Lynxar Series: Boxed Set (Books 14-19) (Superhero Romance - Werewolf Romance)

by Hart, Melissa F.

  “Apple, what in the world are you doing out?” gasped Dawn, and with a grasp that was surprisingly firm for such a small wispy woman, she dragged Apple inside.

  “I was out and Archer sent me here,” Apple said, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom of the soup kitchen. “He's fine, he just wanted me here to help you if you needed it.”

  Dawn smiled a little at the mention of her husband even as she shook her head. “He can't keep his mind on any one thing unless it's a target,” she said. “I'm glad you're here though.”

  Dawn was a shy woman unless her daughter was in danger, and in the years she had spent married to Archer, that protective spirit had blossomed to cover many of the people in the city who needed help. She ran the Helping Hands kitchen, and she was currently in the middle of expanding it into a volunteer day care program.

  Today, due to the disaster in the city, many people had gone to ground elsewhere, and there were only a handful of young children in the small play area. Dawn's daughter, a thin child by the name of Aurora, was entertaining them quietly by reading them a story, but Apple's heart ached for the parents who were away from their children, unsure about what was happening.

  She joined Dawn in getting the kitchen organized.

  “Might as well work as sit and be frightened,” Dawn said, and as time wore on, more and more people came in, looking for shelter from the disaster.

  They bore tales of the heroes of the city fighting with the alien angels, and Apple wondered what kind of plan the heroes meant to unleash with the book as bait. The shelter filled up, and some parents came to pick up their children and decided to stay as the brick building looked safer than their own homes.

  Apple kept herself busy dishing up bowls of nourishing soup and filling sandwiches, and she tried to keep her mind off of the trouble and the turmoil that was going on outside the doors. Distantly, she could hear the sounds of the battle, but she did her best to ignore it, knowing that at the moment, she could do nothing.

  Three hours after she had showed up at the soup kitchen, there was a pounding at the door, and when Apple opened it, she found herself face to face with Mike McIntyre, the mayor of the city himself.

  She did not know the mayor as well as she knew Lynxonna, his wife; she had only met him briefly, and the last time, he had been ferrying evacuated people out of harm's way.

  Today, despite the fact that he wore a Follow Me, I Know What I'm Doing T-shirt mismatched with a pair of designer slacks, he looked every inch the charismatic politician as he strode into the kitchen.

  “Hello, Miss Muldoon, hello, Dawn,” he said. “We need to get you and everyone in this center moving, and we need to do it, like, yesterday. The fighting's getting close, and I've commandeered these school buses to get everyone out.”

  Dawn nodded, and she and Apple grabbed the lists of everyone who had come into the center. They would invaluable when it came to reuniting families who had lost one another, and Dawn asked the mayor where the people would be taken.

  “To the university buildings at the edge of town,” he said. “They're big enough to hold a lot of people, and they are out of the path of danger.”

  Apple suddenly had a terrible thought. “There are still people in the apartment buildings around here,” she said. “There are some squatters too, and they need to be told.”

  Mike nodded, and he looked exhausted for a moment. “We're doing our best. The buses are congregating at the city squares, and they're making as many runs as the drivers can handle. We just need to get the word out.”

  Apple nodded. “I'm going to go looking for people and sending them to the squares then,” she said.

  Dawn bit her lip. “Apple, you should come with us.”

  “You've got lots of people to look after, Dawn,” Apple said with a smile. “You and Aurora get going, I'm going to go get people to safety as best I can.”

  Dawn started to protest, but Mike cut her off. “I'm sorry to say that she's right. The more people we get on the buses, the safer everyone's going to be.”

  Dawn hugged Apple tightly.

  “Be safe,” she said, and Apple nodded.

  When the buses were on their way, she made her way to the first nearby apartment building and started buzzing every single ringer on the panel. When someone came down to meet her, frightened by the intrusion during a disaster, she smiled at him, and told him about the buses.

  “How can I help?” he asked, standing up straight. He was a young Latino teenager, skinny as a fence rail, and she grinned at him. She knew with a single look that he wasn't going to tolerate being sent to safety, and she needed all the help she could get.

  “Let's make sure that everyone in the building knows what's happening,” she said. “The sooner we get everyone moving, the safer everyone will be.”

  Chapter Five

  Vicky had been a reporter for most of her adult life, and she had covered everything from dangerous zoo escapees to prison riots. However, her first kidnapping experience and hostage situation was proving to be surprisingly dull.

  The angel, because that was the only thing she could imagine calling a creature that looked like this, was content to simply hold her arm firmly but painlessly on the grassy hill as the ships hovered above.

  “Why do you want the Psalms of Istarte?” she asked, warily looking to engage him. “What do you hope to gain?”

  He turned to her in surprise, and she got the idea that he was shocked that she was even speaking. “The book holds the power of transformation,” he said shortly. “It will make us powerful beyond belief.”

  She shook her head and pointed at the ships above. “You look pretty powerful to me,” she said. “What do you gain from slipping your skins?”

  The angel hesitated, and she caught his quick glance down at his hand. It was perfectly flawless, but she remembered reports from almost a year before, of a burned angel that the superhero Bellaron had fought and killed.

  “There are those of you who are injured,” she guessed, keeping her voice soft and calm. “There are those among you who are... burned...”

  “Fallen,” he said, and now there was something furious in his voice. “Yes.”

  “And you think that book will help you regain the forms that you had.”

  “The Psalms of Istarte was a relic entrusted to the people of Naith, and they used it to transform their people into fierce warriors and fighters. If it can change people's forms, it can change our wounded back into the magnificent beings that they once were.”

  Vicky's mind raced. She knew a little bit about the Psalms of Istarte, and how Apple Muldoon and Bellaron had used them to defeat a small force of these angels before. She also knew that the book was useless without Apple, and she bit her lip.

  “And once you have the book, you'll go?” she asked cautiously.

  “Our finest minds will use the book to give us what once was ours,” he said loftily. “Of course we will go. Once our comrades’ forms belong to them again, we will continue our mission.”

  “Your mission of conquest?” she asked coldly. “As you conquered and destroyed Naith?”

  For a moment he looked shocked that she knew of the planet that had been destroyed, and then she yelped as he tightened his grip on her arm.

  “Do you think you know anything?” he demanded. “Do you think you know a single damned thing? Naith... Naith was expendable! Naith merely stood in our way.”

  “Like Earth does?” Vicky demanded. “Will you do to us what you did to Naith?”

  “Yes!” The angel's hiss was low and sinister, but it was full of a kind of truth that could not be denied. “Yes, Earth will fall as Naith did, as will all the worlds that deny us what is ours.”

  In a single moment, Vicky could see that this angel was crazy, and that there would be no reasoning with it, no tricking it at all. There could be nothing but battle, and she nodded.

  “You can't do this.” Instead of begging or pleading, her voice was as cold as ice. “You will not do
this.”

  “What hope do you have of standing between us and the destruction of your world?” the angel said scornfully.

  “More than you might think, slime ball,” said a new voice from the thin air.

  When the angel spun around, his grip on Vicky's arm loosened for a single moment.

  That was all the time that Bryan Hillman, invisible hero and superhuman, needed. He tore Vicky away from the angel, leaving the thing holding her sleeve in shock. Using his super speed, he fled, carrying her in his arms.

  “Good timing, lover,” Vicky said, looking at the place where she knew his face was.

  He turned visible as he ran, and he shook his head. “That was nearly a disaster,” he complained. “Did you have to bait him until he was ready to rip your head off?”

  “Hey, so my interview technique is a little aggressive! We got what we needed to know though...”

  The angel had not pursued them, and now, in a sheltered copse of trees, Bryan set her down gently.

  “Yes.” He nodded, his expression grim. “We know they never intended to play fair in the least.”

  “Have we got a plan?” she asked.

  Bryan nodded again. “Well, we kind of have a distraction....”

  Vicky started to ask him what he meant, but then a clear shout pierced the air.

  “Thrice-damned angels from a blighted star, were you looking for a book? Was THIS the book you were looking for?”

  Vicky gasped, and her eyes went straight to the top of one of the nearby hills. There was the heroine Lynxonna, carrying the book that the angels were looking for and waving it like a flag.

  There was a moment of tension, and Vicky came out from cover to see what was happening.

  It was like a scene from a cartoon. The angel on the hill and the three ships turned to regard the purple-haired woman, and as they did so, as their sights were focused on their precious book, they were hit.

  Golden arrows took out the ship's navigational controls, and one by one, they broke the lasers that made the ships so fearsome. The angel on the ground roared with fury, and at that call, the ships opened up, releasing a dozen angels each to spiral into the sky. In slow motion, the ships sank to the ground, crushing trees with a deafening crunch, and the angels swarmed around them, only to be met by arrows, by a savage wolf that Vicky knew was Bellaron, and by a tall man with purple hair, the super strong alien known as Lynxar, the leader of the superheroes of Colossal City. Now Lynxonna joined the fray, leaping high to knock angels to the ground, and for a moment, Vicky was consumed with envy of a being so powerful and deadly.

  “What can I do?” she said, briskly. “Do you need to get down there and fight?”

  Bryan shook his head in frustration, staring up in dismay at the sky.

  “That's... that's a lot more than we thought there would be,” he said. “I don't think we're going to do anything but stall them until we can get help.”

  “Then we need to get Apple,” Vicky nodded. “She's the one who can use the book. She can turn all of you into things that can fight the angels.”

  Bryan nodded in agreement, and they sprinted for the parking lot.

  “I thought that there was a moment when they might have been serious,” she said as they made for Bryan's car. “I thought they might have left with the book.”

  “Well, Lynxar hoped, but Bellaron knew that there was something up. That was why we were going to wave the book in front of them, to see what they would do, but then you made them tip their hand early.”

  Vicky smiled.

  “Always nice to be of service even if I don't have superpowers,” she agreed. “Let's go.”

  Chapter Six

  Apple had spent the past several hours running up and down the stairs of old apartment buildings with Leon by her side. Together, they knocked on doors, they helped elderly people make it to the places where they could be picked up by the buses, and they repeated the same message over and over again.

  The city needs to be evacuated. You must go to the squares. Get on the buses, they will take you to a safe place.

  Apple paused after seeing a large family onto the bus and sending them off, and she had to squat down on the ground.

  “Sorry, kid,” she said, stroking her belly. “I promise, the world will be a ton safer when you're ready to come out.”

  “Do you really believe that?” asked Leon, crouching by her side. Now that she had spent some time with him, she could see that he was even younger than she thought he was, only about thirteen or fourteen, instead of the sixteen she had thought previously.

  “I have to,” she said firmly. “The world's a dangerous place, but there are people out there making it safer, like Bellaron, Lynxar and Lynxonna. They're fighting to keep it safe for all of us.”

  “So are you,” Leon pointed out with a smile, and she grinned, poking him on the nose.

  “You too,” she said. “You should always be proud of what you've done today.”

  He nodded, chest puffed out proudly.

  “And now you need to get on the next bus,” she said.

  “I won't, I can't!” he protested, deflating. “There are still so many people here! We need to get them out of here.”

  “Leon, I don't have the time to argue with you. Look at me, okay?”

  The teen met her eyes, and he was shocked to see tears there.

  “You are just a child. You've done an adult's work here today, honey, but you're done now, okay? You're someone's kid, and... and this is only going to get worse.”

  They had heard the news from the park, that the fire was getting fiercer and fiercer, and the situation that they heard reported from every news outlet, every new message that Leon was getting on his smart phone, well, it didn't sound good.

  When Leon looked like he was going to protest again, she shook her head.

  “If you won't do it for me, do it for the people who love you,” she said firmly. “There's someone who worries about you, isn't there?

  Reluctantly, the teen nodded. “Yeah, my mom and my auntie...”

  “Where are they now?”

  “I sent them a message, I've been talking to them. They got on one of the buses.”

  “Then you should do the same, Leon,” Apple said seriously. “I'm not kidding. Today's a day when we all need to be with the people who love us, and you're no different.”

  “What about you?” he objected. “You're bigger than a house!”

  She made a face.

  “You know, that's exactly what a woman wants to hear when the city's falling down, swear to god. Look, it doesn't matter. I'll be safer if I know you're out of harm’s way.” She knew it was manipulative, but there was nothing to be done about it. She stared down the teen until he dropped his eyes.

  “You did so well,” she said, giving him a hard hug. “Go be with your family now.”

  “What're you going to do?” he asked, unwilling to give her up just yet.

  “I'm going to get more people out,” she said. “And then... then I need to find my husband and his friends.

  Chapter Seven

  Though the alien ships were down, they were far from out, and there were still angels inside, occasionally lighting up the sky with furious bursts of deadly lasers. Archer was trying to find a vantage point where he could shoot them out, but the angels had discovered his tricks and now he was being swarmed. He wasted bolt after bolt on the angels that tried to overwhelm him, but every moment, they drew him further and further away from the ships.

  Bellaron, in his wolf shape, roared and howled, and he dealt with one after another, working from outside the crowd and trying to get Archer free of their bulk. They broke off the attack, flying up to circle them above, and for a moment, Archer dropped to his knee in exhaustion.

  Bellaron shifted to his human form and stood by him, offering the marksman a hand up when he was recovered.

  “Some fight, huh, Chef?” said Archer, striving for some kind of humor.

  Bellaron
scowled, watching the angels circle above them. “We're going to lose,” he predicted. “This is not a fight we can win.”

  Archer winced, stretching his arm behind his back to work out the cramp. “Not very optimistic. You're new, so I'll let it pass. The rest of us, we've beat odds like this before. Have some faith, yeah?”

  “My faith died with my planet,” Bellaron retorted, shaking his head. “All I care about now is making sure that I stop them to my very last breath.”

  Archer laughed, a slight note of despair in his voice. “Yeah, been there, done that,” he agreed. “It... it doesn't look good, does it?”

  They were strong, all of them. They had fought aliens and gods and monsters from the pits of the Earth to a standstill, but still the angels were more powerful. They swept above the sky, and it was fortunate that their anger kept them corralled within the park. They were only attacking the superheroes at the moment, but their ships had already ruined some of the nearby buildings. Once they decided to attack the humans in their hunt for the book and the one who could unlock it, things would quickly turn dark, to a place where even the heroes of Colossal City could not save them.

  The angels above them swarmed into something like a formation, something that Bellaron recognized very well. They were getting ready to dive at them.

  “I'm gonna miss my girls,” Archer said flatly, drawing his bow again. “Dawn and Aurora. I'm gonna miss them so much.”

  Bellaron was silent, as he turned back into his gray wolf battle form, but he agreed.

  When the angels came down on them, he thought of Apple, and he prayed that she was safe.

  TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK EIGHTEEN: World at War - Volume 18

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  World at War

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