Resurrected (Resurrected Series Book 1) (10 page)

There was a soft rapping noise from somewhere far away. I tried to place it but it was distant, metallic and hollow. Gradually, sounds came with greater clarity and I slowly opened my eyes. I had fallen asleep. The popcorn ceiling of the hotel room came into focus, that hollow metallic rapping sound identifying itself as knocking at my door. How long had I been asleep? I glanced over at the clock. Over an hour. I rolled off the bed and looked through the peephole, surprised to see Lottie’s spritely figure waiting on the other side. She was looking down the walkway, perhaps wondering if I had left and I quickly opened the door before she had a chance to decide to leave, too. I didn’t have time to wonder where Eric was. Part of me didn’t care. A big part of me, actually.

“Hey,” I said. God, I could be so pathetic.

She just smiled at me and said hey back. And then walked into my room and sat down on the same bed she had claimed before. “I left Eric with Lydia. They were … actually getting along. It was getting too weird.”

I raised my eyebrows at her. I
knew
Lydia wasn’t Jamie. She wasn’t anything like Jamie. But I could understand why that made Lottie feel so uncomfortable. Jamie and Eric had hated each other. Part of it may have had something to do with Eric’s feeble attempt to ask her out when he first met her and Jamie’s not-so-feeble attempt at making it perfectly clear that was never going to happen. Eric was – apparently – a good looking guy. He wasn’t used to getting shot down, and I don’t think he ever forgave Jamie for that, anymore than she ever forgave him for hitting on her in the first place.

“I’m not sure you should have left her alone with him,” I said. My nap had obviously not cured my incensed mood.

Lottie just shrugged. “I still trust him. Believe me, I would never have left Lydia alone with him if I didn’t.”

“Why is Lydia even ok being left alone with him? She treated me like I was the Jabberwocky last night.”

Lottie raised one eyebrow at me, that half-smile curling at her lips. “C’mon, Dietrich. She’s human.”

I stared stupidly back at Lottie. She obviously expected me to catch on to her innuendo, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge it. It was my turn to cross my arms defensively. There was no way Eric and Lydia were going to hook up. No fucking way.

“Anyway,” Lottie exaggerated the word, fully understanding I was being stubborn and petulant and she had probably half-expected it, “Let’s go do something. Hey, do you have a DVD player in here? We can go down to F.Y.E. I bet they have a copy of
Men in Black.
”

“You know I don’t watch movies.” As much as I didn’t want to think about Eric and Lydia, I couldn’t
not
think about them. “They’re not going to … you know.”

Lottie smirked. “Doubt it, but it’s none of our business. And besides, he’s no longer here to tempt you into committing homicide. So let’s go do something.”

She was virtually bouncing on the edge of the bed now. Even if I had wanted to say no, she was so goddamned adorable, how could I resist her? So we drove down to a Greek and Lebanese restaurant we had always loved and had lunch then went over to the LSU lakes. It was late June in south Louisiana. Hot and humid, uncomfortable even in the shade. But it was an old pastime of ours, to walk around this particular lake, and so we parked on campus and she let me hold her hand as we made our way back toward Dalrymple Drive. Part of it was the heat, and part of it was just that Lottie and I had never felt the need to fill silence between us, and so we walked quietly, occasionally moving to the side as a cyclist or jogger edged past us.

By mid-afternoon, we had stopped to rest in the shade of a huge oak tree, passing a bottle of water between us, breathing heavily not so much from physical exertion but from the hot, sticky air around us. “Now what?” Lottie finally asked.

I glanced down the rest of the path. We still had about a ¼ of a mile to go before we were back to Dalrymple Drive. “Well, when we get back to my car, I’m turning on the air conditioner. And going back to the Circle K for another bottle of water.”

Lottie laughed. “That’s not what I meant.”

I looked down at her. She was staring out over the lake but not really seeing it. “Oh.”

Now what? Hadn’t this always been her call? From the moment I first saw her in the coffeehouse in Houston, I had wanted her with me, no matter who she was. If she had asked me right then to run away with her to Morocco, I would have pulled out my phone and bought the tickets. Lottie looked up at me. I guess she had expected a more thoughtful response.

“You’re fucking gorgeous, you know that?” she asked.

I laughed, both startled and amused. It had been a long time since I’d really laughed. I shrugged, “You’ve told me.”

“Jamie always thought so too.”

“
That
you never told me.”

Lottie smiled back at me. “Well, I didn’t want it going to your head or anything.”

“Whatever. I’ve never cared about anyone’s opinion except yours.”

“I know.” Lottie looked away again, nervous maybe, awkward. The not-Lottie part suddenly remembering this wasn’t a conversation she was comfortable having. I left her alone for a couple of minutes before reminding her, “So … now what?”

She plucked a few strands of grass from the ground beside her and let the breeze, as little as there was, take them from her hand. “Now? I dunno. I guess we hope Eric doesn’t knock up Lydia?” she joked.

I groaned. The thought of Eric having sex with anyone, let alone Lydia, was the last thing I wanted to think about. “Alright, sorry,” she laughed. She turned contemplative again and pulled a few more blades from the ground. “How long can you stay?”

“As long as you’ll let me,” I answered quickly.

“Well,” she said, looking back up at me, those shimmering hazel eyes both scared and excited, “I guess we just start there.”

Chapter 6

Eric had insisted on coming into my room that evening. He sat in the same chair, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped in front of him, as he told the same story from the party, at least what he could remember of it. The rational part of my brain tried to acknowledge it did seem like he had meant the kiss innocently enough, but perhaps because he was drunk or because he was lonely or because it was just Lottie looking as beautiful as ever in her dark blue sweater dress with black filigree designs that he made a stupid mistake. A very stupid mistake. One that I at least wanted to hit him for. Eric told me I could. Somehow, when someone gives you permission to hit him, it takes the satisfaction out of it. I passed on the chance.

For now, I told him the best I could do was treat him as Eric my coworker, not Eric my friend. I think part of him had suspected I would say that and there was nothing he could say at this point to change my mind. He unclasped his hands, leaned back in his chair, folded one leg over his other knee and asked, “So, do you want to hear what I learned from Lydia?”

“What
happened
between you and Lydia? Don’t fuck this up for me and Lottie.”

“What do you …? Oh, Christ, Dietrich, you’ve met her. She’s sweet and all. I mean, really sweet. That’s the problem. It took all of about five minutes to feel like I was talking to my little sister. I’m not trying to fuck her.”

“Your sister’s not
that
sweet.”

“No. But point remains. Do you want to hear this or not?”

I nodded. I still wanted to hit him … sort of … but I also really wanted to hear what he had learned from Lydia. And I was secretly exceedingly glad he wasn’t going to try to sleep with her. Something told me if Lydia’s heart got broken, I would get at least partly blamed. After all, I had told him about Lottie. I had brought him here.

“She told me how it works, kinda. It was actually fascinating. I mean, like Lottie, she’s not a scientist or whatever so the mechanics and all are a mystery even to them … but they’re just girls who wanted different choices than they had at home. It’s crazy, you think of a society that’s capable of doing something like this, you’d think they at least have equal rights and shit, but apparently girls there are just … I don’t know. They don’t have a lot of freedoms, I guess. There’s a lot of classism too. Lottie’s family had money so she was well educated and then she taught Lydia whatever she could, but that’s why they don’t understand how any of this happens. That’s why even working at a bookstore is liberating for them. Lottie’d never had a job before.”

“Why would they even let women come here then?” I hadn’t wanted to interrupt him, but Eric’s stories often had a tendency to start somewhere in the middle, loop around to the beginning and then jump to the end, all while leaving out details I thought might be important. Given his job and training, he was incredibly observant, so why he still held onto this relic of his past, this annoying habit of his to tell stories in such an upside down and inside out kind of way, often irritated me more than it confused me.

“Oh, I asked her that,” of course he had, “and she said it’s not like when women are treated like second-class citizens here. It’s still about power, but they’re not really trying to control women as much as they are trying to exclude them from certain things.”

“That’s the same damn thing, Eric.”

He brushed it off. “She didn’t seem to think so, but maybe she just hasn’t been here long enough. This is one of those things, actually. It’s not easy to get approved to come here if you’re a woman. There are other places, places she didn’t know much about but this is where Lottie had wanted to come. She still doesn’t know how Lottie got it all worked out. She made it seem like she knew somebody. Kyrieana did, I mean. Lydia was nice and all, but there were some things she wouldn’t tell me, and sometimes, she pretended not to know something, but she obviously did. I think she knew how Kyrieana got this worked out so they could both come together.”

“Holy shit, so it
is
mostly men here?” I asked. I didn’t like the sound of this.

“Yeah. You ask me, I think they don’t like letting their women out of their control, no matter what Lydia says. So it’s mostly men, but I don’t know how many. She wouldn’t say; she claimed she didn’t know. How can you not know how many people from your planet have traveled across the universe to live on another planet?”

I shrugged. “And why? Why are they coming here?”

“Well, I asked her that too,” I rolled my eyes now. He was a fucking intelligence agent. He didn’t need to keep telling me he knew how to ask questions. But he ignored me and kept on, “and she insisted we had nothing to worry about. They’re not aggressive. They don’t even have armies. I’m not buying that. But she said for some, it’s scientific curiosity, just like Lottie had told you, and for others, it’s wanting an adventure, or opportunities, or whatever. And they’ve been doing this for a very long time.”

I waited. He was actually going to make me ask him. I sighed heavily. “How long?”

“She guessed it must be hundreds of years.”

“Holy shit,” I said again.

“Oh, and I got a name for her too, even though it doesn’t seem as important since there’s no … confusion … I mean, Lydia’s just Lydia but I was curious. So I told her Lottie had translated her name as Kyrieana, and she thought about it for a while then said her name would probably be something like
Lyr-he-ana
.” He emphasized each syllable in case I was having another slow-English-day. “All girls have that same ending sound to their names, which I think is kind of cool, and she chose the name Lydia because it reminded her of at least part of her name.”

“That may be the most useless information you’ve ever told me.”

Eric just shrugged again. He was clearly enjoying this. “Anyway, Kyrieana got it worked out in some magical way that apparently
Lyr-he-ana
…”

“Stop doing that,” I interrupted. Eric ignored me.

“has no idea how, and there’s just this room. That’s it. No tunnel, or bright light, or swirling portal. Nothing movie worthy at all. She said their bodies on their planet aren’t like ours, they’re not as … tangible … I don’t know, I didn’t really get that part because she didn’t know how to explain it, but they just waited inside this room for a while. It never moved or anything. It was attached to a fucking building, for Christ’s sake, but when the door opened again, they were here. And she could feel the loss of her energy almost immediately. It wasn’t huge, but they could both feel it. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were in Houston. They had been given instructions on exactly what to do and they were told they would have about one week – one Earth week, obviously - to find a body or they wouldn’t have enough energy left to revive it. Wait,” Eric held up a hand.

He knew I had a long list of questions, and attempted to answer them before I could interrupt him again. “No, I don’t know what all of her instructions were. I know some of them had something to do with getting to the morgue. They were very close to the hospital that Lottie and Jamie had been brought to, so that’s how they were able to find them so quickly. Hell, for all I know, that room they came out in or … whatever … may
be
in the hospital. It would make sense. And if they couldn’t find a suitable one there, it’s the fucking medical district. It’s easy enough to find a young female body
somewhere.
Anyway, once they saw Lottie and Jamie’s bodies, they stayed with them. They watched everything. We obviously can’t see them without a body. I mean, they could see each other, but
we
can’t see them. This is a fucking trip, isn’t it?”

I nodded. What the hell else was there to do?

“How did they …” How was I supposed to ask him how they had decided who would take which body? How had Kyrieana decided she would become Lottie? Did they roll a die? Draw straws? Rock, paper, scissors? “Kyrieana, did she choose Lottie’s body?” My throat felt tight and stiff. Why couldn’t I have just gone crazy?

“Oh. I don’t know actually. She never said. I didn’t think to ask, sorry.”

It shouldn’t have mattered, but that was the only part of this story that involved
my
Lottie, so to me, there wasn’t anything more important. “Doesn’t matter,” I mumbled.

Eric hesitated but then picked up with his story. “They watch everything that’s done so they’ll know how to undo it. That’s how they knew all sorts of formaldehyde and shit is put in those bodies that’s not supposed to be there. And you probably don’t want to hear all these details.”

I was about to tell him he was right. While I had wanted to know
why
Kyrieana had chosen Lottie, or if Lydia had chosen first and Lottie was just leftover, I didn’t want to hear
how
Kyrieana, even if I actually kinda
liked
Kyrieana, had taken over my dead fiancée’s body and brought it back to life. But then I remembered sitting by the lake with her that afternoon, the breeze gently blowing those long strands of soft, wavy brown hair around her delicate face, those slender fingers playing in the grass, that thrill of endorphins, and, well yeah, testosterone, when our legs brushed against each other as I reached across her to pluck away an invading spider. “No, it’s ok. Tell me.”

“We were right about them needing help. A lot of help. Somehow, they’re able to let these guys who are here know what bodies to keep an eye on, then as soon as they have the chance, they dig up the bodies, rebury the casket, then get the hell out of there. Lydia made it sound like they start … claiming the bodies, those are her words … as soon as they’re in the van. I told you they don’t have a lot of time. It’s like all this energy they have is used to fix all the shit that doesn’t work anymore. And all the crap that’s not supposed to be there makes it harder, they have to use up a lot of energy just to get that shit out …”

“How do you just get formaldehyde and methanol out of your body?”

Eric shrugged. “Same way we get anything out of our bodies when we’re alive. We know what killed them both. Lottie’s spinal cord was severed, some of her organs, like her liver was pretty badly damaged, she had a lot of broken bones,” Eric’s voice had dropped and he finally stopped. We both sat in silence for a while. I already knew all of this. We had been told the full extent of her injuries at the hospital. We had also been told she had most likely died very quickly. I remember someone – some doctor, maybe an intern – telling me at least she hadn’t suffered. And then Eric was pulling me away, out of the room, and I had no idea why. I had a vague ghost of a memory of him telling me he was afraid I was going to kill that guy.

“Just finish,” I sighed.

“They both woke up in their new bodies several days later in a house in Waco. She described what it was like, waking up in a foreign body. She could remember her language, her life, everything that had happened, but she had no idea how to use this body. She had been watching people at the hospital, at Jamie’s funeral. The way they talked, moved, smiled, hugged, cried. But she couldn’t figure out how to do any of that. Lottie had woken up first and when she finally got her neck to move, to turn her head to look at her best friend, she saw her lying there crying.”

I held my breath. No. That wasn’t right. I
couldn’t
breathe. I felt like someone was holding a pillow over my face, suffocating me. My Lottie. How had this happened to her? What the hell had gone wrong? What had been going through Kyrieana’s mind when she woke up? Or was it Lottie’s mind? Did she know she was supposed to have died? That she
was
dead? Was she thinking about me? Her mother? I wanted nothing more right then than to leave that room, drive the short distance down Essen Lane to her apartment, to beg her to just let me hold her again, to promise her – even though I had no idea how I could ever fulfill it – that nothing like this would ever happen to her again.

“Could she speak to her?” I finally asked. I already knew the answer. She hadn’t even known how to translate her own name. How would they have spoken to one another?

“No,” Eric said. “She understood what crying meant. She had seen so much of it at the funeral. But she couldn’t figure out why Kyrieana was crying, and she didn’t know how to talk to her, she couldn’t really move much. She wanted to make some sort of sound to let her know she was here with her because she thought Kyrieana was scared or that maybe she was hurting. That happens sometimes if a body is badly injured. They heal the worst of the problems but a broken arm is still going to hurt like hell. She couldn’t do anything though except lie there and watch her best friend cry in this strange body she didn’t even really recognize.

Anyway, after a while, one of the guys who had been helping them came in to check on them, saw they were both awake, saw Lottie crying. He figured she was in pain, so he started checking her out again,” Eric paused, he must have seen me flinch, “they weren’t like that, Dietrich. Nobody messed with them. He just checked for broken bones, visible bruises, listened to her heart and lungs, stuff like that. And he talked to her, in English, and of course Lydia couldn’t understand anything he was saying. But she said something weird kind of happened, but she didn’t really think anything of it at the time, because she was kinda dealing with a lot of shit of her own. But this guy, a doctor, I guess, was just talking, trying to be calming and soothing, I suppose, but Lydia was watching her the whole time and at one point, he said something and she
swears
it seemed like Lottie understood him. Which should have been impossible.”