Colliding Worlds Trilogy 01 - Collision (2 page)

Made it.

A massive boom rocked the ground, and a blast of air shot out of nowhere. A shockwave nearly sent her tumbling from the ATV. Then, as if she was no more than a sliver of metal drawn to a magnet, heat sucked her back toward the explosion. There was no air to breathe, let alone scream. She hunkered down over the handlebars with a death-grip and pushed the throttle in all the way, holding on for dear life. The ATV chewed its way forward inch by inch through the ravenous suction.

Then, as suddenly as it came, the wind vanished and the woods hushed, like someone had hit the mute button. Slowing the ATV, she looked over her shoulder and then slammed the brakes. She hopped off and stood there, staring blankly at the crash site. She took off at a jog, then a sprint, back toward the site before coming to a stop. It was what she didn’t see that frightened her. No fire. No debris. No sign of wreckage. No body. It was as if nothing had been there, like the ship and the shredded trees around it had imploded into nothingness.

“Impossible.”

Aside from the eerie absence of nighttime forest noises, everything appeared normal. Nothing to even hint that a ship had crashed there minutes earlier.

Sienna didn’t know how long she stood there in open-mouthed shock. Was this all just a crazy nightmare? One quick glance back at her passenger proved that couldn’t be the case. Spinning on her heel, she headed back to the ATV, unhooked bungees from the front rack, and tied down the pilot. It wouldn’t hold him long, but it would buy enough time for her to reach the gun in case he awoke.

Her heart felt like it pumped lead, making it hard to catch her breath. Without her phone, her only option was to head back to her place, stabilize the guy, and hope he didn’t die before help arrived. Shaking off a shiver, she climbed back on the ATV and drove the ten interminable minutes through the woods, clutching the handlebars the entire time and glancing back every few seconds at her unconscious passenger and the dark, empty woods.

When she finally pulled up to the front steps of her cabin, adrenaline still surged through her veins. She knew the feeling all too well. She’d been in the middle of a half dozen civil conflicts in as many Third World countries. But she’d never, ever looked down the barrel of a gun before. It was a feeling she hoped to never experience again.

Willing herself into action with a mental punch, with a grunt, she dragged the pilot off the ATV and up the stone steps, the smooth material of his flight suit making her job all the harder. Seconds felt like minutes as she hauled the dead weight into her home. By the time she reached her bedroom, her muscles shook with fatigue. Sweat ran down her temple and tickled her cheek.

Dropping him onto the bed as gently as she could a two-hundred-pound gorilla, Sienna collapsed onto the mattress next to him, one hand reaching for the gun. She swept back hair that had become plastered to her face.

Her mind raced.

In a flurry, she jerked open the nightstand drawer and pulled out her Glock. Scanning the room, she finally settled on hiding the pilot’s gun in her closet. With shit hitting the proverbial fan, she needed a weapon she knew how to use.

A flicker of movement caught her eye. Glancing toward the man, she saw a finger twitch. Sucking in a breath, she yanked out two old flannel shirts hanging in the closet, gave the fabric a quick tug, and leapt back to the bed. She set the Glock down long enough to grab one gloved wrist at a time, pulling each toward the headboard, and tying it with a shirt.

Once finished, her stomach churned as she checked, double-checked, and triple-checked the restraints. Confident the old flannels would hold, she grabbed the gun, headed to the bathroom and grabbed anything that could be used as a medical supply, barely taking her eyes off the man on the bed. Her legs didn’t want to move, but she willed them forward, edging closer and closer until she bumped against the bed and dropped the supplies into a pile on the nightstand.

She was no medic, but the first rule in any accident was to stabilize the patient. Then she’d figure out how to get help here. Hopefully before he woke up. Or died.

With a humorless sigh, she turned her attention back to her patient. His breathing was steady, although not strong by any means. He likely had internal injuries. She felt around his neck for the edge of his mask. Ever so carefully, she rolled it up, and then yanked it off.

That’s when she saw
it
.

His skin looked like he’d taken a shower in liquid gold. Dark tribal-style tattoos swirled over shimmery skin, but there didn’t seem to be a specific design to the way they curved around his neck and onto his face — a face that was masculine and perfect; well, except for a nasty bruise forming around an even nastier swollen eye that was no doubt caused by her boot introducing itself to his face. She brushed his bruised cheek with the back of her fingers, his skin cool to the touch.

Holy. Shit.
First the guy with wings. Now this.

Tattoos were one thing, but she’d never heard of skin dye before, not like this. Even so, this glistening King Midas gold was too pure to be some kind of dye. Even if there were, there seemed no military reason for the anti-stealth glimmer that covered his skin.

No way was this guy real. Despite a successful career in selling the possibility of it, she never really believed in it. There was no such thing as an … an … she could barely even think the word.

Alien.

Sienna snapped around, expecting to see a cameraman pop out and yell “surprise!” But no one did, which meant she was alone with a man who was like no man she’d seen before. She had assumed military, but the two men could also be members of some rival cultish gangs or guns-for-hire. Regardless, she was in way over her head.

And she’d seen plenty of crazy in her life. For her first eighteen years, she’d followed her parents across the globe with their humanitarian efforts. After a relatively normal college career, she spent the next ten-plus years with the military’s elite 51st Division, which was a close tie to the shit she’d seen with her parents. But this guy … and the other guy …

A shiver ran across her skin as fear seeped through her. If only she had her phone. To call for help, to call her mother, hell, to even call her late husband’s pal. Her mother — who’d always gone by
Kat
because she thought
Mom
made her sound old — could be stuck in the middle of a bloody coup, and she’d simply pin up her hair and get to work with a transceiver in one hand and a medical kit in the other. She always knew what to do.

But Kat’s not here.

This mess fell squarely on Sienna’s shoulders. For better or worse, Sienna was the one who pulled the pilot from the crash site and witnessed the shooting.

Then it hit her. She spun on a heel and headed to the living room, to the PC connected to high-speed internet.

Pulling out the chair, she typed a quick email to her mother:

Only Sienna’s mother wouldn’t find the question odd. Her parents’ hobby had been researching societies that claimed to have connections with life among the stars. After Dad died, humanity’s connection with the universe became Kat’s obsession. She was convinced not only that Earth wasn’t alone in the universe, but that the small planet already had guests. Kat had sworn she’d found proof.

Sienna wished she’d listen to her mother’s ramblings closer. She’d never put down her mother’s beliefs. She’d just never really drank the Kool-Aid. After all, it was her parents’ hobby that dropped their daughter into the niche career helping the government plan for the improbable and unlikely … like alien invasions. At least, that had been Sienna’s job until her husband Bobby died, and she started her now-going-on-three-years’ sabbatical to write her parents’ memoir at her mother’s request.

Giving her head a shake, Sienna went back to typing, sending the next email to Jax, Bobby’s best friend and a Black Ops guy. If anyone could help, it’d be him. Unfortunately, she hadn’t talked with him since her husband’s death and had no idea if he was even in the States, let alone if the email address still worked.

The third and final email took longer to find the address than to type the message. After pulling up the Hot Springs Police Department’s website, she left sketchy details about a hunting accident and her address. With no crash site, it wasn’t like she could leave any specifics without her email completely being written off as a hoax. Now if only someone got her message before it was too late.

Note to self: buy two phones next time.

Wringing her hands, she came to her feet. “That ought to do it.”

Glancing down the hallway, Sienna’s legs didn’t want to move, but she willed them forward anyway, edging closer and closer, until she was back in the bedroom, and finally stopping in front of the man who lay unmoving, sprawled across her bed.

Convinced he wasn’t playing ‘possum, she ran her hands over muscled arms, feeling for broken bones.
So far, so good.
Then she moved to his chest and down his abdomen, stopping when she discovered a spot where the material was saturated.

She tried to cut down the front of the flight suit, but the thin fabric was much stronger than she would’ve guessed. With both hands clasping the shears, cutting through the fabric was a painfully slow process. When the final bit of fabric covering his torso was cut away, the chest of a sun god bared itself to her. More tattoos unfurled like vines across a torso marred by a mass of small X-shaped scars.

Other than the golden shimmer of his skin, there seemed to be no discoloration or swelling, no signs of internal injuries. That was, until she found the source of the wetness about an inch below his rib cage. Blood seeped from a deep gouge. But it was unlike any blood she’d ever seen before. It was thick and dark and definitely not crimson.

In a shocked daze, Sienna closed her mouth and watched his chest rise and fall and rise again, the wound continuing to ooze the strange fluid. This was something her unerring sense of logic couldn’t defend. Here she was watching dark liquid gold bleed from a wound. The color was so
alien
.

Bending at the waist, she tried several awkward positions to get a closer look at the wound but was unsuccessful. Holding in her breath, she pulled herself, inch by inch, onto the bed, trying not to wake him even though he was clearly passed out cold.

When the pilot showed no sign of consciousness, Sienna leaned in to get a better angle. The injury looked nasty as she dabbed antiseptic across the skin, and new blood rose with every gentle touch she made. The cut was too deep for a bandage and too much for her meager first-aid skills. Even if she was successful in stopping the bleeding, infection was another story. Hopefully help would arrive soon.

With a sympathetic wince, she threaded a needle and placed her palm near the wound. The instant before piercing skin, heat bloomed under her hand. She jolted back, tumbling off the bed and onto the floor, tripping and landing hard on her butt. She barely registered the impact. Shock did that to a person.

Like a kid unable to turn away from a movie guaranteed to cause nightmares, she pulled herself up and looked at his wound. Where her hand had been, his skin shimmered more brightly, fresh skin now covering the edge of the wound her pinky finger had covered a moment earlier. Air turned to stone in her lungs. “Fuck. Me.”

Scanning the floor, she found the needle and plunked it onto the nightstand. Rubbing her neck, Sienna tried to make sense out of something that made no sense. Maybe it was shock, maybe it was the after-effect of adrenaline wearing off, but she made only a half-hearted attempt to reason with herself. Shrugging, she gingerly placed her palm against the wound.

After a moment, heat hit her hand like buckshot. She leaned back onto the mattress, feeling woozy but held steady against the injury. Watching the clock, she counted out thirty seconds — all the while heat tickling her palm as though her hand rested on an anthill — before pulling back to see a fresh scar where the bloody cut had been.

Holy freaking hell.

She stared at her hand still smeared with blood, at the scar, and at her hand again. With a grimace, she wiped her hand on her cargos, leaving behind amber streaks on the cotton. Still lightheaded from the surreal healing experience, she sat on the bed and watched her patient.

His breathing already sounded stronger than the ragged breaths from before, like a deep sleep had taken hold. Feeling a bit guilty — but not too much; after all, he
had
pointed a gun at her — she brushed a hand over his swollen eye and focused on the tingling under her palm. This time, she could make out the tiniest bit of energy being drawn from her through the sensation. When she’d finished, there was no swelling and nothing more than a faded bruise remained. It was a neat — and totally bizarre — trick.

Finished playing magic witch doctor, Sienna sat down next to the unconscious pilot to regain her strength and stared at the man laid out before her. She touched the golden skin, just to brand her memory with how it felt. His heart pounded under her palm. While warm to the touch, it no longer tingled against her skin.

An unbidden image of his naked body under her, inside her, came out of nowhere and fogged her vision. She winced and yanked away from the man.

It had been over three years since her husband Bobby was killed by a driver too busy texting her BFF. Three years since she left the cold city behind and moved to away from humanity, away from senselessness. And three long years since she touched a man.

But this wasn’t just some man. There was a reason he was tied to her bed. He’d pointed a gun at her, and that was most definitely not the sort of thing she took lightly. And who knew what he’d been up to before he crashed in the Ouachita Forest. But most importantly, however, she had no clue who — or what — he was. Until she figured that out, he would remain in the “bad guy” category.