“So, you saw your daughter this morning?” the operator asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry, miss, but I can’t dispatch an officer to your house until your daughter has been missing over for over twenty-four hours.”
“What?”
“Well, the thing is, miss, that most of the time the child is with a friend, or close by. We don’t have enough officers to send out to every case of a runaway child, so we can’t consider a child properly missing until after twenty-four hours have passed.”
“You won’t look for my daughter?” Melisa asked numbly.
“I’m sorry, we can’t. If your daughter doesn’t show up tonight, call back in the morning and we’ll be able to send someone out to you.”
“What if it’s too late?” Melisa said panicking. “What if she’s getting hurt? Why won’t you help me find my daughter?”
“If I could send someone out to you I would,” the operator said with sincerity in his voice. “I have to follow the regulations though, miss.”
*******
The sound of someone’s fist against the front door came crashing through the house. Melisa opened her eyes quickly. They felt sore and swollen from the tears, which had carried her off to sleep. She sat up and rubbed them, so that they would open fully. The night had passed and the sun was starting to break through the sky. The heavy knock at her door came again and she got up hurriedly, so that she could go answer it.
“Melisa, we need to talk,” Dominic said as she opened the door and he pushed it open further so that he could walk right in.
Melisa blinked slowly. Was she still asleep? Was it really Dominic standing in her hallway? “Is that really you?”
He nodded. “I have much to explain to you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Someone has Josie,” he told her calmly.
“What do you mean ‘someone has Josie’?” Melisa asked with her voice breaking with terror. “What’s happening? Who has my daughter? Why are you here? Is this something to do with you? If she’s hurt I’ll kill you!” Melisa exploded all at once.
“You need to calm down,” Dominic said slowly and gently. “I know that you’re scared. I am too, but you need to hold yourself together. We’re going to find her. We’re going to get her back, so you don’t need to worry.”
“This has something to do with you, doesn’t it?” she glared at him accusingly. She waited for him to deny it, but he didn’t.
He dropped his eyes to the floor and slowly nodded his head. “This has everything to do with me, and I am so truly sorry.” He meant it. There wasn’t a trace of deceit in his voice, but that didn’t matter to Melisa. He was the reason that her daughter was in trouble.
“What the hell am I meant to do with that? Is ‘sorry’ going to bring my daughter back?”
“Our daughter,” he corrected her.
Melisa laughed in a fraught way. “Are you joking? You don’t get to walk back into our lives fifteen years later and throw around the fact that we had sex all that time ago. You’re nothing to her and you’re nothing to me.”
“Do you honestly feel that way?” he asked as he took his eyes away from the floor and up to her. “Do you really believe that I am nothing to either of your lives?”
“Is that really what you’re worrying about right now?” Melisa asked him in disgust.
“You’re quite right,” Dominic said as he shook the dampened expression off of his face. “I think I know where Josie is being kept. We should set off immediately.”
“No, we should call the police,” Melisa argued. They had refused to help when Josie’s safety was being questioned, but now it was a fact that she was missing and they couldn’t deny that.
“We can’t call the police.”
“What? Should we storm the place ourselves?” Melisa mocked him.
“If we call the police then they will die and our daughter will be at more risk than she is now. We have to do this for ourselves. I will explain everything on the way, but we need to leave now.”
Melisa couldn’t argue with the urgency in his eyes. She walked out of her house and into the open night without even a coat to cover her bare arms. “Where is she?” she asked, as they walked up the sidewalk, which led to a small parking lot.
“I think she’s in a warehouse at the other side of town. That is the last place she was seen, at least.”
“You’ve had people watching her?” Melisa asked as she realized that things were a whole load more complicated than she had dared to imagine.
He nodded. “It was for her own safety. For the sake of honesty, you have also had someone following you for the last few weeks.”
“Why?”
“That question is a difficult one to answer without telling you the whole story.”
“You better start telling it to me, then,” Melisa said sharply.
“Of course,” he nodded. “You once asked me where I came from and I told you that it was far away,” he started. “I think perhaps you thought I meant another state or country, but you weren’t quite thinking big enough. I come from another planet. I know that’s probably hard to believe, but I can prove it to you.”
“You can prove it?” It seemed ridiculous to Melisa that he was claiming to be from another planet and on top of that, that he could prove it.
“Do you want me to prove it?” he asked. She nodded. He stopped walking and turned to her, so that they were facing each other. “I need you to close your eyes,” he told her, and she did. He raised his hand to her head and placed one fingertip against her skin.
Melisa felt her legs go weak as the force of somebody else’s thoughts and memories overcome her. She could feel each thought and memory striking out against her brain, making room for it to slot in against the prior jumble of junk that had already been there.
The feeling stopped and she opened her eyes. She could see everything. She could see the deep purple grass that swayed without the touch of the wind. She could see the inky green waters that held no reflections, and the sky that burned above. “Is that where you are from?” she asked, as more images of towns and strange-looking buildings filled her mind.
“It is.”
“You really are from another world,” Melisa said as she tried to close off everything that was new in her mind. “Why are you here? Why were you here?”
“Look through your mind,” he told her gently. “I’ve already told you everything that you need to know.”
Melisa tried to focus on all of the new information. It was coming to her in flashes. She didn’t seem to have any control over what flashed up though. The burning sky was something that kept coming back. “Why is your sky on fire?” she asked him.
“Our world is dying,” he said in a barely audible whisper. “It’s burning around us and soon everyone on it will be dead.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Melisa asked him. “Are you seeing whether you’d be able to survive here?”
“I wish it was that simple,” he said with his head falling from left to right. “We have known about Earth for a long time, and we have always known that the atmosphere you experience down here is very similar to our own.”
“I don’t get it.”
“The government that rules our planet intends to bring our people to Earth,” Dominic confirmed part of her theory. “The thing is, though, that they believe your people won’t willingly accept us.”
“Why would they think that?”
“As I have said, we have known about your planet for a long while and we have seen what you do to each other. If you are willing to slaughter your own, so that you might call land your own, then what are you going to do to those that only look like you?”
Melisa wanted to argue with him. She wanted to defend her people and her planet, but he was right and her efforts would have been wasted. “So what do the people of your planet intend to do with us?” she asked.
Dominic didn’t reply at first. Melisa could te
ll from the shame shining in his eyes that his answer was not going to be good. “They plan on wiping you out. They think that way they will be able to take control of the planet and your species will no longer be an issue.”
“They’re going to wipe us all out?” Melisa asked, as she tried to feel the fear she knew she should be feeling over the situation. She wasn’t afraid, though. It was all too much. It didn’t seem real, even though she had Dominic’s implanted memories in her mind proving to her otherwise.
“I think that some of you will be held as slaves, but yes, the majority of you will die. They won’t keep enough of you to be a threat, at least.”
“So is that why you’re down here?” Melisa asked him with a hurt look. “Are you here to report back to them about our weaknesses?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“When I heard about what my government was planning I spread the word. Many of us believed that what they planned was wrong, so we came up with a plan of our own. Josie is not the only child who was born fifteen years ago. There are many children who belong to both moons walking the Earth and they are what is going to stop this war.”
“You’re going to use my daughter in battle?” Melisa asked, and she could feel the same disgust she’d felt earlier towards him return. “You’ll be doing that over my dead body.”
“I don’t plan to use our daughter in battle,” he told her quickly as he came up to a stop outside of a dark warehouse that had broken windows. “I am going to prove to our government and yours that we have already been living alongside each other for fifteen years, so there should be no threat felt from either side.”
That actually kind of made sense to Melisa, even though the situation didn’t. “So, who has our daughter? Why has she been taken? What does this have to do with you?”
Dominic kicked at the front door and it crashed open and against the wall behind it. “There are always two sides to every story,” he replied before he walked into the dust-filled hallway and disappeared out of sight.
*******
Melisa followed the sound of Dominic’s footsteps until they stopped. She could hear something breaking the silence. It was somebody’s jagged breathing. They sounded in pain. They sounded as though they were fighting for each breath that they took. Dominic pushed open a door and Melisa found herself staring at her daughter.
She rushed forward. Her eyes were darting around her daughter. There was blood on her wrists from where the rope had been digging into her. She had a black, swollen eye that marked the place she’d been hit in the face. Her lip looked busted. She’d clearly been beaten up after she’d been tied down and Melisa could feel her blood starting to boil.
“Where is the person who did this?” she demanded to know. Her voice was loud and bounced off the walls as it escaped and echoed off down the hallway.
“I’m right here,” a cruel, cold voice said from behind her. She turned quickly, but kept her hands on Josie. “You know, when I heard about this little plan, I really thought that it was going to be a lot of trouble for me, but do you know what? It’s actually been quite fun.” His lips pulled up into a sharp smile, which seemed fitting against his[S5] pointed nose.
“You’re sick,” Melisa spat at him. “Look at you; you get kicks out of hurting children. You’re so fucked up that I actually pity you.”
Fire suddenly burned in his eyes, melting the frost that had previously been there. “How dare you?” He walked quickly across the room with his broad shoulders held back. “How dare you even speak to me? Your species is filth and your daughter is a stain upon a noble bloodline.”
Melisa felt his hand wrap around her throat. She glanced to her side. Dominic was just standing in the corner. “Help me,” she croaked to him as the edges of her sight started to delve into dark shades of grey and black.
“That’s enough,” Dominic’s voice boomed out through the room. “I will not stand by and allow you to do this.”
“You don’t have a choice.”
Melisa felt the hands around her throat loosen. The sound of crashing came from above her head, but she focused only on getting to Josie. “We need to get out of here,” she whispered to Josie, who was watching the scene with horror.
“What’s going on, Mom?”
“I’ll explain everything to you, baby,” Melisa said softly as she stroked the sides of her daughter’s cheeks. “We don’t have time now though. We have to go.”
*******
Melisa looked at Josie, who had been sitting at the kitchen table for the last hour, unmoving. The door knocked again. “I’m going to answer it,” she told Josie as she stood up. “If you hear anything that doesn’t sound right, then I want you to run out the back. Do you understand?”
Josie didn’t say anything, but her head tilted slightly forward and Melisa accepted that as a response. “I’ll be back in a second,” she said. She took one last look at her daughter before leaving the room and going to the front door.
She had no idea who it was. She had no idea whether she would find Dominic or the man who had taken her daughter, but she knew that she had to answer it. She knew that she had to find out for certain. “It’s you,” she said. Dominic gave her a tight smile.
“Yes, it is,” he said, dryly, as he walked into the light hallway. “Where is Josie?” he asked with enough concern to make a person believe that he’d been there for everything and hadn’t missed the first fifteen years of her life.
“She’s in the kitchen, but I’m not sure that she wants to see you.”
“We all need to talk about what has happened and what is yet to happen.”
Melisa wanted to tell him that it wasn’t the time. She wanted to tell him that he was in no position to start making demands, but she knew that the situation was bigger than what she was feeling. “Fine,” she led him into the kitchen.
Josie looked up from the table where she was sitting. “Are you my dad?” she asked Dominic without blinking.
“Yes,” he told her.
“Why did you leave my mom?” she asked him.
He looked surprised by her question. “I had to go back to where I come from,” he told her. “My people did not know that I was here. If I wanted the plan to work then I had to go back before they realized that I had left.”
“Is that all I am to you?” Josie asked him without any kind of emotion to her tone. “Am I just a part of your plan?”
“You were,” Dominic said hesitantly. “When I first came to the planet my sole goal was to ensure that I left with a child due. Over the years I have been watching over you both, so I could be sure that no harm came to you. I guess I’ve grown quite attached to you both in that time. I know that it’s different for you, but I kind of feel like I’ve always been part of your family.”
“You think you’re family?”
“I think I could be, if you and your mom let me.”
“Is that what you want?” Josie’s voice was disbelieving.
“I think so, when this is all over and we make our last trip over here. I think I’d like to be a part of the family I’ve helped to create.”
Josie turned her eyes away from her father and rested them on her mom. She looked tired. Her hair was a mess and her skin pale. “Is that what you want, Mom?” Josie asked.
“I don’t know what I want,” Melisa answered honestly. The last few days had been crazy, and she could barely get her head around what was happening in that moment, never mind what would happen in the future.
“Why did that man attack me?” She turned her attention back to her father. “Why did he lock me up? Why did he call me a stain on his bloodline?”
“There are some people from our world who do not want a peaceful end to this. There are some people who would rather lose their lives in the glory of battle so that they don’t have to deal with the mundane living that peace can bring.”
“Does that mean he isn’t the only one?”
“He is one of many, but you are sa
fe now. You do not need to fear these people, because I won’t allow anything to happen to you.”
Melisa made a sound halfway between a snort and clearing her throat. “You stood and watched as that man was choking the life out of me.”
Dominic turned to her with an apologetic expression on his face. “I am not the kind of person who rushes into conflict. I was hoping that perhaps he might see the error of his ways before I was forced to stop him.”
“So, what happens next?” Josie asked. “I mean, if I’m some big part in all of this, then what do I have to do next?”
Dominic looked over at his daughter and smiled. “We need to take a trip back to my home planet. We need to talk with the government so that we can prove to them that we can live alongside each other.”
“Are you telling me that I’m going to another planet?” Josie asked, and she couldn’t hide the excitement in her eyes over the once-in-a-lifetime prospect.
“I am.”
*********
Everything was as Melisa had seen it in her mind. She hadn’t been expecting the heat though. The fire that was raging above their heads was throwing some serious heat down to the ground and her skin felt wet with sweat. They stopped walking outside of a purple sandstone building and Dominic knocked on the heavy-looking door.
It opened and he said something quietly to whomever it was that was standing on the other side. “We need to go inside,” Dominic explained as he turned back to his daughter and Melisa. “When we face the government, you should not speak until I have finished explaining the situation. They do not know about you, and this might take them some time to process.”
The inside of the building felt cooler than the outside, but it wasn’t anywhere near comfortable. They walked through a dark hallway until they reached a yellow door, and then they stopped. Melisa wanted to ask what they were waiting for, but she kept Dominic’s warning in her mind. She wasn’t to speak.
The door opened and they were let inside. The room had four chairs pushed against the back wall. Each chair had a man sitting in it. All of the men had their eyes turned to the door and who was walking through it. “Dominic, what have you brought to us today?” one of the men with a white bearded asked.
Untamed Abduction: Alien Romance Collection Page 5