Page 54 of Taken for Granite
Muscle memory took over and Tas navigated through the display, swiping away at the interface, dismissing a thousand years’ worth of error notices and failure to connect to the distress beacon. Finally, he arrived at a communication.
“What is it?” Juniper repeated her question.
“A message,” he said.
She stood next to him, hand on his shoulder. “Well? What does it say?”
“I am going home.”
* * *
juniper
“Home? Like your planet home?”
“Yes,” he said, looking up from the device, his bright amethyst eyes practically radiating excitement.
Juniper forced a smile, despite the twisting feeling in her gut. He said he would stay with her. When he walked through the motel room’s door, her heart felt so full she thought she might explode. He came back. He chose her.
But now he could go home, so none of that mattered. He’d choose home and family over her. Hell, she’d choose home and family, too. Humans hadn’t exactly been kind to him or his kind.
“This is the location.” He swiped more at the display, calling up an image of Earth. A red dot pulsed in the northern part of North America. Glyphs and symbols surrounded it, which Juniper assumed to be Durassian writing.
“I think that’s Canada. The Yukon? Northwest Territory? One the northern provinces,” she said.
The image zoomed in with a satellite image of a mountain range, but without a map overlay, it could be anywhere. Tas took his time, zooming in and then out, examining the terrain.
“This is fascinating and all, but if we’re hitting the road, I need to shower and wash the smell of cult off of me,” Chloe announced, grabbing fresh clothes before heading into the bathroom.
Juniper waited until the bathroom door shut. “What do you think?”
“They selected an area with low population density,” he said with the nod. “The sigil will lead me there.”
“Us,” Juniper said.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“You’re still hurt. Bullets took chunks out of you, for crying out of loud! I’ll drive and you’ll sleep.”
“And when I’m healed? I can fly there faster than you can drive.” He folded his arms over his chest.
“I can drive sixty miles an hour on the highway, maybe eighty, and I can do that all day. How fast can you fly and for how long?”
He huffed.
“Besides, I’m sure there’s stuff about the modern world you don’t know. You need a guide.”
“I do not require a guide. I am a decorated Khargal scout. I have infiltrated the enemy and passed undetected among them for several of your lifetimes.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know how to drive a car.”
“I can drive,” he said.
Juniper didn’t know why she tried so hard to get Tas to let her help him. She didn’t need to chauffeur his ass to Canada, but the truth was that she wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not yet. Maybe at the end of a nice long road trip, they’d be so sick of each other that she’d wave him off to his spaceship with a bounce in her step.
Yeah. Spending time in close quarters was totally how she would get over her gargoyle crush. She rolled her eyes at her own wishful thinking. “How long do you have to get there?” she asked.
“Seven days.” He pointed to a rapidly changing symbol. It must be a countdown.
