Drenched: Elemental Warriors (A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Paranormal Romance) Page 13

  He wasn't someone Luther could recognize, that was for sure. He was...monstrous almost, with bulbous eyes and orange tinged skin. The skin of his face looked cracked, deep fissures in the flesh that made him look like dried earth or something. He had a head of dark hair, and it seemed to be shaved on the sides and braided back, a style that might have looked better on someone else, but didn't do him any favors. Luther couldn't see any more of him, and he was mostly glad for that.

  For a moment, the man didn't say anything, just sitting still and not moving. And then he smiled, and it was like something from a horror production. His teeth were sharp and stained with what was clearly old blood. Luther felt his stomach turn.

  "Hello, Your Majesty," the man said, and his voice was slippery smooth, like an oil slick. "We haven't been introduced, of course, but I know who you are. Everyone knows the great Queen Varen, strong and intimidating, best leader on Lin-Vayel to hear tell of it. It's an honor to speak to you. To know that you're hearing my words. To know what they'll be doing to you."

  He was bold, that was for certain. Luther was pretty sure no one had ever spoken to the queen like that and lived before.

  "You see," he said. "I work for a very powerful man. A man who is tired of failure in those whom he employs. So he’s employed me to get results. I do not intend to fail him. My employer is a very powerful man with resources that far outstrip even your own, Your Majesty. And he is something of a collector, only his collection has yet to be filled by even one of the things he wishes to collect. What would you do with such incompetent workers who couldn’t even bring you one thing that you had asked for, Your Majesty? Off with their heads? That was my suggestion. Ah, well.”

  Depths, the monologuing. It wasn’t like this was a conversation. Varen hadn’t even been able to respond to any of this pompous drivel, and Luther knew her well enough to know that she really would have wanted to.

  "But I can tell you are growing weary of this," the man said next.

  "Finally," Luther muttered.

  "I will get to the point of my message. I know that you have sent one of your own to Earth. As for how I know this, well, let us just say that we have been waiting for someone to look into what is happening on that planet for some time. How many humans have to crash land on other planets before someone offers to return them home, I ask you?" He shook his head. "But you, Queen Varen, you have done what we have been waiting for someone to do, and I am pleased that it was you because you have the greatest treasure of all somewhere in either your planet or your people. Whatever makes your people so good with water, so attuned to the way it ebbs and flows, I want that. I want it, and I will bring it to my employer once I have taken it from you."

  The message seemed to end there, as it cut out and the screen filled with the view of Queen Varen's chamber again. The queen's eyes were hard as she sat there, and she pursed her lips together and then sighed.

  "So you see what I mean."

  Luther nodded. "Yes, I suppose I do. Do we have any idea who he is working for?"

  The queen shook her head. "Not as yet. I'm sure we can figure out some things about it, though, if he's going around trying to steal the powers from other planets."

  That brought up something that was bugging him. "Why do you think he sent humans to other planets? Could they all be like ours?"

  "I do not believe so. I think there are a great many things someone with the need to collect things could want."

  "So you think he's just trying to see who takes his bait."

  She inclined her head. "Yes. And, unfortunately, we have done so."

  "It isn't unfortunate," Luther said, quick to leap to Alanna's defense. "We had to let her go home."

  "I am not arguing that, Luther," Varen said. "I know that she couldn't have stayed here forever, but what we have done is left ourselves vulnerable. This plan is simple, but quite brilliant when you think about it."

  Luther closed his eyes, letting it all wash over him. The queen was right. In a move as simple as kidnapping a human and sending her to another planet, this man had ensured that they were stuck. It was impossible to know if they were going to be attacked on Earth or on Lin-Vayel, so if they sent more warriors to Earth, they risked leaving Lin-Vayel open and vulnerable. And it was apparent that these people had ways of knowing what they were doing, so whatever decision they made, would probably be known before long.

  It was a mess, honestly, and Luther sighed, rubbing his temples. "Do you think we have a leak?" he asked.

  The queen arched her eyebrows. "One of our own people feeding them information?"

  Luther nodded. "It seems unlikely, but how else would he have known?"

  "I can think of a few different ways, but we do need to get to the bottom of this. Perhaps our comm links aren't as secure as they should be."

  "I know someone who can take a look at that for us," Luther said.

  "And you trust this someone?"

  "With my life."

  He bid the queen farewell with a promise to keep his eyes open and not let anyone get the jump on him, and then he contacted Clio. If anyone could figure out of this was a tech problem or a someone who couldn't keep their mouth shut problem, it was her or someone she knew. He would leave it in her hands and trust that it would be taken care of.

  By the time he was done with that, Alanna was coming through the front door. She looked exhausted, and she came in and collapsed in the squashy looking chair that he could tell was her favorite.

  "Answering questions about a nervous breakdown I never had is an exhausting thing to do," she said, sighing and tipping her head back in the chair. "Everyone wanted to know something about it, why I didn't say anything or what it felt like. Where I went. It was just question after question."

  "They must have been worried," Luther said. "There is no shame in that."

  "No, but there's exhaustion in it. I don't want to answer another question as long as I live."

  "At least not about made up things," Luther pointed out.

  Alanna gave him a weary look. "We've been over this, Luther. The truth is too absurd."

  "It's happened to other people, so perhaps not that absurd."

  She waved her hand, as if acknowledging that, and then, as if something had just occurred to her, she sat up and looked at him. "Did something happen? Something else, I mean? You look all...serious."

  “I am always serious,” Luther said, attempting humor.

  Alanna just speared him with another look.

  “Alright,” he said. “I just finished speaking with the queen.”

  “So something did happen, then.”

  “Yes.” Luther gave her the short version of the ridiculous message the strange orange man had delivered, watching her face as he spoke. He didn’t want to frighten her, but then Alanna wasn’t the sort of woman who was easily frightened by things. And she had experience with the strange by now.

  Her face settled into resignation once he had finished telling her all of it, and she sighed. “That’s terrible, you know,” she said. “Just snatching humans in the hope that someone would take the bait. People aren’t bait.”

  “I know,” Luther agreed. “I never thought they were. We will get to the bottom of this.”

  Chapter Nine: Round Peg, Square Hole

  Being back on Earth wasn't what Alanna had expected. She'd known that things were going to be different, and that she was going to feel different, considering she'd spent so much time on another planet, but she'd at least expected there to be some sort of feeling of home. Some notion that she was back where she belonged.

  There wasn't much of that at all. It felt nice to see familiar faces, but she started out all the conversations with the people she'd been away from for so long by lying to them. It wasn't even a very good lie, all things considered, and she was a bit disturbed by how very easily they had all believed her.

  Did she seem like the sort of person who was due for a nervous breakdown? Or were they just relieved to have her back
?

  Shannon seemed to be in the latter category. She called her every day for a week, making sure that she was alright and didn't have the urge to run away again. It was sweet, in a way, that her best friend cared that much, but on the other hand, Alanna wanted to yell that she had never run anywhere in the first place. It wasn't her fault that someone had snatched her up and carted her off to another planet like she was a sack of potatoes or something.

  But she couldn't tell people that. Luther seemed to think that it would be simpler to just say it, and he was right, of course, but Alanna didn't want to just come out with it like that. It would make people look at her like she was crazy, and on the off chance that anyone believed her, she'd be carted away for questioning or whatever.

  No, she stood by the fact that her lie was the best solution, even if it was causing her irritation now.

  It didn't help, of course, that there was apparently some huge conspiracy or whatever happening. Luther and the queen held hushed conversations via the communication device that Alanna just thought of as Luther's intergalactic cellphone most of the time.

  Luther filled her in on the details as they came, but there weren't many, to be honest. There were still too many missing pieces.

  There wasn't anything Alanna could do to help, really. She'd already pulled up all the articles on the disappearances and the things people had seen that she could find, but it was clear that those things were just bait or distractions for the real plan.

  Of course, Luther was obsessed with trying to figure out what was going on. His loyalty to his people was admirable, of course, but he was making himself crazy with all the things he was trying to figure out.

  Finally, Alanna made him go take a shower, sighing as she flopped down on the couch and reached for the remote. No sooner had she done that, than Luther's communicator was buzzing on the table.

  She considered ignoring it; no doubt Queen Varen had less than nothing to say to her now that she was no longer the queen's problem, but ignoring the queen seemed like it was in bad form, so Alanna pressed the screen the way she saw Luther do it all the time, trying to answer the call.

  To her surprise, the screen cleared and showed Clio's face instead of Her Majesty's, and Alanna's face split in a grin.

  Clio looked just as surprised, and she grinned back. "Well, hello there, little human. I wasn't expecting you."

  "I wasn't expecting you, either," Alanna replied. "Luther's been having conference calls with the queen all week, so I was preparing my manners."

  Clio snorted, looking amused. "No need for those here. Is Luther around?"

  "I made him take a shower," Alanna said. "He was driving me nuts."

  "With his smell?"

  "No, with his worrying." She didn't know if Clio had been kept in the loop with everything that was going on, so she didn't say too much, but she did mention the kidnappings and the things that were happening on Earth, since it was her planet.

  Luckily, Clio was nodding with understanding. "Yes, that's all pretty worrying. We did some digging, and it turns out that there have been at least seven crash landings with humans turning up on strange planets since you showed up here. What happened to those humans, we can't tell. Everyone's being really hush mouthed about it, which is irritating the queen to no end, let me tell you."

  "Can't blame her for that," Alanna said. "My friend here said there were more people who were taken than just seven, though."

  "I'm not sure what that means," Clio said. "It's possible not all of them made it to a planet."

  That made Alanna swallow hard because that made sense. Maybe some of them fought back or were hurt in other ways. Maybe they were disposed of. It turned her stomach to think of it, and she sighed heavily. "What a mess."

  "It is a mess. I have some news, though."

  "Good news?"

  "It...depends on how you look at it."

  Alanna sighed again. "Well, you can tell me if you want, and I'll pass it on to Luther, or I can have him call you back."

  "I can tell you," Clio said. "I have a long day ahead of me. Luther had me looking into if we have any leaks in our tech. Since that guy who sent Queen Varen that message knew too much about what was happening to be an outsider."

  "And what did you find?"

  "Nothing. Everything is secure. All of our channels going in and out are secure and locked up tight from the outside. Unless he has some kind of access that we can't find, he's not getting his info that way."

  "Which means what?" Alanna wanted to know, even though she had a sick feeling that she already knew what it meant.

  "It means that we have a leak in another place," Clio told her. "Most likely one of our people are giving out information."

  Alanna frowned. Just what she had feared, then. "Why would anyone do that? To their own people?"

  One of Clio's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Hard to say. Maybe they're getting something out of it. Maybe they're being blackmailed into it. Maybe they just don't like the queen or humans or whoever. There's any number of reasons to do something like this, but none of that matters if we can't figure out who it is."

  "Jesus," Alanna murmured. "What a mess."

  "Mmhmm." Clio nodded and then sighed. "I have to go. The queen needs to know this information, and then I'm sure we're going to have to sit through some long lecture about loyalty or what have you. You'll tell Luther?"

  "I will. Good luck, Clio."

  "And to you. Stay out of trouble."

  Clio waved and the screen went blank. Alanna put the device back down on the table and leaned back with a long sigh. A mess was an understatement, honestly. There were so many loose ends, and they maybe didn't even know the full scope of what was happening yet. It seemed bad now, to be sure, but Alanna had an inkling that it could definitely get worse.

  The bathroom door opened down the hall, releasing a cloud of warm, citrus scented steam. Luther came back into the room with nothing but a towel around his waist, and Alanna's fretting was momentarily derailed by the sight of him standing there, still slightly damp and gorgeous.

  She'd been worried that she wouldn't be as attracted to him on Earth as she was on Lin-Vayel. Of course, there had been no basis for this fear, it was just something she'd found herself worrying about because there were so many things to worry about.

  In the end, it hadn't been a problem. If anything, she was more attracted to him here, where he was taller and broader and kinder than anyone else around. And now he was standing in her living room, drops of water from his hair sliding down his neck to his shoulders and his chest, and she was dry mouthed with wanting him.

  But she had a message to pass on, so she shook herself. "Clio just called."

  Alanna instantly regretted saying anything. The shower seemed to have worked wonders for getting rid of the permanent frown that had been on Luther's face for the last few days, and his tense posture had eased into something much more relaxed. But as soon as she mentioned Clio's call, it all came right back.

  "What did she say?" he wanted to know.

  "That she and her people checked everything and the leak isn't coming from the tech."

  Luther closed his eyes and sighed. "I was afraid of that."

  "Does that mean it's one of your people?"

  "Most likely. It's...possible there's a spy hiding out and gathering information without anyone noticing, but more than likely it's one of our people passing it on." He was silent for a moment and then he swore explosively.

  Alanna jumped from the suddenness of it, and then her face set in determined lines. "Get dressed," she said.

  "What?"

  "Get dressed. We're going out."

  "Do you have an idea?" Luther asked.

  "No, I have a need to not be in this house talking about this anymore."

  "Alanna—”

  "I know it's important, Luther. Believe me, I know. But we've been wracking our brains about this for a week, and we're no closer to a solution. Clearly something bad is happening,
or at the very least something not good, so before everything goes to crap, I want to show you my home like you showed me yours."

  Luther stared at her for a moment, and then he visibly softened, letting out a light sigh. "You're right," he said. "There isn't much else we can do now, anyway." He turned on his heel, and she heard him go into the bedroom to find his clothes.

  Being out of the house was an experience. Nothing was as beautiful as Lin-Vayel, of course, but it was better than being cooped up in the house. Luther held her hand as they walked around, taking in the sights, and Alanna couldn't help but see things as he probably saw them. It wasn't nearly as bright and open as the places they'd gone to when she was on his planet, and everything looked grimy and grey and industrial in the city.

  She found that she missed Lin-Vayel and its clean air and the sound of waves lapping the shore with a physical ache in her chest that was hard to resolve.

  "Are you alright?" Luther asked her, looking down at her face.

  Alanna shook herself and nodded. "Yeah. It's just...this all feels different than it used to."

  "How so?"

  "I don't know. I guess I just never really noticed certain things about the city before. Before I ended up on Lin-Vayel, I mean."

  "It does have a certain...smell," Luther said, clearly aiming for dignity.

  Alanna laughed. "Yeah, it does. That I did notice before I ended up on your planet. It's just...this is supposed to be my home, and I feel...I don't know."

  "You haven't been back for very long," Luther said. "Perhaps it will take time for it to feel like home again. Why don't you show me the places you love the most?"

  He had a point, of course, but Alanna wasn't so sure it was ever going to feel different. Usually when she came back home after being away, there was a profound sense of relief, of being back where she belonged.

  Here, there was just a feeling of being out of place, the same way she'd felt during those first days on Lin-Vayel, when she had been nothing more than an outsider.

  But Luther was right. She'd brought him out here to take his mind off of serious matters, and it wasn't fair for her to spend the whole time wrapped up in her own head. Plus she was hungry.