Destiny's Shift

Destiny's Shift

by

Carly Fall

Copyright © 2012 Westward Publishing

All rights reserved.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to you, dear reader. Thank you for loving the Six Saviors

as much as I do.

With love,

Carly

Chapter 1

Jovan looked around the room and two words came to mind: bored and stressed.

The black walls made sure that the lighted stage was the sole focus in the room. How one

could be bored and stressed all at once he didn’t know, but there he was, the two

emotions teetering on each side of the scale fighting for the top spot.

“Wow. She’s flexible.”

Jovan turned and looked at the female on stage that had caught Cohen’s eye.

“And strong,” said Talin. “That shit is hard to do.”

Jovan watched as the female slid down the brass pole upside down, her legs

spread wide, her only clothing—a gold G-string—glittering in the pulsing lights.

As she glided down the shiny pole, her long, bleached-blonde hair fanned out

below her. She stopped her descent inches before her head hit the ground and then back-

flipped off the pole and began gyrating on another one.

“And when was the last time you were up on a stripper’s pole, Talin?” Cohen

asked, his eyes never leaving the blonde.

“Never, you asshole,” Talin said, taking a sip of his thirteen-dollar beer. “But

think of the laws of physics and gravity. Anyone with half a brain could calculate the

pressure . . .”

And that was when Jovan tuned out. Talin blew the IQ test off the charts and

seemed to think that everyone else wanted to hear about gravity and physics and other

shit no one really cared about.

Saying the female sliding down the pole upside down was strong was definitely

an accurate statement, but he didn’t need to know the how’s or why’s of it all.

He deeply cared about his two friends and fellow Warriors, Cohen and Talin, but

sometimes even the people you cared about bored you into tuning in on your own

frequency, and blocking theirs out.

They were crammed into a booth at a strip club in downtown Phoenix, Jovan

being sure that he didn’t accidently bump a leg or arm of Talin or Cohen. Tonight was

their last night in the city. It was November, and the weather was wonderful, but their

fellow Warriors and their mates were craving a real winter with snow, wind, rain, and

ball-shrinking temperatures, so they were heading for Fernley, Nevada, where all wishes

would be granted.

Jovan would have preferred to stay exactly where they were. He liked the mild

temperatures Phoenix offered in the winter when he could ride his Harley, the wind

whipping around him creating a blessed vacuum effect of where he couldn’t hear

anything but his own thoughts. But he had to go where the boss, Noah, told him to, so the

Fernley missile silo it was. After the Cold War, America wanted to show the Russians that

they were willing to play nice and decommissioned a bunch of missile silos across the

nation. Some were put up for sale, and Noah had picked up a few of them, without the

missiles, of course, and had them fixed up with the best of everything. They were

comfortable to live in, and provided the security the Six Saviors needed.

He reminded himself that a good snowpack in Fernley would provide an excellent

arsenal of snowballs.

Scanning the bar, he thought about how much things had changed over the past

year and a half for him and his fellow Warriors.

They had arrived on Earth two hundred and twelve years ago, their mission to

hunt and destroy the Colonists, the evil from their planet SR44. Things hadn’t gone

exactly as planned, and they ended up staying a lot longer than they thought they would.

For over two centuries, they had blended in and interacted with humans while

fulfilling their mission of killing Colonists. They had fun, they messed around, and they

enjoyed the pleasures of Earth, mainly the women and the booze, but it had always been

the six of them. Then, somehow, females started infiltrating the Six Saviors, and three

months ago, Hudson, another one of his fellow Warriors, and his mate, Beverly, added a

baby to the mix. Man, from what Hudson had told him, that birth had been close to being

a complete disaster, and they were lucky that Beverly and the baby were even around.

As cute as three-month-old Killian was with his head full of black hair and light

yellow eyes at night, it was fucking nuts. And listening to Hudson, an assassin and who

could be one of the meanest, nastiest, mother fuckers Jovan had ever laid eyes on make

cooing noises over the little guy made Jovan want to laugh and lose his lunch all at the

same time.

He turned from the stage where the blonde was now handing over the reins to a

brunette dressed in a nurse’s uniform, and the pulsing beat of Mötley Crüe’s “Dr.

Feelgood” blasted through the speakers.

Now this I fucking like,
he heard Cohen think. Jovan sighed and shut his eyes.

About a hundred and fifty years ago, he had developed the ability to get a glimpse of

people’s feelings by simply touching them. What he hadn’t told anyone was that the gift

was getting stronger, and he could now hear people’s thoughts as well.

He had absolutely no control over any of it, and it was hit and miss, but when it

hit, he hated it.

Humans were naturally negative, and he had been able to avoid that by simply not

being in contact with them, hence he wouldn’t get a glimpse of their emotions. In a

nutshell, he pretty much kept to himself until this whole I-can-hear-what-you’re-thinking-

bullshit surfaced, and now he was pretty certain he would have to buy an island and live

by himself to keep his sanity.

I am a rock. I am an island.

Yeah, he was so rolling with that Simon and Garfunkel tune.

Hell, he couldn’t even take a piss in the strip club in peace without hearing others’

thoughts
. I wonder what my wife’s doing? I’m glad I told my girlfriend I was at Frank’s

tonight. How much would the stripper dressed as a policewoman cost for a roll in the

sheets?

He was certain it was going to make him bat-shit crazy, and he really didn’t know

how he was going to handle the rest of his life having others’ thoughts intrude on his

own. Hence, the stress.

Not to mention the other half of his so-called gift. Humans were the garbage

dump of emotions. He tried so hard to avoid touching others, and being touched.

Opening his eyes and running his hand through his shoulder-length blond hair, he

looked at the stage again. Of course Cohen would like the nurse. He was the healer of

their band of merry fucking Warriors, and a nurse would crank him into overdrive.

Yeah, the brunette was pretty, and she had a nice set of double-D’s going on, but

he turned to look at what had caught his eye since he walked into the joint.

She was serving drinks dressed in a French maid costume, the black fabric a little

too short, the white apron cinched tightly at her small waist. She appeared to be in her

mid-twenties, and her brown hair hung to her chin in tight ringlets. When she had served

his drink, her dark eyes landed on him for a split second, a glint of fear in them. She was

pretty in a very subdued, shy way, which of course got his curiosity up. He wondered

what was going on with her. Minding his own business was usually the motto, but

something about her being in this place felt fundamentally wrong.

She didn’t have the sass or swag of the other women working in the club, and

there wasn’t any of the usual flirting that went on between the strippers, servers, and

patrons. Her movements were jilted and laced with uncertainty, and she rarely made eye

contact with anyone for more than a second or two.

He watched her fake a smile at some guy, then shake her head and take a step

back. The guy reached for her, and she took another step back. Jovan was just about to go

and teach the guy some manners when a bouncer stepped in and whispered something to

the male, making him shrink in his seat.

Jovan turned back to the nurse and tried to block out Talin’s thoughts as the girl

slowly slid down into the splits and ripped open the front of her nurse’s outfit to expose a

white lacy bra.

I wonder if those are real or not?

Shit. He didn’t need to be hearing this stuff. Correction: he didn’t want to hear

this stuff. He wanted to be alone with his own thoughts and not have the thoughts of

others setting up camp in his brain.

Jovan slung back the rest of his beer, and the French maid appeared before him as

he set the bottle down.

“Please, may I get you something to drink, sir?”

Wow. She really had this whole submissive maid service thing down pat with the

verbiage and not meeting his eyes. “Yeah, I’ll take another one,” Jovan said.

If they aren’t real, I wonder about the composite make-up of the implants that

make them look so natural.

Oh, hell.
Just please, shut up, Talin!

“Forget the one,” Jovan said. “Get me two beers and a shot of Jager.”

The French maid smiled slightly and bowed her head. “As you wish,” she said,

and she bee-lined it for the bar.

As Jovan watched her go, he was again struck with the thought that there was

something fundamentally wrong with her being in this place, and her fancy linguistics

weren’t a big put-on.

Looking at his watch, he realized the sun would be going down in half an hour

and he needed to scoot. For his kind, when the sun went down, his eyes glowed his true

being of an SR44 male, a bright, emerald green. He looked down at his big hands, hoping

he would one day see his home and get back to his true smoky form, but lately

uncertainty had began to seep into his mind.

He pushed his doubts aside and turned his attention back to the stage. The nurse

was done, and out came a cowgirl in a white bra and brown leather chaps.

Jovan sighed again, and despite the onslaught of thoughts from others, bored was

winning over stress. “I didn’t put my contacts in, so I’m going to have to blow here in a

bit,” he said to Talin and Cohen. The contacts were developed by Talin a few years back

to dull the glow of their eyes after dark.

“How come?” Cohen asked, pushing a flop of hair out of his eyes, his gaze never

leaving the cowgirl on stage.

“Just didn’t.” Actually, he didn’t put them in because he loved the adrenaline rush

of possibly being seen with his eyes glowing. He ran his fingers through his hair again,

moving it out of his face.

“Rapunzel called. She wants her hair back,” Talin said, looking at him.

Jovan glared at Talin. Yeah, he needed a haircut, but he didn’t want a stranger’s

hands on him. Who knew what shit he would feel, and right now, he was pretty unstable

in the whole touchy-feely gift department. He had no control over it, and people’s

thoughts came at him at random. With his so-called gift getting stronger, sometimes if he

touched someone he would get a glimpse of their emotions; other times it would be a

tidal wave, and they would settle into him as if they were his own.

The French maid came back to their table and deposited Jovan’s drinks down in

front of him.

“Thanks,” he said above the country music, which grated on his already battered