2. Vander
Chapter 2
Vander
I make my way to the front door of this domicile, immediately irritated at the reminder that this human is not residing in one of the bigger, more secure housing buildings in this Earth city, which makes this assignment more difficult. She instead lives in a neighborhood with many access points to her home.
Spartan Shield sent me here because I was requested by this human’s father who apparently is a fan of my work.
This is always nice to hear. I am from the Best family line, a long line of Hunters. My father, mother and many of my siblings are also Hunters. This type of work is in my blood. And I am proud to represent my species on this planet, which seeks to join the four sectors.
I will keep this male’s daughter safe even if it means the end of my own life blood.
This assignment is going to be more difficult, but it does not mean it’s impossible. I plan on showing how I can be the best.
I've already canvassed the entire perimeter, the roof and the city.
I've mapped out the route to drive the armored vehicle from here to the courthouse.
And I know her schedule.
I've even selected the weapons that I need. But I’ve yet to go inside and decide where to set up, the proximity of where I'm sleeping to where she sleeps, and if any more trip wires need to be placed inside.
Humans on the street stare at me with fear in their eyes and there were a few shrieks of surprise as I walked over. I would say this is the only problem. I’ve worked on many other planets in the four sectors, but only recently transferred to Earth. But I am used to not looking the same as the beings I protect.
As I move with her on the streets of this city, I will be easily identifiable as her guard because of my pigment and become a target myself. But hopefully that would mean I would draw fire from her and this could end up being good.
I knock, and the door opens.
I have to look down, because it turns out, unlike the females on my own planet, this human is much smaller than me. I have met many humans, but apparently the others must have been taller, because she seems fragile.
My new client makes a sound and steps back, a flash of fear in her eyes which I find I do not like. I confirm that she is indeed Katie Ross. My protective hunter instincts are already locking onto this being. I inhale her scent, imprinting upon her.
“I am Vander, the Hunter that was hired for you by Spartan Shield,” I say, using the local variation of human speak due to the universal translator than was implanted in my brain before I was assigned to this planet. “Can I come inside?”
She moves back.
I brush past and shut the door behind us and lock it. “I'm going to change all the locks tonight, before I fall asleep, everything will be changed and armed.”
“Are you sure that’s necessary?”
“Yes, it is.”
She shifts on her feet and reaches up to finger a strand of brown hair. “I'm Katie Roberts.”
“I know.” I worry for a moment that she is not fully aware of her surroundings, considering she’s already told me her name. And then my eyes travel down her features and her form and back up to her face. I find myself eyeing her more than usual. Her form is highly enticing. Her bare legs are shapely and her eyes sparkle with… And then I turn away and begin scanning the inside of her domicile, forcing myself to remain professional.
I know from my research that this female is not mated and has not yet started a family line. But I’m not here to find a pleasure mate, or even a mate. I’ve never been interested in a client and behaved in a way that would mar my record or the record of my family line. And I will not begin today. I am here to do a job and I will do that to the best of my abilities.
I move to stand in front of the large windows that provides a view of the street and also out to the ocean beneath. This is also a perfect position for a sniper to take a shot.
The sexy female stands next to me. “What planet are you from?”
Her voice is pleasing to my ears and her luscious scent reenters my lungs. This time I feel not only the basic imprinting of a hunter and the object of his protection, but also an unusual heat in my veins. This is not good. “Zagwe,” I say, knowing she has absolutely no idea where that is.
“Hmm. That sounds far away.”
“It is.” I turn toward her. “I was told that you are in the midst of jury duty and have received death threats. I will be here all day and all night, every day during the rest of this trial. We shall be locked together in the manner of my species.”
“You’re serious about moving in here with me during the trial?”
“It is the best way to keep you safe. I am a Hunter and that means the others are my prey, and you I protect.” And I don't tell her this, but I can feel an inordinate amount of need to protect this one particular female.
She exhales. “I did my best to clean up.”
I nod.
“Oh, I was cooking too. I have dinner in the slow cooker. All I need to do is make rice.”
“Show me the inside of your home.”
“You’re not very talkative, are you?”
“I am here to work, not to make friends. I will make sure that by the time this is over, you are perfectly healthy and alive. I'm not here to interfere in your life, or like I said, for us to be friends.”
“Don't you need to eat?”
“I have nutrition bars if necessary.”
“Can you eat the human food I make?”
“Yes, in fact I like human food,” I admit. “But it is not necessary to feed me. I can find my own nutrition.”
“Well, wouldn’t it be rude of me to make food for myself and ignore you?”
I shrug, because most of my clients do not bother to monitor my food intake.
Then she shows me the inside of her home. “As you can see, my house is small. I’m the only one who lives here and I don’t even have a pet. I had a roommate, but she recently moved out and took the cat with her so I’m all alone. This is the kitchen and dining area, and this is the living area, and…” She points to a back door. “Out that way is a porch, and I have a tiny little backyard. It's really nothing.”
“I have seen the outside already.”
She looks at me startled. “You have?”
“I have already perused the perimeter.”
“Oh, wow, you are on top of it.”
“Yes, I was on top of the house too.”
“Oh, my gosh, okay.” She glances at my chest and I notice her cheeks turn a charming shade of pink. “Sorry, I know I shouldn’t be staring at you like that. I guess I'm just surprised that you're not wearing a shirt.”
“I will wear armor when we go out.”
“But you don't normally wear a shirt?”
“I am warm blooded.”
She licks her lips. “This is the hallway to the bedrooms. Now the bad news is, there's only one bathroom in my home, and we have to share it. Are you sure you still want to stay here with me?”
I grunt.
She opens the door to the bathroom and shows me the inside, and indeed, it’s a small area with a cleansing unit, a toilet and a small sink for water and washing.
I nod. “This will do.”
“You still use all these things the same way that a human would? You don't need something different?”
“No, the same.”
“Oh, okay, good.” And she points at two other doors. “That's my bedroom, and this is yours. You can see it’s immediately next door. We would share a wall. Now that Shelby is gone it's my home office. I want to apologize ahead of time. It’s small and I was only able to fit a twin bed in there because I needed it to fit my desk too. I took everything off the desk though so you can use it. This room will be yours; I won’t need to come in here and bother you for anything.”
She opens it and I see that there is indeed a small bed and a desk. My feet won't fit off the end. “I've slept in worse conditions.”
She rolls her eyes. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
I drop a bag of weapons and equipment to the floor. “I want to see your room.”
“You do? Okay.” She steps back into the small hallway and opens the door to her own room.
We both step inside and I see she has a very large bed that takes up most of the space. I can see where the window is positioned, right by the bed. And there is another door, which I assume leads to a closet.
I bend down and look under the bed.
“Oh!” she exclaims. “What are you doing?”
“I need to see if there's enough room for someone to fit under it. And yes, of course there is.” I stand up again and frown at my client. “Female, this is not a safe situation. It's a good thing you hired me.” I look in the closet. “This could indeed easily fit an intruder. And the window is large and positioned near your bed. Why don’t you live upstairs?”
“This is a two-bedroom flat, and I only own this bottom floor. A younger couple with a small baby live upstairs, and they own that flat. It's a duplex. There’s a set of stairs alongside the building that leads to their front door.”
“This leaves you with the more exposed ground-level windows.”
She shrugs. “This is the one that was for sale and I snapped it up, lucky to have this location with that view.”
I grunt, accepting the fact that she wanted this home and that two years ago she thought she was in a safe location, but now she is not. But I am here.
“The couple upstairs is worried about their safety too,” she explains. “They saw what is happening on the news and learned that I’m getting death threats and they see the police car outside. Can you please keep them safe too? I’m worried about their baby.”
“You are my main concern.”
She gives me a brilliant smile, exposing even teeth. “But if you can protect them at the same time, that would be lovely.”
I grunt in response.
She glances at my chest again. “Do you still wear all those weapons in this house day and night?”
“I take most of them off to sleep.”
She bites her lip and I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to hold her in my arms and taste those lips.
“I’m going to work now,” I announce.
I spend time on my hand-held glass screen. I communicate with Spartan Shield’s tech experts and with the local law enforcement in this large city. Soon, I’ve got tomorrow’s schedule and the route cleared. Katie Ross will get to her jury duty each day safely.
The sun goes down and I leave the domicile for another check of the streets and the perimeter of this domicile. I can move faster and quieter than any human. My sense of smell and eyesight are better and I have night vision. On the roof, I catch a scent in the wind that reminds me of my childhood, in the rocky mist of Zagwa, amongst my clan. We lived next to the ocean and this is where I was raised to hunt, like my ancestors.
The weather at this location on this remote planet is pleasant.
My clan hunted the far reaches of Zagwa for millennia, but now, in modern times when we reach adulthood, we are sent away to the main cities to learn and use our hunting instincts for something other than to take down prey to eat. My clan have the best instincts. And now here I am, using my skills to protect a human on the planet Earth.
I take a deep breath, feeling calmer now that I know the female I protect can sleep safely and that she will be protected this evening, by me.
I go back inside and discover that Katie Ross is placing a meal on the table for us to eat.
“Oh good, you’re back. Dinner is ready. Sit down. I hope you like it.”
The food does look pleasant and I am indeed hungry. I should decline and retreat to my bedroom because eating with her is risky. I am close again and this time I can see that she is wearing different clothing than before and somehow she looks even better. Her hair is down and her face looks brighter. She smells better than she did earlier and she wears clothing that allows me an even better idea of the shape of her curves.
I sit down and prop a blaster on the floor next to me and then place a large knife on the table.
“Do you really need that many weapons?”
“I do.”
“I went a little crazy and decided to save the slow cooker meal as meal prep for later. I want ahead and made us homemade pizza for tonight. I hope you like it. I’m really into pizza. I made the dough and I even have a little pizza oven I was given for Christmas this last year, because everyone knows I love pizza that much.”
“Peez-uh?” I repeat. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Pizza,” she says. “It’s one of the most famous foods on Earth, basically universally loved.” And then she places a small plate in front of me which holds a round bread with melted food substances on top. It smells amazing.
She places another plate of similar food at her seat and sits down. “I already cut it into slices for you. We both have cheese pizza with fresh basil. I didn’t want to go crazy with toppings until I knew you liked pizza in the first place.”
I watch as she uses her fingers to take out a portion in her hands. She explains the ingredients and then takes a large bite. I mimic her moves and take a large bite myself. A wonderful taste explodes in my mouth. The warmth, the savory flavor and the mush of the “melted cheese” is an amazing combination.
I furiously eat the whole slice.
She smiles at me. “I’m happy you like it.”
Soon I’ve eaten the whole thing.
“No worries, I can make more.”
I wait impatiently for the next “pizza” and eat the whole plate again.
Katie giggles with delight at how I “love pizza.” She takes another bite of her own meal. “I’m twenty-seven,” she announces. “How old are you?”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“That’s a good age.”
A rare chuckle escapes from my lips. “Why?”
“Well, for humans it’s a good age. On my planet men mature slower than women, so if you’re a bit older than the woman in a relationship, then it makes you almost even in maturity. But of course, that’s just my opinion. Lots of older women get together with much younger men and it works perfectly. It’s just…I had a bad break-up with my boyfriend who was a year younger than me and I think part of the problem was that even though he was only a year younger, he was very immature.”
For some reason this story bothers me. “You were mated?”
“No, not mated, but almost. He was my fiancé and he left me for my best friend. I lost the two most important people in my life, while living in a town far from my own family. It was a bad time. It makes me wary.”
I grunt in understanding and take another large bite of the dessert she has now given me—“pistachio ice cream.”
“Have you ever mated? Do you have a wife and kids back on your home planet?” she asks.
“No. I am unmated.”
She blinks. “Really? You’re single? You don’t even have a girlfriend?”
“I do not have a long-term pleasure mate, or an actual mate due to the nature of my job. I move around too much to be able to commit.” I meet her gaze and inhale the scent of her arousal towards me. “And I never form relationships with my clients.”
Her face pinkens again. “Oh, I didn’t mean…I’m sorry, I would never act unprofessional towards you.”
I finish my dessert. “And I will never act unprofessional towards you either, human.”
And then she stands and takes both of our plates and walks over to the kitchen sink. She bends down and I’m staring at her perfect ass for a beat too long.
What is wrong with me?
I continue to find her form attractive, which never happens. Her breasts are not large but look like exactly the right size to fit in my hand. And I like the fact that her hair is long. Most of the hunters in my clan have long hair too, but I’ve cut mine short because it’s easier that way when I’m on stakeouts or having to fight or lug weapons.
I’ve worked with other human females and never felt this spark of attraction. My last job was keeping some sort of famous human songstress safe during a worldwide tour while she went into two different cities where there had been bomb threats. I formed the normal protector bond with her as I do with all my clients and made sure she was safe. She seemed to want to talk to me and often invited me into her room. I was unmoved and remained in separate quarters until it was time to fly into action. And when the job was finished, I easily unlocked the hunter instinct as I always do and moved on.
But here I am, in this cold, windy city near the ocean, and I am the one who wants to talk more and stay closer than needed.
I suppose I didn’t strictly need to stay in her quarters. For all my other situations I’ve stayed in rooms nearby, or on the top floor, or in another domicile. I’ve even slept in vehicles. Whatever it takes. But this one time I’m isolated with this female in her home, in the room next door with an adjoining wall.
“I am going to bed,” I announce. “You need to go to bed too because you have to get up early. We are leaving for jury duty together tomorrow morning.
And before she can answer, I am gone.
I take off all my weapons and place them strategically nearby. One is under my pillow; another is on my chest. All the windows and entrances, no matter how small, have alerts. Every neighbor has been checked for clearance. Every line of sight to this house has been visually confirmed and eliminated as a threat. The streets are empty for a one-mile radius because I’ve placed deflectors that I will remove later, when I leave.
I fall asleep on the tiny bed, with my feet hanging off the end.
Strangely, I want to be beside her. Or even under her large bed. Whatever it takes to keep her safe and have… have her scent in my lungs.