Desert Guardian

by Duvall, Karen

  Kelly's arms and legs burned from the strain of fending him off. The realization that someone from the Star Mother cult was trying to kidnap her and coming close to succeeding inspired renewed panic. Adrenalin pumped through her like a blast of fire. The man wrapped the sheet more firmly around her head, cutting off her air. She fought for oxygen, but his arm blocked her nose and mouth. Darkness closed in around her. The man's heavy breathing echoed in her ears.

  Little by little, her muscles turned to jelly. She saw the oak floor through an opening in the sheet. Her focus dimmed, and the floor became a soft blur as she lost consciousness.

  Chapter Five

  A distant crash registered in Kelly's fading awareness. The man let her go, and a welcome flood of air rushed into her lungs. Thudding feet pounded the floor by her head. The smacking sound of flesh against flesh reached her ears, and she finally understood what was happening.

  Sam had come home.

  She struggled to free herself from the tangled sheet, but the twisted wad of fabric had a life of its own. The more she fought, the more tightly the sheet held. Because she couldn't see, she focused on what she could hear.

  Dazed, she tried desperately to make sense of what was going on only a few feet away. She heard mostly grunts and groans, a couple of shouts, and she saw only shadows through the sheet. To her left came a sound like a chair toppling over and banging to the floor. Someone cried out in pain. More smacking of flesh against flesh. Fast footsteps, running footsteps, and the thudding of hard-soled shoes against the wooden deck outside.

  Someone hurried toward her, making her cringe and turning her blood to ice. "Sam?" she whispered, desperately hoping she was right. She coughed and said more loudly, "Sam? Is that you?"

  Strong hands grabbed her arms and hoisted her to her feet.

  "Kelly, are you okay?" Sam's voice sounded tense. He pulled the sheet from her face and held her up, cradling her in his arms so that her feet barely touched the floor. "Did they hurt you?"

  Panic still squeezing her lungs, she tugged at the sheet wound tightly around her chest. "I'm fine. Where's Jake?"

  "Who?"

  "My brother!" Exasperated, she ripped at the sheet. "He was just here. I spoke to him. I almost convinced him to come home with me." At least she thought she had.

  With his help, she shed the wrinkled yards of fabric that had almost smothered her to death. When the sheet fell away, she found herself looking into Sam's deep gray eyes, his forehead creased with worry, a red welt high on his right cheek. Silent and breathless, they stared at each other, their faces inches apart. Her gaze dropped to his full lips and locked there.

  "I'm so glad you got back when you did." She folded herself against him, relieved and protected. His arms wrapped more tightly around her, and the familiar scent of his skin grew intoxicating. She would have been happy staying where she was for as long as he would hold her. Sam had become her guardian, her savior.

  She recalled her dream from that morning, how his hands had felt around her ribs, his sensuous fingers caressing her breasts. She wanted to feel that now. As she looked up, their gazes locked again, and she saw desire smolder in his eyes. He bowed his head, lifting her up slightly as he did so, and his breath rustled the fine hairs above her forehead.

  Protected. Cared for. She hungered for that above all things, but so did Jake. It wasn't her needs she should be thinking about now. It was her brother's. Coming to her senses, she backed away. "You must have seen Jake. He was right here!"

  Sam's breath came out in short bursts as he collected himself. "Tell me what he looks like."

  She did, and he nodded. "That must have been the guy who ran past me and out the door when I plowed into the man holding you down." He glanced out the open doorway. "They're gone now. Left in a beat-up blue van. As soon as I got here and saw a strange vehicle parked in the driveway, I knew there was trouble."

  She studied Sam's face, looking for the deceiver Jake had been so convinced he was. But that wasn’t what she saw. Sam's face was a living sculpture of compassion and concern. There was no liar here.

  He rested both hands on her shoulders as if to steady her, and his frown deepened. "You're shaking."

  Damn her body for betraying her emotions. No point in denying the obvious, so she hugged herself and nodded. "I'll be fine. Really."

  He reached out to touch her lightly on the cheek. She backed up a step and closed her eyes. "I know you're trying to help, and I'm sorry if I seem ungrateful. Just give me a few minutes to pull myself together, and I'll be good as new." Her attempt at a reassuring smile felt unnatural, and she hoped he didn't notice. However, she did feel relieved after seeing Jake and knowing he was well, if malnourished. He wasn't taking care of himself.

  Sam's lips curved slightly, but the real smile came through his eyes. "It's okay to be scared."

  She blinked, a sudden sting of tears threatening her self-control. She wanted to be brave, to dismiss the attack as trivial, pretend it was a failed effort that had no effect on her. But in truth, she was scared to death. If she admitted this to Sam, he'd treat her like a victim, and she couldn't tolerate that. It had taken her years to repair the damage her father had done to her self-esteem, and the result was a fierce independence that had given her confidence. She wasn't about to let it go now.

  She glanced down at the scuffed oak floor that had a few streaks of blood on it. Thankfully, none of it was hers or Jake's. And seeing that Sam's only visible injury was a bruise on his cheek, it wasn't his blood either.

  "Let's get you to the couch," he told her.

  She resisted her stubborn need for self-reliance and let him steer her toward the couch, her steps wobbly and unsure. With his arm draped around her shoulder, he held her close, the contact of his body against hers like a soothing salve to her shattered spirit.

  Stiff and achy, she was otherwise unharmed, but even though the danger had passed, her fluttering heart refused to ease up.

  Once planted on the couch, she asked, "Should we call the police?"

  ****

  Sam had known that was coming. And he doubted she'd like his answer. "Not a good idea."

  She surprised him by saying, "You're right. They might arrest Jake, and that's not what I want."

  "Even if we did call the police, there's not much they can do but slow us down," he said. "Police investigations are time-consuming. The cops would come and take our statements, collect evidence, dust for fingerprints, and expect us to accompany them to the station, where we could look through hundreds of mug shots."

  Her eyes glazed. "Sounds tedious."

  "It is. And a total waste of time." He'd been through this type of situation with interventions that involved other cults. Four years ago, he had consensually abducted an environmental cultist in the middle of the night. The cult's brethren had wanted the woman back and broke into Sam's hotel to take her. They'd failed. When the police were called in, the cultist's tracks had been covered so well that it became their word against the victim's. A couple of shark lawyers were thrown into the mix, and the litigation circus had gone on for months, the cult getting off free and clear.

  He heaped some pillows at one end of the couch, and Kelly settled back against them. "Did you notice that your brother and his buddy had a tattoo of a comet on their forearms?"

  She shook her head, and her eyes flickered as if with sudden pain, but she kept it to herself. It tore him up to see her so distressed.

  He went to the kitchen and got ice for his throbbing cheek. Through the breakfast bar window, he caught a glimpse of Kelly staring vacantly into empty space. His heart went out to her. A moment ago, the two of them had shared a connection that might have become something more if he'd acted on impulse. But she had reacted first, pulling away and denying him the kiss he still ached for. It was probably just as well. He shouldn't get personally involved with his clients.

  Her pallor unnerved him. A healthy dose of his homemade energizer tea should perk her up. He filled a kettle
and set it on the stove.

  When he returned to the couch, she studied his injured face. "Looks like they got you pretty good. I couldn't see the fight, but I heard it."

  Without comment, Sam set the ice wrapped in a dishtowel against his bruise. He studied this remarkable young woman who didn't scare easy. Though shaken, her demeanor remained impressively cool.

  "Kelly, do you understand why they want you?"

  "Because I'm Jake's sister," she said, then squinted as if trying to remember something. "In his last letter, Jake had said we were both reincarnated from Star Mother's original starship crew." She rolled her eyes. "I didn't take him seriously at the time, but it freaks me out now, especially since Valya called here today and pulled some kind of mind whammy on me—"

  "Hold it." He leaned forward to hear her better. "Did you say Valya called? Here? Today?"

  "Yeah. I think you're right about them having started my conditioning." Her body shook with an exaggerated shudder. "But I don't remember any of it. It's like a fog thickens inside my head every time I try to think about my time at the camp. What did she do to me?"

  A wave of worry crashed through him. Kelly was obviously susceptible to suggestion, yet she appeared to have a very strong mind. Strong enough to have kept her senses during her attack. "Valya has a gift for inducing a spiritual high through meditation. She uses relaxation techniques to put her subjects in a trance, and that's when she plays her mind games."

  Kelly's eyes widened. "How does it work?"

  "Once her subject is under, the mind is open to suggestion. Valya plants words or images that she can later trigger into a reaction, usually some kind of submissive behavior. What was it she said that induced your mind whammy?"

  "She talked about my inner place of solitude, and it made me immediately peaceful."

  Of course. That would make Kelly pliable. Having her brother suddenly appear compounded the effect. Valya must have believed that getting Kelly to follow her brother would be as easy as snapping her fingers. Sam smiled to himself; he enjoyed watching Valya fail. "You'd probably had a meditation session with Valya while you were with her."

  "I don't remember it," Kelly said. "I don't even remember her."

  "That's okay. The important thing is that you fought her. You didn't let her take you over."

  She looked appalled. "No way would I let her or anyone else take me over."

  "Glad to hear it. Why do you think I've stayed away from the cult all these years? I know how they think." Though he wished he didn't. Just imagining the thoughts that ran through Von and Valya's sadistic minds made him feel sick. He stood and began to pace. "Three days left until the comet comes. That means there will probably be another attempt to kidnap you."

  The thought of Kelly in danger made his blood run cold. He liked Kelly more than he had a right to, and it was distracting him from his job. He had to stay focused.

  The teakettle whistled, and he retreated to the kitchen to remove it from the stove.

  "I was just thinking about that guy who attacked me," Kelly said, raising her voice loud enough for him to hear in the kitchen. "He didn't strike me as the sentry type."

  Sam plunked a couple of homemade teabags in two mugs. "More like a misfit soldier. Star Mother's sentries are all computer geeks who design internal Intranet platforms for start-up companies. E-commerce is a profitable trade for a cult. They can work from almost anywhere."

  "Which must be why they're able to operate while staying mobile."

  "Exactly. They upload work to their business clients via modem from the nearest town, usually through libraries or Internet cafes. They also have sophisticated satellite equipment they boot up whenever they're too far from civilization for a suitable connection." When the steaming water was poured into the mugs, it created a dark, spicy brew that smelled great. He carried their tea into the living room. "The Star Mother cult didn't always use computers to raise money. In the old days, they operated as a traveling carnival."

  "Thanks." Kelly accepted her mug. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. "What's in this?"

  He took a sip of his and grinned. "My own special recipe. I use herbs that stimulate the senses and calm the nerves. You looked like you could use a pick-me-up."

  She smiled, the dimples in her cheeks deepening as she touched the mug to her lips. "It's different, I'll say that much. Tastes like licorice." She took a deeper swallow and nodded, her eyebrows raised in appreciation. "So tell me about this carnival."

  Sam sat in the chair across from her, relieved to see color return to her sallow cheeks. Her no-nonsense approach to facing obstacles in her path could save her life some day.

  He spun the reel of childhood memory back to his first days with Star Mother. "The carnival traveled from town to town with crystal balls, palmists, tarot card readers, you name it. They even did séances. That's how they recruited my mother, by claiming to talk to my dead dad on the other side." He rubbed a broad, lumpy scar on his forearm while recalling that night twenty years ago.

  Kelly tilted her head, giving his arm a pointed look before asking, "How did you burn yourself?"

  "This scar's not from a burn," he said softly, wishing he could make the physical testimony to his past disappear. "It used to be a tattoo of a comet."

  She sat forward and grabbed his arm to study it more closely. "Like the tattoo my brother has?"

  Sam nodded.

  "How did you get it off?"

  "Sand paper," he said, gently pulling his arm away, though her silky fingertips had felt good against the roughened skin. He'd been branded at the age of twelve, one of his first rights of passage in the cult. The humiliation of being owned by Star Mother had scarred more than just his arm. It had scarred his soul. "I started sanding it off on my sixteenth birthday, the same day I ran away from Star Mother."

  The emotion he saw in her eyes touched his heart. He hoped it wasn't pity that made her say, "It must have hurt pretty bad."

  "It hurt like hell." He massaged the old scar, remembering. "I worked on that tattoo for days until it became one giant scab. I'd hidden what I was doing from my foster family, so when it got infected, they rushed me to the hospital. The start of gangrene. I almost lost the arm."

  Kelly stared at his scar like it held the key to all his secrets. It didn't. It was simply proof of a childhood lived in hell.

  "Sam," she finally said. "Why didn't your mother leave with you when you ran away?"

  How much should he tell her? His mother wasn't a subject he felt comfortable discussing. Sam had lived so long inside himself that the need to share his pain and his worries had become overwhelming. Constantly moving from state to state, town to town, always in pursuit of yet another cult and its victims, had left him no time for alliances, no time for relationships. It was time for him to trust someone. What he needed more than anything was a friend. "My mother was a true believer in the cult's religion. She wanted to stay with them and begged me to stay with her, but I didn't share her beliefs."

  "Because you don't believe in extraterrestrials?"

  "Oh, I'm open to the possibility but not in the twisted, self-serving way Star Mother has incorporated it into their religion."

  "I don't get it," she said. "What do little green men have to do with religion?"

  Sam chuckled. "The extraterrestrial myth is powerful because people are captivated by the idea that billions of advanced civilizations may exist on planets outside our solar system. Add a few power-hungry, self-deluded religious fanatics and you get a cult like Star Mother that combines elements of Christianity with UFOs. Valya's great-grandmother started the cult. She interpreted passages from the four gospels in the Bible and the book of Revelation as referring to UFO visitation. There's a story in Revelation that describes two witnesses who were killed, stayed dead for three and a half days, then came back to life and were taken up into the clouds. I'll give you one guess who those witnesses were."

  "Von and Valya's ancestors?"

  "You got it." He groaned
in disgust. It was a fairytale not even children would believe. And to think he was once a party to that madness. He wanted Kelly to understand how truly insane this cult was. "Star Mother's followers believe the souls of those two people were replaced with superior entities from another world, entities who later became the founders of their cult. And the starship crew who had delivered these entities are believed to have reincarnated into the cultists they have today."

  Kelly raised both eyebrows, looking interested. "When was the cult first started?"

  He shrugged and peered up at the ceiling, trying to recall what he'd been told as a child. "The earliest reference Valya ever made was to the turn of the twentieth century. Her great-grandmother set up the first traveling camp in the Mohave Desert in 1898."

  "Wow." Kelly shuddered. "Creepy."

  "Tell me about it."

  "So is your mother still with them?"

  Sam hesitated. He'd already told her enough about his past. Emotionally drained now, he decided the tale of his mother's fate was best left for another day. "Hey, it's not fair that you get to know so much about me and I know next to nothing about you."

  "I've already told you about my dad. You even met him," she said dryly. "Need I say more?"

  "To be fair, yeah, you do."

  She scratched beneath her chin and yawned. "Your story is much more interesting than mine."

  "Humor me."

  "Fine," she said, deadpan. She took a gulp from her mug. "My mother was fifty-three when I was born. She'd been going through menopause when she got pregnant, not believing pregnancy was possible at her age. Surprise, surprise."

  "But your brother Jake—"

  "Same father, different mother. My mother died of a heart attack when I was two, and three years later Dad took up with a stripper at a local nightclub. Delilah. He got her pregnant, she moved in with us, had the baby, then took off. None of us ever heard from her again." Her eyes looked distant, as if viewing a movie of the past from inside her head.

  What a crappy life young Jake had had so far. Poor guy. Abandoned first by his mother then rejected by his father. No wonder he was messed up.