Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  “I have no idea,” Mia said wryly, pausing in front of the building that was her destination. “I’m going to have to think about this some more. Maybe if I look particularly ugly tonight, he’ll lose interest.”

  “That’s a great idea!” Jessie clapped her hands in excitement. “He wants you to wear something nice tonight? Well, you show him! Put on your ugliest clothes, eat some fresh garlic and onion, put some oil in your hair so it looks all greasy, and maybe do something that makes you sweaty—like a run—and don’t shower or use deodorant afterwards!”

  Mia stared at her roommate in fascination. “You’re scary. How did you come up with all of this? It’s not like you try to un-attract guys on a regular basis.”

  “Oh, it’s easy. Just think of all the things you’d do to get ready for a date—and do just the opposite.” Jessie breezily waved one hand with such a know-it-all expression that Mia couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

  ***

  At six o’clock, Mia began implementing Jessie’s plan. Her roommate had been dying to see her first K and lend Mia moral support for the confrontation, but she had a biology lab that couldn’t be missed. Mia was glad about that. The last thing she wanted was to put Jessie in harm’s way.

  She started out by doing jumping jacks, lunges, squats, and sit-ups. Within fifteen minutes, her leg and stomach muscles—unused to so much exertion—were burning, and Mia was covered with a fine layer of sweat. Without bothering to shower, she put on her oldest, rattiest underwear, thick brown tights that her sister absolutely despised, and a long-sleeved black dress that Jessie had once claimed made her look completely washed out and shapeless. A pair of old black Mary-Janes with medium-height heels, worn out and scuffed, completed the look. No makeup, except for a slight dusting of dark blue shadow directly under her eyes—to imitate under-eye circles. Her hair already looked like a frizzy mess, but Mia brushed it for good measure and added hair conditioner only to the roots, leaving the ends to poof out in every direction. And for the grand finale, she cut up an entire clove of garlic, mixed it with green onion, and thoroughly chewed it, making sure that the smelly mixture got into every nook and corner of her mouth before she spit it out. Satisfied, she took one last look in the mirror. As expected, she looked ghastly—like somebody’s crazy spinster aunt—and probably smelled even worse. If Korum remained interested in her after tonight, she would be very surprised.

  When the doorbell rang promptly at seven, Mia put on her scruffy wool peacoat and opened the door with a mixture of trepidation and barely contained glee.

  The sight that greeted her was breathtaking.

  Somehow, in the short span of a day, Mia had managed to forget just how beautiful he was. Dressed in a pair of dark designer jeans and a light grey button-down shirt that fit his tall, muscular body to perfection, he fairly gleamed with health and vitality, his bronzed skin and glossy black hair providing a stark contrast for those incredible amber-colored eyes. Mia suddenly felt irrationally embarrassed about her own grungy appearance.

  At the sight of her, his lips parted in a slow smile. “Ah, Mia. Somehow I suspected that you would be difficult.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mia said defiantly, lifting her chin.

  “I’m glad you decided to play this game.” He reached out and stroked her cheek, sending an unwanted shiver of pleasure down her spine. “It will make your eventual surrender that much sweeter.”

  Still smiling, he politely offered her his arm. “Ready to go?”

  Fuming, Mia ignored his offer, stomping down the stairs on her own. Idiot! She should’ve realized he would see her deliberately ugly appearance as a challenge. With his looks and apparent wealth, he probably had women fawning all over him. It must be refreshing to meet someone who didn’t immediately fall into his bed. Maybe she should just sleep with him and get it over with. If the pursuit was what he enjoyed, then he would lose interest very quickly if he got what he wanted.

  The limo was waiting as they exited the building. “Where are we going?” Mia asked, wondering about it for the first time.

  “Percival,” Korum answered, opening the door for her. The place he named was a popular restaurant in the Meatpacking District that was notoriously difficult to get into, even on a Monday night.

  Mia mentally kicked herself again. It was one thing to look repellent for Korum—a wasted effort, as it turned out—but it was a whole different level of embarrassing to show up in the fanciest, trendiest district of New York City looking and smelling like a homeless person. Still, she’d rather die of embarrassment than give Korum the satisfaction of knowing how discomfited she felt.

  He climbed into the car and sat down next to her. Reaching out, he took one of her hands and brought it to his lap, studying her palm and fingers with some apparent fascination. Her hand looked tiny in his large grasp, his golden skin appearing much darker next to her own whiteness, creating a surprisingly erotic contrast. Mia attempted to yank her hand away, trying to ignore the sensations his touch was provoking in her nether regions. He held her hand just long enough to let her feel the futility of her struggles, and then let go with a small smile.

  It was strange, Mia thought, somewhere along the way she had stopped being so afraid of him. For some reason, knowing his intentions toward her—as crude and base as they were—gave her a peace of mind. The scared girl who sat in this car yesterday would not have dared to oppose him in any way for fear of unknown retaliation. Mia no longer had such qualms, and it was oddly liberating.

  A minute later, the limo pulled up to the door of the restaurant. Korum exited first and Mia followed, noticing with mortification the double-takes they got from the well-dressed men and women on the street. A gorgeous K in his limo was bound to attract attention, and Mia was sure they wondered about his dowdy companion.

  A tall, rail-thin hostess greeted them at the door. Without even asking for their reservations, she led them to a private booth in the back of the restaurant. “Welcome back to Percival,” she purred, leaning suggestively over Korum while handing them the menus. “Should I start you off with sparkling or flat?”

  “Sparkling would be fine, Ashley, thanks,” he said absentmindedly, studying the menu.

  Mia felt a sudden, shocking urge to tear out every straight blond hair from Ashley’s model-like head. A strange nausea-like sensation roiled her stomach as she pictured the two of them together in bed, his muscular body wrapped around the blonde’s. Stop it, Mia! Of course, he slept with other women! Undoubtedly, the creature left a trail of Ashleys anywhere he went.

  “Have you decided what you’d like?” he inquired, looking up from his menu, seemingly oblivious to the murderous expression on Mia’s face.

  “No, not yet.” Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to concentrate on the menu. This was undoubtedly the nicest restaurant she’d ever been to, and the menu—which lacked prices for some reason—listed some dishes and ingredients that she’d never heard of. Her eyes widened as she noticed goat cheese and caviar in the appetizer section and eggs in one of the noodle dishes. Her mouth watered. “I think I’ll get the roasted beets and goat cheese salad, followed by the pesto-artichoke Pad Thai.”

  Korum smiled at her indulgently. “Of course.” He motioned to the waiter and relayed her order. “And I will have the watercress jicama salad and the shiitake parsnip ravioli in cashew cream. We’ll also get a bottle of Dom Perignon.”

  Mia looked at him in fascination. She hadn’t known that Ks consumed alcohol. In fact, there was so much that she—and the public in general—didn’t know about the invaders who now lived alongside them. It dawned on Mia that she had the perfect opportunity to learn sitting across her at the table.

  Feeling slightly reckless, she decided to start with the question that had been bothering her ever since their first meeting. “Is it true that you drink human blood?”

  Korum’s eyebrows shot up on his forehead, and he nearly choked on his drink. “You don’t pull any punch
es, do you?” A big grin breaking out on his face, he asked, “Are you asking if we have to drink human blood, or if we do it anyway?”

  Mia swallowed. She was suddenly far from sure this was the best line of questioning. “I guess both.”

  “Well, let me set your mind at ease . . . We no longer require blood for survival.”

  “But you did before?” Mia’s eyes widened in shock.

  “Originally, when we first evolved into our current form, we needed to consume significant amounts of blood from a group of primates that had certain genetic similarities to us. It was a deficiency in our DNA that made us vulnerable and tied our existence to another species. We have since corrected this defect.”

  “So it’s true? There were humans on your planet?” Mia was staring at him open-mouthed.

  “They weren’t exactly human. Their blood, however, had the same hemoglobin characteristics as yours.”

  “What happened to them? Are they still around?”

  “No, they are now extinct.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mia said slowly, trying to make sense of what she’d learned thus far. “If you needed them to survive, how and when did they go extinct? Was that before or after you . . . um . . . fixed your defect?”

  “It happened long before then. We succeeded in developing a synthetic substance before the last of their kind disappeared, and it enabled us to survive their demise. They were an endangered species for millions of years. It was partially our fault for hunting them, but a lot of it had to do with their own low birth rate and short lifespan. Just like you, they had a weak immune system, and a plague nearly wiped them out. That’s when we began to work on alternative routes of survival for our species—synthetic hemoglobin substitutes, experimentation with our own DNA, and attempting to develop a comparable species both on Krina and on other planets.”

  A lightbulb went off in Mia’s brain. “Is that why you planted life here on Earth? Is that how humans came to be—you needed a comparable species?”

  “More or less. It was a shot in the dark, with minuscule odds of success. We disseminated our DNA as far as our then-primitive technology could reach. We didn’t know which planets and where would be hospitable to life, much less bear any similarities to Krina, so we blindly sent billions of drones to planets that are located in what you now call the Goldilocks Zones.”

  “Goldilocks Zones?”

  “Yes, these are also called the habitable zones—regions in the universe around various stars that potentially have the right atmospheric pressure to maintain liquid water on the surface. Based on our knowledge, those are the only places where life similar to Krina’s could arise.”

  Mia nodded, now remembering learning about that in high school.

  Satisfied that she was following along, he continued his explanation. “One of the drones reached Earth, and the first simple organisms succeeded in surviving here. Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. It wasn’t until some six hundred million years ago that we reached this part of the galaxy and found Earth.”

  “Right before the Cambrian explosion began?” asked Mia, goosebumps breaking out on her arms. It was public knowledge now that the Ks had influenced evolution on Earth to a fairly significant degree, the timing of their initial arrival coinciding with the previously puzzling appearance of many new and complex life forms during the early Cambrian period. But their motives for planting life on Earth and later manipulating it had remained a mystery, and it was incredible to hear him speak about it so nonchalantly, revealing so much to her over dinner.

  “Exactly. We have occasionally stepped in to guide your evolution, particularly when it threatened to drastically diverge from ours—such as when the dinosaurs had become a dominant life form—”

  “But I thought the dinosaurs had been killed by an asteroid?”

  “They were. But we could have easily deflected that strike. Instead, we simply ensured that the necessary life forms, such as the early versions of mammals, survived.”

  Mia stared at him open-mouthed as he continued the story.

  “When the first primate appeared here, it was a tremendous achievement for us because its blood carried the hemoglobin. However, we no longer needed it by then because we’d recently had the breakthrough that allowed us to manipulate our own DNA without adverse consequences.”

  He paused when the salads were served, and continued speaking between bites of his watercress. “At that point, Earth and its primate species had become the grandest scientific experiment in the history of the known universe. The challenge for us became to see whether we could nudge along evolution just enough to see another intelligent species emerge.”

  Mia felt chills going down her spine as she listened to the story of human origins told by an alien from the gazillion-year-old civilization that had essentially played God. An alien who was munching on his salad at the same time, as though discussing nothing more important than the weather.

  “You see,” he continued, “the primates on Krina were of the same intelligence level as your chimpanzees, and few of us thought that a species as short-lived as yours could develop a truly sophisticated intellect. But we persisted, occasionally stepping in with genetic modifications to make you look more like us, and the result has surpassed all our expectations. While you share a lot of the characteristics of the Krinian primates—presence of the hemoglobin, a relatively weak immune system, and a short lifespan—you have a much higher birth rate and an intelligence that’s nearly comparable to ours. Your evolution rate is also much faster than ours—mostly due to that higher birth rate. The transition from primitive primates to intelligent beings took you only a couple of million years, while it took us nearly a billion.”

  Dozens of questions were running through Mia’s mind. She latched onto the first one. “Why did you care if we looked like you? Is that somehow a requirement for intelligence?”

  “No, not really. It just made the most sense to the scientists who were overseeing the project at the time. They wanted to create a sister species, intelligent beings that looked like us, so that it would be easier for us to relate to them, easier to communicate with them. Of course,” he said with a wicked smile, twirling his empty fork, “there was an unexpected side benefit.”

  Mia looked at him warily. “What benefit?”

  “Well, you see, when the first Earth primates appeared, some of the Krinar tried drinking their blood out of curiosity. And they quickly discovered that, in the absence of the biological need for the hemoglobin, drinking blood gave them a very pleasurable high—an almost sexual buzz. It was better than any drug, although synthetic versions of your blood have since become quite popular in our bars and nightclubs.”

  Mia nearly choked on her salad. Coughing, she drank some water to clear the obstruction in her throat while he watched with an amused look on his face.

  “But the best thing of all was our more recent discovery.” He leaned closer to her, his eyes turning a now-familiar shade of deeper gold. “You see, it turns out that there’s nothing quite as pleasurable as drinking blood from a living source during sex. The experience is simply indescribable.”

  Mia reflexively swallowed, feeling horrified and oddly aroused at the same time. “So you want to drink my blood while . . . fucking?”

  The corners of his mouth turned upward in a sensuous smile. “That would be the ultimate goal, yes.”

  She had to know, even if the answer made her sick to her stomach. “Would I die?”

  He laughed. “Die? No, taking a few sips of your blood won’t kill you any more than giving blood at a doctor’s office. In fact, our saliva contains a chemical that makes the whole process quite pleasurable for humans. It was originally intended for our prey, to make them drugged and docile when we fed on them—but now it merely serves the purpose of enhancing your experience.”

  Mia’s head felt like it was exploding with everything she’d just learned, but there was something else she needed to find out. “How exactly do y
ou do it?” she asked cautiously. “Drink blood, I mean? Do you have fangs?”

  He shook his head. “No, that’s an invention of your literary fiction. We don’t need fangs—the edges of our top teeth are sharp enough that they can penetrate the skin with relative ease, usually by just slicing through the top layer.”

  Their main course arrived, giving Mia a few precious moments to regain her composure.

  It was too much, all of it.

  Her thoughts spun around, all jumbled and chaotic. Somehow, in the past twenty-four hours, she’d gotten used to the idea that an extraterrestrial wanted to have sex with her, for whatever reason. But now he also wanted her to serve as a blood donor during sex. His species had basically created her kind, and they now used human blood as some sort of an aphrodisiac. The idea was disturbing and sickening on many levels, and all Mia wanted to do was crawl into her bed, pulling covers over her head, and pretend that none of this was happening.

  Something of her inner turmoil must have shown on her face because Korum reached out, gently covering her hand with his, and said softly, “Mia, I know this is all a huge shock to you. I know that you need time to understand and get to know me better. Why don’t you relax and enjoy your meal, and we can discuss something else in the meantime?” He added with a teasing smile, “I promise not to bite.”

  Mia nodded and obediently dug into her food as soon as he released her hand. It was either that or run out of the restaurant screaming, and she wasn’t sure how he would react to that. After everything she’d learned today, the last thing she wanted was to provoke whatever predatory instincts his species still possessed.

  The Pad Thai was delicious, she realized, tasting the rich flavors complemented by bits of real egg. For some reason, despite her delicate build, nothing ever interfered with her appetite. Her family often joked that Mia must really be a lumberjack in disguise, given the large quantities of food she liked to consume on a regular basis. “How is your ravioli?” she asked between bites of her noodles, searching for the most innocuous subject.