Exiles

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  She cared about Nick! She desired Nick. If Nick wanted a commitment, she should just jump at the chance. Maybe Maddie was right and he wouldn’t settle down, but did she really want to throw away a chance at some passion and excitement in her personal life just because it might end badly?

  Always assuming she hadn’t thoroughly fucked up any chance of it already!

  And that, unfortunately, was a really big if.

  * * * *

  The bags their rescuers had provided them with when they parted company at the docks were primarily props for the aliases they’d assumed. The odd assortment of things stuffed inside them was to give the baggage weight and bulk—not to provide for their personal needs—and although Nick was reluctant to split up or to spend much time in public places, he gave Maddie and Claire the money to shop for a few absolute necessities.

  After reminding them that they were tourists and shouldn’t arouse suspicions by buying too much in the way of necessities in one place—since tourists would be gravitating mostly toward souvenirs—he headed out to see what he could do about making arrangements for a more permanent abode for the three of them.

  He had the money he’d taken as compensation for the bank accounts and real estate he knew the government had seized that had been their personal property, but, to his thinking, it probably wasn’t even half the value of what the three of them, together, had been worth. Whether it was or not might be debatable, but the bottom line was that they weren’t filthy rich—far from it. They had a finite amount of money and not a hell of a lot at that, and when it ran out they were going to have to be in a position to earn more—which translated to they had to have a relatively permanent place to live that was secure enough that they could take the chance of resuming their lives.

  He didn’t think that was anything likely to happen in the very near future. The dogs were baying right now and they were going to have enthusiasm for the chase for quite some time. After a while, he was sure, other matters would supersede them in importance and they would be able to slow down and, hopefully, eventually settle.

  In the meanwhile, they were going to have to be really, really careful with what they had because if they ran out they were going to be up shit creek without a paddle!

  When Claire had heard the game plan she was a little disappointed that she hadn’t been invited to help pick out ‘their’ place. But then it occurred to her that that was just the sort of domestic chore that could strengthen any misconceptions he might be harboring about their relationship and she decided it was probably for the best that she hadn’t been invited.

  Besides, she was going crazy wondering whether or not she was pregnant! She had to know for sure!

  So she could have a nervous breakdown.

  The problem with acquiring a kit for peace of mind was that she didn’t want Maddie to know and it was going to be damned tricky getting a pregnancy test kit with Maddie in tow without her sister’s knowledge.

  Particularly when she couldn’t speak the dialect of English the Irish used. Their accents were so thick it took a prolonged pause in the conversation each time something was said for her to pick the vowels and consonants apart and identify the words. And then, once she’d mentally translated, it took them a few minutes to translate her accent since it was southern U.S. and they apparently didn’t run into a lot of people from the southern states of the U.S.

  After spending hours browsing one shop after another, Claire was beginning to think her mission was doomed to failure when Maddie asked the clerk at a small shop if they had a restroom for customers. When the clerk returned from showing Maddie the bathroom and unlocking it, Claire seized the opportunity. “Do you have pregnancy tests? Or know where I could get one?”

  The clerk suggested she try the apothecary down the street and after a brief internal debate Claire decided to try to dash down and buy a kit before Maddie could catch up to her. She smiled uneasily at the clerk. “Could you …. I want it to be a surprise. Could you just tell my sis … uh … my companion that I just went to grab some aspirin?”

  The clerk looked at her strangely, but she didn’t say anything and Claire left, hopeful the clerk wouldn’t feel obliged to tell Maddie what she’d left to get.

  She was halfway to the apothecary shop when it dawned on her that the woman thought she’d meant Maddie was her partner—because she’d said she wanted to surprise her companion!

  She struggled to keep her amusement contained. She wasn’t going to go unnoticed if she was seen giggling to herself on the street!

  * * * *

  Madelyn hadn’t wanted to add her personal problems into the mix when they were all in a hell of a fix already, but she was worried sick about Robert.

  She’d been too pissed off, at first, to be worried. She didn’t actually blame Robert for what had happened. She knew he wouldn’t have had anything to do with endangering her, or Claire, or the destruction of such a priceless find as the city she’d discovered. He would be as heartsick over that as she was.

  She was mostly angry with herself—and the government, of course! She should have thought the security situation over more thoroughly. But ordinarily nothing she might have found would have been of any real interest to the government and that had lulled her into a false sense of security that had led to her downfall, she was sure.

  She just hadn’t counted on the government having an interest in her find and she should have! But she’d been too focused on her career, thinking of it only from that perspective—that she needed to protect her interests so that she was credited with the find and that it couldn’t be debunked and criticized as a mistake on her part, that she’d misinterpreted what she’d found or dated it incorrectly.

  If she and Claire just hadn’t sent those damned pictures! She knew that had to be what had started the ball rolling. Sure the trips to the Embassy had probably added fuel to the fire since that was when she’d told the bastards about the alien fortress under the sea—and they had targeted that, too. But she didn’t think even the U.S. could have thrown together a raid on that scale that quickly. That had already been in the works when Claire was taken.

  But she was pissed and she was leery of trying to contact Robert again after the breach from the first calls and texts. And she certainly hadn’t had the wherewithal to contact him after those bastards had imprisoned her! The bastards had dragged her out of bed and hauled her off in her night clothes!

  She’d had plenty of time to recover sufficiently from her shock and anger, though, to begin to worry about Robert.

  Wouldn’t they have taken him in to talk to him, too?

  Or would they have been satisfied just to keep him under surveillance because he was already being watched due to the top secret nature of his research?

  Maybe and maybe they still had him stashed in a hole somewhere, but she was going nuts not knowing whether he was alright or not! She had to try to contact him.

  She wanted to know badly enough to risk the consequences—the possibility of being recaptured.

  But she didn’t want to drag Nick and Claire down with her if that was the case.

  So she took the opportunity to slip out the back door of the shop once the clerk left her at the bathroom and headed down the street in search of a phone.

  She’d seen some spy movies—and cop movies. She could talk to him as long as she kept it really short and they wouldn’t be able to trace the call!

  * * * *

  Nick was uneasy about splitting up and more uneasy about the women running loose without him, but time wasn’t on their side. They had to trust—he had to trust—that they were fully capable of handling their part of what needed to be done without screwing up.

  And, after all, even though neither woman was accustomed to working undercover, they were both brilliant women. He was sure he could trust them to keep a cool head and take care of rounding up supplies and returning to the Inn without attracting undue attention.

  He told himself that, over and over, bu
t somehow he just couldn’t shake the uneasiness that they were going to make a misstep that would cost all of them.

  * * * *

  Dante ‘felt’ Claire’s presence as soon as the ship emerged from the sea. He was torn between pleasure at the possibility that he had linked with Claire as a mate and irritation that he could be so easily distracted when he could not afford to be distracted.

  In any case, he knew that it was most likely pure imagination, bolstered by the fact that she had been constantly on his mind—the forefront much of that time—since he had first set eyes upon her. She was much too far away, being human, to allow for a connection of any kind, he was sure, even if it was true and they truly had formed the mating bond.

  It seemed most likely that that was wishful thinking on his part anyway. True, she had not said that she would not have him, but she had also not said that she would.

  Unfortunately, simply welcoming him into her bed was not sufficient to form the bond. Quite often, at least among his own kind, it was a beginning, but it did not always ‘take’.

  With an effort, he thrust those thoughts to the back of his mind. He needed to focus on the plan if he was to have any chance of leaving the main base at all—preferably with his mind.

  He at least had a chance of that since they had been warned and had had a chance to formulate a plan.

  They still did not understand the motivation of the overlords.

  They were cold blooded creatures with a serious superiority complex, considered all others inferior to them and therefore had no qualms about experimenting in any fashion that struck them. They had been called to account for such actions in the past when the angels had reported that their genetic experiments had gone far beyond an attempt to revitalize the human race they had so nearly wiped out.

  There had never been any love lost between the two species, but they had become true enemies in that moment.

  So did that long ago ‘slight’ play into what had happened?

  Very likely, if they were correct and this was, indeed, a deliberate act by the overlords.

  But was that all there was to it? Had they simply devised some experiment and decided to use the angels as test subjects because they believed they could get away with it and they despised the angels enough that the effect upon them was of no consequence to them?

  Or was it more pointed than that?

  He supposed they were about to find out.

  Those summoned had gathered as many warriors together as they could and hidden them aboard their ships. If it transpired that what had happened to both Daelin and Gaius was no accident and the gods had been responsible, there would be a reckoning. Unlike the others who had walked blindly into the trap set for them by the overlords, they were prepared to fight their way out if necessary.

  The plan, however, was to try to discover what it was the gods were up to.

  Because it had occurred to him that it was damned strange that the gods had mentioned nothing about a cleansing since the discovery of Atlantis and the library of Alexandria.

  True, they had struck immediately to bury the cities once more, but they had to know that the humans had managed to gain at least some of the forbidden knowledge.

  Why had they not ordered the angels to hunt them down and prevent the spread?

  That was a very worrisome question indeed and it seemed to indicate that the gods had something far worse in mind and that their plans for the angels was something they should be very concerned about.

  Chapter Six

  Claire was so aware of her own guilt when she finally managed to catch up to Maddie again the day she bought the pregnancy test kit that it wasn’t until Maddie gave her the slip a second time that she realized she hadn’t been the only one that was up to something she wanted to keep secret.

  Actually, she didn’t realize it then—not immediately.

  She hadn’t used the test she’d gotten. For one thing, she was afraid that if she used it too soon she wouldn’t be able to trust the accuracy of the test. For another, she was afraid that, either way, positive or negative, she would be emotional about it and Nick and or Maddie, at least, would be suspicious. She needed to take the test when she had some alone time so she could have hysterics in private—whichever way the test went.

  And finding time alone, she discovered, was no easier now than it had been when they had all been packed together on the small boat with the five man crew.

  Which, for someone as used to having a lot of alone time as she was—well, Maddie, too, for that matter—was nerve wracking in and of itself.

  So despite the fact that Nick was actually gone a good portion of the days they weren’t all out together ‘sightseeing’ to maintain the illusion that they were tourists, she and Maddie generally were together because both of them were going out their minds with nothing to do but hide.

  Fortunately, on their third excursion into town, they discovered a bookshop—the old fashioned kind that had paper books bound between a heavy cover. Nick had cautioned them to ‘keep it light’ since if they had to run, literally, they might find themselves lugging whatever they’d acquired.

  Of course, they might also have to abandon it, but both of them were well past caring about considerations of that sort by that time. Claire chose a novel, two science oriented magazines and a book titled A Walking tour of the Emerald Isle, which not only promised a list of the best places to visit, but also a listing of the best places to eat and sleep, and the legends associated with popular tourist destinations.

  Maddie found newspapers from the U.S. and picked two, then chose a novel for herself and a history of Ireland.

  Both of them were feeling far more cheerful when they headed back to the Inn where they’d been staying for nearly a week. There, they parted company and went to their separate rooms.

  Claire immediately thought about the opportunity their shopping expedition had afforded her. Disappointment followed an examination of the instructions, however. For best results she was supposed to use morning urine.

  Well hell!

  Returning the kit to its hiding place, she settled down and flipped through the tour guide until she found a segment dealing with their current location. There, she discovered the legend of Hy-Brasil—an island shrouded in mystery which appeared and disappeared and finally vanished altogether.

  Geologically speaking, that was absolutely not possible! She couldn’t think of any natural phenomenon that would account for it.

  Well, possibly volcanic activity. Of course she wasn’t a volcanologist, but they described the island as being shrouded in mist most of the time and only emerging into view every seven years. That actually sounded a lot like volcanic activity except for the repetitious part—well and seven years seemed way too short a time for an underwater volcano to build an island. Plus it wouldn’t be bobbing up and down like it was attached to an elevator and there were no accounts of eruptions that would make it disappear.

  Like Krakatau.

  Most myths had some basis in fact, however. The ancients, she knew, hadn’t simply pulled wild stories out of their asses. They’d seen something that they hadn’t understood and tried to explain it. For a legend like this one, there must have been many, many people who’d observed it.

  Her first thought, naturally enough given her most recent experiences, was that this must have been yet another area connected to the angels—or possibly the gods. She was excited, briefly, at the possibility that it might be another angel base and that it might be where Dante had gone.

  But what were the odds?

  And why was she even thinking along those lines? She didn’t want Dante to find her, did she?

  She realized she hadn’t considered the possibility. She’d been trying so hard to put Dante out of her mind and focus on her current situation—and Nick—that she hadn’t considered that Dante had told her he would be back for her.

  What would he think when he returned and discovered the fortress completely destroyed?
r />   Would he think she was dead?

  That seemed likely and it distressed her to think so.

  What if he actually did care for her as he claimed? Wouldn’t he grieve for her?

  But there was nothing she could think of to do about it.

  Maybe go out to the area where the island supposedly disappeared and throw out a message in a bottle, she thought wryly?

  She wasn’t telepathic like he was.

  But maybe he would be able to capture her thought waves and find her?

  And wasn’t that going to be an awkward moment!

  “Oh my god!” she muttered. Here she’d been blissfully ignorant of that particular disastrous possibility—because she’d been focused on other disastrous possibilities!—and that had the potential to be the most explosive!

  Not that Dante had displayed a great deal of jealousy, but Nick certainly had bristled every time he’d seen or heard anything about ‘Father Dante’ and that had been before he’d known that there was something between them!

  This was terrible!

  It was so frightening a scenario that Claire decided she needed to consult with Maddie and see what her sister might suggest as a way of handling the situation if it did arise.

  That was when she discovered that Maddie wasn’t in the Inn at all and, according to the clerk at the desk, hadn’t been for over an hour. Maddie had come directly back downstairs after the shopping excursion and left the Inn!

  She was tempted to instantly rush out to look for Maddie, but the clerk said she’d been gone since they came back in—at least an hour.

  After a brief internal debate, she headed back upstairs and went into Maddie’s room to see if her sister had left a note or any other clue explaining where she was going.

  Spread across the bed was the newspapers that Maddie had bought at the bookshop and the headlines of both jumped out at Claire and stopped her heart painfully in her chest.