Cross Council

  Chapter 2

  “It’s not a dream,” Charalan said softly and then looked up as someone approached.

  “Vodu,” Charalan bowed her head in deference.

  Vodu. Aimee remembered that name. The kind, elderly voice when she first woke. She could see him now, with his white hair and deep-set blue eyes and skin that seemed tan when everyone else seemed very pale by comparison. He was tall, but his shoulders hunched slightly with age, and his uniform was different than the others. It was silver, but the styling was markedly different. His tunic was longer and not nearly as tight as what Charalan or that Salvan-guy had worn. Every nuance of this man indicated he held an exalted role.

  Aimee searched the deck to see if there were other uniforms similar to Vodu’s, but everyone else looked the same. There were disparities as far as physical traits, of course. Blonds, brunettes, blue eyes, brown eyes. The consistent factor that she noticed was that there didn’t seem to be an unattractive person in the crowd. Even Vodu, with his wrinkles and tan skin appeared very regal.

  “How is our guest doing?” Vodu asked Charalan, while looking directly at Aimee.

  “Her name is Aimee Patterson, Vodu,” Charalan told him. “I believe she is experiencing some displacement shock. She thinks she is dreaming.”

  Vodu shook his head in sympathy and narrowed his eyes as he turned to glare at the young man standing nearby. Aimee recognized Salvan, the blonde who had supposedly plucked her from her peaceful stroll along the pond in error. He stood now with his hip against a console, his arms crossed and a smug expression on his alabaster face. His light blond hair was a little long and curled up beneath his ears, and the familiar silver apparel revealed a lean body. He was probably close to perfection, along the vein of Corey Burnfield, but he made Aimee uneasy, dissecting her with his eyes as if she was a specimen in a jar.

  “We apologize, Aimee Patterson, for bringing you here, but I assure you that you are not dreaming,” Vodu said. “Soon the shock will wear off and there will be people here to help you acclimate to your new surroundings.”

  “Just Aimee,” Aimee said, automatically and then felt dumb.

  Vodu’s words settled in and Aimee felt a nagging sense of doubt that she was truly going to wake from all this. She’d landed in the land of perfect people from the stars and she felt dowdy and dumb in their presence. Maybe it wasn’t so different from high school, but at least she had learned what to expect at school. This was something she might never get used to.

  “Where exactly am I?” Aimee gathered her pride enough to ask. It took some real effort to find her spine, but she felt the need to assert herself somehow. “And don’t say the Guardian ship, Hoorah or whatever.”

  Vodu looked perplexed. He glanced over her at Charalan for insight, but the woman shrugged her shoulders.

  “You are on the Guardian Ship Horus. We have just completed our Triad, a journey where we visit planets from three galaxies to collect samples.” Vodu shot Salvan a disappointed glance. “Not human samples. Plant and animal life. It was wildlife that young Salvan here was aiming for not you. We do not disturb sentient creatures.”

  “Zigg is not wildlife,” she protested.

  Vodu gave her an indulgent look that made her want to argue more, but Aimee was too distracted to put up much of an argument. Silver uniforms flooded the bustling deck, but in her peripheral vision, she caught a glimpse of someone dressed in black. When she turned to look, there was no one there. This had been the answer that she’d screwed up her courage to get and now she found it hard to concentrate.

  “Whatever the case, it was an accident that you were taken from your home, Aimee Patterson.” Vodu explained patiently. “But it is an accident we cannot correct just now.”

  “Aimee, just Aimee,” she whispered, still searching the expansive room with its industrious, shiny staff.

  Then she saw it again. A black uniform. It was like the others, tight enough to detail the tall, powerful frame. Its fabric shimmered with gold flecks that made it glisten, but not as obnoxiously bright as the others. Aimee was so busy admiring how striking the fabric was on the obviously masculine body, she didn’t yet manage to raise her glance. Once she did, even from this distance she found her gaze arrested by eyes of such intense amber, they made her breath hitch. They were like looking into the sun. She knew she wasn't supposed to do it, that it might hurt her—but his eyes, like the sun,were so beautiful she just couldn’t help it.

  This new distraction was a young man standing off the melee of the busy deck, his shoulder hitched against the window with the black void of space as his backdrop. No wonder she hadn't been able to locate him on her second pass. His uniform looked just like the panorama behind him—black, with subliminal bursts of light that flashed as he moved.

  “I know you are in shock and denial,” Vodu continued, either unaware or uncaring of her roving gaze. “We understand these traits. We’ve seen them before with other species we’ve picked up along our travels.”

  “I thought you only picked up plant life,” Aimee mentioned absently, her eyes still locked with the young man in the shadows. Just because she was distracted didn’t mean that she wasn’t listening. It was a survival trait in her household.

  He had dark hair, shorter than the styles that seemed common with everyone else. She guessed him to be a few years older than her, although something in his countenance hinted at a maturity far beyond his physical years. He simply stared at her, his mouth set in a straight line. Not congenial, not disapproving. Not even curious. He just watched her, almost as if she were his prey.

  “Sometimes, such as in your case, our life-tracker locks on one thing and something else jumps into the field before we can terminate the beam.”

  “So is that what this ship is? A bunch of others like me that you accidentally picked up?” Aimee broke from the amber gaze to search the deck again. “Is that what you all are? Who are all these people? If not accidental victims, then what—NASA? Everyone speaks English so I guess you’re from NASA, not the Russian space program or anything.”

  “Space program?” Vodu rubbed at his jaw. To his right, Salvan snickered. And against the backdrop of the cosmos, the man in black still watched her.

  “You must believe, Aimee Patterson. We are not part of your space program,” Vodu answered with a condescending tone, “or the Russians. We speak your language because it is what you communicate in. We speak many dialects. If you were to speak in Russian, we would accommodate.”

  “Madre de Dios!” Aimee blurted a line that her friend Carrie always used when she was mad.

  “Si, hablamos Espanol, tambien,” the old man responded with a perfect Spanish inflection.

  Aimee was about to drop another test when a siren like none she had ever heard pierced the deck. It was so invasive and unexpected she nearly cowered on her knees, shocked and on the verge of throwing up.

  Vodu moved nimbly for an old man. He jogged to the highest platform, a console filled with silver figures whose fingers glided across luminous keypads like master musicians or spin jockeys. A computer floated by in mid air and someone snatched it up.

  “What is that noise?!” Aimee asked excitedly of Charalan, whose serene countenance now harbored tiny wrinkles of fear around her eyes.

  “We are being tracked!” Charalan answered, as if that explained everything. These people, or whatever they were, alternately treated her as if she was one of them and as if she was some monkey in a lab that had suddenly begun talking in perfect English.