“Show me?” Allie squeaked.
“Yes.”
Erik held his right hand over his head, palm towards her.
“On more than one occasion you noticed a blue glow. First from Cody’s car, and then twice from my hand. And also while we were making love.
Well, you were right. It wasn’t your imagination.
In the case of the car, the blue glow was a residue of the protective force deployed to deter vandals after Cody’s removal. During love-making, it was a reflection of the intense Zalian energy involved.
“And in my case, the blue glow is a birthmark, one that identifies me as a member of the Zalian elite, born to lead and privy to every privilege that Zalian society offers. Usually I can control its presence at will, and I do so now.”
Allie stared apprehensively at Erik’s hand.
As she looked, a faint blue light started to emanate from his open palm.
Allie blinked. It had to be suggestion, nothing more.
She continued to stare. The glow flickered, and then grew stronger, developing into a distinct blue marking like the blue lines of a mighty river on a map. The blue grew steadily brighter until it cast an eerie hue over the whole room.
Allie swallowed. She looked at Erik’s face. He wore an expression of extreme concentration.
She looked back at his hand. The river of light glowed more intensely with each passing second.
She shivered as the unbelievable possibility that Erik was telling the truth insinuated its way inside.
She started to back away from Erik and his glowing hand. “No, no, it can’t be, I— No!”
She finished in a scream of horror. She flipped open the door lock and bolted.
Just as Allie reached her car in the underground parking garage, Erik’s hand closed around her upper arm.
He felt her jerk of shock and heard the gasp of terror. Terror of
him
.
His heart plummeted, but he tightened his grasp. There wasn’t time for foolish emotion. He was just glad that her spontaneous flight had sent her running to the parking garage and not the newsroom. He hoped there was enough time to make her understand, to soothe the panic and terror he feared threatened her sanity and their future life together on Zura.
“Let go of me.” Though she didn’t struggle, Allie’s voice vibrated with fear. “Let go of me or I’ll scream.”
For a second her gaze connected with his. The searing hurt and fear Erik saw there hit him harder than if she had slapped him. He swallowed.
“You know I can’t do that,” he said quietly. “But you also know I’m not going to hurt you. I’d never hurt you. All I want to do right now is go some place quiet. Some place where I can finish explaining who I am and why I’m here.”
“I’m going to scream.”
Allie’s lower lip wobbled even as she shoved it stubbornly forward.
“No, you’re not.” Erik regarded her steadily, using every iota of his telepathic power to urge her to listen to him, to believe him, to understand.
Not just for him, but for both of them, and for the future that he would do everything in his power to make good for her, if only she’d let it be. “In the first place,” he continued, glancing around,
”there’s no one down here to hear you. But it wouldn’t matter. I could take you by force.”
Renewed fear arced across her face.
“But I don’t want to,” he rushed on, dismayed by the response his words had evoked. “I don’t want to have to force you into anything.” He
couldn’t
do to Allie what his grandfather had done to his Earthling grandmother.
Something in his voice and his expression must have communicated his feelings as his telepathic suggestions had not. Her brow creased and she looked at him with puzzlement before straightening and tossing her head. “You wouldn’t do that,” she said with a conviction he knew was more show than confidence.
He held her gaze. “I don’t want to. But I would.
I have no choice. It will be better for both of us if you hear me out. I won’t hurt you. I haven’t hurt Cody. But you need to hear the whole story.”
He could see her fear and panic warring with her confusion and mixed feelings towards him. He knew any desire she might have to believe him was tempered by her mistrust of men in general, and of her own judgement. She’d picked losers before, her expression seemed to say. Perhaps she’d crossed the line and finally made a fatal error.
He held his breath and waited. He felt like a heartless hunter presenting his victim with the choice of death now or death later. But he was no more empowered to do something else than he could allow her to escape. It was destiny, after all.
He couldn’t let his love for her override what had to be done.
Finally she bit her lip. Her trembling abated.
She swallowed but did not look at him. “So where do you want to go to talk?”
“The steps at Fullerton. You know, outside in Lincoln Park, right out in the open by the lake.”
Maybe, he thought, she’d feel safer if they were some place public.
“All right.” Allie glanced at his hand. “You can let go of me now. I’ll just go up and tell Nate we’ll be gone for a while.”
“No!” The stricken yelp escaped before Erik could stop it, destroying any illusion of self-control he might have entertained. He cleared his throat and struggled for calm. “That won’t be necessary,” he managed. “We won’t be long.”
Despite his concern that she might bolt again, he released her arm. He didn’t want her to see that he suspected she would call the police as soon as she was out of sight. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the police or how they might complicate his plans. With the help of his Zalian companions, he could easily extricate himself from any physical Earthly complication.
But he didn’t want any more complications than the one he already faced. The only one that mattered. And that was making Allie understand that he loved her and would never hurt her.
“All right. But once we’ve talked, I’m free to go.
Right?”
Erik’s heart sank. He flinched from the hopefulness in her face. Would she ever understand?
“Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The blue sky stretched as far as the eye could see, its color reflected in the sparkling waters of Lake Michigan. Near the horizon where water blended seamlessly into sky, fluffy white clouds had begun to cluster, perhaps an omen of a late afternoon summer storm on the way. Around them, Allie heard the chirp of birds, the sound of children’s voices in the distance. Despite the city behind them, the breeze off the lake smelled fresh and inviting.
Allie clamped her lips shut against the hysterical laughter bubbling up inside. How could everything seem so normal, an ordinary summer day, when her life had just entered the twilight zone? When the man sitting so calmly beside her on the steps—the man she had been madly in love with less than three hours ago—when he had just told her he was an alien who intended to take her with him to his planet in another solar system?
She shut her eyes and took another deep breath in an attempt to slow the racing of her heart, to control the roller coaster ride from terror and depression through curiosity and trust to denial and disbelief. What was going on? Was Erik crazy? Or was
she
crazy to suspect, fear, hope—
she didn’t know which was the right word— that he was telling the truth? Once again, behind her closed eyes, she saw that terrifyingly eerie glimmer of blue light from his hand. A chill ran down her spine and she hugged herself tightly.
“Are you cold? Would you like to go somewhere else?”
Allie opened her eyes to find Erik peering at her. Out here, on the lake shore, he looked the epitome of normalcy. Just an all-round American male.
For a second she grasped that thought and held it to her. Normal, yes, normal. He was normal and this was all a bad dream. In a moment she’d wake up, in her own bed, with Erik stretched out beside her. She’d ask him if he’d slept well and he’d say yes.
She blinked. Erik was still staring at her, his gray eyes dark with a seriousness that frightened her. No, it wasn’t a dream. Nothing would make this moment disappear. The only course left was to go on, to discover the length and the breadth of the unreality Erik was proposing.
“Uh, what did you say? Oh, no, I’m not cold. I’m fine thank you.” She could hear herself babbling but couldn’t stop. “Isn’t the lake beautiful this morning? I always love it here, it’s so quiet and peaceful and—”
“We didn’t come here to talk about the weather,” Erik interrupted. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Allie thought her heart had stopped. She managed to gulp down some air, and it continued on its erratic course. The last thing Erik had shown her was his eerily glowing hand. She wasn’t sure she could take the shock of another revelation of that kind, perhaps the ability to levitate or disappear or zap objects with a thought.
She shuddered again.
Erik reached into his back pocket. He retrieved an item and handed it to her. “Look at this.”
Allie stared at the object. It appeared to be an ordinary black and white photo, plasticized for protection. A simple head shot of an elderly woman. Allie looked closer. The woman seemed familiar, except for the disturbingly blank expression on her face.
Uneasy, Allie didn’t touch the photo. But she couldn’t stop looking at it either. As the seconds rolled by, her impression of the woman’s blankness and bewilderment grew stronger.
“You don’t recognize her?” Erik prodded.
Allie grimaced. “Should I? I do feel as if I’ve seen her before, but I don’t know when or where, or even who she is.”
Erik said nothing. Allie watched as the breeze blew his hair across his forehead. Suddenly she was filled with unbearable sadness. How could Erik not be normal? How could he be crazy? Or even worse, be exactly what he said he was?
Please let this all be a bad dream.
Then Erik drew another item from his pocket.
As he unfolded it, Allie recognized it as one of her columns. It was the one about the strange disappearance sixty years ago of Eva Bukowski, and the photo of her taken only weeks before she disappeared.
He handed it to her. “Maybe this will help.”
Allie looked from the photo of the nineteen-year-old girl to the photo of the much older woman. Was there supposed to be a connection?
She looked from face to face, then back again. The longer she looked, a strange feeling began to come over her. There was a similarity, wasn’t there? Or was it just her tortured imagination, stretched to the limit?
She cleared her throat. “They look a little alike.
It’s possible they are . . . related in some way.”
“They are related. In fact, it’s the same person.
This is Eva Bukowski before her disappearance.
And this is her forty-eight years later, shortly before her death.”
Allie’s throat seized up. She wanted to deny it, to declare it wasn’t true. But her eyes, and an instinct so strong she knew it didn’t lie, told her it was true.
She swallowed. “So . . . so why do you have this photo of Eva? Where did it come from?”
“Look at me, Allie.”
She didn’t want to, but it was a command she seemed unable to ignore. Slowly she turned her head. Erik’s storm-colored eyes, so quick to change and usually so impossible to read, glowed now with an intensity that reminded her of their first encounter outside her door. But rather than being fearsomely blank as he had appeared the first night, she could see and feel concern and love for her in his expression. Her heart lurched painfully.
“Eva was my grandmother.”
The words that should have shocked her seemed unsurprising now. With lightning speed, her mind resurrected the clues that should have tipped her off to just such a possibility: her recognition of the likeness between Eva and Erik, Erik’s discomfort with the story idea and the interview with the family, and his upset when Mrs. Bukowski had pointed out his likeness to one of her grandsons. Not to mention his strange unfamiliarity with so much of American life.
Allie tried to prevent her thoughts from skittering off in a dozen different directions. It was important she ask exactly the right questions, at the right time. “So,” she said slowly,
”if you’re from another planet, how did Eva come to be your grandmother?”
Erik exhaled sharply. “My countrymen had just perfected intergalactic travel and begun to explore the few planets in the universe supporting advanced life. My grandfather came to Earth on one of Zura’s first expeditions here and kidnapped Eva. He kidnapped her because the Zalian seers had foretold his destiny—that he must marry the Earthling Eva Bukowski.”
“And did he? Marry her that is?”
“Yes. My mother is their only child.”
“And what did your grandmother think of all this? Being kidnapped to another planet? Never seeing her family or her home again? Married off to a stranger—to an
alien
— in outer space?”
Despite herself, Allie’s voice rose with each question.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Allie looked at him with disbelief. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean—well, my grandmother never actually spoke since the day she was kidnapped.” Erik shifted uncomfortably on the stone step. “Not a word in English or Zalian. Not ever. She . . . I think that the shock was so great—from the kidnapping, the spaceship, Zura itself —her mind simply closed against it, shutting out everything she didn’t understand or couldn’t face. No one was ever able to help her, and I know my grandfather brought in the top medical experts.”
Erik grimaced, then looked away from Allie and out to the shimmering lake. “By the time I was born, my grandmother spent most of her days locked in a padded room. I never talked to her. I never touched her. The only sound I ever heard her make was a kind of wailing, like an animal caught in a trap it couldn’t comprehend.”
Allie’s mind reeled with the incredible story Erik was unfolding with the sincerity of fact. Fact her mind revolted against, but which another part of her recognized implicitly as the truth. Fact, that if she chose to believe him, explained so much about Erik she had not been able to understand before.
In silence she tried to grasp the