“You brought your bow and arrows,” the other girl said softly.
“Yes. As I said, I came prepared. I don’t want to use them, but I won’t let him take you or anyone else in this house. An arrow in the leg should make him change his mind.”
“Are you sure you want to do that? Kiri, if you do, you’ll be doing something you can’t ever take back. He’ll report you to the others. You don’t know what will happen.”
Kiri shrugged. “I’m not going to think like that right now. It might never come down to me having to use the bow and there will be nothing to worry about.” She put the bow and quiver back into the duffle, then stood.
Meg nodded. “You’re right. There’s no point getting stressed if there’s no reason to. You can stay here while I tell my mom that you’re sleeping over and the reason.”
Kiri nodded and Meg left the room. Kiri went and sat on the bed. It didn’t take very long before the sound of Meg’s mother getting very upset reached her ears. She cringed inside at the fear in her voice.
* * * *
The afternoon turned into evening and then into night. So far, nothing had happened. Kiri helped Meg throw some food together for dinner to feed everyone, since Mrs. O’Brien had been in no state to cook. Meg’s brother, Luke, hadn’t seemed to care that it was macaroni and cheese that had come out of a box. He shoveled it into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Meg’s mom ate next to nothing and seemed lost in her thoughts, not talking to anyone.
Up in Meg’s bedroom, Kiri made a “bed” for herself on the floor with the quilts and pillow the other girl had given her. It’d be a bit uncomfortable, but she didn’t mind. It was only for one night.
They hadn’t changed into pajamas. Meg hadn’t wanted to in case the Atres male did come. She wanted to be prepared to run if it came to it. Kiri had figured it was a good idea.
It was after midnight when Meg and Kiri decided to turn in for the night. The rest of the house was quiet as Kiri settled herself on her makeshift bed. Her bow and quiver of arrows lay on the floor within easy reach. Tired from having to wake up early for school—she looked forward to the summer holidays when she could sleep in every day—and closed her eyes and fell asleep in a matter of minutes.
Kiri had no idea how long she’d slept before the sound of screams brought her instantly awake. Meg shot out of bed at the same time Kiri surged to her feet. She rushed to the closed door. She threw it open before she ran down the hallway toward the master bedroom where the screams were coming from. Meg was hot on her tail.
What Kiri found was something that could have been out of a vampire movie. The Atres male from the school was there along with another. The latter held Mrs. O’Brien in a rough hold with his mouth at the side of her neck. His throat moved as he swallowed, and a trickle of blood dripped down his chin. Meg’s mom screamed and struggled to free herself. The other male watched and laughed.
Kiri launched herself at the one who held Mrs. O’Brien. Kiri kicked out, using a karate move that tore him away from Meg’s mother’s neck and forced him to let go of his hold. He turned toward Kiri, his eyes blazing red, and snarled, revealing a set of bloodstained fangs.
With an animalistic growl, he launched himself at Kiri. She automatically slipped into her offensive mode, striking out with hits and kicks. She also used the moves Cax had taught her in the style of fighting his people preferred. It didn’t take her long to beat him down to the point where she rendered him unconscious.
Kiri swung around to face the other Atres warrior with her hands balled into fists and raised to strike or ward off a blow. He was between her and the door where Meg and her mom were, clutching each other. Luke stood next to them, eyes wide.
“You fight like one of us,” the Atres said with a snarl. “How is that possible?”
“I learned in my dreams.”
Before Kiri could strike out first, he swung around and tore Meg out of her mother’s grasp. He dragged Meg out of the room, even though she screamed and fought him every step of the way, trying some of the moves Kiri had taught her. It was no use. Meg wasn’t a match for the warrior.
Kiri rushed out of the room to Meg’s bedroom. She picked up her bow and slipped her quiver of arrows onto her back. She ran after her friend and the Atres, who steadily pulled Meg down the stairs.
As the warrior reached the bottom and turned himself and Meg toward the front door, Kiri yelled, “Stop! You aren’t taking her anywhere!”
He swung around and looked up the stairs to where Kiri stood a few steps up. He laughed. “How are you going to stop me, little girl? With what you’re holding? That weapon is no match for one of our guns.”
The warrior took his gun out of the holster on his right hip and aimed it at her. He took a step away from Meg, holding her arm with his other hand so she’d stay at his side.
Kiri remembered something Cax had drummed into her over and over again, his voice loud inside her mind as if he stood beside her. Don’t think. Just do. She did just that. She hurriedly reached behind her, grabbed an arrow out of her quiver, nocked it, and sent it flying toward the Atres. It knocked the gun out of his hand. A second and along with a third arrow followed in quick succession. She didn’t think too hard of what she was doing and aimed for the places that would do the most damage.
The Atres dropped his gun and raised his hands to the two arrows that stuck out of his chest. They were in the left side, close to, if not in, his heart. He gave her a shocked look before he crumpled to the tiled floor.
“Kiri! Behind you!” shouted Meg.
Kiri grabbed another arrow as she swung around. It took a matter of seconds to nock it and then let it loose. It found its target in the chest of the second Atres warrior that she’d left unconscious upstairs in the master bedroom. He’d been on the stairs headed toward her. As the arrow took him, he stumbled and fell the rest of the way to land in a heap at the bottom. She gazed up to find Luke and his mother standing at the top, looking at her with shocked expressions.
She turned her attention to Meg to find her staring at her as well. Kiri looked from one Atres to the other. What she’d done sank in and she shook. She’d killed them. She lowered her bow, her mind going a million miles a minute.
Meg came to her side. “Don’t. I can tell you’re thinking about this.” She waved at the dead warriors. “Don’t do it. You saved me. You had to kill them. You’d had no choice. They would have killed you for standing up to them.”
Meg’s mom and Luke came down to join them, stepping around the fallen warrior at the base of the stairs. Mrs. O’Brien gave Kiri a watery smile. Blood was smeared on her neck and still slowly seeped from the bite mark.
“Meg’s right,” Mrs. O’Brien said in a shaky voice. “You saved us.”
Kiri took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “We have to get rid of the bodies. And we can’t leave them close to the house.”
Luke went and picked up the dropped Atres gun. “We use this to get rid of them.”
It would work. The guns were capable of turning a person—or anything it was shot at—to ash. Kiri had seen one of the warriors at school use it to destroy a tree when they’d first arrived to show what their weapons could do and to scare everyone into behaving.
She nodded. “Okay, but I have to remove my arrows first.”
She went to the body near the stairs. Kiri rolled the warrior over to his back. A small pool of blood had formed underneath him. She swallowed, fighting back the urge to fall apart from what she’d had to do. Trying not to think about it too much, she grasped the arrow and tugged it out.
After she stepped back, a red beam of light hit the body, turning it to ash. Kiri looked where it’d come from and found Mrs. O’Brien holding the gun extended. She nodded for Kiri to retrieve her other arrows. Once she had, the second dead warrior met the same fate.
Now that it was over, Meg’s mother took charge. She no longer seemed to be the frightened woman she’d been since
her husband’s abduction.
“Kiri,” she said. “You can wash the blood off your arrows in the kitchen sink while Meg and Luke help me clean up this mess. I’ll get rid of the gun as well.”
Kiri nodded and went to the kitchen. At the sink, she turned on the faucet and shoved the arrow heads under it. The blood slowly washed away. Her gut clenched at the sight of the pink water swirling down the drain. She told herself that she’d acted in self-defense. She’d saved Meg’s family. It could have gone so very wrong if she hadn’t taken a stand against the Atres warriors. Those thoughts only made her feel marginally better.
She grabbed some paper towels off the roll on the counter and used them to carefully dry the arrowheads. As more of the adrenaline left her system, the more her hands shook. Kiri had to take a deep breath to calm herself. This had to be what Cax had trained her for, why he’d wanted her to learn how to shoot with a bow and arrow. God, she wished she could talk to him. He couldn’t have spent so much time with her to abandon her when the going got tough. Could he?
Kiri returned to the front entranceway to find Meg and her family had just about finished cleaning up what was left of the two dead Atres. The ash had been swept up and put into a garbage bag. Mrs. O’Brien ran a wet mop across the floor where they’d been. The pool of blood was gone as well. She looked up as Kiri stepped into her line of sight.
“We’re almost done here,” Mrs. O’Brien said. “I’m going to throw the garbage bag into the neighbor’s backyard that backs onto ours. No one lives there anymore. It was empty before the Atres came. While I do that, you kids should go back to bed.”
Without saying a word, Kiri nodded, and followed Meg and her brother upstairs. Luke veered off to his bedroom once he reached the door, not even bothering to look at them before he closed it behind him. Meg and Kiri continued on to Meg’s room.
After they were inside, Kiri unslung her quiver of arrows and placed it along with her bow on the floor next to her makeshift bed. She sat on it and looked at nothing in particular. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, at least not yet, even though it was very late.
Meg plunked down in front of Kiri. She stared at her. “I know I said we wouldn’t talk about why you had to see your shrink, but after what you told that Atres warrior, I have to ask. What did you mean that you learned how to fight like one of them in your dreams?”
Kiri sighed. “I suppose I should tell you. I just recently told my mother.” She paused. “I wasn’t hurting myself in my sleep like the doctors thought. I was meeting with one of them. An alien.”
Meg’s eyes widened. “You mean one of the Atres? How is that possible? You started having those dreams years before they came to Earth.”
“Yes, one of the Atres. His name is Cax. He’s a warrior two years older than us. I don’t know how he did it, but he said he could connect with me during my dreams. He brought me to his world. I think it was, anyway. He trained me to fight. He said it was important that I learn, and that I had to catch up to his level of training since he’d started when he was eight. That’s why I took up karate and archery.”
“Why would he train you?”
“He had to have known his people planned to come here and take over. That’s the only thing I can come up with.”
“You haven’t asked him? Don’t you see him in your dreams all the time?”
Kiri shook her head. “The last time I saw Cax in one was two years ago. He’d said he was going into stasis and that he couldn’t see me anymore. I know he’s here, though. The day the Atres arrived and their leader took over the TV stations and made that speech, I saw Cax in the background. He hasn’t tried to contact me. Before they came, I’d started to feel as if I’d made him up.”
“Maybe he’ll come looking for you. Maybe he just hasn’t had the chance to do it yet.”
“I couldn’t say.” Kiri sighed. “After what happened here, I’m not sure if seeing him again would be a good thing.”
Meg reached over and squeezed Kiri’s hand where she had it resting on her lap. “I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. You have no idea what Cax would be like if you saw him. He could be the same as in your dreams, or he could be like the two Atres who came here tonight.”
“I know.”
“Kiri, you didn’t like what you had to do to them, but I don’t think you should stop.”
“What do you mean?”
Meg let go of Kiri’s hand. “The way you moved, the way you fought them, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. You need to be out there at night, taking out the Atres.”
Kiri chuckled and shook her head. “You want me to take on an entire race? All by myself?”
“No, not exactly by yourself. I want to help.”
“What do you expect we can do?”
“My family can’t be the only ones who the Atres are attacking in the middle of the night. Someone has to stop them. Like what you did. We could sneak out to do some patrolling of our own. We could save some lives.”
Kiri looked at her friend. From Meg’s serious expression, Kiri could tell she wasn’t making light of it. She really wanted to go out there and try to stop the Atres.
“I don’t know,” Kiri said. “If we were to get caught outside after curfew, there’s no telling what they’ll do to us. People disappear when they break it. That alone is a big offense. Do you really want to take that risk?”
Meg nodded. “Yes. I already lost one parent to them, and almost a second. How many more parents will they take? Or kids, for that matter?” She met Kiri’s gaze. “Can you sit back and do nothing? Especially after you said you figure Cax trained you to stand up to his people. You can do this.”
“No, I don’t think I can do nothing and let it happen, but I have to think it over first before we take such a drastic step. Once we cross that line, there will be no going back. And there’s my mom. I’d have to talk about it with her.”
“I figured you’d want to. I’ll talk to my mom about it too, though I can’t see her having a problem with it. At least I don’t think she would. Not after you saved her. And, Kiri, you already crossed that line when you killed those two Atres.” Meg stood. “Try to get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning.”
Kiri nodded. Meg turned off the lights, then climbed into her bed. Kiri stretched out on her back on her makeshift one and stared at the ceiling. Could she do what Meg had suggested? She had the training for it, and tonight showed she was more than capable, but should she take the risk?
She closed her eyes. She had to talk to her mom. Kiri would tell her everything that had taken place here. As for Cax, if he hadn’t wanted her to take a stand against his people, he shouldn’t have trained her to be a warrior in her dreams.
Chapter 5
Kiri left Meg’s house shortly after she’d awakened in the morning after getting next-to-nothing of sleep. She’d tossed and turned for the remainder of the night, the confrontation she’d had with the two Atres warriors playing over and over again in her mind. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was what they’d looked like when her arrows had hit them. She doubted she’d ever forget.
Meg had wanted to talk more about them patrolling the streets after curfew, but Kiri had decided she didn’t want to discuss it further until she’d talked to her mom. Meg had understood and said she’d pick her up on Monday for their first exams.
As Kiri walked along the sidewalk, she couldn’t stop herself from looking for any Atres who could be patrolling. She wanted to avoid them as best she could. She had no idea if she’d in some way give it away that she was guilty of something. She hoped the two warriors wouldn’t be noticed as missing for some time. And if luck was on hers and Meg’s side, the aliens wouldn’t know where their people had gone and come searching her neighborhood for them.
Kiri used her house key to let herself through the locked front door once she arrived home. It was quiet. It was early enough her mom could still be in bed, sleeping. Sh
e walked up the stairs to the second floor. Her mother’s bedroom door was shut, which meant she was asleep.
Inside her room, Kiri unslung the duffel bag from her shoulder and placed it on her bed. She unzipped it. She took out her bow and quiver. She slipped an arrow free and stared at it. The memory of having to pull other ones from the dead Atres flashed through her mind. The sound, the feel, and the sight of the blood. She swallowed and forced herself not to shake.
“Did you take your bow and arrows to Meg’s house?”
Kiri shot her head up to look at her mom, who stood just in the doorway of her bedroom. Kiri hadn’t heard her get up. She looked at her, standing frozen with the arrow still in her hand.
Her mom walked toward her. “What happened? I know something did. I can tell by the way you’re looking at me.”
Her mother could read her so well. She always knew when something bothered Kiri or if she was sick or had hurt herself.
“Mom, I have to tell you something.”
“Okay, but not yet. I need a cup of coffee first. I’ll make you some breakfast.”
Kiri followed her mom downstairs to the kitchen. Her mother started the coffeemaker, took out a frying pan from the cupboard, and a carton of eggs from the fridge. Kiri put a couple of slices of bread into the toaster oven while her mom cracked some eggs into the pan.
Once the food and coffee were ready, they sat at the table. There was only the sound of their forks hitting against their plates until her mom spoke.
“All right, kiddo, what’s up?”
Kiri swallowed her mouthful of food that suddenly turned into sawdust. She put down her fork. “I’m not sure how you’re going to react to what I have to say.”
“Just spit it out.”
She took a deep breath. “Two Atres came to Meg’s house in the middle of the night and attacked her mom. One bit her neck and drank her blood. I stopped him. We fought. I knocked him out. The other warrior grabbed Meg and would have dragged her out of the house.” Kiri paused. “I ended up shooting them both with arrows…and killing them.” Her mother blinked, not saying a word. She just stared. Eventually, Kiri couldn’t take it anymore. “Mom, say something.”
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