The Mythmakers: An Impulse Power Story Read online

  “If you mean a life-mate, then no, I do not. We make love when we are attracted, that is all. Right now, I am deeply attracted to you, Steffi Savannah. Am I wrong in thinking you reciprocate the desire?”

  “No. It’s just that you talk about it like it’s mealtime, or something you do to alleviate boredom. Plus, you’ve not told me enough about yourself. Won’t you sit down?”

  He didn’t appear to know whether to smile or frown. In the end he tipped his hat, then widened his eyes with an alluring confidence. “What if I assure you it will not affect our lovemaking?”

  A very careful response.

  “Then I’d ask why you’re dodging the question.”

  “Rather than tell you what I am, I would prefer to show you. Later. I promise you will smile.”

  “You sure you’re not some kind of politician? With a slippery tongue like that, you could—” She coughed, banishing the image from her mind. “Okay, Mr. Denmark, I’ll put it to you this way—if you don’t sit down right now, no one will be going down on anyone. Period.”

  After running his fingers through his hair, Arne cocked his head to one side, studying her. “I do not understand. Which part of that ultimatum involves coital enmeshment?”

  Steffi shivered, then wagged her finger at him. “See? You make it sound like we’re putting up chicken wire. I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that, Arne. Why don’t you take me back to your lagoon, introduce me to your friends? I know mine will be dying to meet you.”

  His wounded expression lifted a little.

  “It’s not that I don’t fancy you,” she explained. “It’s just that where I come from, jumping straight into bed is usually an empty experience. I’m sure you’re a perfect gentleman, but this isn’t the way to go about convincing me. It might be your custom here, but I’m afraid I’m just not having it.”

  Despite speaking English, Arne seemed to have a hard time grasping what she meant. His blue eyes seared, and he fidgeted above her, as though he was wrestling aside generations of conditioning, tradition and permissiveness, to gain a perspective hitherto unseen. Perhaps her abstinence was as alien to him as pollen refusing a bee. Maybe, to Arne’s kind, it was bad manners to turn down a sexual advance after both partners admitted to the mutual attraction. Tough shit! Steffi had had enough of that cheap tequila and last-one-out-the-door-afterward-pays-for-the-room sex.

  “I am sorry if I offended you.” He offered her his hand. “My knowledge of Earth’s customs is limited to these recordings…and our own practices, passed down for centuries. It was not my intention to entrap you. Please accept my apology, Steffi Savannah.”

  She loved the way he over-enunciated her name, as though each syllable were dipped in crisp fjord water, priceless. “Accepted,” she replied. “Now won’t you sit down? We still have a date, don’t we? I mean it’s not every day a girl gets taken to Loch Ness.”

  He kept eye contact while sitting opposite her, his tense, befuddled face now pink and bereft of all confidence. His Adam’s apple bobbed twice over heavy swells. What had she done? Against his every gesture so far—his sweet, outreaching nature—Arne now appeared intimidated, perhaps even afraid of her. Why? Just because she’d told him to cool it? To wait ’til she was ready? Was she the first woman who’d ever spoken her mind like this? Stood up to him?

  “Will you be all right?” She wanted to laugh at how ridiculous that sounded, at how pathetic he was being about the whole thing. But if he really was so naïve, then this might very well be a life-changing moment for him, on a par with his first ejaculation, or, as a two-year-old, having the shit scared out of him by his neighbour—a large prehistoric fish.

  “I will be fine,” he replied, chipper all of a sudden. “I realise how little I know, and how much you must know. I must seem like a child to you.”

  “No, just a really sweet Danish gent…who likes getting his own way. All things considered, you’re shooting far, sunshine. And I bet there’s a lot I could learn from you and yours. Being polite, for one thing.”

  He smiled without defence, and she imagined the wet paint behind his eyes and in his cheeks. Her paint? Her handiwork? For despite this being Arne’s favourite haunt, they were both on fresh, uncharted ground.

  The warm, inviting atmosphere in the bar restaurant circulated quiet merriment and wafts of delicious beer. Each look she shared with Arne started out tense, only to deepen, fizz inside, until her heart rate galloped and the distant, untamed passion she’d braved on Hellespont reared its feral memories. No words, just hopes and brittle promises.

  She yawned. It had been a long day without a proper night’s sleep—and so much to take in. “Sorry,” she said. “It must be catching up with me.”

  “Would you like to rest in the bedroom? I can always take a walk around the loch.”

  She stifled another yawn. “Now that you mention it, that’s not a bad…idea.” But she didn’t want him leaving her alone in this unprecedented place. What they needed was some sort of compromise, one that would keep them together whilst upholding her take-it-slow promise.

  “Shall I tell you where the room is?” he asked.

  “Hmm…no, but you can show me.” Her quick wink only seemed to puzzle him further. “Okay, Arne, just trust me on this. I think I’ve found the solution. Go on, lead the way.”

  After tapping his walking cane on the tabletop, he retorted, “And you call me cryptic, Steffi.”

  The stairs seemed steeper than they had a while ago. Was she more tired than she’d realised? A middle-aged, redheaded man sporting a pipe and a well-trimmed moustache blew smoke into Arne’s face on the stairs. Arne’s deafening coughs rang out, but the man didn’t so much as blink in response. The noise reminded Steffi it was time to send an e-alert. She flipped open the protective casing on her forearm, then pressed and held the red button for five seconds. When she released it, the button lit up and flashed exactly ten times.

  No problem. The alien simulation hadn’t shut the gadget off. Rex’s reply of ten green flashes commenced right away, reassuring her the signals were unaffected.

  She hesitated before clicking the casing back into place. Hmm…subsequent e-alerts would not be so straightforward. Every thirty minutes? What a goddamn nuisance. Alarms and quiet time—two things created to confound one another…and Steffi. She’d never sleep in half-hour increments but, on the other hand, she had to send those alerts.

  Yawning, she spun the timer dial around the button—click, click, click—until it reached the third notch. Automatic e-alert every thirty minutes. She wouldn’t catch Rex’s replies, but he’d be perfectly safe with the others aboard the Albatross. If anything did happen outside, his signal would trigger a wailing siren inside her e-band, or, failing that, they could pinpoint her signal and come get her. Emergencies aside, however, she needed this uninterrupted time.

  The soft landing lights above the first floor corridor reminded her of old Xiu Pau’s attic, where she’d spent many happy hours as a teenager, nursing and feeding the stray Hephaestian critters he’d taken in—an illegal practice on Hellespont. Steffi couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t broken one law or another. Not that it had ever lost her any sleep. There were laws and then there were laws worth having. Whatever else she’d done, she’d never broken the latter.

  Steffi smirked. The words of every criminal who ever lived.

  Arne led her to the penultimate room on the left. Number 17. The oak-panelled door swung open with a gentle push of his arm. He clasped her clammy hand in both of his, easing her inside the cosy bedroom.

  “What are you really?” she whispered, melting in the sensual gaze of his unblinking blue eyes.

  “I am yours, whenever you desire it,” he replied.

  She flushed and, trying to regain her grip on the situation, ghosted at the foot of the bed when his warm caramel breath touched her lips. “Okay, this isn’t what you think it is.” She gathered herself. “I’m inviting you to share my bed, but that’s all. We’ll
lie apart and just keep each other company. How does that sound?”

  “I do not know. Surprising?”

  “Exactly. Have you ever done that before?”

  “Never.”

  “Me either. And that’s why it’s the right thing to do.” Steffi walked to the near side of the bed, peeled the covers back, then started to undress. “Do you think you can handle that?”

  “Yes. But can you?” The cheeky way he mimicked her quick wink from downstairs made her shiver with delight. Maybe he was starting to lighten up after all.

  Steffi undressed to her underwear and climbed into bed. After drawing the maroon curtains, Arne followed her in, wearing only boxer shorts. Neither of them said a word, and to Steffi, the three feet between them felt like the most wonderful promise she’d ever kept. Alone in bed with a gorgeous man, and she was untouchable.

  It was a day for firsts.

  She drifted away imagining what he tasted like, and what it would be like to swim in his lagoon. On a trip to nowhere, any stopover could be a destination.

  This was hers.

  Chapter Five

  “So what are you, Arne?”

  He appeared to have trouble keeping his eyes open—he claimed he’d stayed awake, watching over her, throughout the six hours she’d slept—but he sighed into his pillow and diverted his glance with an almost clownish self-consciousness.

  She chuckled through her nose. “What’s the matter? You really don’t want to tell me?” The idea gave her pause. She swallowed but tried to hide it by shifting her head on the pillow.

  “I would rather show you.” Such a soft, cuddly answer. What was it about him that made her feel like a teenage girl with a crush?

  Facing each other three feet apart on the pillows, just to stare, was the most intimate she’d been with anyone in years. Sex with Bo had been for sport, for pleasure. Never for sharing. He’d loved her without knowing anything about who she really was, and she’d wanted it that way. That distance. A part of her had been off limits to men.

  But Arne had come along and intrigued the real Steffi into bed, if only to sleep. How? She studied his narrow blue eyes while they struggled to stay open. Before, she hadn’t seen past the stunning coolness. But reflecting back—his solitary introduction in the corridor, his extraordinarily ingratiating efforts to befriend a complete stranger—she perceived sadness, over-friendliness, the lonely yearning of the man inside.

  “What’s your number one wish?” She hid the cunning in a blasé delivery. She reckoned his answer would have to reveal at least something about him.

  “I would like to set foot on a planet like Earth.” He didn’t elaborate, but the immediate and matter-of-fact response told her he’d already given the idea a lot of thought.

  “Which planets have you visited?” she asked.

  “None.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Not one,” he reiterated. “In all the generations of our colony, no one has ever set foot outside this ship.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I am not.” He sounded severe, a little bitter.

  “So you want to just explore…see what’s out there?”

  “Yes. Is that too much to ask?”

  She checked her frown before it set. “How could it be? You’ve been trapped here all your life. It’s paradise, but it’s paradise with bars. There’s a whole universe to explore, sunshine. Wow, Arne, have you met the right girl!” She propped her head on a warm palm, her elbow bunching the pillow against the wooden headrest. “Did I tell you I’m the captain of my own ship?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Well? Wanna come? With me, I mean.”

  “To where?”

  “Does it matter? You said you wanted to get off this tub. I’m saying I can take you places you’ve never dreamed of…and for free.” She cringed at that last part—it sounded like a tacky advert for a budget package holiday.

  “Why would you promise that, Steffi? We have barely met. Not ten hours.”

  “And? When you’ve been tearing through space as long as I have, you learn to snatch any opportunity that comes along. You’re just wary because all you’ve ever known is this safe little bubble. You’ve known exactly what’s going to happen and at what time every day. If you come with me, you’ll have to kiss all that goodbye.”

  Silence. Another sign of genuine trepidation from the man who’d tried to get into her pants in record time. Well, well. Not all superhuman after all. She wanted to kiss him and hold him against her breasts and tell him not to worry. But this was the decision of his life. She’d only just entered his world, and now she wanted to turn it on its head? If their positions were reversed, she knew she’d need space to think.

  Space.

  “Maybe you want some time to yourself.” She combed his untidy fringe with her fingernails.

  “I would need to talk it over with my kin. They are well acquainted with my wanderlust fancies, but they do not share them. Perhaps one or two secretly dream of life away from the lake, yet it is strange that I am the only one who visits Earth—these reconstructions—habitually. They must feel content where they are.”

  “So where did your kin fit into the watchers’ plan, originally?”

  Arne laid his head flat on the pillow, facing the ceiling. He closed his eyes. “They created each species for a specific purpose, as part of their experiment. When the time was right, they were going to introduce the creatures into their so-called natural habitats on Earth, one at a time. Nessie would be set loose in the loch, fairies would be released in rural England, and so on. I will show you as many as I can. The watchers then planned to gauge humanity’s reaction to each mythological creature—to see what effect this new reality would have on their superstitious nature. If a thing is real, one no longer has to blindly believe in it, or fear it. Based on the outcome of these experiments, they planned to formulate a strategy to phase out mankind’s irrational beliefs over time. No one knows how. Evidence suggests they had no real conception of what they were up against, as if they themselves had never known superstition. Their records hint at a radical plan—the introduction of widespread but bogus visions of angels and gods, a kind of disinformation leading up to the big payoff. On an allotted date, in front of the entire world, the watchers were going to reveal it was they who had manufactured the visions, not any God. They were going to show humanity, once and for all, that there is no supreme being. Nothing to fear but themselves. That it is enough to simply exist and share one’s existence with others. That may have been their plan.”

  “To stop us destroying the galaxy in some god’s name?”

  “Exactly, Steffi. You see, for all the watchers’ vast intellect, they were without one vital human component.”

  “Insanity?”

  “A capacity to believe in that which cannot be proven. The enigma of faith.”

  She scoffed louder than she wanted. “You mean the complete fucking stupidity of faith. You said it yourself, we blew the galaxy to kingdom come because some god told us to. If you ask me, the watchers were on to something.”

  “Nevertheless, they were thwarted before the plan could be implemented.”

  “By whom?”

  “By a far less forgiving party who arrived from the future without permission, and with one purpose—to annihilate Earth. They did. The watchers destroyed that enemy ship before it had a chance to hunt down the rest of humanity’s colonies. But in the fire-fight, our ship was also badly damaged. It could no longer return home. Gradually, over hundreds of years, the watchers died of old age until there were none left. The last one died more than six of our generations ago. And we have been drifting ever since.”

  Steffi masked a huge, regretted yawn. “My God. That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard. You’ve just been drifting for centuries inside your little homes? I mean gigantic homes,” she corrected herself, “just waiting for time to run out?”

  “You could put it like that.” His flat-lined delive
ry could not be so cool underneath. Steffi reckoned she’d planted another new seed of perspective in his mind, one she’d nurture a little if she could.

  “Yeah,” she urged, “this has been your whole world all this time. It’s no wonder your friends are so attached to it. I would be. But seriously, you have to ask yourself: what’s gonna happen in the end? If you don’t leave sooner or later, you might get pulled into a sun or pummelled by asteroids. And if you don’t leave now, with me, you might never get another chance.” Quietly preening, Steffi was adamant she’d convinced him to join her on the Albatross. Her logic was sound, if not her method. But she couldn’t bear the thought of undocking without him. Of all the scenarios pinballing through her brain, it was the only one giving her that sinking feeling.

  No, she would abduct him if he refused.

  She swallowed the word salvage with a wry smile.

  “So, Arne, where do we go from—?”

  Crack!

  The door slammed open and three armed men tore into the bedroom. Their uniforms were burgundy with gold trim and silver epaulettes. Royals. Arne sat up, flabbergasted. Steffi’s first reaction was to dive over him and make for the window. The adrenaline rush electrified her limbs and made her feel twice as fast.

  Something hard and blunt thudded against the back of her neck. The splintering pain tossed cold waves up into her brain. Her legs buckled.

  “Not so fast,” quipped one of the men. He dealt her a vicious kick to the stomach, then dragged her by her hair to the middle of the room. “I don’t know what this place is, but it’s starting to look up.” Yanking her hair into his fist, he pressed the barrel of his pistol against her neck.

  “Who are you?” yelled Arne, kneeling upright on the bed.

  The other two men watched him, their guns trained on his muscular chest. “Don’t try anything, pretty boy,” one of them mocked. “This bitch is under arrest for treason. Soon as we get her back to October, she’ll dangle with the rest of her crew. If you try anything, you’ll join her.”