Falden stood before her, literally blocking bullets with his sword as she watched in fascination. Was it even fair to call it a sword? The blade was long and pointy, but even that didn’t look like any kind of sword she’d ever seen. She could literally see something swirling around the runes, a smoky, silvery liquid inside what should have been solid steel. There was no doubt that the sword was an alien weapon, with alien technology inside of it. The humanoid attacking Falden fired his weapon over and over until it began to smoke. Falden never faltered.
He raised the sword now, pointing it at the sky like some kind of sorcerer.
Lightning flashed again. Struck a few steps behind the attacker, the crack of thunder so loud her entire body shook from the blast.
Lightning. He is calling down lightning. And wind. And rain. Not. Possible.
Was he some kind of space Jedi right out of Star Wars? An alien wizard out of Lord of the Rings?
She didn’t like the idea of frying anyone with a lightning bolt. Seemed a horrible way to go.
Still, that asshole firing the gun had shot at her, too.
The attacker recovered from the blast of thunder, and Isabella saw dark fluid seeping from the man’s nose. But it wasn’t red. Wasn’t even close to red. More like a sickly green sludge. When he turned, shaking his head from side to side as if to clear it, she saw the same dark fluid leaking from one of his ears. Served him right.
Even that didn’t stop him. He held still for the briefest of moments, adjusting something on his weapon, then lifted it up and took aim once again, right at Falden’s chest.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Zero to sixty in four seconds, that’s what the GT could do, and she didn’t hesitate. She hit the gas, gunning for the asshole attacking Falden. She cranked the wheel at the last second, slamming the front side panel into Falden’s attacker from the driver’s side. The impact threw the man back and away, his body flying into the side of the building. He hit hard enough that she heard the thud over the storm Falden had somehow brought down on them in seconds.
“That’s gonna leave a dent,” she cringed, patting the dash like it was her new best friend. “Sorry, baby.”
Her apology was to the beautiful piece of art that others referred to as a car, not the alien who owned it. If Falden complained, she would remind him that she had been saving his life.
Shoving the gearshift into reverse, she backed away from the attacker as quickly as she’d rammed into him, giving a satisfied grin when the car spun around.
A glance at the unmoving attacker made her feel only the tiniest bit of guilt. “That’s what you get for shooting at us, you asshole.”
Falden stood like a legendary hero in the dark, sword blazing, a look of complete shock on his face as he stared at her through the windshield. He wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving?
She leaned over and opened the passenger side door, swinging it wide. “Let’s go! Get in! Get in now before his friends get here!”
Her words seemed to break the spell, since he folded himself into the passenger seat in a comical maneuvering of knees and elbows until he was curled up on himself like a clown. The moment he closed his door, she peeled out of the dark parking lot. The police had arrived in the front. She saw three officers exiting their vehicles when she dared to take a peek behind them in her side-view mirror. Seconds. That’s how much time they had to get out of here without being seen by the police. Seconds.
“That was close,” she huffed, suddenly a bit less steady.
“Remind me never to anger you when you have a transportation device at your disposal.” Falden gave a half grin, his eyes twinkling with humor.
Laughing at his odd name for the car, she took pity on him and his knees practically hitting him in the chin. “That seat is adjustable.”
The look of confusion on his face was priceless and confirmed her suspicions. This was not his car. He did not know how to drive it. He probably did not know how to tell time on his fancy wristwatch, either.
Careful not to speed past the ambulance, the fire truck and the additional police cars racing toward the restaurant, she slowed to a leisurely pace until they were several blocks away. It was hard. Really hard. The car was made for speed, and she was dying to take it out for a real test drive.
Taking pity on him, she murmured, “You can move the seat back so you have more room for your legs. And your…sword.” Why did that sound so wrong? So very naughty? Oh hell, she knew why. He was cradling the giant, glowing weapon between his legs like it was his most prized possession, and the puns running through her mind just wouldn’t stop.
“His name is Furon.” He said the name with near reverence before his shoulders slumped in his seat.
“So, your invisible sword can block bullets and make it rain? What else can it do.”
“I do not know.”
“Furon. Mean anything special?”
“Furon means Storm Caller in your language.” He had already told her too much. This small bit of information meant nothing.
Isabella was feeling smug now. His sword had a cool, secret, wizards-and-magic kind of name. Real superhero stuff. And it was a boy, a he. She filed that away for future reference, for her news article. A glowing, alien sword with a wizard name that blocked bullets and summoned lightning. And she’d bet last month’s rent his two friends had swords just like it. Yep, the politicians and the Caldorians that rarely gave personal interviews hadn’t left anything out. Nope. Not at all. These aliens and all their weapons were just like humans and would not endanger humanity.
That was the official government line. What a steaming stew of lies. And she was going to expose every single one of them. Tell the world the truth. As soon as she was done with this mission. Friends first. And over the last weeks, Sevron had become her friend.
“The buttons are on the side of the seat.” She pointed to the space between her own thigh and the door. He turned to find the seat controls on his side of the car, a sigh of relief coming from him as the passenger seat’s motor sounded in the small space and his seat moved backward.
He looked like a man, a very tall, very sexy man. But he was not human. He was an alien. As in, not from this planet.
“You’re glowing,” she stated matter-of-factly, as if she saw people glow every day. No big deal. Nothing to see. But she wondered if he had other markings, and if he did, what they were like. Did they glow like the crystal marking on his temple was glowing right now?
Falden turned to look down at himself, then up at Isabella. His brows lowered. “I do not glow.”
“Okay. Whatever you say, Commander.” She purposely used his title, the one his men had used, and he did not refute or deny it. Interesting. “So are you going to tell me who just tried to kill us?”
“No.”
Isabella coughed. “Excuse you?”
He shook his head. “You misunderstand. I cannot tell you because I do not know who they were.”
Well, she had an idea. The sleezy street gang she’d been in contact with had helped her set up this meeting, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. At least not until she found out how Falden knew about it, and why he had shown up instead of her black market contact. Not only had her contact not shown up, but Falden and his Caldorian buddies had crashed the party, along with some freakish alien with green sludge for blood.
And that freakish alien had said he was going to take the female. Take her where? And to whom? Had she been set up? Was she being hunted? Or had they been after Falden and his invisible friends? That kind of tech would sell for a fortune.
Safely out of the immediate area, she hit the gas, grinning to herself when the back of his thick skull hit the headrest. She was no stranger to fast cars and even faster getaways. “So you don’t know who attacked us?”
“I do not.”
“How is that possible? They were after you.”
“They were humanoid. Possibly from Earth. There are many planets with humanoid species. Earth is just one of them. A
nd there are others who are able to mask their true identity and walk among you.”
“So…you’ve been attacked by other aliens? Aliens that look like us? People from Earth?”
“Many times.”
“Well that one had green sludge for blood. So what kind of alien was he?”
“That narrows the choices to several dozen possibilities.”
“What? Please tell me that was just a bad joke.”
Before he could respond, a black SUV shut off its headlights and came up on her bumper. Close. Too close. “No. No. No.”
She downshifted and stomped on the gas pedal, putting distance between her car and the aggressive driver behind them, hoping the gut feeling she had was wrong. When a bullet shattered the back window, she cursed and turned a sharp right, the car’s wheels squealing on the pavement as she fought to recover from the spin.
“They’re shooting at us. With real bullets. The kind that kill people.” Why did she feel the need to state the obvious? But then he seemed completely calm. Maybe he hadn’t freaking noticed the glass shattering!
“Drive faster. Their vehicle is large and cumbersome. You should be able to outmaneuver them, even with this primitive machine.”
She took another turn, spinning the back end of the car in a semicircle to make the sharp cut onto the highway on-ramp. Accelerating with every ounce of speed she could pull from the car, she turned off the headlights and wove between traffic until she could hide in front of a large vehicle nearly identical to the one following them.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his hand clenched around the door handle.
“Hiding. And waiting.”
“For what?”
“This.” With the attacker’s SUV trailing too far back to see their small car’s movement from their angle, she crossed two lanes of traffic and took an exit at high speed. Racing to the bottom, she turned the corner and drove beneath the freeway’s overpass, pulled to the side of the nearly deserted industrial road and waited.
One full minute passed. Two. When five full minutes had gone by with no sign of pursuit, she turned the lights on and creeped onto a side street. She knew this area well, had been tracking black market dealers down here for a couple of months. She had even signed a lease on a studio loft nearby under a false name so she would have somewhere to hide her work and, more importantly, a place to lay low if her investigation became too dangerous. She knew every dark alley, deserted building and hiding place in this section of the city. But hiding wasn’t her goal, at least not tonight.
“I’ll take you back to your base now.” She’d take him home, get inside, shake him loose and have a look around the Caldorian base. She had to get to Sevron, tell him what she knew. Get some answers. But Sevron had stopped responding to her messages. He’d disappeared. The official word from the Caldorians was that nothing had happened. The explosions and sounds of battle, the fires a few weeks ago were nothing more than “training exercises.” She rolled her eyes. The military had been using that lie for decades. And her gut was telling her that was a lie. Beyond that, Sevron had left her very specific instructions.
Trust no one but the king, Dagan.
As in NO ONE. Sevron had warned her that there was a traitor on the Caldorian base, someone on the inside, and he didn’t know who it was. Was this Falden the traitor? How had he known where she would be? And if he wasn’t the black market contact she’d been supposed to meet, as she very much suspected he was not, then who the hell was he and how did he get here?
With Sevron not responding to her messages, she’d tried to reach the king. But getting past the bureaucrats when she couldn’t tell them who she really was or what she really wanted had proved futile. Getting past the perimeter security? Impossible. She’d tried. More than once. The last time they caught her, they’d threatened to call the human authorities and ask that she be charged with trespassing with the intent to commit a terrorist act, and incarcerated.
What the Caldorians wanted, they got. Slap the terrorist label on her, and she’d rot somewhere until she was dead. And who knew how long that would be if the government—or the Caldorians—found out what she knew.
At the very least she would have disappeared down inside some dark spy dungeon, never to be seen again. And no one would have missed her. No one knew what she was working on. Even Jessica, sweet as her friend was, wouldn’t stand a chance of ever finding Isabella if that happened.
“No. We will not be returning to the base.”
“What do you mean, no?” Pulling into an alley, she turned the car’s lights off again but left the engine running, the parking brake locked so they wouldn’t go anywhere until she was good and ready. The sword, Storm Caller, had stopped glowing, although the semiliquid state seemed to be a permanent condition. She had no idea why she could still see it, but she itched to touch the alien weapon. See if it was warm or cold.
The spiral marking near Falden’s temple looked like he really liked diamonds and had decided to embed a few of them in his skin. Normal, right? Totally normal. At least it had stopped glowing. She sighed.
Too bad. He’d looked super sexy with the glowing tattoo. Like, lick-him-up-and-down hot. Or maybe that was the adrenaline talking. Her hands shook from it; her heart raced. She’d been shot at twice, and then she’d outrun a gunman in a car chase on a major freeway with an alien and a glowing sword next to her.
Not exactly a normal Friday night, even for her.
“You have been seen with me. They know where the base is located. Everyone knows. It will not be safe to return there tonight.”
Well, hell. He sounded adamant. And she couldn’t lose him now. “Well, I guess you can sleep on my sofa.”
“No. You will not return to your residence. They will have identified you by now.”
“No, they won’t. Trust me.” She’d been too careful. Fake name. Fake identity. Fake hair. Glasses with plain glass lenses. She’d even made a point of doing her makeup in a way that changed the shape of her face. God bless contour pallets and YouTube videos. Even she didn’t recognize herself when she looked in the mirror.
He turned to face her, and she couldn’t stop herself from looking back. When he lifted one hand to remove the glasses from her face, she let him do it. Why? No idea. It was like staring into his icy blue eyes paralyzed her or wiped her mind of all good sense.
Gently he folded the frames and placed them in the cupholder before returning his attention to her face. “Isabella Serrano, if you think a wig and a pair of black glasses are going to hide your true beauty from the world, you are not as intelligent as I had hoped.”
He’d just called her beautiful. And stupid. And her hands were still shaking.
And he knew who she was. He knew her real name. He’d called her Isabella when he’d told the others to watch over Jessica, and when he’d told her to start the car. He had known her name before he met with her.
“Where did you hear that name?” She leaned closer, the challenge he presented too tempting to ignore. Maybe he only thought he knew who she was. Maybe it was just a suspicion. She wasn’t going to confirm it for him.
He leaned in so close the heat of his lips brushed hers, his whispered words doing nothing to cool her flushed skin. “You, Isabella Serrano, are an investigator and a journalist. You have tried to sneak onto the Caldorian base no less than three times. Your work is respected, and you have sold your writings to dozens of publications all over the world. And for some unknown reason, you have become deeply involved with some very unsavory people.”
Oh shit. He did know. And his lips were closer than ever, so close hers would nearly brush against him if she answered. Which, of course, she did. “I am not a criminal. I am looking for answers.”
“Tell me your questions. Perhaps I can help.”
Well, no lie, she was tempted. That face. That body. Those eyes, eyes that looked at her like she was the only important thing on the entire planet. No man had ever looked at her with such focused intensity
. Would that look, that focus, carry over into bed?
Sheesh. She was losing it. “Get a grip, Serrano.”
“Talking to yourself? Talk to me. I am right here.”
“No offence, John”—she made sure to emphasize his fake name—“but I don’t know you. I don't trust you. And your people are keeping secrets, not telling the truth.”
“And you?” Ignoring the spreading pain in his back from where he’d been shot, he reached for her hair, touched the false red strands. “You tell me what you were doing in that place. Tell me who you were planning to meet and why. Tell me why you have been so desperate to contact Commander Sevron, why you tried to sneak onto the Caldorian base.”
“No.”
“No?”
She didn’t answer because that would require moving her lips, which would make her want more contact, and she was quite sure she would be kissing him and not able to stop. Why did this guy have to be so…so…
Silence was her response until he looked at her as if he were confused. At the base of his neck, his pulse raced. His gaze remained locked on hers in an unnatural and intimate way she could not escape. Maybe she wasn’t the only one feeling on the edge of losing control. She should hate him. Should be afraid. Nothing about her reaction to him made sense. But she had a job to do, and he’d just wrecked her night and possibly cost her weeks of work setting up that meeting. Weeks. Of. Work. She’d have to start from scratch, blame the Caldorians’ interference tonight on her contact’s sloppy communications. Feign anger at her contact at the alien black market, find out how both Commander Falden and his men ended up at that bar, at that time, looking for her.
And where were the buyers she was actually supposed to meet? They were bad guys, no doubt. But they didn’t just disappear. Had Falden and his men scared them off? Captured them and taken their place?
“Who is Sevron to you?” she asked.
“He is the Caldorian base commander.”
“But they called you ‘commander.’ What are you commander of, then?”
“A small team of guards. Nothing more.”
Alien Knight Blind Date Disaster (Lumerian Knights Book 3) Page 6