Chapter 21 #2
His mouth tightened. “How did you get that mark, Raven?” he countered, tone grave. “I need you to tell me.”
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to hurt. That question again. He was still asking. Still offering nothing in return. And just like that, some of the fear faded, drowned out by smoldering anger.
I had started this conversation. I wasn’t going to let him hijack it.
“No. I need you to answer the question. What is it? And while you’re at it, what do you know about…” Here went nothing. “What do you know about the aliens?”
A muscle ticked in his cheek, and his nostrils flared, but to his credit, he didn’t look away. Instead, he stilled. I saw something spark there, though, a shift in his eyes when I said the word aliens.
Confirmation.
Oh my God. I gaped at him.
I’d been right.
He held my gaze. This push and pull, this awareness, sizzled between us like the lightning arcing overhead. The air hummed with tension. It tingled along my skin like static.
“What do you mean?” he asked so softly it was nearly drowned out by the thunder.
I shook my head. “No, don’t do that. Don’t play dumb now. I know you know something.” My heart jackhammered in my chest, and I squeezed my marked hand. “The night of the accident, you weren’t just out for a country cruise, were you? Were you chasing them down or something?”
His tanned throat worked before he jerked his chin toward my palm. “Tell me about that.”
I nearly rolled my eyes. This back-and-forth was getting us nowhere. One of us had to give.
“Fine.” I spoke clearly, concisely, showing him my hand once more.
“I got these markings when an alien robot at the university tried to kill me. I’m pretty sure it was over a stone artifact that turned into a crystal and then burned the shit out of me—” I broke off, exhaling a humorless laugh.
“That’s my best guess, anyway.” I twisted my wrist and studied the pattern.
“I got knocked out or fainted…and somehow woke up in a totally different place. With these.”
I waved my palm halfheartedly at him before gripping it in front of me again. Silence stretched like thick putty.
Sky didn’t answer. He didn’t move, either. In fact, he might as well have been carved from stone, too. Only his eyes skimmed between mine like he was searching for something else I hadn’t said.
But I’d already laid pretty much everything bare.
Several heartbeats passed, and just when I hit my breaking point, he finally murmured, “And the markings…they showed up that day?”
“Yes. I noticed them an hour or so after coming to in that hallway. But…” I eyed him, my voice trembling. “Sky, why don’t you look surprised by any of that…?”
Being right about him wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d thought it would be. In fact, something icy crawled down the back of my neck, and it wasn’t just the rain.
He didn’t answer.
“Oh my God,” I breathed. “You’re not surprised, are you? You know about them. The alien robots.”
Sky’s jaw clenched tighter. He had to be cracking molars. “Rae…” he ground out, the warning unmistakable.
“What do you know about this?” I flattened my hand between us. “Tell me.”
The tension between us practically crackled.
I wanted to run back inside. Forget this confrontation. Forget everything. But it was too late for that.
Too late to pretend this wasn’t happening. Too late to escape any of this.
I kept falling, diving deeper and deeper into impossible truths. Why couldn’t I let it go? Why couldn’t I stop pushing?
Sky stared down at me, emotions swimming in his eyes. Another white flash of lightning lit them up, but his face stayed locked in that unbearable tightness. I felt it in my own shoulders, a pressure bearing down as I gazed at the man I’d been obsessing over for months.
A stranger.
He wasn’t who I’d thought he was. I couldn’t summon that righteous anger I’d felt earlier. Not when he was looking at me like that. Like he was afraid, too.
I was so wound up I nearly gasped when he asked, “Do you really remember what happened at the university?”
“Do I remember it?” I gawked at him in disbelief. “What kind of question is that? How would I just forget an alien robot attack? That’s not something that just…” I flung my arms out. “Just slips your mind!”
My harsh laugh felt more like a sob. Everything I’d been struggling with for days—it was bubbling up inside me like frothing water. Like trapped steam.
I hugged my middle, but it was a failed attempt at containment. Another bitter scoff scraped out of me. Rainwater slicked stray strands of hair to my cheeks. My skin was buzzing, humming. Too stretched over brittle bones and seething blood.
“I won’t ever be able to forget what happened,” I rasped, not looking at him. “I’ve been replaying it over and over. I’ve had nightmares. I’ve been alternating between worrying I’ve gone completely insane and being terrified that some mechanical monster is going to hunt me down and finish the job.”
When a phantom stone lodged itself in my throat, I paused, trying to regain the scraps of my composure. My stomach churned.
I risked raising my eyes and found Sky watching me. Assessing. Like I was a bug under a microscope, another sample on the anthro lab table that had changed everything.
The ache in my chest twisted tighter. Became more painful. Like that bubbling, frothing pressure fought to escape.
“Please. Just tell me what you know,” I whispered. I’d resorted to borderline begging, and I didn’t even care. “Please.”
It was enough to crack the mask, apparently, because Sky grimaced, turning his head to give me his profile.
The mist had dampened his dark hair, curling it around his forehead and ears in a way that would’ve been endearing in any other circumstances.
If I didn’t want to grab him and shake the answers out of his handsomely wrapped skull.
My heart pounded in nauseating thuds. This had gotten all too real, all too quickly. I’d wanted the truth, but this felt dangerous. Like walking the edge of a long drop.
“Sky…” I started, but that was as far as I got before the words dried up.
He squeezed the back of his neck and closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose, like he was gathering himself. Then he pinned me with a haunted stare. “Raven, I can’t. I can’t tell you what you want to know. You don’t—” He swore, dropping his head back. “You don’t understand.”
“You can’t tell me?” Fury erupted in my belly.
I didn’t care about the pained look he was giving me.
I let him have it. “That’s bullshit, Sky.
You’ve spent days chasing me, trying to get information, and now I’m telling you that a…
that a fucking UFO drove me off the road, an evil alien robot chased me through the anthro department, and I’ve got these shapes—” I lurched forward, planting my marked palm on his chest. My fingers slipped between undone buttons, brushing skin hot to the touch.
He flinched, eyes widening at my sudden charge or maybe my chilly hand. But he made no move to push me away.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Why I was touching him. Maybe I was just trying to form a connection. To ground myself. I was trembling, my vision hazed, the vibration in my blood too much to hold in.
Everything was pouring out, emotions, words. Maybe my insides at this point because I was coming apart at the seams.
“Seriously, Sky. You owe me answers. I know you know more than you’re saying, and I want the truth.” I glared up at him, gripping his shirt. His chest heaved beneath my fist. “Right now—”
The tension erupted.
Too late, I recognized the charge in the air. The humming in my blood. The static. I’d felt it before, in the lab. Just before the tablet exploded. Familiar and yet not.
Now, it snapped like a rubber band stretched too far.
A white-hot glow erupted from the hand I’d tangled in his shirt.
Heat flared. I cried out, released him, and stumbled back until I hit the picnic table behind me. Swaying, I lifted my palm.
It was glowing.
Light shone through my skin. Bright orange light, pulsing from within. The etched shapes were lined in blinding white. It didn’t hurt. Not like before. Only warmth radiated up my arm.
From my freaking glowing hand.
I gaped in horror, breath faltering as I wrenched my gaze to Sky.
Or what had been Sky.
Air rushed from my lungs.
“What—? Sky…?” His name cracked apart as it tumbled from my lips. A scream clawed its way up instead, but there was no air to back it up. Instead, I wheezed.
My muscles locked. My thoughts screeched to a halt.
Because Sky had changed.
His skin…wasn’t skin anymore. Not quite. It shimmered, refracting light like thousands of tiny crystals. Like scattered diamond dust. Glittery and…and silver.
I stared, rooted in place by soul-deep shock and a kind of morbid fascination. Lightning glimmered over him in a sheen. His features were sharper, sculpted from moonlight and stone. Not…human.
His dark hair was gone, and his scalp shimmered, the same jeweled starlight spiraling with darker patterns, delicate whorls that swept down across his brow.
And yet…
He was still in there.
Paler lips the same shape as his had been a second before. Sweeping ridges traced over his temples, tapering into pointed ears. But that jaw, those cheekbones…
It was Sky, and it wasn’t. Like I was looking at him through a filter. Like this had been there all along, lurking beneath the surface.
Dizziness swept through me. The world pitched. I was going to be sick.
I could smell the fryer grease still clinging to my clothes. Hear the pattering of the rain. Its cold, clammy kiss misted my slack face. But none of it felt real.
And I wasn’t the only one reeling.
The thing that had been Sky gaped down at his shimmer-speckled hands, turning them over slowly. Then he lifted his head, and I saw his eyes.
No whites. Just inky black, swallowing the sclera whole. His pupils glowed, iridescent blue in every shade imaginable. Impossibly bright and jeweled.
And in them, I read panic.
His mouth had fallen open, but he clamped it shut again and staggered back, like he could vanish into the shadowy bushes behind the dumpster. His outline seemed to melt into them, but it was too late.
Far too late. I’d seen him.
We both knew it.
I stood there, gulping air in ragged pants.
Like he knew there was no hiding now, he straightened slowly. His chest rose and fell just as quickly beneath his human clothes. Bartender clothes. A detached part of my brain registered how strange it was, that long, lean body in that fabric with that skin…
The glow was fading from my palm, dwindling fast. I couldn’t even look at it, though. Rain sliced sideways into the shelter, plastering my hair to my cheeks, but I barely noticed.
It was Sky. And it wasn’t.
He was staring back at me. Even in the gloom, his skin glimmered faintly. It was…oddly beautiful. Terrifying.
I couldn’t close my mouth.
He shifted his weight, swallowed hard. Cursed under his breath in a voice that sounded strangely resonant. Musical. Human words coming from something that wasn’t. The sound struck me to the bone. Jolted free the only thing rebounding in my brain, over and over:
“Holy shit,” I whispered hoarsely. “Sky, you’re…an alien.”