Blue Dawn (27 page)

Wanda dumped the contents of the dustpan into the garbage. She put down the broom. “Does that mean you
are
going to elope?”

Allie shook her head. “No.”

She moved towards her sister, too aware of the pain and suffering she would be putting her through soon, the same pain she had seen again and again during interviews with brothers and sisters and parents of those who had disappeared without trace.

She put her arms around Wanda and hugged her close. “It just means that I love you,” she whispered. “I love you and I always will. I want you to remember that, no matter what.”

With a start, Allie realized she was repeating the same words that Erik had said to her before he’d revealed he was an alien. She closed her eyes briefly and tightened her arms around her sister.

Then she withdrew and picked up her dish towel.

“Hey. We’re never going to get the dishes done at this rate.”

Erik hung back a couple of feet from Allie, as he had all evening at Wanda and Connor’s home. And every day that week. He watched as she felt for her keys in the pocket of her skirt, withdrew them and inserted the key in the lock.

As she opened the door to her apartment, Sharkey poked his gray head through the opening and mewed piteously. Allie immediately bent down and scooped him into her arms.

She straightened, holding the little cat close.

She stroked him and nuzzled him as if he meant more to her than anything in the world. “How’s my little guy? Did you miss me?” she murmured.

Jealously gushed through Erik. Allie hadn’t let him near her, hadn’t let him touch her all week, though he’d ached to be close to her, to try to make her realize that her fate wasn’t the death sentence she seemed to think it was. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him or to let him close to her in any way. She had erected an invisible barrier around herself, and her heart, one that he could not penetrate despite constant attempts.

His jealousy gave way to disgust as he realized what he was doing.
I’m jealous of a cat, by the light
of Oridian. A cat!
He called on all his Zalian powers of control to bring things into perspective.

Had he sunk this low, had he been so infected by Earthly emotions that he could not accept and savor his victory? Was this what his far-too-human love for Allie had done?

He looked at Allie again. Immediately his anger and disgust evaporated. He watched her stroke and coo to the cat. Yes. But he couldn’t regret it for a minute. He wouldn’t. No matter what Zalian custom dictated. He loved Allie, and he loved the new world of affection and passion and emotion he had discovered within her and within himself.

Even a return to Zura and his homeland of Zalia wouldn’t change that. He frowned and tried to dismiss the crystal’s disturbing image of Allie that immediately came to mind. He wouldn’t let it be like that. He would do everything in his power to see that Zalia didn’t destroy the very things he loved about Allie the most.

“Can I bring him with me?”

Erik realized that Allie had addressed him, not the cat. “Pardon?”

“I said, can I bring Sharkey with me?”

“To Zura?”

She nodded.

Erik frowned again. He hated to deny Allie something as small as this. He had already denied her so much. But, as with the fulfillment of their destiny, there was no choice.

“I’m sorry. You can’t bring him,” he said quietly. A sudden vision of the bird he had cared for lying dead at his feet—the closest thing he’d ever had to a pet—made him cringe inside. “We—

people don’t have pets on Zura, at least not in Zalia. Emotional attachments to other people are barely acceptable, much less attachments to animals. He’ll—Sharkey will be safer here.”

His voice dropped lower as he repeated the things he knew she didn’t want to hear. “I told you earlier you can’t bring anything beyond the clothes you wear at the time of departure. And to prevent contamination, even those will be destroyed as soon as we reach the spaceship.”

Her gaze, which had never quite met his, dropped to the cat. But not before he saw the glimmer of tears.

His chest tightened. Impulsively he moved towards her.

Immediately she turned away. “Well, goodnight.”

Erik halted. “You’re not going to ask me in?”

She kept her back to him. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I want to be alone.”

“But—”

She whirled around to face him, Sharkey still clutched in her arms. This time he couldn’t pretend he didn’t see the tears.

“Isn’t it enough that I’ve agreed to go with you?” she demanded, her voice breaking. “Isn’t it enough that I’ve agreed to leave everything and everyone behind that I love? Isn’t it enough that I’ll never be able to communicate with them, never be able to let them know what’s happened to me?

And all because of your damn destiny!”

Her bottom lip jutted out, but the tears gave her away. “Well, I want tonight alone. And tomorrow. And every minute until it’s time to leave. I don’t want to see you again until ten Sunday night. That’s when we’re leaving, right?”

Stung by the bitterness and hurt in her words, shamed by the tears in her eyes, Erik could only mumble, “Yes”.

“Well then, good night. I’ll see you at ten o’clock Sunday.” Allie stepped inside her apartment and slammed the door.

Erik stared at the shut door, immobilized by the welter of emotions that whirled around him.

Hurt, anger, shock, shame, and guilt battered and pummeled him unmercifully.

He shook his head, trying to dispel an unpleasant idea that had taken root and was slowly growing and undermining his convictions.

He hadn’t ever wanted to hurt Allie. Not like this. That was why he had taken such pains to woo her, to get to know her. He had convinced himself that he was different from his grandfather.

That he wouldn’t destroy Allie the way his grandfather had destroyed Eva, his grandmother.

But now, in the dim light of the hall, staring at the shut door, his head full of the misery he’d seen in Allie’s eyes, he wondered whether history was repeating itself. In his own way, was he destroying Allie every bit as much as his grandfather had destroyed his grandmother?

Allie started at the sound of the door bell. She glanced at her watch. Sunday, at two minutes to ten.

For the last time she looked around her apartment, trying to imprint it on her memory. She hadn’t lived here long enough for it to have become home, but she would miss it all the same.

Especially where she was going now.

She shuddered, then walked slowly to the door.

She reached for the door knob. She didn’t bother looking through the peephole. She knew who it was.

The door swung open and she stood face to face with Erik. In the dim hallway he looked grim, and more foreign and distant than ever before, more the lunatic stranger who had stood at her doorway six weeks ago than the man she had foolishly believed she knew and loved. A man who had never really existed, but whom she already missed desperately, as much for what might have been as for what had been.

For a moment they stood and stared at each other. Though Erik’s expression didn’t change, nor his gaze flinch, Allie was suddenly struck by the thought that he was as unhappy as she was at leaving. She didn’t know how she knew it, or why, but she was certain she was right. Erik didn’t want to go back to Zura either.

“Are you ready?”

The somber words brought her back to reality.

Happy or not, it didn’t seem to matter to Erik. The only thing that mattered was his goddamn destiny.

Unable to speak, Allie nodded. She stepped into the hallway and closed the door. The lock to the empty apartment clicked behind her with an ominous finality. This morning she had taken Sharkey to his new home with Kate’s niece. She’d lied and said Erik was allergic to cats.

Now it was her turn. The end of her life as she had known it.

She swallowed, then felt the press of Erik’s hand at the small of her back, urging her forward.

Despite herself, the faint hum inside her head that always accompanied Erik’s presence started up. She tried to force it out of her head but it refused to go. It occurred to her that they were both prisoners of a cold, alien destiny that neither cared for nor respected their wishes or innermost feelings.

In silence they proceeded along the hall, into the elevator, and down to the parking garage where Erik’s leased Jaguar waited.

In silence they got into the car. Erik started the engine, and swiftly maneuvered the vehicle out of the garage and onto the street. In moments they were headed south along the lake.

Ignoring the air conditioning, Allie opened the window. She wanted to feel the breeze on her face, to gulp down as much fume-laden Chicago air as she could. To hold in her senses the memories of the gritty taste, the feel, the smells and sounds of the city where she had lived all her life. Where she had laughed, and cried, and loved and raged, all things she would never do again if Erik’s description of Zalia was accurate.

For several minutes she let the hot, damp breeze blow her hair about. She listened to the growl of engines, the squeal of brakes, the intermittent sound of voices. She looked at the passing buildings, the trees in full summer bloom.

She inhaled deeply.

Then she looked at Erik. Sitting at the wheel of the car, he appeared carved from stone. Was he retreating into his Zalian persona? Was this how it would be on Zura? From the little he’d told her, from the few revealing incidents from his early life, she knew it was a cold, forbidding place with no tolerance for the love that meant so much to her.

A shiver of fear raced down her spine and she clasped her arms. She swallowed. She had to try, at least once more, to convince him to stay here.

To not return to that horrible place he called home.

Because, she realized, she still believed—she
wanted
desperately to believe—that the wonderful man she had come to love truly did exist. He was not just an invention coldly developed to achieve an end, without feeling or concern for her. She still believed that, deep inside him, there was a wellspring of humanity, flowing with love for her.

She didn’t want to believe it had all been a lie, a cruel trick of which she was the victim, for an alien destiny whose reasons she failed to understand. A destiny that even Erik couldn’t explain beyond a flat, “It’s the Zalian way.”

“Uhh, Erik?”

He turned his head towards her. In the twilight, his eyes glinted silver, and the light from the controls reflected off his broad cheekbones and square jaw. It was a face that seemed to be growing increasingly distant, increasingly cold.

Taking a deep breath, Allie appealed to the last shreds of humanity she saw there, the kindness and loving buried deep inside that had been unearthed and brought to the light during the last few weeks.

“You don’t need to go back to Zura, you know.

You could stay here. You’re part Earthling, you said so yourself. You’ve got a good job here. We could get married.” In her desperation to make him see the possibilities, the words gushed out.

For one long second, Erik held her gaze. His silver eyes seemed to flare with hope.

But then the light dimmed. He turned his gaze back to the road.

“I must fulfill my destiny. It is the Zalian way.”

The flat, unemotional words dashed Allie’s last hopes. She bit her lip and blinked back the tears.

It was bad enough she was leaving her home, her family, her job, everyone and everything she’d ever loved. But now she knew she was losing Erik too.

When they finally reached this Zura of his, she would be alone, among aliens who neither could nor wished to understand her. And Erik—or Barak, as he had called himself—would be one of those remote strangers.

Finally Erik pulled into a parking lot for a deserted stretch of lake shore. He turned off the ignition, then looked at Allie. “We have to get out here.”

Allie nodded. Despite the still warm evening, and the jeans and T-shirt she was wearing, she trembled. The metal of the door handle felt warm to the touch of her ice-cold hands as she opened the door. For a brief second, she considered making a dash for it.

Then she shook her head. Erik had made it clear he was capable of overcoming any physical or technical resistance she or anyone else might offer. She didn’t know why, but deep in her gut she knew it was true. He meant exactly what he said.

And then there was Cody to think about. Unlike her, he had a widowed mother tormented by his disappearance, agonizing over what had happened to him. If she had disappeared while her parents were still living, it would have killed them. She couldn’t do that to Cody’s mother. She just couldn’t.

Wordlessly, she stumbled after Erik as he made his way to the sandy beach near the water’s edge. He stopped under the cover of a large old maple, where grass and sand met about one hundred feet from the water.

Allie, her gaze blurred by tears, looked out at the dark waters below the navy sky. She could hear the gentle waves lapping at the shore, and in the distance she heard the squawk of a seagull.

Sand, still holding the day’s heat, slid into her sandals and between her toes. Fear and an incredible sense of loss combined to bring a sob to her throat.

“What?” Erik turned towards her.

“Nothing.” Allie choked back the sob. In an effort to still her fears, she tried nonchalance. “So what happens now?” she asked brightly. “When does this nifty spaceship of yours whiz down and whisk us away to the far reaches of the universe?”

Erik’s lips thinned. He didn’t know what he hated more: Allie’s tears of pain, her tremulous bravery and self-sacrifice, her withdrawal from him, or this latest version, a brittle-edged nonchalance that was as false as his show of impassiveness.

He didn’t think he could stand another minute of her hurting, especially knowing he was the cause of it all. He clenched his fists. It was eating away at him, every second more painful than the one before. All he could do was get it over with, as quickly as possible.

From his pocket he pulled the flat black square that was his communication device. Without a word to Allie, he flipped it open.