The Watchers

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  “I have been here.”

  As tempted as she was to pursue that line of questioning, the sound of a helicopter drew the attention of both and broke the momentary truce. Claire watched the helicopter, heading toward the disaster area, feeling anger and suspicion oust the softer emotions from before. She didn’t really believe it of him but she had to ask, had to hear him deny it so that she could make herself believe he wasn’t some evil monster. “Are you pleased with that? Did you do it? Did you have anything to do with that … that horror?”

  Dante whipped a sharp look at her, the taut, grim set of his expression supplanted with a look of anger and surprise. “Do I look pleased?” he growled. “I did not do that, no.”

  She studied him for a long moment, trying to decide whether she believed him or not, but why bother lying to her? It wasn’t as if she could do anything about it.

  On the other hand, she knew she didn’t want to believe he was an evil thing—or just so cold and unfeeling he was capable of destroying so much and taking countless lives in the process. But why else would he be here? And there had been that threat when he’d found her in the cavern! “But you had something to do with it,” she probed.

  Something flickered in his eyes, but she couldn’t decide what it meant or what had prompted it. Had he had something to do with it? And if so, what? “What were you doing in the cave if you didn’t have anything to do with this? What did you mean when you said that to me? You said you wouldn’t hurt me or allow me to be hurt, but ….”

  He shook his head. Moving closer, he caught her face between his palms, tipping her head up to look down at her. “The knowledge you seek could cost you your life, Claire. Leave it alone.”

  So he was saying he wasn’t the threat? He was just the messenger?

  His expression was grim. “Something like that.”

  “You read minds,” she said flatly. She’d tried really, really hard to convince herself that it was purely her imagination—or he was amazingly perceptive. “Do they read minds, too? The ones that are responsible for that … mass murder!”

  “They do not have to—but no. They do not have that capability.”

  “Who are they?”

  He hesitated. “The overlords. The gods.”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “Gods as in deities? Or gods as in aliens who call their species god?”

  “You pointed out that you were neither religious nor simple minded.”

  Claire’s head hurt from trying to make sense of the things that had happened and that she’d seen and heard.

  Sooo—there were aliens on Earth that had been coming for thousands of years and had either deliberately or accidently convinced mankind that they were magical beings when, in fact, they were merely beings from other worlds?

  “Yes. That is what we are.”

  He’d said ‘we’. She wondered how many of them were on Earth.

  “I cannot answer that.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him thoughtfully. “And wouldn’t even if you could.”

  “As you say,” he responded absently, returning his attention to the sky.

  Claire turned to see what had caught his interest, expecting another rescue helicopter. The flying object that seemed to materialize out of thin air as she watched was definitely not a helicopter, though.

  It stopped when it was only a matter of yards from them, hovered for a handful of seconds, and then settled silently on the roof. The light that seemed to rotate around the entire circumference of the disk slowed and then stopped. When it did, a mouth opened in the side and a long tongue extended.

  Dante’s hand curled around her upper arm like a vice. “Come.”

  Claire’s fascination with the ‘flying saucer’ vanished like so much smoke. She pulled against the hand clamped around her arm. “Where?”

  He glanced around. “This place is not safe … now.” He didn’t seem to notice Claire was resisting every step of the way as he hauled her toward the gang plank.

  “Exactly what place are we talking about here? This building? The city? State? Or planet? Because I can find my way from here. I don’t need any more help.”

  Apparently he had noticed she wasn’t eager to board the ship. He halted abruptly, swept her into his arms, and strode briskly up the gangplank and into the ship. The gangplank was already being retracted and the portal closing when he set her on her feet inside. Claire tried to dive out anyway. He caught her and jerked her deeper into the ship, down a long corridor that seemed far longer than the ship could’ve contained—it hadn’t seemed nearly as big on the outside as it did once she was in it. Lights flickered on as they progressed, brightening the corridor ahead almost as if it was leading them, lighting their way and then fading to darkness behind them.

  Claire was too frightened to gather her wits. “What do you need a flying saucer for? You can fly.”

  He didn’t look at her. “Why would you need a car? You can walk.”

  Ok, so it was a stupid question! His silence was scaring the piss out of her, though, and she couldn’t think straight! She’d just asked the first thing that popped in her head to break the silence.

  He caught her around the waist and maneuvered her into something that looked like a cross between an egg and a chair. It cupped around her as he pressed her into it. Leaning closer, he met and held her gaze. “I have no evil intentions toward you—no intentions at this point at all beyond removing you from danger and taking you to a safer place.”

  The icy cold fear that had been gripping Claire began to thaw a little. “That’s … that’s all? You swear?”

  He leaned closer still, pressing his lips to hers briefly. She’d thought he meant to leave it at that but after a brief hesitation, he tilted his head slightly and deepened the kiss. As it had the first time he’d kissed her, heat almost instantly began to scorch her inside. Her heart began to race and then her brain seemed to overheat and go haywire. She felt almost drunk when he pulled away, studied her for a long moment and then moved across the room to a console she hadn’t noticed before. He lifted his hands and the area above it lit up and began to sparkle with faint images of strange symbols. A few moments later a transparent hologram of the Earth appeared, rotating. He touched the orb and it disappeared and then he strode back and settled in an egg chair beside hers.

  His didn’t swallow him whole like the one he’d settled her in, making her aware of his size for the first time.

  Not that she hadn’t noticed he was tall—a big man. She had. She hadn’t actually had the opportunity to compare him with anything that would give her a clear idea of his size, though. She’d been in a wheelchair the first time he spoke to her, at a distance every time since, or in a state of duress.

  Her stomach was still churning with fear despite his reassurance, but that had eased enough of her terror for thought and her mind went into ‘replay’ mode.

  He’d simply appeared when the soldier had threatened her. Surely, even if he had all sorts of superior technology he couldn’t have done that unless he’d been watching her?

  He’d said he had watched her ‘fuck the warrior who pulled you out of the sinkhole’. She’d been so … shocked and dismayed that she hadn’t realized that he hadn’t actually told her what he was doing there. Or what he’d come for. He’d just told her what he’d done after he’d arrived, baldly enough to throw her into disorder so that it didn’t occur to her to ask him why he’d gone to her apartment in the first place.

  Then again, she wasn’t sure she believed he was shocked. Unless he’d come back for seconds and discovered somebody else in ‘his’ bed?

  That was way too simplistic, she decided. He’d pointed out himself that they were animals, too, and she thought that probably meant that they were subject to many of the same motives as human animals, but it damned well wasn’t her imagination that something was going on and she thought it wasn’t exaggeration that it could be something disastrous for humans.

  It already had been!r />
  For several moments, she felt like she might throw up with the welling of sick anger that rose at that thought, but her sense of fairness and justice refused to be ignored in favor of pointing the blame directly away from people she didn’t want to blame.

  She was obliged to admit she actually didn’t know that, not for a fact. She suspected he and/or others of his kind had had something to do with the major collapse, but the truth was it might have been a natural phenomenon arising out of geological weaknesses they hadn’t previously been aware of and overbuilding above those weaknesses. That was what caused the majority of sinkholes.

  That was what everyone believed caused them—because it was actually a logical assumption.

  They knew, had known for many years, that limestone was a weak stone that was very susceptible to water erosion and they’d suspected even before they had instruments to prove it that much of Florida—a good bit of the country—was honeycombed with caverns and channels created by running water. As long as these caverns were full of water, there was usually sufficient strength to hold up whatever was built over these holes. The water pressure was enough to prevent the cave walls from collapsing.

  But Florida was very heavily populated now which meant high-rises going up everywhere at the same time as more and more people came into the state and consumed the water in the caves beneath their feet. It was the same principle as parking a tank on a wooden bridge built to carry cars. It could carry some weight, but add too much and it was going to collapse.

  She only had two reasons that she could see for blaming Dante and/or his people and one was that he was in the depths of the cavern doing something when he caught her there. And the second reason was the warning--There are things, child of man, that you are not allowed to know! Do not come to this place again … unless you seek death, because that is what you will find—not answers.

  She’d taken that personally—he didn’t want her snooping. But he’d referred to her as ‘child of man’ so the ‘you’ he’d used could be interpreted as plural—as everyone that was a child of man—which was what she’d concluded just before the great collapse and, she supposed, was mostly why she was convinced it wasn’t merely an accident arising from ‘human error’.

  Either way, if she’d interpreted that correctly, there had been a very real threat made against mankind. There was something down there ‘they’ didn’t want mankind to find, to learn, and they were willing to kill to keep that knowledge from surfacing.

  They might not have had to—humans might have been responsible for the collapse—but they were certainly willing to and that made her wonder what they could be trying to hide that was so critical to them.

  What the hell could be down there?

  That question made her realize that she had a third strong reason to suspect that Dante had had something to do with the collapse.

  Wasn’t it a little too convenient that the secret they’d wanted to preserve was now buried under tons of tangled wire, twisted girders, and broken concrete?

  So was she right in thinking it was no accident at all but rather a deliberate, premeditated act to protect their secret? How many had they killed to keep their secret? How many were they willing to kill? What could be down there that was so important to them?

  * * * *

  “You can have no notion of just how badly I want to mate with you,” Dante said as he stared down at her upturned face, knowing it was a weakness that he felt that way and worse that he had willingly admitted it.

  He wasn’t surprised by the skepticism he detected in her mind, but he supposed he was relieved that she had not believed a word. Like the human women he had wooed before, she liked the pretty words, but unlike them she didn’t believe when, for once, he was being completely honest.

  “Yes, well, I’m flattered you want to fuck me,” she replied dryly, “but I don’t see a relationship working out between us and I’m just not really ‘in’ to fucking for the sake of recreation.”

  Anger flared, churning with another emotion in his belly that made him feel faintly ill, but he realized she had given him a chance to retract a statement he shouldn’t have made to start with. She was right. There would be no chance to strengthen the bond he had inadvertently formed with her.

  Not that he could see that there was much possibility of it becoming stronger than it was already! He had formed a mating bond with her when he had made love to her before—something he had not thought possible between an angel and a human woman or he would not have touched her for any promise—even freedom.

  But it was done now and his torment to bear.

  And that would be easier than giving in to his desires and having her snatched away by the damned overlords! He could bear it easier if he at least knew that she was alive and he would be able to see her if he could escape the watchful eye of the overlords.

  “I will come back for you when I see that it is safe to return you.”

  Claire gaped at him in confusion and then looked around the room he’d taken her to—the empty room. “You’re going to leave me here?” she asked blankly. There wasn’t even a damned bed—not a chair ….

  He stepped away from her, turned, and strode briskly across the room. A console appeared much like the one he’d used to navigate the craft. Her first inkling that this one was vastly different was when she began to itch all over and then burn. When she looked down to see why, she saw to her horror that her lower body was gone. Even as she stared, the blinding, stinging light rushed upward and consumed her.

  When awareness surfaced again, she found herself standing ankle deep in a sand dune. She’d felt a very brief sense of falling just before full awareness and had sucked in a sharp breath to scream only to discover solid ground beneath her feet. Too shocked to absorb it, she merely stood staring down at the drifting sand and slowly becoming aware of her surroundings, of sights, smells, and sounds she should have been able to interpret but somehow couldn’t at the moment.

  “Claire! Oh my god! Claire? Is that you?”

  Whipping toward the sound of the voice, Claire saw Maddie—white faced and shaking, staring at her as if she was a ghost—with fear and disbelief. The moment their gazes met, though, Maddie seemed to shake her paralysis and raced toward her. “Claire!”

  “Maddie?” What in the hell had just happened? “How did you get here?”

  Maddie pulled away and stared at her. “I was going to ask you the same thing. You don’t remember?”

  “What?”

  “The … flying saucer? Being … abducted? I swear I never believed those kooks, but I saw it!”

  At that prompt, Claire turned to survey the sky. “Where is it?”

  Maddie shook her head. “It just … vanished. One minute it was there and then it just shot off and disappeared. This beam of blinding white light shot down from it when it was hovering and then when it disappeared I saw you standing there.”

  He’d taken her to her sister? In Kuwait? Half way around the world in a matter of a few minutes? She hadn’t even felt the sensation of moving—at all!

  How the hell had he known where her sister was? Even that she had a sister?

  What else did he know about her?

  Suddenly, she felt a little faint and sick.

  Concerned, Maddie wrapped an arm around her. “Come on. You’ve had a shock. Let me help you inside. You should lie down on my cot for a little while.”

  Amazingly, since her internal clock was set to the other side of the globe, Claire settled on the cot Maddie led her to inside her private tent and fell asleep.

  Maddie was asleep on a pile of pillows across from her when she woke. She studied her older sister, listening to the sounds of a camp awakening and thinking how much her sister looked like their mother. She’d never noticed that before.

  But then again they were a family of nomads. Their parents had taught school until she and her sister had gone off to college and then had set out to pursue their interests in the field. They tried to me
et up somewhere and catch up at least once a year—sometimes twice—but not everyone always managed to make it in for the family gatherings. Her mother’s funeral was the first and last time they had all managed to meet up in years and that had been … nearly ten years ago now.

  Claire could hardly believe it had been that long.

  It didn’t feel like her mother could possibly have been gone so long.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Claire hadn’t realized Maddie had awakened until she spoke. “Really well, I suppose, considering I’ve never been particalized before and beamed to Earth,” she said dryly. “I’m going to kill that bastard if I see him again! No warning! Not even a ‘brace yourself, baby! This might freak you out!’”

  Maddie blinked rapidly as she spoke, as if Claire was flicking something solid at her—like maybe bullshit? “You know who …what …? Is that why you wanted me to come to Florida? You’ve met an alien and you wanted to introduce us?”

  Claire stared blankly at her for several moments, her mouth agape, trying to decide whether to laugh or blast her sister for such an idiotic assessment of the situation! “My god, Maddie! What the hell made you think that?”

  Maddie glared at her. “The fucking flying saucer you fucking arrived in!”

  “Whoa! I didn’t know you could get fuck in one sentence that many times! You’ve spent way too much time in low company!”

  Maddie looked like she was contemplating braining her with something for several moments. Abruptly, though, she burst out laughing. “Claire! I swear to god if that was some kind of elaborate hoax last night ….”

  It was Claire’s turn to chuckle, but she sobered quickly. “No. It wasn’t a hoax. And I didn’t have any intention of trying to …. Ohmygod! He sent me through the particle ….” Claire broke off and searched her clothing frantically. Relieved when she found the pouch, she unpinned it and picked the stitches loose. Maddie got up and crossed the tent floor when she held it out.

  “What is it?”

  “I thought you could tell me. I found it when I went down into the sinkhole.”