She wasn’t their intended target. At first, he thought his human host’s attraction to the female had overridden his control. But once he lifted her from the street, he knew she was one of them. The same, yet there was something different that set her apart. 

He hesitated, hand hovering a centimetre above skin the colour of rich crème marred with blueberry and raspberry hues of developing bruises. Wisps of her hair brushed across his knuckles as she moved fitfully in her sleep. He let a delicate wave fall through his fingertips, mesmerised by the alternating tones of platinum and gold shifting across the strands in the fading light.

Questions sped through his thoughts; too many for any, except the last, to reach his tongue in a breathless whisper. “What am I to do with you?”

“Let me go?” Annabel rasped, her throat and lips parchment dry.

Shocked into sudden movement, he snatched his hand back and stood, moving out of her strike range.

“You’re injured,” he said, hastily, his voice quivering in fear of the females of his species. Having never encountered a female before, the only knowledge came from his father’s dying thoughts. “I brought you here to recover.”

Mindful of the tenderness across her abdomen, Annabel rolled over so she faced him. “Sure you did. Most people’s first thought would be a hospital, yet you brought me to …?”

His faced flushed. “My home, but…”

Pushing herself upright sent waves of pain across her chest, making her pant with shallow breaths until it subsided enough to ask, “But what?” 

“You’re hungry. I have what you need here,” he reassured her, retreating from the room. He paused at the threshold to add, “I’ll be right back.”

Realising she wouldn’t get very far in the condition she was in, Annabel took the opportunity his absence supplied to look around. A shelf full of dolls in various state of undress, combined with pastel pink curtains and matching bed linens were a dead giveaway that the room belonged to a young girl. The partially open door revealed another bedroom on the other side of a narrow hall. At the foot of the bed in the other room, lay a tan and black dress, much like a coffee shop uniform.

Leaning forward to see out the window, Annabel managed to spot the tops of several white-dusted fir trees. She frowned, thinking, Snow in October? And, cradling her ribs as she rose, hobbled closer for a better look. Drifting snowflakes brushed gently against the glass, almost obscuring a child’s swing set in the frozen garden. There was little else she could make out beyond the falling snow and high treeline, but she could clearly see they weren’t in the city anymore.  Any reassurance she may have felt at being in a family home, dissipated as quickly as the flakes on the breath-warmed pane.

Her rescuer reappeared with a blue beaker in his hand and held it out at arm’s length for Annabel to take. “This should help take the edge off until I can get more.”

She eyed it warily. “What is it?”

“You already know what it is. You can sense it.” He smiled and pushed the beaker into her outstretched hand.

One whiff as she opened the lid of the beaker identified the contents as the real thing rather than the synthetic stuff Shafira had given her before the last mission. Thought of the last mission stopped the beaker’s ascent to her lips.

“Who the hell are you? What happened at the restaurant?” she demanded.

“Drink first, and then I’ll explain everything, I swear.”

After a regretful sigh, she passed the untouched drink back to him. “Answers first. If I’m happy with your responses, then I’ll drink it. You can start with your name and where we are.”

“I’ll make you a deal; for every answer I give, you take a sip? That’s fair, right? It will help you heal.”

Her inner voice spoke its agreement and she nodded.

“I’m known as Allan.” He waited for her to take a sip before continuing. “We’re ten minutes’ drive from the city, not far from Hayworth.”

Annabel didn’t need prompting a second time; the beaker met her lips before he finished the sentence. A second sip of the fresh adrenalin made her mind sharper and her senses more alert. How did he know what I needed? I’ve only ever told Shafira about the cravings, she thought, wariness growing. His looks don’t match the description of the man Shafira was meant to meet at the restaurant either. “What about the explosion at the restaurant? Were you responsible for that?”

With the increased cognizance, she became aware of something different about Allan, something that set him apart from other men she knew.  Standing so close, every breath she took imbued with his scent, heat pooled at the juncture of her thighs. Her heartbeat thumped an increasing tempo against her ribcage, the pain bringing welcome interference to a feeling she’d never experienced for a man before. Simone, a former room-mate, being the only other person to have evoked the sexual fantasies flooding her thoughts, inducing a need so great, Annabel began trembling.

Allan broke eye contact and moved away from her to sit on the edge of the bed, mistaking the waves of heat Annabel gave off as anger. “I’m not going to lie to you, so yes, we were.”

Freed from his hypnotic gaze, Annabel turned back to the window and laid her forehead against the cool glass. With a sigh of relief, she asked, “We?”

“My brother, whom I now assume is dead, wanted to rescue our sister from the humans who brainwashed her.”

Annabel stiffened. Humans? Well that confirms he’s one of them.  She decided to focus on his emotionless tone, it said a lot about his lack of concern for his family. “Why do you think he’s dead?”

“Drink.” He paused, waiting for her to comply. “Because he was supposed to call me this morning and he didn’t.”

“And what about your sister? Is Shafira okay?”

“So you are involved with their little group.”

Some investigator I turned out to be, Annabel thought, mentally kicking herself. “I’ve met her, but I don’t know much about her beyond her name and the fact that she’s … not like other people.”

“She’s like us. Well, you, actually.”

 “How so?”

Allan laughed at her attempt to appear unacquainted with their species. “You know exactly what I mean. Although, I thought there were only four of us born that night, so finding you was a bit of a shock.”

“Where’s your other sibling? You, your brother and Shafira make three, where is the fourth?”

“Dead. Our Father and Gould were killed by the woman who abducted Shafira, and if my theory is right, she’s killed Pete too. I believe you know her, she goes by the name of Jones.”

“Why would Captain Jones kill three members of your family and abduct a fourth? And you still haven’t told me what it is, exactly, you want from me?”

Allan took the empty beaker from Annabel’s hand, setting it on the window ledge. “Because of what we are and what we can do. Jones took her as an infant and feed her lies in order to use her as a weapon against us. It took us a few years to find her, but once Gould told us what his superior was up to, we had to act. The explosion at the restaurant was nothing more than a rouse to get to Shafira. Only I found you instead. Honestly? I don’t know why I brought you here, other than a subconscious need to protect you from Jones. We didn’t even know you existed until I found you on the street.”

“Why would Jones need a weapon she could use against you? What are you that she feels so threatened by you?”

“We, are all that’s left of our kind. According to the memory my father gave me as he died, he managed to escape his planet before a meteor struck, destroying it and everything on it. The resulting explosion propelled him toward Earth where he found a suitable host and procreated with a female before his body went into a healing stasis. Having to sustain the female whilst he slept drained his energy and it took him a great many years to recover enough to birth us into this new world.

“Shafira favoured our human mother in looks, the rest of us take after our symbian Father. As for what we can do? Absolutely anything we please. Humans are no match for our various strengths or control of elements.”

“So you plan to take over the world?”

“Not initially. All we ever wanted was to be left alone, but Jones has been hunting us down and that changed things. Pete tried mind linking with Shafira, scarring the life out of her with his visions of the future. I’m tired of running, tired of body hoping. We could make his vision a reality if we worked together. We could rule this planet together.”

On the edge of her vision, Annabel saw a Minnie Mouse stuffed toy, reminding her that she was in a little girl’s room. “What happened to Allan’s family?”

“They’re downstairs. The child is providing motivation for the female to produce an adequate supply of refreshments. Speaking of which, the next batch should be ready for harvest.” He snatched her beaker from the ledge and went to refill it.

Annabel followed. From the moment she stepped over the threshold of the bedroom door, she could hear a child’s whimpers, stuttered and lacking vocal strength as if the child were exhausted.  An intermittent mechanical buzz accompanied the child’s pleas, loud enough that Annabel knew she should have heard it before. She stepped back inside the room and everything became quiet again. The scientist in her was intrigued, yet bewildered for the reason.

“The room is sound proofed,” Allan said from the top of the stairs when she stepped into the hall again. “You needed rest; I didn’t want the noise to disturb you.”

“But that’s not possible. You can’t stop noise without some sort of barrier to stop the sound waves.” She gestured through the open doorway. “There’s nothing here.”

“Exactly, there’s nothing there. I created a small void around the room, there’s no air for the sound to travel through. I told you, we can do anything.”

“But manipulating the air?”

“By manipulating the elements that make air.”