Sworn by Starlight (Warrior Kings of Alioth #7)

Chapter 1

Earth, 1973

Rose

T he thing nobody seems to understand about free love is that love is never free. It always comes at a cost.

I tried to explain this to my partner, Gary, while we were driving to the campground where people were already gathering. He had this crazy idea that once the aliens made contact, it was going to be some kind of intergalactic orgy.

“They might not assign sex the same value as we do. Maybe they don’t even have sex,” I yelled over the wind blasting through the rolled-down windows of my van as we barreled down the interstate. “Maybe they fertilize their eggs like fish.”

“Then we fertilize their eggs, babe.” He laughed, his long hair whipping around his face, and cranked up the radio station.

We’d heard from a guy at a drum circle in Omaha that a flying saucer had landed by a lake in Wyoming. Gary was way into the idea that soaking up the vibes from this alien ship would lead us closer to enlightenment. I was way into the idea of hanging out in nature and sleeping under the stars, so we were heading there to check it out.

I rolled my eyes. He was completely missing the point. “I’m just saying we should be cautious. What if sex means something different to them, something heavy, like soul marriage. Some cultures take it seriously. It can be transcendental, right? Sacred. So if we show up all casual like ‘let’s bone to pass the afternoon,’ what then? We could start a galactic incident.”

“Lighten up, Rose. You’re being a bummer.”

That was one of those things that people say to make you shut up. Because what’s the most bummer thing of all? Arguing that you’re not being a bummer. So I shut up and stared out the window as the rest of Nebraska flicked by in shades of gold and thunder. Thought about what loving Gary had cost me. My voice, mostly, especially during times like these when he didn’t want to hear it.

We stopped at a rest area to eat lunch, but we ended up eating in the van because it started pouring rain. It pounded on the roof so hard that conversation was pointless, and I think Gary and I were both a little relieved that we didn’t have to talk. About halfway through my peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich, someone hammered on my steamed-up window. I rolled it down a crack and saw a couple about our age outside. They both had frame backpacks on and looked soaked to the skin.

“Hey man, you think you could give us a ride?” the woman asked, pushing a wet lock of hair out of her face. She had a deep dimple in one pink cheek. “We’ve been hitchhiking, but nobody’s stopping in this weather.”

Gary leaned around me, and his face brightened when he saw her. “Sure, get in back. Where you all headed?”

I prickled. He didn’t even consult with me. Right, because Rose has hangups. Rose is a bummer. Never mind that it’s Rose’s van to begin with. Rose’s plan to drive around the country collecting and recording folk songs for her dissertation. Rose’s grant money funding the whole thing .

They piled in through the sliding door before they answered his question, and this time it was the man who spoke. He was almost the opposite of the woman, narrow where she was full, pale where she was ruddy. “Salt Lake City.”

“We’re headed that way, but we have a stop planned. You in a hurry to get there?” Gary asked, squinting at them in the rearview mirror.

“No way,” the woman said, laughing. She peeled off her wet coat and squeezed some water out of her hair. “We’re just going with the flow.”

“Don’t have gas, but do have grass,” the man added, unsnapping a flap on his jacket pocket to show it was stuffed with a baggie full of dried herb.

“Cool.” Gary cranked the van’s engine until it turned over. “Very cool.”

A couple hours later, and I was driving because the three of them were so baked they couldn’t see straight. And by the time we got to the campsite in the late evening, they were giggling and kissing and groping each other. It was like they totally forgot I was there.

Lighten up. Don’t be a bummer.

I tried. While they made the van shake in its parking spot, I made a fire and cooked dinner for all of us. Gary reappeared alone, flushed and shirtless, after I’d eaten and the remaining eggs and potatoes were getting cold. He took the whole pan back into the van with him.

“You’re welcome,” I said to his back.

He looked at me over his shoulder as he was climbing in. “You’re a groovy chick, Rose. You sure you don’t want to join us? ”

I wanted to be a groovy chick. But maybe that stuff I’d said about aliens before, about how they might view sex as something more than just a fun hobby, was actually about me. I was the alien who’d ended up in this strange orbit where I was supposed pretend that I cared about everything and nothing at the same time.

It might work for some people, but it was costing me. It was costing me a lot.

I played my guitar to drown out the sounds of their lovemaking and ended up sleeping out under the stars like I wanted, staring up into the pale wash of the Milky Way and dreaming about something more. A real connection, an unbroken promise. Something sacred.

In the morning, when the van trio ate the breakfast I made and then disappeared across the road to swim in the lake while I washed dishes, I realized I was done pretending for other people’s convenience. I was done smiling and shutting up so Gary could have good vibes all the time. He liked to listen to my music but not hear my voice. So I put the clean skillet in the van, bagged up his stuff and set it neatly on the picnic table along with the two frame packs, and left to find the alien ship.

I didn’t care if it was real or not. I just needed to do something on my own.

The ship was actually easy to find. On the west end of the lake, down an unmarked gravel road, up a rocky rise, in the shadow of a stand of pines, a shiny, silver, saucer-shaped craft was parked between two large boulders.

I tied my hair back and got out of the van. I didn’t take anything with me, not even my guitar or the little patchwork purse that I’d made out of a pair of old blue jeans. I left the door of the van open and walked toward my destiny.

I didn’t get any vibes from the ship. I didn’t ask myself who was inside or what they might want from me. I didn’t have any expectations of what I would find when I reached it. I wasn’t even thinking—as I should have been—about collecting an alien folk song or two to add to my catalog.

Did I want to be abducted?

I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. I’m not sure exactly how long. Definitely months, maybe years. And I’ve decided that I must have expected that I would stay on Earth, because I would have shut the door to the van if I knew that I’d never come back. If I knew that I’d be taken, locked in a cage, and whisked away.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep because the pins-and-needles in my fingers and toes are pricking me too sharply, I think about that van and whether it’s still there at the end of that road, the driver’s seat upholstery getting soaked by Wyoming thunderstorms. Birds making nests on the dashboard, mold growing on the floor mats. My guitar’s spruce soundboard softening and splitting.

And I work out answers to all the questions that nag at me.

Do my parents think I’m still off on my graduate-school road trip, out of touch because I’m out of dimes for the payphone?

I think they do.

Was Gary relieved when he got back to camp and saw that I was gone?

I think he was .

I turn over in my tiny cage, my shoulder pressing painfully into the wire mesh of the floor. I can’t stretch my arms out fully, and I think that’s part of the reason why my fingers always feel like they’re asleep. Or maybe they know they’ll never play music again, so they’ve decided their usefulness is at an end and have walked off the job.

But I’m also sick, really sick. My stomach hurts all the time, and when the aliens let me out to exercise, my muscles don’t work right. They make their laugh-sound when I stumble and flail, like I’m doing it to clown around, but I really can’t help it. Even though I am desperately thin now, skinny enough to count my ribs, I’m never hungry for the sharp, gray-green cubes they feed me. They hurt my mouth and they hurt my stomach and they hurt coming out the other end, too.

Every day, I think I’m not going to make it to the next day. But then every day, I do.