by Mikayla Lane
He knew it was stupid, but he likened it to allowing a vampire in your house or a horror movie where something bad always happens when you let the wrong person in. He didn’t even have a best friend because he never felt he could truly trust someone else, but he was expected to form the closest bond he’d ever have with a beast that has an attitude and didn’t like him.
Yeah, that’s a real incentive to make this thing happen, he thought sarcastically.
Form an intimate bond for life with someone who hates me—just what every guy wants. If I wanted that, I could have married any number of exes. Hell, good thing I never did want to marry anyone since I’m technically already married and never knew it, he thought.
Mikey knew that it required a physical bonding with Lauren as well to make that official, and he was still a little floored that was all it took for them to be considered married in their societies. And there was no such thing as divorce among the beast species either. So once he made that bond, it would be for life as well. Which according to everything he’d heard and read, would be a very long time since the beast also gave them an extended life on top of their already extended life span.
I could easily be stuck in both relationships for a thousand damn years, and these people can’t figure out why I’m a little hesitant! he thought with irritation as he kicked a small plant in passing.
Mikey stopped short when Simya and Crator motioned for him to be still. He looked around the two large men, but didn’t see anything ahead.
“What’s going on?” he asked through the Shengari’.
“Grai said there’s a few small shacks up ahead that will be hard to get around because of the terrain. He’s trying to figure out if they’re friendlies or an outpost for the drug cartel’s territory,” Simya responded.
Mikey sighed, knowing that was exactly what Grai had meant when he said his gift could help them get out of there. He moved up towards Grai, feeling a little like a sacrificial victim heading towards his own death.
No one looked at him oddly or with any surprise when he stood beside Grai and looked down in the valley at the scattered buildings spread beneath them.
“We’ve counted 10, and there’s children,” Grai said to him through the Shengari’ without taking his eyes off the activity below.
Mikey peered into the valley below while a part of him hoped that the ability would just happen, but after several minutes he knew he was hoping in vain. He glanced behind him and saw that Lauren was avoiding his gaze, and he turned back to the group of buildings.
“Will you please help me see if it’s safe for us to continue this way?” Mikey asked in his head, hoping the beast would comply.
Again there was no reply, but suddenly he could see colors surrounding the people below. When Grai started to move down, Mikey grabbed his arm and shook his head.
“Don’t do it. There are two men, one in the shack on the right; the other is two down from it. They are way too heavily armed to be just farmers. It looks like they are using the others as cover,” Mikey warned as he watched the two figures surrounded in varying shades of black through the building walls.
“Can you see another way around?” Grai asked, squinting his eyes as if to try and see what Mikey could.
Mikey scanned the area, thankful that his beast was being nice and helping him to use his gift. He knew the beast’s survival was at stake with his own, but he hoped that wasn’t the only reason leading the beast to help him. He was really hoping it was a promising step forward for them.
He was brought out of his thoughts by what he saw around them.
“Grai, there’s four more in the surrounding area. Not the warm and fuzzy kind either. There’s two on either side we take; the first one is 30 yards to the left, the other 20 yards to the right,” Mikey warned.
Grai looked at him and nodded his head in thanks while he considered how they were going to get around. Mikey was also thinking about how they would get around, and he looked carefully around the area before he turned back to Grai.
“If we go back about 20 yards, there’s a rock outcropping that can get us around this place completely,” he suggested.
Grai called out to Simya and Crator who were still taking up the rear and asked one of them to check out Mikey’s suggestion. A few minutes later, Grai nodded.
“Can you go back to Simya and Crator and take the lead?” Grai asked, preferring to take the rear if the biggest danger would be the military on their asses.
Mikey nodded, grateful to feel useful in protecting Lauren and the others—especially after all they’d tried to do to help him. He made his way back to the end of the line and couldn’t help but feel a little crushed when Lauren avoided his gaze and moved farther away than necessary to avoid him.
He reached the end of the line and accepted the hand that Simya held out to help him get over the rock outcropping. In turn, Mikey helped Crator up before he took the lead.
He’d just led them around the armed men when he heard through the Shengari’ that the US government promised the Mexican government a lot of money if they delivered anyone who had been in their craft—dead or alive. Which in turn meant that those in the corrupt Mexican government notified the cartel in the area of the bounty on their heads.
Great, Mikey thought, there are no friendlies around us now. Every human in the area would be after them, either because they worked for the cartel or feared the cartel enough to do what they wanted.
The double digit miles they still had to trek might as well be hundreds with so many people looking for them. Mikey shook his head to clear the negative thoughts.
“No, me and this beast are going to help us get out of here, aren’t we?” he asked in his mind.
He sighed heavily when there was still silence from the beast.
“Well, thanks for helping with the eyesight thing anyway,” Mikey said to his beast, not expecting a response.
He heard movement behind him and turned as Grai came up to him while Lauren was escorted closer to the front of the line. Mikey looked to Grai for what he wanted them to do now.
“We need to stay closer together, and you’re the only one who can see where the potential dangers are, so you’re going to have to lead us out of here, or we’re going to end up in an all-out war,” Grai said, his eyes conveying the seriousness of the situation they were in.
The weight of the responsibility sat heavily on Mikey’s mind for a moment before he looked at Lauren and saw the fear reflected in her eyes. He wanted nothing more than to take that away and make her feel safe again.
Mikey turned to Grai and made one sharp nod of his head before he faced the path ahead of them. He scanned the area, grateful that his beast was just as determined as he was to get Lauren out of there.
He saw nothing in the immediate vicinity and began leading the group forward, constantly scanning the area for potential dangers to them.
Lauren watched Mikey while his back was turned and couldn’t help but feel a pang of regret at how this whole thing had worked out for them. If she hadn’t been so determined to prove to him that they weren’t going to keep him locked up like the military had, they wouldn’t be here at all. This was her fault, her mistake, and if anyone got hurt trying to get them out of the jungle, she’d never forgive herself.
She looked up startled when she felt the hand on her shoulder and looked into Blade’s face.
“I wouldn’t worry too much. He’s confused, a little afraid, and an ass sometimes. But he really does care for you a great deal. He’s just letting everything else cloud that right now; he’ll come around,” Blade said reassuringly in her mind as he gently squeezed her shoulder in support.
Lauren forced a small smile and nodded at Blade.
“Thanks, Blade. I really hope you’re right,” she responded as she looked away from his gaze and continued picking her way through the jungle.
They’d moved in silence for another hour before Mikey held up a hand and everyone stopped. Lauren looked up an
d saw Mikey having a conversation with Grai through the Shengari’, and she wondered if they were fighting. Neither man looked very happy.
Grai ran through a string of curses in his mind as he looked at Mikey again, hoping he was wrong. The slight shake of Mikey’s head told him differently.
Traze walked up to the two and looked curiously at Grai, waiting for him to tell him why they were stopped. Mikey looked at the young guy with renewed respect after what happened between them in the craft and tried to use the skills Simya and Crator taught him to talk to him.
“There’s a group of seven up ahead; five of them look like little kids with rifles in their hands,” Mikey told Traze.
He would have cheered when Traze turned his head to him and nodded once to acknowledge that he heard him if the situation wasn’t so serious.
Mikey appreciated the fact that the aliens—my people, he mentally corrected—were extremely hesitant to do anything that could harm children. Even if they were armed. He’d been in Afghanistan; he’d seen more than his fair share of small kids being used as human bombs or shields, and it sickened him to think that they’d have to face the same hard choices here.
No one wanted to hurt a kid. No one except the heartless, disgusting parents who put the guns in their hands or allowed the bombs to be strapped to their little bodies in the first place. It was the parents who deserved a merciless death, but sadly it was the children who ended up dying horribly while the parents cheered and bred more little victims for their cause.
In his mind, every child killed before they could detonate the bombs on their bodies or with a gun in their hands was a child murdered by his or her own parents—not by whoever was forced to end the threat they posed to others. Mikey felt that it was the parents of those children who should have been hunted down, tried for murder, and executed. He felt no differently now.
Even animals tried to protect their young, and anyone who allowed their children to be used as cannon fodder was less than an animal and deserved to be treated as such.
Mikey didn’t realize he’d broadcasted his thoughts through the Shengari’ until the others began nodding their heads in agreement.
Traze put a hand on his shoulder.
“If we have to harm one of those kids, I’ll help you find the parents and deliver justice,” Traze promised.
Grai and the others nodded, each resigning themselves to doing what they had to do to get out alive. But their actions would have consequences for those who put them in the position of having to choose between their lives and the children put in their path.
Mikey looked at Grai, making a quick decision.
“I can see them; give me a few minutes, and I may be able to knock them out so we can get past,” he offered.
Grai shook his head.
“It’s too dangerous,” he said, trying to think of another way around the patrolling children without hurting one of them.
Lauren had heard through the team chatter on the Shengari’ what the problem was, and she thought she had a solution. She moved past the others up to Grai and caught his attention.
“I can program medibands to knock them out for hours, you just have to get the bands on bare skin,” she said to Grai, trying to ignore the race of her heart as she stood so close to Mikey.
Grai pondered it while Mikey looked between Lauren and Grai, wondering what they’d been talking about privately. He felt a rush of jealous anger that she was talking to anyone privately, and he tried his best to tamp it down.
What the hell is wrong with me? He wondered. I freak out like I don’t want her, but I don’t want anyone else near her either. God, I’m being such a psycho no wonder she won’t look at me, he thought with a shake of his head.
As much as he wanted to look away from her, he couldn’t stop himself from staring. Her subtle floral scent was teasing his nostrils, and he felt a pull towards her that was becoming more intense the longer he was around her. Even now, the only thing stopping him from reaching out to touch her was pride, shame, and the fear of being rejected.
Instead, he studied her body movements and watched her face, looking for any sign that she still liked him at all. He had no idea why it was so important to him, but it was, and not knowing was eating at him.
He was so intent on studying her that it took a moment to register that Grai had spoken to him and another second to process what he’d said as he watched Lauren walk back to the circle of guards.
“I need to know you can do this. If shots have to be fired we will bring hell down on us. Do you understand?” Grai asked, not wanting to put their potential capture and death on the shoulders of a guy who couldn’t pay attention.
Mikey pulled his thoughts away from Lauren and looked Grai in the eyes.
“I can do this. It shouldn’t be too hard to get the band things on the kids,” he said, focusing his attention on getting them past the kids.
Grai studied him for a second before giving him a sharp nod.
“Blade will get the locations of the two adults from your mind and wait for your signal that the kids are out,” Grai reiterated to make sure Mikey was still paying attention.
Mikey sighed and turned to look at Blade.
He wasn’t too thrilled about the guy fucking with his head again, but they didn’t have a choice—they had to take out the adults while he snuck up on each of the kids.
Blade made the exchange quickly and blinked at Mikey in surprise.
“Wow, that’s a pretty cool gift,” Blade admitted with a grin before he reaped the image into Grai’s mind.
Mikey carefully picked his way past the group to where he clearly saw one of the children through the foliage. He watched the small boy with a rifle as big as himself turn his back to him, and Mikey lunged through the undergrowth, catching one hand around the boy’s mouth while he stuck the mediband to his forehead with the other.
Within seconds the child was passed out. Mikey carefully laid the child—Mikey estimated him to be only nine or ten—on the ground.
“One down,” he relayed to Grai through the Shengari’.
He stood quickly and scanned the area for the next closest child and headed in that direction.
Within three minutes, the children were safely down on the ground while Blade and Grai took out the adults. Mikey began carrying the children to a small, bare hut. When he arrived at the hut with the last child, he saw Lauren inside with the others while her guards surrounded the ramshackle building made of thick, dried stalks bound together with twine and a roof of palm fronds.
He gently laid the last young boy inside and stepped out with a sigh when Lauren turned her back to him. He saw Grai, Blade, and Traze in the distance and headed towards them. Mikey could tell before he even got close that something was wrong by the hardened expressions on their faces.
“What is it?” he didn’t hesitate to ask.
“We’re heading right towards a suspected cartel fortress,” Traze informed him.
Mikey ran a hand down his face and wiped off the sweat while he cursed in his mind.
“How many?” he asked Traze.
Traze shook his head and shrugged.
“We’re not sure; the area surrounding the stronghold is thick with vegetation. The only reason we saw it was because of the road leading to it and the small airfield not far from it,” Traze admitted before turning back to his brother.
Mikey scanned the area to make sure there weren’t any more people close by when a thought occurred to him, and he turned back to Traze.
“Can’t you land your ships at the airfield?” he asked.
“Yeah, we’re trying to figure out how to get there without trekking through half of the cartel’s territory,” Traze answered.
“I can see them before we get to them,” Mikey offered.
Blade agreed with him, but that wasn’t the problem.
“The problem will be our ability to take them all out before they can get out a warning,” Blade explained.
Mikey u
nderstood what he meant. The airfield would be heavily guarded, and the only way to make sure they weren’t out in the open field—sitting ducks—would be to secure the perimeter.
Grai moved to stand beside Mikey and showed him the aerial view of the stronghold and airstrip. Without speaking, Grai moved his finger along the path they would have to take to get to the airstrip.
Because of a mountain ridge, they would have to move around the ridge, and that was going to cause them to cross the road and the front of the home that could barely be seen through the thick foliage. It was the only way to the airstrip. Even with the 20 or so people they had, it was going to be damn hard—if not impossible—to cross a heavily guarded stronghold without setting off a warning.
“We can avoid it and go this way,” Grai said, pointing out another route. “But we’d have to trek the other 20 miles to the next pick up location.”
The groans around them told everyone that they preferred to take on a cartel than spend another minute in the jungle.
“I say we take them down. We’d be doing the country and the local kids a favor,” Traze said, crossing his arms over his chest. His hard stare said he was looking for a fight.
“They’ll have more kids fighting though, and we don’t have enough medibands for them all,” Grai argued, weighing their options.
“The kids are more noticeable though,” Mikey interjected. “They’re smaller, and the color around them isn’t black even though they’re holding weapons. I’m not real sure what that means, but I’ve noticed that the people with the black outlines are bad.”
“Is it an aura?” Grai asked curiously.
Mikey shrugged his shoulders, not real sure what an aura was supposed to look like. Blade nodded his head though.
“Yeah, it looks just like an aura when I saw what he did. He doesn’t see through things like an x-ray vision, he sees the auras around the living things inside or behind material objects. When he’s close enough, he can see through skin,” Blade said, pretty surprised by Mikey’s ability.
