by Alysha Ellis
“So? He’s injured.”
“It’s more than that and you know it.”
“It’s not unheard of for Dvalinn to be lighter skinned. Huon is much paler.”
“But it’s unusual. Like it’s unusual for someone to be caught in the tunnels in a thermo-magnetic storm. I don’t like it.”
“You worry too much, Nieko. You always do.” She grasped the man’s shoulders. “Help me get him over to the bed. Lying on the hard floor isn’t going to help him. I need to find out if he’s hurt anywhere other than his head.”
His lips flattened into a tight line, Nieko picked up the man’s legs and together they carried him to the bed.
“His hands are burned. We need to see if he’s hurt anywhere else,” Eora said.
Nieko helped her to remove the shirt from their patient. She opened the buttons on the man’s pants and eased them down over his hips, taking the silky briefs beneath with them. There were no bruises, no cuts, definitely no broken bones. Whoever he was, he was well muscled, fit and—if you could ignore his pallor—healthy-looking. She pulled the pants the rest of the way off and tossed them aside.
She ran her fingers up under his dark-golden hair to check for any other cuts or lumps.
“Get away from him, Eora. Right now.”
She turned her head to ask what had got up Nieko’s nose now, but the grim expression on his face stopped her.
“I mean it, Eora. Move out of his reach at once.”
“He’s unconscious, Nieko, he —”
“He’s a human. He’s probably waiting for a chance to kill you.”
“You’re crazy. What makes you think he’s —”
She broke off as Nieko brandished the shirt he still held.
“This doesn’t come from our world.” His voice grated with fury. “Look at the way it’s sewn together. And this. It’s a label. This is from the surface world.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her away. “That’s not a man. That’s the enemy.”
“He’s a human?” She spun back to the person lying on the couch. “I thought they’d look different!” She reached out a hand to touch him but Nieko leaped forward to slap it away.
“For once in your life will you listen? This is a human! He’ll kill you if he can.”
“You don’t know that!” Eora snapped. “He could be here on a peace-seeking mission or out of curiosity. It’s wrong to assume he’s come to kill us.”
Nieko clenched his fists. “It’s stupid to assume he hasn’t.”
“How’s he going to do it?” She cast an eye over his naked body. “Unless you want to conduct a cavity search, he doesn’t seem to be carrying a weapon.” To annoy Nieko she added, “aside from the impressive one there.” She pointed to his penis, large and thick even as it lay flaccidly on his motionless body.
Nieko glared at her and tossed over a blanket. “Cover him up.” While she complied, he went through the pockets of the human’s clothing. He held up a case full of folded pieces of paper and rectangles of hard, shiny material. He took one of these and squeezed it between his fingers until it folded and snapped.
“Is that some kind of weapon?’ Eora asked.
Nieko shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure the paper is currency.” He shoved the case back into the pocket it came from. “There’s nothing dangerous here. Did he have a bag or anything with him?”
“Not when I got to him,” she replied. “He could have dropped it outside, but I didn’t see it. I didn’t take the time to look around. After all, as you told me yourself, it’s dangerous to leave the door open for too long during a storm.”
Nieko turned and walked out of the room.
“Hey,” Eora called after him. “Where are you going?”
“To find something to tie him up with,” Nieko replied.
Eora pushed herself to her feet and raced after him. “You are not going to tie him up. He’s hurt. He hasn’t done anything to indicate he’s a threat.”
“Because he’s unconscious. He hasn’t been able to do anything at all,” Nieko said.
“I won’t let you tie him up,” she said, folding her arms and staring him down. “He’s got a head injury. He’s not going to be at full strength when he wakes up no matter what. If he shows signs of aggression, we’ll be able to take him down then. In the meantime, I say we take him on trust.”
“I don’t trust him,” Nieko replied. He reached into a box of first-aid supplies and withdrew a roll of bandage. “I’m keeping this with me. At the first sign of trouble, I’ll use it to truss him up so tightly he won’t be able to move. As soon as the storm has died down, I’m taking him back for the council to deal with.”
He looked so determined that Eora didn’t bother to argue. For the moment, getting him to leave the man unbound was enough. When the human woke up, she’d convince Nieko to do whatever she wanted. He always did in the end.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I opened some of the rations before I heard him outside.”
He grunted. Taking it for assent, she tossed over one of the bags. Nieko tore the top off, waited while the self-heating function worked and forked the food into his mouth, all without taking his gaze from the man lying on the bed.
Eora shook her head at Nieko’s stubbornness and ate her own food. “Are you going to stare at him all night?” she asked.
“If you won’t let me tie him up, yes,” he replied.
“You’re being prejudiced and pessimistic,” she retorted.
“And you’re being naive,” he said, exasperation clear in his voice. “This is a human. He’s near Ogof. Have you forgotten what happened there?”
“Of course I haven’t, but —”
“Wha’ happened?”
The slurred whisper spun her around. She stared at the dazed brown eyes of the man on the bed.
“You’re awake,” she exclaimed moving over to him.
“Eora, get back!” Nieko ordered.
At the same time the man muttered, “Where am I?”
The fog of pain and confusion clouding his brain cleared, and Elijah looked around him. He shouldn’t be in a room, lying on a bed, naked, covered by a soft blanket. The last thing he remembered was the solid rock of the underground world heaving and tossing him around like jetsam in a storm.
The Dvalinn underground world. A woman was heading for him. Ignoring the pain in his head, Elijah braced himself for whatever attack she planned. Before she reached him, though, a body came flying through the air and tackled her to the ground. The Dvalinn male who held her down looked up at him. He appeared to be about the same age as the woman, in his early twenties, but since Dvalinn lived for hundreds of years, Elijah didn’t make the mistake of underestimating the danger. There was no softness in the hard brown eyes.
He tensed, waiting for their next move. There was no logic to their first one. If the female Dvalinn was coming to harm him, why had the man stopped her? If the man wanted to hurt him, why had he tackled the girl?
Elijah watched them carefully, adrenaline surging through his bloodstream, preparing him for flight or fight. It had better be fight, he thought grimly, because the room didn’t offer any opportunity for escape. He pulled himself up into a sitting position, back against the wall, muscles primed, ready to spring into action.
“Nieko, let me up.”
At first the words, uttered in the woman’s velvety voice, didn’t make any sense to him. The cadence was strange and his brain wasn’t expecting it. But then he realized that apart from the first word, probably a name, he could understand. Whoever these people were, they spoke a version of English. Her accent was unusual but intelligible.
He waited in silence for whatever came next. The man got to his feet, pulling the woman with him. He kept a firm grip around her waist but he glared at Elijah. “You’re human.”
Elijah couldn’t tell if it was a question, a statement or an insult. Perhaps all three. No way was he saying anything until he knew how much trouble he was in.
/> “What are you doing here?” the man growled.
Elijah remained silent. As if he’d tell them he’d come to wipe out their entire race. Way to get real dead, real quick.
The man’s free fist clenched and he growled, “I want answers. You can give them voluntarily or I’ll…”
“You’ll what, Nieko?” the girl interrupted. “Hit him? Torture him? For someone who claims to despise human beings, you’re quick to use the kind of threats I’d expect from them.” She stuck her chin in the air. “He was hit on the head. He’s not going to leap up and attack us.” Offering Elijah a smile, she asked, “What’s your name? Do you remember how you got here?”
She sounded concerned. Maybe she’d missed the memo telling her she was one of the bad guys. Her companion, although uncannily good-looking, at the moment looked angry enough and tough enough to have a fair chance of success if he decided to tear Elijah’s arms and legs off. Lije had no trouble casting him in the role of enemy to humanity.
He had to stop the questions before he gave anything away. He latched on to the excuse the woman offered him. If he convinced them he couldn’t remember… Short-term memory loss was a common enough symptom of a blow to the head.
He put his hand to his forehead and looked around blankly. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“See,” the woman said. “He’s not okay.”
“Doesn’t make him any less dangerous,” the man replied.
“I’m not dangerous,” Elijah said. He rubbed his hands across his face, faking confusion but always keeping his eye on the two people in front of him. “I don’t know how I know but I know it’s true.” He heaved out a loud sigh. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know why I’m here and I don’t know who you are. The last thing I remember I was at Stonehenge in England.” He stopped for a moment. Time to see what he could get away with. “My name’s Elijah, Elijah Denton. I was on vacation in England.” He added a final touch of to the fiction he was building. “I don’t understand. Am I in hospital? Are you doctors?”
He doubted if they would fall for that one. No one in their right mind could mistake the man’s lean, brown, shirtless form, all rippling muscles above the battle-dress pants, for the clothing of a doctor. The woman wore similar pants but had on a black sleeveless singlet, stretched tightly over her impressive rack.
They’re Dvalinn, he reminded himself, the enemy. He had no place finding anything about either of them attractive or admirable. Anger, distaste and confusion swirled around in a disorientating mix in his brain. He struggled to keep his face bland, his eyes blank. He needed to lull their suspicions so he could escape, make his way back to the exit point, detonate the explosion and get the hell out of there.
Leaving these two and all the other inhabitants of this world to suffer a horrible, inevitable death.
Elijah closed his eyes and ignored the voice in his head. It was too late for his conscience to surface now. The device was set, balanced at the crossroads, waiting for the signal.
His mouth went dry and horror raised goose bumps on his skin. He’d felt the floor surge and roll. What if the case for the device had fractured and the gas had been released? He had no idea how long the vapor would remain lethal. His chest tightened and he panted, rapid and shallow. Was this his last breath? Or this one? Or the next?
“Are you all right?”
The woman’s question acted like a slap. Lije blinked and forced himself to calm down. The entire Dvalinn world depended on one central air circulation system, so the air in this small room would be the same as the air outside in the tunnels. There were filtration plants at frequent intervals but they wouldn’t be effective against the gas Hopewood used. The whisper of fresh air on his cheek reassured Elijah that the vials of chemicals in their plastic case were still intact.
“I don’t give a fuck how he feels. I want answers.” The male half of the pair spoke, his mouth turned down with an overdose of grim. He was clearly the more dangerous. The woman seemed more approachable, more prepared to take a neutral stand. He could work with her. Convince her he was injured and harmless.
“Argh! My head.” He screwed his face into a grimace of pain. It wasn’t hard—his head hurt. He’d hit the rock wall damn hard and he’d been out cold.
The woman responded exactly as he’d hoped. “Is there anything I can do?”
She tried to take a step toward him but the man refused to let her go.
“You could tell me where I am,” Elijah replied.
“Where do you think you are?” the man asked, his tone low and threatening.
“I don’t know,” Elijah lied. If he were an innocent human victim of some inexplicable mishap, he would have no idea the Dvalinn people existed. All his responses had to support that scenario. It would be interesting to see how much of the truth these people would tell him.
“You’re in a safe room,” the woman offered.
“Safe from what?” he asked.
“The thermo-magnetic storm.” With one more tug, the woman managed to free herself and took a step nearer to the bed. “I’m Eora and this is Nieko. When the storm hit you were stranded in the passageway. You hit your head and I heard you call out. I opened the door and pulled you inside, where you’d be safe.”
“Thank you,” Elijah said, and discovered he meant it. Although he couldn’t admit it, his memory of those few minutes when everything he knew about physics was overturned was clear and devastating. He needed to know what kind of phenomenon could cause solid rock to roll like a wave. “What’s a thermo-magnetic storm?”
“You don’t know?” the woman, Eora, asked. “You must have seen one before.” She hesitated for a moment. “Although if you had, you might not have hit your head so hard. You’d have been prepared for the effect.”
“What effect?” He had to ask, although he thought he knew some of the answer.
“The magnetic field gets distorted and it messes with your brain and balance centers. It’s common for people caught outside a shielded room to feel as if the walls and floors are moving.”
“You mean they don’t?” The wavelike movement had felt real to him. He touched the bump on his head. It felt pretty damn real as well. The male Dvalinn’s gaze followed the gesture and his eyes narrowed. Elijah snatched his hand away.
“It’s solid rock. It can’t move.” The woman tilted her head to one side. “That’s probably how you hit your head. You adjust for movement that isn’t there and you lose your balance.” Her forehead wrinkled. “You must know something about the effects of magnetic sensitivity.”
Nieko made a sound of disgust and took a stride to bring him to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. “He’s human. They don’t know anything about us or our world.”
“Of course I’m human,” Elijah said. To have ignored the man’s continuing references would be more suspicious than to address them. “What else would I be?”
Openly, with no pretense at subterfuge, Eora said, “You could be Dvalinn like us.”
Now was the time to tread carefully, to decide how much reaction to show. He didn’t want to over- or underplay his reactions, but he was no actor. He decided to rely on what was rapidly becoming a stock response. “I don’t understand.”
Eora turned triumphantly to Nieko. “See! I told you most humans don’t know about us. If they don’t know, they can’t hate.” She plopped herself down on the side of the bed. “You surface-dwellers have a restricted view of the world you live in. Beneath your feet there’s another world, an underground world where we, the Dvalinn, live.”
“The Dvalinn,” Elijah repeated. He looked at Nieko. “Why have we on the surface not heard of you? What are you hiding?” He couldn’t keep completely hide the aggression in his tone. He didn’t much care. This Nieko had done little to hide his animosity. They were enemies and both of them knew it.
“It’s not what we’re hiding,” Eora said. “It’s who we’re hiding from.”
“Humans have forced us into hiding,” Nieko bu
rst in. “Thousands of years ago you drove us from the surface into a world of pale, artificial light where there is no sun, no sky, no stars.” His lips twisted into a hate-filled sneer. “You denied us the sunshine and fresh air we loved. But that wasn’t enough. You sent attack parties into our world to kill us. Innocent men, women and children who have done nothing to you or your surface world.”
He stomped over to the side of the bed and poked an accusing finger at Elijah. “Humans are murderers. If I’d known what you were, I’d have let you die out in the tunnel. Eora is too kindhearted.” He took a step back. “When she dragged you in, you had nothing but the clothes you wore. If I find out you have a weapon hidden somewhere or you mean any one of us harm, I will kill you, I swear.”
He had nothing? What had happened to his backpack? If they’d found it any, doubts about his innocence or guilt would be removed. They might not recognize the remote detonator but they would certainly see it, the compass, the charts and the notes for what they were—evidence that Elijah’s presence here was not an accident but a planned incursion. Barely suppressed violence seethed in Nieko, and Elijah had no doubt he had the strength and ability to carry out his threat.
“Leave him alone,” Eora said. “He’s hurt. You know he doesn’t have a weapon.” A smile curved her lips. “We searched your clothes.”
She bent down, picked up a bundle at her feet and dropped it on the bed. “If you’re feeling better, you might want to get dressed.”
Yes, dressed was good. Naked, he felt vulnerable and unprepared. He needed to take the first opportunity to escape and do what he’d come for. The gas vials were in place, waiting. All he needed to do was push the button.
He put his hand on the blanket. Instead of turning away as he’d expected, Eora studied him, a small smile curving the corners of her mouth. He looked into her eyes. She didn’t blink. Okay, then, he’d call her bluff. He tossed the blanket aside and got to his feet.
A momentary ripple of dizziness diverted him from the impromptu staring contest. He dropped one hand onto the bed to steady himself.
Eora leaped forward. “Do you need help.”