by Ravyn Wilde
Falcon threw up his hands. “I see what you mean. That doesn’t mean anything to me. But there is a database of places and names that I can log on to from here. It catalogs evil deeds done across the universe and provides us with a list of names to watch for in our travels. I can enter the little information you have, along with what I know about the Siloth, and we will see if anything comes up.”
“Okay. So, I think that is pretty much it. Breeding, wanting younger girls.” She sucked in a breath. “And there was also mention of someone on Earth helping them.”
“What?” he exclaimed.
She nodded. “Let me think.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head a bit. She knew she probably looked a little insane. She was nodding her head up and down as she thought. Trying to replay that night in her mind. She’d been scared, worried, pissed.
She sat up straight and peeked at Falcon. He was silently watching the monitors. She glanced up at the screens. “I don’t know why I thought it would be dark, no color. But there are bands of color, everywhere. Where are we going?”
“Umm, not sure.” He looked out the window and concentrated. “Right now, we’re following both the trace of chemicals in space and a cosmic trail. As a Guardian, I can feel a disturbance, an imbalance if you will. Where it leads, we follow. That probably isn’t very reassuring.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she wondered.
He grinned and looked over at her. “Yes. I’ve done this several thousand times.”
“And you captured the bad guys?”
When he nodded, she went back to thinking about what the Siloth had said. They made her so mad.
FALCON LOOKED AWAY from the monitors, pleased that they hadn’t been followed and for now his Keeper was safe. He would bet that the longer he was around his woman, the harder it would be to keep her out of the line of fire. She had already killed several Siloth with her low-tech Earth weapons. He would need to spend time training her. The modern Guardians said many of the women liked to fight at their side. That it was a mistake to just wallow in the new physical part of their bond because something could happen anytime.
Hawken’s Keeper had been kidnapped within days of them bonding. He hadn’t spent enough time showing her how to be part of a Guardian pair. He had been lucky the woman had some survival training.
He was jolted out of his thoughts when Makayla started talking. She hadn’t even opened her eyes.
“I was laying behind the house after I climbed out of a window. Two of the Siloth came from the front talking about the translator working great. Then he said something about they had been told the girls weren’t guarded.”
She lifted her head and looked at Falcon. “The other one corrected him, saying that there wasn’t a male to guard the breeders. ‘Just an old woman past childbearing years with a weapon that doesn’t kill us.’ I remember those words pretty clearly. Then they said something about taking the ones who could be trained and loading them with the rest.”
She stopped again, her eyes getting wide. “Does that mean they took more girls than Kaitlyn and Lauren?” she asked Falcon.
Falcon nodded. “I think it probably does. It never made sense to me that the Siloth would come all the way to earth for two girls,” he said gently and reached out for her hand.
She squeezed his fingers. “The last part was something about the earth man didn’t lie. That the girls were a really good sample of what this planet had to offer, and they needed to get back to Brac.” She sat up straight and her eyes became fierce. She glared at him. “The last thing they said was something about not needing to waste their time on me. That the old one wasn’t worth anything and I could shoot them all I wanted because all it did was sting!”
Falcon didn’t bother to hide his smile. He would guarantee she had more than a few years left for children and she certainly wasn’t old. “Is that when you shot and killed them?”
Her smile filled her face when she nodded.
He threw back his head and laughed. Of course, she did. Not just because they’d taken her family, but also because they’d dissed her skills with the gun and made disparaging remarks about her age. Yes... she killed them.
He looked at the cast on her leg. “And that.” He pointed. “What happened to your leg?”
She hissed when she told him what happened. About jumping into the hidey-hole to keep the other Siloths from finding her. Breaking the leg when she landed wrong. And then their departure from Earth. She’d seen the ship and while she was waiting for the local Sherriff to arrive, she’d drawn her pictures.
“It was broken, badly. They didn’t even want me to leave the hospital yet. The doctor said it would take a month or more to heal and I’m supposed to stay off it.” She sighed and looked very upset.
Then she snapped back to herself. She looked around the flight deck and asked, “Do you have something on the ship that would heal the break in my leg faster. I don’t want to be a burden or get us in trouble if I need to do something like run. With this on my leg, I am pretty useless.” She shifted her leg.
It obviously pained her. And it would be much better if she were healed. He could help her with that. The question was, would she hate him if he did?
His heart thudded and his body clenched. Falcon didn’t answer her immediately. He had to figure out how he would handle this.
He checked the monitors and told her, “When a ship leaves the atmosphere there are chemicals that can be traced for a short time. I have picked up the trail of those chemicals from a ship that left Earth’s atmosphere in the vicinity near your home. I can’t imagine there was more than one as this planet is supposed to be off-limits to space travel. It has to be the Siloth. The timing is also right. They are several days ahead of us.” He grimaced. “Without knowing what type of space vehicle they’re in...”
Before he could finish that thought, Makayla handed him a drawing she’d done of the spaceship.
He looked at it and said, “Oh, this is very good. I know exactly what this is. They won’t travel as fast as we can. This means we should catch up to them in about,” he fiddled with the instruments on the panel in front of him. “In about five of your earth days.”
He studied a map he put on the screen in front of them. Drawing a wide green circle with the cursor in his hand, he told her, “Depending on their direction and if they are capable of sifting space, there are several inhabited natural planets and a few manufactured satellites they could get to within that time frame.”
Makayla frowned at him. “What do you mean if they are capable of sifting space? What is that?”
Falcon shrugged. “I will try to explain. Earth and the rest of the universe are made up of much more than what you see. The homo sapiens on earth believe that they are the only ones on their planet, and in their solar system. They aren’t allowed to see beyond their own world. Don’t ask me who controls that, because I can’t answer. I just know that there is more out there. There are many Realms or what you might call Dimensions that exist beyond your world. These Realms surround Earth—something like the layers of a blanket. They shift and fold, touching your Earth in specific places, forming small doorways and large dimensional gates that extend out through space and all the universes.”
He paused and took a deep breath. Then watched her frown as she thought about it for a bit, and slowly nod as if she understood a least a part of what he’d shared with her.
“The currents that surround the planets and run through space are not just created from the areas surrounding them, but they also represent wrinkles in time. The overlapping space dimensions can be sifted, and a ship can pass through them. Taking days and even centuries off of flight times. When someone has the ability and they can see those patterns, then they are taught how to use their mind to move between the interconnected currents. That is called sifting time and space. Once they can do it using their minds, then they can move a ship through them if it has the technology to blend with the currents. It isn’t easy and
it can be very dangerous. If someone is expecting it, the effort to shift can be used against someone. So sifting is never done if an enemy is close. The energy and concentration needed to sift puts the sifter in danger. They are easy to track and kill while they are moving through the currents. We learn to sift only when we know we are alone.”
Makayla looked at him. “You can sift?”
He nodded. “There aren’t many who have the ability. They must pass through the dimensions and overlapping currents and get from one point in space to an area that is millions of light-years away in just a few days. In order to do this, there needs to not only be a person on a ship that has the psychic ability to sift through those strands of time and space, but the ship has to have the technology to allow that person to guide it through the currents. I will say the combination is rare and I doubt the Siloth have the ability. But I will watch for it.”
Falcon smiled when he noticed that Makayla’s eyes had started to cross. That was enough about interdimensional space travel for now. He ended with more reassurance. “All you need to remember is that it won’t matter if they can sift space because as a Guardian, that is something I can follow, and this ship is equipped for it. Plus, I’ve been taught how to track someone who is using the ability.”
He handed her a watch that was set to the time in Texas, it had a calendar of days. “Eventually you will need to understand Galactic time. This watch will toggle between your Earth time and what the Galactic time equivalent is. Being able to see both will help you make sense of it all. Eventually. Don’t get discouraged. It will take you a little while to adjust to this new reality. One of the hardest abilities to learn is telling time and tracking days. Every planet and dimensional realm has its own definition of time. The Galactic standard uses the 24 hours of Earth’s or First Realm’s day.”
His Keeper groaned and buried her head in her hands. “My mind is overwhelmed working on this sifting thing and time. Can we hold the discussion of First Realm for another time? Because if there is a First Realm, there has to be more...right?”
He nodded and she sighed. “Yeah, I don’t have the brain capacity for that. Tell me something I won’t need to think about.” She pulled her hands through her long dark hair, taking down her bun. She looked tired. Stressed.
He could give her a little good news. “I have set this ship on the trail of the chemicals from the Siloths space vehicle. Our ship with do its job and follow without my assistance for some time. I can help you heal your leg if you wish?”
Her breath hissed out in excitement. “Yes! please. I need to be able to move so anything you can do to speed the healing will be great.”
He was going to take her word for it. Not just on healing her leg, but earlier she told him that she would do whatever he needed if he would take her into space. He needed her to become his Keeper.
So, he helped her out of the co-pilot chair and toward their future. He focused on controlling the excitement starting to pound through his body.
Chapter Five
FALCON LED MAKAYLA off the guidance bridge and into the hall of the ship. It wasn’t a large vehicle. It was made for speed and stealth. If needed it could hold four to six people comfortably with enough food and supplies to last them several months. He was fully stocked and refueled. Wherever this journey took them, they would be able to make it.
They passed the room where he’d stowed her gear. The next was his room.
He had been wondering how to do this...
What to say...
How to explain...
And decided there were no words. There was nothing he could tell her that would make sense. She had to live it to believe it. All the Guardians who came before him in the last several years said to just let it happen and deal with the fallout. Besides, the only way he could heal her was to use the Binding Pollen.
She couldn’t chase after the Siloth and her family in a cast. He would heal her, and she would eventually forgive him. Healing his Keeper was one of the specific things his body had been created to do. He was physically programmed to see to her healing. Her injury bothered him on an instinctive level. His body was pumping out Binding Pollen at an alarming rate.
So, Falcon walked in the door of his room and turned to Makayla. His Keeper was frowning.
“Is this some type of medical bay?” she asked, her eyes darting everywhere.
Falcon shook his head. “No. I need to change and let my body relax for a bit. You saw my form once and it caused you to faint. I would like you to lean against the bed so you can take the weight off your leg for a bit. This way, when I will transform you will have something to prop you up if the sight bothers you. It is important for you to get used to my natural form. Plus, you can ask me any questions you have.”
He moved her to the foot of his bed and helped her sit. Standing just a few feet away, he pulled off his tee-shirt. For several moments he let her enjoy the sight of his human body, all the tight muscles and ripped stomach. Her breathing and the way her eyes widened, told him she like this form.
At least Hawken and Talon gave him good information about this aspect of his Keeper.
In this human body, he had a six-pack, as a Guardian he was so much more.
Makayla reached her hand out and dropped it before she touched him. “You have an amazing body. But this wasn’t the one that popped in front of me,” she accused. Her hands clenched in front of her.
“No. This is the true me,” Falcon told her and relaxed the hold he had on his shape. His body was no longer pink, flushed with red blood rushing through his thin flesh.
No, it was gray. It shimmered with silver from the pollen dusting his much thicker skin. Knives couldn’t really hurt him as his flesh would stop the blade, and most bullets wouldn’t penetrate if someone shot at him.
His body with its coating of shimmering pollen was statuesque. He still had all the ripped muscle and the pale flesh glowed faintly. The silver coating on his flesh was meant to tempt his Keeper.
And it worked.
He took a step closer so she could easily reach him.
SLOWLY, CAREFULLY, Makayla reached out her hand. She wanted to make sure that this body was real and not some figment of her imagination. That Falcon was real.
He was standing in front of her in all his alien glory. He kept his pants on and except for his strange coloring, everything looked human. She was happy to see that in this form he didn’t have any extra bits and all his body parts were where they were supposed to be. She’d seen it for a few seconds before. Now he was mesmerizing.
His facial features were the same. Instead of having deeply tanned skin, his body gleamed in multiple tones of silver. She tipped her head to the side and studied him. The look worked for him. He was very compelling and still fantastically beautiful.
He was all silvery and muscled.
When his body changed in front of her, his incredible physique didn’t disappear. He grew a little taller, filled out a bit more, and added muscles to the already impressive washboard of a stomach. Now he sported an eight pack. Holy Hannah, she wanted to drop to her knees and worship at the altar of Falcon.
But she couldn’t do that. Not yet. It wouldn’t be right to have sex and rub her body all over this... alien.... when her family was missing.
She just wanted one touch.
She reached out and trailed her pointer finger down one hard, toned, quivering muscled arm.
She grinned and glanced at Falcon’s eyes. Her touch made him shiver.
Sweet baby Jesus. She could bounce a quarter on that stomach, and it was right in front of her eyes.
He shifted under her finger. So okay, more than one finger because now her hand was on his flesh. He was so soft, so smooth. As he turned in front of her she kept her palm against his skin. She let her hand glide over his shoulder and down his spine. She reveled in his every sigh and quake at her light touch.
When he faced her once again, he was closer. She leaned toward his body to breath deep. He
smelled so good. All cinnamon spice and hot male. The scent of him made her tingle and want. She looked down at her hands, noticing they were covered in the soft dust that was all over Falcon. She tentatively sniffed her hand and then licked one finger.
Oh, my God! The flavor was amazing. She licked the residue again, groaning at the sweet cinnamon zing that flooded her senses. That small taste wasn’t enough.
Without thinking she leaned closer to Falcon and in a daze stuck out her tongue and licked over his stomach... Her taste buds sizzled, and her mouth warmed. The flavor was amazing. She blinked and started to lean back.
Oh my god! What was she doing? Part of her mind tried to assert some sanity into this situation, the other part told it to shut the hell up. When Falcon put his arms around her and pulled her up and into his body, she took another long swipe of his flesh with her tongue.
His flavor was like nothing she’d ever tasted before. And she needed more. Frantically she started licking him. Falcon moved his hands to her face, and slowly guided her lips to meet his mouth. And he kissed her.
She was immediately swamped with more of that cinnamon taste. That taste she craved. The taste that silenced her sanity. She sucked his tongue into her mouth and fed on the spicy flavor of her alien.
At some point, she realized he was naked, and she moved her hands down his back to the curve of his ass. She was overwhelmed with the feel of him, with the tingling in her flesh everywhere she touched him.
She frowned. Her entire body was tingling. She opened her eyes and moved a few back without letting him go. She looked down and frowned. She was naked. How the hell had that happened? Was she losing herself in this man?
Falcon pulled her into his body and whispered in her ear, “The dust covering my body will heal you. Can’t you feel how your leg no longer pains you? Come, you need more.”
She nuzzled her face into his neck, licking his flesh and marveling at his words. He was right. The dull ache and occasionally sharp, painful twinges in her leg had stopped completely. She stepped on her walking cast and was happy to find it didn’t hurt.