He wanted to touch me, I realized, but must have noticed my fragile emotional state.
I wiped my eyes on my sleeves without removing my hands from the steering wheel.
“I knew I wouldn’t kill him,” Vai said.
“I saw you put three bullets in him.”
“They aren’t bullets—”
“Three bolts of light then. Whatever they are, you put them in him.”
“Yes, but they didn’t kill him.”
I cocked my head at him.
“They didn’t? But I saw him fall off the bed. There was blood everywhere.”
“Was there blood?” he said. “Think back carefully. Did you see any?”
I thought for a moment and blinked in surprise.
“But I thought… I swear there was blood! There was. I’m sure of it!”
Vai shook his head.
“Plasma cauterizes the wound before the blood can escape. I shot him but there wasn’t any blood.”
“Okay. So maybe I was wrong about the blood. But I’m still right about you shooting him!”
He nodded.
“Yes. But there’s something about us I haven’t told you yet and you’re not going to understand everything unless I tell you.”
He took a deep breath and turned to look at me.
“You see, neither of us is from here.”
I snorted.
“I guessed that much, funnily enough.”
“You did? It must have something to do with the bond.”
“The bond?”
“It will be a new sensation, one that links you and him. I don’t know. There haven’t been any accounts of a M’rora mating with a human.”
M’rora? Human? Homeworld?
I was getting a deep and sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach.
“When you say you’re not from here, what did you mean?”
“Pull over,” Vai said. “We’re almost there.”
I did.
My hands were shaking.
The keys rattled in the ignition.
Vai peered at me closely and came to a decision.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you.”
He took another deep breath.
“I’m from the planet M’yaw, home to the M’rora. We are a unique species in that when we’re born, we’re not born with a light and dark side. We, the M’rora, are born in the light and educated in all things good and just. The Aror’m are our dark counterparts. Identical to us in every way but with a dark and sinister twist. Most species have both contained within themselves, a light and a dark side, but for us, we are born separate. We in this universe, the Aror’m in the Shadow Realm, a universe that exists in parallel to ours.”
I listened to every word he said and understood them individually but when put together, I couldn’t make head nor tail of any of it.
“What are you saying?” I said. “That you’re a… a…”
The word was right there on the tip of my tongue but I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“An alien?” I said finally.
“To you, yes, we are aliens. Just as you are an alien to me.”
I just stared at him.
“You’re insane. Is that what this whole thing’s been about? Some kind of joke you’re playing on me?”
It was one damn sophisticated joke if it was.
But reality shows had a lot of money they could blow on things like this.
Maybe that was all it was.
Just a big elaborate prank.
I wished it was.
I wished it wasn’t real.
“Maybe I should show you,” Vai said. “Actions speak much louder than words.”
He grasped a handful of his cheek and yanked at it.
The skin stretched and for a moment I thought he was going to tear his whole face off.
“Sick!” I screamed, covering my face with my hands and peering at him through my fingers.
“No, really, I can show you,” Vai said, still working at his skin. “Just give me a second…”
This was insane.
This was beyond insane.
I felt sick just watching him.
And the tearing sound…
Oh God. I’m going to be sick.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I… I… have to go,” I said, dry retching. “I can’t stay here.”
“No, wait.”
I pulled on the door lever and fell out.
I got to my feet and slipped.
I didn’t stop and just kept running.
The offside passenger door opened and Vai called after me.
“Emma!” he yelled. “Wait!”
There would be no waiting.
I couldn’t stand idly by while he tore his face off.
If he was willing to do that to himself, what would he do to me?
Murder me while my back was turned?
He was stark raving mad.
He couldn’t be an alien.
I needed to hole up somewhere.
If I could get free of this crazy guy and his buddy, I could start again somewhere else.
I could live a normal life.
I could return after the police caught them and sent them to jail for a decade or two.
I came to a broad open patch of brownland.
Aged and archaic machines lay stooped in rusted poses and grass and other wildlife had long since begun to reclaim what rightfully belonged to it.
A dilapidated building with a large hole in its roof yawned at me with three doors hanging open on rusty hinges.
A fox blinked in the moonlight at me, turned, and ran.
“Emma,” Vai said, catching up to me. “Wait. I’m sorry if I scared you—”
I spun on him.
“You didn’t scare me,” I snapped. “You terrified me! You tell me you’re an alien and you expect me to shrug my shoulders and carry on like everything is normal? It’s not. It’s really not. I don’t know what I’ve stumbled into. I don’t know why you and your ‘Shadow’ chose me but I’m not interested in your twisted games. I just want to go home and live my life.”
“I understand this isn’t easy to grasp but if you let me show you what I am, what I really look like, it’ll make things easier.”
He reached up and began tugging at his skin again.
“Don’t,” I said, stomach lurching and threatening to spill itself onto the dirt. “You’re going to make me sick.”
“It’ll just take a minute. It’s tricky to remove… The disguise is a little tight…”
Riiiiip!
Someone might have torn a sheet of paper, not just once but twice, and then three times, four…
And then so many times I lost track.
Vai let out a deep breath and I dreaded to turn back and look at
