What was undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the kingdom that they now wandered into, however, was the people. All around them were still, silent people, their bodies shaped into the postures of normal life, but none of them moved or breathed. It truly looked like they had been stopped, crystallized into a single second of their existence, and had not moved since.
"Everyone spread out," Pyra said evenly, slipping the book that held the map to the kingdom into his bag so that his hands were free, "Explore as much of the area as you can, but make sure that you keep contact with at least one other of us. We don't need anybody getting lost."
At that command, the men slowly dissipated, wandering in their own direction further into the kingdom as if each of them were drawn toward a certain place. It was unnerving to see the people scattered through the space, their eyes open but unseeing, their bodies primed for action but unable to move. There was a large garden in the center of the houses and Lynx saw several people in it, tending to crops that were still perfect after all this time. One woman leaned over, her hand just cupped around a vegetable she intended to pick while a man nearby rested with his arms crossed on top of a tall gardening implement. Lynx sighed, musing that that man could not have imagined how long his break was actually going to be when he stopped his work on that fateful day.
To one side Lynx could see a small group of children playing, locked in their laughter and joy, and he had to turn away. It was too painful to see the innocence of little ones stolen from them because of a war between adults, a conflict that they would never understand.
Turning his back toward the children, Lynx walked toward one of the houses. It drew him in in a way that the others didn't, and he felt compelled to go inside. He called out to Ty who he saw walking along at the end of the street, letting him know that he was going inside the house so that someone knew where he was should the rest of the men decide to leave the kingdom before he got out of the house, or if there was something inside that might threaten him.
He didn't expect the door to open as easily beneath his hand as it did. When it opened fully, he stepped inside the cool, airy house and looked around. Just as the outsides of the homes were more complex in their design than the Denynso homes back on the compound, they were more complex on the inside as well. Multiple rooms stretched out from the front entryway, and a set of stairs headed up to another floor. He followed his instincts and let them pull him to the stairs, keeping him focused on the landing above him as he climbed them.
At the top of the stairs Lynx let the strange, tight feeling in his belly guide him toward a room at the center of the hallway. The door was partially open and when he pushed it the rest of the way open, he felt his heart constrict.
It was a bedroom with pale yellow walls, airy white curtains on the window, and a large canopy bed tucked in one corner. On that bed lay the most beautiful woman that Lynx had ever seen, and as soon as his eyes rested on the long strands of coppery hair spread across the pillow, her pale, delicate face, and full, pink lips, he felt everything inside him unravel as an overwhelming sense of love, desire, and the need to protect her took over.
Lynx walked cautiously to the side of the bed and gazed down at her face, so perfect and calm in the sleep in which she had been locked. It made no sense, but he felt completely and inarguably in love with her, the same intense, immediate feeling of soul-wrenching attraction and need that the other men had described when talking about meeting their mates. This was a woman who had lived generations before he was even born, and yet Lynx felt inextricably connected to her, as if all this time she had been lying here sleeping, waiting for him to come find her.
Something on the nightstand beside her bed caught Lynx's eye and he picked up a silver-framed picture that looked like a younger version of the woman in the bed standing with two older people in front of a large house that resembled the houses along the main street, but much larger. Lynx flipped the frame over in his hand and released the brackets that held the picture in place. When the backing came off of the frame, he rested it carefully on the nightstand and took the picture out so that he could look at the back.
Visit to the homeland
Earth
Rain, 22 years
Lynx gasped as he realized what the inscription meant. These were not some strange, unknown species that they had never encountered. These were creatures with whom the Denynso were becoming quite familiar.
The Light Ones were humans.
Taking the picture with the intention of showing it to Pyra, Lynx took a final look at the beautiful woman, whose name he could only guess to be Rain, and then turned to the door to leave. Before he could take another step, however, a series of deathly sharp black spikes came around the doorframe, cutting into the wall as they gripped into it to pull massive black bodies like gruesome spiders into the room and toward Lynx.
(To be continued in Part IV…)
Book 4 – The Alien’s Love
Chapter One
Lynx's mind was spinning. He didn't know what to think or how to react. He could hear the walls cracking and tearing as the massive creatures pulled themselves into the room, following each other so closely that they filled the doorway and crawled over one another grotesquely as if they couldn't wait to get to him. Lynx could only relate them to the spiders that Zuri had shown them pictures of while she was describing Earth and some of the types of life that lived there, but these were far beyond the small, scurrying bugs that she had shown them. Even the largest of those were miniscule compared to the gleaming creatures and their sharp, spiked legs that dug into the walls and ceiling as they crawled into the room.
As they moved toward him, Lynx stepped closer to the bed where Rain, the human, lay frozen in her calm, sleeping state. He had to protect her. He knew that this beautiful, delicate-looking woman, this lovely human that at once baffled and intrigued him, was meant to be his mate. It didn't matter to him that she was from a species that was not meant to have even visited Uoria before they started to arrive at the Denynso compound to research and learn, and even then were supposed to have been limited just to their area of the planet. It didn't even bother him that she had been lying here, frozen in her sleep, for longer than he had been alive. It was confounding and beyond his realm of comprehension, but at that moment the only thing that mattered to the warrior was making sure that the woman that lay in front of him was safe from these fearsome creatures crawling toward him.
There were seven of them now, leaving deep gouges in their wake as they moved across the walls and ceiling. He had seen gouges like that in the lower portion of the house when he had first arrived, but he had thought nothing of them. He had been far more concerned with the fact that in their desire to explore the planet of Uoria and discover what types of beings might share it with them, the group of Denynso men had found that there had been a long-running feud between two species that ended in one of them, the Covra, locking the beings they knew as the Light Ones, and that Lynx now knew were humans, in time, and that they were then roaming through that locked kingdom discovering everything that had stopped in the span of a breath, decades before.
Now what he worried about was Rain and how he would protect her. She couldn't move. As far as he knew, she had no awareness of what was going on around her. It was his responsibility to ensure that she was safe and that these creatures didn't harm her. He could continue to process the fact that she was human later. Right now he had to think quickly and get rid of these monsters.
Lynx stepped back toward the window that overlooked the street and could hear muffled screaming coming from the rest of the settlement. The creatures seemed to have found the rest of the Denynso men. Like the others, Lynx rarely carried weapons. They preferred to fight with their bare hands. And like the others, occasionally he carried a dagger that he had crafted himself. This dagger, however, he had left tucked in the bag he had been carrying as they walked from the compound, and he had dropped that bag to the floor near the door to the room.
>
He heard another scream from one of the buildings across the street and the frantic sound mobilized him. Lynx took a long stride across the room and dove toward his bag. He could feel something sharp grazing his back as he grabbed onto the bag and pulled it up against his chest. A fearsome hissing sound above him told him that he had angered the creatures, and he felt the sharp, piercing feeling in his back intensify.
Lynx reached into his bag and pulled out his dagger. In one fast movement he rolled over onto his back and slashed at one of the creatures. The tip of his dagger bit through the leg that was digging into his back and vibrantly green blood splattered down on him as the leg splintered off of the rest of the creature's body and skittered across the floor. The injured creature let out a horrific screeching sound and pulled back away from him, but even as Lynx saw the gleaming black thing withdrawing away from him, he watched as the open wound in the leg healed itself over and the limb started growing back.
Out of the corner of his eye Lynx saw one of the larger creatures climbing over the smaller one above his head, moving toward Rain where she lay on the bed. Lynx tightened his grip on the dagger and scurried backwards across the floor toward the edge of the bed. The large creature came toward him and he slashed at it with his dagger. Since he had watched the other creature heal itself so quickly, he didn't know how the larger one would react to his threats, but it was all he could do.
The creature took another step toward Rain and the fury built inside Lynx with an intensity that he had never experienced. He pulled himself up higher and changed his grip on his dagger so that it was pointing directly at the bulbous black eye at the front of the rounded body. He could see the reflection of his blade in the surface of the eye and as he leaned toward the creature, it stepped back. Lynx took another step forward and lay a protective hand on Rain's leg.
As soon as his hand touched her, Lynx felt his entire body tingle and saw a flash of bright, vibrant light. The room around him disappeared in the light and then reappeared, but it looked different. Sunlight, the type of dark, rich light that came with a late afternoon, made the room appear to glow. Out of the corner of his eye Lynx saw movement and he turned. Against the wall stood a vanity table with a large, curved mirror and at the table sat Rain.
Chapter Two
Lynx started to reach toward Rain, and saw her look up into the mirror as if she could sense his presence. In the reflection in the mirror he could see just how beautiful she was, the sparkling blue of her eyes like nothing he had ever seen. As she looked into the glass, however, he realized that she wasn't looking at him, but something over her shoulder. He hadn't noticed anything, so he continued to watch.
Rain drew a brush through her long hair and then settled it onto the surface of the vanity table. She stood, the thin fabric of her nightgown skimming the curves of her body and brushing against the floor as she walked the few steps to the bed and slipped beneath the covers. Just as she settled her head onto the pillow and her body relaxed, he saw one of the massive black creatures climb out from under the bed. Lynx screamed, but it didn't do any good. The creature lifted one sharply pointed leg, the tip glinting even more gruesomely in the sunlight, and plunged it into Rain's stomach.
As suddenly and inexplicably as the vision had appeared, the room around him seemed to melt and Lynx found himself standing back where he had been. It must have lasted only a few seconds, but Lynx felt like it had changed him completely. Something like that had never happened to him before. He wasn't even entirely sure what had happened, but those few moments had confirmed to him that these spider-like monsters were the Covra.
"Why?" he screamed at the one closest to him, and he saw it recoil as if it wasn't accustomed to hearing a spoken voice.
Lynx slashed at it with his dagger and the creature stepped backwards. He lunged forward and drove the tip of the blade toward the Covra's eye. It scurried backwards more quickly and Lynx rushed around the edge of the bed. The few moments of seeing Rain awake and vital had infuriated him to a level that was almost blinding, and he roared as he went after the Covra.
The louder he got, and the harder he slashed toward their eyes, the faster the creatures scurried toward the door.
"Lynx!"
Lynx heard Pyra's voice shouting up to him from the lower floor of the house. The deep sound of the lead warrior was encouraging. He knew that Pyra had survived and that he was not alone. A moment later Lynx heard Pyra's footsteps pounding up the stairs toward him, accompanied by another set. The horrific screeching of the Covra filled the space as Pyra and Bannack came into the room slashing at them with their own daggers. Green blood splattered the room and pieces of the creatures littered the floor.
"Their eyes!" Lynx shouted.
Pyra and Bannack turned their hands on the handles of their daggers, creating a tighter grip that allowed them to direct the carefully honed tips toward the rounded black domes of the Covra's eyes. The three warriors held their blades out toward the spider-like creatures, and for a moment they seemed to be retreating. As the room fell silent, however, the Covra's splintered limbs and the pieces of their round bodies that had fallen away under the edges of the Denynso's blades grew back and the monsters started to advance toward them again.
"Where are the other men?" Lynx demanded.
"They are fighting others of these creatures throughout the rest of the settlement," Pyra told him.
Lynx noticed that the Covra had stilled when they started speaking, and on instinct, he started again.
"These are the Covra," he told Pyra, pushing forward slightly with his blade held toward the eye of the closest creature.
"The Covra?" Pyra asked.
"Yes. The creatures that we read about in the prison in the compound. The ones that built the prison and locked this settlement."
"How could these things build a prison?" Pyra asked.
"I don't know, but they did, and now they are back here."
The men had managed to force the Covra back toward the door and they were scurrying away from them now, running along the walls and ceiling until they disappeared into other rooms and out of windows. Them being out of sight did not provide any relief for Lynx. He knew they were there, he knew now that they existed still and that they could appear out of seemingly nowhere. He didn't know how they had managed to make them retreat, and it was not comforting to him that he didn't know when they might return or how they could make them leave again.
The screams and hisses from outside had faded away as the Covra in the house disappeared and soon they were replaced by the shouts and frantic yells of the other Denynso. Pyra and Bannack started to run down the stairs toward the door to the house, but Lynx hesitated. He didn't want to leave Rain behind. Now that he knew that the Covra could return at any time, he felt like she was vulnerable. He rushed back into the room and knelt down beside the bed.
A moment later Pyra came back into the room.
"Lynx, come on. We have to find the other men. What are you doing?"
"I can't leave her," he said, gazing down at Rain.
"What do you mean you can't leave her?"
"This woman is supposed to be my mate."
He glanced up at Pyra and saw the look of confusion and shock cross his face. Finding their mate was something that the Denynso men waited for their entire lives. Unlike other species who may be able to mate with any number of others, the Denynso had one single mate. This was the only woman that existed in the entire universe who they could create a bond with, and the only one who they ever would create a bond with. They would look for that one woman throughout their entire lives, and when they found her, they immediately knew. After that, the bond was for life. This was something that they all knew from a very young age, and it took on even more serious meaning for Lynx now that he realized his mate was someone who may never again open her eyes.
"Lynx, this woman is locked in time. She has been here since long before you were even born, and she may be here on into eternity. You are just
reacting to everything that's going on."
"No," Lynx said, feeling the defensive aggression building inside him, "Rain is my mate. She has been waiting for me for her entire life, and for mine."
"Rain?" Bannack asked, stepping into the room behind Pyra.
Lynx realized that the others didn't have any idea what he had discovered about these people, the Light Ones as the Covra had called them, and he debated with himself whether he should tell them. He worried that if he let them know that he knew they were human, they would not be as inclined to help them. Even though several of the Denynso, Pyra included, had mated with humans, there was still deep-seated controversy about how much interaction and connection the two species should have. The thought that they had been living on the planet all along, and that Creia had either not known about them or had been lying to them, could cause them even more difficulty than they were already facing.
Not telling them what he had seen, however, didn't seem like an option.
"I saw her," he said carefully.
"What do you mean?" Pyra asked.
"When the Covra were in here, I touched her, and I could see what I think were the last few seconds before she was locked."
"What did you see, Lynx?" Pyra demanded.
The force behind the words made Lynx feel even more defensive and he straightened his spine, pressing his chest toward the larger, older warrior. Suddenly Pyra's eyes widened.
"Lynx, you're bleeding," he said.
Lynx looked down and saw trails of his own blood sliding down his arm and dripping onto the floor beneath his feet.
Chapter Three
"There's something wrong."
Elianna jumped up from the chair where she had been sitting and rushed across the room to Eden. She dropped down onto her knees next to her and rested her hands on the other woman's rounded belly.
The Alien Uncovers (Uoria Mates IV Book 3) Page 56