”
Despite the confidence and nonchalance in the words, Jem could hear the slight hesitation in the man’s voice. This would be the first time in several years that either Angela or Jacob would be on Earth. Like he had, they too had disappeared from their planet. Unlike Jem, however, their families and friends had been given false explanations as to why they had gone to the excavation deep in the desert and simply not returned. Jem struggled to decide which would be more difficult, them returning to lives that had been manipulated and damaged by those who didn’t want anyone to know that they had truly disappeared from the research site, or him returning to the life that his kind thought had ended the moment that he fell from the limb in the mirrored realm beneath the Denynso compound. Their family and friends thought that they had moved on into a new life and had simply been living without them. To them, Angela and Jacob had purposely left them and would be returning to the life that they abandoned. To the Denynso clan, however, Jem would be stepping out of death and back into a life that had likely already been put to rest.
Jem looked at each of them and Jacob and Angela stepped up closer to him so that they were a tight cluster, their shoulders touching as they all focused on the necklace that Jem wore around his neck. He lifted the small metal cage and looked in at the piece of wall that it contained. This had once been a reminder of the first cave that he had settled into when he arrived on this planet and resigned himself to the reality that he would never be able to return to Uoria. Now he understood it as the method by which he would get back to the planet that he loved and the people he had thought of each day since inadvertently leaving them behind.
“Are you ready?” he asked them, repeating the question that they had asked him to ensure that all three were prepared for the brief but largely unknown journey that lay ahead of them.
Angela and Jacob both nodded and Jem returned the gesture before opening the metal cage so that they could access the piece of wall within. Ensuring that their bodies were touching, the three reached forward and touched their fingertips to the engravings in the stone that marked this small segment of stone the portal that would bring them directly back to Earth.
Jem closed his eyes as the tugging feeling began in his chest and traveled through his body until he felt as though everything inside of him was moving away from his body. A few moments later, he felt his body catch up with the pull from within him and the dizzy, near-blackness in his mind that told him that they would soon arrive in the museum. He struggled to maintain his connection with what was around him. In the times that he had used the portals to move from this planet to Earth and then to Vyker’s stream and back he had learned that the transition could be extremely difficult on their bodies. He had seen the detrimental effects on Galadriel and worried that the same thing could happen to him if he wasn’t vigilant about his mind and body and how they responded to the transition. Jem kept his mind moving as quickly as he could, forcing thoughts through it nearly indiscriminately in the few moments that it took for them to move through the portal.
Finally, he felt his body hit something solid and knew that they had made it to Earth. Jem lay still for a few seconds, giving himself a chance to recover from the transition and acclimate to being on the planet. When he felt his body relax, he opened his eyes and looked to the side to make sure that Angela and Jacob had both fared the journey well. Jacob was propped up on his elbow rubbing his forehead, but Angela was still lying on her back, her eyes closed. A sense of panic rushed through him as Jem remembered how Galadriel looked when they had traveled from the museum to Vyker’s stream. She had looked very much like Angela did now, eyes closed and skin pale, only to be revived quite some time later after being brought to Vyker’s home.
Jem knelt at Angela’s side and rested his hand to the side of her face, then ran it across her forehead. Her eyes fluttered open and he felt relief flood through his body. Jem leaned down to rest a kiss to her lips as she smiled up at him.
“Let’s keep moving,” Jacob said in a hushed voice. “We probably don’t want the guards to find us wandering through the museum when it’s closed.”
With that, Jem looked around and realized that the corridor where they had arrived was shadowy with only small lights along the ceiling glowing in the darkness. It had been like this when he came with Vyker and Galadriel, but he couldn’t remember where they went or what they had done when they were there. It was an uncomfortable realization. As a Denynso warrior he had been trained to be aware of his surroundings and respond. Now that he was back in the museum he knew that he hadn’t used this training when he was first in the museum, putting him in the unpleasant situation of not knowing where he was or what might happen as they made their way through the darkened building.
“Where should we go from here?” he asked.
“I think that it would be best to get out of the museum,” Jacob said. “We can decide what to do from there. If the guards caught us in here, we would have a lot more trouble on our hands, especially considering that Angela and I are supposed to be in other parts of the world and you are from another planet and suspected dead. We get out first, then we figure out how to get to Uoria.”
Chapter Four
George could see the storm of emotion in Eden’s eyes. He knew that she wasn’t completely confident in what she was saying. The thought of stepping outside of the lab was frightening. He knew that the creatures that Ryan had talked about, more of what they had already encountered, were waiting for them throughout the building, and it likely didn’t matter which direction that they went. The chances that they were going to be able to get out without finding more of them were slim. Eden, however, knew the way that Ryan thought better than anyone. If she believed that it would be more dangerous for them to leave through the staircase that they had used to get into the lab, they needed to listen to her.
“Down?” he asked. “Toward the main doors?”
Eden shook her head.
“Not yet,” she answered. “They will be staking out every single entrance and exit to this building that they know about. If we go to the main doors, we’ll have to go through the lobby, which means there will be nothing to protect us.”
“That they know about?” Pyra asked.
Eden let out a breath and nodded. The blend of emotion in her eyes had seemed to fracture slightly, spreading out into more identifiable thoughts and feelings for a brief moment, and in them George could see fear simmering within them. It was a different type of fear than some might have expected to see in the eyes of a young mother facing such intense danger. It was guarded, as if the determination to defeat what had tormented her when she was on Earth and protect the home and family that she had built when she finally left the life behind had created a barrier around the fear and wasn’t allowing it to control her.
“There are sections of the building that most people don’t know about,” she said. “Even I haven’t been into them.”
“Then how do you know that they are there?” George asked.
She looked at him with that same expression that told him that he should know what she was talking about.
“I don’t know for sure,” Eden said carefully, “but for now, it’s really the only option that we have.”
Without waiting for anyone to say an
ything to her, she crossed the room and rested her hand on the doorknob. She paused for only a moment, leaning toward the door as if listening for any movement that might be on the other side, and then opened the door. George could feel all the men around him brace themselves, preparing for the swarm of hybrids to come into the room, but none did. They left the room again and rushed out into the hallway. It felt strange to be following the same path that they already had, but there was no choice. Ryan had them like rats in a maze. At this moment, they were completely at the mercy of the building and of his whim; the only choice that they had was to follow the thoughts of Eden, who seemed even more driven now.
They followed the corridor until they reached an exit at the end in the opposite direction that they had originally gone. George noticed that there was no keypad beside it and realized that it might be a storage closet. There were doors similar to that on the floor of the building where he had his lab and offices, but they had long since been emptied and abandoned, or filled with crates of decades-old records being used in research projects. He knew that most of these closets throughout the building were rarely used and even when they were they didn’t contain anything that was sensitive or confidential, which is why they didn’t bother with keypads and personal access codes. This closet, though, seemed intriguing to Eden. She was staring at it in a way that told him she knew something about it that the others didn’t.
“What is it, Eden?” Pyra asked, stepping up beside Eden as she rested her hand to the door.
“What if he knows?” she murmured to herself.
It was hard to tell if she was speaking to herself or the others, but Pyra brought his strong hand to her back and guided her up against himself comfortingly.
“What if he knows what?” he asked. “Ryan? Are you talking about Ryan?”
Eden nodded and looked over her shoulder at him. She seemed to be opening her mouth as if to saying something but then there was an extremely loud crashing sound in the direction of the stairwell and her eyes widened. Without another word of explanation, she pulled open the door and revealed that it was, in fact, a closet. There were a few crates sitting on the floor and pieces of outdated equipment shrouded in cloths tucked in the corner. Eden began to pull on one of the large pieces and Pyra guided her aside by her shoulders so that she was out of the closet. George saw her wrap her arms protectively around Lysander where he was tied to her chest and lean down to touch a kiss to the top of his head. It was difficult to see, a moment so tender and gentle, and yet so heavy with the emotion and energy of what was happening around them.
George stepped into the closet with Pyra and helped him move the objects inside out, handing them over to the other men in the group. Gyyx tossed one of the boxes behind them and the sound of its impact on the floor shuddered through the building.
“No, Gyyx!” Eden hissed. “We can’t call attention to ourselves.”
“I’m sorry,” the massive warrior said.
He took another box from Ty and lowered it more carefully to the ground. They listened for a moment and heard another crash in the distance, sounding even closer this time than the one before. It seemed Eden had been right and the hybrids had been lurking in the staircase, waiting for them to come back in so that they could ambush them. Now that they hadn’t, the creatures were making their way back up to the laboratory. The thought suddenly shot through George’s mind that they still didn’t know where Ryan had gone. He could be truly anywhere at this point. If he had actually figured out how to override the locking system of the building he had access to anywhere he wanted to go, which meant that he could move through the building at his whim, coming at them from any direction he pleased.
They moved more quickly getting the rest of the boxes and equipment out of the closet and stepped out of the way so that Eden could go inside again. She walked to the far end and ran her hand along the wall carefully as if feeling for something in the paint. Finally, she stopped and applied pressure to the wall. Nothing happened and she moved her hands to the side and pressed again.
“What are you doing?” George asked.
“Give me a minute,” Eden snapped and moved her hands slightly again.
She pressed again and there was a slight cracking sound. Seeming motivated by the reaction, Eden lifted her hands and slammed them against the wall. Long, meandering cracks appeared in the paint and Eden repeated the gesture. Pyra stepped into the closet with her and reached up to dig his fingers into the cracks being formed by Eden’s hands. His thick fingers pulled away at the paint and the wall material beneath it. As it fell away George realized that the pieces were nowhere near as thick as they should be. Pyra continued pulling at the wall and within a few moments they had revealed a large hole.
“Holy shit,” he muttered. “What is that?”
There was a slight smile on Eden’s face. It wasn’t one of happiness, but rather relief, as if she had not fully believed what she had been thinking when she first stepped into the closet. She reached for the lightstick that Pyra had tucked into the waistband of his pants and climbed through the hole. The darkness engulfed her, but a moment later she held the light up above her head rather than in front of her and the glow illuminated an old, narrow staircase. A gasp rippled through the group and George felt a glimmer of excitement and hope in his belly.
“Let me go first,” Pyra demanded, and Eden stepped out of his way.
The warrior started down the stairs, ducking down and turning slightly sideways to accommodate his tremendous size as he made his way along them. Eden fell into step behind him and George followed, reaching behind him for Zsilvia’s hand. He knew that she would be there without even having to look. The connection that they had between them was far more powerful than anything that he had ever experienced. It was unexplainable how closely tied he felt to her and the way that they seemed to exist in the same moments, the same breaths. They seemed to orbit each other, always knowing where the other was and being able to move together without having to find each other. His hand wrapped around hers and he felt her body come up close behind him.
“Where does that lead?” she whispered.
George shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never seen it before. I don’t know why it’s there.”
They stepped into the stairwell and followed the sound of Pyra’s footsteps in the darkness ahead of them. He used the hand that wasn’t holding Zsilvia’s to guide himself along the handrail to one side. The metal pole felt cold, gritty, and sticky with cobwebs. It was evident that it had been many years since any other hand had used this rail as someone walked down the stairs. That was at once unnerving and comforting. Though it meant that they were moving into a section of the building that had been abandoned, meaning it might be unstable and filled with unknown dangers, it also meant that no one else had found that stairwell. This was reassuring, telling him that neither Ryan nor his hybrid creatures had used these stairs and they may be moving into an area that would keep them safe as they tried to escape the laboratory and get back to the ships to bring them to Penthos.
The group made their way down the stairs as quickly as they could. George followed them nearly blindly. Eden had moved far enough ahead of him that he couldn’t see the light from the lightstick and he only had the sound of the footsteps and heavy breaths ahead of him to keep him going. He didn’t know how far they would need to go. He simply let his feet follow them and waited for them to end. The stairs turned at points, following sharp bends that seemed to indicate that they were moving through the different floors of the building. There were not enough of them, however, to mimic the floors of the laboratory that they had already followed, indicating that wherever in the building they were, it was different form the section to which they were already accustomed.
Finally, ahead of him he heard the footsteps stop.
“There’s another door, Pyra,” Eden said. “Is it unlocked?”
“No,” Pyra said. “It doesn’t matter.”<
br />
There was a tremendous crashing sound and George knew that the Denynso warrior had kicked down the door. If it was anything similar to the lightweight closet door that they had encountered before entering the hidden stairwell, this would not have been a challenge. Almost instantly George’s lungs filled with thick, dusty air and he muffled a cough against his arm. The air smelled old, like it had been closed behind that door for quite some time without benefit of moving in and out of lungs or moving with an open window.
“We need more light,” Eden called from ahead of him.
George relayed the message to the group behind him and soon there were several other pinpoints of light shining over his shoulder.
“Not all of them,” Pyra said. “Those have traveled a far way without charging and we need to conserve the light.”
A few of the lights turned off and George felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and took the light that Ty was handing him so that he could pass it along to Pyra. A moment later they started moving again. Soon George stepped down off the final stair and felt himself surrounded by the stale air. The glow from another lightstick behind him revealed the outline of the broken door and he could see a large expanse of darkness beyond it. The shifting light that broke through the darkness told him that Pyra and Eden were standing slightly apart in the space and moving their lightsticks around to scan the room.
George gently pulled on Zsilvia’s hand as he guided her further into the space and away from the door so that the others could join them. As soon as he was inside, he realized that the room that they were in was not as large as he thought that it was. Once the rest of the group was inside, he could feel their bodies close to him and could only walk a few steps to either side before encountering them.
“What now?” a voice came from the other side of the room.
“There has to be another door,” Eden replied. “We find it and we keep going.”
The Alien's Return (Uoria Mates IV Book 1) Page 3