Who had dared hurt her?
Selena straddled him, laying her body over his. She wasn’t a small female. No, she was a bundle of taut muscles and honed reflexes. Perfection.
He kissed her soft cheek, the hard line of her jaw, the warm stretch of her neck, all while she rocked her hips against his. He spread his legs wider, opening hers, hating the layers of clothes that separated their bodies.
“Selena,” Bastion said as he rubbed his cheek against her throat, “tell me about the Omnis.”
Her body tightened. She drew back from him and frowned, withdrawing completely from their warm intimacy.
“This isn’t a dream,” she said.
“Of course it is.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I am just a dream.”
Selena scooted back from him, in full retreat. Bastion sighed as he stared up at the starry sky illusion he still kept in place, hating that she owed her loyalty to a team other than his.
“We are on the same side of this war, you know,” Bastion said. They had to be. The Matchmaker wouldn’t have selected her for him otherwise.
Or would he?
“Get out of my bed. And out of my room.” She was crouched at the head of her bed, a cold and hostile stance for a warrior who’d just been like melted caramel in his arms.
Bastion got off the bed. He retrieved her knife and set it on her nightstand. He wished he could read minds as easily as Liege could. Instead, Bastion could only read energy and catch thoughts that were clearly broadcast, but that didn’t preclude him from imposing compulsions, which was what he did now. Facing her, he compelled her to remember only bits of their encounter and none of the details about him.
“Know this: I am yours and you are mine. I’m coming for you.”
2
In the hallway, Bastion paused to take stock of what had just happened. His body thrummed with excitement. He’d found his woman, his one and only. His light.
And it was entirely possible she belonged to his enemies—the Omnis.
He forced himself to get his shit together and get on with his mission. He became aware of the hallway he was in, of the rooms he’d passed on his way to hers, rooms where other mutants had once been or were now. The War Bringer, whose energy he and Liege had encountered in the Omni subterranean stronghold, was here. The War Bringer had fought his way out of an Omni torture chamber, but did the fighter’s conflict with the Omnis signify a schism in their ranks rather than a direct hit from an Omni enemy?
There was much to see and understand yet. Bastion had been observing from the outside for a couple of weeks, but he needed to know more before he could report back to Liege.
At the moment, the mansion’s occupants slept, oblivious to the threat walking among them. They had robust technical protections in place around the house and grounds against wicked humans, but nothing secured them from Bastion or his kind.
The house was filled with fighters—and their families. They lived here openly, with no attempt to hide their whereabouts from the locals or the Omnis. Bastion knew, from surveilling the household, that some of the women who were not fighters operated businesses, both in town and from the compound itself. People—regulars—were in and out of this place all the time.
Was this group hiding in plain sight? Were they under the Omnis’ protection? Or were they just dangerously ignorant of the fight they’d entered?
He could feel the energy of more than one mutant around this place. If these fighters had mutants among them, then they should know what his kind were capable of…unless the mutants here had not shown their true selves.
So many questions.
Earlier, while he’d been on his way to Selena’s room, several of the other rooms had caught his attention. Two had recently housed mutants. Bastion went into the first of those rooms. A male mutant had stayed here recently.
Did the other residents here know they’d had a mutant for a guest? If so, did that make a checkmark in the column for these people being Omni affiliates or enemies? Bastion put it in the pro-Omni column he was mentally tallying.
He went down a few doors to another room recently occupied by two mutants. A bonded couple had been here. He’d felt the presence of a mutant female from his patrolling outside the house. Was this whom he’d been sensing? Both of these mutants had the stink of Omnis all over them. Who were they? Why had they been here? Was this couple the Ratcliffs—the scientists Liege had sent him to find?
He should have come inside when he first arrived rather than observing from a distance for so long, but he hadn’t wanted to tip off his enemy, Brett Flynn. If Bastion had found this band of fighters, it was only a matter of time before Flynn did so as well. With his energy all over the place, Flynn would know it held importance for the Legion.
So far, Flynn was nowhere in sight, so Bastion couldn’t put off this exploration. And now that the Matchmaker had connected him to his light, he’d had to come inside and find her.
Did the fighters who lived here know they’d been infiltrated by mutants? Perhaps that was why they could exist here with impunity; they’d struck a deal with the devil.
Definitely a tick in the pro-Omni column.
Bastion continued down the hallway into the main section of the house. He held his hands up near each door, letting himself sample the energies that used the room.
When he came to the room the War Bringer used, he felt a little thrill of anticipation. This man had survived Omni torture. Bastion wanted the whole story, but he couldn’t expect to learn it tonight. He slipped inside the room. A man and woman were asleep in the bed. The woman was a petite blond. She fit the Omnis’ white supremacist ideal of a perfect woman.
Another tick in the column of these people potentially being Omnis.
His gaze moved to the War Bringer. Bastion had been leaning toward the theory that this man had fought a fellow Omni warrior for the rights to the woman, but that theory crashed and burned when he got a good look at the War Bringer.
Olive skin, black hair, tribal symbols seared into the soft under-skin of his forearms. For the millionth time, Bastion wished he had Liege’s skill for reading minds. The War Bringer’s leather wrist cuffs were lying on the dresser. Bastion picked them up.
Guerre, I need you, Bastion said, summoning his team’s healer. Guerre was hypersensitive to energies and could often read detailed events from objects. His psychometry worked even through a mental connection with any of the guys on the team.
Go, Bastion, Guerre said.
Can you get a read on the cuffs I’m holding?
Hang on.
A long stretch of silence chewed up the minutes. Bastion stayed quiet. Guerre could work miracles, but he needed complete focus.
What is it you want to know? Guerre asked.
Tell me about the man who owns them.
He’s from an American Indian tribe. Lakota. I’m not sure which subgroup.
Huh. A tick in the column for Omni enemies.
Is he an Omni? Bastion asked. Might as well get Guerre’s take on the guy’s situation.
Again there was a long pause. It’s unclear. He’s entangled with them, for sure, Guerre said.
Thanks. Go back to sleep.
Bastion stared at the big leather cuffs. The Omnis would not admit a Native American into their wretched ranks, except perhaps as a servant, slave, or human experiment. Brett Flynn would love to turn the War Bringer into a ghoul.
Bastion looked at the couple sleeping on the bed. They had an extraordinary energy binding them. Pure, almost tangible, it was what the energy of love felt like. He set the cuffs down, suddenly feeling as if he’d overstepped. He left the War Bringer’s room, more confused than ever about the loyalties held by this group of fighters.
The bedrooms in the rest of the upper floor were of no interest to him. Bastion went downstairs. A short hallway led to the southern bedroom suite on the first floor. The first bedroom was empty. Well, empty of current occupants, anyway. It
was packed with the energies of many people, almost as if it were a passageway.
In the next bedroom, a couple slept. Bastion kept himself invisible, but even with such protections in place, his presence woke the man. He got up and looked around the room, then went out into the living room shared by the three bedrooms in that suite.
His absence gave Bastion a chance to focus on the blond female that shared the man’s bed. She was a mutant.
Another female mutant. Maybe this was the one he’d felt from outside.
Bastion wondered what change had happened in the core Omni ethics, thin as they were, that they were now modifying female humans?
The man came back into the room and slipped under the covers. As he pulled his woman close, energy arced between them, like two halves of an electrical device that only sparked when the pieces were close to each other.
Bastion stumbled back and banged into a chair. His careless movement startled the man, who cursed and turned the light on. Bastion held still, confident he couldn’t be seen. The man threw the covers off and stomped to the door again. Of course, there was nothing to be seen in the suite’s living room.
When he returned to his bed and his woman, that energy arced again. This time, Bastion was prepared for it. Outside of this house, he’d only seen that electrical bond when Liege and Summer were near each other.
These two people were in love. Desperately. Beautifully. Completely. Like the War Bringer and his woman.
But that didn’t mean they weren’t Omnis.
Bastion tended to believe that Omnis were born without souls—the most evil of psychopaths—but perhaps even the soulless could fall in love.
Given that the woman was a mutant, and the only mutants Bastion had ever met were ones created by Omnis, then it meant another tick in the pro-Omni column.
It was curious, though, that this woman didn’t sense him. He’d been able to sense her from way out in the woods surrounding the property. Her man was more woke than she.
Bastion pondered that as he left their room and went into the next one. Two boys were fast asleep inside it.
He hated the fact that children lived here. It muddied the waters, making this place seem more of a familial retreat than a stronghold. The Legion couldn’t strike against the compound without significant collateral damage. Perhaps that explained the presence of the children. Omnis would hide behind any shield they found useful.
Bastion had just stepped into the small living room shared by the bedrooms in that wing when a realization hit him. Human energy had many identifiers, but two aspects were most prominent. The first were biological markers shared by families of the same blood. The second came from a human’s personality. An individual might share biological markers and have diametrically opposed personality markers, but you could always sense who was related to whom.
One of the boys in the room Bastion just left was a biological son to both the man and woman sleeping in the next room, and the other was biologically related to only the female. And there was another family bond from the man—he was a biological relative of the mutant male who’d had a room upstairs, the one who’d slept alone.
These people weren’t just Omni allies; they were family.
What was going on here?
Bastion resumed his discovery of the house and its occupants. He walked down a short hallway, through two glass doors, and into another wing at that end of the house—a large gym building. The first room was a basketball court, or had been before it had been repurposed. Now it served as a classroom, a living room, and a bunkroom. About a dozen and a half bunks were stacked in rows at the far end.
Bastion stepped into the dark room. The only illumination came from the ambient light in the hallway, but he could see almost as well in low-light conditions as in daylight. He crossed the long space and wandered among the bunks. Most of them held sleeping boys. A few contained young adults—or older teens, at least.
More children.
Why were they there? Why did these people keep some children close but banished others to this huge gym wing?
The Omnis did things like that, use children in any way they wished—as servants, test subjects, sex slaves.
These kids had a vibe of abuse. Definitely a tick in the pro-Omni column.
The rest of the rooms in that wing were standard for a gym—a pool room, locker rooms, and a weight room. No one was in any of them.
He returned to the main house and went through the rest of the rooms, finding nothing of great interest. He didn’t want these people to be Omni supporters, but the mental balance sheet he’d been tallying was leaning heavily in that direction.
And what did that mean for his Selena?
If she was in deep with Omnis, he was going to have to crack her brainwashing.
Or terminate her.
3
A knock sounded on Selena’s door. She didn’t get up. The door wasn’t locked. If she were needed badly enough, whoever was knocking would come in. She still had ten minutes before needing to dress, so she lingered in bed, trying to hold on to the fading threads of last night’s dream.
“Sel?” Ace asked.
“Yeah.”
She came into her room. “What are you doing? You missed our workout.”
Selena stared at the ceiling, remembering the stars that had been there in her dream. “You ever have a dream that felt so real that you actually miss the world it showed you?”
“No.” Ace plopped down in one of Selena’s armchairs near the window.
“I did last night.” Selena looked at Ace then back at the ceiling. “I don’t want to move. I don’t want to wake up and lose it.”
“What was it about?”
Selena shook her head. “I don’t really remember. There was a man. God, he was gorgeous. Big. Hairy. Obnoxious. Not at all my type.”
Ace laughed. “But he was gorgeous.”
Selena blinked. “There was something about him. Something addictive. In the dream, I think I loved him. You know, the real kind of love. Not a wannabe kind. Not the fill-in-the-gaps-for-a-while kind. We watched stars from my bed. But I think it almost turned into a nightmare. It’s all fuzzy now.”
“Shit, Sel. That sounds like a helluva trip.”
Selena sighed. “Yeah. I guess it was.” She sat up. “I just wish it had been real.”
Ace bent her knees and braced her heels on the chair as she folded her arms around her shins. “I’ve had dreams I didn’t want to let go of.”
“Yeah?”
“Val’s one. And you and the team. Having a place I belong. A family.”
“We are your family.” Selena gave her a sad smile. “I guess I have to let it go.” Truthfully, it was already gone, burned by the daylight. “Sorry about missing our workout. I’m going take a shower. I’ll be down in a few.”
Ace got up. “See you downstairs. Glad you’re okay.”
Selena turned the shower on after Ace left. She grabbed a thick towel, set it near the shower, then turned the light off and got undressed. Another wave of yearning ripped through her. She missed him…a guy who was a figment of her imagination. How could she long for something she’d never had, for someone who didn’t exist?
The answer hit her as she stepped into the water.
Yearning was safer than having.
Bastion waited for Selena in the hallway, frustrated that his sense of decency consigned her to showering alone. After a few minutes, she came out of her room, dressed for the day, outwardly composed but inwardly still rioting—because of him. Her energy ripped through him like a rush of white water.
She was beautiful—the perfect image of a female and a warrior. Eyes that were a rich green. Lips that were soft when she smiled and hard when she threatened. Her neck was long and slim, her shoulders broad and straight. Her breasts were generous enough that a man could spend hours loving them. Her ribs and waist were slim, her hips nicely rounded. And those long legs of hers could make a man lose track of time.
&nb
sp; This morning, her thick brown hair was drawn back in a severe ponytail. But her eyes showed how he’d affected her—the same as she’d affected him. He wondered if she’d seen the Matchmaker herself. The fiend had made an appearance to both Liege and Summer. Was it that way with all the couples he paired?
She leaned against the wall outside her room. Bastion observed energy like a physical experience—he could see or hear or smell it. Sometimes all three. Right now, Selena’s energy sounded like a rock band’s jangled warmup session, each instrument being tuned independently of the others around it.
She seemed lost. She stared across the space at him. He kept himself hidden from her, but it was as if some part of her knew he was there.
He closed the distance between them, bracing his hands on either side of her head as he let his energy surround hers, encapsulating it, calming her. He bent his face toward hers, letting his mouth hover over hers as he whispered, “I feel as you do—shocked at the chemistry we share. Know that you are not alone. Whether I’m near or far, you have only to summon me, and I will be there for you. Go in peace today. I will visit you again tonight, if you’ll allow it.”
Pulling away from her was physically and emotionally difficult, but it had to be done. He had his mission and she had hers. She sighed as he put space between them.
He didn’t yet know if they were working toward the same end in their dealings with the Omnis. Though all of his instincts said they had to be, he needed to find proof for Liege and for himself.
Could he do what had to be done if he discovered they were enemies? Did the Matchmaker ever make a mistake? Did he ever unite enemies?
Bastion watched Selena move down the hallway, briefly considering revealing he was the Matchmaker’s latest project to Liege. He wasn’t sure how his team lead would take the news. Perhaps Liege would take him off this assignment.
That would kill him. He’d only just found his mate; he couldn’t leave her now.
The pull to follow Selena was irresistible. Almost a compulsion. Was this how Liege had felt? Was it a compulsion, or just perfect chemistry? Biology he could trust. Psychic manipulation he could not.
Bastion: O-Men: Liege’s Legion Page 2
