Alternate Worlds: The Fallen (2 page)

It was almost dark anyway, and I’d had the
brilliant idea of buying myself a really cool black jumpsuit. I
figured I needed to look hot to turn the guy/alien on and the best
part was the thing had zippers from hell. I could slip out of it in
no time at all. Getting back in wasn’t as easy, but I figured if I
didn’t have time, I’d just leave it.

I studied the Temple as I skirted the edge
of the woods, stopping now and then for reconnaissance. I knew
there were bound to be cult members guarding place. The full moon
wasn’t due till the following night and, from what I’d been able to
discover about the freaks, they were purifying themselves for the
ritual, but I figured they’d still have guards. It didn’t hurt to
hope they were stupid and wouldn’t, but I wasn’t taking any
chances.

I could hear the cult chanting from
somewhere close by. It made the hair on the back of my neck
prickle.

As I neared the Temple, however, I
discovered there was another building behind it. The chanting was
coming from the other building. Pausing in the shadows, I
considered the situation. The building in the back must be like a
dormitory, I finally decided. It seemed a little odd that they’d
hold purification in the dorm instead of the Temple, but then they
were pretty damned weird anyway.

The demon, I felt sure, was in the
Temple.

There were two guards posted at the front
and two more at the back. I’d have cussed a blue streak except that
I was afraid they’d hear me. Sighing, I settled to think again. I
was pretty sure I could handle one. I was also pretty convinced I
couldn’t handle two and certainly not if it meant taking them both
down soundlessly to keep from alerting the two at the back of the
building. There were windows all the way around the building, but
from what I could see they were the kind that didn’t open, just
glass set into a window frame.

I looked up at the strange steeple that
topped the building—strange because it wasn’t actually a spire.
Instead, it was more like a square tower. At the top was a real
honest-to-God bell, which meant they would have a way of ringing
it.

After a few moments, I realized why it was
square.

There was a guard posted at the top. I
hadn’t noticed him at first because he had stopped, watching
something at the rear of the building. I watched him for nearly
fifteen minutes, realizing that he was bored stiff. He’d pace for a
while, and then he’d stop and gaze off into dreamland for several
minutes before he remembered he was supposed to be watching.

Did I want it that bad, I asked myself?

Irritated because I knew the answer—I’d come
this far, I was damn well going to give it a good try—I began to
work my way around the building, looking for some way to climb
up.

Either the guy in the tower had had to climb
up from the outside, or some dear soul had been working on the
roof. I found a ladder just waiting for me. If was full dark by
then. I checked to make certain I was out of the line of vision of
the guards at the front and the rear, peered at the guy in the
tower to make sure he was turned the other way, and then darted
across the open lawn.

I was breathing like an asthmatic horse by
the time I got to the top of the ladder. I couldn’t wait to rest,
however. I had to make it across the roof until I was under the
tower and out of sight.

Pardonably pleased when I managed the short
run without slipping and busting my ass, I settled at the bottom of
the tower and waited until I didn’t sound like an obscene phone
caller before I moved to the rungs embedded in the tower
itself.

Vertical climb. That was going to be
hellish, but at least the watch at the top couldn’t see me unless
he decided to look straight down. I climbed slowly to keep from
overexerting my heart and lungs. When I was near the top, I paused
to listen. Step, step, step, pause. Step, step, step, pause. At the
second pause, I went over the top, landing cat- like on the tower
floor—which meant I sounded like a thundering herd of elephants and
everything on the fucking belt rattled.

The guy whirled, but I already had my taser
out. I hit him with a few thousand volts and released, leaping
toward him as his knees wobbled and gave way. It was a near thing,
but I managed to lower him to the floor without pitching either of
us over the side.

When I’d settled him, I whipped my trusty
roll of duct tape from the pocket of my utility belt and trussed
him like a yearling calf. He came to just about the time I wrapped
a strip of tape around his head and immediately began wiggling
frantically. Glancing around, I saw there was nothing to tie him
to. Finally, I hauled him to his feet and tied him to the corner of
the tower, figuring the other guards would at least see that he was
still at his post if they looked, and he couldn’t do anything I’d
regret.

Tucking the tape in the belt again, I pulled
out a small flashlight and examined the floor. Sure enough, there
was a trap door. My heart was pounding with excitement when I
pulled it open and looked down into the belly of the building.

Burning candles were all over the place. The
smell of candle wax was almost enough to overwhelm me.

I was a lot more overwhelmed, though, when I
discovered there was no ladder leading down from the tower.

What kind of morons built a tower that was
only accessible from the outside?

Dropping to my belly, I hung over the drop
for a better look. To my relief, I spied rungs running down the
inside of the tower similar to those on the outside. The catch was
that they ended at roughly the same place, and there was no ladder
under the tower.

Shrugging, I reversed positions and put my
legs through the opening, feeling around with one foot until I
found a rung. I left nail prints in the wood when I finally came to
the point of no return. My arm was just long enough I could brush
the nearest frigging rung and not quite grasp it.

Taking a couple of deep breaths for courage,
I lowered myself until I was hanging by both arms and made a dive
for the rung I hadn’t been able to reach. I caught it, but my palms
were so sweaty with fear by that time I almost lost my grip.
Slipping an arm through the rung to steady myself, I wiped my
sweaty palms, blew on them until they were dryish and started down.
When I reached the last rung, I turned to look down and gauge the
distance.

There was a podium about ten feet below me.
I didn’t especially want to land on it and the idea of swinging to
miss it didn’t appeal to me a lot more. Sighing in irritation that
nothing so far had been easy, I unhooked the rope from my belt. I’d
brought it to tie up cult members if the need arose, not for
climbing. I decided it ought to be long enough though.

It took me a good ten minutes to work knots
into it to have something to hold onto and another five to tie it
off to my satisfaction. By the time I had, I was sweating, partly
from nerves and partly from the fucking candles.

Jeeze! Were they trying to roast the guy? Or
just trying to make him feel at home?

My palms were wet again. I dried them and
started down. It was hellish. I didn’t remember having nearly this
much trouble when I went through boot camp, but then again it had
been a few years. The rope didn’t quite reach. I dropped the last
few feet before I’d had the chance to consider how I was going to
get back up the frigging thing.

Not that it mattered. I doubted very
seriously that I could climb up it. It had taken all I could do to
climb down with gravity helping me.

I saw him/it as soon as I took my first look
around. My stomach clenched in empathy. The bloodthirsty freaks had
staked him to a cross and then hauled the cross up—to display him I
supposed. Wings covered in feathers that were the inky, iridescent
black of a raven’s wings were spread on either side of him and
staked or nailed in place.

Chapter Two

My heart failed me. I thought he/it was dead
at first. I also thought it was fake, not the man part, but the
wing thing. From what I could see, he looked like a man.

These people were crazier than I’d thought
and I’d already given them credit for being some of the craziest
fuckers not caged.

Something blue had been splashed onto him in
several places. It dripped, forming small puddles beneath him.

Swallowing the bile in my throat, I moved
closer.

Long black hair hung across his shoulders
almost down to his pecs and pretty much obscured a look at his
face, but the body—my, my what a beautiful specimen of the male
anatomy! I moved around him, studying the wings, and discovered
with a strange flutter in my belly that they were not only real
wings, they were growing out of his shoulder blades.

The flutter of excitement became a tremor of
revulsion. The blue hadn’t been splashed on him. It was dripping
from his veins where they’d wounded him. Bracing myself, I looked a
little closer and saw that there was very little coagulation. It
was blood, blue or not, and fresh. He hadn’t been here long—like
this. Otherwise he would definitely be dead as a door nail and I
could see he was still breathing.

Obviously he’d fought like a demon—and made
a good accounting for himself if they’d thought they had to stake
him down and still bind him with wire.

He wasn’t human, but he was an intelligent
being.

Black hair, black wings, I mused. White, of
course being the color of purity, it just naturally followed that
black was sin.

Crazy, stupid, backwards mother fuckers!

When I’d made a circuit and stood in front
of him again, I discovered he’d lifted his head. His eyes were
open. The irises were the color of ice, that next-thing-to-white
sometimes but very rarely seen in humans, except his also had an
iridescent shine to them like the eyes of a nocturnal animal. I
shivered.

The face went with the body—masculine beauty
personified.

So he had to be a demon because he was
gorgeous and had black hair and wings?

Give me a break!

There was pain in his eyes—which I’d
expected to see—but it paled beside the absolute fury in them—which
I hadn’t actually expected and was surprised to discover made me
more than a little uneasy even though he was trussed securely and
couldn’t get his hands on me.

Those, I saw, were balled into fists.

My stomach clenched again.

That explained the wire. He’d pulled free of
the stakes.

“Speaky English?”

His eyes narrowed. “Not that version,” he
responded tightly.

I felt my face redden. It pissed me off.

“All right smart ass, so tell me—demon? Or
angel?”

His gaze slid over me speculatively.
“Elumi.”

My brows popped upward in surprise.
“Alien?”

“Elumi.”

This was getting me nowhere fast. “I’m not
with them.”

That time his gaze moved past me. The hairs
stood up on the back of my neck, but I discovered he was looking at
the neon yellow rope I’d used to climb down. Apparently he’d been
playing possum and had noticed my unorthodox arrival.

That realization pleased me. I figured it
meant he was in a lot better shape than I’d thought, which meant
alive enough to give me what I needed.

He was still breathing, after all. I figured
he wasn’t
that
much different from a human male.

Time wasn’t on my side. I couldn’t afford to
finesse the deal. “I heard of this woman who did it with one of you
guys and got pregnant, even though she couldn’t conceive. Was that
a fluke? Or can you do that?”

He gave me a speculative once over. I
decided that meant yes. Otherwise, he would’ve looked at me like I
was a fruitcake, right?

“Hell, I’m willing to try anything at this
point or I wouldn’t even be here. So—here’s the deal. You do me and
get me knocked up. I’ll let you go.”

His lips curled back in a sneer that made my
palms itch. “I will free myself, or I will die. I will not taint my
line with the blood of a lesser being. It would be a blood
sin.”

Shock hit me first, but I recovered quickly.
I gave him a drop dead look, which he actually weathered better
than most men, but that only pissed me off even more. He talked
like fucking me would be on a par with fucking a dog, and I damned
sure wasn’t a dog.

Alright, so I wasn’t prime beef either. I
was slightly aged beef, but I kept in good shape. I was no great
beauty—like he was—but mirrors didn’t crack when I looked in them
either. Men, human men, usually gave me at least one look when I
passed them.

I studied him speculatively for several
moments, my hands on my hips.

Superior fucking asshole!

“You’ve done a dandy job of freeing yourself
so far,” I taunted, unable to resist the temptation to take a stab
at him. The poison dart hit its mark. He gave me a look that sent a
shiver down my spine.

He was better at ‘the look’ than I was.

Shrugging it off, I went back to considering
my plan. Finally, I decided I might as well have a talk with his
cock since I was here already. His cock might not be as fastidious
as he was about mixing with the lower order.

The cross presented a problem, though.

After studying the ropes holding it up for
several moments, I discovered with little surprise that the freaks
had used a pulley system to lift it. Moving to the wench, I grasped
the rope, found the release and braced myself. Fortunately, it
didn’t just disengage. After a bit of a struggle, I managed to
lower the thing until it was against the floor.

Striding back to him, I stepped across the
post he was bound to, placing a foot on either side of his hips,
then squatted down for an inspection of the plumbing. Catching hold
of the sarong around his waist, I flipped it up. I was a little
surprised to see it looked pretty much like any other cock—slightly
disappointed, actually. I was hoping for something a little
different. All the same, it was pretty impressive equipment. It was
adult sized, even flaccid.