Alien Protector: Sci-Fi Alien Invasion Paranormal Romance (3 page)

“Which is basically the same as you coming back empty handed,” Plintos snapped. “Again.”

Draco was taken aback by his tone, and he stepped closer. “What’s the matter with you, Plintos? The people are concerned. They say you haven’t been seen outside of the palace in days, and I’m sure you’ve been holed up in here the entire time.”

“What’s the matter with me?” Plintos repeated. “What’s the
matter
with me? Can you even hear yourself, Draco?”

“Can you hear
yourself
?” Draco shot back. “You’re acting like this is the end of the world. I understand, Plintos, I do. You want to have all three. You want to be the first king since before we learned how to get off this planet to have all the Artifacts because that’s something to be proud of. I understand that. But you’re acting like a lunatic right now. When’s the last time you ate, Plintos? Or slept? And I don’t mean hunched over a table and pouring over a tome. I mean when’s the last time you went to your rooms and slept in your bed?”

“You can’t speak to me like that,” Plintos hissed, and the tension in the room grew that much thicker. “I’m your king.”

“And before you were ever my king, you were my brother,” Draco said before he could stop himself.

Plintos got up suddenly, his chair skidding back and then falling to the floor with a crash. His eyes were fiery when he turned, and it was very clear that he hadn’t been sleeping or eating well at all since the last time Draco had seen him. There were dark smudges under his eyes, and his face looked gaunt, skin even paler than usual. His fury seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright at the moment. He was clearly not well, and Draco was worried and frustrated all over again.

“You don’t understand!” Plintos shouted, hands balled into fists at his sides.

“Of course I don’t understand. You won’t tell me anything. You just keep sending me out again and again to chase something we may never actually
find.
What if someone else already found it? What if it was scattered further than we can reach?”

“No!” Plintos said. “No. I refuse to believe that. You’re just not looking hard enough.”

“We’ve combed every planet from here to Tellar,” Draco replied, voice flat. “I think it’s safe to say we’re looking hard enough. It’s just not there.”

His words seemed to take the fight out of Plintos who sagged and swayed in place. Draco swore under his breath and moved closer to him, supporting him with one arm. “Draco,” Plintos murmured, and he sighed.

“I’m here. Let’s get you out of here, alright? You need food and rest.”

Plintos nodded and let himself be maneuvered out of the tower and down the stairs.

Draco left strict instructions with the servants that the king was not to be disturbed or allowed out of his rooms for the rest of the night. The two of them clearly needed to have a conversation, but Draco didn’t think either of them were in the right frame of mind for it that night. He needed sleep himself, and he made a promise that he would go see Plintos first thing in the morning and get to the bottom of whatever was going on.

And really, he shouldn’t have been surprised when that didn’t happen at all.

The next morning found him waking up to the sound of pounding at his door, and he groaned and called for whoever it was to enter.

A blushing Daebtheri servant girl bowed to him, averting her eyes from his bare chest. “Begging your pardon,” she said. “But his Majesty is calling for you. He says it’s urgent.”

Draco groaned again and pulled his pillow over his face, muffling the cursing that he was doing. After a moment he pulled the pillow down and found a weak smile for the girl. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

She bowed and made herself scarce, and Draco got out of bed and got dressed, taking his time so that when he saw the king, he wouldn’t strangle him.

He marched to Plintos’ rooms, which were not far from his, and pushed the doors open without knocking, glaring in the direction of the king’s bed. “Do you have any idea what time it is?” he demanded. “Or how tired I am? Just because you’re dedicated to never getting enough sleep and running yourself and the rest of us ragged-”

“Draco,” Plintos interrupted, raising a hand to silence him. “Look.” He pointed that same hand to the screen on the wall of his room, fingers trembling.

Draco frowned and stepped in, closing the door behind him. He couldn’t imagine what could be on the screen that would make Plintos summon him at such an absurd hour of the morning, but when he saw it, his eyes widened.

There, on the screen, which seemed to be getting a feed from Earth of all places, was the final Artifact. From what he could tell, the story was about how they had uncovered it and had taken it to a museum to study.

“But...how?” Draco asked.

“I don’t know,” Plintos replied. “I honestly don’t. There’s nothing in any of the books I’ve read even suggesting that one of them could have made it all the way to Earth.”

“But there it is,” Draco said. And it was without a doubt the last one they were looking for. The blade was shiny and bright, just like it was in all the images in Plintos’ books, and the runes on the blade could be seen on the screen, though Draco couldn’t get a good enough look at them to read and see what they said.

“I know you just got back,” Plintos murmured, and he actually did look repentant.

It was a lot to ask. Most of his crew were worn out from the almost nonstop back and forth they had been doing, but Draco could see the prudence in going now. It would take almost a week to get to Earth from where they were, and if it left the place it was now, then there was no telling if they’d be able to find it again.

“I’ll go,” Draco said. “Just me.”

“Draco. You can’t do that. You’ve never been to Earth before.”

“It’s like all the other inhabited planets isn’t it?” Draco asked. “There should be someone there who can help me. I’m not going to ask the crew to come with me for this, but I’m not going to wait either. I know it means a lot to you, and if it leaves this place they’re taking it to who knows where it will end up. It has to be now.”

Plintos looked torn, but Draco already knew he was going to get his way when it came to this. He wanted the Artifact bad enough that he was going to let Draco go alone to retrieve it.

“Alright,” he said finally. “Alright. But you need to be careful. This is the last one, so just get it and come straight back.”

“Of course. What else would I do? Go sightseeing while I’m there? Earth isn’t like the other planets I’ve been to. I know enough to know that. Humans are an entirely different thing, no matter how much we look like them.”

Plintos sniffed at that. “Some might say that
they
look like
us
.”

“That’s beside the point. I’m not planning on staying long. It might take me a few days to figure out how to get the thing without them noticing and shooting me, but I’ll get it.”

“I know you will,” Plintos replied. He dropped his eyes to his lap and then looked back up at him. “Draco, I...I’m sorry for yesterday. I wasn’t in my right mind, and I shouldn’t have said those things to you.”

Draco smiled and shook his head. “It’s fine, Plintos. Consider it forgotten. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a trip to plan for.”

Chapter 2: The Discovery

Stephanie Baker smiled at her reflection in the mirror and adjusted her glasses on her face. She smoothed down her blouse and checked the creases in her pants before pulling her ID card on its lanyard over her head. It marked her as one of the interns working at the Carperville Museum of Science and History, a job which she was all too pleased to have snagged.

She was working on her Master’s degree in History, so the job was perfect for her, and she loved being one of those people who enjoyed getting up and going to work in the mornings.

While classes were over for the summer, she found herself at the museum every day, helping to give tours as well as handling some of the administrative tasks. The pay wasn’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but she always told herself that the experience and the learning made it more than worth it.

Stephanie was always excited to go to work, but that day she was more excited than usual. They’d
found
something.

Well. Not her. She hadn’t found anything, since that was definitely not a part of her job description, but she would get to look at whatever it was the team who had done the actual digging had found.

Those were the best kinds of days. When the researchers were trying to figure out what it was that the team had brought in. As part of her internship, they sometimes let her watch while they worked and allowed her to ask questions and get a close look at the find. Even though she had no idea what they’d brought in this time or where it had come from, she was hoping that this would be one of the times when she was allowed to observe.

Satisfied with her clothes, she pulled her strawberry blonde hair up into a ponytail and grabbed her purse and keys, doing a quick check to make sure she had her phone and tablet and wallet before she was heading out the door.

Steph was definitely a morning person, and she paused to inhale the cool, damp morning air, watching the last traces of morning mist linger around her car and the trees before the sun burned it off.

Her morning routine was always the same. Get up, shower, get dressed, drive to the drive thru coffee shop a few blocks down from her house for coffee and a bagel sandwich and then head on to work. It took her exactly twenty-seven minutes to get breakfast and make it to work when there was no traffic, and she was always sipping the last dregs of her coffee and crumbling the plastic from her sandwich by the time she stepped out of her car and made the walk up to the museum. Both the cup and the wrapper went in the trashcan that stood at the curb, and she was brushing any crumbs from her hands and clothes by the time she hit the stairs that led up to the gilded double doors.

She checked her reflection in the shiny glass of the doors and then pulled one open, stepping immediately into the air conditioned lobby. They weren’t open to the public yet, so the lobby was quiet, safe from the sounds of people going about their jobs. Calla was stocking the cash register, ready to assist people in purchasing tickets for the exhibits, and there was Donald, walking the shiny floor and giving it a once over to make sure the night crew had waxed and cleaned it to perfection.

Her boss was nowhere to be seen for the moment, and she was pleased with that, not ready to deal with him just yet. He was the one dark part of an otherwise perfect job, and Stephanie liked to pretend that he didn’t exist whenever she could.

Inhaling and squaring her shoulders, she made her way across the floor.

“Steph!”

No sooner had she crossed the polished floor than her name was being called. She looked up and smiled at Nate, one of the researchers who had taken her under his wing when she’d started working there, who was leaning over the railing of the stairs waving at her with a grin on his face.

“Good morning,” she called back, waving. “What’s the emergency?”

“No emergency, just come and see!”

Her grin doubled in brightness at that, and she took the stairs two at a time, hurrying to catch up with him. “Is it the new find?” she asked, a bit out of breath when she reached him.

He nodded. “It’s extraordinary. Like nothing we’ve seen before, actually. We haven’t made that much progress yet since it just came in yesterday, but already we’ve pretty much figured out that we don’t have anything to compare it to.”

Steph’s eyes widened at that. “Really? What is it?”

“It’s a weapon, we’re pretty sure. Looks like a blade from a sword. I told Simone that you would have a better description for us, little miss weapons expert.”

She laughed at that. “I’m not an expert. I just know a lot about swords. But I can’t wait to see it.”

And she didn’t have to wait long. They went up another set of stairs and then into the quieter office area. Past that were the labs where things were cleaned and worked on before being put out for people to see.

Through the clear glass of the large windows, she could see a couple of the researchers in their white coats and gloves, touching something that shone brightly even from where she was standing. “It's been cleaned already?” she asked.

Nate nodded. “A bit, but it was that shiny when it was brought in. We haven’t even attempted to try and figure out what it’s made of yet, but we know it’s not iron or bronze just from looking at it. Maybe some kind of silver, but we’d have to run some tests.”

“Incredible,” Steph breathed. “Where would it have come from if they were making weapons out of
silver
?”

“We’re not sure. Thing is, it’s definitely old, but we have no idea how old or what we’re looking at. This could be quite the find.”

The prospect of something that no one had ever found before had Steph excited, and she couldn’t help but drift towards the glass of the window, nose nearly pressed right up against it as she peered at the process and tried to get a better look. She could hear Nate chuckling behind her, and he held out a pair of gloves to her and then jerked his head towards the door. “Get in there. I want to hear your thoughts on this.”