Kathryn
She couldn’t take it any longer.
Despite his strict orders to stay hidden and quiet, she’d been unable to completely contain her yelps as the battle raged around her. Now, as quiet reigned supreme, she needed to look. To ensure that it wasn’t because Callan was dead.
Peeking around the edge of the log, she witnessed a scene that, until thirty minutes earlier, would have had her screaming and proclaiming herself bughouse nuts.
Near to her stood a human clad in some sort of black armor that was so thin and lithe that it coated the bearer like a layer of skin. She knew the shape and outline of the person, from the set of the shoulders right down to the tautness of his butt. It was Callan, and he was holding swords in both hands. Horns jutted from his head and spikes adorned the armor in various places, giving him a terrifying look.
But it was the thing on the other side of the clearing that truly caught her attention. Pinned to a tree was a creature that was quite obviously not human. Kathryn gasped as she realized that this must be one of the alien invaders Callan had told her about. It was currently impaled on the sharp stub of a tree branch, struggling to get free.
As she watched though, its struggles stopped. For a moment she thought it was dead, but then one of its arms swung behind it and plunged deep into the tree.
“Callan, what’s it doing?” she asked, watching in horror as the tree withered and died. If she focused hard, Katy would have sworn she saw some sort of blue light moving from the tree into the creature.
“It’s learning.” He sounded stunned, and more than just a little uneasy.
“Can you kill it now?” she asked as the tree crumbled to ash and the creature dropped to the ground. Almost immediately the ground around it darkened and died, an ever-growing circle.
“I’m going to try. But this one seems to have learned that it can feed off the land itself, sucking the life from the earth. That’s…well, I don’t think I have to explain to you why that’s not good,” the armor-clad blackened form of Callan said, stepping back toward her.
“Please?” she begged. The creature was quite obviously healing as it drained the land of life. “I’ll do whatever you want. Anything, just kill it. I want to go now.”
Callan turned to look at her. She could still see the blocky facial features of the man she cared for, despite the black armor and horns. The eyes were still there, turning from black back to the deep indigo blue-purple that she was used to.
“That’s not what I want from you,” he said, glancing over at the creature to ensure it wasn’t moving.
“What do you want then?” Fear stilled her body as she waited for the answer.
“I want you. I want you to love me, on your own time, in your own way. Not because of any pressure or feelings of obligation, Katy. That’s what I want. Nothing more. If I can’t have it, I understand. I won’t force it. But I don’t want you to say or do something you don’t feel, simply because of our situation right now.”
Despite the situation, Callan spoke with no urgency. No pressure filled his voice, echoing what he’d said with his words. This decision was up to her, and she could make it on her own time whenever she felt the need.
There was only one small thing wrong with that. She didn’t need more time. Katy already had the answer. Though it scared her to admit, shaking her to the core almost as much as the life-or-death situation she found herself in, she couldn’t deny it. The truth was easy for her to see now, the realization that maybe this time she wasn’t going to walk away from what happened plowing the way for her brain and her heart to finally get on the same page.
She loved Callan, loved him more thoroughly than she’d ever loved anyone before.
Compared to Doug, Callan was mountainous bonfire to a tiny, flickering candle. How could she have thought she was ever in love with that pig? It boggled her mind to think about as endorphins flooded her system, the giddiness and excitement at realizing she truly, fully, and wholeheartedly loved the man in front of her filling her heart to the breaking point.
“I do love you!” she shouted as her man moved to intercept the creature.
Her eyes watered with glee. For so long she’d thought herself broken and unavailable, unready to love and barely able to lust. Her heart was as broken as her body, she’d told herself over and over, until it rang true. But it wasn’t true; it was false. All she’d needed the entire time was the right person, the right partner and lover to reveal to her that if anything, she was more ready to love than she ever had been before.
That person was Callan, and right then he was about to do battle with something out of her worst nightmares.
“I love you too.”
She wanted to melt as Callan spoke to her. Sure, his back may have been turned to her, and yes, he was covered in black liquid-armor stuff, and the horns on his head weren’t the hottest look she’d seen this side of the Middle Ages, but it didn’t matter. He was hers, and they had just proclaimed that for everyone to see.
It drove the alien wild. The thing shrieked. Kathryn clamped her hands over her ears as the assault on her hearing continued. The two arm-like appendages pulled back and drove down into the ground as the shrieking wail continued, growing louder. All around her the ground wilted and died, the trees shivering and dissolving into ash at the lightest breeze. It grew and grew, twenty feet in diameter. Thirty. Fifty.
It didn’t touch the log she was in, or anything else lying dead on the forest floor, but anything living had the life sucked from it. A blue glow rose from the earth and flowed into the creature, empowering it. Purple lightning started to crackle and jump around its body, a neon-colored show that spoke of extreme power.
“Time to take this up a level,” Callan said, his voice barely audible over the screaming noise.
The sound dropped off abruptly as he suddenly resumed his dragon form, his bulk blocking the alien from her sight. The massive creature didn’t hesitate, and she saw its head lunge down to where the creature was. The wailing stopped completely, and a moment later there was the sound of a tree trunk snapping.
Massive wings darker than the purest night spread wide, the air they disturbed causing numerous ash trees to simply dissolve without so much as a whisper. The clearing was suddenly much, much wider around them. It was horrific to see, a scar upon the earth that would never grow back.
It also gave the colossal dragon room to maneuver.
Katy watched as Callan went on the attack. A stream of liquid vomited forth from his mouth, engulfing the creature. It didn’t fall to the ground like water though, but instead washed up and over the matte-black monster, circling around and around until it formed a solid globe of burning liquid. She could see droplets of it spray wide, burning dead branches and leaves that hadn’t been turned to ash by the alien.
Acid. It had to be acid.
Two blades jutted forth from the globe and ripped it apart, the acid spilling away. The thing stepped out, but she could see that its armor was pitted and holed, the lightning display gone. Whatever Callan had hit it with was damned powerful.
It leapt at Callan, raising both sword-arms high, aiming to stab deep into the obsidian scales on his left flank.
She felt a flicker of fear, but it evaporated as Callan turned swifter than she could have imagined. Air whooshed over her head as his tail went speeding by, and Katy couldn’t help but laugh as the invader was batted out of midair by the massive bone-like club on the end of the dragon’s tail.
It drove the creature down and away, ash and rock spraying everywhere on the impact. Callan lunged forward, and a massive dragon paw slammed down. One of the gigantic claws pierced right through the creature, and all at once it lay still, thick, viscous purple goo oozing up out of the wound.
She saw the dragon eye it for a moment, and then suddenly Callan was back, his arm driven deep into the core of the thing. He stepped back, and she watched in mute awe as he flicked a hand at the creature. More acid spewed forth from his hand, spilling around the creature, but moving with a life of its own, clearly under his control.
It rose up, bringing the hopefully dead thing with it. Tendrils of acid looped around its arms, and its legs, both where it joined the body and mid-limb. More acid came forth in a never-ending flow, resolving itself into the image of a sort of octopus-like thing that lashed its ends around the alien.
Callan’s black-clad face grimaced, and the tentacles tightened. He grunted, and she heard a cracking sound come from the armor, and more purple goop leaked from where the tentacles were crushing it.
Her man…her mate—she could call him that now!—gave a mighty roar, and the tentacles of acid severed the creature at all points. Callan sagged with the effort and waved his hand at the acid. It all disappeared, except for the tentacles. They fell to the ground, hardening into individual spikes jutting from the ground, each one impaling the body part it had severed, holding them out of range of each other.
The black armor faded from Callan’s skin, and the hunky features of the man she loved returned, etched with fatigue but happy and alive.
She got to her feet and stumbled over to him, surprised at how energetic her legs were. Reaching Callan she all but tackled him to the ground, covering him with kisses.
“I knew you could kill it,” she told him. “I believed in you all along.”
“That’s good,” he gasped, holding her tight. “Because I had some serious doubts. I’ve never heard of an Outsider being able to do that…pull energy straight from the earth itself.”
“Outsiders? Is that what you call them?”
Too exhausted to reply he just nodded.
They were still lying like that in each other’s arms, when two black helicopters arrived overhead. It disgorged two metal-clad humans and two others in sleek, all-black uniforms with a golden crest on the left breast.
“About time,” Callan said. “Cleanup is on you, Vanek.”
One of the non-armored humans came over in response, thick black hair tied back in a braid, his bushy eyebrows scanning the enlarged clearing intently.
“You killed it.”
Callan nodded. “I did. And left it in pieces. Can you ask the idiots in charge to try not to let it escape again? That would be fantastic.”
Katy started to giggle, and Callan joined her. A moment later the black-haired giant also lost his composure, all of them sharing a reprieve, letting the tension dissipate now that a crisis had been averted.
“Colonel Mara will want your report,” the one she surmised as Vanek said once they calmed down.
“Yeah, I know. We’ll get there. But first Katy and I are going to go home and change, shower, and relax. I’m exhausted.”
“I think that can be arranged.” Vanek smiled, then looked over at her. “How does a helicopter ride sound to you?”
Katy grinned back, excited about the prospect. She’d never been in one before. “Sounds great!”
Callan hauled himself to his feet and went to lift her, but she waved him off, feeling good now. “I’ve got this,” she told him.
She headed to the helicopter with her love.
And she walked every single step of the way herself.