Chapter Fourteen
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Axel followed Wyatt’s vehicle all the way to a local bauxite pit abandoned by earthlings in the last century. The Alpha bauxite mining operations were further west of town.
The sheriff’s vehicle turned, his headlights swinging to one side to illuminate someone standing in a clearing next to the road. A closer look revealed his sister, Valene. That explained how Wyatt knew where he was, as his sister had dropped Lucy off at the Cosmos Café for their book club meeting, but it didn’t explain everything.
What was his sister doing out here seemingly all alone? With Wyatt? On lovers’ lane?
Axel frowned.
Valene, arms crossed as if she shivered with cold when it wasn’t chilly in the least, approached the two waiting vehicles.
His sister gave him a semi-defiant look as if daring him to ask any one of the slew of questions he’d thought up concerning her presence here with Wyatt.
The sheriff got out of his car. “It’s over here,” Wyatt said, walking toward the far edge of the clearing.
Valene gestured for Axel to follow him. He did and his sister fell into step behind him.
Wyatt had stopped at the far side of the twenty-foot-wide open space at the edge of some bushes and scrub pines along a thickly forested area beyond it, and pointed to what looked like a big rock in the darkness.
“What is it?”
“You tell me.” Wyatt pushed the button on his flashlight, illuminating not a rock, but instead a shaggy, monstrous-sized bear-clawed beast. Axel knew the creature couldn’t be found in the wilds of Arkansas, let alone anywhere on Earth. It was all Alpha-Prime.
Space potatoes.
A few Alphas, especially super-rich Alphas, didn’t care to follow the rules regarding illegal pets on interstellar flights. They foolishly felt their wild pets made for perfect travelling companions during long journeys through space.
Diesel would blow a gasket. Cam would go Defender happy on the entire surrounding area just to be safe.
“Looks sort of like a misshapen bear.” Axel knew exactly what it was, and it wasn’t a bear. “Maybe it’s sick.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But look closer.” Wyatt handed him the flashlight and gestured for him to do just that. “If it’s a bear, it’s a mutant one. And you should have heard the sounds it made before I shot it with the tranq gun in my cruiser. I’ve never heard anything like it. Not even in horror movies. If they made a scary Halloween mask that looked like that, people everywhere would drop their bags of candy and run in fear.”
Axel didn’t disagree as he pondered the idea of a sand-claw beast Halloween mask. Scary. “You shot it? What happened?”
Wyatt cleared his throat and said, “I usually drive down lovers’ lane once a night to clear everyone out. You know how it is.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“So, I was driving near the clearing and saw this thing lope by my vehicle slowly like it was wounded. It headed for open ground as I grabbed my tranquilizer gun and chased it to the edge of the clearing. It made a frightful noise and lunged at me, so I had to take the shot. It kept coming. I took three more shots before it went down hard and didn’t move again.”
“You keep a tranquilizer gun in your cruiser?”
Wyatt nodded. “For exactly this reason. This isn’t the first time I’ve run across a wild animal. Like that rabid dog running around scaring everyone until Cam got him?”
Axel remembered that was also a wild beast from Alpha-Prime that Cam had used his experimental Alpha Submissive Sticker. But he certainly couldn’t bring that up now.
“Why call me?” Axel asked, staring right at his sister. She caught his gaze and suddenly found the forest floor vastly more interesting.
“Valene wanted me to call you before alerting Diesel or Cam. Thought it might be another rabid dog like last year and didn’t want to get everyone all up in arms if it was.”
“Right. Good thinking.”
“But this doesn’t look like a rabid dog.”
“No. You’re right. It doesn’t.” Axel handed the flashlight back to Wyatt. “I need to get something from my glove box.”
Wyatt and Valene followed him to his truck. He didn’t bother asking Wyatt why Valene was with him. He already had a big suspicion about what was going on by the looks his sister was sending the sheriff’s way when she thought Axel wasn’t paying attention.
He went to Lucy’s side of his vehicle, opened the door, pulled the glove box open, retrieved the megaphone-shaped Defender and shot Wyatt with it before he even noticed Axel had the device in his hand.
Wyatt slumped to the ground.
“Axel!” Valene screamed. “Why did you do that? I called you specifically instead of Cam or Diesel so he wouldn’t get shot with the Defender and lose time that will be hard to explain.”
“You want to tell me what you’re doing out here on lovers’ lane with the human sheriff, Valvoline?”
“None of your business! And stop using my real name. You know I hate it.”
Lucy slid out of the truck and walked to his sister, who had dropped to her knees to cradle Wyatt’s head in her lap.
“How long was your Defender set for?” Valene asked. It was hard to miss the forlorn tone in her quivery voice.
“I don’t know. I didn’t look. I just took aim.” He checked the display and winced. He hadn’t meant to knock Wyatt out for that long. “Sorry. It’s on the new maximum of forty-five minutes. In my defense, I’ve never used it before. That’s the setting it was on when Cam issued it to me.”
Valene started crying. “But forty-five minutes was before we even—” His sister sniffled and didn’t finish her sentence.
Lucy gave him a sharp look of reproach and kneeled beside his sister, patting her comfortingly on the back.
Axel hated to see his sister cry. He hated seeing Lucy’s accusatory stare worse, but there were rules. If he had to follow the stupid rules about his arranged marriage, then so did everyone else regarding their love lives. Humans could never know about Alpha-Prime, aliens roaming the Earth in plain sight and especially not illegal sand-claw beasts running loose in the area.
“I’m sorry, Valene, but you know Wyatt can’t find out what that animal really is, nor should he even remember seeing it at all.” Lucy looked across the clearing at the beast. From this distance it looked once more like a large rock formation.
“I know.” His sister checked at her wristwatch and moaned. “Come on. We have to get him back into his squad car before he wakes up. I already have some big, fat explaining to do.”
Axel thought so, too, but she probably meant something very different. He loved his little sister dearly, and he was always going be her older brother with specific ideas on her dating, well, anyone. Even though he liked Wyatt and could certainly think of worse guys for his sister to date, the man was human.
Axel waved the women away from the sheriff’s limp form. He shoved his hands beneath Wyatt’s arms and lifted his shoulders so he could drag him back to his cruiser. Axel might be stronger than a human male his size, but Wyatt was a very big man. Valene went ahead to open the driver’s side door. He stopped when he thought he heard a car approaching, but dismissed it as stray noise from the highway.
Axel wrestled Wyatt behind the wheel, trying not to leave bruises. He slapped the accumulated dirt off the heels of Wyatt’s boots before shoving them into the footwell.
Valene put his seat belt on, and lovingly brushed a lock of hair off his forehead before closing the door with a gentle slam. She turned, resting one hip against the side of his car.
“Are you planning on explaining anything to me?” Axel asked.
Valene pushed out a long sigh. “You need to leave before he wakes up,” was her only response as she studiously focused her gaze on the ground.
“Why is your shirt buttoned up wrong?”
Valene sucked in a shocked breath, uncrossed her arms and looked down at the perfectly-aligned buttons on her shirt. She shot a puzzled look his way. “Nothing’s wrong with my shirt buttons.”
“Made you look,” he said, with a satisfied smile, unsure of his feelings regarding his sister’s secret relationship with the human sheriff of Skeeter Bite.
Valene frowned, opened her mouth, then closed it without saying anything. She settled for shooting him a petulantly wary glare.
Axel liked Wyatt. He was a really good guy, for a human, but he didn’t think his parents, especially his father, would ever allow their only daughter to marry a human and move to Alpha-Prime. Axel would miss Valene if she had to leave.
“As soon as Wyatt comes to, I’ll tell him we need to leave. You wait out of sight down the road and call Cam as soon as we’re gone to come and get the sand-claw beast.”
“How am I supposed to explain what I’m doing out here at the bauxite pit’s lovers’ lane with Lucy?”
His sister looked at Lucy and then at Axel. After a few seconds, she shrugged. “I’m sure you’ll think of something. Just like I will also have to do some quick explaining.” She gestured at Wyatt.
“We’ll talk later, right?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh, it’s necessary.”
Valene made a face. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
“You’re not going to pull that stupid, ‘I’m an older, wiser brother’ hooey on me, are you?” Maybe.
“Well, not anymore. Don’t get me wrong, Valene. I like Wyatt. I just don’t know how I feel about any guy dating my little sister, let alone a human, given all the rules regarding a relationship like that.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
“Drop it, Axel.” She looked into his eyes and her beseeching gaze turned hard. “You aren’t my mother.”
“Well, now that Mom’s back in town, perhaps you should share the news about your human boyfriend with her and see how she reacts.”
Valene looked skyward at the stars twinkling down. “No, thanks.”
Axel thought he saw her eyes get shiny. “It’s not because I don’t like him. It’s because I would really miss you if you were forced to move back to Alpha-Prime. Plus, Wyatt’s the sheriff, someone used to working hard and being respected for what he does. What would life be like for him on Alpha-Prime?”
“And there’s another really stupid rule,” Valene said under her breath.
“Oh, trust me, there are lots of stupid rules to go around,” Axel said. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, giving him a sympathetic look.
Inside the sheriff’s car, Wyatt coughed. The three of them froze. Valene silently shooed him and Lucy back to his truck as she scrambled around to the passenger’s side of Wyatt’s police car and got in.
Axel and Lucy hopped in his truck, drove away from the clearing, around a bend and out of sight.
The last thing he saw as he passed the sheriff’s cruiser was Valene leaning over the center console, kissing Wyatt on the mouth. He quelled the urge to race back and pull them apart, but only barely.
Axel parked well out of sight of the cruiser. He glanced at Lucy and wished he could kiss her.
Lucy didn’t say a word. Had she seen his sister kissing the sheriff? If she had, she also didn’t mention it.
Axel waited for what seemed like an hour, but was likely only a couple of minutes, until he heard the sheriff’s patrol car start up and pull away, exiting the bauxite pit’s lovers’ lane.
They drove back to the spot where the sand-claw beast slept at the far edge of the clearing. He’d have to be creative when he called Cam or Diesel. It wasn’t like he could not call them. He didn’t have a shackle sticker and four different shots of even a standard tranquilizer dart were only going to last so long. He didn’t relish chasing another Alpha-Prime animal through Alienn or any other nearby town.
“Now what?” Lucy asked, squinting through the window at the shadow of the huge beast.
“Now I have to call either Cam or Diesel or both and carefully tell a story that includes what Wyatt did, what I did and why I called them, but I also have to exclude Valene and also explain why we are here together.”
“Tell the truth,” she suggested. “Wyatt came to the café and led you out here, he told you what he did and you had the wherewithal to shoot him with the Defender, then put him in his car.”
“What about Valene?”
Lucy shrugged. “What about her? Why would they assume she was here if you don’t mention it?”
Axel nodded. “That’s true. Okay. Good. That’s good.”
“Did the animal over there just move?” Lucy asked, staring out her window.
He squinted at the large shadow. “Look in the glove box again. Maybe I do have a shackle sticker in there.”
“Shackle sticker? I know what it is, but I don’t know what it looks like.” Lucy opened the release and Axel heard the beast make a noise. Crap, the sand-claw beast was waking up.
“Never mind.” Axel grabbed his phone and punched in Cam’s number. “Where are you?” he asked when his brother answered, sounding half-asleep. It was pretty early to be in bed, but his brother was a newly married man.
Cam cleared his throat, but his voice was raspy when he spoke. “Well, I was asleep until you called. What do you want?”
“Wake up. I need you at the bauxite pit’s lovers’ lane with a shackle sticker. Pronto.”
“Shackle sticker? Why?”
“What do you mean why? Why do you think? Remember the last time we needed a shackle sticker? Why aren’t you here, yet?”
“I’m moving as fast as I can.” Cam sounded a little more awake. “What’s going on?”
“It’s a long story, Cam. Wyatt shot a beast with a tranquilizer gun and found me by accident on his way to find you or Diesel.”
“Space potatoes,” Cam said. Over the line, Axel heard a car door slam and a vehicle engine start.
“Where is Wyatt now?”
“Don’t know. I shot him with my Defender and shoved him back in his patrol car. He left the area a few minutes ago. I’ll track him down later and ensure he doesn’t remember talking to me. But the beast he tranquilized is waking up. I don’t have a shackle sticker with me, so you need to get here right now.”
“I’m on my way.” Cam disconnected the call without fanfare or farewell.
Lucy looked at him sideways. “How will we explain my presence out here?”
Axel shrugged. “I guess we’ll tell him the truth. We were meeting to discuss Dirk Crusher books, Wyatt saw my vehicle at the Cosmos Café and came in to get my help. I just don’t see the need to involve Valene in this, okay?”
“Fine by me. I’ll try to say as little as possible.”
The beast across the clearing made a grunting noise and its body moved. Lucy leaned forward in her seat. “What kind of animal is it? I didn’t get a good look before you moved the flashlight away.”
“Sand-claw beast. Probably an illegal Alpha-Prime pet left behind when the airship was here last time. It isn’t the first time we’ve had to chase down some rich Alpha’s inappropriate pet that got loose on Earth.”
Her eyes widened. Axel realized he’d sort of insulted her rich family with his vague over-sweeping comment. “A sand-claw beast? Oh no.” Lucy opened her door and headed for the beast, which was getting louder and moving even more.
Axel leapt out of his vehicle and chased after her. “Lucy. Wait! Don’t get too close.”
She had the flashlight in one hand and pressed the button to turn it on. The beam cast a light on the face of the beast. “Oh no.”
“What?” Axel said, skidding to a halt beside her. The beast’s eyes looked wild. Wyatt had hog-tied it, but the ropes didn’t look strong enough to hold the sand-claw beast for very long. Where was Cam? He needed to hurry up and get here.
“It’s Eugene.”