Alien Protector: Sci-Fi Alien Invasion Paranormal Romance (15 page)

“Because I’m jealous of you,” Plintos said, and Steph was shocked into silence.

“You’re jealous of me?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “That doesn’t really make any sense.”

“It does, when you think about it. Draco has been by my side since we were small children. He’s always been there for me. I’ve always been his priority. And now there’s you. He’s had...dalliances before, of course, but none of them ever amounted to anything. He never looked at any of them the way he looks at you.”

Stephanie frowned, though inwardly she thrilled at the thought that she was special to Draco. “So, what? You think I’m trying to take him from you or something?”

Plintos shook his head. “Please, don’t misunderstand. I don’t think it’s something
you’re
doing. You’ve likely not done anything at all, and just you being you is what draws him to you. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand that I don’t mean you ill will.”

She was quiet for a moment, taking that in. “You know,” she said. “I think you should give him more credit than that. When I first met him, he told me that I reminded him of you. You’re more important to him than you might think.”

He looked startled at that, and looked at the floor for a moment before smiling at her. “Thank you,” he said. “Enough of this, then. Would you like a tour of the room? There’s quite a lot to see.”

Stephanie was sure her eyes were comically wide as she nodded enthusiastically, and she spent the next few hours in the tower with Plintos, learning about Aldara’s history and things about the various other planets Draco had brought Plintos things back from. And it was impossible not to see how Draco loved his best friend. How he went to other lands to find things that he would like so Plintos could study them and display them in his tower.

It looked a lot like love to Stephanie anyway.

“This is all so wonderful,” she said, when they’d paused to eat a meal brought hesitantly by the servants. Steph got the impression that Plintos didn’t often let people in this room, and she was honored to have been invited in. “But...you know what might be better?”

Plintos looked at her sidelong. “What?”

“If you shared it all with the people. History is important to your people, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is, but I…” He looked over his shelves and sighed. “I suppose I thought of all this as mine for so long. But I take your point.”

Stephanie beamed at him.

With that out of the way, Stephanie felt better. She explored more freely and spoke to people when she saw them, feeling more and more at home in this place that was so like her own planet and so different at the same time.

Canna had a steady stream of food for her to eat while she went around and talked to people and saw things, keeping busy while Draco was otherwise occupied.

At the end of the day, he always apologized for making her do things alone, but she always waved that away, insisting that she didn’t mind. It was nice to see things on her own and to be her own person here all the while knowing that if she needed Draco, he would be there and that they would spend the evening together.

She missed her home and thought about it often, of course, but it wasn’t the homesickness she had been expecting, and she had to wonder if she had ever really been living while she was there. She’d loved her job and had been excited about classes and things like that, but otherwise, it had just been going through the motions without much to excite her.

This was entirely different, though, and the longer she stayed, the more relaxed she felt, all the while never losing that feeling of wonder that came from exploring a new place.

Maybe that was why she was more careless there than she would have been on Earth. There were no warnings about not going places alone or needing to look out for predators or criminals, and so she’d assumed that she was safe.

Of course, Stephanie should have remembered that the whole reason she was there in the first place was because there were creatures who were after the blade and who knew what she looked like.

All it took was one trip to the outskirts of the more populated areas of Leothian for her to remember that in startling clarity as she ended up staring down a Triptherus that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.

It melted out of the shadows of one of the empty buildings and hissed in her direction, terrifying mouth curved into a garish smile.

“I remember you.”

And then it lunged.

Chapter 11: A Hero’s Duty

A scream split the air as Draco was walking from the grounds where he’d been training with some of the guards, and it made his blood run cold. Not only was it a scream of pure terror, but it was a familiar voice that was doing the screaming.

Stephanie
.

“Have you seen Steph?” he asked the first person he passed on his way back. All of the people in Leothian knew who she was at that point, and most of them kept watch over her in one way or another during the day while he was busy.

The man frowned. “I think I saw her heading towards the old factory district,” he said. “On the outskirts, you know?”

Draco did know. He also knew that even if he ran, it would take him at least five minutes to get there. It was the perfect place for a Triptherus to corner her, too. Just shadowy enough for them to have plenty of places to hide. It also didn’t help that it was already getting dark, making the shadows longer and deeper than they’d been even just an hour ago.

Rumor had it that Triptherus got stronger the darker it was, but no one had ever lived to say if that was true or not.

He didn’t want to test the theory, so he took off at a dead sprint, calling over his shoulder “Tell the king they’re here!”

He didn’t know if it was the full group of them or if it was just a scout, but they’d made good time in following them either way, and he didn’t want to take any chances. The blade was back at the palace, but he had a blaster on his hip, and he was going to do whatever he could to protect Stephanie from harm.

Just as soon as he made it to her.

Draco skidded to a stop when he made it to the outskirts of the city, breathing hard as he looked around. It was getting darker as he stood there, and there was no sign of life. There hadn’t been any more screams as he ran, and he was on his guard as he walked forward, keeping his eyes open and moving for any signs of moving shadows. If one of those things snuck up on him, it would not be pretty.

Just to be on the safe side, he pulled his blaster from its holster and took the safety off, ready to fire if need be. It had four settings from stun to cook, basically, and he wouldn’t hesitate to fry anything that leapt out at him.

“Stephanie?” he called cautiously. “Are you here?”

His own voice echoed back to him, and he narrowed his eyes. There was no way they could have gotten far in the time it’d taken him to get there, and he knew Stephanie would have put up a fight.

“You’ll never find her,” hissed a voice from the shadows, and Draco spun, firing into the darkness. A chilling screech echoed from the corner he’d shot into, and there was now a burning hole in the side of an abandoned building.

“Where is she?” he demanded, readying to fire again.

“Bring us the item,” the voice demanded right back. “Bring it.”

“I’m not making any trades with you,” Draco snapped. “Where
is
she?”

The laugh that followed seemed to echo around him, and it chilled him to the bone. “You don’t make demands here,” the voice said.

Draco let loose a wordless growl of frustration, irritation and anger warring in him to just leave him pissed off and ready for a fight. He fired his blaster at the corner a few more times for good measure and the hissing laughter just increased. They were mocking him, and since he had no idea where they were, there was very little he could do about it.

It seemed that the only thing he could really do was go get the blade and bring it back, no matter how much he really, really didn’t want to.

“I’ll be back,” he snapped, turning on his heel.

“We will be waiting.”

Well. That was reassuring in its own right, he supposed, and he ran all the way back to the palace.

Plintos was rallying the guards when Draco burst in, breathing hard and drenched with sweat despite the coolness of the evening and the chill in the air. His chest heaved, and Plintos looked at him, concerned.

“Have you seen them?” he asked, eyes wide. “Are they approaching?”

It was easy to read the fear in his friend’s face, no matter how hard he was trying to hide it from the rest of the assembled group, and Draco knew this was far out of his comfort zone. It wasn’t exactly something Draco was skilled at either, fighting and going into battles, but he was going to protect Stephanie or die trying, and even he was startled by the force of that desire.

“They’re on the outskirts,” Draco managed once he’d caught his breath enough to reply. “They’ve got Stephanie.”

Plintos closed his eyes and let out a sigh through his nostrils. “They aren’t messing around, then,” he said.

“I need the blade,” Draco said.

“What?”

“I
need
the
blade
,” he said again. “They won’t tell me where she is or show themselves until I bring it to them.”

“Draco,” Plintos said slowly. “We can’t just… If they get their hands on all three of the Artifacts, then we’re done forever.”

“And if I don’t take the blade down there, they might kill her,” Draco snapped back. “Don’t you understand that? This was never her fight. This doesn’t even have anything to
do
with her, and they’ve
got
her, and I’m going to get her back. I won’t let them have the blade, Plintos. I’m not looking to make a trade. I just need them to show themselves.”

“It’s dark out there. You know how much stronger they get in the dark,” Plintos said, but Draco could already see him relenting.

“I don’t care. I’ll put the weapon together if I can and take them out, but I’m getting her back, Plintos. I need you to back me up here.”

They held eye contact for a few charged seconds, their years of friendship and camaraderie stretched out between them. Draco knew that Plintos would be able to see that this was important to him and that he was willing to rush in there armed with nothing more than a blaster and a handful of rocks if he had to, and he knew that Plintos wouldn’t let him be so ill equipped.

He was right, and Plintos sighed and nodded, reaching down to take something from his belt.

When Draco looked, he saw that it was a sheath. Not the same as the one that belonged with the blade, but a leather one that he’d found somewhere.

“I didn’t think it was smart to leave it unattended while we deal with this, and this was better than carrying it by hand,” Plintos said, passing it to Draco. “Go find her. We’ll follow you.”

Draco let out a sigh of relief and pulled Plintos into a rough hug from just a moment, ignoring their audience and the fact that Plintos rarely allowed such familiar physical contact.

As quickly as he’d come, he was releasing his friend and heading back, wishing for the first time that Aldara had followed Earth’s example with personal vehicles. They didn’t use them because they liked keeping their air clean and breathable, but he couldn’t deny that driving would have been much more effective than running back and forth.

As much as he wanted to all out sprint back, he knew that wouldn’t be wise. If he was worn out and out of breath when he got back, then there was no telling what they’d do to him if he couldn’t defend himself.

And they weren’t going anywhere. Not if they wanted the blade.

Speaking of, the thing seemed to hum where it rested against his hip and thigh, practically singing with power. A glance into the sheath showed that it was glowing faintly, a sure sign that the other two Artifacts were nearby.

Good
, he thought. If he could put them all together, then he’d had a powerful weapon the likes of which no one had seen since Cillidan’s time, but even if he didn’t, Draco would swing the sword with his bare hands if he had to.

It was much darker when he made it back to the factory district, and he didn’t even pause. He reached into the sheath and pulled the blade out by the end, letting the pulsing glow of it illuminate the area around him.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see something shrinking back into the shadows, and he smiled grimly, striding forward and thrusting the blade out so the light shone into the darkness.

The shadows were pushed away, leaving the cowering form of one Triptherus easily visible. Draco’s lip curled in disgust at the sight of it. “Where is she?” he demanded.

For a moment their eyes held, Draco’s meeting those fathomless dark ones, and then the creature lunged, trying to get its hands on the blade.

Draco whipped it back and out of its reach just in time, a hard smile on his face. “No,” he said. “That’s not how this is going to work. You’re going to take me to her and then we’ll see about you getting your disgusting hands on this.”