She woke with an aching head and a mouth as dry as the Sahara. Sera opened her eyes and found herself in a low-cost motel room, her wrists bound to the bedside table with a belt. Across the room, sitting at the single table in front of the window, the man from the sarcophagus and the man with the glove were talking quietly. Their voices were pitched low and little more than whispers, but she could tell that they were speaking that strange language again. The sunlight shone brightly through the window, setting both of them ablaze.

The man with the glove had taken off his hoodie, and she could see his face now. He was as dark as his companion was light, and like the blond man, his skin was covered with flashes of iridescence. He had thick, black hair that was cut short, exposing pierced ears that were slightly pointed. His eyes were like the blond’s, lacking both iris and pupil, but they were bright emerald green. He had taken off his gloves, too, and his long-fingered hands were clasped before him on the table.

She found herself thinking that if she had to be kidnapped by aliens, at least they were hot; she promptly gave herself a mental kick in the ass.

The dark-haired man looked over and said, “You’re awake.”

“So it seems.”

The blond spoke. “We were afraid perhaps the stunner was improperly calibrated for your biological systems.”

She tugged at the belt. “Is this absolutely necessary?”

The brunet grimaced. “We didn’t want to take the chance that you might become violent, or try to run away.”

“If I promise to do neither, can I please go and use the bathroom?” She managed to sit up.

The blond man rose and walked to her. “Of course.”

“Do you promise?” The question came from his dark-haired compatriot.

“I promise. I swear.”

The blond smiled and sat beside her, undoing the impromptu handcuff. “You could probably have undone this yourself, now that I look at it. We’re not very good at kidnapping.”

She pulled her wrist free and rubbed at it. “What are you good at?”

The dark-skinned man snorted. “Not much, it seems.”

The blond put the belt aside. “We’ll talk more when you’re comfortable.”

Sera nodded and rose, but her head swam almost immediately, and she started to fall. The blond caught her, his hands strong but gentle around her waist. She was suddenly conscious of his body heat and the alien beauty of his shining eyes. She shook her head, disgusted with herself. She was all hormones.

He smiled. “Take it slow. The after effects of being stunned can be quite bothersome.”

He was wearing an earring again, along with what looked like a very delicate version of a Bluetooth earpiece. He caught the direction of her gaze and touched the device.

“It helps me to understand you, and to speak your language. We are…”

“Not from around here?” she finished for him, puckishly. It was another uncharacteristic moment. She had been kidnapped, and here she was flirting with one of the men who’d abducted her. What is the matter with me?

He smiled. It was a very handsome smile, revealing white, even teeth. “You could say that.”

Sera rose again, more slowly this time, and the blond escorted her to the bathroom, keeping watch over her in case she should start to fall again. There was a sweetness to him that didn’t seem to match with her impression of aliens, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.

She went into the bathroom and locked the door. After she used the facilities, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, and her long blonde hair was a mess.  Her army cap had been lost somewhere. Her eyes were bloodshot, red tracery in the white around the blue of her iris. She opened her shirt and looked at her chest where the stun ray had struck her, but there were no marks. She shook her head and buttoned up again. She couldn’t wait to tell Joely about this.

She hoped she’d see her again.

For the first time, the tenuousness of her situation struck her. She had been kidnapped by two men who were obviously not of this world. She was locked in a motel room with them, alone, and she was off balance from the stun gun the brunet had used. If they wanted to attack her, she knew she wouldn’t be able to fight them off. Her palms began to sweat and she wondered what they were going to do with her.

She knew if she didn’t come out soon, they would come in after her, even though the bathroom was perfectly windowless and there was nowhere for her to go. She took a deep breath, attempted to finger comb her hair so it wasn’t a mass of tangles, and unlocked the door.

To her surprise, the aliens weren’t hovering outside the door. The brunet was still sitting at the table, and the blond had gone to sit on one of the two double beds in the room. He was facing her with a friendly enough expression when she came out.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Sideways,” she answered honestly. “And a little scared.”

His forehead puckered, and he said, “We’re not going to hurt you. I swear to you.”

He was dressed in a T-shirt and blue jeans, with cheap sneakers on his feet. He looked like any other twenty-something dude… if you could disregard the sparkling skin, glowing eyes and

supermodel looks. 

She sat on the other bed. “I really hope you aren’t, because I think I’m at a big disadvantage.”

The man at the table spoke up. “My name is Beno. This is Theyn.” Theyn nodded his golden head to her and smiled. Beno looked considerably less friendly. “I’m sorry that I stunned you and took you hostage, but we need some sort of insurance against your people. We’re at far more risk of being hurt than you are.”

“Dr. Sera Cooper,” she introduced herself. “Not a medical doctor, though. I’m an archaeologist.”

Theyn’s forehead crinkled again. “An archaeologist? What were you doing in the hospital?”

“And why are you in a military uniform?” Beno asked. He looked more guarded than perplexed.

“I, uh… I wanted to check up on you,” she told Theyn. “I sort of dug you up.”

Beno turned his face away in annoyance, but Theyn chuckled. “So we have you to thank for our early wake-up call.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

Theyn leaned back on his hands, and in that position, she could appreciate the things his body did for his blue jeans. She could not believe she was even thinking such things and wanted to slap herself silly.

“You must have questions,” he said. “I’ll try to answer them.”

Beno objected in their native tongue, and his companion shook his head and responded calmly. He obviously didn’t like what Theyn said, but he held his peace and just looked on, his face stony.

“We are from a world called Ylia,” the blond explained. “It is a world not too unlike this one, in orbit around the star you call Arcturus.”

Beno scowled. “Or it was.”

Theyn hesitated, and a look of sorrow crossed his face. He chased it away with a carefully neutral expression and continued. “Beno is a xenologist, and I am a botanist. We’re not soldiers – well, Beno used to be a soldier, but he’s reformed.” 

The dark haired Ylian chuckled.

“We were on a research base studying plankton blooms on one of Ylia’s moons when something terrible happened. We had to escape. We ended up converting a sample mover – a sort of drone or probe that was meant to send our work back to Ylia – into an escape pod. When our planet was destroyed, we set course for the Sol system. That’s here, by the way.”

She frowned. “Your world was destroyed?”

Beno took up the tale. “The probe was designed to be converted that way, and it had two escape pods built in. Unfortunately, to have two pods, we had no room for a propulsion unit, and an asteroid storm sent us off course. That’s how we ended up here on this world.”

“Years and years and years ago,” Theyn nodded. “When we reached Earth, we took our pods to the surface and were separated. I ended up with a jungle people, and Beno landed in mountains. We were both with populations who were too primitive to be of any use to us, or us to them. We were only able to communicate once after we landed, and that was to agree to go into hibernation, and to agree on the time frame that we would set for our wake-up call.”

“Intergalactic egg timer,” she mused, her head feeling like a balloon. She shook herself. “Sorry. So you both went into suspended animation?”

“Yes,” Beno said. “I keyed my unit to Theyn’s, so that when he woke up, my unit would start the awakening sequence. When you found him, it started the countdown for my unit, and that’s how I woke up now.”

“Where were you?”

“In a place you call Oaxaca,” he said. “In the mountains. Safe from glorified grave robbers.”

She bristled. “That is not what I am.”

Theyn held up his hand. “That is an old philosophical argument for another time,” he said, glancing at his partner. Beno looked away. “We have archaeologists on Ylia – “

“Had,” the dark-haired Ylian corrected.

“Had archaeologists on Ylia,” Theyn said. “We used to have discussions about the value of archaeology versus respect for the dead. It passed the time.”

Sera crossed her arms. “I get it. So, when we found your…hibernation unit, I guess…and we accidentally woke you up, why were you out cold for so long after we sprang you?”

“Because the unit was damaged by whatever you did,” Beno said. “It didn’t go through the proper awakening procedure, so he was a little scrambled. Not that you’d be able to tell, comparing him to how he normally is.”

Theyn smiled.

It was the sort of comment and response that spoke of deep familiarity. “You two have known each other for a long time, I take it.”

“We grew up together,” Theyn said. “We were paired at birth.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Paired?”

“Ylians are symbiotic in nature,” Beno said, as if that explained everything.

It didn’t. “Okay…”

“As males, we need to have another Ylian of our gender to whom we are paired. Our biological systems sync up, and we become constant companions, sort of like best friends and brothers all at once. If an Ylian does not have a partner, he slowly goes mad and dies.”

“Males are the only ones who are paired. Ylian males outnumber females by a ratio of four to one.” Beno sighed. “This is awfully personal and a little off topic, so I don’t think we need to explain more about that right now.”

Theyn smiled. “He’s shy.”

Her eyebrows crept toward her hairline. “So you two…are…”

“Are what?”

She almost choked on the word. “Lovers?”

Beno barked out a laugh. “No! By the flames, no!”

“By the flames?” she asked, curious.

“A translation of a mild profanity from our culture. Our people used to believe in a god who is resurrected in fire, similar in most respects to the Earth creature called the phoenix,” Theyn explained helpfully.

“Used to? You don’t believe anymore?”

“Not in gods, not per se. We’ve advanced too much in our scientific understanding of the world,” Beno said. He glanced at Theyn. “Some people are more dedicated than others. And some people supposedly descend from the Burning One.”

“The Burning One is your god, I take it?” she asked.

“Yes. Supposedly there’s one bloodline that traces back to the first Phoenix, and under duress, it will show itself. I’ve never seen it happen.”  Theyn smiled. “We can talk more about this later. I just wanted to explain that we are very close. Very close, indeed.”

She took a breath and her head swam again. “How long was I out?”

“About twelve hours.”

That explained the dizziness. “I need to eat. My blood sugar must be crashing or something.” She slid down to lie on the mattress of the bed, stretched out on her side and facing Theyn. “Do you eat?”

“We wouldn’t survive for very long if we didn’t,” the blond said, still smiling.

Beno rose abruptly, grabbing his hoodie and putting it on. He slid the dark glasses over his luminous green eyes and pulled the hood forward. “I’ll go get us some food.”

“Thank you,” his partner said.

“Do you know where to go, or what to do? I mean… how do you…”

“Beno is a telepath. He can take cues from the people around him.”

She looked at the dark-haired man, then back at Theyn. “Handy.”

Beno nodded. “You have no idea.”

He left the room, and Theyn went to slide the deadbolt into place. Sera sighed. “Your friend is pretty intense.”

“Yes… he gets a bit gruff when he’s nervous. I apologize if he’s being unfriendly to you.”

“It’s fine. If I were in your shoes, I’d be a royal bitch.”

His forehead creased and he tilted his head to study her face, looking for all the world like a confused puppy. Then his expression lightened up and he said, “Oh! I understand.”

“Are you a telepath, too?”

“No. That’s Beno’s trick. I have other abilities.”

“Like what?”

“Energy manipulation and redirection.”

“Which means?”

He grinned. “Maybe I’ll show you sometime.”

“And just what would that entail?” she asked. I can’t believe it. I’m flirting with him again.

Theyn didn’t seem to mind. If anything, he seemed to like it. His singular eyes brushed her from foot to head and back again. “A lot of…physical contact.”

She flushed like a teenager, suffused with a rush of desire that she could barely contain. Even her mouth was watering, looking at him. She thought desperately, This is insane. I am absolutely batshit crazy.