Runner's Moon Trilogy Megabook Series (9 page)

"Hannah!"

She flailed against the beast, but it caught her wrists and held them with long fingers tipped with thick claws. She screamed again before the creature's other hand clamped down over her mouth. A brief struggle ensued before she could grasp the fact that the horror staring at her with liquid brown eyes was holding her firmly without harming her, or allowing her to inadvertently harm herself.

It was going to eat her. It was going to rip out her throat with those cannibal teeth and devour her alive. Her chest constricted to think this monster had overcome Jeb. Maybe killing him before it sought her out.

Terrified beyond any further thought, she continued to stare into its pain-filled brown eyes. Brown eyes flecked with gold.

"Hannah. Stop! It's me, Jeb!"

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The words came out of its mouth; a mouth containing those ungodly sharp little teeth. With a voice that sounded just like...

It had lain down beside her. It had come out of the bathroom after taking a shower, and gotten into bed like Jeb did.

Her body was trembling violently. She could not think; her mind was focused on the thing that continued to resist her struggling while also maintaining a warm—claw?

—over her mouth.

The pounding at the door distracted her.

"Mr. Morr! Miss Pitt! Open the door! Open the door!"

She swung her eyes toward the portal and tried to warn them about the creature, but the only sound she could utter was the whining in the back of her throat.

"It's okay, Mrs. Newburg!" a voice called out behind her.

Jeb's voice.

"What's happening! We heard a scream! Open this door!"

the woman shouted, banging again on the door.

Hannah jerked her head back around, coming nose to nose not with the green-skinned monster, but with Jeb's familiar, beloved visage. Her eyes flew open as he leaned closer to her face.

"Say nothing, Hannah. If you love me, say nothing. I will explain."

He gave her long enough to reply with a nervous nod.

Immediately he released her wrists and mouth, and crawled off the bed.

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The pounding came again. "Open this door, or I'll call the sheriff!"

She remained staring at him as he grabbed the jeans he had thrown on the chair and hurriedly pulled them on. She caught a glimpse of his manhood a second before he stuffed it inside his pants and zipped them up as he strode to the door.

The beating on the door continued until he unlocked it and threw it open. Outside Mrs. Newburg and a couple of other motel guests were gathered, wide-eyed and fearful.

"It's all right, Mrs. Newburg. An owl flew into the room and frightened us," Jeb told her calmly. He continued to hold the door open wide enough so they could see inside. See Hannah sitting up in bed with the sheet bunched under her chin.

Above the bed, the window was clearly open.

Mrs. Newburg gave him a cautious glare before examining the woman in the bed. "Is that the truth, Miss Pitt?"

Without blinking, Hannah nodded. "Scared the bejeebers out of me. Sorry if I woke anyone."

The motel owner relaxed. It was clear her worst fears had not come to pass, and Jeb had not attacked the young woman as they all had believed.

Jeb continued the charade. "It's gone now. Sorry for the trouble."

Giving them both a nod, the woman said, "Better keep that window closed, or it could happen again." She paused, then added, "You sure no one got hurt?"

"No, ma'am," Hannah quickly offered, glancing at the man—a human-looking man—who remained by the door but didn't look back at her.

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After another moment, Mrs. Newburg nodded and bid them goodnight. Jeb remained at the door until they all had dispersed back to their rooms. Then he closed and locked the door. With that done, he turned to face her. Finally. Yet he remained leaning against the jamb, not coming near her.

A shiver raced through her as her heart slowly calmed. Her eyes never left him.

"When I came to bed, I thought you might be awake, because you tend to dream aloud," he said softly. "You didn't take the sleeping pill, did you?"

"No." She shook her head. Her eyes raked over his figure, and she realized this was the first time she had seen him shirtless. His chest was as broad as she knew it would be.

Broad, with muscles that looked like they had been carved into his flesh. Large, dark nipples contrasted sharply against his pale skin.

Pale skin. Not the dark forest green color she remembered seeing.

"What are you?" Biting her lower lip, she added, "I know what I saw, so don't try to lie your way out of it. You're not human, are you?"

This time it was his turn to shake his head and reply, "No."

He made a move away from the door. Hannah's instinctive reaction was to scramble back across the bed to keep as much distance as she could between them. When he saw her attempt to stay away from him, a look of deep pain crossed his face. But instead of rejoining her on the bed as she thought he was going to do, Jeb went over to sit on the chair by the writing table.

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"Tell me the truth," she ordered him, her voice soft but threatening. "All of it."

"Very well." He sighed and looked up at her. The pain was still there on his face. In those beautiful brown eyes with their amber flecks. "But remember this, Hannah. Despite what happens after I do, and what you may think or decide, I will always love you."

The admission tugged at her heart. She tried to swallow, but tears were threatening to clog her throat. "I'm listening,"

she managed to say, pulling the sheet closer to her. It wouldn't matter now what he told her because her mind was already made up.

She knew what her decision would be before he spoke another word.

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"Feel free to ask me anything," Jeb insisted.

"Don't worry. I will."

"Where do you want me to start?"

Hannah cocked her head at him. "The beginning is always good. Like, how did you get here? Or have you always been here, living among us?"

"We arrived here on Earth a little more than five years ago."

"We?"

"There were thirty-one of us," he explained. "Men, women, and children."

"Where are they now?"

"I have no idea." He shrugged to emphasize his point. "For safety's sake, we split up. The only Ruinos I know who is nearby is my brother, Simolif."

Her eyes grew wide. "You have a brother? Where is he?"

"In Templeton."

"Templeton? Cripes, Jeb. That's not nearby. That's in the next state!"

Somehow he managed a small smile. "In galactic terms, it's next door."

"Simolif?" She tried to say the name the way he had.

"He goes by Simon."

"Simon Morr?"

"Yeah," Jeb nodded.

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She gave him another quizzical look. "What's your real name?"

"Jebaral. Jebaral Gitall Morr." He watched as her lips formed his name. Lips that had kissed him. Lips that had clung to his when she told him she loved him. Pain twisted inside him.

"What does that mean?"

"Well ... Jebaral is the name my parents gave me upon my birthing. Gitall is my mother's name. Morr is my father's."

"So, Simon's full name is Gitall Morr, too."

"Yeah. Simolif Gitall Morr."

"No other siblings? No sisters? Cousins? Grandparents?"

"No. Just him and me."

"Who's older?"

"He is. By almost two years."

"What about your parents? Where are they?"

"They were killed before we escaped."

She lowered her face as she absorbed what he told her. He continued to stare at her face, hoping for some sign she was accepting what he said. That she wouldn't ultimately reject him as he knew she would. As she eventually would.

"Why are you here?"

This would be the hard part. "We escaped. We killed our captors and fled in a lifeboat. All of us did."

"All?"

"There were over two hundred of us on that ship."

"But you said there were thirty-one of you," she reminded him.

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He nodded. "On the Arran ship. We revolted. We all managed to escape ... or so I was led to believe. We dodged the Arra for more than two years before arriving in your airspace. By that time our fuel was gone. Our food was gone.

We had no choice but to attempt a landing and hope we could assimilate into your world."

"What about the others? The other, uhh, hundred and seventy or so?"

He shrugged. "We don't know what happened to the others. For all we know, we are the last survivors. The last of our race."

"Last race of what? What did you call yourself? Roo-what?"

"Ruinos."

Her eyes roamed up and down his body. "What I'm looking at now, that's not the real you, is it? That ... thing ... that's what you really are, isn't it?"

"Yes. What you saw is my true self."

She gave him a puzzled stare. "How are you able to do that?"

"You mean, change the way I look?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know. All of my kind have the ability. Of course, there are restrictions."

"What kind of restrictions?"

Somehow Jeb managed a small, humorless chuckle. So far Hannah had emitted a faint, smoky scent because of her suspicious nature. It was a promising sign. "Well, for one thing, there are certain kinds of creatures we can't imitate.

Certain life forms that are impossible for us to manipulate.

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We were very, very lucky to land on a planet where the inhabitants closely resembled us."

"Your real you looks nothing like us," Hannah almost snapped.

"Compared to other species and races, yes, you do." He gave a big sigh. "Imagine the trouble we would have if we tried to look like a jellyfish. Or a spider. There are civilizations out there in the universe that live on gaseous planets that would kill us, even if we managed to change our outer appearance to look like them. To blend in with them. Much less try to live the rest of our lives among them." He lowered his head as he recalled some of the life forms he had met.

And the difficulties he had faced.

"You guys are stuck here for the rest of your lives?"

His head jerked up. "Yeah."

"So ... what did you mean when you said you were tired of running?"

"I said that?"

"Yeah. At supper. When you told me you loved me, you said you were tired of running," she reminded him.

He groaned softly, unaware he had done so. "We managed to escape, but the Arra are still out there. Still looking for us.

And they won't stop until they find us all."

"How do you know that?"

"We don't. Not for sure. But they have been decimating our species for hundreds of years. Kidnapping us off of our homeworld until there was no one left. A whole race of beings

... wiped out."

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Hannah stared in shock to see his hands shaking. She looked up to see he had noticed where her attention had been centered. "Why did they hunt you?"

"One reason is because of our ability to shape-shift.

Because most of the time we can blend in with the species of whatever planet we're on."

"Why would that make a difference?"

"It makes a lot of difference, Hannah, when you're sold into servitude."

She gasped. "Slaves?"

"Or ... food."

This time she turned white. Her eyes became enormous blue circles in her face. "They ate you?"

"The Arra find us quite tasty. In fact, we are considered a delicacy. We're as highly prized for our meat as your kind prizes lobster and other rare dishes."

"No!"

"I would not lie to you."

He waited for her breathing to slow and the color to come back into her face. Her eyes remained locked on his hands resting on the back of the chair in front of him, but her gaze was turned inward. After several moments, she sniffed. "How did you know what to turn yourself into when you came here?

I mean ... how did you become you? The way you look now?"

"It took us a couple of days to come across one of you and realize you were the dominant species on this world." He smiled at her. "It took us by surprise to see all the similarities. After that, it was only a matter of deciding what 124

we should look like. What different attributes we should adopt, like hair color and all." Jeb snorted softly.

"What?" she smiled. For a split second, he felt a spark of hope.

"I need to tell you that we are locked into our forms during the daylight hours. The sun keeps us from changing, whether we are in human guise or not. It's after the sun goes down that we go back to our Ruinos forms."

"Is that why you got restless after dark? Because you wanted to change back?"

"Somewhat," he acknowledged, nodding. "We can't stay locked into an unnatural form. At some point we have to revert back, whether we want to or not. But mainly we change because it feels good to have the wind and rain on our bare skin. Our real skin."

"That's why you wanted me to take those sleeping pills.

You wanted me to stay asleep so you could be in your real form at night."

"Yes. Exactly. I would wake up right before sunrise and turn back into my human self, the one you see right now, before the sun locked me into this."

"What if the sun rose before you got to change?" Hannah wondered aloud.

"Then I would be locked into my Ruinos self until sundown."

There was an odd sound in his voice that she noticed. "Has that ever happened to you? Been locked into your real self during the day?"

Jeb nodded in answer.

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She lifted her knees, crossing her arms on top of them before resting her chin on her hands. In the meantime she never took her eyes off of the man sitting a dozen feet away.

"Jeb ... or do I call you Jebaral?"

"I prefer Jeb when I'm human."

"Okay. Jeb. Gosh, there's so many questions I want to ask you, but I don't know where to begin."

Spreading his hands outward, he conceded. "I'll answer as many of them as I can. I won't hold anything back. Not anymore."

"Good. So explain to me one thing."

He waited silently for her to continue.

"I take it you weren't expecting to fall in love with a human, were you?"

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "No."

"But you did."

"Yeah."

"Does Simon know?"

This time he nodded. "Yeah. I called and told him about you."

"What did he say?"

Jeb laced his fingers together. "He said that if I ever told you the truth about me, to let you know he was the handsomer one."

Hannah giggled in response. The crystal scent of fresh rain sparkled in the room, bringing more hope to his parched soul.

"Does he approve?" she asked with a grin.

"Approve?"

"Of me. Of you falling for a human female," she clarified.

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"He is skeptical, but he promised he would offer up prayers in my favor."

"He's skeptical? Why?"

Jeb stared at her in disbelief. "Why? Oh, come on, Hannah.

For the same reason I was hesitant to tell you about myself from the beginning. Because I'm afraid you'll reject me now that you know the truth."

A moment of silence stretched into the longest minute of his life. Silently he watched as Hannah unfurled herself and got up from the bed. His breathing literally stopped as she approached him, stopping right in front of the chair.

"Stand up."

Slowly he stood. The top of her head barely came to his shoulders.

"Now ... change."

"Hannah—"

"I want to see Jebaral. I ... I have to see him. All of him."

His fingers felt numb as he unzipped his jeans and let them fall to his ankles. Kicking the pants out of the way, he locked his gaze on Hannah's face.

And changed.

Her eyes widened, as he expected, but the tiny amount of fear he saw in them did not alarm him. It was a natural fear.

One of self-preservation.

And a moment later, it was gone.

He sucked in a quick breath as her hand reached out and touched his chest. Her fingers were cool on his burning skin.

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"You're warm," she observed, commenting mostly to herself. She placed a palm over his ribs and stepped forward to place an ear against the chest cavity. "One heart?"

"Yes."

Moving back, she stared up into his face. "Your eyes ...

they didn't change."

"No, they don't. It's the only outer attribute that remains the same."

She squinted. "You don't have any eyebrows or lashes. Not much of a nose, either. Why are your teeth pointed if you don't eat flesh?"

"The food on my world is tough and very hard to chew."

"Kinda like eating tree bark?"

He nodded, smiling. "Kind of."

"And you don't have hair." Her eyes dropped below his waist, then she gasped. "Uhh, anywhere." Her examination of his male reproductive anatomy was not making him uncomfortable. Just the opposite. He could feel himself begin to thicken the longer she gazed at it.

"No. No hair."

Tearing her eyes away, she lifted one of his hands and laid hers on top of it, judging its size. "Oh, Grandma, what big claws you have."

Grandma? The analogy eluded him, but he nodded again.

"We are a very powerful people. Heavy manual labor is what we do best." She tapped a thick claw with her fingernail. At her inquiring glance, Jeb said, "We're often required to dig in the ground."

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"With hands like this, and as big and strong as you are, I would think they would put you in an arena or something like it somewhere and have you fight other species."

"Like your ancient Rome?"

"Uh-huh. Like gladiators."

"It's been done, Hannah," he told her gently.

She glanced up at him in surprise before releasing his hand. Slowly she walked around him, taking in every inch of his sculpted body. There wasn't an atom of wasted flesh on his nearly six-foot-four-inch frame. "Jeb, for a green guy, you're a hunk."

"Hunk?"

"What's this?" he heard her ask just as she touched the bubbling sore on his back. Searing fire exploded inside him, and Jeb jerked away from her touch with a hiss. "Oh, God, did I hurt you?" She peered around his hip and looked up at him apologetically.

He managed to remain on his feet. "I was not what you would call an obedient slave."

"They tortured you?" She peered around from the side once more. "I thought you said you landed five years ago."

"They used an adjac on me. Wounds from that device take years to heal." He managed a weak smile. "You should have seen it right after it happened."

She continued examining him; her sharp eyes not missing a thing. "You're completely naked, right?"

"Like the day I was born."

"Then what's this?" She ran her hands over the tough, thicker exterior skin covering his shoulders. To her surprise it 129

reacted to her touch. "It looks like some kind of covering, but

... I dunno." Hannah waited for his explanation.

"I guess you could call it natural padding. It's more like body armor. Many times we have to go places where it's very cold but we can't wear any kind of outer garments. The extra skin insulates us." He turned his head to look at her. "It also helps give me a little protection against thorns and rough brush when I go running. I'm sorry. I can't explain it any further. I don't understand it myself."

"You're covered in welts and all kinds of scars. Especially on your back and buttocks." She bit her lip. "More punishment?"

Jeb nodded silently.

"Would it hurt if I touched them?"

"No. Just the adjac wound." To answer her unspoken question, he added, "It will take at least another two to three years before it's healed enough to touch."