It's a Love Thing (39 page)

“
I love you,” he whispered
when he pulled away. “You know that, right?”

I managed to respond between ragged
breaths. “Of . . . of course I do.” He held me tighter in his arms
and let his head fall on my shoulder.

“
Good.” My mind was a whirl
of thoughts and emotions and I frantically tried to think of what I
could say to calm him down. My brain was so overloaded that it took
me a moment before I saw something move behind Xeno. In the tree
line that backed up against Xeno’s house there was a shadow. As my
eyes adjusted to the darkness the shadow grew into the shape of a
person, watching us.

“
Xeno . . .” He sensed the
panic in my voice and followed my line of sight to the trees where
the figure was raising an arm that was holding what looked like a
gun! Before I could react there was a flash of light and Xeno
jumped in front of me. The ball of light hit him straight on and he
doubled over in pain. Shock froze my body completely and I watched
as the figure stepped out of the shadows and crossed the lawn to
us.

“
What was that for? I would
have hit it straight on!” the person said. In the light of the
lamps I could see that it was another boy, about our age, but with
straight, jet black hair that glinted in the moonlight. There
wasn’t much more I could see though because in an instant Xeno was
back on his feet and standing between me and the
stranger.

“
Leave, Orin,” he
growled.

“
What’s wrong with you?”
Orin shot back. “Step aside, it can’t get away now!”
It
. He was talking
about
me
, but
why?

“
Who are you?” I said,
silencing them both.

“
Em, please, let me handle
this.” Xeno’s voice pleaded with me, but Orin simply scoffed.
Looking around Xeno’s shoulder, I could see Orin sneering at me
with disgust as he spat his words.

“
You want to know who I am,
Earthling? I’ll tell you. I’m here to save this sorry scum’s ass by
taking you back up to the flagship.”

“
Orin!” Xeno shouted,
cutting him off. “Get out now or I swear—”

“
What?” He looked back and
forth between me and Xeno and slowly a smile grew on his face. “Oh,
you must be joking. Xeno, I thought you were better than this. It
doesn’t know why you’re here, does it?”

“
She has a name,” Xeno shot
back. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t deny anything Orin was
saying.

“
Of course she does,” Orin
said with a laugh. “And I suppose ‘she’ thinks that you’re just
another one of her kind looking for a mate, then? Well, I hate to
disappoint you, girl, but you’ve been greatly deceived.”

“
Orin, I swear if you are
not out of here in the next five seconds I’m going to tear off
your—”

“
Stop!” I interrupted,
putting a hand on Xeno’s shoulder. He froze at my touch and that’s
when I knew. He was hiding something from me. He’d been lying, but
about what? “Tell me. The truth,” I demanded, trying to keep my
voice from shaking. Xeno didn’t say a word, but luckily Orin and
his big mouth were up to the challenge.

“
Xeno, as you call him,
isn’t one of you humans. He works with me for the research
department of the flagship leading Project Discovery. Your planet
isn’t the only one that likes to explore the unknown universe.”
Memories of my father ranting about extraterrestrials in the area
came back to me. His voice echoed in my head and I thought I was
going to pass out.

“
No . . .”
We have reason to believe that they not only
landed on Earth, but that they are somewhere near here.
Xeno refused to look at me. His face was
completely blank.

“
We’ve been looking for a
suitable place to start a colony. Your boyfriend and I were part of
a team created to research forms of life on different planets to
see which one would be most like our own physical forms. It’s
really the best way to find a suitable planet for us to live on.
His job was to come down here and find the most fit human he could
for us to do research on within a few weeks. Excuse after excuse
came up as to why he couldn’t be back in time and how he hadn’t
found a good test subject yet. Finally, I decided to come down here
and save his ass before the commander got ahold of him.

“
And what do I find? He’s
spending his time down here messing with some alien chick who can’t
even put two and two together to figure out he’s been playing her
this whole time.” A satisfied smirk crossed his face and I couldn’t
find the strength to say anything. I didn’t dare look at
Xeno.

“
I don’t believe you,” I
whispered, desperately wanting Xeno to say something. I wanted him
to jump to his own defense and call the police to arrest this
stupid boy trying to scare us. But Xeno didn’t say anything.
Instead, Orin simply held out his hand and smiled.

The skin on his palm began to shift
and warp until it looked like something was bulging out of it. A
scream caught in my throat as bit by bit a tentacle began to
slither out of his hand. By the time it stopped growing it was
nearly a foot in length. Horror froze me in place and I didn’t have
time to react when Orin snapped the whip forward, wrapping it
around my waist. It felt like a snake was choking me and it got
harder to breath as he squeezed.

Xeno launched himself at Orin, who
simply tightened the whip’s hold on me, forcing me to let out a
small wince as my lungs were constricted.

“
I wouldn’t,” he said
tauntingly to Xeno. “I might just snap her in half right here. You
know I can.” Fear crossed Xeno’s face and finally he stepped back.
Orin’s tentacle slithered away from me and back into his hand as
quickly as it had come out. Taking deep breaths, I steadied myself
on a chair as a wave of vertigo hit me. Once I looked back up,
though, Orin was once again pointing his gun at me.

“
Of course, killing you
probably wouldn’t be in my best interest. Once I bring you back up
there’ll be bonuses in it for me.” That did it. Xeno snarled and
launched himself at Orin, knocking him to the ground. The gun
skidded across the patio, but Orin simply laughed.

“
Come on, Xeno. You and I
both know you can’t stop me. That stun blast is already starting to
take effect. You’ll be out cold in a few minutes and then there’ll
be nothing stopping me from taking her back to the commander.” He
didn’t get the chance to say anything else and I didn’t get the
chance to even fear for my life. Xeno pulled him up off the ground
and threw him into a tree ten feet across the yard with inhuman
strength. Orin was on his feet in a few seconds, but not fast
enough. Xeno was on him again, this time hitting him so hard I was
sure he would kill him. Finally, Orin went completely limp and for
a moment I thought he was dead.

Xeno stood there for a minute, staring
down at Orin’s unmoving form. Eventually he reached down and
grabbed the watch on Orin’s wrist and said something into it that
sounded like a mixture of grunts and clicks. Slowly, Orin’s body
dematerialized until a huge flash of light engulfed him. When my
eyes readjusted, he was gone, leaving me and Xeno alone once again.
He turned around and I watched him sway a little before steadying
himself on the back of a chair. My legs began to move so I could go
help him, but I stopped myself.

Xeno was the alien my father had been
searching for. It was like a bad horror film. Xeno had been trying
to kidnap me and bring me back to . . . wherever this commander
person was. They could have killed me. He was going to let it
happen. No! He just saved me from Orin. But why?

“
Em?” he called softly. I
didn’t respond. All I could do was stare at the ground. “Em,
please.” His hand grazed mine and I pulled it back
reflexively.

“
Don’t,” I snapped. He took
a step forward and I backed away. A look of pain crossed his face
and he stopped. We were at a standoff, neither knowing what to say
or how to react.

“
I’m not going to hurt
you,” he assured me, reaching out an arm. He looked like he was
trying to approach a wounded animal. They did think of us as
animals. Orin had called me an ‘it’.

“
Of course not,” I shot
back, feeling slightly hysterical. “You were just going to turn me
into your mother ship so they could dissect me is all.”

“
I wouldn’t have let them
get you. I’ll admit that is the reason I was down here. I had to
complete my mission and I was going to until . . .”

“
Until you met me. That’s
not the cheesiest line known to man. But you wouldn’t know that,
since you’re not even human.” The words stung as they were supposed
to, but the look of pain on his face made me feel
guilty.

“
Well, it’s true. I’ve
never known anyone like you, Emily. I’ve been in love with you
since that day in the park and I’ve been trying to keep Orin and
the others away until I could figure out a way to get out of this.
That’s why I was acting so strange, I knew that if they saw me with
you they would assume you were the test subject I
picked.”

“
Looks like that’s exactly
what happened.” I gestured to the trees behind us and Xeno sighed.
His eyes were drooping a little and I recalled what Orin had said.
He only had a few minutes until he would be knocked out. What if
Orin came back?

“
I promise I won’t let him
hurt you.”

“
He won’t have to. You
already did.” His mouth opened to defend himself again, but his
legs gave out from under him and he collapsed onto the ground.
Getting down on my knees beside him, I saw his lips moving, but
barely any sound was coming out. I didn’t want to listen to him,
but some part of my brain made me lean down to hear what he had to
say.

“
I love you,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry.” With that his eyes closed completely and he went limp
underneath me. A tear rolled down my face and fell on his cheek.
Pain coursed through my chest every time I took a breath, but I
barely noticed it. My mind was racing, my heart was pounding, and I
had no idea what to think or feel or say.

Xeno had betrayed me. He got me to
love him, and I fell for it. But he said he really did love me.
That was the worst part; not knowing if I was an idiot who fell for
his lies or the girl that changed his life. It didn’t matter now. I
could never trust him again.

“
Em?” Sophie’s voice pulled
me out of my thoughts. I could hear her coming around the side of
the house. “Is everything ok? I heard shouting and . . . Em, what
happened?!” She caught sight of me in the dirt with Xeno
unconscious on my lap and ran over. She continued to shake my
shoulders, trying to get a response out of me, but I didn’t say
anything. There was nothing to say.

She must have pulled out her phone and
called an ambulance because the next thing I knew Xeno was being
carried off in a stretcher and I was being examined by paramedics
to see if I had any broken ribs. Part of me wanted to leave so I
wouldn’t have to look at him, but I knew I couldn’t leave him.
Besides, they wanted to ask me questions.

On the ride over they couldn’t get any
information from me, but the truth has a way of coming out.
Eventually they realized that Xeno had no heartbeat, no blood that
could be drawn, and no vitals of any kind to check. It occurred to
me during that ride that I may never know what Xeno actually looked
like. For all I know the human appearance could have just been
something his kind did to not raise suspicion.

His kind. The thought of Orin still
made me want to throw up. I kept imagining him pointing that gun at
me and taking me back to his ship to be a science experiment. That
was the only image that was in my head until we got the hospital.
It was pure chaos as nurses and doctors examined Xeno and tried to
figure out what exactly was wrong with him. Luckily they realized
that I had no intention of saying anything and they let me
be.

After what seemed like forever
somebody handed me a cell phone and I recognized my father’s number
on the caller ID. Of course they would call him. Somebody at the
hospital would have put two and two together by now. For the first
time that evening I completely broke down and began sobbing into
the phone. I told him everything that had happened, minus the parts
about Xeno saying he loved me, and he did his best to soothe me. He
didn’t yell at me for sneaking out, but I knew it would come
eventually. For now he simply listened and said one more thing
before hanging up.

“
I’ll be there in ten
minutes”

3 minutes.

He still hasn’t moved. I get up from
the chair and walk over to the bedside. It has only been a few
hours since Orin came and ruined what might have been the best
night of my life, but it feels like years have passed. Xeno still
looks distressed, even while unconscious, and it makes me feel even
guiltier.

When I talked to my father I knew
exactly what he was going to do. He was bringing a team to come get
Xeno so they can take him back to their own lab.

I have no doubt in my mind that they
will kill him. In the name of science, of course.

2 minutes.

My heart may very well explode. The
seconds begin to fly by. I can’t let this happen. I have to let
this happen. Xeno is a threat. Xeno is my boyfriend. I love him. I
thought I loved him.