“What are we waiting for?” Paige asked, ready to leave the car.
“The path is mired with traps. We have to diffuse them before we can go any farther.”
“Where’s the first trap?” Paige asked looking up the path.
“Right where we are standing. It was a mind trap, Victor diffused it.”
“He wanted us to be so concerned with Paige that we would drive into it unknowingly.”
“What happened with Paige?” Selma asked.
Cal gave them a brief summary bringing everyone up to speed.
“We will have to walk from here,” Rylan said looking down the path.
All eyes followed his gaze. A huge cat like creature stalked down the road. Selma watched in amazement as Victor pulled her back. Cal reached for Paige, before she avoided his grasp.
“That looks like my kitty but he can’t still be alive.”
“That’s no cat, Paige.” Cal moved closer to her staring at the creature walking towards them.
“Of course it is. My cat was just like that. When I was younger it would come at night and protect me from all the things that might hurt me. It started coming after the Sudir found me.”
Paige walked towards the cat. “I’m telling you he looks just like my cat, Joaquin. Don’t laugh, I asked him what his name was and that’s what he told me.”
No one laughed. They all stared at it with varying degrees of horror on their faces. Cal’s face was pulled tight as he started towards the cat daring it to make a move.
Paige shrugged and stood looking at the cat that came and wound itself around her legs. Crouching down she opened her arms and gave it a big hug.
“It is you, but how did you find me way out here? Don’t worry, I have a nice house you can stay in to keep warm.”
“Paige, don’t!” came a beat too late from Cal.
“Reveal yourself,” Cal demanded as white light began to skate over his fingertips.
The cat leapt out of Paige’s arms to stand several feet away. A dark shadow hovered over it before a male stood in its place.
He stood tall with bronze skin that was highlighted to look like it was shining in the sun. His long silver hair hung past his shoulders. The contrast of the two was breath taking. His body was slender, yet the wiry muscles of his body was evident. Her eyes slid from Cal to Joaquin and back again. If she met him first…No, something about Cal and those arms would do it for her any day.
“You’re an alien?” Paige brought her hand up to her mouth looking at what she thought was a huge misshapen cat.
“Paige, I knew we would see each other again.”
Paige raced over to him throwing caution to the wind and hugged him, “You really were protecting me.”
“Paige…don’t,” Cal sputtered unable to get anything out.
“Your mate is so overwhelmed with gratitude he is having difficulty thanking me. I protected your mate. You’re welcome, Arbrin.”
Joaquin smiled at Cal before sketching out a bow to Paige. “Thanks for your generous offer of a place to stay. I will, of course, take you up on that offer.”
The Arbrin’s groaned while Selma shook her head.
Joaquin turned to Selma, “I have disabled all the traps outside. I have no idea what we will find in the house.” He eyed Rylan. “Although I believe that one knows.”
He turned and began leading them down the path.
“Why are you helping?” Victor asked as they followed him.
“No one should be taken away from those who love them.” Joaquin’s body shivered as he kept walking.
Paige understood, she knew what pain sounded like. Years of controlling her voice and her body language passed in a blur. Joaquin’s voice was laced with pain tightly controlled as was Rylan’s. Aliens. She shook her head as she walked; who would have thought that quiet Paige would be involved with some of the strangest and hottest males on the planet? She thought of the women at her job. Eat your hearts out.
She reached out and touched Cal allowing the glow from him to warm her. All she needed to make this strange day perfect was to see Vick’s smiling face.
*~*~*~*
The house was eerie; surely this wasn’t what it really looked like. A cloud of darkness surrounded it, making the one Selma generated look like a spring day. Ghouls seemed to be floating in the air, ghost like. It was definitely giving off stay away from me signs. Maybe the Sudir shrouded it in an illusion to encourage anyone who found it not to stop. It was a huge two story structure covered in what could have been vines if they didn’t look like fangs hanging down to rip the unwary traveler in half. The vines from the bonding test flashed in her mind making her wonder if the Sudir had been able to influence what happened there. They stood at the bottom of the steps covered in darkness.
“Rylan,” Victor’s voice rang out loud, “How long do we have?”
Rylan breathed in deeply like he was tasting the air around him.
“Thirty minutes, maybe,” he replied in a loud clear voice.
“When this is over I am taking you both to the movies to see whatever spy, espionage movie is playing. Haven’t you ever heard of stealth and quietness?” Paige’s voice was somber as she scolded them.
Victor gave her a hard smile. “We want him to hear us.”
Paige looked around and shut up; whatever it took to get Vick back.
Selma stepped on the first stair leading to the porch wrapped in an eerie glow much like the cast of the moon on a dark night. An image, only seen because it was darker than the gloomy shadows around them, raced for her. It hit against the glow screeching as it died before their eyes.
“Four more steps,” Cal whispered as Selma stood on the next step repeating the experience.
Selma’s eerie glow was diminishing as she prepared to step onto the porch. Victor walked up the steps behind her casually splaying his hand over her back. The glow began to regenerate, glowing brighter. She cast him a smile before squaring her shoulders and stepping on the porch.
Dark gloomy forms attacked her from all sides; they covered her, pulling her to her knees battering against the glow that surrounded her. Victor started to step up. Stopping suddenly, he turned to look at Cal with a frown before turning back to watch Selma intently. Selma’s raised hand stopped him.
“What’s happening?” Paige asked Cal as she stepped closer to him.
“Selma is fighting for the right to enter the house. The Sudir has guarded the house with Spectral Anomalies. He has led them to believe he has a right to Vick. They will now protect both the Sudir and Vick from any outside interference. In order to get in, Selma must prove her claim and our claim to Vick. She has asked Victor to stay back, I have no answer for that.”
Selma dropped under the weight of the Anomalies that attacked her. The darkness was now filled with a silence that was unnatural. Slowly the Anomalies began to back off one at a time until Selma could be seen prone on the porch.
No one moved until finally a groan of pain could be heard coming from her. Victor was at her side picking her up, checking to see how much damage she sustained. She stood balancing herself with her hands on his chest.
“Now,” Selma spoke in a strong voice belittling the fight she just endured, “the real battle begins.”
She turned to look at the door before shaking off any lingering effects of the Anomalies and headed towards her son.
Chapter Eighteen
The inside of the house caused Paige to breathe normally, her heartbeat slowed and her pulse stopped trying to jump out of her wrist. That, in and of itself, caused her skin to crawl as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Something wasn’t right here.
They walked into an entryway any home would be proud to sport. It was large and well lit; there was a bench to sit on to remove shoes or boots, a closet for winter coats. There also wasn’t one shadow, spider, or Anomaly in sight. The fingers walking up her spine agreed this wasn’t right.
“What am I missing?” Paige asked, looking
around.
“Everything,” Cal replied reaching out to draw her closer to him mentally.
“Look through my eyes, Paige.”
Her pulse kicked up barely keeping her blood in her veins while her heart shuddered it beat so fast. This house was beyond any horror she could dream of. The Sudir had several decomposing animal bodies strewn across the floor and several other bodies under covers and she was almost sure at least one of them was human. Cleanliness was obviously a word he didn’t know. She shivered unable to un-see now that her eyes were opened.
“Where’s Vick?” Every eye turned to Rylan at Victor’s question.
“He should be in the attic, if this Sudir holds true.”
Joaquin walked down the attic stairs. “I have taken care of all the traps in the stairwell. You’re welcome. What’s in the room will not be that easy to conquer.”
There was a flurry of activity as they began to ascend the stairway. There was no reason to be quiet; the Sudir knew they were coming for him.
“What will we find?” Paige asked in a quiet voice.
“Your worst nightmare,” Rylan relied quietly.
The stairwell had been strangely quiet of any sound except what they made. Now they stood before the door that kept them from Vick.
“It’s now or never.” Selma threw the door open wide.
Paige almost tripped over her two feet as she went sprawling into Cal’s arms. She wanted to say thank you but the trembling in her limbs extended to her vocal cords.
Selma asked the question she couldn’t. “Is that an illusion?”
“It’s very real,” Joaquin replied. “I will deal with the black widow spider; the rest of you will have to deal with whatever else you find in the room.”
Joaquin shifted into a huge alien with lethal claws. He cut through the web distracting the easily seven foot spider. They slipped in while he enticed her away from the door.
The attic covered the entire length of the house. Vick was lying hovering over a table at the far end of the attic, wrapped in dark pulsating energy fields. The Sudir had huge tentacles coming from his body reaching towards Vick.
“We can’t let him touch Vick with those.” Rylan’s voice a kaleidoscope of agony as he spoke.
“What are they?” Paige looked at him.
“Horror.”
She moved cautiously towards Vick with the others not asking another question. Every line of Rylan’s taut body communicated the agony he suffered at the hands of the Sudir. Paige felt the desire that bled off of him in waves to tear the Sudir apart.
She might have spent time feeling sorry for him if she hadn’t been hit with the most intense longing to see her parents. She needed them, the weight of it crushed her as she fell to her knees, arms outstretched trying to grab onto anything for balance.
Her brain exploded into a thousand parts, mocking her attempt to regain any measure of sanity.
“So glad you came to me, I didn’t want to seek you out again.” The Sudir’s voice reached into her causing the shreds of her brain to retract in horror as the darkness of it chilled her overheated skin taking her from painfully on fire to freezing cold.
Her knees gave out completely dropping her to the floor. She sprawled there in a heap. Her fingers curled into the wood as she grabbed for leverage, any small thing would do to propel her to a different part of the room. Finding nothing, her body convulsed as shards of ice enveloped her before she stilled.
Awareness came slowly, tickling her brain and teasing her dead body. Nothing on her moved except her eyes limiting her view of her surroundings. She knew she was hanging, her arms and legs were stretched out wide as she hung over the room. She couldn’t see her body, but that bit of knowledge had been granted. The Sudir’s way of layering torture upon her.
“Where am I?” Her mouth never moved, she was dealing on a level of pure feelings.
“This is where you will be kept until I am ready for you.” The words were translated to feelings.
She could feel his grim satisfaction as if it were hers. It bubbled against her deadened skin, touching parts of her that were dark and shady. She never would have believed that evil could lie just beneath her skin, but there it was. It crept through her demanding the right to own her.
Furiously she found herself trying to fling her head back and forth only to realize her body was indeed dead. Her cry for help fell on death ears, she was alone. Turning inwards she reached for the door, the path that connected her to Cal, only to find it missing as if it were never there. Alone.
Raising her eyes, the only things left to her, she looked upward to find two images coming towards her. They smiled in joy as the name ‘Paige’ seemed to echo around the dark space of the room.
“Who are you?” she asked, feeling the words that weren’t words leave her.
“I’m your mom and this is your dad.”
Paige rolled her eyes in lieu of shaking her head. “My parents are dead, Sudir. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’m not biting.”
“Paige, we are your parents. Your dead, Baby,” her mother whispered.
“I can’t be dead, I just started to live.”
“Sorry, love,” her father said, looking at her with sad eyes.
“No, just no.” She hung there helpless.
Dead. There would be no more watching Cal as his eyes heated up with desire for her. She would never slip into his mind again, she was just learning that trick. His Matra would never sit on that huge couch and wait for her to wake up. Her dreams of this being a perfect Christmas, trimming the tree, beating the Sudir, and maybe receiving a gift from Cal had been stolen. Her time was up and the life she was just beginning to appreciate flowed through her fingers alerting her that her time was at an end.
The parents she longed to see were standing before her. A part of her should rejoice at least that she was being reunited with them in death. There was no happiness, she couldn’t even think of one question to ask them. She wanted to live, to fight the Sudir, to be given a real chance with Cal. She wanted it all, it couldn’t end this way.
“Then fight, Paige.”
Was this really her mother? She couldn’t be sure, the woman may just be a figment of her imagination. There was one thing she was sure about, the image was of her mother. It was how she looked the last time Paige saw her. Over the years the image had faded until it became a cloudy blur she could no longer see. Now it was back in crystal clear definition. She was looking at the spitting images of her parents.
“Paige, I both loved and hated your curiosity and your tenaciousness when you were a child. You never let anything go once you made up your mind. Your father and I pulled you out of so many situations because you had to know. ‘I want to see honey, Mommy.’ So you found a bee hive. We were in the ER for hours after that one.”
The memory of the pain caused her body to ache. She found out the hard way she was extremely allergic to bees. The doctors said she was lucky.
When she was finally allowed outside again all the bee hives within a five mile radius of her house were missing. She cut her eyes towards her dad. ‘Nothing was allowed to hurt his princess.’ He always called her his princess. How could she forget that?
“Paige?” Her eyes flew back to meet those of her mothers.
It didn’t matter if her parents were really here or if they were a figment of her imagination, she was finally getting to see them after all this time.
“I can’t go with you. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to join you, but now is not the time. I have this life I want to live. It seems foolish to give up on what I want.”
“That’s the woman I knew you would grow into. We will continue to watch over you. I love you, Paige.” Warm lips touched her forehead making the skin there tingle.
“Princess, you were always beautiful.” The words emerged with deep emotion as her father kissed her cheek. Together her parents walked away hand in hand leaving her to her fate.
The tingle o
n her forehead and cheek made her realize she wasn’t dead, it was another trick that played on her emotions. Why, she wondered, would the Sudir pretend to bring her parents to her? Seeing them, real or not, built her up. What if they were really your parents? Her inner voice whispered.
“Then I better make them proud,” she responded out loud rejoicing at the sound of her own voice.
She concentrated on one arm as she deliberately contracted her muscles until she was able to wrench her arm free from whatever held it immobile. She fell until she crashed landed into her body that was still sprawled in the most unlady like pose on the attic floor.
Her body had been beaten, strips of pain plagued her back where she could feel deep cold on exposed flesh making her shiver. Turning her head carefully she noticed patches of skin were removed from her back as well as several deep cuts. Looking around she saw the others in similar states fighting the Sudir as she did.
Barely lifting her head she looked for Vick. He was still hanging over the table. Rylan was in front of the Sudir bartering for Vick’s life.
“Why should I give up the boy for you? He’s young and strong. Besides it would only be a matter of time before I caught you as you would come back to try to rescue your friends.”
“I am the other part of the crown, without me the Arbrin will never be at full power.”
The Sudir leaned over allowing his tongue to wiggle as it escaped his lips to taste Rylan.
“You are the third.”
“For Vick’s release as well as the rest of them, I will turn myself over to you allowing you to plunder me without a fight.”
The greedy gaze of the Sudir circled the room before looking back at Rylan.
“No more,” Paige’s inner voice screamed.
No one was sacrificing themselves today. She already suffered from lives being wasted for no reason. No one would die today. She turned hoping she wouldn’t get her wounds infected, a bolt of energy came from her hand hitting Cal before one emerged from her other hand hitting Victor.
Soul-Bonded to the Alien Page 12