by Regine Abel
Once I brought her onboard the rescue ship, there would, no doubt, be quite a few frowns. I might even face disciplinary measures for violating the Prime Directive. But then my friendship with Lana, who would be staying here, had also been a violation. Pretty much every single one of the surviving Khargals had formed a special bond of friendship with a human that assisted us in one form or another with living on Earth. Whatever the punishment, I would accept it as long as they didn’t dare try to take my woman from me. I didn’t really fear that would be the case though. Khargals respected the sacred bond that existed between true mates.
Forcing my thoughts back to more productive endeavors, I called my notary to give my approval on the final draft of my revised will. He confirmed the official documents would be couriered to me today. I’d have to ask Lana to call her friend, the Commissioner of Oaths, to bear witness when I signed. After hanging up, I cast a vague glance at the monitors displaying different angles of the room being cleared, only to do a double-take. I jumped to my feet, my eyes widening at the sight of the gargoyle face carved into the wall that had finally been revealed.
I raced to the catacombs and called on Stephen, the construction manager, to tell him to halt the work for the day. With the sigil within reach, I wanted everyone out in order to open the secret cache without prying eyes in the vicinity.
He argued at first, saying there was still some debris left to be removed in the room and, with their current progress, they could get started on the second room two days early. My impatience to see them all leave must have been evident in the curtness of my response. Frowning in confusion, Stephen gave me a stiff nod and then proceeded to herd his men out of the catacombs.
No sooner had the last man left than I headed for the gargoyle face carved into the wall. After a century of disuse, and the collapse from the explosion, I prayed that the opening mechanism of the secret cache remained functional. Releasing my claws, I used their sharp tips to dislodge some of the dirt around the hidden switches. The bulging eyes of the gargoyle would have been too obvious. Instead, the switches were concealed in the spiraling ornaments surrounding the face. Two specific spots, with nothing in common visually, needed to be depressed simultaneously, the pressure applied for at least five seconds before the mechanism released. It ensured no one would reveal it by accident. Even if someone tried to open it, if they didn’t know exactly how, chances were they would never find it.
A victorious growl rose from my throat as the grinding sound of stone against stone echoed in the empty room. The gargoyle face slid to the side, revealing a gaping, recessed shelf behind it. Plumes of dust rose around the face, and small rocks drizzled to the ground. I waved the dust away, then held my hand before the scanner, invisible to human eyes, so that it could identify my digital prints. Once again, it took a little over five seconds for the blue laser to appear and scan my palm. The delay was meant to fool a potential intruder into a false sense of safety, causing him to trip the booby trap.
As soon as the scanner chimed, confirming the trap was disabled, I reached for the sigil, ignoring the couple of other devices I had hidden here. My brain tingled from the psychic connection with the sigil. No bigger than a medallion, the device fit snugly in the palm of my hand. It immediately responded to contact with my DNA. The large, red gem in its center lit up, bathing the entire room in a bright, red glow. With a small flash, a 3D hologram of a mountain appeared above the sigil. Floating next to it, script text written in Durassian indicated the pick-up time and date, the name of the mountain range, and its coordinates.
My heart soared, and my throat tightened with emotion. Despite my conviction that the sigil had indeed become active, until this instant, a doubt had lingered in the back of my head that maybe I’d imagined it all. But now, I held irrefutable proof that, at long last, we were going home.
With my free hand, I rotated the holographic representation of the mountain. The rendezvous point had been set to Mount Nirvana in the Canadian Northwest Territories. Zooming in, the mountain face didn’t show any roads or easy access. This would be a tough climb—an impossible climb for a novice—or an easy flight for a Khargal. I would need to train hard to be able to carry Brianna over such a long distance. Thankfully, the pick-up date was set for October 31st. That still left me three weeks to get back in shape and convince my woman she belonged with me.
Turning off the sigil, I shoved it into my pocket and reached for my armor and the defective weapon which I had stashed away here. I’d barely raised my hand when a subtle sound had my head jerking back to look over my shoulder.
Grack!
How could I have let a damn human get the drop on me? That was twice now.
“Hands up where I can see them, creature!” the man said, leveling a dart gun unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
I pretended to comply, assessing the extent of the threat and turning my skin to stone. As I’d not deactivated my perception filter yet, he couldn’t see my transformation, nor my wings opening. The challenge would be fighting with stone skin. It made us heavier and our movements slower, thus draining us faster of energy. If not careful, I could drain myself to the point of exhaustion, and become helpless in front of an enemy.
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked, playing dumb. And then it struck me. “I know you! You’re one of the workers. You’re here to rob me?”
“Do not take me for a fool,” the man said in a sharp tone laced with a subtle British accent. “You know exactly what I am, just like I know what kind of abomination you are.”
My eyes flicked to his hand wielding the gun, and my stomach dropped as I recognized the ring with the symbol of a rose adorning his finger.
His lips stretched into a malicious smile as he noticed where my gaze had wandered. He wiggled his fingers, flaunting the ring.
“I see you’re familiar with it,” the man said. “Good, we can get straight to business. You have something we want. Hand it over and don’t make a fuss. Give me a hard time, and that human traitor you’re fucking will have a most unpleasant time.”
My blood froze in my veins, and an angry haze descended before my eyes. I advanced by one menacing step towards him.
“Hey!” the Rose Syndicate agent snapped. “You stay right where you are or I’ll pump you full of drugs. I don’t give a shit if you overdose. We already have another one of you monsters for our studies. We don’t need you alive. We just want that thing in your pocket. So hand it over.”
“Lar forsakes you, vermin!” I hissed before rushing him.
He fired his gun, the dart glancing off the side of my wing as I veered right to dodge it. Standing his ground, he fired three more times in quick succession. I swatted the first dart out of the way and barely managed to dodge the second one, my movements significantly slowed down by the heaviness of stone form. But the third found its mark in my shoulder. Although I immediately yanked it out, numbness began to spread.
How in Lar’s name had the dart pierced through my stone skin?
Whatever substance it had contained, it would soon have me completely incapacitated. Throwing caution to the wind, I charged him only to have another dart hit me square in the chest while the agent quickly backed away from me. The dart’s vile content immediately coursed through me, making my legs wobble and my stomach churn.
Stone skin had been a mistake.
Without it, I would have been faster. Even if he had shot me a second time, he’d be lying on the ground with a broken neck right now. Until this instant, piercing rounds were the only type of human ammunitions that had worried me as they punched through our stone skin to bite into our flesh. But these darts…
The man took aim again and I brought my right wing before me to shield myself. He fired but his dart gun clicked empty. I spread my wing open to clear my line of sight only to find the man fumbling with his pocket. His face drained of blood, proper fear descending upon him when our eyes connected, and I shed my stone skin. I stumbled towards the doorway, my visio
n blurring and my limbs getting heavy. And yet, even with the drug on the verge of overwhelming me, we both knew he wouldn’t escape me.
The man yanked out of his pocket a small device that resembled a remote car key and pressed a button on it. A series of quick snapping sounds resonated overhead, no louder than firecrackers going off. I raised my head just in time to see a series of large stones collapsing on me. The brutal impact knocked me to my knees.
I’d grown too numb to push off the boulder that had fallen over my wing.
“If you want what’s in my pocket,” I slurred, “come and get it.”
The man snarled, realizing he’d effectively blocked his own access to my right pocket with the boulder pinning my wing down against my side. If he were dumb enough to approach, I’d claw his face off. And once I lost consciousness, my body would enter duramna. My Durassian pants would turn to stone as well, further sheltering the sigil from his filthy hands.
“You will bring us the medallion, or the little engineer won’t be so pretty anymore,” the man said, regaining his cocky attitude. “You will receive your instructions soon. Do not disappoint us.”
As darkness descended before my eyes, another series of snapping sounds brought the collapse of more rocks and boulders, this time completely sealing me inside the room.
A single name occupied my last thought.
Brianna.
8
Brianna
My phone rang, breaking my concentration. The number didn’t look familiar.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Ms. Brent?” asked a male voice I didn’t know.
“Speaking.”
“My name is Charles Lumney, one of the workers at The Darkest Hour.”
My stomach dropped, a sudden sense of impending doom washing over me.
“I’m sorry, Madam, but there’s been a terrible accident,” the man said in a commiserating voice. “Part of the hallway has collapsed. Stephen and Mr. Drayvus both got severely injured. The first responders are on the way. I think you should come, too.”
“Oh my God!” I exclaimed. Jumping to my feet, I grabbed my purse from my desk drawer. In my haste, I almost upended it. “How bad is it?” I asked, running towards the elevators.
“It’s hard to tell, Ms. Brent,” the man said, sounding deflated. “They’re both stuck under the rubble, and there’s a lot of blood pooling from under there.”
“Oh God!” I felt dizzy with fear, imagining the worst. “Marnie, there’s been an incident on one of the construction sites. I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I shouted to the receptionist, not waiting for her answer as I jumped into an open elevator by the reception desk. “I’m on my way, Mr. Lumney,” I said back into my phone. “Everything will be okay.”
“All right, thank you, Ma’am.”
The elevator doors closed as I continued to frantically punch the button to the underground parking of the building. I eventually stopped when the lift started moving, berating myself for doing exactly what I hated seeing other people do whenever they entered an elevator. I tried to call Lana but there was no signal in the lift. Stomach in knots, I couldn’t breathe at the thought that something terrible could have happened to Alkor. But worse still, what would happen when they removed the stones he was trapped under and saw his true appearance? Would they even know how to heal a Khargal?
The lift finally reached its destination. When the door opened at last, I skip-ran to my car while once again trying to call Lana. But of course, the signal acted up as was often the case when in the underground garage. As I closed the distance to my car, a familiar-looking man approached me. I didn’t have time to chitchat, but he called out my name, forcing me to slow down.
“Ms. Brent?” he man asked.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m in a hurry,” I said without stopping.
“I know,” the man said. “I’ve been sent to pick you up to drive you to The Darkest Hour. I’m one of the workers.”
“Oh!” I said, stopping dead in my tracks. I was terrible at driving when under strong emotional turmoil. Come to think of it, I should have hopped in a cab instead. “Yes. Yes, thank you. That would be great.”
“This way,” he said with a pleased smile.
As we approached his vehicle, he unlocked the doors of a black sedan with the remote. I didn’t know jack about cars but his seemed a tad fancy for a construction worker going on site. That first random thought raised an avalanche of other questions. Why had he come to pick me up? How did he know where I worked when he was Stephen’s contractual employee? How did he get here so fast? Why didn’t Lumney warn me he had sent someone to get me?
My steps faltered, and I stopped a couple of feet from the car. The man, who had been opening the door to the driver’s seat, paused and looked at me questioningly. My expression must have given away my sudden suspicions. His face hardened, losing all traces of his earlier kindness.
“Get your ass in the car, bitch, before I shoot you,” he said in a menacing voice.
I gasped and stumbled two steps back. Before I could react, I watched the man pull the trigger on his strange gun. As if in slow motion, a dart flew towards me before embedding itself in my torso. The only sound I emitted could have passed for a hiccup before nauseating numbness spread through me. With an annoyed expression, the man circled around the car towards me just as I collapsed to the ground, lost in oblivion.
I regained consciousness, my wrists and ankles shackled to a chair in an interrogation room. The overly bright neon lights on the ceiling made the barren, pale grey walls appear white. I blinked until my vision cleared. Two empty chairs across the metal table in front of me were my sole companions. The clichéd two-way mirror didn’t feature in the room but a camera in the top left corner probably took its place.
The clicking sound of the door opening startled me. Stephen and the ‘construction worker’ who had abducted me walked into the room. My chest tightened at the sight of the construction manager. We’d worked together for years. I’d grown to consider him a friend and even worried he was lying injured under the so-called collapse. What the hell was going on? I stared at him with disbelieving eyes as both men took a seat in the chairs across the table from me.
“Hello, Brianna,” Stephen said, an apologetic hint in his dark-brown eyes. “It is unfortunate that we should meet again under these circumstances.”
“What is going on, Stephen?” I asked, anger and betrayal burning through me. “Why am I here?”
“This is Daniel, my partner,” Stephen said, ignoring my questions. “I’ve always had the utmost respect for you as an engineer and a professional. Our collaborations over the years have proven quite successful and provided me with the perfect cover during my investigations.”
“Investigations?” I asked, a sense of dread rising in the pit of my stomach, already guessing where this was headed.
“You specialize in historical buildings, and you have done your damnedest to secure every church project your firm contracted. That suited me perfectly. You see, like you, my organization seeks the stone creatures.”
My involuntary sharp breath intake gave me away. Stephen’s knowing smile confirmed I’d blown my chances of playing dumb.
“Your organization?” I asked, trying to change the course of the conversation.
“Almost twenty years ago, we came across an interesting police report which mentioned the delirious ramblings of a grieving little girl who had lost her mother in a car crash and barely survived drowning herself,” Daniel said. “The poor child claimed a gentle, stone demon had rescued her and her dad from the sinking car. Naturally, the authorities dismissed that claim, but we knew better.”
“We’ve been keeping a close eye on you ever since, in case your ‘rescuer’ would show up again,” Stephen said, leaning against the back of his chair. “You’ve been impressive in your efforts to dig up information about the Creatures. We often considered offering you a chance to join our organization, but you have too romant
ic an idea of what they truly are. Until we knew if you would be a fit with us, I’d decided to collaborate with you on your various projects.”
“You mean use me to try to get closer to them,” I said bitterly.
“Semantics,” Stephen said with a shrug, his face taking on a bored expression. “When Drayvus gave you the contract, and you reached out to us, I could have kissed you! Do you have any idea how long we’ve been trying to approach him to verify our suspicions that he was the real deal and not some freak cosplay fan?”
“What do you want from him?” I asked, anger fueled by my protective instincts towards Alkor seeping in to my voice. “He doesn’t bother anyone, pays his taxes, and observes our laws. Why not just leave him alone?”
The look of pure contempt Stephen leveled me with made me shudder. This was not the man I had grown to believe a friend.
“You are a foolish girl. I’d expected better from you, to be honest. All he had to do was show you his wings for you to jump into bed with him. With it!” Stephen spat with disdain. “How could you lay with a monster?”
My face heated, but I lifted my chin defiantly. “The only monsters I see right now are sitting across this table from me. He saved my life when he had no reason to, exposing himself in the process. He had nothing to gain from it and never asked for anything in return. All these years, he’s been an exemplary citizen. Why do you want to harass him now?”
Stephen shook his head in disappointment, his shoulder-length dark brown hair waving with each movement. “He played the long-game with you. Earned your loyalty, made you chase after him, staying just out of reach to keep you trying until he had you exactly where he wanted you. Until you were ripe for the picking.”
My stomach knotted, an uneasy feeling blossoming deep within me at hearing him voice the fear that had haunted me ever since Alkor first revealed his true nature to me.