Blue Dawn (20 page)

Remembering himself, and the duty he had deliberately shunted aside yesterday, he flattened the smile. “I know,” he responded slowly. “But I’d better go. There are several personal and business matters I must deal with today. I’m sorry.”

Wistfully his gaze traveled the face he’d come to know so intimately over the past few days and weeks. The pert nose, the soft, teasing lips, those wonderful freckles and eyes and tousled hair. A sharp spasm of pain constricted his chest. He hated disappointing Allie. He hated hurting her.

You should have told her!
His conscience nattered at him, reminding him of what he knew without a doubt. Once she’d admitted her love for him, while she was besotted with him, physically, emotionally, mentally, he should have revealed her inescapable destiny.

He drew her closer, reluctant to lose the warmth and love they’d shared all night.

He closed his eyes. He’d certainly had ample opportunity to tell her. Failing that, he should have waited until she slept, and transported them both to the Idlanta III. He could have made explanations after the abduction was a
fait
accomplis
.

But every moment he’d chosen—
chosen
—to let pass.

He withdrew from Allie and held her at arm’s length. He reached out and twisted a strand of red-gold hair around his finger, watching with wonder as her pout turned into a smile. It was a miracle to him how a simple touch could have so much effect on another human being.

But you’re not human!
that annoying voice nattered in the back of his head.
And you’d best
heed that important fact.

He swallowed. He knew full well why he hadn’t told Allie the truth, why he hadn’t abducted her while she slept. He hadn’t told her because he was enjoying being human—being human with her—with all the affection, love-making, passion and laughter it entailed. Allie had reached him on a level he hadn’t known existed.

And he—despite everything he knew and a lifetime of training—had responded to it. He had forgotten who and what he was.

He continued to study her, his expression neutral. He had to leave now, if only to get control of himself, and to prepare for what was destined to follow. He had to tell her the truth, and soon, a truth he was finally starting to see that she might refuse to accept.

Finally he spoke. “I’ll see you tomorrow. At work.”

Disappointment filled her eyes. He rushed to soften the blow. “And after, too.”

He leaned forward and kissed her, savoring every second. Then he straightened and walked to the door.

As he stepped into the hallway, an unbidden thought cut into him: Once Allie knew the truth, would she ever kiss him like that again?

Forty minutes later, Erik parked the leased Jag near the Lincoln Monument in south Lincoln Park.

He got out, then locked up and headed north on foot past the Bath House and North Avenue Beach. When he reached Diversey Harbor, he watched the boats coming and going, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the summer sun and breathing deeply of the damp, hot air.

Through the morning, into the sweltering heat of the midday sun and early afternoon, Erik walked, and walked, and walked. If not for his hurried step, his distracted air and lack of attention to his surroundings, he could have been a tourist trying to squeeze in the sights and sounds of Chicago’s lakeshore in a hurry.

In the late evening he returned to his room at the lakeside apartment hotel, no closer to quelling the questions and conflicting emotions that had dogged him all day, still not ready to do what had to be done. Instead, he paced back and forth from the kitchenette to the bed.

Inside a battle unlike any he had ever fought raged between his heart and head, between his Earthly and Zalian tendencies. On the one side was Allie, and all the love and happiness she had brought into a life he had never realized before was so barren. On the other side were duty, destiny, order, and everything he had lived with and believed in since the day he was born. The incredible happiness he had experienced on Earth warred with his long-held belief in the superiority of the Zalian way.

Why haven’t I told her?
he asked himself again and again. It had all seemed so simple when he had planned his campaign back on Zura. He would make her acquaintance. He would tell her of the far superior Zura and his homeland of Zalia.

Despite her Earthly failings, she would immediately recognize not only his superiority, but the superiority of Zalia. She would recognize her destiny and acquiesce to his demand she accompany him back to Zura as his mate. He would simply and easily avoid the devastation his grandfather had inflicted on his grandmother.

Erik halted his pacing and stood on the balcony. From here he could see Lake Michigan and the dark horizon where it met the sky. The evening lights shone up into the navy sky, reflected again and again in the dark waters, and creating a far more beautiful sight than anything he had ever seen on his own polluted planet. The scene inspired a wistfulness he was only beginning to understand, a wistfulness he knew was connected with Allie and the deeply-buried emotions her loving had unearthed in him.

With the uncompromising honesty that was as much a part of him as the emotions he was just discovering, he faced up to the truth. He hadn’t told Allie because he doubted she would react in the docile, acquiescent manner he had originally expected. After what he’d seen and experienced, he doubted even love for him would convince her to forsake the beauty of Earth forever, and the family and life that meant so much to her.

He stood still at the rail of the balcony, his hands clenched at this side. Equally disturbing were his doubts about the rightness and the superiority of the Zalian way, doubts that kept surfacing despite his best efforts to quell them.

Doubts heightened by the dismaying image revealed by the crystal, the image of a blank, emotionless Allie. An image he knew he didn’t like.

Was Zalia so superior after all? he wondered.

He shuddered at his heresy. Certainly, scientifically, technologically and organizationally, he had no doubt about its superiority in these areas.

But in matters of the heart? In personal relations? In family life? In simple physical beauty? He didn’t know any more and he feared what he might find if he probed too deeply.

What he did know was that he had never felt as wonderful as he had last night. Never been so loved, or so happy. Never been so immersed in another person. Never felt so connected, so accepted. At home, he had always known he was not the same as the others, that something held him apart. He had hoped fulfilling his destiny would change that once and for all.

He grimaced, pulling back from the revelations he might find if his thoughts continued in this vein. He glanced at his watch. He was late.

Woodenly he left the balcony and went to the closet. He retrieved a suitcase, and from an inside pocket his communicator, a small black device similar in appearance to what Earthlings called a cellular phone. But that, and the fact it was a communications device, were the only similarities.

What this piece of machinery did was heighten thousands of times over the telepathic powers belonging to many Zalians, thereby making possible communications such as the one he was about to embark on to the commander of the Zalian vessel orbiting Earth right now behind the moon. A communication, he thought with a grimace, far removed from the telepathic love-making he’d unsuccessfully attempted with Allie.

Erik sat in the straight-backed chair by the desk. Carefully he cleared his mind of the emotional debris of the last few hours. He punched in a code on the device and concentrated on reaching Lorad, commander of Zalia’s lead intergalactic vessel, the Idlanta III. He, and several other Zalians on a variety of scientific and investigative missions in the star system that included Earth, were required to report regularly on their progress. With a grimace he remembered that his was the only mission requiring collection of a human specimen.

He wiped the distaste from his mind that thought had produced. He shut his eyes and concentrated, waiting for Lorad’s voice to enter his mind.

“Barak! You’re late.”

Even from such a great distance, the disembodied voice in Erik’s head sounded cold and grim.

“Yes.” Erik concentrated on that one word, not daring to waver from it for a second. To give excuses, to give any indication of his internal turmoil would serve only to threaten his mission with immediate abortion. If he wanted to succeed—and to succeed on terms that would hurt Allie as little as possible—he needed to remain cool and detached.

If Lorad was irritated by his one-word answer, nothing in the voice reverberating in Erik’s head indicated that.

“What is the status of your mission? Are you ready to transport the Earthling and yourself to our ship?”

“No. Not yet.” Erik focused on calmness as he calculated the longest he might string out his mission. “I think it will take another two weeks to complete this mission appropriately.”

“That is what you said two weeks ago. Most of the others have completed their assignments. You are running perilously close to the deadline for our departure. You know our supplies and mechanical circumstances will not allow us to delay. Is there a problem?”

Erik sensed suspicion in the other man’s mind.

If not for his own position as a commander in his own right in the anti-insurrection segment of Zalia’s forces, Erik would never have been able to win agreement to court his destined, rather than abruptly kidnap her. Even then, permission had been given only grudgingly.

“No. There is no problem.” Erik tread carefully.

“But humans are much more complicated than we realized. It is taking longer than I had planned to win the woman’s willingness.”

Lorad snorted, and his scorn echoed through Erik’s head. “I will never understand this desire you have to ”win” her acceptance. She is only an Earthling, after all. Have you mated with her yet?”

“Yes.” Erik checked his sinking heart. There was no point lying. To do so would only undermine his credibility. But the truth threatened to cut his time shorter still.

Silence followed. Then, “But you have not yet told the Earthling who you are and why you have come?”

“No.”

A series of tiny electrical shocks pricked his mind, like sparks from a loose wire, a clear indication of Lorad’s deepening suspicion. Few Zalians knew Erik was one quarter Earthling; Lorad was one of the few who did, and the knowledge had made him treat Erik with apprehension. Until now it had always been undeserved.

“Why not?”

Erik concentrated on keeping his returning thoughts as emotion-free as possible. “Human beings are more complicated than we on Zura have been lead to believe. You are aware, Lorad, that my own grandmother, an Earthling, suffered an incurable breakdown as a result of her abrupt kidnapping to Zura. I do not wish to inflict this fate on my destined mate.”

“I see. But as you indicated last week, and now tonight, two thirds of your strategy has been successfully completed. You have won the Earthling’s trust, and you have mated with her.

There is no reason not to take her now, willing or unwilling. Surely even the weakest of humans should be able to accept, and even embrace their destiny, especially a destiny with a superior being on a far superior planet.”

“But—”

“No buts. We have nothing further to discuss. I acknowledge your wish to refrain from disabling your destined one, but it is clear to me you have already taken steps to prevent that from happening. And I have been extremely generous in what I have allowed you. But no more.

Lorad’s voice grew louder. “You have exactly five days from today to complete your mission.

Then, willing or unwilling, the female shall be transported with you back to our vessel.

Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Abruptly the communication ended. Erik, alone and empty, stared down at the communicator in his hand.

Rain poured from leaden skies Wednesday morning, but it did nothing to dampen Allie’s spirits. Neither did the traffic snarls nor her slow progress through the rain-slicked downtown streets.

Her great mood continued on the elevator trip up to
The Streeter’s
editorial department. She breezed into the newsroom, smiling at every person within ten feet. She swung over to her desk and plopped down at her seat, ignoring the mess of papers and a sheaf of phone messages waiting for her. Nothing was going to impinge on her great mood. It hadn’t yesterday, and it wouldn’t today.

Because this time she was in love—really in love—and not with some playboy with a string of women on the side. Perhaps she still didn’t know enough about Erik, but in her heart she knew the important things. That he was honest. That she could trust him. That he truly loved her, even if he hadn’t said the words out loud. That he was the kind of man she had always wanted and needed, even if she hadn’t realized it until now.

Allie picked up her messages and flipped through them. There was Grace Firetta, the interview she’d missed Monday when that demented Klassen had pulled a gun on her. She was glad to hear the judge had remanded him in custody for a psychiatric assessment. And here was her contact in the Chicago police department.

An acquaintance who’d been pestering her for weeks about getting in on a new multi-level marketing company. And Joanne Carabini . . .

Allie frowned. “Please call, it’s important,”

whoever had taken the call had written under Madame Carabini’s name.

Allie sighed. She didn’t want to talk to the psychic. She didn’t want to hear any more intimations of dark doings in relation to Cody.

What she wanted was hard news that would actually help find him. The police still hadn’t come up with anything; neither had
The Streeter’s
police reporters. It was getting more and more painful to talk to Norah Walker every day. Cody’s disappearance was a dreadful thing, and not to be trivialized by a lot of hocus pocus.

Not only that, but Allie had forgotten to check Erik’s background. Not that she considered it important, but she
had
promised.