Primal Heat (33 page)

The boy looked like he was going to wet himself, but he squeaked out. “I'm working with Sargeant Major Preston.”

“He's not lying. He's one of mine.” Bren's voice sounded from the room behind them. She stepped into the light, and Kyber saw how her face was streaked with dirt and blood. The skin beneath the grime was deathly pale, and one of her ears was caked with dried blood.

“I have another one here, or so he claims.” Dhalesh had his twin razers pressed to an Earthan's back, propelling him through the same door as Johar.

Bren nodded to them. “Yeah, he's with us, too.”

Dhalesh pointed his weapon away from the human, who relaxed a bit and let a breath ease from his lungs. “Good to see you, Bren.”

“You, too, Zielinski.” She jerked her chin at the younger human. “The two of you should get out of here before anyone sees you with us.”

“Yep. Good luck to you all. We're gone.” Zielinski grabbed the kid and suited action to words.

Jana looked around at the remaining people in the kitchen. “Everybody hanging in there?”

The Kin Guardian grinned. “It was mostly just cleaning up behind the wild man.”

Johar purred, his tongue sliding down a long fang as he climbed down off the table.

After staring down at the two dead bodies in the room, Bren glanced over at Jana. “Farid has your parents hiding out in the detached garage. He's keeping them calm the way only Farid can.”

Jana's breath whooshed out, her relief a palpable force in the room. Johar stepped forward. “My Guardians?”

A tiny headshake was Bren's response. “The shuttle landed just fine, but we didn't even get the doors open before we were under attack. The pilot's dead, the shuttle's blown. We sent two of the wounded to your shuttle, and Farid and I came here with another Kin Guardian. We got caught in a firefight; the Kin didn't make it. Farid lost his ear comm. somewhere along the way, but is okay otherwise. Or he was a few minutes ago. I-I can't sense him through our bond with the white noise going.” Her voice was flat, desolate. She shook herself and touched her bloodied ear. “We found the Townsends, but a bullet destroyed my comm. so we couldn't call for help. Talk about a serious goatfuck.”

Johar barked out a laugh, the Kin behind him coughing into his fist. Kyber clapped his hand over the Earthan woman's shoulder, knowing how each death—Earthan and Sueni—tore at her, despite any jokes. “You did well. Thank you.”

Her eyes went remote the way only a warrior's could. “We'll get through this. Let's finish the mission.”

Jana hurried to the door Johar had come through, stepping past the Kin Guardian. “The garage is this way.”

Dhalesh held her back, planting a hand on her stomach. “Allow me to go first, Empress.”

Nodding, she moved aside to let him by. Everyone else fell into line behind them, Kyber bringing up the rear. Bren walked smoothly, and he sensed no injury besides the one to her ear. The comm. seemed to have taken the brunt of the bullet's damage, which was a good thing.

The side door to the garage stood ajar and Bren broke into a run, the scent of her fear leaving a rancid trail behind her.

Something was wrong.

His heart slammed against his ribs. He could smell his cousin drawing closer with each step, but that meant his body was near, not that life still flowed through that body. He loped behind Bren, easily keeping stride with the smaller human.

“Mom? Dad?” Jana called at the same time Bren yelled, “Farid?”

“I put them in the storm cellar under the garage.” Farid staggered around the side of the building, one sleeve ripped off his shirt, his fangs bloodied as if he'd bitten someone. He slid his razer back into the holster at his hip.

Bren raced forward and he caught her against his chest. She bunched her hands in his tunic, searching his face. “Are you all right?”

Kyber could see how his cousin's fingers shook when they brushed back a loose lock of Bren's dark hair. “I am unharmed, my One.”

She nodded, took a deep breath, and released his shirt as she let the air sigh out of her lungs. “Show us where you stowed the Townsends.”

“In here. Don't stand out in the open.” Jana disappeared into the building, and Kyber heard things thumping and crashing around. Subtle. Very subtle. His lips twitched.

The comm. in his ear buzzed with life. “Captain Sajan, we have two injured Guardians from the second shuttle here.”

“We have the Arjuns. No other survivors.” Johar's voice rang clearly in Kyber's ear as the other man walked into the garage. The rest of their team followed, and Dhalesh stood guard by the door.

There was a long pause over the comm. before the Guardian at the shuttle responded. “Understood, sir.”

Johar sneezed in the musty gloom of the garage, and it took a moment for Kyber's eyes to adjust. A heavy door stood open, with stairs leading downward, and Jana drew an older couple up the steps and out toward them. Her gaze sought him out in the darkness, so he moved to her side and cupped her jaw in his palm, brushing a smudge of dirt from her cheek.

She glanced back at the older couple. “Mom, Dad, this is Kyber. Kyber, my parents.”

The man held out his hand, and Kyber took it. Regrets swam in Mr. Townsend's eyes. “General Arthur came with men. We heard them talking about…how he'd hurt our daughter. How he was going to make you watch this time.”

“There won't be a ‘this time.' I swear it.” He shook the man's hand hard and let go. “Arthur will be dealt with, but we need to get you and your wife back to my ship.”

“We may have a problem with that.” Dhalesh spoke quietly from the door. Kyber's sensitive ears heard the hum of engines over the squeal of white noise.

They moved to the windows. Bren groaned. “Okay, this just went from goatfuck to total clusterfuck.”

“They know we're here or at least that we were not long ago,” Kyber said.

Vehicles bearing far more soldiers than they could deal with pulled to a stop in front of the house. It was only a matter of time before they came to check the outer buildings. He watched Jana's hand lift to press her ear comm. “This is the empress. I need air support. I'd like you to blow as many of the houses on my parents' street as you can. They should be empty, so it won't kill anyone who might be working for us, but we need to give them something to think about besides finding us. So rain as much fire down on them as possible.”

Her mother gasped in horror, and her father held her tight. He nodded to Kyber, his jaw set in the same stubborn line Jana so often wore. Kyber almost smiled.

Then it came to him. Arthur's scent. He was close. He did smile, then. Anticipation of what was to come made him purr. “I've scented Arthur. Bren, Johar, and I will hunt him.”

Jana's head bobbed in a quick nod. “Mom, Dad, come with me.
Now.
”

Farid checked the charge on his weapon, glanced up at Bren, and reeled her in with one hand for a hard, hungry kiss. Their bond almost shimmered in the air with the devotion pulsing between them. Kyber felt a stab of ugly jealousy, wishing that he and Jana shared such an open bond. He wanted that so badly he could taste it. The only way it would happen was if they both got through this, if he defeated Arthur, if he protected them all.

No more of his people should die for this expedition he'd brought them to the back end of space for. He would not, could not, fail them.

It ended tonight.

 

The image of her childhood home—her whole neighborhood—exploding into flames would be burned into Jana's mind forever. The remains of dead bodies that they'd left
inside
the house littering the once-pristine yard, helping her mother step over a severed, charred limb. The scent of roasting meat that she knew was human flesh.

Her stomach turned, but she pushed on.

It reminded her far too much of the day Kyber was taken. The smoke, the blood, the sizzle of razer fire. It was worse that the battle had taken place in a field not far from here. This little Midwestern town had been a warzone before because of their quarrel with Arthur.

Dhalesh moved out in front of them, Farid guarding the rear. Jana held her razer steady, watchful of any approaching soldiers. Her mother clung to her other hand. “Jana, I want to tell you how sorry I am that I—that
we
—didn't believe in you.”

Jana nodded, though she doubted her mother could see it in the dark, and kept moving. “It's okay, Mom. Don't worry about it.”

“I'm so sorry I thought you'd been brainwashed and sucked into some kind of alien sex cult.” Dhalesh shot an incredulous glance back at that, and Jana fought the wild urge to giggle. Her mother stumbled a bit, and Jana turned to catch her as her father reached forward to do the same. Her mother continued in a furtive whisper, “We were so worried that we'd lose you, too, we pushed you away. I'm sorry we didn't believe in you. That's
our
fault, not yours. I'm sorry we ever made you feel you couldn't tell us the truth when things went wrong. Thank you for coming to get us, for giving us a second chance. We're glad to be a part of your life, and we'll apologize to your Kyber, too. We'll do better, we promise. You don't have to pretend to be happy and perfect all the time. We can handle the truth.”

Tears welled in Jana's eyes and she blinked fast to clear her vision. Her heart clenched hard and robbed her of breath. This was
exactly
what she'd always wished one of her parents would say to her, but the timing sucked. “Mom, seriously. I want to have this conversation, I really do, but not here and not now.”

Her mother blinked back tears, too, but her voice was level and calm. “I know, but just in case something happens tonight, I don't want any of us to have regrets.”

Jana pulled her in for a tight, one-armed hug. As nice as it was to have her parents understand that they'd hurt her, she knew they'd had their own grief to work through. They were human, just like her. They made mistakes and had problems and weren't perfect, just like her, but they could get better. They could take the good as well as the bad, and that was what made everything all right. She didn't
want
to be perfect, she liked herself just as she was. It was a revelation a long time in coming, breaking through another of those walls in her mind, but better late than never. She smiled and breathed in the familiar scent of her mother's hair. “I love you, Mom. We're going to get through this, and we can finish this discussion on board the ship.”

“Okay.” Her mom squeezed her back, and her dad wrapped his arms around both of them, kissing the tops of their heads. “We love you, too, baby.”

Farid spoke softly from behind them, “Your Majesty, we need to move.”

They broke apart with an embarrassed laugh. Her dad patted her shoulder. “It's going to take some getting used to with people calling you ‘Your Majesty.'”

“Don't worry about it.” She shrugged and turned to tow her mom after their Kin Guardian. “You're my family. You still call me Jana.”

She kept her gaze moving, watched for an attack, felt the ground rock beneath her as their fighter wings fired their razer cannons on something in the distance. An explosion lit the night sky, making the air around her vibrate. Farid snarled, and she winced in sympathy. The bombardment of noise wouldn't be good for the half-feline Kith. The white noise that made a low hum throughout the town made
her
temples throb, so she didn't want to imagine what it did to Farid.

She swallowed, trying to shove down her anxiety over what had happened to Kyber, where he was, what he was doing. The connection between them trailed to nothing, a deep void that scared her. It was worse than when he'd been kidnapped by Arthur. Then, the longer he was in the noise, the less she was able to sense him until he'd severed their One link entirely. Whatever they were using now had been amped up, because she'd lost all mental contact with him the moment they'd left the shuttle.

It shook her more than she'd like to admit.

“We've got company coming.” Farid's voice jerked her out of her worry about Kyber and brought her back to the here and now. They took cover in some bushes beside the road, but it wouldn't block a bullet. They were too exposed. Shit.

She adjusted her grip on her razer, tried to regulate her breathing and the way her heart had begun to race. Her hands only shook a little. “Protect my parents. They don't know how to fight.”

Soldiers were on them in moments, bullets flying. Several went down in the charge, falling under the sizzling onslaught of razer fire. Farid shouted something else, some warning, but she didn't catch it. She was too busy keeping herself planted between her parents and danger. Her mother screamed once, but other than that, her parents remained silent and stayed out of the way of those with weapons and the knowledge to use them.

Three soldiers went down before her razer before two more crashed through the bushes, driving her into a wide, grassy yard. Farid took her place in front of her parents, and she watched her father slug a man in the face. She almost grinned but snapped her focus back to the soldiers before her. They had their guns trained on her.

One barked at her, “Put your gun down and surrender.”

Yeah, right. She didn't bother with a verbal response, just shot him in the thigh and sprinted across the lawn toward a small house. Bullets send dirt flying into her face, and she leaped for the cover of the wooden porch, twisting midair to fire at the second soldier. She hit her mark, and he screamed and went down.

Another man grabbed her arm from behind and smashed her hand into the porch railing. Her razer went tumbling under the deck and she felt his gun press under her ear. Slamming her head back into his face, she latched on to his forearm and pulled his pistol over her shoulder until she could bite down on his wrist. He shouted, dropping the gun. She kicked behind her, her boot heel making solid contact with his shin. Squirming free of his hold, she thrust the butt of her hand under his chin and snapped his head back. He stumbled away, into the front yard again, and she went after him. He pulled a huge, wicked knife from his utility belt. She swallowed and kept her gaze on the gleam of the blade in what little moonlight was revealed by scattered clouds.