Carter, Beth D. - Star Mates (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  But that triangle was hard to ignore. Sweat beaded on her skin and she reached over to cut the heater then rubbed her forehead clear of the moisture. Thoughts spun in her mind but she dismissed them out of sheer reasoning. Those lights simply had to be a spotlight of some kind. Perhaps at the school? Was there something happening at the football field this evening? Emmarie wracked her brain trying to remember if she had heard of any such event.

  Perhaps a local warning system had flashed up in the atmosphere when bad weather approached. But how did they get the spotlights to reflect if there weren’t any clouds? And if there weren’t clouds, then that meant there wasn’t any bad weather.

  And how come she couldn’t see the origin of the lights?

  She screamed as a bright white light suddenly shot in front of her car upon the asphalt. She twisted the Chevy’s wheels to the left and the car spun one-eighty as her feet jammed on the brakes.

  Emmarie threw the car in park and jumped out, turning to see that a red light now pinpointed on the ground, like a laser pointer. She inched around it, looking upward, and realized that it originated from the center of the triangle. Slowly, she backed away from it.

  Still, she refused to believe what her mind was screaming at her. Emmarie looked around the dark wheat fields for the perpetrators playing this colossal joke on her because…it had to be a joke. Or have a perfectly logical explanation. She spun in a circle, looking for anything, anyone. Looking for help. But the only thing that greeted her was the whisper of the wind through the stalks.

  The light moved toward her. Emmarie turned and ran with everything she had, pushing herself as hard as she could. Unfortunately, she was not very athletic and the light moved very fast.

  Her mind went blank. Planning, strategy, thoughts of what to do disappeared. Adrenaline pumped out fear and pushed her onward. But no matter how far, how fast, the light caught up with her.

  Her last coherent thought registered the searing heat that scorched her skin.

  Chapter Two

  The world was dark.

  Like how a torrential storm blocks the sun or like mud churning through water.

  The dark suffocates and releases demons.

  As Emmarie floated through the murk, flashes of memories surfaced like taunting specters. The night her parents died. Going to court to become an emancipated minor. The crushing loneliness of packing her parents things up, like clothes and toothbrushes, knowing they’d never be used again.

  How she wished someone would come and save her, take away the pain and heartbreak so she could breathe again. But no one did.

  She tried fighting against the darkness. She tried opening her eyes but something held her down. Something invaded her mind and warped her sleep.

  She wished she knew.

  Because the world was too dark.

  Chapter Three

  Emmarie moaned as a sharp pain stabbed behind her eyes. She felt groggy, like a fog had rolled into her head and blanketed her brain.

  “Hey, hey there,” a deep voice whispered gently. “Are you waking up for me?”

  Emmarie’s eyes fluttered several times before she managed to get them to stay open. The room swam into view. A blue emergency light illuminated the area around her and gave the man holding her a sinister edge. She stiffened and immediately tried pulling away. The man tightened his grip and made soothing sounds in the back of his throat.

  “My name is Logan Crusic,” he continued in a low tone. “I think we’ve been kidnapped. I’m trying to find us a way to get free.”

  She lay on the floor, her head and shoulders cradled in Logan’s lap, and stared up at him. He gazed at her behind black-rimmed glasses, his blue eyes showing concern. His hand absently soothed the hair on her head. As she took a breath to speak, the walls around them shook with force, throwing Logan off balance. He pitched and Emmarie ended up falling out of his lap and onto the floor, his body twisted oddly over hers.

  “What was that?” she squealed, clutching him close.

  “Maybe an earthquake or…we might be in an unsecured area,” he told her as he disentangled her from his body and stood. He straightened his glasses firmly on his nose then held out a hand and helped her to her feet.

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “You’ve been out for a while so I’ve been thinking maybe our kidnapping is terrorist related.”

  She blinked. “Are you serious?”

  He shrugged. “Take a look around. Does any of this look familiar to you?”

  Pipes ran overhead of various sizes, semi-transparent with black wires running through them. Several splits between them caused steam to leak in a high-pitch squeal. Around the end of the row of chambers, she could see the edge of a door. She went to it, but the door, however, had no knob. A panel rested next to it and Emmarie assumed it had to be a sensor of some type littered with a smattering of odd symbols. She swiped her hand in front of the plate.

  The door remained closed.

  She banged her fist against it.

  “I think we might be in a holding facility,” he said from behind her. “That’s why I mentioned terrorists. What’s your name?”

  It took her a moment to answer him. Suddenly, she was so tired all she wanted to do was close her eyes. “Emmarie,” she finally answered. “Emmarie Tice.”

  “Do you remember anything?”

  She blinked. Her tongue darted out to coat her dry lips. “I was driving home and there was this triangle of lights, and a red light, and it was really hot. That’s all I remember.”

  “Where are you from, Emmarie?”

  “Missouri. Claring, Missouri. It’s about an hour south of St. Louis, in the boot heel.”

  “I was driving in Illinois,” he told her. “And it was the same for me. I think those lights were a type of targeting device and the red pointer was a hypnotic laser program. We’re victims, Emmarie, and we have to get out of here.”

  She felt a sickening unease creep down her spine. “Is it just the two of us?”

  He hesitated for a second, but it was enough for her to step back. “No,” he admitted. “They kept us in chambers, sedated.”

  “Chambers?”

  “In the other room.”

  It was only after he gave a nod over his shoulder that she noticed an open doorway.

  “I think this facility was bombed,” he continued as he ran a hand over his face, “and the chambers we were in, yours and mine, were cracked open. But the others…”

  “What happened?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “I’m guessing when the power was cut the chambers’ oxygen supply was severed,” he said. “I woke up and managed to push open my chamber. That’s when I saw them.”

  He stopped talking and looked at her strangly.

  “What?” she asked, not sure if she wanted to hear the answer.

  He shook his head. “They didn’t make it.”

  She studied him a moment, then pushed past him.

  “Emmarie!”

  She ignored him and rounded the corner. There was one row of ten coffins standing upright, made out of some type of white metal. The first chamber had a smashed face window. In horror, she moved down the row. On each window the fine layer of dust had been wiped aside, she assumed by Logan, allowing her to peer into each face. Men and women alike, every person she saw had been asphyxiated, their faces slack in death, blue tint around the lips. She stopped in front of the last chamber and stared at the cracked glass.

  “That was yours,” Logan told her.

  She stared at it and a shiver tore through her. And once started, her body couldn’t stop shaking. Logan turned her gently into his arms and buried a hand in her hair, trying to absorb the coldness that had settled in her bones.

  “I don’t know any of them,” she cried.

  “I don’t either,” he soothed.

  “They’re all dead!”

  “Shh,” he rocked her.

  “Why us, Logan? Why me?” she asked
into his shirt. “I don’t have any money and I don’t have any family. Why did they leave eight of us to die?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he murmured, rubbing back her hair. Finally, after several minutes, her shaking subsided and the tears stopped. They stood holding each other, body heat melding as they each took substance in one another. She took his strength, leaning into him.

  “You and me, Emmarie,” he said into her hair, “and I promise you, I’ll get us out of here. I’ll get us home.”

  She silently vowed to hold him to that promise. As she stepped back, she wiped her cheeks. “What about that door?”

  “Whatever knocked out the power seems to have disabled the doors. I can’t open them.”

  He took her hand and led her back. They stared at the door, both analyzing it.

  She ran a finger over the side plate. “What language is this?”

  Again, she noticed a smattering of odd symbols, completely incomprehensible. “Some form of Arabic, I think,” he told her, “but I’d have to study it. It could take me a while to translate.”

  She shot him a curious look.

  “I’m a linguist major with a minor in computer engineering.”

  “Oh, well, I guess if one is going to be taken hostage, it helps to have someone who can speak the language, as well as understand all these buttons.”

  He smiled.

  At that moment the compound shook again, almost knocking them down. This time it hadn’t been as violent as the one before.

  “An earthquake or another bomb?” she asked.

  “I’m leaning toward bomb. Come on, there may be another way out, or at least out of here.” He led her to the other side of the room. “I made a general search of the area before you woke up and I found this floor plating.”

  He pointed to a place of the room where the floor divided up with a step and metal grates lined the section. The blue light didn’t penetrate the murk, but Emmarie thought she could identify a corridor of some type under the grates.

  “Perhaps this is a maintenance path or an access route,” Logan continued. He bent and secured his fingers through several of the holes, braced his legs, and yanked. It didn’t budge. He rested, took a deeper breath, moved his feet further apart, and bent deeper in the knees. A low grunt escaped his mouth as the floor plate shifted. He let go with a huff when he had managed to move it enough for a person to squeeze through. They both winced as it clanged loudly when it fell. He took several steadying breaths and massaged his palms.

  “Stay here while I make sure it’s safe,” he told her.

  He jumped down into the blue-coated interior.

  “I wish I had a flashlight,” he called up to her, “but at least the blue-light special extends here.”

  “Is it an exit?”

  “There’s a tunnel. Be careful coming down.” He held up his hands and helped her into the narrow space. They were able to stand, but Logan had to stoop a bit since he was several inches taller than she.

  The lower level was lined with the same pipes that had run in the room above, through the tunnel that Logan had mentioned.

  “These are odd looking,” she said, reaching up to touch one. The pipe glowed at her touch, like when touching a static ball.

  “They might be optical wiring,” he replied.

  “Like for phones?”

  “Or digital monitors.”

  The tunnel was very straightforward, with only one turn, which led to another set of plates overhead. Logan waved her back as he tried to see upward through the grates.

  “This light isn’t helping,” he grumbled. “But it doesn’t look like anyone is up there.”

  “Do you think they abandoned us when this place was bombed? Just left us to die?”

  “More than likely,” he answered. He slipped his fingers in the grate and pushed upward, bracing his legs to use them for extra leverage. The heavy plate moved slowly, but he managed to finally push it wide enough for his body.

  “Stay here,” he said and disappeared.

  This room was different than the previous one, larger with consoles completely dark from lack of power. Emmarie could tell he was looking around, trying to find something useful. She reached up and heaved herself topside. So intent was his concentration, he jumped when Emmarie laid her hand on his elbow. “You should stay hidden,” he said, turning back to the console.

  “I don’t twiddle my thumbs very well,” she informed him simply.

  That brought a small smile to his lips.

  She walked around, running her fingers over surfaces. “Do you think this is the command center?”

  “I think its close proximity to where we were being held is significant,” he corrected, “but I don’t think it’s the base of operations.” He reached out to trace the language over one panel. “Hm. Well, I thought this was Arabic.”

  She leaned in close to some writing. “It’s not?”

  He shook his head. “Every language has a basic structure, and I’ve studied many languages,” he tapped one particular spot, “but this symbol looks like, I don’t know, something from Krypton.”

  “Linguist and comic book aficionado?” she deadpanned. She would have tried to tease, but it just wasn’t in her.

  “College is not won by academics alone, you know. Superman helps.”

  All she could muster was a wan smile. Emmarie stepped up to examine a part of the wall that had what looked like a fuse box. There were buttons and switches that pulsed red, instead of blue. The building suddenly rocked again, pitching her forward into the open console. She threw her hands up to brace herself, but a palm smashed inside among the buttons and levers, causing a shower of white sparks. Logan raced to her and pulled her back, and both stared with jaws dropping as regular lights flooded the room.

  Emmarie blinked and squinted at the unexpected brilliance. Logan had raised a hand to shield his eyes, but she finally was able to see his features clearly. He had blonde hair, a shade darker than her own, and wore black-framed glasses. He wasn’t much older than her but he reminded her of the boys she had gone to high-school with. He exuded a certain level of cockiness and arrogance, even in their present situation, like he could solve any problem handed to him. People like him intimidated her slightly. They were so focused on their drive to succeed in life that nothing else mattered.

  Her one simple goal in life was to find a place she belonged.

  She raised a self-conscious hand to her blonde hair pulled back into a sloppy pony tail. She still wore the make-up from the rehearsal, but after how-many hours stuck in a coffin she wasn’t really sure if she looked like a raccoon or not.

  A series of sounds whistled around them and the room suddenly came to life.

  “Logan?”

  “I think hitting that panel was a good thing,” he said, impressed. He took her hand and led her back to the console. Both were speechless to see the chambers from the first room on the monitors, every angle covered. “Let’s get out of here,” he muttered.

  They walked over to the door and this time, when he touched the side panel, it swished open. From their doorway, it went both right and left then curved as if it were circular.

  “Which way?” she asked, not daring to look at him.

  He gave a small sigh and pointed. “Right. If you enter a maze always go to the right.”

  She led the way and they walked cautiously forward. Emmarie swore her heart had jumped into her throat. Her head pounded with each beat. Basically, they walked in a circle. There was one closed door to their left, and as they came to another door on the right, the compound shook again with a violent jerk. Logan fell back but Emmarie smashed into the door, and her hand accidentally snagged on the panel as she made a desperate bid to brace her fall. The door swished open and her momentum carried her through it. Another harsh shake was enough to send her flipping over the railing to the ground below.

  She landed hard on her back. The world swam in blackness before it came slowly back into focus. She dra
gged a large gulp of air into her lungs, hearing Logan call her name frantically.

  She turned her head to look beside her and saw large, oval black eyes staring back at her. She screamed and scrambled back, her eyes trying to absorb the inert body of…an alien.

  It lay supine with its head turned. It was one of those classic little green men, with overly large ebony eyes and a large, elliptical head. Its body was tiny, rail thin with ribs outlined in the chest area. Smallish, perhaps only three or four feet tall, with slits for nostrils and a mouth.

  “Emmarie!” Logan called out as he looked over the balcony rail. She didn’t answer because she was too busy gaping at the creature before her.

  But she knew when he had joined her, after scaling the ladder nearby. His eyes were glued to the alien as well, and he circumvented it until his outstretched hand managed to find her arm. He yanked her to her feet then pushed her body behind his.

  “Oh. My. God.”

  “I don’t think he’s…it’s…Middle Eastern,” she managed.

  “Obviously, this is not real,” he muttered. “This is…we must have suffered from a mild form of oxygen deprivation.”

  “Right,” she said. “We’re hallucinating the exact same thing.”

  He threw her a dark look. “I’m going to make sure it’s…organic.”

  She nodded her head vigorously. “That’s a good word to use.”

  “Go check to see if it’s alive.”

  He threw her an incredulous look before letting go of her hand. He took several steps closer to the alien, studying it with narrowed eyes. Then he knelt and reached out and poked the bony leg. It didn’t move.

  “What does it feel like?”

  “It feels like clammy skin,” he reported.

  “What type of skin? Lizard skin? Frog skin?”

  “Human skin.”

  “Oh,” she said, surprised. “Is it breathing?”

  Logan shook his head then half rolled the alien over. The big head flopped to the other side. “There’s blood at the base of the skull. I think its dead. Emmarie, I think…God, I can’t believe I’m going to say this out loud,” he took a deep breath and faced her. “I think we’re on a spaceship.”