Fire's Touch (The Enlightened Species Book Three) (29 page)

“Happy?” she snapped.

With an air of dismissal, he flew off. Stacey was tired. She’d never flown much. Certainly not for more than twelve hours straight at such a high altitude for this type of distance. Thoughts of Johnny pushed her on. He turned sharply toward the pacific coast less than an hour later. Stacey ungracefully landed hard on a secluded, beautiful beach. Forward momentum and exhaustion had her face down with a mouthful of the sand, staring at the foam of a retreating wave. She scrambled to her feet before the next wave hit her.

The male shook his head with disgust and dropped her bag none to gently before unzipping his own bag.

“Do you have a name? Do you even know mine?” Her legs trembled with fatigue, but somehow they carried her closer to him and then gave out. Her ass hit the sand next to her bag.

“I know who you are; Osiris gave me your dossier before he sent me to meet you.” He flipped open the cell phone he had fished from his bag, punched some numbers, and snapped it shut.

Making the most of what could be a short break, she laid back into the sand, closing her eyes against the bright sunset reflecting brilliant colors across the ocean. “That was only one of my questions.”

“We didn’t port because those were not my orders,” he answered her earlier question. She’d already figured out Osiris aimed to exhaust her before re-uniting her with her son. Did he know of her ability?

“You’re being an ass … you know that, right?” She glared at the male and then let her lids fall shut dismissively. If nice didn’t work … maybe bitch would.

His voice softened. “Twelve. I’m known as Twelve.” Stacey peeped out at him.
One of poor Mick’s brothers
. He stared across the majestic, rapidly darkening horizon. Despite his less than friendly treatment of her thus far, she felt compassion for him.

“That name sucks. Mind if I call you something else?”

He turned a narrow-eyed, suspicious glare on her. “Like what?”

“Moody bastard” came to mind first, but from the look on Twelve’s face, he expected her to give him a name like that. “What name would you like?”

Twelve slowly sank into a sitting position next to her, his gaze never leaving hers. “I don’t see the point in a name.” The sharpness in his words betrayed how uncomfortable he was talking to her. Of all people, Stacey understood putting up a front to keep people away.

She rose on braced elbows in the sand as the last rays of daylight sank below the ocean beyond. “You fly like a hawk. I think I’ll call you Hawk.” He snorted and grumbled under his breath, but Stacey got the distinct impression Twelve liked the name. “So Hawk, what are we waiting for?”

“Nine.”

Stacey checked her watch; it was 9:15 p.m. in Arizona. Were they on Pacific Time now? “According to my watch, that’s eleven hours away?”

Hawk looked past her farther down the shore. Stacey followed his line of sight and saw another male; this one looked a lot like Mick and the other Sicarius males, his face free of tattoos. He shrugged out of a heavy parka.
Ah, Nine must be another brother.
Unlike her escort, this male gave her a small smile in greeting. These weren’t bad guys … they’d just been unlucky enough to be born into a nightmare.

Stacey found a satellite photo with a smaller one inlayed into it shoved into her face. She pretended not to look at it and pushed it away. “I need to … umm … use the facilities.” He looked around. “Seriously … I need to pee.”

“Over there.” He used his chin to indicate the line of palm trees that edged the stretch of beach. “We will avert our eyes, but you must remain where we can see you.”

“Having my son kidnapped makes compliance my motto.” Stacey saw a flash of sympathy from both males. In full view of them between the trees, she slowly slid her pants down. True to their word they dropped their gazes. Stacey quickly wrote another single word into the dirt with her finger and covered it with one of the large palm leaves.

“Okay, Scotty, now let me see where we’re beaming to.” She held her hand out to Nine as she returned to join them, studying it like she hadn’t seen it the first time, and gave them a nod.

“Who’s Scotty?” Nine asked.

Twelve barked out a short laugh. “Apparently you are. She calls me Hawk.” There was a ring of pride in his response. Stacey grinned; the males were moving into her corner, she could feel it.

A psychic flutter in her maternal bond alerted her that whatever Osiris had done to tranquilize her son was starting to wear off. An urgent need to get to him before he woke fully, scared and surrounded by strangers, had her grabbing Twelve and Nine’s arms. Nine counted to three and they ported together.

****

As the boat sped across the southern ocean, Osiris snapped his phone closed. He and his guards donned the heavy coats, hoods, and gloves they would need. The young, iron-rich Hulven female Osiris had selected from Frank’s compound in Haiti shivered, though both she and the tranquilized boy where covered from head to toe in winter gear and wrapped in a seal-skin blanket. “If that child freezes, I will kill you slowly,” Osiris warned.

The only parts of the female visible were two light-blue eyes that widened with fear. Frank had assured him that Kelly did a good job of caring for the children in the breeding facility. She’d better. Johnny would have his mother soon enough asumingStacey didn’t do anything stupid. There would still be times when Johnny couldn’t be with his mother. After tests, medical evaluations, and trials, and after Osiris figured out what made Stacey capable of conceiving with a Hulven male, he’d dispose of her altogether so her maternal bond didn’t compete with the bond Osiris would establish with his grandson. With Stacey dead, Johnny would require Kelly’s full attention.

Of the two locations Osiris had chosen, this was by far the better. The window of opportunity to utilize it had been rapidly closing, however. One more day before the sun set its final time. Then four months of darkness, storm-force winds, and cold so bitter not even Volaticus could survive the elements. The nearby land would be frozen at dry-ice temperatures to ensure that all Tellus remain thousands of feet beneath the land surface. A few schools of rogue Aquaties called this part of the ocean home. The Aquaties believed them to be human researchers. The Aquaties had long ago stopped being curious and left Osiris’s iceberg hideout in peace, even avoiding the area altogether since several of their members had been netted and captured by some human trappers Osiris had tipped off.

The Aquaties had capsized a ship and killed a boat-full of trappers after the first two losses of their kind. Osiris had achieved his goal of making the Aquaties leery enough to steer clear of the few humans in their territory … him included. The real human researchers had abandoned the facility built on top of the iceberg a few weeks ago for the winter.

Funding the human research facility had been genius. Osiris had used the human’s construction of the research facility to disguise the platinum/lead fortifications, stocking and hiding the entrance carved within the interior of the iceberg. No one except Osiris could get in or out once winter began in earnest. It was a self-contained, floating, impenetrable fortress. The magnetic pull of the South Pole even made GPS impossible. Only those familiar with the current patterns the berg floated in could find it.

Less than two hours at top speed brought the Antarctic coast into view, a desolate tundra of dense ice. The boat driver steered parallel with the land. Finally his destination loomed and rose from the ocean, larger than Manhattan. The boat driver steered carefully around it, his eyes glued to the rise and fall of ice beneath the ocean surface, searching for the small, carved-out section designed for boats to dock. Not a moment too soon—Kelly’s chattering teeth were driving Osiris out of his mind.

Osiris glanced over his shoulder at the boat carrying Ten, trailed by several more coming up fast. There was a good chance Stacey would arrive after sunset. The Antarctic was harsh in the sun, but the instant the sun set, especially the last time, plunging it into four months of darkness, it was brutally inhospitable. If she heeded his instructions, she might arrive without too many effects from the elements. If she ignored them in any manner, she’d be barely alive from the cold, but she would survive.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“We’ve got a problem.”
The telepathic voice of his brother was like acid thrown on Conlon’s extreme frustration at following the helicopter for miles to anticipate a safe spot to bring the bird down, only to have the pilot dodge at the last minute each time. The flight plan seemed to purposely travel human establishments and towns. Every once in a while he’d see a Tellus head pop out of the ground like a periscope. The Aquaties hadn’t been able to keep up on foot and had dropped out of the chase hundreds of miles ago. Although fast in water, they could only maintain short bursts of speed on land.

Mid-state Utah, he and the other warriors had had enough. They brought the ’copter down in the San Rafael Swell within a few miles of the Utah/Colorado border and just outside the small town of Green River. Shock, uncertainty, and guilt ate at Conlon. The pilot was alone in the craft, human, and he’d died on impact. A red herring, or chance? It was possible the coincidence of the helicopter take-off had nothing to do with Johnny’s abduction and they’d just killed an innocent man, probably been seen in flight by thousands of humans along the way, traumatized townsfolk that were now being gathered and mind scrubbed … all in the pursuit of an innocent or decoy.

“Pile it on, brother.”
Conlon felt a shiver of dread course down his spine at the stress in Shane’s voice. The two teenage boys he just finished scrubbing wandered dazed toward the small dirt bikes they rode over to the crash site. Since the pilot was human, Conlon and the other Volaticus were leaving the mangled helicopter with the body inside. They carved around the crash memory to remove the sight of flying Volaticus and Tellus popping out of the ground from the minds of the human witnesses.

With the telepathic bond open between Conlon and Shane, he could tell that his brother conversed with others, but he couldn’t catch the details of those conversations
. “With so many SOSC warriors mass-exiting the energy weave, we’ve only just now got the energy-signature reports.”
Did an enemy breach their protections? Was Stacey in danger? Conlon waited for Shane to elaborate; as commandant, Shane had to be dealing with an unimaginable amount of chaos.
“Stacey has left the protection of the weave, Conlon.”

Conlon searched the faces around him, expecting to see Stacey among them. The stubborn female would defy him without blinking. When he didn’t see her, he searched the horizon. How far behind them could she be? How experienced was she in flight? Would she be able to track them, or would she get lost?

“I’ll find her,”
Conlon assured Shane and left the others to finish with clean up. Taking to the sky, he retraced the path using a zigzag pattern as his ears pivoted constantly to pick up any sound along the way.

Two hours later, he landed outside a weave entry to the campus, unable to find her. Most of the people from the crash had already returned via port or a more direct path. Conlon bypassed the building where his brother had set up a tactical meeting and where the SOSC currently was organizing a full-scale search for Mick, Johnny, and now Stacey.

His hand shook when he reached for the doorknob of his house. Room by room he searched for clues. Stacey’s cell phone sat abandoned on the counter with sixty-seven missed calls, most from Cassie but others from Shane, Jess, Irsu, Umbrae, Aymee, Greycia, Greyton, and the list went on and on …

He scrolled through the calls between rooms. Outside his bedroom he found her last received call. Unknown caller … was it from Osiris or one of his minions?
Please Fates … don’t take her from me.
The lump in his throat threatened to choke off his airway completely. When he saw her things scattered around, indicating she’d packed quickly, he knew exactly what had happened. Wildly he rummaged through everything.
She would have left me a message … I know it.
His gaze traveled into the master bath. Stacey’s tattoo gun was plunged into the sheetrock of the wall with the word “SOUTH” written on a scrap of paper hanging from it.

Conlon snatched the paper and raced to the meeting. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

****

Son of a bitch
. Conlon had followed Stacey’s scent but lost it quickly when the wind picked up. He needed his partner. With fear-induced, impotent rage, he caught sight of her beside a warrior unit tracker named Gord. She wore a bikini. “Let’s go.” Mattie shifted into the shape of a chimpanzee, as if she had been waiting for him.

Conlon caught a glimpse of marine hair and opalescent skin out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw Greyton and Greycia standing next to him with an assortment of Aquatie warriors. “Conlon, my friend, we’re headed out. Our people will be along the coast of both the pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. We will parallel your southerly search from the water. Beach scouts are stationed every two hundred miles on either side. They will echo sonar into the seas to keep us informed of your coordinates along the route.”

Conlon gripped Greyton’s shoulder in appreciation and friendship. As powerful as the Aquaties were against a direct land target, their abilities were limited when long-distance, rapid land travel became necessary. “Thank you.” Greyton returned the shoulder embrace and Greycia placed a kiss to Conlon’s cheek.

Before Stacey’s arrival in Conlon’s life, Greyton, Greycia … hell pretty much everyone was merely an acquaintance. In taking part at the sparring ranges, he had made friends. Truthfully, he’d only joined in so he could keep an eye on Stacey while she trained with Jess and Umbrae, to show off for her occasionally and be near should she need him. Plus, she destroyed his private workout space in his basement. Stacey had shattered his “loner” image.