“You wanna take me to him?” I asked Sam.
“Not particularly. But I suppose you ain’t gonna give me much of a choice in the matter?”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Then I suppose I will.”
***
We left Inez back at Sam’s house and made the half hour drive to the Reverend’s “church” in total silence. Me and Sam have never been what you would describe as close. Sure, we were brothers, but we’d never paled around growing up like me and my little brother did. We were blood and that’s all that mattered. But in the same breath, if push came to shove, I was fairly certain Sam would sacrifice me in a dead second to either save his own ass or curry favor with someone who could give him a little more power. So when it came to dealing with the Reverend, I didn’t know where I stood exactly.
As we pulled in front of the Reverend’s church—which was just an anonymous storefront in a burnt out mini-mall—Sam turned to me with his gray eyes.
“I can’t have you killing this man, little brother,” He said.
“And why’s that? Are you into him?”
He snickered and cleared his throat.
“First off, I don’t feel like arresting you today, and if you kill him in front of me, you ain’t going to give me a choice in the matter. Secondly, I ain’t into him, but a whole bunch of people you don’t want to mess with are, and if you kill him, I ain’t going to be able to protect you one damn bit. So hands off, right?”
“Right.”
“Oh, and let me do the talking. He don’t know you from fucking Adam, but he’s scared shitless of me.”
We exited my brothers truck and stepped through the glass fronted door to the jingling of bells. There was nothing in the store front other than the Reverend himself sitting at a battered desk that looked like it had been fished out of the trash.
“Samuel!” The Reverend greeted us. “What a pleasant surprise! It’s been too long since you’ve last visited!”
The Reverend held out his long-fingered hand, but Sam just stared at it like it was a dead moth stuck in a screen door.
“Knock off the shit, Joe, and sit down, this ain’t a social visit.”
“It’s not, then whatever reason do you have for visiting me today? And who is this fine young man you brought along with you?” The Reverend took a seat and kicked up his snakeskin boots on top of his battered desk. The boots he was wearing easily cost 10 grand, so obviously he was doing pretty well for himself.
“This is my little brother and just killed the shit out of Billy Zane,” Sam tossed the ID onto the desk and it bounced off the Reverends boot. “And a couple of other fellas who just shot up his house trying to kill his girlfriend.”
“Now that’s a shame. Billy was always a little too hot tempered when it comes to dealing with the illegal problem. Too hot-tempered, too over overzealous.”
“Indeed, he was,” Sam agreed. “But my brother’s girlfriend also told me that Billy and a few of his other buddies killed a truckload of Mexicans just after crossing the border up near Phoenix.”
“That is a shame. As you know, Sam, I’ve never condoned violence.”
“Of course. But, you know I don’t feel quite the same. So here’s the deal, if you or any of your people come at my brother or his girl ever again, I’m going come down here and put you into a pair of handcuffs. And then I going personally drive you down to Juarez to visit a couple of fellas I know down there, and these fellas, Joe, they don’t give two shits about who you know up at the statehouse, all they know is that you’re bad for business. Got it.”
The Reverend’s face had turned visibly gray as we turned and walked out of the small office. As the door closed behind us, Sam said me.
“Don’t say I’ve never done nothing for you, Hank, because that just cost me more than you’ll ever know.”
***
It’s been two months since the attack on the ranch, and things are more or less back to normal. The day Inez and I drove back home, Sam called the Apache Junction sheriff’s department and smoothed things over with them and the attack was labeled a home invasion gone bad. The house is more or less back to normal, too, but both Inez and I have taken to sleeping in the trophy room just incase. She still has nightmares about what she experienced here and out in the desert (I do, too, but she doesn’t need to here about that.), but every night, they become a little less frequent.
Every morning, we go out riding and every night I help her study for the GED. Neither of us talks very much, but then again, we really don’t need to.
Because all we need is to know that we’ll always be there for one another, and that’s all that matters.
THE END
Desired by the Alien King
Blinking her bleary, groggy eyes, Gwendolyn tried to focus her mind on the last thing she could remember. The shooting pain in her head—where did that come from?—did not make it any easier.
She and her archaeological team had been going through the Sarmian excavation. The desert around them was gorgeous. It reminded them of the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert of North America back on Earth, except the browns and tans and the ruddy and rusty colors were streaked with green and grey. Being surrounded by all that beauty had made them wish they were tourists instead of scientists. But they had gotten to work well enough, for each of them was well accustomed to interplanetary travel. More exciting than Sarma itself was the idea of who lived there and what first contact with them meant. Gwendolyn and her people were living the dream of not only every archaeologist on Earth, but every biologist, every biochemist, every political scientist and historian, every philosopher—practically the whole of humanity. They were on the cutting edge of the most exciting thing to happen in human history since the confirmation of extraterrestrial life itself.
The Sarmians were not merely extraterrestrial—they were humanoid. They had human forms, human anatomy. Except for the trail of hair descending from the hairline of the scalp to the bridge of the nose, they could easily pass for human, at least physically. It was something that science had always deemed biologically impossible, but it turned out to be one of the times when the universe yanked the rug out from under science. The Sarmians had become Earth's great obsession and people from every discipline were all but foaming at the mouth to have a crack at studying the planet and those who lived there.
And Gwendolyn Rush had snagged for herself the singular honor of leading an archaeological team to the desert wilderness of Sarma, into the ruins of an ancient Sarmian society, to dig for clues to why the Sarmians were so much like humans.
What they were seeking was not just insights into how ancient and prehistoric Sarmians might have lived, but also confirmation of the only theory that could explain them, a theory so radical that it could have been easily dismissed if the very existence of the Sarmians were not such a radical thing. What the scientists of Earth hoped the planet Sarma might yield was any clue to the identity and nature of the aliens who, the theory held, had come to Earth eons ago and abducted prehistoric humans, taking them across the stars to guide and shape their evolution for some unknowable purpose. The Sarmians were one riddle whose answer might expose a greater one.
And that was what brought Gwendolyn light years from Earth into the heat and dust and undeniable beauty of another planet, supervising other archaeologists and students in the digging and scraping and sorting and categorizing for later study of structures buried in the sand and the objects and artifacts that they contained. As much as Gwendolyn loved and cared about the work, it made her wish that she were a leaner and lighter woman. Gwen was pretty—an almost luminous beauty in fact—with a soft round face, bright blue eyes, and an incandescent smile. When she did not have her hair bound up in a scarf or rolled up under a hat, it fell in loose black curls about her shoulders. But it was in the mid section that she felt a bit ponderous when she went to work on a dig. Her hips, buttocks, and thighs had somewhat more of a spread than she would have liked. At times she wo
uld watch the female students who accompanied her on digs, note their hips and thighs that lacked the same spread, and think, A decade and a half ago, that was me.
But then, a decade and a half ago Gwendolyn was not one of the youngest leaders of the field of xenoarchaeology, whose perseverance had contributed to humanity's greater understanding of the non-human species of the galaxy. A decade and a half ago she could only dream of leading the effort to understand the other human-like species in the galaxy, something that biology had predicted man would never see. Even if she was not what the most desirable men wanted to take to bed, there were compensations.
Work on Sarma proceeded uneventfully until Gwen and the crew noticed a greying of what had been a perfect blue sky, and a low sound like a million heavy breaths exhaling coming in from the distance. They all looked up from their tools and their excavations and found something growing and looming into view on the horizon. It was a spreading vastness of ruddy brown emerging over the hills in the distance, and it could mean only one thing. Gwen cursed the luck. While modern Sarmian society was as advanced as Earth in many ways, they did not have a lot of the niceties of Earth, such as weather-tracking and severe weather dissipation systems. On Earth, massive sandstorms rising out of nowhere had ceased to be a problem long ago. Sarma, damn it all, still had them.
As the airborne tsunami of sand came rushing in, Gwen ordered everyone to cover up their work, throw on scarves and goggles, and take cover themselves. She had just gotten her tools into an electric wheelbarrow along with some pottery whose markings and symbols she wanted to study and covered her eyes and her face when everything around her disappeared into flying sand. She pulled her electrolocator out of her pocket and turned it on, meaning to use it to find her way around by detecting masses and other moving bodies in the low visibility of the sandstorm. The screen on the device showed the shapes of structures and devices around her and the moving forms of the rest of her party. It also detected two other moving bodies coming up behind her, which she took to be simply two other members of her team looking for shelter.
And it was then—ah-ha, then!—when that damn pain in her head started. She wondered now if she might have accidentally backed into something, but no, she remembered that the electrolocator showed nothing in the flying sand behind her but those two moving bodies. Her next assumption was that one of them had run into her. What sense did that make, one of them running into the back of her head? Which led to her next hypothesis: she had been struck on the back of the head, deliberately hit. And that was when the sandstorm and everything else disappeared into blackness in her memory.
Now, opening her eyes and wincing from that nagging throb in her skull, Gwen started to become aware of other things. There was something unfamiliar under her, soft and cushiony and satiny. And whatever she had on, it wasn't the durable fatigues that she had been wearing on the dig. It was soft too, luxurious and flowing. Getting her vision back into focus, Gwen saw that she was in a circular room with windows from floor to ceiling on every side. Outside and stretching out all around was a panorama of the Sarmian countryside in which she had been digging, with whirling and billowing clouds of sandstorm whipping through it, thinning here and thickening there. Inside the room, everything was red and gold and magenta. It was all silky, satiny fabrics, drapes and blankets and carpets, divans and cushions and Ottomans, and a very large bed on which she was resting. And Gwen was dressed not for an archaeological dig, but in a flowing gown that suggested activities of a totally different sort.
After a moment of utter bewilderment taking this all in, Gwen sat up on the bed and blurted out her confusion: "What in the name of hell am I doing here?"
Her voice bounced off the walls and windows of her surroundings, and only silence greeted her outburst. She half expected she had no answer forthcoming and would have to get up and start looking for one. That was when a portal at the far end of the chamber hissed and slid open, and he came striding in.
He was a Sarmian, no question about that. But in Gwen's unscientific opinion he was the most jaw-dropping specimen of manhood ever to appear before her wondering eyes. He was tall, like a pillar on a monument to masculinity. He wore nothing but loose-fitting silken leggings and thin, solid-gold armbands on a body built to be naked. It seemed to her that nature had taken on the role of a sculptor and hewn the most perfect body humanly imaginable from solid marble, then rendered it into flesh. The face was as chiseled as the rest of him, with a handsomeness that appeared to command without words, Submit to desire. Short brown hair crowned his head. Eyes the color of the desert sands blazed hotly at her. In his expression was no violence, no threat, but the unspoken understanding that he was accustomed to being obeyed. But even in this tone, the words that he poured out in a low voice like a desert wind were surprisingly gentle: "Gwendolyn, you are awake. It is good. I have been most anxious to know you. I bid you welcome."
Gwendolyn squinted at the awesomely sexy stranger addressing her by her first name. "You've got me at a disadvantage, whoever you are. And by the way, who are you? And what am I doing here, and where are my clothes and what am I doing wearing this?"
The tower of sex before her said, "There is nothing to fear. My people brought you here, out of the storm, at my command. This, of course, is one of our royal bedchambers. And I am Dantar of Sarma, your liege and king and future husband." This he said with a smile devoid of irony. Gwendolyn blinked at him. He actually meant it.
She leaned forward to shake a demanding finger in the air at him, and her sudden motion sent a hot spike of pain into the back of her skull and made her wince and grow dizzy. But even through this she held fast to her shock and indignation, enough to challenge his patently ridiculous claim. "What the hell do you mean, future husband?" Grimacing, she fell back on the bed a bit and watched him through a squint. His expression was her next surprise.
This Dantar actually wore a look of gentle concern. "Are you injured, my bride? Did they hurt you?"
"I am not your bride," she winced back at him. "And someone came up behind me in the sandstorm and clocked me over the head with something. Is that your idea of courtship?"
Dantar's expression now turned to wrath. "I instructed the guards who brought you here that you were not to be injured. This infliction of pain upon the person of their queen shall be summarily punished. I'll have them chained in the chamber of hot stones for this."
Rubbing her head and carefully studying this man she now understood to be her captor, Gwen said, "Do whatever you want with your guards, but I'm nobody's queen. I'm a citizen of Earth and you're going to let me out of here or risk an interplanetary incident."
But this Dantar person was adamant. "I have selected you as my royal consort and chosen you to be my bride. As such you shall be Queen of Sarma with all of the duties, powers, and privileges of your title, and as such you shall be my lady wife."
Gwen now no longer cared about the pain. She was hearing no more of this madness, and rose to her knees on the bed to underscore it. Raising her finger to him once again, she said, "Listen, Dantar, or whatever you call yourself. I am Dr. Gwendolyn Rush of the planet Earth. I am an archaeologist doing a survey of this planet. I appreciate your help with the sandstorm, but I have unfinished work waiting for me out there and I'll thank you to let me get back to it. So show me where my clothes are and I'll be on my way, understand?"
Dantar folded his arms, calmly and confidently, and replied, "'Tis you who do not understand, my bride. Your duties are no longer what they were. Your duties as Queen of Sarma now do supersede them. This is to be the night of our prenuptial consummation. Our royal wedding will follow directly, and our nights of First Coupling as King and Queen." He stepped forward, moving his hands to the waist of his leggings. In his gesture and his look, his intentions were crystal clear. Gwen watched him disbelievingly. He was giving her an actual copulatory gaze, not the look of an assailant or a rapist, but the look of an expectant and ardent lover. This was getting madder by the minute.
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Gwen thrust out her palm toward him in a gesture that she hoped would translate from Earth to Sarma as meaning Stop right there, Mister! "Are you insane?" she cried. "Do you actually think I'm going to let you have sex with me right now, and I'm going to marry you, just like that?"
Dantar halted in his tracks, his hands frozen in the gesture of stripping off his leggings. His bush of pubic hair was already exposed and he looked eager to show her what hung and pulsed beneath it, when her demand for him to stop left him bewildered. In a curious voice he answered, "Yes, my bride. This, our first intercourse, will let our bodies know one another, to prepare for our marriage. What do you not understand?"
She shook her head, wondering, What do I not understand? Where do I even start? And aloud, she asked, "How about the simple question, 'Why me?' "
As if perplexed by her ignorance, Dantar answered, "Because I am newly ascended to the throne and I am thus in need of a queen."
Whatever rejoinder she might have made to this caught in Gwen's throat. She looked off for a moment and considered the current political realities of the planet Sarma, to which she might have failed to give due attention because of her focused interest in its past. "Newly ascended to the throne... Wait, that would make you the son of—"
"King Dealon," the young monarch said, straightening up at the mention of his honored father's name. "Well may he rest."
Highlander's Desire: Winter Solestice (Against All Odds Series 2) Page 7