Forever One Page 2

  Finally reaching a tall ridge, he surveyed the area below and ground his teeth. He still avoided eye contact with Cayla. She must continue to believe that he could save her parents. But the knowledge he’d gained through the mind-link brought him despair. Far ahead in Omajar Oasis, Elizabeth and Logan fought against overwhelming odds while Sean, their son, had taken their skimmer, their only means of escape. They were unable to reach him.

  Sean. Where was that witless male? Vadyn inwardly cursed and struggled forward, lamenting over the boy he’d loved—one who had grown into a young male who hated him. Sean, Elizabeth and Logan’s son, was Vadyn’s first birth experience, his shared joy of new life. In his early years, Sean had been the first to call him “uncle.” He had scrambled up Vadyn’s legs as if he were climbing a tree, his laughter echoing throughout the stone keep. A blend of his parents, raven-haired, green-eyed Sean, for reasons known only to him, now despised Vadyn. Bah! Raging at the boy was a useless waste of energy. But another growl escaped before he could stop it. He shook his head free of distracting thoughts.

  Finally, he reached the rise of the last giant dune overlooking the smooth, rolling plain of Omajar Oasis. The deceptive golden-lit sand with its wind-carved peaks and gentle knolls ringed the desert sanctuary. The oasis looked closer than it was. With its sweet, yellow fruit-bearing trees and fragrant white liestra flowers, the fertile area blazed a bright spot of color against the gleaming sun-kissed desert. It should have been a gentle place of peace, of reflection and romance. Instead, mounds of smoking bodies littered the razed landscape amid the shattered craters of glazed sand. Logan’s and Elizabeth’s laser strikes had certainly hit more than just desert scenery. The serene, arid beauty of the dunes reflected a torn and rutted plain. Hardy scrub brush and spiny octo plants, hiding precious moisture in their bases, lay ripped apart with their fragile roots gaping, exposed to the brutal suns’ rays. Ghostly smoke drifted across the hazy air in wavering gray fumes. The grim scene unfolded before him in slow motion. Helpless, still too far away, he watched, connected with Elizabeth, while she and Logan fought against the overwhelming odds.

  He rushed forward. “Stay here!” he roared at Cayla, knowing even then that the young one wouldn’t listen. He fired his palm laser. It wouldn’t reach the attackers, but maybe he could draw their fire. The laser, firing continuously, scorched his hand, but he ignored the puny pain. If he could attract the Slytreen’s attention, maybe the delay would be long enough for his troops to arrive.

  I’m coming, my friends. Hold on!

  Chapter 2

  BETH GAGGED AT the stench of charred flesh, but she kept pulling her laser’s trigger. Come on, you bastards, just keep coming. Just a little more—almost in range. Sweat dripped into her eyes, and she swiped her forehead with the end of her thin sleeve. Back to back, crouched on their knees behind a sheltering ring of boulders, she and Logan fired their hand lasers at the advancing outlaws. They hadn’t brought more firepower—after all, they were just here for a picnic. Only the clump of granite in the tree-ringed oasis protected them from the Slytreen’s attack. She blinked fiercely to clear her stinging eyes then became distracted by her silk-covered arm. Funny, her gossamer gown’s sheer fabric seemed so out of place here. She should be in the leather-vested armor of the Kasar, but she hadn’t dressed for a firefight as she had so many times in the past. Today, she had worn flimsy silks meant to seduce her husband. In these days when they seemed to find so little time to themselves, she thought a romantic gesture would add a special spark into a marriage of nearly thirty years. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  “How’s your power, Beth?” Logan shouted over the hiss of the discharging lasers and the cries of the wounded. His voice croaked, obviously as dry as hers from the choking dust and smoke.

  “The charge is low. It won’t last much longer.” Despite her size, she reflected a fierce strength, a blessed legacy from Vadyn’s shared power. She risked a quick glance over her shoulder and had to tilt her gaze up at Logan. His disheveled black hair, streaked with silver at the temples, streamed in wild abandonment around his handsome tanned features. Unbelievably, she caught the white-toothed gleam of a defiant grin. Her husband fought with lithe grace and brave assurance, rivaling the best of any Kasar warrior. He was always the best in her eyes.

  But when had all that silver appeared in his hair? She couldn’t remember. It seemed like only yesterday when they first landed on Kasara. Their lives couldn’t be cut so short. Please gods, no. All she had wanted were a few stolen minutes alone with her husband. Now her innocent scheming could be the cause of their deaths.

  Again she sent an urgent message to Vadyn through her link and quickly received his anguished reply, a wordless mind roar of red concern and frustrated anger. The warlord was trying to reach them, but his troops were too far away. Drawing on Vadyn’s alien strength, she fought with renewed warrior courage. Kasar anger, fueled by human rage, drove her just as it had when they had joined minds twenty-five years ago.

  “Vadyn’s coming, Logan. Just hold on a little longer!” she shouted above the noise of laser flashes and exploding charges. Just then, with single-minded intent, the outlaws’ loud shrieks rose into one long continuous cry. They were staging another swift charge! Despite her and Logan’s accuracy, the Slytreen had steadily advanced in an ever-tightening circle. For a long time, the air was filled with the sound of weapons firing and blinding smoke. She fired her laser until it overheated. Logan fought at her back, his long length adding reassuring warmth to her. With their combined accuracy, the Slytreen’s brave battle cries soon turned into high-pitched death screams. Suddenly, without uttering a sound, Logan fell against her before slipping away to rest on his side at her feet. Dead?

  “No! Oh, gods, no—please—” She twisted around in the rock sanctuary and drew him to her. Scarlet blossomed like an obscene flower on the front of his snowy shirt. She pulled him tighter against her, but even the press of her hand couldn’t stop the steady flow. It spilled in a thick stream over her fingers. A hot, coppery scent filled the air. Within seconds, his breathing became labored, shallow, and rapid.

  In their confined area, she ripped her gown’s sleeves into a hasty pressure bandage. Her mind raced, and she prayed desperately. As if he heard her unspoken plea, Logan opened his blue eyes shadowed by thick, black lashes. Her heart hitched. God, he was always so strikingly beautiful, but now he squinted, a frown wrinkling his forehead. Awful pain dulled his brilliant gaze. A giant fist closed around her throat.

  “Guess I zigged when I should have zagged.” He flashed a weak but dazzling grin at her. The lump in her throat grew larger at the sight, and an irritating mist fogged her vision. Her husband’s amazing smile never ceased to affect her. She couldn’t lose him. Her heart began thudding a painful rhythm in her breast.

  “I’m sorry, Bethie. Looks like we . . . won’t have time . . .” He stopped on a shortened gasp.

  “Don’t you dare leave me, Logan. We have lots of time left. You and I both know it.” She hugged him tighter. Death would have to fight her for him. His eyes, those eyes she loved so much, drifted shut. No. He couldn’t be dying. Not him! She swallowed a sob, clutched him fiercely, rocking back and forth. But he didn’t move in response. Steadily, her anger built until it filled her with an all-consuming warrior rage. A roar caught in her throat. She would kill anyone or anything that hurt her loved ones. And Logan was the greatest of those. Rational thought fled. The overwhelming fury of a Kasar rose within her. She’d make them all pay.

  From the sand, she snatched up Logan’s pistol, added it to her own, and stepping from her covered position, she fired two-fisted, burning both lasers blindly at the encroaching Slytreen. Back and forth, she swept the area with deadly rays without regard to her safety. Vache, the killing madness of a Kasar warrior, took over. She would kill them all.

  First one laser overheated again and jammed, then the other. All her power failed.r />
  The last remaining outlaw, a reptilian Xeetag, overconfident in his charge, returned her fire. She saw the blast coming at her as if in slow motion just before a burning jolt slammed through her chest with a punch like that of a heavy-armed blow. She staggered, spun halfway. Through hazy vision, she saw the lizard-man crumble too. Good, she hadn’t missed that last shot. Funny, she couldn’t stand any longer. Her knees buckled, and she fell forward. Sudden pain sliced through her with every breath, scorching its way through her body. Her only thought was to get back to Logan. Steadily, she crawled, her hands digging her slowly forward through the sands. Her eyesight dimmed, but she could still see his white shirt, blazing like a beacon.

  Logan was her life, her love for over thirty years. Now, he lay so silent. At long last, she reached him. “Logan,” she called, her voice sounding weak and trembling even to her ears. She coughed, vowing to sound more confident when next she spoke. She curved around his oh-so-familiar frame, wrapping him in her arms. He felt warm; his chest rose and fell. He lived. Her husband lived, still.

  She calmed her racing thoughts, breathing in the short, shallow pants necessary for the meditative trance of the Kasar warrior. But too much pain interfered. That peaceful escape, the first level against pain, eluded her. Perhaps she was just too human to calm down enough to find it even with Vadyn’s link. Damn! She had to fight the pain, to hold off the blackness that called her. She had to wait for Vadyn to find them. But blessed, soothing darkness hovered at the edge of her blurred vision. It tempted her with such sweet forgetfulness. Soon, she promised. She would enter that darkness, soon. She rested her head on her arm above Logan’s head and heard the slight rustle of flower blossoms still lost in the snarls of her hair. The petals crushed under the weight of her forehead. Oddly, even over death’s carnage and the discharged lasers’ fumes, she still smelled the light perfume of the fragrant liestra that Logan had laughingly crowned on her head just hours ago. Next to her cheek, the bruised white petals gave off a sweet fragrance that became a cloying but clean-smelling obscenity. She smiled in sad reflection at the thought of the one who had placed them there.

  Her husband loved her. He had always loved her, even after she had linked her mind to an alien all those long years ago on Earth. The two of them—Logan and Vadyn—her husband and her alien warrior—how she had loved them both. Now, alone from them, borne on the wings of pain, she drifted back twenty-five years to a shipwrecked spacecraft in the Arizona desert where it all began.

  Beth knew the end had come for the female alien. The male’s roars of mindless agony split the bright morning skies over and over. Even with her hands over her ears, she couldn’t block out the terrible sounds of the alien’s grief. They broke her heart. She had to do something!

  Heedless of the danger, she slid down the ravine’s slope, frantic to reach him—to stop what she knew he planned. She fell several times on the steep incline, but she didn’t stop. Rocky shale gave no balance to her hasty descent. Finally, she dropped next to the grieving alien where he sprawled in the sand.

  “Open your eyes.” She shook his great head between her palms. His short fur felt soft and warm under her touch, like that of soft velvet. Golden hair had come loose from the braid at the base of his neck; silken, its texture felt just like human hair. And the blood that flowed from his wounds was certainly as red as any person’s. The creature obviously grieved for the dead female. Surely this species was sentient and civilized. Beth no longer saw the differences between them. “Come on, listen, you great beast, you’ll kill yourself if you continue this way.” She tugged the broad shoulders further across her lap, held his face, and continued speaking quietly but steadily. She tried to reach through the creature’s pain with her repetitious reasoning. The alien twitched in her grip. Did he hear her? She thumped his chest hard enough to hurt both her hand and his chest.

  Persistent chest pain brought her back to the present. She fought against it and stroked Logan’s sweat-dampened hair back from his brow. Her husband still breathed shallow breaths that barely raised his shirt. “Stay with me, honey. I need you.” God, that was so true. She had always needed Logan. And he had always come through for her. Her own pain lessened as she remembered how much he loved her—even on that day when he discovered what had occurred in the Arizona desert—how she had rescued Vadyn from death and mind-linked with him, preventing his suicide. She remembered so clearly.

  Logan would never believe her. She still didn’t believe it herself. And she had an imagination. Unfortunately, her husband didn’t have one ounce of imagination in his whole body. He was always the lawman, the realist; everything was black or white. No shades of gray. How could she make him believe her without showing him Vadyn?

  And that confrontation she wanted to delay for as long as possible. Her link told her that Vadyn was still sleeping in exhausted slumber. She wished she was doing the same. Her limbs weighed a ton; even her thoughts seemed sluggish, strange. One minute her mind was calm, the next it leaped with strange rippling anger. It was mind fatigue from their linking, Vadyn had said. Well, she didn’t have time for mind fatigue; she owed Logan an explanation. He deserved that much after the scare of finding her scarf at the crash scene. Thankfully, he had the presence of mind to hide the lace scrap from the fake NASA men. She watched Logan’s face, the way he stared at her so intently.

  She still hesitated. Was it only last night that they watched the falling star of Vadyn’s crashing spacecraft? A pain—that of distant grief—swept over her. She gasped at the depth of alien hurt that assailed her. Joined, she felt Vadyn’s grief as if it were her own. In a controlled monotone, she hurriedly related all the facts to Logan, the incidents leading up to the female alien’s—Mirrah’s—death. At the end, unusual powerful emotions again stirred her. She reined in anger and misery that were not hers. Vadyn’s. Then she told Logan of the mind-link, how it happened, how it seemed to work, but not how she was afraid that they would never separate. In the end, Logan took weeks to believe it all, longer still to accept it. But, thankfully, when she and Vadyn fled Earth, Logan decided he’d rather share her mind-linked with Vadyn than live without her.

  She moaned awake with tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t ask for more love than Logan had given her all these years. Yes, he had given her his all—now, even his life. She didn’t know which hurt worse—her grief or the pain in her chest. She couldn’t be losing Logan after thirty years. She’d rather die, too. A choked sob brought forth a coughing spasm. She wiped her mouth and found blood on her fist. Ah, as sure as twin suns blazed over Kasara, she would die, too. A distant cry drew her. She couldn’t shield her pain from Vadyn any longer.

  “NO!” VADYN roared to the skies. Blinded with the knowledge of Elizabeth’s impending death, he tripped and rolled the last few feet down the dusty ridge. Cayla struggled next to him, caught knee-deep in a soft drift, but he ignored her. His mind had shared Elizabeth’s memories of the past then her full knowledge of futile resistance to death. Then came her overwhelming grief. His warrior fangs and claws remained extended from his rage. But they were such useless weapons. He longed to use them on something—anything. Snarls and growls ripped from his abused throat while he lunged over the loose sand. He must reach them. He would.

  Too late! He knew he was too late to save either of them. Dying. They both lay dying.

  A flash of brilliant green swept by him. The sight distracted him and brought him back from the awful darkness that tempted just out of reach. Cayla rushed on toward the oasis in a swirl of billowing silks. Her thin cries ripped his tenuous hold on reality. “Hold on, Mother! Father, we’re coming!” Her blue eyes widened in white-rimmed panic. “We’re coming!” She sounded so hopeful, but surely, she had to know, even though she wasn’t linked, that the lack of movement in the oasis meant that death hovered. Such horrible silence lingered over the plain. The hindering grab of the sand now tripped Cayla before he reached her. This
time, he drew her gently up to him. Sorrow choked his throat.

  “Hush, little one.” Quickly he sucked in a deep breath and calmed his panicked heartbeat. He smoothed her wild hair. A windblown strand wrapped around his hand, trapping him with its ruddy silk. Quickly, he shook it free without jerking it. If he caused Cayla any physical pain, he would never forgive himself. Soon, she would suffer enough. The gay color of her sheer robes glared in stark opposition to the terrible horror unfolding. With his grip tight on her shoulders, he set her back on her heels.

  “Stay here, Cayla! There is nothing you can do for them.” Or for me.

  His death waited below. He had to face it alone.

  Chapter 3

  VADYN’S WARNING came to Cayla through glistening fangs. The sight of him with his lips pulled back, exposing his battle teeth, frightened her. But, without looking at her again, the warlord turned away. His anguished gaze remained fixed on the scene below. Her heart pounded, stunned by his savage visage. Never had she seen him this way, like a crazed animal. Blazing madness gleamed in his eyes while muscles clenched and flexed in his jaws. His chest expanded with a deep, shuddering breath—then, suddenly, he stilled. A final tremor passed through his long frame. He shut his eyes, bowed his head, and gripped his clenched fists so tightly that she saw blood dripping from his lacerated palms. Without speaking or looking at her again, he hastened on, stumbling to his knees once in unaccustomed clumsiness before rising and staggering toward the low ring of boulders that sheltered her parents.

  The sight of the once proud warrior brought so low broke her paralysis. “I’m coming too, Vadyn! They’re my family!” Her shrill cry spun him around, but he blocked her way. Stinging tears flowed down her hot cheeks. Hastily, she swiped at them. Warriors never showed such emotion. In defiance, she tilted her jaw and wiped away the steady stream with her fists. She glared at him. “I will see them too. You can’t stop me.”