Tagan's Child (30 page)

“Inferior?” He
chuckled as if genuinely amused. “I admit there was a time when I
thought your race was inferior, you were inferior.”

That hurt a
bit.

“But you’ve
changed my opinion. The rest of your race may be average but there
is nothing average about you Sophie, you seem to forget that if it
wasn’t for you in that motel room we would probably both be dead.
You’re brave Sophie and an enemy with courage is a formidable
opponent, you could give any of Bazeera’s agents a run for their
money,” he said with a chuckle. I flushed at his compliment. “And…”
he continued his voice lowering an octave, “there was nothing
inferior about the way you behaved last night.”

I felt my blush
spread at his words. His smile indicated that it hadn’t gone
unnoticed.

“I think we
both got carried away last night,” I said, folding my arms across
my chest. Was it an act of defiance or a feeble attempt to
physically protect my heart from any further injury? I wasn’t
sure.

His eyes
searched mine. “Do you regret what we did last night?” he
challenged.

Do I wish it
had never happened? At the time it had felt so right, it had felt
like our whole life’s purpose was to be together for those precious
hours. But in the cold light of day, the enormity of my feelings
frightened me and the chasm that was between us felt like it could
never be breached. I was struggling to articulate how I felt as a
myriad of emotions bore down on me.

“Sophie. Do you
regret last night?” It seemed very important he know the
answer.

“No, I don’t
regret what happened last night,” I said quickly, I couldn’t lie to
him. “All I’m saying is that it shouldn’t have gone as far as it
did, it’s not the first time we’ve let ourselves get carried away
and we need to put a stop to it,” I answered wearily. I was trying
to protect myself, to rebuild the barriers that I had so foolishly
allowed to crumble.

“You are not
making any sense,” he said and ran his fingers through his hair in
frustration.

“Do you want us
to stop?” His voice sounded strained as he kept his eyes on the
road.

“I think we
should just get on with finding Toby,” I finished.

“You haven’t
answered my question,” he pushed.

I didn’t feel
strong enough to cope with the feelings he was stirring in me.

“Yes, I want us
to stop,” I said angrily, knowing that this was my chance to stop
the rail crash that had become my life.

“I don’t
believe you,” he said harshly.

“What do you
want from me Ahran?” I turned towards him, suddenly feeling very
tired.

“I want you,”
he said his voice softening. “I can’t carry on as if last night
didn’t happen and I don’t want to go back to my life without you in
it.”

My heart
stopped at his words but my head was struggling to compute.

“Ahran, we
can’t possibly have a future together. We live in two completely
different worlds. We aren’t even the same species!” I said with a
humourless laugh.

He looked at me
as if to say, ‘you are kidding.’

“Ahran, don’t
act as if it doesn’t matter, it does,” I said, trying to be
rational. “How can we possibly make a relationship work? Maybe you
should reconsider a life with Talina. At least you share the same
genetic make-up.” Never did I think that I would be using that as a
reason to break up with a guy. “You might still have a chance of
patching things up with her, you could put it down to a moment of
pre-marital nerves.” Everything I was saying went against
everything I felt but at least one of us had a chance of coming out
of this with a shot at happiness.

Ahran sighed in
frustration. “Talina and I do not have a future together, we would
end up making each other miserable. How can I make you understand
that?”

“I don’t want
to be held responsible for breaking up your relationship. What
happened last night was a moment of weakness, it doesn’t have to
mean anything, people do it all the time and still manage to return
to their lives, no harm done.” If only I felt the conviction of my
words.

“Sophie, I may
not have known you long but I know that what happened last night
meant something …” He tried to catch my eye. I stubbornly kept my
eyes trained on the road. “And I certainly don’t hold you
responsible for the breakup of my relationship,” he continued.
“There were serious problems even before I met you. I had been so
focussed on buying the farm I hadn’t given myself time to work out
what they really were, I just tried to ignore them thinking our
love would grow. It was a classic case of denial. I am just
thankful that meeting you made me realise what a mistake I was
making.” He paused as if he was searching for the right words. “And
as for last night being a moment of weakness, I knew exactly what I
was doing and I wouldn’t change a second of it.”

I turned to
face him feeling so utterly torn by what he was saying.

“I want to be
with you Sophie,” he confessed. “And I want to do what we did last
night and more again and again.” There was a hint of desperation in
his voice I hadn’t heard before and it was ruining me. He was
saying exactly what I wanted to hear but at the same time exactly
what I didn’t want to hear. This gorgeous, superhuman man was
declaring his feelings for me.

“How can we
possibly have a future Ahran? I don’t belong here and you couldn’t
live in Hatherley. You’ve got the farm and your future is all
mapped out, I couldn’t expect you to change that, you’ve worked so
hard for it.”

“We could work
it out together.”

“Oh God Ahran,
you are making it so difficult for me to do the right thing.”

“It isn’t a
matter of doing the right thing Sophie, it’s a matter of letting
fate take its course.”

“You believe in
fate?” This surprised me, he had seemed so pragmatic.

“There are
worse things to believe in when you are faced with problems to
overcome.”

Suddenly the
phone in the charging dock rang.

Ahran cleared
his throat and answered it.

I listened to
him speaking to whoever it was, desperately trying to pick up any
thread of what he was saying.

When Ahran hit
the hang up button I was none the wiser.

“Is it Toby?” I
asked hopefully.

“Yes, one of
Halsan’s agents has reported that Toby spent the night he was
kidnapped at a tavern in a small town in the heart of Bazeera’s
territory.”

“Really? Does
he know where they went from there?”

“Nobody has
been able to contact him since. The tracking device in his phone
shows that either he or his phone has not moved in the last 24
hours.”

“Either way not
a good sign?”

He shook his
head ominously.

“So what are we
going to do?”

“We’ll head to
this tavern and see if we can find out where Bazeera’s men and Toby
were headed.”

“Is it
far?”

“It should take
about 12 hours by road.”

I glanced at
the clock. We should get there in the early hours of the morning. I
felt a glimmer of hope but it was a frustratingly long drive. Maybe
it was what I needed, it would at least give me time to think about
what Ahran had just said. He had made it sound so easy, but I had
my safe life, the cafe and Toby to think about. Did being with him
mean I would have to give all that up? My head ached, and I shut my
eyes and rubbed my temples. “I suppose it’s good that we have a
more concrete lead, it just takes so long to get anywhere here,” I
said, unable to hide my impatience.

“Ramia is much
bigger than the world you are used to, we could still catch the
train if you wanted to, but you know the risks.”

“No let’s just
get there as fast as we can by road,” I said with a sigh. It would
take longer but we had a better chance of survival.

I was thankful
that Ahran didn’t push me any further about how I felt and we
settled into what was a more highly charged silence, there was so
much more to say but neither of us broached the subject over the
next 12 hours.

Ahran’s phone
had charged and I was able to phone the hospital back home to find
out how Audrey was doing. She had gained consciousness and was on
morphine to help her cope with the pain. She was asleep when I
phoned and was unable to speak to her. I would have done anything
to have heard her calm reassuring voice. Her doctor told me that
her stroke hadn’t been too serious but she would require some
fairly intensive physio to help her overcome the reduced mobility
on her left side. I was overwhelmed with relief that there had been
no lasting damage.

We stopped
twice en route. Ahran and I talked about things on more neutral
territory, but from time to time I noticed the tension in his jaw.
He had laid his cards out on the table, shouldn’t I be thrilled? If
only I could allow myself the luxury of what I wanted to feel. What
chance of happiness did we have when one of us would have to
sacrifice everything we held dear? But the most terrifying prospect
was allowing Ahran any closer than he already was. As things stood,
the chances of my heart coming out of this unscathed were poor.

I laid my head
back on the seat and closed my eyes to give my brain a rest. I
really needed some time away from Ahran to think, but the situation
made that impossible. Eventually, I fell asleep and this time
dreamt that Ahran, Toby and Audrey were walking away with their
arms linked and laughing over their shoulders at me. I was trying
to run towards them with huge superhuman leaps but the bigger the
leap the further they seemed to move away. My heart was pounding
and I opened my mouth to scream in desperation but nothing came
out. Perspiration ran down my back from the exertion of jumping and
I finally fell into a heap on the floor utterly exhausted and no
longer able to see them, all I could hear was Ahran calling my name
from a distance.

“Sophie?
Sophie!”

I woke with a
jolt and opened my eyes to find Ahran leaning towards me gently
shaking my shoulder. “You were dreaming.”

I rubbed my
eyes in an attempt to make them focus. I took a deep breath and
stopped myself from flinging my arms around his neck and never
letting go.

“Please tell me
I have slept for two days and that you have found Toby,” I said,
sitting on my hands as an insurance against any impulsiveness on my
part.

“I’m sorry,
you’ve only been a sleep a couple of hours and we’ve arrived at the
tavern.”

It was late and
we were parked outside a pub that wouldn’t have looked out of place
in the East End of London. It was three stories high at the end of
a row of shops and had a rather British looking pub sign showing a
yard of ale swinging above the door.

“This is some
kind of joke, right?” I glanced over at Ahran.

He looked
slightly apologetic. “There are some people in Ramia who like to
try and create a piece of the old world.”

“It’s like a
scene out of Oliver Twist,” I snorted.

“I am sure the
landlord would be very pleased to hear that he has successfully
created an authentic piece of Dickensian London,” Ahran added.

“You’ve heard
of Dickens?” I asked in surprise.

Ahran nodded.
“We are encouraged to read other-world literature at school. Don’t
forget we spend much longer at school than you do, we have to fill
our time somehow.”

I chuckled. “It
just seems so morbidly appropriate. Besides I thought Ramians
thought Sapiens were inferior, why would they want to try and
emulate them and their world?”

“Earth holds a
certain enchantment among Ramians. We know that somehow we are
descended from Earth and even though there are many things that are
better about Ramia there are many here who regard Earth as exotic.
Especially those who have never visited it.”

I had come
across this mentality before when I had travelled around Australia
on my year out. Some people still considered Britain as home even
though they had lived in the southern hemisphere most, if not all,
of their lives. It seemed very strange to learn that the same
phenomena existed among an alien race in a completely different
universe.

“So Ramians are
descended from humans on Earth?” I struggled to understand how this
could be.

“Yes but we
don’t know how or when. It is our world’s biggest mystery.”

“Blimey!” The
origins of the Ramian race hadn’t even crossed my mind.

Ahran nodded as
if to say ‘strange but true’.

“Come on let’s
see if Fagin can shed any light on Toby’s whereabouts,” he said
with a wry smile.

Inside, the
place was lit by an inadequate number of wall lights and most heads
turned in our direction. I took a cursory glance around. Apart from
me, the girl serving behind the bar, and a scantily clad girl
half-heartedly winding herself around a pole on a podium at the
other end of the bar, the rest of the clientele were male. It was
all rather seedy and I felt decidedly self-conscious as at least
fifteen pairs of eyes watched us approach the bar. Ahran held my
hand and gently pulled me closer to him as he addressed the
barmaid.

He spoke to her
in Ramian. She didn’t answer but nodded her head in the direction
of a short and slight, for Ramian standards, middle aged man, with
a bushy moustache and shifty eyes at the other end of the bar. Our
arrival had not gone unnoticed by him and he made his way over to
us. Much to my surprise he spoke in heavily accented English.

“We don’t see a
human for three years and then two come along in as many days.”

Oh my god! He
had seen Toby? My heart began to beat harder. The place was
uninviting and hostile and by the way the landlord was eyeing us he
wasn’t particularly happy to welcome two more newcomers. In fact,
it was hard to imagine a smile lighting up his face in any
situation. The thought that Toby had been here filled me with hope
and horror in equal measures.