Ultimate Passage: New Beginnings: Box Set ( Books 1-4) (2 page)

M
arissa stared at the envelope
. Certified mail. Addressed to Marissa Sanchez. Owner of Two West Two
.

Certified mail was never good news. What could it be now? She didn’t want to open it. She shoved it on the dash.
Screw this.
It could wait until tomorrow.

She turned the key in the ignition. She had work to do. Lots and lots of work, since she was working with a skeleton staff at the restaurant now. Odd how there was this point in the restaurant business, in terms of volume and money-making, the point right before the restaurant became busy enough to hire the amount of help it would take to keep her from killing herself at work. Two West Two
was not at that stage now. At one point, it had been, but that was some time back.

When she took a turn, the envelope slid across the dash, reminding her that it was there, a reminder she didn’t really need. It wasn’t like she was going to forget what had to be bad news. Oh, shoot, she should have looked at the return address. That would have given her a clue. But now the envelope was all the way across the dash, unreachable. At least, not reachable in a safe way, not while she was in traffic.

It probably said IRS on it. That’s what the last two certified letters had said.

No. she needed to know what it was. She pulled into a convenience store parking lot, parked the Honda, and reached across.

She turned the envelope.

The return address was her landlord’s.

The man who owned the property that Two West Two
sat on. She’d been leasing the land and building from him for years. And before Marissa, her father had leased it, when he owned Two West Two
.

Why would Dan send her a certified letter? He had her phone number.

Fear raced its icy fingertips up her spine. This did not bode well. She took her cell phone out, hit speed dial for Dan.

Shouldn’t she open the letter first? She pressed
END CALL
and ripped the letter open.

She scanned it. Got lost in the legalese. Then took a few moments to read it more thoroughly.

“Son of a bitch.” Her voice wasn’t much more than a low whisper. She’d been on a month-to-month lease for a while now. She had never worried about renewing and Dan had never given her cause to think he was worried about it. She figured they had an understanding. He knew how much Two West Two
meant to her. He wouldn’t do anything to change that.

Wouldn’t?
that voice in her head asked.
He just did
, the voice reminded her.

Yeah, he sure did. He was selling the land her restaurant was on. Not all of it, but enough of it to mandate getting rid of the restaurant. Getting rid of her father’s dream—her dream now.

She leaned back against the headrest. She wanted to call Dan and explode at him. Like that would do any good.

She could call her brother—no, no she couldn’t.

She couldn’t call the brother she hadn’t spoken to in two years. The brother who had refused to come to their father’s side while he was on his deathbed. Her brother had been too busy, couldn’t handle it, had already said goodbye as far as he was concerned.

All of her brother’s excuses amounted to one thing: Marissa had to be the only one there when their father died. She swallowed back the lump that always rose in her throat when she thought of the night Dad had passed.

The hell with it. She dialed her brother’s number. A quick “Hello, how are you?” was the only formality she and her brother indulged in before he said, “What’s up?”

“Dan’s going to sell the land that Two West is on. I can’t get the money to buy it out by myself. Thought you could help—”

“Marissa. I never cared about that stupid restaurant.”

“But it was Dad’s dream.”

“He’s dead.”

Her brother’s words sliced through the final bit of affection she harbored for him. “Yeah, I know. Sorry I asked. I’ll figure it out.”

And with a quick, “No problem,” he hung up.

Just like that. What the hell had she been thinking, calling him?

Time to call the landlord. She pressed his speed dial number. He answered on the first ring.

“Dan. I got the letter.” Shit, she should have said hi, how are you, something, anything. She surely wasn’t acting like someone who wanted to ask him to let her have some time to come up with the money.

“I’m sorry, Marissa. I had an offer I couldn’t turn down. Lizzy’s sick, you know, and this would allow us—” His voice broke.

With his wife Lizzy sick, she shouldn’t be surprised that the local developers were closing in like buzzards.

“Her medical bills, you know.” Dan continued.

Marissa felt worse about calling the poor man. “I’m sorry Dan. I understand.” She didn’t want to understand, but she did. He didn’t need to be any more upset than he already was. “I’ll see if I can make something work out with the bank to compete for the land purchase.”

She didn’t have that kind of money in her account. She had no money in her account. Yeah, she’d have to look into a loan.

“My lawyer, Joe Perry, he’s handling it. He’s a good guy. If you can make it work, somehow, he’ll be there to deal with. But I have to say, if you can do it, I’ll be happy for you. He’s the reason for the certified mail, you know.”

Marissa could almost picture Dan’s characteristic shrug.

“
I
think
she would have liked her service.”

Kal followed Finn from the mess hall. They walked the narrow path, reinforced against the enemies on the outside. They’d just left Nana’s service, a simple funeral attended by few. Too few. Just two. And then a cremation. The luxury of burial in the ground didn’t exist on this planet, not when space was limited by what area of land in Kormia they could protect from invasion.

Kal’s father and Finn’s father were brothers. They shared a grandfather who’d been married twice, first to Kal’s grandmother, and then when she died, to Finn’s grandmother. Even though Nana wasn’t Kal’s grandmother, Kal had been at her house more than any of their other cousins, so it would follow that Kal would attend the service.

It saddened Finn that there were only two of them in attendance. He and Kal, like always, closer than ever, than brothers.

“Yes, she would have liked her service very much.” Finn felt the tension bunching the muscles in his shoulders. He didn’t want to have the conversation that he was going to have with Kal, but he had to. “The mission...” He couldn’t finish, didn’t know what the consequences would be.

“What about it?” Kal turned to face him, brows drawn together.

Finn scrubbed at his face. He didn’t know if his thoughts were from grief or if he was using this situation to gain the upper hand. Did it matter? He might as well forge onward. “I don’t want to go. I’m thinking I’m going to pass on this assignment.”

“It isn’t exactly optional. It’s not one of those. And it’s crucial. How can you turn it down?”

“You say that when we just buried my Earth-born human grandmother? She was captured and brought over in the First Wave.”

“And?”

“And I don’t want to go to that planet. To see her people. To see the things she told me about.”
To see the things I wish I could have.
He clenched his jaw at that thought. He had no business trying to have something or be associated with anything human. He’d fought all his life to not be human, to be more like his Asazi father. Curses be damned, he was confused.

“You’re putting yourself above the Asazi. Our people need this. Our women are no longer able to conceive. Our species is going to die out. And it will happen before we make it to our Ultimate Passage. To reclaim our Earth. Our lands.”

“Ultimate Passage is a myth. A myth that’s kept alive by the old ones. I don’t believe we had to make a passage here to this forsaken planet overrun by Kormic miscreants. A planet where we’ve had to spend every moment hiding or fighting off attacks. If we’re from Earth, we should have returned long ago. We are superior to humans. Here we’re sport and victims for the damned native creatures.”

“It is not a myth. I believe the Sacred Writings.”

Time for Finn to use some leverage. “Your father has power in the government.”

“Naturally. He’s one of the Governors-Select.”

“I’ll do the mission if you’ll have him get me out of the Binding.”

“Out of the Binding?” You want to nullify your Binding to Alithera?”

“I don’t want to be Bound to her.”

“She is fine marrying material. You’ve been Bound to her since you were two years old. The day she was born you were Bound to her. It was proclaimed. The ceremony is in a year, Finn. Your children will be born from those procured from the Third Wave.”

“No.”

“You haven’t even heard what the mission entails. What you have to do. Surely you realize how much it matters. I choose to believe that this is your grief acting on you. You need a practitioner to check you out, to verify that you’re sound physically as well as mentally. You don’t seem well.”

D
ays later
, in his living quarters, Finn loosened his collar.

Kal leaned against the doorjamb. “Humans, especially the female of their species, are dangerous.”

Finn ignored his cousin’s cautionary words. It had been five days since his grandmother’s passing and three days since he’d grudgingly accepted the mission. Very grudgingly, because he still didn’t want this cursed assignment, even if he had been released from his Binding to Alithera, and even though the mission had been explained to him—in brief.

“When I joined the service, this wasn’t what I planned to be doing. Posing as a human male to entice females.” He unsnapped his weapon belt.

“You thought you’d always be wielding a weapon? Killing?” Kal’s skin fluoresced faint orange hues in ripples that traveled from his face to his arms, a sure sign he was becoming irate.

“I’m a soldier. So yes, something like that. Definitely not this.” Kal’s anger meant nothing to Finn, who concentrated on his pulse. That was the first step in conversion, to lower his heart rate to match a human’s. It wasn’t hard for him, not as hard as it was for others, because he was a quarter human, after all. He bit back the smirk that threatened to appear on his face. He would have to make sure not to let it rise, especially not rapidly, as his wings would burst through the human skin.

“Do you need the machine?” Kal reached for the equipment used to help them in their human conversion.

“No, I’ve got this.”

“Well done, cousin. You’re already sounding authentic.” Kal didn’t let the smile out, but Finn could see it in his eyes. Of course Kal wouldn’t smile. That would be anti-Asazi. The Asazi prided themselves on being stoic and unemotional.

Finn snorted. Being converted into a human was definitely not how he’d planned to spend his military career. But like a good soldier, he did as directed. It was vital to the Asazi mission. Finn stretched in his newly acquired human skin, looking in the mirror.

“Not bad.” Kal took a step back and studied Finn’s reflection. “Not a bad specimen at all.”

Finn’s heart rate sped up. His chest expanded. He couldn’t allow that to happen; it would convert him back to his native form. He bit back a growl of frustration. He was reverting. His skin glistened iridescent under the human layer of epidermis. His shoulders ached where his Asazi wings threatened to reemerge. He would be in so much trouble if he reverted while he was on Earth. Imagine if his wings erupted from beneath the human skin while people were around! Stupid wings. Why did the Asazi have them anymore, anyway? They were like appendixes in humans. Useless wings.

He’d asked his father about them when he was a child, why why the Asazi had wings they couldn’t use.

“Once, long ago, we could use them. That was taken away from us,” his father replied, but he wouldn’t tell him who had taken flight away or why.

“Have you ever flown, Father?” he’d asked. “Or was it taken away before your time?”

His father had put his hand on Finn’s shoulder. “I’ve never flown. It was long, long before my time, son. You know that already. The Sacred Writings say Asazi have not flown since the Banishment. It was part of our punishment.”

“Finn, you cannot fail.” Kal interrupted his reverie. “You must not fail our people. Every targeted human female we can get is valuable—”

“And why are these women specifically crucial? Why can’t we grab
any
women? Earth has an assortment of lesser populated areas where we don’t risk discovery.”

Kal’s chin rose a notch, and he continued as if Finn hadn’t posed a question. “And you are crucial to this mission. Please control the conversion.” Kal took a step back, his eyes expressionless in the mirror.

Finn grit his teeth. “I’m trying, dammit.” He didn’t understand why they needed human women for this. “Why humans? Why can’t we—”

“Much better. But I fear that your emotional outburst is not a result of your pretending. It’s the human factor. You are part human, and that still wreaks havoc on your Asazi emotions.” Clearly Kal didn’t plan to address the second question.

Finn fought back his anger. No, he wasn’t going to let that side of him win. He would control his emotions.

“The last thing you need is to convert in front of humans.”

“I know. I get it. They’ll capture me. Like they did the others.”

“They killed Asazi with their experiments. I don’t want that to happen to you, cousin.”

“I know. I won’t have a dissected body for you to retrieve if I’m caught anyway. I’ll make sure I’m dead and leave no trace of myself to be examined. So when am I to be dropped off? How many of us will be going?”

“You and nineteen others are slated for insertion tomorrow morning. Have you memorized your targets’ files? All eighty of the targets are crucial. You have four, just like the others on your mission. Lucky you, you don’t have to procreate with them. Don’t lose your meal packs. Make sure you eat regularly. And do not eat human food. Ever. Your life depends on it.”

Finn huffed his irritation with his cousin. “I’m not a child. I’ve been on countless missions. I know not to lose my meal packs. I know I have to consume sustenance at regular intervals.”

“Fine. Fine.” Kal had the decency to look embarrassed at his micromanagement.

“Cousin.” Finn put a hand on Kal’s shoulder. “Is it so bad? This procreation they indulge in?”

Kal looked away. “We don’t want to be like them. They are an uncontrolled and uncontrollable race.”

“But once, long ago, that was the method our people used to mate with humans. To produce... half-breeds.”
Like me
, Finn wanted to add, but didn’t.

“Like what happened with your mother,” Kal continued. “Our methods have evolved. We are far more advanced than we used to be. We’ll handle that once they’re brought to the temporary station we will set up outside of Houston.”

“What will happen to the women? What will be done with them? To them?” Finn’s curiosity wouldn’t let him rest.

“Enough.” Kal’s voice was gruff. “Do not reproduce with them, or indulge in copulation—sex, as they call it. It does strange things to human hormones. It makes them feel. It makes them do stupid things.”

Finn didn’t want to be on the receiving end of a lecture and he regretted asking. “Enough, already. Can we get going?”

“It makes them impatient.”

Not funny. “Asshat.” Finn frowned and took a mock-swing, at his cousin.

Kal ducked with an uncharacteristic laugh. “Very authentic human dialogue. Asshat? Really?”

Finn joined him in the laughter.

“Do not make mistakes.” Kal turned serious. “I don’t want to lose another family member to this cause.”

“I won’t.” Finn became somber. Kal’s oldest brother had been a part of the failed Second Wave of insertions. “So all I have to do is make sure they consume the formula. They’ll be unconscious and I can deliver them to your team. That’s it? But what happens to them?”

“We don’t harm them. Unless... But even then, we are not the reason they come to harm. They have a reaction to the formulas and anti-serums. Don’t concern yourself with that. You simply perform your role.”

“But I didn’t sign up for this. I signed up to be a soldier. Not to lure human females to our cause.”

“They’re called women. They’re soft, sensuous, and occasionally... interesting.”

Finn was pretty sure
interesting
wasn’t the word Kal had originally planned to use. “You sound like you have experience with them.”

“Only what I’ve heard.”

Finn wasn’t sure if he could believe his cousin, but it didn’t matter at the moment. “I should talk to Alithera.”

“You’ve been told not to. We’ll handle telling her about the breaking of the Binding when you are gone.”

“That seems evasive and underhanded. It’s not my style. Let me tell her in person. Let me explain.”

“Negative. Her father is a Governor-Select, as you well know.”

“So? What does that matter?”

“She may press on him to delay the mission, to keep you here.”

“She can’t do that. Surely she wouldn’t. Surely he wouldn’t.”

“We aren’t willing to take a chance. These missions mean salvation for the Asazi.”

“I don’t agree with that method of handling her. She deserves better. Even if I don’t—” Was he really going to say
Even if I don’t love her? Since when did that come into play in Asazi Bindings?
Finn switched track immediately.
“That doesn’t change what I said. I didn’t sign up to be a part of this. To be a part of your squadron. Anyway, isn’t it against regulations to have relatives in the same squadron?”

“An exception was made. You’re uniquely qualified.”

“Because I’m a ruthless bastard.”

“No one said that. Because you’ll fight harder than anyone to keep emotions out of it.”

Finn didn’t want to hear that. It all boiled down to having a human female—a woman—as a grandmother.

“There aren’t many left with the genetic composition you have.” Kal clearly wanted to convince him, though Finn knew that the number was one, just him. But he’d put money on it that he’d been brought in because out of all the ones with human derivatives, he was the only one who was born of an actual human, and raised in proximity to a human. He knew humans personally. Well, one human—Nana. He had no siblings. And his grandmother had only had one child, his mother.

“Years of military training. Years of Elite Measures training. And what am I doing? I’m brought in to be an abductor. A kidnapper. Practically a seducer.” He fought back a grunt of disgust. “Ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? How can you say that? Ridiculous to endeavor to propagate our species? To save Asazi? Your arrogance and belligerence is what I find ridiculous.” Kal opened the door to Finn’s quarters.

Finn snapped a salute.

“Not a seducer.” Kal snapped one back.

Looking in the mirror, Finn studied his cousin’s reflection, comparing it to his own—his new, human reflection. Not so very different. Not really, but yet in some ways, very different. The skin tone. The wings that Asazi folded, with barely a hint of protrusion. Never mind. Very different. If a human saw him in his natural form, he or she would think he was an otherworldly creature, but they wouldn’t likely think he was from another planet. They’d assume he was an angel. Of course they would, what with the shimmering iridescent colors of his Asazi skin, and those wings.

They’d never believe this his people used to reside on Earth, long ago, before they were removed. Taken to another place, forced to learn new ways.

F
inn lay on his bunk
. His environment-controlled room suited his raging emotions. He knew that would change as soon as he arrived on Earth. Tumultuous, chaotic, disorderly Earth, populated with emotional, chaotic, tumultuous humans. Hunger seized him with a fierceness that reminded him it had been a while since he’d eaten.

He pressed a button on the headboard. Ten seconds and one swoosh, a meal appeared, perfect temperature, perfect nutrition. He held back a sigh, knowing that things weren’t so simple on Earth, with its restaurants and fast food, processed foods. Asazi foods were processed, a part of him wanted to argue. Probably the human part.

He took a bite of the sustenance, which was devoid of flavor, but full of nutrients. What would his body do with different food? Kal had warned him not to eat any, but then again Finn had grown up with a human in his family.

No, he couldn’t indulge that thought. He needed to do as he was ordered, not think about deviating. There was no point in thinking about human food. He wouldn’t be indulging.

Thinking of human food brought his human grandmother to his mind. During the First Wave, long ago, she’d been brought back and assimilated. She used to pull him aside and confide that he reminded her of her brother—a human. The day she had first told him that, Finn determined to never let his human side out. Being human was a weakness. Not that humans weren’t likable; they were—but they were so damned flawed. So ruled by emotions.

From that day on, Finn strived for a perfected stoicism. And he avoided his grandmother.

He rolled over in his berth, disgusted, appetite gone. Damn it, he had never planned to be in the next movement to bring back humans. This was the Third Wave. The Second Wave had failed, had left evidence on Earth that his kind had made it there. It had left the humans in a panic that they’d be invaded by Martians. He smirked at that thought. Martians, ha. The Asazi had waited decades to return, allowing the furor to die down, to turn into legends, whispers, conspiracy theories.

Studying human culture was not optional. The Asazi belonged on Earth, not these humans. One day, the Asazi would reclaim their place on Earth.

He wondered again what would happen to the women. What would be done to them? Would they live? Would they be kept captive? Would they be released? Or...

A small stab—emotional pain, human pain—caught Finn off-guard. He pushed it back. He didn’t need to feel pain for his grandmother—a human. Kal’s words invaded his mind:
It isn’t bad to have emotions. Our kind do.

What did Kal know? He had no human blood in him, no human ancestors. Kal’s mother was 100% Asazi unlike Finn’s mother, half-human, half-Asazi, who had died giving birth to Finn. It had been her choice, though she’d been warned not to, or so Finn’s father had told him countless times. During childbirth, if the babies were not removed surgically, the human women died. But she was hardheaded, that half-human mother of his. His father would have a look of sadness on his face when he related that to Finn, sadness until his Asazi stoicism returned. Then it was replaced with nothingness, as if the sorrow had vanished. Or had never existed.

Finn’s walk to the pod that would take the team from the carrier to Earth was like a prisoner’s walk to the gallows. Each step was heavy. Why did it feel like he was walking to his own execution? Not that he had any experience with executions, or being a prisoner or a lawbreaker. No, not him. Not top-of-his-class Finn. He snorted in disgust, maybe even despair. And now he was here, the seducer of women. Snap out of it? Not that easy.