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What the hell?
Marissa Kincaid froze at the subsonic boom rattling the house. Her muscles as quickly unlocked and she dropped the sudsy bowl back into the sink to peer out the kitchen window.
Her eyes widened. What the hell?
She raced out onto her veranda. Pushing her bright red hair out of her vision, she blinked up at the cloudless, late afternoon sky. Her eyes were surely playing tricks on her. A flash of something huge streaked into the distance, with half a dozen fighter jets giving chase.
The frightened squeal of her old gray mare brought her back to earth. Winnie galloped around the round yard, hooves flashing as she kicked and bucked, ears flat to her head.
Marissa headed toward the horse. “Settle down, Winnie,” she crooned, though her throat was drier than sawdust. “Whatever we saw is long gone now.”
Bad enough she’d seen what looked like a UFO. In her three years of living in this house, she’d never once seen or heard fighter jets in the area.
She climbed the lower railing of the round yard, frowning even as she stroked Winnie’s nose. “Easy now.” But the whites of the mare’s eyes showed, her pink nostrils flaring. “Nothing to be spooked about anymore. This isn’t like you at all.”
Winnie was a twenty-three year old plodder enjoying retirement.
Not that she blamed the mare for working herself into a sweat. Whatever had shot across the sky had been scary and mind-boggling. Things like this didn’t happen in the backwater community of Chelderwood, inland Australia. In fact, nothing much at all happened out here except heat and even more relentless heat. She only hoped she’d sleep tonight!
Satisfied Winnie had calmed, she headed back to her small, two bedroom fibro home. The veranda creaked underfoot and the screen door slammed shut behind her as she swiped her brow that was already damp with sweat.
At least the gum tree at the back of the house screened off the worst of the summer’s relentless heat. A pity that same tree also dropped its leaves. It was a constant struggle cleaning out the blocked gutters so that when rare rainwater fell, it flowed freely into her single water tank.
Of course when she and her fiancée, Luke, had bought the rundown property three years ago they’d had big plans, which included installing more tanks. They’d even talked of extending the house to make more bedrooms for their future children.
She pressed a hand to her flat stomach, ignoring her blurred vision and an all too familiar ache in her chest. “Why’d you go and die on me Luke?” she croaked, giving into emotions she rarely indulged. How often had she wished for him back? Yearned for the man she’d fallen in love with at the tender age of eighteen, the same man who’d, three months later, taken her away from her controlling and manipulative father.
Luke would have been fascinated by the UFO and possibly more so by the fighter jets giving chase. He would have discussed the incident with her for hours, a hundred different conspiracy theories puzzled over while imagining what it meant for the human race.
She curled her hands over the rim of the kitchen sink. She was a fool to yearn for Luke almost a year since he’d passed away. Life went on long after loved ones died. Never mind that her heart had died right along with her fiancée. Never mind that a handful of days ago she’d turned twenty-two but felt so much older.
But then she should be used to people dying on her. Her mother had taken her own life when Marissa was barely sixteen. Her hands tightened on the sink. At least Luke hadn’t deliberately died; he’d wanted to live and to stay with her.
She closed her eyes for a moment, before releasing her grip to finish washing her bowl and place it beside her spoon and saucepan she’d used to heat up her can of asparagus soup. She’d skipped breakfast to have a half-decent lunch. Her money was drying up as fast as the land and she ate frugally and spent even less on food.
She sighed. Soon she’d have no choice but to sell a few more cows from her dwindling cattle herd. She couldn’t continue hoping for summer rains that never seemed to come. But lately hope was all that kept her going.
Pivoting away from the sink, she reflexively twisted the engagement ring on her finger. If she kept on losing weight the damn thing would fall off. The jewelry was her one solid memory, her one comfort when her solitary existence felt like a curse instead of a relief.
She didn’t want to be around other people, didn’t want to see those couples who might remind her of the wonderful life she should have had with Luke. She frowned. Didn’t want to let her father think he’d won.
She’d go without a lot—had been without a lot—so as not to lose her farm. Losing the small eighty-five acre property meant losing her independence, and all her brief, but happy memories.
No. She wouldn’t slink back to her father and the life he expected of her. She wouldn’t lower herself by accepting all the wealth and privilege imaginable in exchange for him owning her soul.
Being a Kincaid didn’t make her a puppet to be controlled in every aspect of her life. She might be broke and working herself to the bone, but at least she was free. At least she got to make her own decisions.
Winnie’s high-pitched neigh dragged Marissa from her introspection. With a frown she walked back onto the veranda, watching as the mare galloped around her yard, kicking up even more fuss. Marissa checked the bright azure sky, relieved this once to see nothing but a couple of fluffy clouds.
She then searched the parched green-brown of her property, with its withered eucalyptus trees and ragged fence line before her stare reflexively scanned the national park that neighbored her property. It was dazzling green in contrast, untouched by livestock and nurtured by rains that rarely pattered on her thirsty soil.
She expelled a weary breath, her stare returning to her barren land. It would be a good idea to check the cattle in the far-off paddock that adjoined Winnie’s. She’d make sure the Brahmans hadn’t been spooked by all the commotion.
She turned to head back inside and grab the jeep keys. Opening the screen door, she froze. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, a rash of goose bumps flaring up her arms. She pivoted slowly, clapping a hand over her strangled scream.
An enormous black winged creature staggered toward her before sprawling onto its side not even ten yards from Winnie’s round yard. Blood streamed from its chest, a huge wing outstretching as though reaching out to her. Her mind screamed run but she couldn’t move. Not even with the scent of sulfur permeating the air.
She swallowed disbelief, caught in a web of shock as the creature groaned even as its muscles contracted. Its skin shivered and moved, its bones grating and grinding as they seemingly stretched and then sickeningly snapped. Her eyes widened. Holy shit! It was altering and changing into something else.
The creature convulsed and appeared to lose consciousness. Its skin rippled and shrank, its jaw retracting along with its tail. Its body twisted and then shuddered, every single one of its cells altering in front of her eyes before it was suddenly nothing like the creature she’d seen.
An unmoving, flesh-and-blood man now lay on the ground in his own blood, a man almost too big to be human.
Of course he’s not human; no one on Earth can shift shape.
“What the hell is going on?” she whispered.
Even as she said it she knew he must belong to the alien craft she’d seen earlier.
Either way, she’d never abandoned a person or animal in pain and she wasn’t about to start now. She ran to him even as doubts crowded in her head. He was an unknown entity, a man who could be dangerous, who could kill her the moment she’d tended to his wounds.
She’d take the chance, she wasn’t about to let him bleed out because she was worried about her own skin. He could as easily be friend as foe. Alien or not, she wasn’t going to stand back and let him suffer.
She sank to the ground and felt his wrist for a pulse. Shit. His skin was burning hot, and yet his pulse thudded with a strength that belied any fever.
He groaned, and she released his arm as he came to and tried to push himself off the ground. A fresh round of blood gushed from his wound, and she winced at seeing all the red even as she ignored the rather too impressive part that made him male ... that made her mouth go dry and her lungs constrict.
She focused on his chest wound. It appeared to be made by a bullet, which didn’t surprise her one bit. She didn’t trust those on Earth who’d been put in a position of power. No, she’d put more faith in the unknown than she would in her own corrupt people.
Winnie nickered and she glanced at the mare that seemed calm now the creature was a man. Marissa was comforted by that fact. She trusted animals and their instincts, trusted they knew good from bad.
He isn’t a man though, remember? He’s something else.
He groaned again, and she dragged off her long-sleeved cotton shirt and pressed the material to his chest to stem the blood. His eyes fluttered fully open and her belly did a slow somersault. His stare was the deepest amber brown she’d ever seen, with flecks of yellow like autumn in a forest.
But even under his pain she recognized his sharp intelligence, along with something far more intense.
She resisted folding her arms across her chest, as much to cover her faded old bra as she did her breasts. She needn’t have worried, he was too busy staring at her bright red hair. She shivered, but not with fear. Desire pulsed through her veins too. She was inexplicably drawn to him, her instincts clamoring to help him.
“Thank you,” he managed, his voice beautifully modulated and strangely accented. She could fall into his voice as easily as she could his eyes.
She didn’t move for a moment, not until she heard someone’s not so distant shout. She frowned and the injured man looked up at her and said hoarsely, “Your people are looking for me.”
Her frown deepened. So he was an alien. Somehow the news didn’t disturb her like it probably should. “What did you do?”
“I escaped my enemy and crash landed on your world. But it seems your people don’t want me here.”
She nodded. Somehow she believed him. In fact an intrinsic part of her recognized he was telling the truth, and that he was a man of honor. Lord only knew she’d lived long enough in a ‘privileged’ world where men and women were well versed in the art of lying. “C’mon, let’s get you into my shed and out of sight.”
His eyes seemed to glow with an inner light, as though burning embers. “You’d protect me?”
