Angelique Rising (37 page)

             
"C'mon, lovebug," Lexa said taking Anthony by the arm and leading him out, her tears coming brilliantly, silently, purging Malcolm Cochran from her soul. She wondered if Anthony knew how much she loved him for saving her, rescuing her, pulling her out of the deep black pit of torment even when she'd begged to just drown, and bringing her to this moment of salvation and rebuilding. "I have Robert's audition in L.A. to get to."

             
"You haven't asked, but Margret's going home next week though she doesn't know that yet," Angelique said to Malcolm as she too turned her back on him to leave.

             
"How did you do it,"
he gasped in mindless lather,
"I have to know. How did you do it?"

             
Angelique stopped in the doorway, turned and stared at Malcolm.

             
"I," she said drawing herself up to her full height, "read a lot
.
"
She disappeared through the doorway.

             
"My wife does have talents," Wyatt almost chuckled to Johnson as they too left the secured chamber, the screams of Wyatt and Donald muffled as the door behind them closed unambiguously shut.

             
It was just as long a trip back. And as their jet hurtled down the runway to take them all home and Angelique felt herself rising
up,
into the clouds, she looked around the cabin at the people seated nearby.

             
I bet I can fly like in dreams,
I can fly in the clouds forever.

             
She
was
flying in the clouds --with Anthony, the most valuable of friends, the kind who didn't want to take, only to give. And Lexa, her best friend, a person who could come through fire and --ultimately she was sure-- become whole again. And Johnson, she would never understand how she could have earned such devotion from such a man.

             
And her husband.
She had a husband.
Wyatt.
A man loved her.
And she loved him back. If that wasn't flying in the clouds she didn't know what was.

             
Somehow in this life she had risen to a height she had never even peeked at in her old. She was connected to people. She loved and was loved. How had that happened? The change was like rising from the dead and she had to squelch a giggle because for her it really was.

             
And suddenly she remembered her own name and
oh my God IT FIT!
She was
Phoenicia!
Her mother had named her that ridiculous name after her grandmother. Her nickname wasn't May-May, it was Fi-fi. She was
Fifi!
Should she tell Wyatt? No. Because she wasn't Fifi anymore, not really.

             
"Heh," Wyatt said softly, gently pulling her chin toward him so she was looking into his eyes, "where are you?"

             
"I think," she said in gratefully mounting appreciation, "exactly where I'm supposed to be."

             
And above her, higher than the clouds she soared through, Angelique's guardian angel stretched luxuriantly. It had not come for her in death for the simple reason that she had not wanted to go. But it had watched, waiting for when she was ready, and so had seen that moment when she had been pulled so violently back to Earth. It had not been easy to find her a worthy Protector but it had, and now it was ready for a well deserved slumber.

             
Only one thing bothered it, the coincidence of the names. An angel goes into the body of a child named Angelique. A woman named after a Phoenix rises to a new life. Mighty big coincidences. Of course it knew The Big Guy Upstairs, if not having a sense of humor exactly, did have quite the sense of irony.

             
Angelique and Wyatt had found each other through, as Angelique called it, A Great Cosmic Fluke. So just before her guardian angel at last slept it wondered how much of a fluke the whole thing had truly been.

             
When it came to two people falling in love and The Big Guy Upstairs it thought happily, you just really never knew.

∞

Sample bonus chapters from
Alien Advantage
[bad guys chase the good guy humor],
The
Dangerous Path of Loving Jaesha
[erotic romance], and
Coquina Hard
[historical fiction].

ALIEN ADVANTAGE

By

Lorain O'Neil

CHAPTER ONE

              It was the air conditioner dying that woke me up. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve thought if only I hadn’t woken up, I’d be a rich fat cat lawyer by now. The darn thing was, I’d become addicted to the soft hum of that air conditioner, like a lot of people in college dorms are. The white noise drowns out the clowns around you, lets you sleep. If it stops for some reason though,
bang
, you’re wide awake. That’s what happened to me even though it was three o’clock in the morning and I’d been dead to the world. Of course I wasn’t living in the dorms anymore then, I’d moved into an old apartment out in the Gainesville boondocks (translation: cheap) where I was a third year law student at the University of Florida College of Law.

             
When that air conditioner died, I did oh so regrettably open my eyes, and what I saw was a strange vibrating green light flooding my bedroom. The window shade drawn by my bed looked positively aglow with it. I reached for the shade but just as I touched it, the light winked out. Blip. Gone. On its own, the air conditioner cranked back up. I shrugged it off, laid back down in bed and dismissed the phenomenon. But then that green light was suddenly there again, and the air conditioner sputtered back out. A transformer, I decided; an electrical transformer has blown up outside or something, who cares? Well, worth a quick look, right? I sat up and raised the shade, staring out at the street. Everything was bathed in that eerie green light. I saw the light pole by the road --it was out. The opposite side of my street was just a pine forest, but on my side all my neighbors’ doorlamps were out. The green light winked off yet again, the air conditioner rumbled back to life and the streetlamps fluttered back on. The street looked normal, completely silent.

             
It is certifiably, absolutely, one hundred per cent amazing, the colossally unfair tricks fate plays on us: one moment you’re plodding along an anonymous contented law student, the next --finito.

             
I was still sitting up in bed scanning the street when I saw the damn thing. About half the size of a house, a green ball of light floating up, up from behind the forest.

             
I didn’t believe in UFO’s, yet there was this
thing
! It was just there
hovering
. The rush of it overwhelmed me. My reason went on vacation. I was on my feet, running out the door in wild excitement to gawk up at the thing. I didn’t know. God, I didn’t know. My life was over. My good life, anyway.

CHAPTER TWO

             
I know you want to hear about what happened between me and that thing in the sky, and I will tell you, but it’s best that I tell you about it in context with Little Island, a place you would like very much until you realized you wouldn’t be leaving any time soon. It was where I ended up after that UFO got me. Before that, I was just a poor Floridian (also known as a Cracker). Both my parents were dead and I hadn’t seen my two sisters since well before that night I brainlessly ran out to complete catastrophe. I guess I should’ve been grateful that my parents weren’t around anymore because if they had been, you can bet the Doctor or the General would’ve used them against me quite effectively. But to be without a family --it hurt. Made me vulnerable. The people at Little Island knew that of course, it was one of the things they tried to use against me, make me feel like
they
were my family. Crap, I’d shoot myself now before I ever felt familial to the Doctor.

             
As to my arrival on Little Island, it came by way of sheer rotten luck, which I imagine you’re thinking --correctly-- I was having an awful lot of. I landed only a few hundred miles from the place, though it probably wouldn’t have mattered, they’d have gotten me anyway, but I like to think that I would’ve gotten away. Ego, I suppose. I was piloting that little spaceship myself (yes, I’ll get to that) when I landed, all right, crashed then. I’d escaped the aliens who’d taken me that night in Gainesville after I’d so gleefully presented myself up to them.

             
I should start my explanation by telling you that I could “talk” to that alien ship I piloted back to Earth. Or rather I could think at it. That’s how I flew it home. I would think “SLOW DOWN” or “TURN”, etc. That “thinking” (the experts at Little Island call it “thought projection communication”) was taught to me by the aliens to communicate with them. They also used it to run their ships and to communicate with each other. It was --and still is-- very hard for me. I’m not like Eugene, who could read you a whole book via it if he wanted to.

             
You don’t “shout” your thoughts or concentrate hard and screw your face up like those fake telepaths on TV do. It’s just the opposite. You wash your mind clean and let everything just fall away until you’re left in a rather pure-feeling state. Then your thought (I can only communicate a few words) just sort of bubbles up and “connects” to something. In my case it was “GO EARTH” and whoosh! I was off. I’d stolen one of the aliens’ ships and I’ll never know who was more astounded, me or them. The General tells me I’m the only person who ever escaped the aliens on his own, much less steal a spaceship, but that’s the General speaking, so who knows.

             
The ship was moving very fast, and when I finally thought I saw Earth through the window (the ship had a few small window-like portholes) I realized in lunch loosing horror that the ship
wasn’t slowing down
. The thing apparently needed landing instructions and I knew as much about landing a spaceship as you do.

             
SLOW DOWN, I thought, and felt the connect, but couldn’t tell if the ship had truly slowed. I was sure the planet below had to be Earth, but I couldn’t make out what part of Earth I was looking at before the window got obscured by, I don’t know what, burning atmosphere or something. Ask an astronaut, not a law student. For all I knew I was about to go splat in the middle of North Korea.

             
I washed my mind as clean as total panic allowed and pictured northern California as I’d seen it once from a satellite picture on the net. THERE, I whimpered. I figured I’d have a better chance of not crashing into some city there, as I would if I aimed for the east coast. There was a jolting shudder throughout the spacecraft, then darkness. The ship had flown into the night side of Earth and I could see nothing but fuzzy red streaks flashing by the windows.

             
Think,
I yelled aloud in an awesomely high squeal. Assume the ship is going to land in northern California. Should I tell it how? LAND SOFT, I thought frantically but not well enough, because I felt no connect. I tried again, picturing a large black flat area, and thought LAND SLOW THERE. Part of the thought connected but I wasn’t sure which part.

             
That’s when the ship crashed. I realize now that the ship interpreted the “large black flat” area as a forest at night and the “slow” as just that. I did indeed land slowly, careening in slow motion into tree after tree, leaving me with a fractured skull from being thrown about inside and some pretty outlandish promises having been made to God. I must have thought OPEN twenty times before the spaceship door did (I have plenty more to tell you about that damnable door) and I stumbled out hoping for people, preferably young nurse-like people, all waiting for me with outstretched arms saying “Thank goodness you got away!” and “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.” In short, I was a mess, physically and emotionally, and that’s why I was such a pathetically easy picking.

             
I collapsed face down in soft forest dirt --I can still remember how delicious it smelled. Earth! I was free-- I’d survived! If my head hadn’t felt like it was cleaved in two and my whole body like a boulder was sitting on it, I would’ve danced a jig. Instead I apparently opted for just fainting, a stupefying choice I suppose, but one a charitable mind would forgive under the circumstances.

             
It was the sound of the helicopters that brought me to.

             
If you’ve never heard helicopters coming at you, you can’t possibly know what it’s like. Liquid thunder all around me. Sounded like an invasion force about to land on top of me.

             
It was still dark and I couldn’t see much, with the trees blotting out everything except the hapless path I’d carved through them with my seemingly indestructible spacecraft. I could sure hear though.