Her Imaginary Lover (2 page)

She continued to
shout for help as her hands mapped out her savior's torso. He was huge, with
bulging muscles, and she felt several days' worth of beard growth underneath
her questing digits when she traced his jaw. Full lips, pressed together
tightly, told her of the pain he was in. A strong nose, wide eyes, and shoulder
length hair that half covered his face.

"Who are
you?" she asked, and the man groaned under the silent exploration of her
hands. She traced her palms lower over the tightly packed pectorals and the
ridges and valleys of his abdomen. Heat rose in her cheeks when she met the
neatly trimmed nest of hair that signaled his groin, and she hastily pulled her
hands away. Nonetheless velvet covered steel met her briefly, and the man
groaned again.

"Why are
you naked?" she whispered. "What's going on?"

Instead of
answering her, her savior struggled to sit up, and drew her shivering form to
him. Instantly her body heated. He was so warm, and he smelled divine. Like
home, like
Kaylom
. But it couldn't be? Was he back
after all this time?

"
Kaylom
?
Is that you?"

He didn't answer
her, just pulled her closer to him, until sirens screamed in the distance, and
then she was pulled out of his arms.

"Miss, are
you all right? Where have you been hurt? We need the paramedics here now. That
one seems dead." They pulled her away, and she screamed and fought them,
but it was useless.

Her eyelids were
lifted to check her responses, and a blanket was wrapped around her. Gentle
hands ran over her body as if to check for injuries, but no one listened to
her.

"We need to
see where the blood is coming from. There's the head injury, but she's covered
in blood."

"No, no,
it’s not mine. You need to help him." She tried to sit up, to tell them
that she was okay. It was
Kaylom
that needed their
help, but it was useless. An oxygen mask covered her face, and then there was a
scratch in her arm and then nothing…

Nothing
but darkness and despair.

****
                                                                

Kaylom
inhaled sharply
as he pulled the knife out of his side. It hurt like a fucking bitch, but not
as much as seeing his Macie carted off in an ambulance. What would have
happened to her had he not shifted into her dimension just then didn't bear
thinking about. He couldn't even say what had made him do so. He'd been in the
human realm rarely since she'd told him to leave. It was too fucking painful to
be there and not to be able to touch her, to talk to her, to make sure she was
safe. He'd broken all the rules by engaging with her in the first place. But
how could he resist when she not only sensed him, but accepted him as though he
was real. Which of course he was, but humans couldn't see his race.

The
Athurons
had co-existed with humans since the beginning of
time, and after some disastrous consequences in ancient times, contact was
strictly forbidden. It never ended well when humans and
Athurons
mingled, yet, like countless youngsters before him,
Kaylom
had not been able to resist taking a peek at the human world in person. The
first shift always took them by surprise, and in his case, he'd found himself
in little Macie's bedroom. The small girl had been crying silently under her
duvet, but she'd stopped and sat up, and looked straight at him. It had freaked
him out somewhat, but her next words had stunned him.

"Hello, I'm
Macie. Who are you?"

Not an ounce of
fear had shown on her face, just curiosity, and relief at not being on her own
anymore. The two of them had become firm friends, and shared many adventures,
but
Kaylom
was two years older than she, and as Macie
reached puberty, things changed. He knew he had to distance himself, had been
ordered to, in fact, by his father, and when Macie turned on him, he'd left.

That had been
fifteen years ago, and in his absence a teenage Macie had grown into a
beautiful woman with curves in all the right places. Humans would no doubt
still call her fat.
Kaylom
never understood the
obsession with skinny women in this dimension. In his realm women were
celebrated regardless of their size, and his personal preference had always
been toward more voluptuous women. Females were meant to be soft and yielding,
with flesh to hold onto while…

Kaylom
cursed under
his breath at the dangerous direction his thoughts were taking. He had no
business thinking of Macie along those lines, no matter how easily she'd fitted
against the hard planes of his body.

Kaylom
pressed his
hand to the gaping wound and concentrated on healing. Thanks to their different
atmospheres wounds sustained in the human realm rarely lasted, and sure enough
this one closed slowly until only the blood stains showed where he'd once been
hurt.

The fine drizzle
turned into a downpour, and he lifted his face into the rain to welcome its
cleansing effect. Around him the humans went about the business of marking out
the spot where the body of the man he'd killed had lain. They collected their
evidence, completely oblivious to his presence. He should feel some sort of
remorse at having killed the human, but only disgust coursed through his veins.
That scumbag had his hands all over Macie, and
Kaylom
had no doubt that they would have raped and killed her had he not intervened.

Her scent still
clung to his skin and filled his nostrils, and he turned away from the crime
scene. They'd taken her to the hospital, and he would fetch a ride in one of
the remaining ambulances. Unseen he slipped in the back and out again once they
were at Accident & Emergency. It took only a matter of moments to find her
bed station.

Still
unconscious and hooked up to far too many wires for his liking, Macie looked
pale and fragile. Her mass of raven hair fanned out across the starched white
hospital cushion, and her slim hand was clasped in an iron grip by her mother.
Jenny Johann was an older, silver haired version of Macie, and tears clung to
her eyelashes and ran down her wrinkled cheeks. Macie's father, Trevor, looked
all set to give himself a heart attack. Face bright red with barely concealed
rage, he paced the narrow space and muttered to himself.

"I told her
this office in the beat up part of town was a bad move. Does anyone in this
bloody family listen to me?
Of course not.
She needs
help.
Wandering around in her condition.
It's not
right. If I was twenty years younger…"

Kaylom
bit back a
smirk and slid around the portly man until he could stand on the other side of
Macie. Macie's parents had aged considerably in the years he hadn't seen them,
but one thing remained. Their suffocating need to make sure Macie was safe. It
had been a constant source of frustration to the younger Macie. Her parents
meant well, but they'd kept her on a tight leash of supervision, and not much
had changed as far as
Kaylom
could ascertain.

Trevor pounced
on the approaching nurse who took down Macie's vitals.

"Why isn't
she waking up? This can't be right. What the hell is going on? No one is
telling us anything."

The nurse, Lucy,
according to her name tag, smiled and continued taking Macie's pulse.

"Mr.
Johann, I can assure you this is quite normal. Apart from mild concussion and
cuts and bruises your daughter seems unharmed. The doctor gave her a sedative
when she arrived as she appeared quite agitated. Now, I'm sure this will wear
off very soon, and the very best thing you can do for her right now is remain
calm and let her sleep. Her body will heal, but she had quite a shock. She'll
be taken up to the ward in a minute as we'll be keeping her in overnight for
observation, but there is no reason to suspect any lasting physical
damage."

"It's not
her body I'm worried about. It's her mind," Trevor said, and
Kaylom
barely suppressed a growl. Here they went again.

"Trevor."
Jenny's annoyed whisper as she straightened up to her full five foot nothing
frame stopped the big bear of her husband instantly. It had always amused
Kaylom
how Macie's diminutive mother could quell anyone
with just one of
those
looks. Even though she couldn't see him and
therefore never directed those looks at him, he still shuffled on his feet and
suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands. It didn't help that he couldn’t
wear clothes in this dimension. With Macie this close to him, her scent pulled
him under, and his body was all too aware of her with predictable consequences.
It seemed wrong somehow to stand mere feet away from her parents with a hard-on
to rival a porn star's.

Kaylom
grinned at his
predicament and willed his dick to behave, with mediocre success.

"Don't
start this again, Trevor. She's not a little girl anymore," Jenny said.

Her husband
stopped his pacing and glared at her.

"Don’t you
think I know that? If she were I would still be able to keep her safe, not have
her live on her own and put
herself
at risk like
that."

Jenny swiped
away another tear and took a step closer to her husband. He took a deep breath
when she put both hands on his chest and smiled up at him.

"I know,
Trev
, but she's a grown woman now with a thriving practice.
She's blind not incapable, and this could have happened to anybody. Thank
goodness there was someone there to save her."

Trevor tensed
anew and shook his wife's hands off.

"Yes, and
that is my point. You heard what she said, what she called him."

They both
glanced across and looked straight at him, and
Kaylom
held his breath. He knew they couldn't see him, but nonetheless the worry in
their eyes was hard to take. This was why he had left the first time after all.
He didn't want to be the cause of any trouble between Macie and her parents. He
knew he needed to leave again, but first he had to make sure Macie was okay.

"Yes, the
paramedic who brought her in said she seemed to know who saved her. Someone
called
Kaylom
?" Nurse Lucy asked, and wrote
something in Macie's notes. "She seemed very worried about him and said
he'd been injured." She looked from Trevor to Jenny and back again and
pursed her lips.

"If you
know who he might be and where we can find him, the police would be most
interested in speaking to him to shine some light on what's happened. Most, if
not all of the blood covering your daughter wasn't hers, so he clearly was
injured in the attack and must be in need of medical attention."

Kaylom
tensed anew as
Trevor paled and shook his head.

"No, you
don’t understand. This
Kaylom
is just a figment of
her imagination. He's not real. And that's my point. What if this attack has
brought all that shit back again. I can't stand to see her talking to herself
again like she used to."

To her credit
Nurse Lucy took this revelation in her stride.

"Well,
whoever saved your daughter is very real. He killed a man, and he bled
profusely. The police recovered a bloodied knife at the scene, and it was
covered in the same blood-like substance that covered your daughter."

"Blood-like
substance?"
Jenny asked.

"Yes, we're
running some tests, but it doesn’t seem to be human blood. The police are
looking into it, and I've really said too much already, but I wanted to put
your mind at rest so to speak. There was someone there, either this
Kaylom
or, well … who knows. I'm sure there's a perfectly
reasonable explanation. For now, I would suggest you go home, grab some things
for her overnight stay, and by the time you get back she'll no doubt be awake
and much more coherent."

Lucy smiled at
them and left them alone in the cubicle.

Trevor swore
under his breath, and Jenny, too, tensed.

"If he's
not a figment of her imagination, then what the fuck is he?"

Chapter Two

Macie blinked to
try to moisten her gritty eyes. Everything hurt, and there was an annoying beep
in her ear. What the hell was going on?

"Darling,
you're awake.
Finally.
How you're feeling?"

Macie winced as
her mother's excited words seemed to echo around her skull, and she carefully
cracked one eye open and turned into the direction of her mother's voice. To
reassure her further she tried to form her lips into the semblance of a smile,
even as the events that led to her lying on a hospital bed flooded back into
her consciousness with alarming clarity.

Kaylom
.
Had he really
been there, saved her?