Chapter 15 #2
All his previous romantic liaisons had been forced.
Blake found someone he didn’t dislike—and they fucked.
It was simple. It scratched an itch, but didn’t satiate the deeper need.
There was always a piece of him that didn’t settle.
One that was unhappy, that…wanted more? But even when he shared a bed afterwards, it was always too warm.
Too crowded. Two bodies under the covers were too warm.
And he needed space to breathe. To move around.
He found himself wondering if Gabriel would be the same way.
Yes, he was handsome, Blake didn’t mind admitting that.
But his skin was cool and soft, and Blake could imagine pressing his face into his neck while they slept and thought it would be comforting, like the underside of the pillow. Refreshing.
Gabriel was strong too. Strong enough to handle Blake’s chaotic work schedule.
The nightmares that came along with it and the inevitable frustration.
The times when his brain hurt from seeing too much, when he needed to just shut down.
To stop thinking. To immerse himself in something that was far removed from the things beyond his vision.
His hands were big. Which shouldn’t really make a difference, and Blake’s looked so small in them while they were handling the gun.
Delicate. Something no one had ever accused him of being, but the thought of it made his cheeks flush and his stomach flutter.
Gabriel would treat him delicately because he wanted to, not because he was.
He handled him so easily when he lifted him down from the truck, held him tightly, but not caged.
So fucking strong.
Blake could close his eyes and still see the shadows flickering on Gabriel’s face from last night.
It made the hard planes of his face even sharper, but his hands were soft.
Sure. His chest warm and supportive. Even the way he smelled—masculine, dirty, with the acrid tang of gunpowder lingering on his skin—he still found it comforting. Blake could have sat there all night.
And the look on Gabriel’s face when he was getting ready to leave was proof of his strength. Gabriel wanted to stop him. Protest his involvement. But he didn’t. Because he knew Blake was strong and capable.
He trusted him.
Blake’s foot slipped off the gas, and the SUV stuttered. Judd looked at him curiously, but he just hunched his shoulders and looked ahead, hoping his face wasn’t broadcasting all of his emotions.
Every romantic comedy he had ever seen always told the protagonist to go to their crush’s friends for information. But the thought of asking Judd about Gabriel’s romantic preferences physically made him recoil. There was no way he was going to do that.
But the fact that he had even considered it was huge. He’d never chased anyone before. Or cared if he was their type. Quite frankly, he’d never been interested enough.
Swallowing thickly, he tried to avoid thinking about what that meant and reminded himself to fuck off, this was not the time or place!
Victoria’s slim fingers slid over his shoulder as she pointed forward. “Ahead.”
They’d entered a municipal park. There was a lot where school buses were parked, along with snowplows, street cleaners, and a few other city vehicles. To his right, he could see some plain looking office buildings and a crappy park with only one bench and a dried-up fountain.
While he was busy getting his bearings, they pulled closer to the park. Just past the dried-up fountain, he finally saw it.
Nearly transparent; it looked more like an incandescent shimmer on the top of an oil slick. Blake could only see there was something there when he shifted positions, and the sun hit it just right. A wave of something, maybe energy, crackled across its surface as it wobbled in the sky.
Parking the SUV, he cut the ignition to save gas and stepped out of the car. Craning his head, he looked up only to find he couldn’t see where the barrier ended. The translucency of the shield mixed with distance had him losing it somewhere near the clouds.
“How high does it go?”
Victoria limped over to him, leaning against the car. “Higher than we can fly.”
“Fuck.”
Judd pushed himself up to the roof of the car, pulling out a pair of binoculars so he could scan the area. Crouched, he took a long moment to scan their surroundings.
“I don’t see anything like a power source.”
Blake didn’t either, not that he knew what he was looking for.
“It wouldn’t just be out in the open, you redneck.”
“Oh?” Judd asked, jumping down. “Do you have any better ideas?”
Tuning them out, Blake approached the barrier.
It cut right through the little fountain.
The cement was cleanly severed with such precision that he only noticed it was broken at all because there was a little pool of water at his feet.
Tapping the toe of his boot in the standing water, he tried to see if he could figure out what the barrier was made of.
While technically transparent, the shield did have some substance now that he was close enough; it was almost invisible to the naked eye, unless you were looking for it. Clusters that looked like knots with filaments extending to interconnect them. Almost like a fishing net, or wire of some kind.
There was no heat or any kind of electricity coming off the barrier. On a whim, Blake leaned closer. There. A faint buzzing. Like the thing was alive.
Blake lifted a hand and without thinking about it, he extended his palm forward towards the shield. The sunlight caught the barrier, projecting a pinky swirl of color on his palm. Entranced, he shifted his hand until almost every color of the rainbow was splashed across his skin.
He followed the color until his hand was hovering just above the barrier. Blake’s breath caught in his throat as he made the final push, touching his hand to the luminous shield.
It felt gelatinous, but solid. Like there was a thin layer of gel over ice.
He hissed at the cold as goosebumps erupted along his arms. Shivering, he ignored it and pushed more.
The filaments and knots hiding in the barrier seemed to grow corporeal, pressing back against him.
The more he pressed, the harder it pressed back.
Color streaked across the barrier and solidified under his hand, like the knots were demanding reinforcements.
Less translucent under his hand now, the coy rainbows had congealed into a brown color. Then he felt it. The barrier started pushing him back.
Not hard enough to knock him off his feet, but enough that he felt a burn in his arm as he fought against it.
Suddenly, the barrier began to flicker. It snapped, and the filaments began to retract. The buzzing stopped and like a waterfall, the shield dropped. Blake’s hand slid through to the other side, his entire body rocking forward from the abrupt lack of pushback.
Before the waterfall had even hit the bottom, the shield flickered back, filaments reconnecting and slamming back into place.
Judd jerked him back just as the barrier reengaged itself.
“Jesus!” he snapped, breathless. “You want to lose an arm?”
Held up by the scout’s strong arms, Blake found himself unable to speak. It had happened in the span of a second. He had been so busy watching the shield change that he didn’t realize what was happening.
“The pulse,” he gasped, wide eyed.
Victoria nodded, still leaning up against the car. “Unpredictable and fast.”
“How did you even fly through there?”
Without a word, the pilot gestured off to the left.
Turning, Blake looked at the open field beyond the shield. Through the sheen of the filaments and knots, he finally saw what Victoria had been talking about.
What looked like hundreds of planes, helicopters, and even tanks were lying around like some sort of macabre museum.
Crushed like cans at the bottom of the recycle bin, they hardly resembled the machines they started out as.
Planes and helicopters were twisted around each other, scattered farther from the shield and all around the field.
The tanks were closer; their front ends smashed in and smoking.
“Holy shit,” Judd rumbled so low Blake could feel it against his back.
This was…it wasn’t like he was impressed with the alien technology. More like horrified. But seeing it like this, the full scope of it all, it was…it was difficult to breathe.
If the tanks and the planes and all those other war machines were taken out by their shield, what could they possibly do?
“I don’t understand,” Judd began, setting Blake back on his feet. Hands on his hips, he looked up at the shield. “If they’re so smart, how did their shield get damaged?”
Blake was still trying to catch his breath. Turning away from the shield, he focused on Judd. Not seeing it helped a little. “What do you mean?”
“Seems kind of careless. They need this…battery or energy source of theirs for this shield. And maybe even their guns. So how did it get damaged?”
“We don’t know that it is damaged,” Blake hedged, licking his dry lips. “And if it is…it’s not like space travel is safe. Even advanced species can’t possibly avoid space junk and black holes.”
Probably. It’s not like Blake would have any idea, but just driving down a highway is dangerous. Space would have to be so much worse.
But it was a good question. How could they allow their precious battery to be damaged? And if they had so much technology, why didn’t they just demolish the entire city like they did the military bases? Why bother fighting with the humans at all? Or why were they even here in the first place?
He was about to voice his question when a sonic boom cracked across the sky.