WarriorsandLovers (9 page)

She sounded concerned. Maybe she’d missed the memo telling
her she was one of the bad guys. Her companion, although uncannily good-looking,
at the moment looked angry enough and tough enough to have a fair chance of
success if he decided to tear Elijah’s arms and legs off. Lije had
no
trouble casting
him
in the role of enemy to humanity.

He had to stop the questions before he gave anything away.
He latched on to the excuse the woman offered him. If he convinced them he
couldn’t remember… Short-term memory loss was a common enough symptom of a blow
to the head.

He put his hand to his forehead and looked around blankly.
“Where am I? Who are you?”

“See,” the woman said. “He’s not okay.”

“Doesn’t make him any less dangerous,” the man replied.

“I’m not dangerous,” Elijah said. He rubbed his hands across
his face, faking confusion but always keeping his eye on the two people in
front of him. “I don’t know how I know but I know it’s true.” He heaved out a
loud sigh. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know why I’m here and I don’t know
who you are. The last thing I remember I was at Stonehenge in England.” He
stopped for a moment. Time to see what he could get away with. “My name’s
Elijah, Elijah Denton. I was on vacation in England.” He added a final touch of
to the fiction he was building. “I don’t understand. Am I in hospital? Are you
doctors?”

He doubted if they would fall for that one. No one in their
right mind could mistake the man’s lean, brown, shirtless form, all rippling
muscles above the battle-dress pants, for the clothing of a doctor. The woman
wore similar pants but had on a black sleeveless singlet, stretched tightly
over her impressive rack.

They’re Dvalinn,
he reminded himself,
the enemy.
He had no place finding anything about either of them attractive or admirable.
Anger, distaste and confusion swirled around in a disorientating mix in his
brain. He struggled to keep his face bland, his eyes blank. He needed to lull
their suspicions so he could escape, make his way back to the exit point,
detonate the explosion and get the hell out of there.

Leaving these two and all the other inhabitants of this
world to suffer a horrible, inevitable death.

Elijah closed his eyes and ignored the voice in his head. It
was too late for his conscience to surface now. The device was set, balanced at
the crossroads, waiting for the signal.

His mouth went dry and horror raised goose bumps on his
skin. He’d felt the floor surge and roll. What if the case for the device had
fractured and the gas had been released? He had no idea how long the vapor
would remain lethal. His chest tightened and he panted, rapid and shallow. Was
this his last breath? Or this one? Or the next?

“Are you all right?”

The woman’s question acted like a slap. Lije blinked and
forced himself to calm down. The entire Dvalinn world depended on one central
air circulation system, so the air in this small room would be the same as the
air outside in the tunnels. There were filtration plants at frequent intervals
but they wouldn’t be effective against the gas Hopewood used. The whisper of
fresh air on his cheek reassured Elijah that the vials of chemicals in their
plastic case were still intact.

“I don’t give a fuck how he feels. I want answers.” The male
half of the pair spoke, his mouth turned down with an overdose of grim. He was clearly
the more dangerous. The woman seemed more approachable, more prepared to take a
neutral stand. He could work with her. Convince her he was injured and harmless.

“Argh! My head.” He screwed his face into a grimace of pain.
It wasn’t hard—his head hurt. He’d hit the rock wall damn hard and he’d been
out cold.

The woman responded exactly as he’d hoped. “Is there
anything I can do?”

She tried to take a step toward him but the man refused to
let her go.

“You could tell me where I am,” Elijah replied.

“Where do you think you are?” the man asked, his tone low
and threatening.

“I don’t know,” Elijah lied. If he were an innocent human
victim of some inexplicable mishap, he would have no idea the Dvalinn people
existed. All his responses had to support that scenario. It would be
interesting to see how much of the truth these people would tell him.

“You’re in a safe room,” the woman offered.

“Safe from what?” he asked.

“The thermo-magnetic storm.” With one more tug, the woman
managed to free herself and took a step nearer to the bed. “I’m Eora and this
is Nieko. When the storm hit you were stranded in the passageway. You hit your
head and I heard you call out. I opened the door and pulled you inside, where
you’d be safe.”

“Thank you,” Elijah said, and discovered he meant it.
Although he couldn’t admit it, his memory of those few minutes when everything
he knew about physics was overturned was clear and devastating. He needed to
know what kind of phenomenon could cause solid rock to roll like a wave.
“What’s a thermo-magnetic storm?”

“You don’t know?” the woman, Eora, asked. “You must have
seen one before.” She hesitated for a moment. “Although if you had, you might
not have hit your head so hard. You’d have been prepared for the effect.”

“What effect?” He had to ask, although he thought he knew
some of the answer.

“The magnetic field gets distorted and it messes with your
brain and balance centers. It’s common for people caught outside a shielded
room to feel as if the walls and floors are moving.”

“You mean they don’t?” The wavelike movement had felt real
to him. He touched the bump on his head.
It
felt pretty damn real as
well. The male Dvalinn’s gaze followed the gesture and his eyes narrowed.
Elijah snatched his hand away.

“It’s solid rock. It can’t move.” The woman tilted her head
to one side. “That’s probably how you hit your head. You adjust for movement
that isn’t there and you lose your balance.” Her forehead wrinkled. “You must
know
something
about the effects of magnetic sensitivity.”

Nieko made a sound of disgust and took a stride to bring him
to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. “He’s human. They don’t know anything
about us or our world.”

“Of course I’m human,” Elijah said. To have ignored the
man’s continuing references would be more suspicious than to address them.
“What else would I be?”

Openly, with no pretense at subterfuge, Eora said, “You
could be Dvalinn like us.”

Now was the time to tread carefully, to decide how much
reaction to show. He didn’t want to over- or underplay his reactions, but he
was no actor. He decided to rely on what was rapidly becoming a stock response.
“I don’t understand.”

Eora turned triumphantly to Nieko. “See! I told you most
humans don’t know about us. If they don’t know, they can’t hate.” She plopped
herself down on the side of the bed. “You surface-dwellers have a restricted
view of the world you live in. Beneath your feet there’s another world, an
underground world where we, the Dvalinn, live.”

“The Dvalinn,” Elijah repeated. He looked at Nieko. “Why
have we on the surface not heard of you? What are you hiding?” He couldn’t keep
completely hide the aggression in his tone. He didn’t much care. This Nieko had
done little to hide his animosity. They were enemies and both of them knew it.

“It’s not what we’re hiding,” Eora said. “It’s who we’re
hiding from.”

“Humans have forced us into hiding,” Nieko burst in.
“Thousands of years ago you drove us from the surface into a world of pale, artificial
light where there is no sun, no sky, no stars.” His lips twisted into a hate-filled
sneer. “You denied us the sunshine and fresh air we loved. But that wasn’t
enough. You sent attack parties into our world to kill us. Innocent men, women
and children who have done nothing to you or your surface world.”

He stomped over to the side of the bed and poked an accusing
finger at Elijah. “Humans are murderers. If I’d known what you were, I’d have
let you die out in the tunnel. Eora is too kindhearted.” He took a step back.
“When she dragged you in, you had nothing but the clothes you wore. If I find
out you have a weapon hidden somewhere or you mean any one of us harm, I
will
kill you, I swear.”

He had nothing? What had happened to his backpack? If they’d
found it any, doubts about his innocence or guilt would be removed. They might
not recognize the remote detonator but they would certainly see it, the
compass, the charts and the notes for what they were—evidence that Elijah’s
presence here was not an accident but a planned incursion. Barely suppressed
violence seethed in Nieko, and Elijah had no doubt he had the strength and
ability to carry out his threat.

“Leave him alone,” Eora said. “He’s hurt. You know he
doesn’t have a weapon.” A smile curved her lips. “We searched your clothes.”

She bent down, picked up a bundle at her feet and dropped it
on the bed. “If you’re feeling better, you might want to get dressed.”

Yes, dressed was good. Naked, he felt vulnerable and
unprepared. He needed to take the first opportunity to escape and do what he’d
come for. The gas vials were in place, waiting. All he needed to do was push
the button.

He put his hand on the blanket. Instead of turning away as
he’d expected, Eora studied him, a small smile curving the corners of her
mouth. He looked into her eyes. She didn’t blink. Okay, then, he’d call her
bluff. He tossed the blanket aside and got to his feet.

A momentary ripple of dizziness diverted him from the
impromptu staring contest. He dropped one hand onto the bed to steady himself.

Eora leaped forward. “Do you need help.”

“No, I’m fine,” he muttered, annoyed by his weakness. He
dragged his pants on and reached for his shirt.

“Why do you wear a woman’s garment?” Eora asked.

“Probably because he’s weak,” Nieko snapped.

“It’s not a woman’s garment,” Elijah responded. “It’s a
man’s shirt.”

“Our men don’t wear them,” Eora said. “Only women.”

The shirt fell back onto the floor without Elijah being
aware that his fingers had opened. “It’s hot in here—I don’t need it.” His legs
still felt a little wobbly, so he dropped back onto the side of the bed, since
there was nowhere else to sit.

“How long before we can get out of here?” he asked. “If the
rock movement is only a hallucination, surely it can be countered if you really
concentrate?”

“It’s a thermo-magnetic storm,” Nieko said, offering
something other than confrontation for the first time. “The magnetic
disturbances generate a huge amount of heat. That’s no hallucination. Once the
rock heats up, it can take days to cool down enough to make surface travel
possible. This room protects us, but as you noticed, the temperature is still
higher than normal.”

“Can’t you control it?” Elijah asked. Surely if, as Hopewood
had said, these people were capable of causing warming of the Earth’s surface,
they could deal with this.

“No one can control the Earth’s thermal energy.” He looked
at Elijah, contempt clear in the sneering lips and hard eyes. “We’re all stuck
here until the storm passes and the heat fades.”

“You can go,” Elijah said. “I’ll make my own way home
somehow.”

“We’re not leaving you,” Nieko and Eora said in unison but
with vastly different intonations.

“You’ll be taken to the council. They’ll decide what to do
with you,” Nieko continued, and it was clearly a threat. “Humans can’t teleport,
so the council will want to find out exactly how you got here, and why. Unless
of course you’d care to tell me now.”

“I told you, I don’t remember.”

“Bullshit.”

“He hit his head, Nieko.”

“Not that hard. It’s a damn convenient excuse, isn’t it, human?”

Lije exhaled heavily. The Dvalinn was going to be a problem.
He might be forced to kill him. If he killed Nieko, he’d have to kill Eora too.
The prospect of destroying the entire, faceless population of the Dvalinn
hadn’t seemed as personal or as difficult as taking the lives of the two people
who stood before him.

“Going before the council would be for the best,” Eora told
him. “You don’t know how you got here, so you won’t be able to get back. Once
the council realizes you mean us no harm, they’ll be able to help you return to
the surface world.”

“How do I know the council won’t lock me up forever or put
me to death?” Elijah retorted. If they knew what he’d planned and what he’d
carried with him, that was exactly what they’d do.

“If you aren’t guilty of anything, they’ll let you go, help
you back to your own world,” Nieko replied. “If you’re guilty, you’ll be
convicted. That’s how you’ll know.”

Eora placed her hands on her hips and glared at both men.
“None of this matters now. No one is going anywhere.” She gestured to a panel
on the wall with a glowing red light and a series of numbers. “This is a really
bad storm. The magnetic fluctuation is as high as I’ve ever seen it. The heat
in the unshielded areas is intense. We’re stuck here for the duration. We might
as well make the best of it.”

“How do you suggest we do that?” Nieko asked grumpily. “Sing
campfire songs, play word games?”

“It would be better than sniping at each other,” she
replied. To Elijah she said, “We have enough food and other supplies in this
safe room to survive any storm and its aftermath. We’ll be fine.”

Elijah looked around at the restricted space. “You said safe
room? If this is all there is, we’re going to get on each other’s nerves pretty
quickly.”

“There’s a bathroom, of course—that’s essential,” Eora
replied. “But otherwise, yeah, it’s just this room. So we need to call a truce.
Don’t we, Nieko?”

Nieko glowered at Elijah. The Dvalinn’s brawny arms were
folded across his chest. Beneath them, shadows highlighted the ridges of muscle
of a defined six-pack. His legs were spread in an aggressive stance, shoulders’
width apart. The width of Nieko’s shoulders made it a pretty wide stance. The
man radiated power and hostility enough to cow most people.