Alien in the Family

I shifted. Martini made leaning against walls look a lot more comfortable than it was. “Now, the royal family is sending someone out here, ostensibly to give me the royal marriage test that I’m going to flunk impressively, but no one in the entire universe can convince me that the head royal honcho or honcha is going to be arriving on our unwelcoming shores. Only the completely moronic would do that, and they may be many things, but stupid surely isn’t one of them. So they’re sending a representative, or several. Then they’ll enact their little plan of world domination or world extermination on us. But your people wouldn’t care about that. They want to deal with the folks nearby, to make them pay for what they did. And I can understand that. But you can’t, can you?”

“No blood from that line should remain!”

“So, did they rape and kill your family members or something?”

“No. They enslaved our entire race.”

“Yes, yes, enslaved, big net, got it. I’m asking you if they did something else to make you suffer.”

She looked as though she didn’t understand the question. “They denied us our place in the stars. That is sin enough.”

Great. She and presumably her mate were fanatics. Wonderful. “So, the two of you decided, what? That you were going to take care of any remnant bloodlines?”

“We were sent here by the Grace of God to enact vengeance.”

“Oh, right. Um, I don’t think that’s God’s plan.”

“Of course it is. Why else would She have allowed us to escape?”

CHAPTER 23

“ESCAPE FROM WHERE?” I wasn’t surprised Moira was calling her God a female. It would have been a lot weirder if she’d thought God was male.

Moira didn’t answer. She just gave me a dirty look, then checked out my chest. I had a feeling she was doing it to make me uncomfortable. Didn’t work, especially since I’d just flashed the twins at all my guys a few hours earlier.

“So, you two were under arrest, weren’t you?”

She looked away from me. “No.”

“Who arrested you? Your own government?”

She kept on not looking at me. I moved into her line of sight. She turned her head to the other side. I had the feeling she was going to try this child’s move all day. Another thought rose up.

“How old are you?”

“We don’t count age like you do.”

“I’m sure. How old are you in the way you do count?”

“I am of age.”

Aha. She was a kid, by their standards, anyway. Only kids made sure you knew they were old enough to do what they were in trouble for doing. A fanatical kid. But a kid. And kids had fears and usually not a lot of defenses against them. “So, Moira, just want to tell you something.”

“What?” She turned back to look at me.

I got up closer to her, but not so close she could head butt me. “When I find your mate, and I will, I’m going to make sure I destroy her in the most evil, painful way possible. I’ll make sure to smash her brain in and do other horrible things to her. And I’m going to make you watch. You’ll get to see her suffer, and then you’ll get to see her die. How does that sound?”

Moira didn’t look as confident. “You will never be able to catch her.”

“Caught you.”

“Only because you had help.”

“I’ve got a lot of help. And your mate doesn’t, does she? She had you, but you’re not going anywhere. In fact, I’m going to shoot you full of drugs, so you can’t escape even if you manage to get out of the restraints. They might kill you, but I’m willing to take that risk.”

“She is more experienced than me. You won’t catch her.”

I did my best to give her my mother’s most intimidating smile. It worked, if the look in Moira’s eyes was any indication. “Of course I will. She’s going to come to try to rescue you. And I’ll be waiting. I’ll have so many traps waiting for her that even if most don’t work, one will. Then you’ll get to see her suffer and die. So you can feel what it’s like when you hurt a person someone else loves.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you not only hurt someone I love, you gloated about it. You were happy to hurt him, and you had no reason to do it other than pure viciousness. On this world, we have an old saying: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. My father’s people wrote that, mille

She swallowed. “You won’t succeed.”

“Sure I will. I’ll bet you’ve missed check-in time with your mate. She’ll be looking for you, realize we’ve got you. There’re only a few places we’d take you. She’ll be here, soon. And I’ll be ready.”

I dug into my purse and pulled my phone out. “Chuckie.”

“Yeah. Why are you calling me?” I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw him walk away from the window. I went farther away from Moira, so she couldn’t hear him, at least, I hoped.

“I want all ma

“Um, yeah. I assume this is all for show? Since Reader’s alive and going to be well, I mean.”

“You got it. Make it vicious. Oh, and I want Space Bitch here to be drugged out of her man-hating mind. So she can’t do anything. Oh! Quick thought. Do we still have all that truth serum?”

Chuckie started to laugh. “God, you crack me up.”

“Great! Bring it. I want her full of it. No, I don’t care if it’ll cause her brain to stop functioning if we give her too much. Good. Yeah, of course we’ll toss her to the troops once we’re done with her. Right. Of course to rape her in all possible ways. Why would you even need to ask? Maybe we’ll let her mate live long enough to watch.”

“Martini is indicating that our prisoner is starting to cry. Wow, you’re nasty.”

“Yes, I know. She’s a threat to our world security, and her partner will be more of one. I want them both treated like the animals they are.”

“You know, I was a lot nicer than this.”

“I’ll bet. Yeah, that sounds great. I want the one who’s still loose to suffer. A lot. Yeah, of course you can break, shoot, or cut off things that aren’t necessary to survival.”

“Okay. I think she’s broken, or at least close to. Should I put on security for real, however?”

“Yes, make it so.”

“Oh, over and out, Captain Not Quite Picard.”

We hung up, and I turned back to Moira. “You could have cooperated. Pity for you, nice for me. I’ll have some men along shortly to drug you and do horrible things you’ll hate to you. You won’t be able to fight back. I may film it, just for the pure entertainment.”

She was really crying. “Why would you do that? The men I can understand. But you, you should be joining us.”

“You attacked my best friend and tried to kill him. You were proud of yourself for attacking an i

“You don’t understand . . . they have to die.” Moira was still crying.

“Why? You give me a reason I can believe in.”

She shook her head. “They’re men. Men are evil by nature; they can never become good. They’re the reason our world was locked away and kept from the stars, because of the men. We destroyed ours, and we must destroy all the others, to purify the universe.”

My father had given me a lifetime course in comparative religions. He’d spent a lot of time focused on how to spot a fanatic and how little you were likely to be able to do to alter said fanatic’s viewpoint. Logic didn’t work on most in-the-bone fanatics; neither did kindness or any rational idea. The best you could do was understand how their minds worked, then stop them from harming others, as humanely as possible. Sometimes, however, you couldn’t be humane.