Page 8 of Unexpected Alien Prince

Jax watches as I return to the door, standing to one side of it and pressing himself to the wall. He continues to frown but is letting me do what I’m going to do, though he does look wary. There’s a tension in him that I’ve never seen before, as if he’s ready to spring into action at any second.

I open the door just as they ring the bell again. I smile broadly at the young people. It’s two boys and a little girl. One isthe wolfman, one Frankenstein’s monster, and the girl is oddly the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I’m struck again by the incongruous nature of their costumes.

“Trick or Treat,” they call in unison but their voices are deep.

Much, much too deep for children. I stare, mouth dropping open as everything happens at once.

The light outside the door disappears. Blackness engulfs everything but the children themselves, whom I can still oddly see.

Jax yells something that I don’t understand. He grabs my arm and jerks me back. I stumble backwards, tripping over my own feet and falling onto my ass.

Jax’s sword crackles as it swings through the air and in that single motion all three of the things, they are no longer children but faceless blobs, are decapitated. Or sort of are. They don’t really seem to have heads anymore but the shadowy, dark part that is where their heads should be separates and falls in slow motion.

Jax slams the door shut, spins around, sees me and rushes over. He bends, scoops me up as if I weigh nothing, which I very much do not, and carries me effortlessly towards the back of my house.

“Rear door?” he asks.

“Huh?” I ask, numbly trying to process everything that has happened.

“Ads, focus, please. Exit? Rear?”

I nod and wave in the general direction of the backdoor. We’re moving so fast that the world around us blurs and the next thingI know we’re out the door and moving across my small fenced backyard.

I stare at the yellow light streaming through the open rear door of my home. Somehow I am certain that this is the last time I will ever see it.

6

ADELLA

Ishake my head to clear it and make myself focus. Jax runs as fast as any athlete I could possibly imagine. It becomes more than a little unreal when he bounds over the fences separating my neighbor’s yards in single bounds all while carrying me and landing with barely a jar.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“My ship,” he says. “I wanted time to ask you. To explain,” he glances over his shoulder before continuing. “But there isn’t any left. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” I ask.

He darts a look at me and he’s frowning deeply.

“Safety first,” he says, a strange look on his face.

I can’t argue with that because below the shield of numbness that I’m still cowering inside of there is fear. Fear that is so deep and so strong I know if it pierces my protection I’ll be overwhelmed. Probably lie in a curled up ball and cry or something equally useless.

Instead of being dumb I do the only intelligent seeming thing I can think of. I wrap my arms a little tighter around his neck and bury my face in his hair. The wind whips past us as he carries me to what I can only hope will be safety.

When he slows at last I lift my head and look. We’re in the Cricketts’ woods. The woods no one goes into because everyone knows they’re dangerous. He had to slow to navigate his way through the trees but he’s still moving fast enough to make my stomach lurch as trees loom and disappear.

He bounces around the trees until ahead there is a soft blue glow. As we get closer to the source of the light and I see what’s causing it my heart speeds up. My stomach clenches with a surge of fear.

It’s a ship. An honest to god flying saucer like all the UFO enthusiast go on about. It sits in a clearing and pulses as if greeting its masters return.

Jax makes a click tick sound with his mouth that I’ve never heard before in my life and a door opens. A ramp extends down and he barrels up and into the ship. He sets me onto my feet as the door closes behind us.

“I have to get into orbit, we’ll be safer there, for a little while,” he says quickly.

I follow him through the narrow corridors into a cockpit that reminds me of the Millenium Falcon fromStar Wars.Jax slides into one of the seats and not knowing what to expect or do with myself I take the one next to him.

He does… something. I don’t know what it is. His hands fly across the console in front of him then my stomach drops and for a moment it feels as if I’m lifting out of the chair only topush down into it. We tilt forward, then back, then I feel the acceleration but there are no outward signs of it.

---