by Aja James
“There’s not much to tell. I just revealed that I was genetically engineered. Part of a top secret program to create super soldiers. I didn’t have a childhood. I didn’t have a family. I’m not sure why I wasn’t kept under constant surveillance and trained accordingly until adulthood to carry out my missions.”
She shrugged again.
“I can only assume that I was let out into society at an early age because I needed to acclimate and learn to blend in. As soon as I could join the military, I did. There, I got the necessary education, training and experience. And when I was done, I continued to hone my skills in the FBI.”
It was a succinct summary of her life. No emotions attached.
Was that all she was?
It sounded so sterile and…sad.
Maximus wondered if he’d describe his existence in much the same way.
But no, at least he’d found a purpose with the Chosen. He had comradery and friendship, and he’d had Simca.
Agent Kyles had no one.
“What kinds of missions?” he prodded, focusing on less personal information.
She gave him a look that said, come on, big guy, you don’t really expect me to tell you, do you?
He tried a different tack, “How long has human agencies known about my Kind? What do you intend to do with the knowledge?”
“I’m relatively certain humans have known about vampires and other supernatural beings for a very long time, likely as long as you’ve been around. It’s just not broad-based knowledge. As to what my employers plan to do with the information I gather, I wouldn’t know. I just do what I’ve been programmed to do.”
His brow knitted at that.
“You’re a program? You don’t have free will?”
She tilted her head again in consideration.
“What is free will? How do I know if it’s my program telling me to do things or if I’m choosing to do them myself? Wouldn’t you say Fate or Destiny is a program too? If there are things that are meant to be, does any of us have choice?”
She was making his head hurt. This was the most philosophical discussion he’d ever had about the existence of being.
“If it makes you feel any better, my fixation on you isn’t exactly part of my program,” she volunteered with a sly look.
“Whether I have a soul or whether it’s your familiar’s soul now inhabiting my body, my one constant in all this is that I’ve always been fascinated by you.”
Maximus tensed all over. Part defensiveness, part apprehension.
But also anticipation.
He wanted to be known by someone.
Simca had been the only one who’d come close to knowing him. She’d been the only one who made him feel less alone.
“I don’t know why,” he grunted self-consciously. “I’m just your garden variety vampire.”
She softly clucked her tongue at him.
“First, there’s nothing average about you. I’d expound upon that in lurid detail but I don’t think you were fishing for compliments.”
He wasn’t.
“Second, you know there’s something ‘other’ about you that sets you apart from your comrades, from the rest of your Hive. I feel a kinship to you because of it. There’s something other about both of us that makes us more alike than different. Perhaps if I helped you find your answers, I will also find my own.”
Maximus remained silent for a while.
He’d embarked on this dialogue because he wanted to know more about the mysterious Ariel Kyles, but he hadn’t learned much. In fact, he now had more questions about her than he did before.
“Stop thinking so much,” she said, uncannily reading his mind. “Just feel. The best things in life are felt.”
It sounded like something Simca would say when she used to communicate to him in his mind, Maximus reflected.
“And dream,” she uttered low as her eyes drifted shut. “I’ve never had dreams before, but now they’re filled with you.”
Maximus didn’t know what to do with that last piece of information, so he took her advice, closing his eyes as well.
And dreamed…
2nd century, AD. Ancient Rome.
Out of sheer terror and shock, the boy stumbled backwards. His calves hit a jagged rock bed and he fell to the cavern floor flat on his back.
The tiger’s roar gathered in fury and volume, reverberating against the stone walls, all but rattling the iron bars of its cage.
The boy lurched for the kitten, grabbed hold of it and scrambled back, peddling his hands and feet like a crab, scuttling farther into the opposite corner, as far away from the great beast as possible, where he hid himself behind a large boulder.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
The soft clucking of a tongue and the subtle click of slipper heels cut through the echoing roars more effectively than a scythe.
The boy’s eyes rounded as he beheld Mistress Circe enter the cave with six of her vampire henchmen.
“Eager to see me this night, are you?” she taunted softly at the tiger in its cage, laughing in delight when it threw itself bodily at its prison bars.
Over and over, the tiger butted its cage, ramming the thick, unyielding metal until its forehead began to bleed.
“I’ve missed you too, darling,” she cooed to the beast as she drew closer, enjoying its display of fury and desperation.
The vampire guards gathered around her, poised for battle, weapons drawn.
The tiger let out another mighty roar that shook a few stalactites from the cavern ceiling, ending in a snarling hiss and hate-filled growl.
“I do love your tiger form,” Mistress Circe murmured low, regarding the beast with intense greed.
“But I prefer another form for my purposes just now.”
As the tiger backed up slightly to ram the cage once more, she extended her right hand toward it and turned her wrist.
And just like that, instead of a seven-hundred-pound tiger throwing its weight against the bars, a naked man crumpled to the ground upon the jarring impact in a tangle of limbs and jangle of chains.
The boy could barely contain his gasp upon witnessing such a startling transformation.
It happened in the blink of an eye. One moment there was a great white tiger, and the next there was a man.
While he lay on the ground in a stupefied heap, the Mistress turned her wrist once more, and the collar and shackles that bound the tiger tightened around the man, conforming to his shape and size.
“There you are,” she said almost affectionately as she stared down at the naked man, and motioned for her guards to open the cage.
When they did, the man leapt up and charged the nearest vampires, taking two down by surprise, barely noticing when a third vampire sliced into his side with a sword.
He tried to bite one’s face but was yanked viciously backwards by a leather rope around his neck, a sort of harness held by yet another guard.
The man struggled with all his strength, arching his body this way and that, kicking out, grappling at the chokehold around his neck, but the vampire who held him got help.
Soon, the man was not only strangling in the harness but pinned down by his arms and legs as well, laid flat upon the rock bed.
“So much strength,” the Mistress said, her voice more guttural than before.
“So much power and savagery. How terribly beautiful you are.”
The man continued to struggle, but his efforts were futile. The six vampire guards who held him down with harness and chains were too strong.
Finally, he stopped moving. Only his massive chest rose up and down with his gusty breaths.
The boy felt sick to his stomach at the sight. That so much strength and vitality should be brought so low.
The Mistress came to stand beside the man laid flat on the rock bed. She flicked her hand again, but the boy couldn’t see what she did.
The man bared all of his teeth in a ferocious snarl as a long, wrathful, inhuman growl tore from his t
hroat.
“Gorgeous,” the Mistress said approvingly, staring down at the man.
Then, she lifted her tunic to her upper thighs as she stepped over his torso and straddled him, seating herself on top of his lap.
The growling abruptly stopped.
But the Mistress was just getting started.
She began to rock back and forth upon the man, her raspy moans, belabored breaths, and keening wails the only sound in the cavern.
They were hideous to the boy’s ears.
He wanted to shut out the sounds. He wanted to shut out the sight.
He huddled behind the boulder with the kitten and waited for whatever was happening to end.
But it went on and on. The Mistress wouldn’t stop.
Sometimes she hit and scratched the man. Sometimes she screamed and screeched at him. She leaned forward to bite his throat and chest many times, sometimes taking his blood, other times just to hurt him.
No matter what she did, the man didn’t make another sound. He gave her no reaction and didn’t struggle again.
At some point, hours later, the man turned his face in the direction where the boy hid.
The blood on his forehead had dried, but the gaping wounds in his throat and chest and side kept oozing. His eyes were open and unblinking.
The boy stared into them, too afraid to move.
What if the man saw him and alerted the Mistress? What if…
But the man did not appear to see him, or perhaps he simply didn’t care.
His icy blue eyes were glazed over with pain and something else—
Humiliation. Defeat.
All the wildness and power, the raw beauty of the great white tiger, were absent from the man’s unfocused gaze.
And the boy’s heart broke.
Right then and there he made a vow.
Whatever it took, whatever it cost him, he’d find a way to set the tiger free.
*** *** *** ***
Maximus came awake with a start when someone tapped the heel of his boot.
He opened his eyes to see Agent Kyles already standing and suited up with her parachute, goggles covering her face.
“Ever done a HALO before?”
Maximus stood and took the parachute pack she extended to him and shook his head.
He was not familiar with human military and law enforcement lingo. Nor was he well versed in human combat maneuvers. There had never been a need to learn.
“High Altitude Low Opening jump,” she explained. “We’re cruising at about thirty thousand feet right now, just over the Koryak Mountains, south of the Anadyr River, northeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It should be in the general vicinity of the vision in your dreams. We’ll have to trek it when we land.”
If they landed in one piece, that was, Maximus thought darkly.
Her lips quirked as if she heard him.
But of course she had. They were apparently mind linked.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be with you the whole time. It’s why we’re doing a HALO instead of a High Altitude High Opening jump. We’ll free fall together, and I’ll help you open your pack when it’s time to pull. But just in case, here are the instructions, listen carefully.”
He did.
She made him repeat all the instructions back to her twice before she was satisfied he knew what to do if they were separated for any reason.
“I already did my pre-breathing exercises. I don’t know if vampires need it too. Are you susceptible to high altitudes? You shouldn’t be prone to frostbite given your body heat.”
Maximus had no idea.
He’d cross that bridge when he came to it—which, unfortunately, was going to be in the next few seconds.
But right this second, he didn’t even know if he wanted to jump off an airplane, potentially plummeting to a nasty death, with a woman he didn’t trust.
Again, she read his mind.
“If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead,” she provided as reassurance, which was not comforting in the least.
“And I didn’t save you just to lose you to a death drop now. Come on, trust me. At least in this. You might even enjoy it.”
She was walking away from him toward the back of the plane, where the rear door was already lifting.
He’d come this far, Maximus thought with a burst of adrenaline.
As she said, what did he have to lose? Something inside of him needed to see where this insane adventure led.
He joined her shortly.
She flashed him a toothy grin.
“On three!”
And Maximus quickly realized that he did, in fact, enjoy jumping out of airplanes.
The sense of freedom and abandon! The icy wind in his face!
Letting go of everything that restricted him. Blanking his mind of swirling thoughts.
Just feeling.
Just being in the moment. Knowing that he might very well die in the next few minutes, and laughing at death in the face.
Never had he felt such exhilaration, when an instant and an infinity collapsed together, when he felt both helpless and powerful.
He let out a mighty roar of wonder and joy as they plummeted.
The sound of his voice might have been lost in the deafening churning air, but she appeared to have heard him. For she grinned that brilliant grin and grasped his hands tighter as they descended together, as if they were the only two beings in the world.
But they didn’t have a lot of time to revel in their wingless flight.
The blunt terrain of the tundra below quickly rose up to meet them as they reached ten thousand feet.
She gestured for him to get ready to deploy the chute, using hand signals that he didn’t need an interpreter to understand.
Five thousand feet.
She reached for her own cord, letting go of one hand, keeping their gazes locked as she silently mouthed a countdown.
On one, they both released their chutes, a second after she released his hand.
Maximus was immediately jerked back as his chute caught the wind. For a few seconds, he felt like he was floating, the contrast stark between the terminal velocity freefall versus the aided descent with the chute.
But soon enough, the ground still rushed up at him at a much faster speed than he was comfortable to connect with it.
Even though he recalled Agent Kyles’ instructions about how to stick a landing, those words flew out of his head a second before impact.
He acted on instinct, harnessing a deeper primal reserve than his vampire senses, and landed with catlike grace on all fours on the hard, dirt ground.
Agent Kyles also stuck her landing about a hundred yards away.
After unhooking their chutes, they made their way toward each other.
When they were finally face to face, she lifted her goggles, and he did the same.
She was grinning at him, her bright golden green eyes sparkling with excitement and joy. She opened her mouth to speak, but he silenced her with his own.
He didn’t mean to do it. He didn’t think.
He just acted on instinct and pulled her to him, lifting her off her feet against his chest, his arms supporting all of her weight.
He kissed her hard and squeezed her tight, his tongue thrusting into her parted mouth just as she inhaled sharply on a gasp.
There was no finesse. No softness.
There was only passion and hunger and need.
He never kissed females. He never felt the desire to.
And if he were to describe the act he was engaging in now, he wouldn’t necessarily categorize it as a kiss.
It was a mating of mouths. A battle of tongues.
He was taking possession of her, and letting her take possession of him.
It was no different than if he had thrust his cock inside her pussy, over and over and over again, to stake his claim, to let her mark him in turn.
Neither of them knew how long they’d been at it, him holding her off her feet flush against his bod
y as if she weighed nothing at all. His mouth devouring hers; her mouth conquering his.
With the ebb of adrenaline, conscious thought finally intruded into their cocoon of lust.
He pulled his mouth away and stared for a long moment into her eyes before letting her slide down his torso and releasing his hold on her.
She staggered back a step, almost falling on her ass, weaving unsteadily on her feet.
“Well,” she rasped, breathing in belabored gusts.
“That was the best use for a human mouth I’ve ever experienced.”
A corner of his lips twitched as he hid a smile.
Guess he didn’t botch his first kiss too badly if that was her reaction.
She paused a beat.
“Actually, I take that back. I can’t decide whether I like eating your cock more or eating your mouth more. It’ll have to be a tie.”
Maximus’s body went up in flames, and so did his face.
But before he could feel self-conscious, she got down to business, walking away to organize their equipment and supplies.
“I scoped out a small cave on the side of that mountain,” she called back to him as she worked.
“We need to get up there before dark. Hopefully hunt some game while we’re at it. It might be summer here in the tundra, but the nights can still go below freezing.”
“You know where we’re headed?” he asked, finally finding his voice, though it was still husky deep, more gravelly than usual.
“I’ve got a general sense. I know we need to go up that mountain, but I don’t know what we’ll find.”
She looked at him intently.
“I’m hoping you’ll take us the rest of the way, Mad Max. I hope you figure out the meaning of your visions before we freeze or starve to death out here.”
She cocked her head and flashed him a toothy smile.
“No pressure.”
Chapter Six
The female researcher rubbed the twine of the anklet she’d taken off between thumb and fingers, back and forth, back and forth, making the tiny bells woven into the cord jingle softly.
She didn’t know why she always wore it. Why she kept it. Perhaps it reminded her that she used to have a soul.
