by Amy Star
“I still don’t see what this has to do with us,” Sarah said again.
“Normally, it wouldn’t. But this thing…” the elder lowered his voice and pointed to the grainy image of the snarling creature on the screen, “could only have been created by sampling the DNA of a theriomorphic organism. Which means, somewhere, somehow, he captured one of us to get the template.”
Sarah sat down and crossed her arms, and Connor leaned forward, his face etched with concern. The elder shut down the holographic screen and an uneasy silence followed. “If someone is doing illegal genetic research using Bear DNA, then it does become our problem. What do we do?”
He turned to Sarah, even though he had an inkling of what she was going to say. She had always been the one to preserve peace but both of them knew the cost that that peace ended up paying, in some way or another. Personally, politically. It was a curse, but a curse they had both vowed to suffer together, if it meant keeping the people they loved safe.
People like Cora.
“It means we need to book a flight to London,” Sarah said miserably, “and I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of fish and chips.”
“How about rain?” he grinned.
“I’m not a fan of stereotypes, either.”
CHAPTER TEN
Sarah hated the idea of leaving Cora again, but she knew that her daughter would be safer at the Estate, and she put Marcus specifically in charge of looking after her. He had raised an eyebrow at her command, but had given his solemn oath to protect the young girl. Really, Sarah knew, there was no danger, she was simply unsettled by the news of Dr. Golding’s experiments, and was transferring her own fears onto Cora.
The long plane ride to London was passed mostly in silence, although Connor did his best to try to supply her with as much reading material as he could find. She always liked to know everything about where they were going, and it took her only a few hours to commit Golding’s dossier to memory, including all the preceding research material on the same topic.
She slept soundly, and tried to will herself not to dream. It worked, and she knew that jetlag and exhaustion would do the rest; it was a black sleep, endless and without the sense of time moving at all.
Against the elder’s better judgment and Marcus’ adamant admonishment, the couple had decided to go by themselves. They had learned from experience that it was easier to travel just as a pair. It attracted less attention, and if their surveillance and information was correct, then Dr. Golding was probably quite wary of outsiders. It still wasn’t clear where he’d acquired a sample of Bear DNA to accelerate his research, but it was safe to assume that he had at least a cursory knowledge of the tribes.
I don’t like being at a disadvantage, she thought to herself, and tried to recollect what she had learned as the plane began to descend into Heathrow. Dr. Ernest Golding had actually been born in Poland, but then he’d moved to the States to finish his Ph.D, and had finally settled in London. He was brilliant, as far as his chosen field of interest was concerned. She didn’t understand a lot of the research, but his results were staggering.
It also looked like he’d attracted the attention of several shell companies that had military printed all over them. Which means finding him will be more difficult, she thought regretfully. However, she knew that money was always a reliable way of tracking power. Some minor research had revealed a paper trail leading from a central firm to the London outskirts.
“You weren’t kidding about the rain,” she glowered at Connor as they stepped out of the airport and hailed a cab.
“You like the rain,” he reminded her.
“It smells all wrong here. Like there’s no wilderness,” she said.
“There isn’t, really,” he said, “there used to be forests covering the UK, but a lot of it has been cut down. I wouldn’t really call England a wilderness. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t secluded places.”
“I don’t like cities,” she said, suddenly realizing how many faces were passing by them, and felt another stab of claustrophobia. It was a weird sensation, something she had never really felt with such intensity before. “How do people live like this?”
“They’ve been living like this for centuries,” he said, trying to restrain a grin, “you’re cute when you’re all wild and sheltered.”
She punched him in the arm. “I’m not sheltered. I just… never grew up in big artificial places like this. I don’t know how people can handle it. Too many scents, too loud. Promise me we’ll never move to a city. If not for my sake, but for Cora’s.”
“I promise,” he nearly laughed, throwing both of their backpacks into the rear of the taxi and escorting her into the padded leather interior.
They’d arranged for a hotel overlooking the Thames, and although Sarah still had misgivings about having traveled all the way to London and leaving Cora at home, she had to admit, at heart, she liked to move. There was a vibrancy in traveling, a freshness that excited her. It wasn’t just a new place, new sights and smells, it was also the strangeness and familiarities she could detect in culture. It took her a few tries to understand what the hotel clerk behind their desk was saying, and she abashedly found herself accidentally trying to mimic their accents. However badly, she realized.
As she came out of the shower and slipped on a thin nightdress, she couldn’t help but admire the old buildings and sprawling green of trees and different hued bricks that made up the horizon. She placed her hand on the window and sighed.
“I almost wish Cora could have come with us,” she said, out loud.
From the bathroom, the sound of the shower stopped, and she heard Connor open the door and shout into the bedroom. “I kind of do, too. But this is too dangerous for her. Maybe, after this is finished, we can come back for a family vacation. She’d probably have your same reaction to London but… well, give the both of you a day or two, and I think you’d love it.”
“I kind of already do,” she said, “it is a pretty exciting place. I know we’re here on business, but can we try and see some of the sights while we’re here?”
Connor stepped out of the bathroom in just a towel and rubbed his smooth cheeks. “Then it’s settled!” he exclaimed.
Sarah looked him up and down and skipped toward him. Even under the thin nightshirt, her breasts gleamed from behind the contours of the fabric, round and soft as they bobbed with her movement. They had always been something she’d been a bit ashamed of, even as a teenager, they had seemed to grow faster than the rest of her, and their graceful angles bobbed with a fullness that she had only ever seen in ripe fruit. She wrapped her arms around Connor and kissed him on the lips.
“Smooth,” she remarked affectionately.
He kissed her back and felt her hands wrap around his waist and tug at the end of his towel. Sly girl¸ he thought, letting the towel drop. The arced muscles of his pelvis angled acutely downward, highlighting the pivot of his hips and the mesh of dark curled hair at his groin. His penis slipped playfully out, thick even in its limp state, and she reached down and clenched it lightly.
“Careful,” he said, “I’m liable to think that you’re just jetlagged right now and not thinking straight. I might have to politely decline this offer.”
“Oh, shut up,” she grinned, kissing him again and pushing up on his foreskin.
His penis hardened in her hands as she opened her mouth and let him suck on her tongue, both lips sliding over the pink organ and causing her to moan, even as his other hand dragged her in close and rubbed her lower back, threatening to pull the nightdress further up.
The bare edge of her buttocks glinted below the hem of the nightdress and she began to move her hands up and down the rigid shaft in her hands, marveling at how quickly it obeyed her. She clenched harder and she felt him grunt in her ear, and his hands wrapped around her buttocks, squeezing them fast.
“Higher, you,” she whispered back.
He consented and peeled the nightdress further up her lower b
ack, and limited his surprise when he realized she was wearing nothing on underneath. His fingers pried at her buttocks, slipping between the deep crack that bridged them, and moved the tips of his fingers down, stroking the sensitive areas near her anus, which caused her to shiver.
She bucked against him, grinding her groin against his, and rubbed the bright bud of her clitoris against the base of his penis. He clenched her buttocks harder and his hands moved up, fondling her waist and her ribs until they found her breasts. Through the soft fabric of the nightdress he began to knead her chest, causing her to breathe faster as her arms wrapped around his neck. Her breath was like a hot flame at his neck, burning with intensity.
Gently he kissed her on the mouth and guided her to the bed. She stooped down on the soft mattress on all fours, bracing her elbows and looked behind her. The nightdress had fallen partly away up her waist, revealing the perfect dimples of her lower back and the round supple cheeks of her buttocks. Teasingly, she spread her legs, just enough for him to get a view of her sex which was fully engorged.
He climbed onto the bed on his knees and licked his fingers, sliding them gracefully over her vagina, his fingers peeling back the labial folds, and she shivered again and her eyes were pleading. She always got this look, and she knew it turned him on; a sleepy and desultory expression of desire, her lips slightly spread as if expecting pleasure or pain at any moment, her eyes slightly closed, almost as if in a trance.
Connor squeezed her hips and she lifted her ass higher toward him, tempting him. He smiled and pushed the tip of his penis against her vagina. She let out a low cry as he pushed, teasing her this time, and feeling her grow wetter with the anticipation. Then, all at once, he moved his hips into her and let out a sigh as she accepted him.
A wet sound proceeded as he pulled himself into her, and she lowered her head and began to rock back and forth on his penis.
“Fuck me, Connor,” she pleaded again.
“I love it when you say that,” he said, and began to pump harder into her. Each time he did she let out a muted groan, and her eyes rolled back in her head in sheer desire.
It only served to stimulate him more, and he lost himself in the action of thrusting. His hips slapped noisily against her buttocks as he sped up, and his breath began to match hers – a vicious and desperate panting, and his fingers plied into the flesh of her waist. She grabbed his wrist with one hand and tried to stand up, and he lifted her up. Her back bent fully like a bow pulled back and ready to let fly an arrow as he continued to plunge into her, feeling himself work toward an explosive orgasm.
His other hands came up, cupping her breasts through the nightdress, and she reached behind, almost howling with joy. Her screams could probably be heard through both adjacent hotel rooms, but she didn’t care. She screamed again, her hands tightening on his wrist as she felt him find, at last, her G-spot. The ribbed edge of his penis pushed against it, threatening to burn a hole in her.
“Almost there, fuck me!” she said again louder, and Connor’s hands moved down, pitching under her belly, below her navel.
She was already very wet, and he felt immediately the sticky frothy lubricant of both their sexes, damp on her pubis where he continued to fuck her, lost in a kind of animal mentality; a hunger that pierced both of them to the core, and one that only they could satiate in one another.
“Coming!” she screamed, bucking forward as Connor’s orgasm overtook him in turn.
She fell onto her forearms again, her buttocks still raised like an offering to him, and he fell on top of her, breathing hard. Both of them tried to regain their breath, and their hearts began to sync as they slowed down. She could still feel his seed, coating her insides, a wet and warm embrace. He was still half-erect when he withdrew, and she felt something warm dribble out between her legs. Both of them were sweating hard, but it had already started to cool on their skin. She turned over so she could face him and draped a leg across his thigh.
Even exhausted, a liminal desire still ached in her loins, an after-effect, and for several seconds her hips continued to mime the pumping of her lover’s pelvis. She reached down between her legs and rubbed at the soft flower of skin between her legs, heavy with moisture, and let out a beautiful cooing sound that made Connor sigh.
He wrapped his arms tighter around her and closed his eyes.
*
After their lovemaking, Sarah always felt a sense of euphoria, as if she were happy for no reason. She had learned to look forward to these ecstatic states, and had encouraged Connor to as well. They went out into the city, and were pleased to see that the grey clouds had started to part, allowing in a fraction of sunlight, which painted the old city in the kind of pastel colors she had always pictured.
They visited Big Ben and the Thames, and even though she hated heights, he took her on the giant Ferris wheel they could see from their hotel room. Then they visited the Bastille and the Tower of London. It was exciting for Sarah because these were all places she had read about hundreds of times in her books, but to actually experience them firsthand was something else. She wondered if the other great cities in her books could amount to the same thing: places like Paris, Istanbul, even Tokyo or Hong Kong. She understood now the appeal of traveling.
It wasn’t just about experiencing something new and out of the ordinary, it was about experiencing things you had only imagined in your wildest dreams, to feel the non-physical become something corporeal; real and exact.
As they walked by another church, Sarah asked if they could stop so she could rest. She hadn’t really noticed, but they’d been walking constantly for almost four hours. It was strange. She could hike for twelve hours through the rugged Canadian wilderness, swim kilometers in freezing water, and scale tall cliffs as if they were nothing at all. And yet, there was a special exhaustion reserved for walking around a city. She couldn’t understand it and asked Connor.
“I suppose, it’s what you said earlier… about artificial places. Perhaps they just make us tired. Our bodies aren’t used to them. I also think that visiting places you have always wanted to see probably makes you tired. It’s like meeting a childhood hero… it takes your breath away,” he said.
“Who was your childhood hero?” she wondered.
He winked. “All my heroes were long dead before I was born,” he grinned, “I’ll be right back. I think I saw a coffee cart over there. Double black?”
She nodded and sat down under a green tree that had fully burst forth and let the cool shade bathe over her, smelling sweetly of chlorophyll. The sounds of London filled her ears, and for the first time she realized it wasn’t all chaotic. There was a kind of rhythm and pattern to it: the sound of young children laughing and squealing down the cobblestones along the Thames; and the sweet French accents of young women conversing among themselves while they walked back to their apartments through the ancient arcades of old London.
She opened her eyes again and smiled, and for a moment she completely forgot about the reason they’d come. It seemed impossible on such a beautiful day for such a threat to exist.
Then she heard something, a rustling, and when she turned there was an envelope on the bench beside her. She looked up quickly and saw a dark figure in a black petticoat disappear around the buttress of the old church. She stood up frantically, her senses suddenly pricked and cautious.
She looked back down at the envelope. It was manila, crisp and new, and there were only two words on it, written in a cursive French with a dark black felt pen. Faites attention. Be careful. She sat back down and picked it up, holding it in her hands like she would some curious artifact. There was no mistake, it had been meant for her. There was no one else in the plaza, and certainly no one else sitting down at a bench. Her curiosity got the better of her and she carefully slit it open with the end of one sharp pointed finger.
The envelope was lighter than expected. She poured out the contents into her lap, and looked them over. There were two pieces of ID, and they looked like s
ome sort of security clearance. What alarmed her was that they somehow had both of their pictures on it. There was a company name she didn’t recognize either, Apollo Inc. It sounded fishy. She looked through the rest of the contents and found a map, which seemed to point to some sort of facility just north of central London.
She frowned and suddenly Connor was beside her, two coffees in his hand.
“Hey, I got…” he stopped when he saw the envelope, “what’s that?”
“Good question,” she said, holding up the security badges, “someone just dropped this off. These were inside.”
He sat down and looked at the one with his face on it. “So I’m Iago Francois? That’s a mouthful,” he said with an equally perturbed frown. “No idea who it was?”
“No, but there’s a map, and this looks like a telephone number or access code,” she said, holding up another small piece of paper with some numbers written on it.
Connor leaned back and rubbed his scalp, his eyes trying to adjust to the subtle play of shadows and sunlight through the branches of the tree above them. “What do you think? Some sort of anonymous benefactor, or a certifiably naïve trap?”
She looked at the badges again. “We know that Dr. Golding was operating out of a facility to the north of London. This fits the criteria. But I think we should treat it as a trap, all the same.”
“You know best,” he said, taking a sip. The coffee was strong, dark, and burned his throat.
CHAPTER 11
When they returned to the hotel, it was already dinnertime, but neither of them felt particularly hungry. They knew it was because, for better or worse, whatever joy they had experienced during the day was just a preamble. It was a way of distracting themselves from what they knew they would have to do next.
Sarah unfolded all the information they had on Dr. Ernest Golding and Apollo Inc., and tried to brush through it one more time, hoping to make sense of something she might have missed. Connor changed his shirt and took another look at the map.
