Take Her to HeVan (Nephilim Book 6) (17 page)

Now she had pulled away from them both. It was understandable—learning your lover was from a different planet was a lot to take in. He hoped they could win her back. Since she had driven those other two men away without revealing their identities last night, he had some hope.

Standing outside her bedroom door, he heard the water shut off and jolted from his reverie, left to go downstairs. He wanted to tell Karlo their Lady, or
Beleti,
was up and would be ready to eat in a few minutes.

He met up with Karlo in the kitchen. “
Beleti
Marla is out of the shower. She should be down soon. We need to inspect the shuttle. Once we have a list of the necessary repairs, we can call Markus back. I would like him to come as soon as possible to examine our Lady. Until then, she must not exert herself, just in case.”

“I agree,” Karlo said as he mixed the eggs.

The bacon was already done, as were the hash browns, and the oranges were squeezed for juice. He waited until he heard the door open upstairs before pouring the eggs into the pan. As he scrambled them up, Charl finished setting the table. When Marla made it into the kitchen, Karlo was bringing the eggs to the table.

“Good morning, Marla. Did you get enough sleep?” Karlo asked.

“Marla, how much do you remember about last night?” Charl asked her.

She waved her fork in the air. “You mean about you being from HeVan and the queen crashing here on Earth and all of that? Or about the part where the three of us are married or mated or something
—
you used a different word.

“Joined. We call it joining because we join our bodies, our hearts and our souls,” said Charl.

“Yes, that’s right. I also remember something else, though the memory is a lot fuzzier. Did the three of us actually have sex while flying through the sky?” she asked in a somewhat surprised voice.

“We did. For a long time, many thousands of years ago, the female would lie on the ground and watch her
Ankida
fly for her. The sex would come after,” he added with a wink. “You were overdosed on joining pheromones. Your body was burning up with need, and we didn’t want to leave you alone while we flew. Since you’re so tiny, we knew we could easily support your weight, so we carried you. It wasn’t until after we were in the air and started the Joining flight that we realized you were meant to be there. Why our people no longer include the female, I don’t know. That’s for the scholars to figure out. I’m just happy we got a chance to experience it ourselves. I’m only sorry you were not fully aware the entire time. Are you angry about us going through with the Joining?” Charl asked.

“Not really. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a little freaked about the whole alien thing. I guess it’s that, except for the wings, you look just like humans. If you were creepy alien insect creatures or had three eyes, something like that, I wouldn’t be nearly as accepting as I have been. Just so you know though, I don’t consider us
married
,” she added, making little quotes with her fingers around the word married.

“Why not?” asked Karlo from where he sat at her feet.

“Duh, no ring…no promises.” She waved her hands in the air to emphasize her point. “Getting married means you’ve sworn
—
in front of witnesses
—
to be faithful through thick and thin, et cetera. When we went to Boulder, we were going to use the standard wedding vows. Some couples write their own. Basically, it’s the making of promises you intend to keep for your entire life with that other person
—
or persons,” she added, nodding to Charl.

“Why does there need to be witnesses? Do promises made to each other have more meaning only because someone else hears them?” asked Charl.

Marla could tell Charl was asking his question seriously. She picked up a grape and popped it in her mouth while she thought of her answer. “I think when weddings started out, the promises weren’t made to the person you were marrying. They were being made to her family, or more specifically, the bride’s father. Women were considered owned by their fathers. So he was transferring ownership to her future husband. The husband had to promise to take care of the gift he was receiving from the father. After a time, that changed to be the bride and groom making promises to each other. The family and friends act as witnesses and also to celebrate the “joining” of the two people becoming one unit. Don’t you have parties to celebrate on your planet?”

“After the Joining, which is private, there is often a feast to welcome the new
Ankida
into their new House. Their
Beleti
, or Lady Wife, hangs their wings on the wall. Since the males give up their House upon Joining, the wings represent their history. The colors in the wings denote their ancestry,” Charl explained.

“We’ve gotten a little off topic,” said Karlo.

“Oh? Was there supposed to be an official agenda for this meal?” Marla asked.

She looked at her plate and was amazed she had been able to eat nearly all the mound of food Karlo had piled on it. Wiping her mouth with the napkin, she then put it down and pushed the plate away. Charl took it and started eating what was left over. Karlo reached over for a piece of bacon. Both men had finished all the food on their own plates already.

“You know, if you’re both going to keep eating like this, we’re going to need to make another trip to the grocery store,” Marla said.

“Getting us back to the main topic…” said Karlo and Marla raised her eyebrows. She moved her wrist to wave her hand in a go-ahead gesture.

“When we checked with the medical, he was concerned the overdose of pheromones might have damaged your heart. Until we get a chance to have it checked out, we both want you to rest and not do anything strenuous,” Karlo said.

“Am I going to die?” she asked, suddenly worried.

“No! Don’t even think such a thing,” said Karlo. “We just don’t want to take any chances. Markus, a healer with our people, is coming with his family to visit. He’ll examine you and I’m sure everything will be fine. This is just a precaution, okay? At the same time, a few other warriors are going to come. We need to assess the damage to the shuttle before it can be removed. We don’t want it to crash again.”

“No, you might land in a barn belonging to someone who’s not as nice as me next time,” she said.

“Please, Marla, will you do as we ask and rest?” Charl asked.

After thinking about it for a minute, she agreed. “I’m not going to stay in bed though. I’ll put on my sick clothes and hang out in the living room. I’ll read the books on my Kindle and catch up on my Netflix. The two of you can do all the work and pamper me. Do we have a deal?” she asked.

“Yes. I only have one question,” said Charl.

“Yes?”

“What are sick clothes? You have special garb for when you are ill?” asked Charl.

“Of course. I wear my softest t-shirt and either sweats or yoga pants, depending on the weather. These sweats are my cool weather sick clothes, and you can build me another fire in the fireplace,” she answered.

The brothers agreed. Then she shooed them out of the room so she could clean up the kitchen. She insisted it wasn’t strenuous, and it was still her house. She was happy they were going to be working outside, and she would be alone for most of the day. She needed the time to come to grips with everything. She was acting like nothing unusual had occurred, but inside she was still really, really confused about her future.

She was going to spend some quality time with her computer searching Google for information on the ancient Sumerians. Karlo and Charl each gave her kisses before going outside. They were finally going to take a look at the shuttle.

Karlo and Charl went into the hay barn. They didn’t see the ship. They didn’t see anything. The barn was empty.

“I’m guessing you don’t have your remote?” asked Charl.

“No, I don’t. Marla grabbed my emergency kit because it looked like luggage to her. She closed up the shuttle and the security system must have been set for automatic stealth mode. I told you I was lying half in and half out of the door. That was the only reason Marla was able to find me and help me,” said Karlo.

“Why haven’t you checked out the shuttle before now?” asked Charl.

“Until I got my memory back, I didn’t know there was a shuttle,” Karlo answered.

“Okay. Well, it looks as if we’re going to have to do this the hard way,” he said, before stepping into the barn.

Both of them knew they couldn’t use their eyes. The technology of the shield would fool their eyes, changing their perspective. Instead of walking in a straight line from the barn door to the large hole at the back of the barn, they would be walking around the shuttle and out the back.

Stepping inside, the brothers put their backs to the wall on either side of the door. Reaching out, they grasped hands. Closing their eyes, they each took one step forward and then another and another. By keeping their eyes closed, the visual distortion of the stealth shield couldn’t trick them. Now they only had to worry about special distorting waves. By taking slow measured steps along with stretching their bodies out while maintaining contact, they had the best chance of finding the shuttle. After an hour of trying, they still hadn’t found it. The interior of the barn was just too big.

Karlo finally thought to ask Marla where in the barn the shuttle rested. She had seen it before the stealth shield went up. Leaving the barn, they started back to the house. Karlo looked up and started laughing. They were halfway to the house when Charl broke down and asked Karlo what was so funny. Still chuckling, Karlo pointed to the weather vane on the roof. Charl’s pants from the night before were hanging there.

As Karlo entered the house to find Marla, he looked back and saw Charl standing with his hands on his hips and a baffled look on his face. It would be his problem to figure out how to get them down. Karlo went in to question Marla again about the night she found him.

When she told them how close it was to the hole in the back, they decided the best way to find it was to go around the barn from the outside and come in through the hole. Marla had told them there was barely enough room to pass on the right side so what they did was stand shoulder to shoulder while touching the barn on the right. Then with arms linked, they slowly pivoted around the opening. This time, they touched the shuttle right away.

At least, Charl did; he was standing to the left of Karlo. Once he was in contact with the hull, keeping his eyes closed to avoid the visual distortion, he moved along to the hatch. It took some fumbling, but finally though, he was able to access the exterior hatch control panel. Working entirely by touch, the entire front of his body pressed against the shuttle, he got the panel open and then keyed in the sequence to shut down the stealth shield and open the hatch.

Stepping inside the shuttle, he waited for Karlo to join him.

“First things first, we need to find the remote,” Charl said.

They were worried about having to repeat their work. At the same time, they needed to keep the shuttle hidden from the locals.

Karlo went to the cabinet where the remote was kept. “It’s gone. Hend probably took it. Let me check the emergency parts storage to see if there is another one. Since the shuttle can hold a two man crew, there should be two remotes.”

“While you look, I’m going to grab some diagnostic tools and start running scans,” said Charl.

As the brothers worked on the shuttle, Marla sat at her desk getting caught up on the paperwork of her ranch. Every half hour or so, either Karlo or Charl would come back to the house on some pretext or other. She knew they were simply checking up on her. A part of her worried about her health, was it really so fragile now? She confronted Karlo about it the next time he came in.

“You keep checking on me. Is my health more precarious than you said?” she asked him.

“You’re going to be fine. We’re just reminding you we’re here. We aren’t leaving you. And if we can get in a few kisses, then it’s a bonus,” he said as he bent over, caging her into her chair. He leaned forward and, touching her with only his mouth, he stole all her senses. After kissing her until she was a puddle of goo, he stepped back with a smile and walked out of the room.

Marla waited until her heart settled down and stopped beating so hard. She was still deciding what to do about her relationship with Karlo…and his brother.
Were their species really compatible? They must be if there were descendants of theirs mixed into the population.

Shaking her head, Marla turned back to her computer. She had switched screens when she’d heard Karlo open the door. Now she switched and went back to reading about the ancient Sumerians. She wasn’t stupid; Karlo and Charl had glossed over how long it had taken their ship to get to Earth on their quest to find the lost queen of HeVan. She had already looked up information on space travel and the distance to the nearest solar system. She wondered if they had hibernation chambers on their ship like on
Alien
or warp speeds like
Star Trek
. Maybe it was both.

She made notes and slowly compiled a list of questions. How the brothers answered them would help her decide what she was going to do. Of course, she hadn’t forgotten about her predicament with her ownership of the ranch.