Alien Love (3 page)

“Nothing to say, Commander? I never expected to have the honor of watching you die, but I will be the proud witness to your death, and tell the story, that you fought to the end.”

Rell leaned over him—and Kiele gathered the last of his strength, screaming as he rolled on his left side and thrust his legs up. The blow shoved Rell across the chamber, and he stumbled.

Kiele knew the retaliation would likely kill him, and braced for it, even as darkness ate at his vision. Every breath was agony, his tattered strength no match for it. He waited for the next breath to be his last, almost surprised when he choked in another. His clenching gills added another layer of pain, until he was sure he could count his remaining breaths on one hand.

Anji—forgive me, my heart. Forgive me—

Movement penetrated his agony, and he knew he hallucinated, in the final moments of life. Anji ran toward him, that glorious dark hair flowing around her. He closed his eyes and welcomed her spirit.

“Kiele—open your eyes, damn it. Can I just pour the water? Or will that make him worse?”

“Allow me.” Orlen’s no-nonsense voice startled him. How could he be—

Water spilled across his back and he arched off the floor. A different kind of agony shuddered through him as his gills took in the water.

“Get that bastard over here—the lock on his shackles need a thumb.” More water washed his back, and he coughed, his lungs released from their iron grip. “Kiele—open your eyes for me.”

He gathered himself, certain he was imagining that low, beautiful voice. When he managed to pry his lids open, her sea blue eyes met his, tear-bright, and very much alive.

“An—ˮ His body rebelled at the audacity of speaking.

Several hands caught him, his engineer’s voice sharp with anger. “He needs to recover before you start—ˮ

“She needs to know he’s alive, Grumpy, so back off.”

Kiele tried to frown. He knew that voice, but his mind could not grasp the memory of it. All he could focus on now was breathing, taking in the water that continued to slide over his skin, cool, life-giving, but not enough.

A sharp snap echoed in the chamber, and his shackles loosened. He did not have the strength to pull free. Anji’s voice wrapped around him, cursing with more variety than he had ever heard from Orlen.

“Water, Pern. The blood has glued these damn things to his wrists. I’ll kill them, slowly and with extreme pain.” Cool water splashed over his wrists, and he welcomed the pain. It told him that he was alive, that this was not a dying dream, a final memory before his mind let go. “Kiele.” Her warm hand cradled his cheek. “We’re going to move you to the water. Don’t try to help.”

He swallowed, and nodded, enough to let her know he heard. The last thought he had before the agony took him under was of Anji, and the fist around his heart finally loosened.

She is alive.

***

Anji went in
the water with Kiele, wearing one of the portable breathers. She refused to let him out of her sight, not when she had been so close to losing him. It was a temporary measure—enough to get him back to the ship, where he could immerse for as long as he needed.

She held on to his hand, watched color slowly seep back into his face. He had looked like death when they got to him, barely breathing and fighting off his captor. It took all of Orlen’s persuasion to keep her from attacking the guard. Pern was standing watch over him now, and before they went under, he had been casually flipping one of his throwing knives.

Kiele opened his eyes, that desperate pain easing. She moved closer, touching the matching dolphin tattoo on his left forearm before she cradled his cheek. God, she wanted to wrap herself around him and never let go. The fear that he was already dead had been there, piercing her heart, threatening to leave her doubled in pain. Only moving forward had kept her sane.

His hand closed over hers, and he leaned forward, kissing her temple. He pointed up, and she shook her head. They hadn’t been under nearly long enough—

He tugged at her and started kicking, pushing them toward the opening above their heads. Even injured, his strength outstripped hers. When they reached the surface, Orlen was there to pull her out. He and Pern crouched at the edge and spoke to Kiele in their language. It sounded more like an argument—one they were losing.

When Kiele raised an eyebrow, then held his hand up, Orlen sighed, and helped him out of the water.

“We head back to the ship immediately, Kiele, since you are too stubborn to stay immersed.”

Kiele shook his head. “Every moment we remain here puts them in harm’s way.” He looked at her, then at Melissa, who hadn’t said much since they found him. He held out his hand to her, and after hesitating, she moved to him. “Orlen told me I have you to thank for Anji’s life. There will never be enough time for me to repay my debt to you.”

“It’s already paid, Commander. You releasing that strap helped me escape. Without your effort, I’d still be there—or not.” She swallowed. “I was on the short list.”

Kiele cursed, tightening his grip. “No one will face that terror when I am done. Take us back to the ship, Orlen.”

The surge of anger obviously sapped the last of his strength. He sagged, Orlen grabbing him before he collapsed. Orlen shot an angry look at Melissa.

“Tell me there is a back way out of this hell.”

“There is. Follow me.”

She led them down a corridor so narrow they had to turn sideways. It made supporting Kiele difficult; Orlen and Pern took turns cursing when body parts scraped the rough stone wall. Anji covered the rear, holding the laser pistol Pern had handed her while Orlen was busy with Kiele. Her fingers ached from gripping it by the time they reached the surface.

Kiele stumbled just past the doorway and dropped to his knees. Orlen beat Anji to his side, crouching in front of him. “We are a good distance from the ship. I believe other options need to be explored. If you are discovered—”

“They will kill first. I am aware, Orlen.” Kiele’s voice rasped out of him, and the pain was back on his face. “Ask Melissa if she knows of a place where I can immerse.”

“She does,” Melissa said, moving next to Orlen. “And she’ll be happy to lead Grumpy to it first, so he can put his stamp of approval on it.”

Kiele raised an eyebrow. “Grumpy?”

Orlen lifted his chin. “I have no idea of the reason for her ridiculous name for me. But I will accompany her. Pern—”

“Will stay,” Pern said. He hadn’t complained about his injured shoulder, but now he cradled his right arm, pain tightening his face. “I have one good arm, sir, and throwing knives with either hand is a skill I acquired as a boy.”

Orlen nodded once, and stood, following Melissa out of sight.

“Sir.” Pern crouched in front of Kiele. “We need to get you out of the open.”

“Right.”

Anji helped Pern pull Kiele to his feet, taking as much of the weight as she could. They were next to a wooded area, and moving closer to the trees seemed like the safest bet. Anji pointed to some bushes that edged the clearing.

“That’s close enough for us to watch for Melissa and Orlen, but away from the exit.”

“I agree.”

As fast as they could, they half walked, half dragged Kiele around the edge of the clearing, finally easing him to the ground, on his right side. He closed his eyes, sweat sliding down his face. Pern didn’t look much better, struggling as he stood.

Anji caught his left arm and stood with him. “Are you okay?”

“The laser wound was cauterized when I received it. I will be fine, miss, once I immerse.”

“Call me Anji. Thank you.” She squeezed his arm. “For taking care of the bastard who hurt Kiele. I want to peel his skin off with a dull knife, but I’ll get over it. Eventually.”

He smiled down at her. “I understand my commander’s attraction to you.”

“Your commander is right here, Lieutenant, and aware enough to hear you.”

“Of course, sir.” He winked at Anji.

“I want you to sit,” she said. “I’ll keep watch.”

“No.” Kiele tried to stand, and got as far as propping himself up on one elbow before Anji reached him. “I will not—”

“Right now I’m the only one not clutching a body part. I can take care of myself, Kiele. This isn’t the first time I’ve held a laser pistol.” She pointed at Pern. “Sit. Rest, both of you.” She eased Kiele down to his right side, not liking how pale he looked. “Hold on for me.” She kissed him, gently, then brushed her fingers over his forehead. His skin was clammy, sweat sliding back into his hair. “I’ll get you home, love. I promise.”

As she watched him close his eyes and try not to show her how much pain he was in, Anji ignored her own aches and prayed she could keep that promise.

Orlen returned sooner
than she expected. And he was alone.

Anji lowered her pistol and moved to him. “Where’s Melissa?”

“Waiting for us just the other side of the park. I did not kill her and hide her in a convenient alley, as much as I was tempted. Her people have a place for Kiele. It is crude, and not as clean as I would like, but it is close, and as safe as we could be on this forsaken planet.”

“So, you approve.”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “Yes.” He walked past her and crouched next to Kiele. “We found a place, Commander. Can you walk?”

“I will crawl if necessary,” he whispered. Just those few words had him gasping in pain.

Orlen and Pern pulled him to his feet and moved, holding him up when he stumbled. Anji followed, covering them. One look at Kiele’s back told her he was worse than he let on; dark blue blood stained the entire back of his shirt.

Melissa waited for them under the shadows of some trees as the edge of the park, two tall men with her, and a figure Anji recognized.

“Jane—”

“I’m here, sweetheart.” She clasped Anji’s hand. “We’ll take good care of your T’An. He isn’t the first to cross paths with those murdering bastards.”

Melissa stepped forward, the men next to her. “We have to carry him, and move fast. The patrol will be here soon, and he’ll be at the top of their look for list.”

Orlen frowned, but he didn’t say a word as the two men carefully lifted Kiele off his feet. They headed through the trees, and when Anji caught up, saw them ease Kiele into the first of two transports. Thank God—she was afraid they’d planned to carry him halfway across the city.

“Anji.” Jane gestured to her. She was steps from the second transport when sirens screamed through the air. “Hurry, before they have us tagged.”

That didn’t sound good.

Anji ignored her stiff, aching legs and ran, jumping into the transport. It started moving almost as soon as she landed.

“Hang on!” Nathan’s voice filtered back from the cockpit.

Anji took his advice and gripped the nearest handhold. Flashing red lights followed them, getting close. Too close. If they were caught, Kiele would die.

The transport made a sharp turn, throwing her across the small cabin. She bounced off the wall and rolled when they turned again, out of control.

“Anji—arm up!” She obeyed, and Melissa caught her wrist, pulling her toward the bench seats. “Come on—”

With the last of her strength, Anji hauled herself up and collapsed on the bench. Melissa grabbed the seat harness, and kept her from tumbling again when they took another hard turn.

“Thanks.” With shaking fingers, Anji buckled herself in.

“You’re bleeding.” She touched Anji’s temple. “It looks shallow, though. He’ll make it, Anji. He’s strong.”

“I—” She lowered her head, hiding the tears she couldn’t control any longer.

Melissa draped an arm across her shoulders, her presence a surprising comfort. Anji had never had female friends; between her aunt’s off putting personality, and Anji’s love of engines, she’d had very little in common with the girls in her neighborhood.

The transport jerked again, and merged into the traffic shooting along the throughway that ringed the city center. Now they looked like any other commuter, headed home after a long day. Hopefully, it was enough to keep the authorities from singling them out.

“Everyone okay back there?” Nathan glanced over his shoulder.

“Alive,” Melissa said. “Now keep your eyes on the road, Nate. We’re not out of it, yet.”

“Stop looking so guilty, Mel. You’re all just commuters, headed back to your parked transports after a long day.”

The sirens went silent the second they hit the throughway, making the authority vehicles harder to detect. Whoever was in charge of tracking them down was not stupid—unmarked transports, blending into traffic. They could be right on top of Anji’s transport—or Kiele’s—before Nathan knew they were there.

But he was making it just as hard. He’d swung into the commuter lane right away, and now wore a hat that Anji recognized—it marked him as a commute driver, shuttling workers to their designated parking spot. It may just fool the authorities long enough for them to—

“Hold on.” Nathan warned them a second before he turned left—across five lanes of oncoming traffic.

“Shit—” Melissa grabbed the back of the bench seat with one hand and Anji with the other. “Try not to kill us, Nathan!”

“Not on the schedule.” He swerved around honking transports—so close Anji could have reached out and shook hands with the drivers—then slipped between two transports and shot off the throughway onto one of the branching exits that led into the residential parts of the city.

Anji scanned the road. “Where’s the other transport?”

“Rick’s going around the other way. He knows where to meet us. Now look like tired cubicle workers.”

Nathan settled back, driving like he was bored, and not on the run. Since she needed to do something, Anji untied her hair and braided it, her fingers plaiting the length without even thinking about it. When she started to tie off the end, she caught Melissa’s admiring gaze.

“I’ve had long hair most of my life. Braiding it is like second nature—I could do it in my sleep.”

“It’s so thick, and perfect.” Melissa tugged at her shoulder length hair. “Mine starts looking like a cat clawed it if I go much longer.”

Anji flipped the braid over her shoulder. “This also gets caught on everything, I can’t sleep with it loose, and it snarls if I look at it wrong.”

“Why do you keep it?”

“I need something to let me feel like I’m still female. In my profession, I work with men, all day.” She shoved at her long bangs. “Having hair I can take down at a moment’s notice that screams I’m a woman helps keep me from becoming androgynous.”

She lost Melissa halfway through the sentence—and realized why a second later. Melissa had seen her scar.

“How did you—”

“Childhood injury.” Anji turned away after she said it, not wanting to relieve the day she lost her parents.

“I’m sorry if I offended you.” After a pause, she touched Anji’s shoulder. “I won’t ask again.”

“You can.” With a sigh, Anji turned, already sorry for her abrupt attitude. “I’ll be happy to tell you, Melissa—after I know Kiele is safe. This scar,” she lifted her bangs to reveal it, and saw Jane, sitting on Melissa’s other side, lean forward to look at it. “This represents the worst day of my childhood, and I can’t have that weight on my heart, not when Kiele needs me.”

“You’re the strongest person I ever met. With you in his corner, he’ll make it.”

Tears gathered in Anji’s eyes, tears she couldn’t control. Again. Melissa hugged her, awkward in the confines of the shoulder strap. It felt good to lean on someone else, even for a minute. Her aunt had believed in self-sufficiency, and open affection was never a part of Anji’s life growing up. She knew that need for affection, and Kiele giving it freely, was part of the reason she fell so hard for him, so fast.

But most of the reason was him.

I just found him—please, I can’t lose him. Not now.

The transport jerked to a halt. Anji wiped her eyes, fumbling at the buckle. By the time Nathan opened the door she was on her feet.

“Kiele—”

“The other T’An are taking him inside. We already have water for him, from the source under the lab. Since the T’An live in the city they built there, we figured it would be safe for him.”

She followed Nathan into a small house, indistinguishable from the other houses lining the quiet street. Until she stepped inside, and walked into what looked like a war room. Orlen stood at the far end, and her heart skipped when she saw the tall, rectangular glass tank. She ran across the room, dodging around anyone who didn’t move out of her way fast enough.

Orlen caught her arm when she skidded to a halt. “He is alive, Anji.”

Her knees threatened to buckle. She locked them, and pressed one hand against the thick glass. Kiele floated in the water, his body stripped down, his blood tinting the water blue.

“He’s still bleeding—”

“He will, until his gills are clear of it. Then we will change the water, let him immerse as long as we can.” Orlen took her hands, and the care of his movements told her that she didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. “Kiele stopped breathing before we arrived. No,” he held her tight when she tried to jerk free. “The water revived him, but I am afraid it will take longer than we have for him to recover enough to leave it.”

“What do you mean, leave it?” she whispered. Her throat felt raw, like she’d vocalized all the screaming she’d been doing in her head.

“Please, sit with me.” He led her to a small sofa that had been pushed against the wall, obviously to make room for the tank. “When a T’An is as close to death as Kiele, the recovery is not a simple immersion cycle. Were we on the ship, he would be sealed in a water chamber until we returned home. This is the closest we can manage, and he must remain, for as long as possible, to have a chance of recovering fully.”

“Thank you, for being honest with me.”

“I see his love for you. That you return his love has been made obvious, by not leaving him, even when you had the chance to do so, to save yourself.”

“You sure have a low opinion of humans.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I have met few humans worthy of high opinion.” To her shock, he leaned in and kissed her forehead. “You are part of a select group, Anji Suun Pearce.”

Before she could say anything, Orlen stood and moved over to the kitchen table, where another one of the people crowding the house worked over Pern’s shoulder. He looked like he needed some time in immersion himself, and she didn’t know where Orlen was in his…

Her breath caught as the realization struck her, like an unseen blow.

They had become important to her.

These gruff, often rude aliens had become her family. Anji blinked back more tears and pushed to her feet, moving to the tank. More blood darkened the water, almost obscuring Kiele. Behind him, she saw several men hauling in buckets of water. Strangers, treating him like he mattered.

She pressed her hand to the cold glass. “We got lucky, Kiele.”

***

The next twenty
four hours felt like days.

Anji wandered the living room, wearing a borrowed, too big dress, her hand closed around the screwdriver in her pocket as she watched the people who took them in plan and replan the best way to infiltrate the lab. Melissa had returned Anji’s screwdriver, after holding it for her while she tended Kiele in the underground lab. She also learned that Melissa had tried to escape the lab twice before her successful attempt. That she came back for Anji, and agreed to return again for Kiele, made her the most courageous woman Anji had ever met.

After a restless night, Anji was ready to crawl into the nearest bed by the time they all sat down for dinner.

“Come on, sweetheart, before you fall asleep in your food.” Jane stood next to her, one hand held out.

Grateful, Anji took it and stood, following her across the living room. She halted at the tank and leaned against the cold glass. The men had changed the water three times, keeping Kiele in a bathtub. Anji had sat with him, holding his icy hand. Even now, he was still unconscious, his body in a T’An version of a coma. Orlen told her, more than once, that it was their way of healing deep wounds, and not uncommon.

She forced herself to believe him.

“Goodnight, Kiele,” she whispered. “I’m right here, and I’m not going anywhere without you. I love you.” She laid her forehead against the glass, watched him float. His dolphin pendant hung in the water, the abalone shell that made up the sun flashing in the overhead light. Her heart eased when she saw that his face had more color than before dinner, and the gills on his left side had finally stopped bleeding. The still clear water proved that. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

After a minute, she pushed away from the tank and followed Jane through the doorway leading to the bedrooms. She had the one closest to the living room, in case Kiele woke up during the night. Once again, guilt nudged her at the thought of kicking someone else out of their bedroom, but she couldn’t apologize personally, since no one was claiming the room as theirs.

Jane brushed the long bangs off her forehead and pressed a gentle kiss there. “Get some sleep, Anji. If Kiele wakes, someone will come for you.”

“Jane.” She paused in the doorway, one hand on the brass knob. “Thank you, for taking us in.”

“Your Kiele is the reason we have Melissa back. He more than earned our assistance. This is also our time to remove that murder factory for good. Sleep now, honey.”

Jane closed the door, and left Anji with only her thoughts. They weren’t enough to keep her awake for long; minutes after she slipped out of the oversized dress and climbed into bed, exhaustion pulled her under.

***

Cool fingers slid
down Anji’s bare arm, jerked her out of sleep.