I wanted to protest that I didn’t like bourbon. Didn’t like spirits of any kind, really; they all tasted like medicine to me. Some white wines were okay, but I still could take them or leave them.
But all I had to do was take another look at Gideon’s face to know it wouldn’t be very smart to argue with him. Willing myself to stay calm, I went over to him and took the shot glass, feeling the stickiness of slopped-over liquor on its sides.
“What are we drinking to?” I asked. I really didn’t want to know the answer, but the words had come tumbling out before I could stop them.
“Do we need a reason?”
“I guess not,” I admitted.
He lifted his shot glass and bolted the contents neat, as if he’d done that sort of thing every day. Well, almost. Since I was watching him closely, trying to gauge every reaction, every shift in his expression, I could see the way the muscles in his neck tightened as he swallowed. Probably trying to keep himself from gagging.
I wasn’t about to be that reckless. Yes, I didn’t see any way out of drinking that crap, but I wasn’t going to throw back a shot as if I were playing a game at a frat party. I lifted the shot glass and tried to keep myself from wrinkling my nose at the smell. Then I took one small sip and swallowed as quickly as I could.
That didn’t help much. My throat constricted, and I forced the bourbon down, praying I wouldn’t spit it right back out again. Somehow it made it all the way to my stomach without incident, where I could feel it burning away.
Gideon watched me during this whole procedure, expression blank. I’d just swallowed another nasty mouthful when he reached for the bottle and poured himself another shot. That one he tossed back just as quickly as he had the first, and I had to keep myself from wincing. How well could his half-alien physiology handle that much liquor?
Once again I asked, “Gideon, what’s the matter?” I hoped if I could get him talking, then maybe he would slow down with the drinking. Then again, maybe the question would only infuriate him, make him pour another shot.
Since I couldn’t take it back, I had to stand there and wait to see what he would do.
Very deliberately, he set down the shot glass and turned toward me. The dark mark left behind by his father’s blow seemed to stand out even more in the bright light cast by the luminous ceiling overhead. Then he smiled, but there was no humor in his expression. That smile might as well have been the empty grin of a shark.
“What’s the matter?” he repeated, and paused as if considering the answer. His shoulders lifted. “I would say you are the matter, Taryn Oliver.”
“I am?” I responded. A chill began to creep its way down my spine. I wanted to back away from him, but that would be far too obvious, wouldn’t it?
“Yes, you.” He took a step toward me, and I forced myself to stand my ground. “I think I’ve been very patient.”
“P-patient?” I managed, feigning incomprehension. Unfortunately, I thought I had a very good idea of what he was talking about, and the chill that had begun in my spine started to spread throughout my entire body.
Again he moved. This time there was less than a foot between us. I could smell the alcohol on his breath, see the look of baffled fury in his eyes. And I could feel the war inside him, the need to show who had power here battling with the part of him that had, against all odds, begun to care for me.
I didn’t know which side would win. I could hope, but hope wasn’t knowing. Every instinct in me was telling me to run, to bolt for the door and get the hell out of there. Problem was, I didn’t think that door would open for me.
But I couldn’t keep myself from taking a step backward, and I saw the answering flicker in his eyes, as if my small attempt at escape was enough to convince him of something he’d suspected all along. Moving so quickly it was terrifying, he had me backed up against the wall, his hands planted against the metal surface on either side of my head so I was well and truly trapped.
“So you don’t want this,” he said.
“I didn’t say that,” I replied. My voice sounded horribly shaky, but there wasn’t much I could do about it right then.
“You might as well have. But you realize you don’t have much choice, don’t you?”
For a long moment, I didn’t answer. Nothing I could think of to say seemed as if it would make any difference. In my mind, I heard once again the horrible smacking sound of Lir Shalan’s hand striking his son’s face. That single blow had to be the reason why Gideon was acting like this now.
Then I took a breath and forced myself to meet his glaring ruby eyes. “No, I don’t have much of a choice,” I retorted. I didn’t stop to think — the words spilled out of me as I added, “After all, your mother wasn’t given a choice, either, was she?”
Dead silence. Gideon stared at me for a long moment, and again I caught a flash of guilt, of anger. But not directed at me. At least, I didn’t think so.
I didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare breathe. Had I said exactly the right thing…or exactly the wrong one?
Then he muttered something under his breath, words I couldn’t understand because they were in the Reptilian tongue. But I didn’t need to know the vocabulary to guess he was cursing, although I had no idea whether those curses were directed at me, at his father, or at himself.
After a span of a few seconds that felt like an eternity, he pushed himself away from me, then picked up the bottle of bourbon. He stared at it, and I wondered if he’d decided to dispense with the shot glass and was going to drink directly from the bottle.
Again he moved so quickly that I didn’t even have time to blink. In the next instant, the bottle was smashing against the wall, glass and bourbon flying in every direction. I threw up my hands to shield myself and could feel sharp, tiny pinpricks as some of the shattered glass touched my skin. Right then I could only be thankful I was wearing one of the bulky dresses Gideon had provided, because most of me was safely covered.
Then he said dully, “You’ve won.”
Won what, I wasn’t sure, but in that moment I wished I’d never made that comment about his mother. There was something defeated in his expression, and, as much as he’d just frightened me, I didn’t want him looking that way.
“Gideon, I — ”
“Don’t.” He paused for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I knew this would never work. He didn’t want to believe that. He made it all sound so simple. But now….”
Even though he’d scared me senseless, I found myself wanting to reach out and take his hand, offer him some sort of reassurance. But I didn’t quite dare. His behavior had been erratic enough that I didn’t want to take the chance.
His eyes met mine. In them I saw the beginnings of some sort of resolve. About what, I didn’t know, because the emotions that had been flaring out from him just a few moments earlier had been banked down, like a roaring fire knocked down into ash.
“I’ll take you now,” he said.
“Take me?” There it was, that awful quaver in my voice. I really needed to get a handle on that.
“Home,” he replied. “Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along?”
I must be hearing things. After almost two weeks of keeping me trapped here, he was going to ferry me home, just like that?
“Well, yes,” I said. “But your father — ”
“I’ll handle him.” His tone was dismissive, but I felt a short, sharp burst of fear before he locked it down. Not that I could blame him for being afraid of his father. I’d seen what Lir Shalan was capable of…and I worried a blow to the face would only be the beginning, once he realized his son had let their prized captive go free. “So where do you want me to take you? To the home of your parents in Sedona?”
I didn’t bother to ask how he knew where our house was. They knew a great deal, these Reptilians; they’d been watching my family and my parents’ friends since before I was even born.
But I hesitated. Oh, I wanted to go home…but I also knew what would happen once
I was there. The whole gang would be called together for a “briefing” at Kara and Lance’s house, and I’d have to answer far more questions than I was willing to handle at the moment. I needed just a little breathing space, a chance to absorb everything that had happened to me over the past ten days.
“No,” I said at last, willing myself to meet those dark, defeated eyes. “I want to go to my brother Michael’s apartment in Flagstaff.”
CHAPTER SIX
Getting away was far easier than I’d thought it would be. Although the device Gideon used was a short cylinder of dark metal rather than the gleaming opal jewel I’d seen hanging from Raphael’s belt, it appeared to do pretty much the same thing in terms of getting people from place to place. As Gideon swiped a finger down one side, glaring yellow light surrounded the two of us, and a few seconds later we were no longer standing in the kitchen area of his suite, but in the shelter of one of the pine trees that surrounded Michael’s apartment complex.
Good thing, too, because appearing in a burst of yellow light was enough to attract attention on its own, let alone when the people stepping out of said yellow light included a man with green skin and a young woman in a long black dress who looked like she might be late for a coven meeting.
I turned toward Gideon. Something in me wanted to urge him to stay here with me, which was crazy. He didn’t belong here, would most likely be hauled off to be experimented on as soon as people began to report seeing a strange green-skinned man wandering around their neighborhood.
My words stumbled over themselves. “I don’t know what to say — ”
His expression was stony. Was he imagining what his father’s reaction would be once he found out what his son had done? “Then don’t say anything.”
A flash of light, and I lifted a hand to shield my eyes. When I lowered it, Gideon was gone.
A sudden tightness filled my chest, and I was pretty sure the stinging in my eyes didn’t have all that much to do with the brilliant illumination that had accompanied his departure. Damn. I really had screwed that up, hadn’t I?
Probably. Not that I’d wanted to fall in line with Lir Shalan’s crazy plans, but at the same time, I couldn’t help feeling that there must have been some way for me to show Gideon that my reluctance to become his mate — for lack of a better term — had nothing to do with him and everything to do with not wanting to be his father’s pawn.
So much I could have said, or done. If I’d only reached out to him, laid a hand on his arm…something. But I hadn’t, and now he was gone, and the wind was cold, biting through the thin fabric of my dress. By then it had to be nearly April and the weather should have been milder, but Flagstaff was a law unto itself.
Trying to ignore the chill, I gathered a handful of skirt so it would be out of my way, then headed toward the back of the complex where Michael’s apartment was located. I prayed he would be home; I didn’t know his schedule, but I seemed to recall that he taught morning classes and worked on his dissertation in the afternoons and evenings. From the slant of the light, I guessed it must be late afternoon now. Not that the time of day necessarily indicated that he would be home, since he spent a good deal of time on campus even when he wasn’t teaching.
With my luck, he’d be gone altogether, getting in some hours on one of Lowell’s remote telescopes, which meant he could be miles and miles away. Then I shook my head. No, that wasn’t right. You didn’t go stargazing at five o’clock in the afternoon.
And if he wasn’t home, well, I’d make my way over to the mall and use one of the pay data kiosks there to call the house. The idea of walking around the Flagstaff Mall while wearing this getup wasn’t exactly appealing, but better than sitting on the landing outside Michael’s apartment and praying that he’d come home before I froze to death.
Going up the stairs in that skirt wasn’t much fun. I kept the folds of bulky fabric out of the way as best I could while I climbed to the second floor, although I did nearly trip once or twice.
When I got to his door, I used my free hand to knock, praying all the while that he would answer. I knew I wouldn’t be marooned here in Flagstaff indefinitely if it turned out he wasn’t home, but sitting around and waiting for my parents to come fetch me would be uncomfortable and anticlimactic.
I was tired, and I didn’t want to think about the look in Gideon’s eyes just before he turned away from me and disappeared.
To my relief, the door opened. Not immediately, and Michael was wearing his familiar distracted expression, which meant he’d been buried in something on his computer and hadn’t quite snapped back to reality yet.
But then his hazel eyes — so much like mine — widened, and he said, “Taryn?”
“Yes, it’s me. Can I come in? It’s freezing out here.”
Looking positively flummoxed — not that I could blame him — he replied, “Um — well, of course.”
He backed out of the way so I could head into the apartment. I’d been here once or twice before, and nothing much seemed to have changed. The place was small, occupied by a hand-me-down leather couch that had originally lived in the family room back home, with a cheap glass and metal coffee table in front of that sofa. You could barely see the surface of the table, though, because Michael’s laptop took up most of the space, and a pile of notebooks and some actual books covered the rest.
After shutting the door, he said, “What’s going on, Taryn? Mom and Dad said you were — ” He stopped there, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to say “abducted by aliens” without sounding like an idiot. True, those same aliens had revealed themselves to the world, so talking about such things wouldn’t be an automatic ban to advancement for Michael the way it had been for our father. Even so, my brother looked vaguely embarrassed by even having to say the words out loud.
“Yes, they took me. But one of them brought me back.” I headed over to the sofa and more or less collapsed on it. That confrontation with Gideon had taken more out of me than I’d thought. “Can I have some water, please?”
Brow still puckered in concern, Michael nodded and went over to the small galley-style kitchen. After extracting a bottle of water from the fridge and handing it to me, he said, “They brought you back? Why?”
I really didn’t want to go into the whole Gideon thing with Michael. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if I understood the situation myself. The truth would have to come out at some point, but it didn’t have to be now. “They just got tired of me, I guess.”
An eyebrow went up. Right then Michael looked a lot like our father, although in coloring he resembled our mother more. “You really think that’s the reason?”
Of course it wasn’t. “I don’t know, Michael,” I said, my tone growing waspish. “They didn’t exactly explain themselves to me. It was just, ‘we’re done, where do you want to go?’ So I told them.”
“You asked them to bring you here? Why not Mom and Dad’s?”
At least his question was something I could answer truthfully, because I knew that sometimes Michael felt just as overwhelmed by the combined Oliver/Rinehart/Jones dynamic as I did. “I wasn’t ready for the third degree yet.”
He nodded. “I can understand that. Well, of course you can crash here — but you’re going to have to call them eventually.”
“I will. Tomorrow morning. I just need to catch my breath.”
His gaze flickered to the dark dress I wore. “Did they give you that?”
“Yes. Apparently Reptilians have issues with jeans. Who knew?”
My tone was flip, and he frowned again. To my relief, though, he didn’t ask any other questions, only said, “Well, I’d give you something to change into, but you’d be swimming in it.”
True enough. I took after our mother and was barely average in height, while Michael was tall, like our father. “I know. But could you do me a huge favor and go pick up a few things for me at the mall? Mom and Dad will pay you back.”
“Like that matters.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m not exactly wh
at you’d call an expert at shopping for women’s clothes.”
“It’s all right,” I said, relieved that he hadn’t shot me down immediately. “I can make a list.”
In answer, he dug in his jeans pocket and pulled out his phone. After having it read his thumbprint to unlock it, he handed the phone to me. “Just dictate your list. It’ll be a lot easier than writing it all down.”
Which was what I did, asking for a pair of jeans and a shirt, some shoes in a size seven, a pack of underwear, a toothbrush. I figured I could steal some toothpaste from him and borrow his deodorant as well. And I wasn’t going to ask him to get me any makeup, since I’d only be crashing overnight and then heading back to Sedona in the morning.
I handed the phone back to him. He looked at the list without comment before sliding the phone back into his pocket, although by the way his brows pulled together, I could tell he was less than thrilled at having to purchase a few of the items I’d included. “Do you want me to go now, or should I wait a little while? I mean, if you don’t want to be by yourself — ”
“I’ll be all right,” I said, and hoped that was true. There was always the chance that Lir Shalan would come rampaging back here to collect me. However, I doubted even he would attempt that kind of maneuver in broad daylight in a crowded apartment complex. Full dark was still a few hours off. Plenty of time for Michael to run over to the mall and get back.
“If you’re sure — ”
“I am.”
My brother gave a fatalistic sort of shrug, and got his jacket from the hall coat rack that stood in the corner near the door. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, then headed out.
I’d heard him lock the door, but I still went over and tested it, just to be safe. Stupid, I knew, because aliens intent on abduction really weren’t deterred by locked doors. Anyway, Gideon knew where he’d dropped me off, but no one else did, and I doubted he was going to reveal that information to his father anytime soon.
The shopping trip probably wouldn’t take Michael that long anyway, since his apartment complex was just down the street from the mall. I’d asked him why he wanted a place so relatively far from campus, and he’d told me he spent so much time at the university that when he came home, he wanted to feel entirely separate from it so he could decompress.
sedona files 06 - enemy mine Page 7