Read Online Blue Dawn by Norah-Jean Perkin - Free Book Online

of expressing himself, the meaning was clear. “Yes,”
    she forced out through gritted teeth.
    “Hmm.” Erik pulled a computerized datebook from his back pocket, snapped it open, and consulted it. He punched a few digits, then looked up at her. “All right then. We’ll have dinner tomorrow evening. Maybe lunch too. So we’ll have ample opportunity to develop the required affection as quickly as possible.”
    “What?” Allie couldn’t believe her ears. Was he crazy? Anger and hurt flared into rage. She stomped over to the door and flung it open, then picked up the camera bag and hurled it into the hallway. “Get out!”
    “But—”
    “Just get out and don’t come back!”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Erik jerked awake. For a moment,
    disorientation held him in its grip. That, and the agonizing remnants of a dream he’d had every one of the five nights since Allie had thrown him out of her apartment.
    It was similar to a dream he’d had many times before. A boy of ten, he’d had to stretch on tiptoe to look through the tiny square window into the research center’s isolation room. To see his grandmother, dressed in blinding white, curled in a fetal position in one corner, her face blank. Until suddenly she raised her head and emitted a keening wail unlike anything he had ever heard.
    Not wanting to see yet unable to look away, he had watched, horrified but fascinated by the terrifying wail of misery. A wail that had marked him for life, in ways he had never been able to understand or dismiss.
    But during the last five nights, the dream had changed. The woman’s face had grown rounder, rosier, the complexion dewy rather than gray and pallid. The whitish/yellow hair cut to a half inch all round was replaced with chin-length auburn hair, its golden streaks glinting in the overhead light.
    With a jolt of horror that always woke him up, he recognized the woman as Allie. Allie had taken his grandmother’s place. It was Allie in the isolation room, wailing out a misery she neither would nor could share with anyone on Zura. Allie whose mind had snapped, unable to cope with the reality of kidnap to a faraway planet.
    Erik sat up abruptly. His bare feet hit the carpeted floor of the apartment hotel where The Streeter had arranged his temporary lodgings. He glanced at the bedside clock. The illuminated numbers showed it was 3:10 a.m. Central Standard Time.
    He sighed. He didn’t know a lot about dreams.
    Zalians didn’t dream. But then he wasn’t a full-blooded Zalian and, despite his best efforts, he’d always known deep inside he was different. He’d hoped that the fulfillment of the final part of his destiny would put an end to the questions that had always haunted him, to the strange yearnings he could neither understand nor admit. But perhaps it was not to be.
    He snapped on the light, and grimaced at its brightness. He ran a hand through his hair, then grabbed the white terry cloth hotel robe from the end of the bed. He might as well get up now. He knew from experience he wasn’t going to sleep.
    Opening the sliding doors to the balcony, he stepped out and looked up at the sky, its clarity and myriad stars obscured by quickly-moving clouds. He took a deep breath. One of the things he found immensely appealing about Earth, or at least Chicago, was the freedom to simply step outside, unprotected, without immediate fear of harm from noxious pollution or murderous enemies. By Earth standards, Chicago might not be the safest or cleanest place around, but it certainly beat out the violence and dirt of the Zalian borderlands he had inhabited the last few years in his struggle against rebel forces.
    He took another deep breath, and looked down at the deserted street below. As he had on numerous occasions before, he wondered why, of all the destinies predicted by the seers, his had to bring him to Earth. To Earth, and face-to-face with the contradictions and unending questions that could only be spawned by his hybrid