Kidnapped by the Alien Dragon

by Ward, Abella

  "Not as strong as yours will be, once you've got it back."

  I pulled away from him. Being near him was both thrilling and painful. My heart hammered and I wanted to be closer, but my fear continued to hold me back. At least I didn't have the urge to take off running again.

  "I'm sorry I took off the way I did," I said, hanging my head. "I don't really know what came over me."

  "It's not the first time." He reached for my hand but pulled back. "I forget and push too hard sometimes. But you are the one who wanted to know."

  Grimacing, I nodded. "I did. But then you were telling me these things, and I had these feelings… I don't know what to think or do. All I know was that once I go down this path, there is no going back. Mom and Dad won't be my messed up but loving parents. My dreams of being a psychiatrist will be gone. My whole life… I'm afraid I won't be me anymore."

  But what was waiting for me just behind the veil of forgetfulness?

  He cupped my face. "Your past doesn't mean that you aren't the person you are right now. And I know it will hurt, but I'm here for you."

  It was the most comforting thing he could have said to me. I inched forward, my eyes on his lips. "Finvarra… were we—"

  A wheezing noise behind us made us both turn. The dragon lifted its head, eyes still glazed, blood still pumping from its chest. At first, I thought it was going to rise as a zombie and attack again, but it didn't. It merely collapsed back down. A rattling breath made me shudder, then a green cloud seeped from its gaping jaws. Everywhere the cloud touched, grass withered.

  Finvarra cursed. He grabbed my hand and began pulling me away, but the cloud moved faster. Almost as if it were drawn to me, it enveloped me. A smell like rotten eggs choked me.

  Darkness overtook me.

  ***

  The air smelled of minerals and tasted of pineapple. Surprised I could breathe at all, I stayed where I was, taking stock of my senses. The air was warm and humid, and I lay on something soft. Not a mattress. It was a little too scratchy for that. I opened my eyes, finding myself in a dim cave. The softness I lay on was a bed of grasses. Odd.

  A splashing noise drew my attention to the far side of the cave. Ripples of light reflected off a wavy surface. A pool. I propped myself onto my elbow. Moist, warm air brushed against my face as I gazed at the sparkling water. Hot springs? It would explain the smell and heat.

  Finvarra floated in the water, resting on his back, eyes closed. He was utterly naked, leaving me with blood rushing to my cheeks. My gaze didn't linger on his impressive shape for long. Over his torso were a multitude of scars, some fresher than others. A cut ran across his chest, scabbed over but clearly not old. The dragon? Or one of the other enemies that had come after me lately?

  A wave of emotion fell over me. Love, lust, a mix of both. I wasn't sure. Uncertainly warred in me, but I knew that things would change in a blink, and I wanted this moment. To feel safe and loved.

  My gaze lingered on Finvarra as I slowly removed my clothing. Memories flashed over my skin, filling me with fire. I knew what I wanted. Once I was naked, I slipped into the warm water, moving to meet him.

  Chapter Six

  As the ripples from my entrance into the pool brushed his face, Finvarra's eyes opened. He straightened in the water, bright brown eyes drifting over my naked form. They traced down my neck and focused in on my breasts before moving further down, but how much he could see under the sparkling water was a mystery.

  "These are healing springs," he told me, gaze returning to my eyes. "Your body is still mortal. Bringing you here was the only way I could stop the dragon's breath from killing you… again."

  I shivered at the raw emotion in his tone, but unlike before, it wasn't from fear. "You've seen me die before."

  "Yes. I was there that first time Balor took you from me."

  The name made my heart squeeze. I really should have done more research after my initial contact.

  Well, Finvarra had lived through it. He'd be able to give me better information than Wikipedia, right? I opened my mouth to ask, but he answered before I could.

  "Balor was a king among the Fomorians. He was born blind, but that never stopped him. His eye, when opened, would kill all who looked in it. His other skills were no less impressive. A master with the sword, he cut through our armies with glee. You and the rest of the Morrigan were determined to bring him down. You were killed. I was there. I cut down a dozen of his guard, but I couldn't get to you in time." Agony flashed over his face, grief poisoning the space between us with a sharp, metallic taste. "I never got to tell you—"

  I knew what he was going to say. I didn't need to hear it. I pressed my fingers to his lips, silencing him. The air grew warmer between us as I wrapped my arms around his neck and brought myself to him.

  Our lips met, sending fire flooding through my veins. Finvarra's skin was moist against mine, the heat he had absorbed in the hot springs seeping into my body. His mouth was hungry, demanding, pulling me deeper into this rabbit hole of emotion. And I had no desire to fight against it.

  Finvarra pulled me closer, moaning with desire as he deepened our kiss. His tongue was wicked and quick as it explored my mouth. His hands frantically ran over my body, like he was trying to find every shape and contour to remind himself what I looked like. Which might have been exactly what he was doing.

  He picked me up, pushing my legs to either side of his hips, and I gripped him tightly with my knees. I could feel his arousal pressing against me, not ready but clearly showing exactly what he hoped from all this. I laughed breathlessly, excited, nervous, and not wanting anything to break this moment.

  "What's funny?" he grinned at me. "Ecstatic that the fairy king remains under your thrall?"

  "I thought you said you were a sidhe, not a fairy," I teased, grinding my hips against him. He moaned and kissed my neck, but I stopped, suddenly uncertain.

  "What's wrong?"

  Blood rushed to my face and I bit my lip. "I don't know what to do. I've never…"

  His eyes widened. "What do you mean?"

  I tangled my fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, my gaze circling the cave. "I mean… were we together? Before I died?"

  His gaze was electric when I finally looked back at him. He brushed his mouth against mine. "Yes. We were lovers. I have not had any woman since I lost you. Those stories about me kidnapping girls away from their homes? Pure fantasy. I haven't wanted other women."

  Was he why I'd never felt drawn to any of the guys that I met? I hadn't lacked the opportunity to date, but I never wanted to. Was I holding out for someone I didn't even know existed? "What about my past lives? Have I…?"

  "I don't know," he replied. "And I don't care. I would never fault you for being with other men. I might kill them for daring to touch what is mine, but I would never expect you to wait for me when you didn't even remember me. But you're saying that you…"

  I bit my lip and nodded. "Sometimes I wondered if there was something wrong with me. And it's not fair for you to say that you'd kill the guys I was with if you wouldn't even be angry with me."

  He laughed and kissed me again. "What can I say? I'm possessive."

  Finvarra carried me to the edge of the pool and set me down, pulling his body away from mine just far enough to slip his hand between my legs. I clung to him as he pushed in a finger, using his thumb to trace small circles on my clit. The fire flooding my body concentrated in my core, twisting hard with pleasure. His mouth coasted down my body, concentrating on my breasts. All my muscles coiled. I looped my arm around his neck, struggling to enjoy each sensation and not get lost in it all.

  The water splashed rhythmically, and I realized that he was handling himself with the same pace that he was slipping his finger in and out of me. My breasts seemed to swell under his attentions and I groaned, pushing them out further. I wanted to writhe and buck, but I forced myself to stay as still as possible. He built me slowly, everything becoming tighter than I could handle.

&
nbsp; "Finvarra," I gasped, needing more. "I want you. Now."

  He chuckled. "A little longer."

  "Now." I rolled my hips, forcing his fingers deeper into me. He did something that sent a shockwave through me and I cried out. "Now!"

  "Demanding. As always," he whispered, gripping both my hips now.

  It was all I could do to stay with him as he entered. The pressure was unexpected, the coils of flame shooting down my legs as he started moving. I gasped, expecting a sudden burst of pain. But there was none. Only more pleasure as he continued to work my clit while rocking his hips back and forth.

  The flames curled up and down. My head fell back as everything exploded. My muscles went limp, pleasure coursing through my veins. Finvarra's mouth was on my neck again, his movements harder. I clung to him, screaming in time with his movement, rolling to increase contact. It was simultaneously too much and not enough. Waves of black passed over my vision. I felt him finishing. He collapsed over me, half in the hot springs, half on me.

  I carded my fingers through Finvarra's hair, marveling at the closeness I felt to him. He kissed my shoulder, neck and cheek, and finally let a long one linger on my lips.

  "My strength and light," he whispered. "I love you."

  I love you. The words echoed in my mind, opening the floodgates.

  A thousand memories poured into my brain, tearing my mind to shreds. Pain flared through me. I remembered that day on the battlefield, facing Balor of the Evil Eye, the agony of life being ripped from my body. I remembered my sisters – I had sisters. Badb and Anand, the two parts that completed the Morrigan with me.

  And I had other sisters. Mortal girls, who I never felt quite the same as me, brothers who never understood me, parents who struggled to love me. Hundreds of faces, the family I had loved, now all lost to the ravishes of time.

  Then the murders started pouring in. People I had killed. People who had killed me. Again and again and again; knives slicing through my body, burning as a witch, drowning as my own father held me under the water.

  "Nikki? Nikki, are you alright?" Finvarra's worried eyes peered at me.

  I remembered the first time I saw the sidhe king, he a young man, I over a hundred years old. How he fought for my favor, how he had amused me until I granted it to him. We would ride in battle together, laughing at our invincibility. The friends we had buried, the way we had cried together, fought together, laughed together.

  It was all too much. I screamed, pushing at my lover while my fingers tore into his skin. This wasn't me. This wasn't Nicole X, this was a ruthless goddess, a woman of untold power. Not me. It couldn't be me.

  Finvarra struggled to hold me. "You're remembering."

  He touched my face, but all of a sudden I didn't want him near me. The perfection of my first time was marred by the fact that it wasn't the first time. There was so much pain between us… there could never be a first time. We could never go back to when our love was clean and pure.

  "Get away from me," I spat. The Morrigan rose in me, flapping her wings as black feathers sprouted from my skin. "A tiny little man –what have you done beside hiding in your halls and pretending you were a grand king?"

  Finvarra flinched back from me. I regretted my words, but I couldn’t take them back. Not when so many memories pressed against my mind, threatening to break me. I threw on my clothes and fled the cave, letting my form shift into the war-bird I knew so well. As I flew into the sky, everything below faded into an indistinguishable blur.

  My sisters. Badb and Anand would have answers.

  I had remembered the Morrigan in some of my past lives and researched what happened to the Tuatha Dé Danann. Those memories came back, guiding me from Finvarra's land.

  The Tuatha had left this world through an ancient burial mound, using it as a portal to the Otherworld when humans drove them from Ireland. Humans. Such delicate, fragile creatures. And yet they had driven the most powerful of us from their homes.

  They'll pay, I vowed, but even as I did so, the taste of lemons filled my mouth.

  Delicate and fragile? No. Humans were strong. Even at their weakest, they were not feeble. My wings faltered. I wasn't Macha. These memories were just that, memories. I had changed. I was human, I had parents. I had a home.

  Was it still my home? Could I ever tell Mom and Dad what I had learned? I wasn't a changeling. I didn't replace their Rosemary – I was their Rosemary. Nicole X never existed, except as a reason to reject me as their daughter.

  I pushed them from my mind and continued. I would find the Tuatha Dé Danann and retake my place in the Morrigan.

  It was where I belonged.

  Chapter Seven

  When I got to the ancient burial mound where the portal to the Otherworld lay, I found it hardly recognizable. The magic wards about it had protected it from human industrialization, but the damage caused by natural forces was as devastating as any human device. Erosion had flattened the mound and the cement with which we had bonded the rocks together was crumbling. The entrance had collapsed.

  The portal inside was sealed tight. When I pressed my hand against the stone wall that should have been an arch, the first doubts trickled into my mind. The memories of being murdered were pushed aside by the lives I had taken. My sisters and I used to laugh about it, to have competitions about who could kill the most in battle.

  When we were bored, we would provoke the humans into battles with one another, playing them as if they were pieces on a chessboard. Did I want to return to that? I had changed when I met Finvarra, but there was a reason I kept choosing to be reborn human rather than return to the Morrigan.

  The Tuatha Dé Danann were like gods to humans, and we, fallible and temperamental as them, drank it up. When I was part of the Morrigan, I would have said we were better than humans; like giants in their small worlds. They were mayflies, we the burning stars in the sky. But now I had seen it from the other side.

  Were they right to drive us out? Would we have spread over the face of the whole planet, destroying everything in our path, if they had not?

  A gentle, tinkling song filled the mound. I nearly jumped out of my skin before I remembered that it was my ringtone. I stared stupidly at it for a moment, forgetting what century I was in. My memories were drowning me, but my most recent once came back, a soothing balm to my scorched mind.

  Mom and Dad might have struggled with me growing up, but I was never unloved. I didn't know how to go forward from here, but they didn't deserve to be just cut off.

  I held the phone to my ear. "Hello?"

  "Macha. It seems that this is the only way to get hold of you these days."

  The male voice was pleasant, nondescript, the kind of voice that you fell asleep to in university lectures. But there was history between him and me, and the voice with its accompanying smug molasses taste dripping down my throat made me shudder. My lungs seized and the crow beat against my chest, everything dissolving into fear.

  "Balor," I whispered.

  He chuckled. "Ah, good. You've regained your memories. This will make things so much easier."

  I wanted to throw the phone away, to run forever until I found some dark hole to blend into, somewhere that Balor would never be able to find me. He hadn't needed his poisonous gaze to kill me. Just his sword and my own arrogance. The pain of that first death was the worst I had experienced…

  Or was it? Physically, perhaps. But after all the lives I lived, there were worse pains than a blade slicing flesh. Being a child neglected by her parents. Always trying my hardest, but never being good enough. Being betrayed by those I loved. Feeling like I would never belong. Being killed by the people who were meant to protect me. The constant fear that it would happen again.

  My lives had changed me. Macha of the Morrigan no longer existed. New tears blurred my vision. Even if I could return to my sisters, I wouldn’t belong with them. Where did I belong?

  "What do you want, Balor?" I asked.

  "You."

  "Dramatic
, but that doesn't tell me a damned thing."

  A loud sigh was my reply, and the smug molasses nearly choked me. The confusion of my changing emotions, fear, anger, sorrow, all wrapped themselves up in my chest, making it hard to breathe. With concentrated effort, I shoved them all aside, letting a pleasant numbness overtake me. It allowed me to think clearly – or at least somewhat clearly. Balor had set up a battle as a trap for me and my sisters once to kill us, but I was his only victim. He was probably looking to complete the job.

  "Are you going to answer me?" I demanded. "Or are you just going to sit there like a smug cretin and pretend that you've got everything under control?"

  Coconut tinged the molasses. That had made him angry. I smirked. Balor laughed despite his anger.

  "Still the impatient one, I see," he said. "Very well. I want to speak with you, and since you kept running from the servants I sent to fetch you, I thought I'd have to go another route."

  "We're speaking now."

  "I meant face to face."

  It was my turn to laugh. "So you can kill me again? I don't think so."

  "Oh, but you haven't heard what I have to say. It seems you have developed an emotional connection with these humans. It would be a shame if that connection was… severed."

  Icy dread drenched me. Shaking, I checked the number that had called me. Mom. He had my parents. I didn't care what problems there were between us, or about my long, complicated history. They were still Nikki's parents, and I was as much Nikki as I was Macha. I couldn’t let anything happen to them.

  "You have my attention," I said.

  "Good. Meet me on that little island where I killed you and they won't be harmed."

  "I'll be there," I promised.

  Balor hung up. I slipped my phone back into my pocket. My mind turned to Finvarra as I hung up the phone. He had spent so long trying to find me, and now that he had, I was going to leave him again. I closed my eyes and shook my head. I had to do this, for my parents.

  Finvarra was better off without me, anyway.