“She was a fine warrior,” he said seriously. “She will never be forgotten.”
“Not so long as I live and love her,” Mike replied, and Apple could see a shadow that fell over him, something that would follow him in one shape or form for the rest of his life.
Mike seemed to shake himself, standing up taller and stronger when he did. “I still have people to protect and a city to run. I'm not a hero like you are, Bellaron, or like she was, but I have people who need me.”
Apple threw her arms around the mayor, wishing that she could take even a little bit of his pain while thanking everything that she could think of that it wasn't her mourning Bellaron. She felt his breath hitch in his body once, like a sob he dared not let go, and slowly, gently, he pushed her back.
“Thank you, Apple,” he said sincerely, “but there are things I must do.”
Bellaron and Apple watched as he strode back into the crowds of people at the university buildings, and Apple turned to bury her face in Bellaron's broad chest.
“How can he stand it?” she whispered. “How can he still stand?”
“Because he was married to Lynxonna,” Bellaron replied. “He is doing what she would want him to do, which is to stand tall and to continue doing his job.”
Apple knuckled some tears out of her eyes, and she stood up straight as well.
'Then we should do ours too,” she said. “We need to go talk to Rachel.”
They left, and as they did, they could still hear Mike McIntyre telling the people who came in, who were lost and frightened, that it would be all right, that they were safe and that things would soon be back to normal. With a pang, Apple wondered if he believed himself.
Chapter Four
It took some searching for them to find Rachel Deering. She wasn't at the university buildings the way that the other people were, and instead, they realized that even with the attack from the angels, she must be at her underground laboratory. It was shielded from any kind of attack or blast, and it was an obvious place for a woman to take her child when the city was being threatened.
It was also, Apple realized, a place where Rachel allowed her genius to let loose when it needed to work, and when she and Bellaron were confirmed as safe visitors and allowed in, she stared.
The center of the laboratory was a jumble of cables and supports, and in the middle of it all was Rachel's slender form. Her small hands worked with lightning speed, connecting wires and diodes and mixing it all together in a way that made Apple's head hurt. Apple was an artist, and for a moment she stood in awe of what Rachel seemed to be doing.
“Honey, honey, Mommy needs the wire strippers, bring them over here, okay?”
Apple jumped as little Lynxiennia brought her mother the tool she needed. The child's purple hair was a shock. One person she knew who had that hair was lying dead, and the other had gone missing. She fought the urge to hug the child, and instead called out to her mother.
“Rachel? Rachel, will you come out and talk to us?”
Rachel pulled herself out from under the jumble of wires and electronics, revealing herself to be a rather short, slight woman with a heart-shaped face and wide brown eyes. When Apple had first met her, Rachel was sweet and shy, but now in her element, Rachel snapped and sparked with electricity.
“It's an emergency relay,” she said, answering Bellaron and Apple's unspoken question. “Communications went down hours ago, and if this thing is going to last, people are going to need to talk to one another. I figured that while I was stuck down here, I might take a shot at helping people get in touch with one another.”
“Rachel...” Bellaron began, but Rachel reached for the remote, switching it on and filling the air with a long low buzz before it resolved to silence.
“There we go...” she crooned, and then she turned to them.
“Okay, what's going on?” she asked briskly.
“Lynxonna's dead and Lynxar... we think he was maddened by it,” Apple said in a rush. “He wouldn't leave her body at first, and now we're not sure where he is.”
“How can you lose him?” Lynxiennia asked, and instead of being disturbed or even crying, the little girl's tone was stern.
“We were busy fighting,” responded Bellaron, kneeling down to speak to Lynxiennia. “We will find him. He will not go far from you or your mother.”
“Damn straight he wouldn't,” Rachel said, and if there was any kind of fear or terror in her, she hid it well.
She strode straight to the control panel on the opposite side of the room, and she started twisting knobs and dials. When an interface lowered itself from the ceiling, she used the touchscreen to maneuver her way through databases so quickly that Apple couldn't follow it.
“What are you doing?” she asked tentatively, and Rachel spared her a glance over her shoulder.
“When Lynxar first came to Earth, I managed to find him with this device I was working on. It was meant to detect Regmagylpt particles, which can tell us if things passed through the atmosphere. It led me straight to him, and on days when Lynxiennia is playing hide and seek a little too skillfully, it can lead me straight to her too...”
Apple watched in fascination as Rachel plunged through calculations, eventually bring up a holographic 3-D map of the city and looking at it closely. She and Bellaron stepped closer as Rachel manipulated the map, spinning it around, cutting off bits of it and enlarging it again and again until she could focus on a bright purple circle that must have been Lynxar.
“There he is,” she said with satisfaction. “He's in the forest.”
Apple frowned. “Are... there are any meteorites where he is?” she asked hesitantly, and Rachel looked at where she was pointing. Directly in Lynxar's path was another circle, this one dark blue and somehow menacing.
“No, not at all,” Rachel said, frowning. “Could it be Archer? He would give off the same signal.”
“We just left Archer with his wife and his daughter,” Bellaron growled. “No, that's not one of us.”
“It's an angel,” Apple breathed, her voice hushed with fright.
Bellaron nodded. “Come on, we need to get going.”
“Not without me,” Rachel said promptly. “You need me to find him.”
Bellaron grinned, and there still was a little humor to it despite the dire nature of the situation.
“You are a liar, Dr. Deering,” he said, not unkindly. “You were using a hand-held device to track him when he first came to Earth. On top of that, you have a daughter, and you must stay here with her.”
“Would you say that if I were a man?” Rachel demanded.
He laughed. “Doctor, I would say that to anyone whose spouse was in the line of fire and whose family needed to survive. Now every moment we waste, Lynxar could be in danger. Please...”
Swearing under her breath, Rachel dug out the device and showed him how to use it, first disabling it so that it would not simply show his own alien readings or Archer's.
“All right,” she said, her face stone. “Go find him, but if you take too long, don't think I won't come looking.”
Chapter Five
Bellaron was the only one who had night vision, and despite how much Archer and Bryan wanted to come with him, he knew that they would be more harm then help.
“Stay at the edge of the forest here,” Bellaron said. “If the angel or if Lynxar comes this way, they need to be stopped. Turn them back to the forest if you can't catch the angel or delay Lynxar, but just remember that nothing alien and out of control should come out of the forest tonight, especially when folks are still shaky about what's happened. I don't want anyone getting hurt, understand?
Archer nodded, all military efficiency, but Bryan frowned.
“So you're going into the woods with not one, but potentially two hostiles that might want you dead? How is that a good idea?”
Bellaron bristled slightly, and then he remembered that Bryan was very used to talking things out and acting as a team.
He
shrugged. “It's not,” he said. “It's just the best we have.”
With that, Bryan had to be content, and after another moment, Bellaron loped into the woods. His wolf form saw even better than his human form did, but he needed human hands to hold the tracking device that Rachel had given him. It allowed him to make a straight line to where Lynxar was, but the torn bushes and broken saplings led the way easily enough after a while.
As he grew closer, he realized that there were two scents in the air. He could smell Lynxar, though the scent was murkier and stranger than the last time he had scented the tall alien, and there was something else as well, a singed and foul odor that made him want to gag. He knew it was an angel, and after a moment's thought, he hid the detector in a bush and shifted into his powerful wolf form.
Now he could see well and run faster, and traveling as silently as he could, he ran through the forest, praying that he could get to his grief-stricken friend before the angel did.
He came to the forest clearing where he could tell that Lynxar was, and he started to call out to his friend when a motion caught him by surprise. There was a sweep of white wings and hovering above the crouched purple-haired hero was the lead angel, the one who had tried to take Vicky Campbell hostage. For all that he was beautiful, he smelled of corruption, and his killing lunge was meant to take Lynxar's head off.
Bellaron sprinted toward them, already certain that he would be too late. He was fast, but he wasn't faster than an angel in a dive, and then Lynxar stood up.
Instead of striking the angel, Lynxar threw his arms outwards in a flinging motion, and there was a terrible light and an intense heat. Where there had been an angel, there was now only a charred corpse, and the clearing smelled of char and rot and ruin.
Bellaron stared with dismay, and then Lynxar saw him. For a moment, Bellaron expected to be incinerated on the spot, but instead Lynxar roared like a lion. It was a powerful sound, an elemental challenge, and there was enough wolf in Bellaron to back away.
Lynxar watched him with mad eyes until he was well away, and then Bellaron raced for the edge of the forest where his friends waited.
He gathered the two of them and shook his head. “We need to make sure that no one goes in and no one goes out,” he said. “He's dangerous until he calms down, and I think he would kill anyone who came close.”
Chapter Six
Rachel made her decision two days after Mike McIntyre sealed off the forest. She had watched in silence as the men with guns had been stationed, and she had nodded when Mike assured her that they were simply to warn Lynxar away until he was sane again. She refused to see Bellaron and when Bryan and Vicky came to comfort her, she was distracted.
“I wonder if she's okay,” Bryan said to Vicky as they left.
She gave him a solemn look. “I wouldn't be if you were in there,” she said, holding his hand tight.
Rachel's quick analytical mind went over her options and went over them again. One plan after another was discarded, and finally, she packed her bag and went looking for Archer Speedlight.
She found him on the roof of hospital he worked at, staring toward the forest.
“You don't think it's right, leaving him there,” she began.
He looked up, completely unsurprised that she had found him. “I don't,” he agreed. “Piss poor thing to do to a guy who helped save the city.”
“Take me to him,” she said.
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You know, the last time Dawn thought we were alone together, there was some serious hell to pay.”
“And she got over it when she realized that it was a weird clone trick. She'll get over this too. No excuses.”
He looked like he was going to argue, and she simple stared at him, her dark eyes stern and unyielding.
Archer sighed. “What about the kid?” he said. “She okay?”
“Apple's keeping an eye on her. She's teaching her how to make pots.”
“All right, okay. I wouldn't do this, Rachel...”
“But we both know it's the only way.” She nodded. “Thank you.”
Getting through the fencing was child's play for someone with Archer's powers. With his strength, he simply knocked the fence down, and he carried Rachel deep into the forest before the guards could sound the alarm.
“All right, thank you,” she said, straightening away from him. “Now you need to leave.”
“The hell I am!”
“If he sees anything that might be a threat, this could be disastrous. That new energy ball trick he learned, my equipment could sense it from the lab. It concentrates the power of a sun, Archer. Not a gun, not a bomb, not a nuclear blast, a sun. Maybe he can only do it once, but I don't want to risk your life on it.”
“And yours?” he challenged.
She smiled. “My life could never be in danger because of him,” she said tenderly.
Archer shook his head. “All right. On your head be it. I'll be out at the edge, just... for your sake and his, be careful.”
It was coming on sunset, but the sensor that she held showed her just where to go. It still took her a good half-hour hike to get to the place the sensor indicated, but when she parted the last stand of bushes, she saw a familiar flash of purple hair and her heart sang. She took a deep breath, perhaps a little more shaken than she was willing to admit to Archer, and she stepped into the opening.
Lynxar was stripped to the shreds of the jeans he had been wearing during the last battle with the angels, and there was a feral look to him. He sat at the base of what looked like the greatest oak in the forest, and he watched her with wary eyes. Her heart quailed when he didn't recognize her right away, but she shook it off. No matter what her nerves were like, she knew him, and she knew that he would rather tear off his arm than hurt her.
Moving slowly and with great deliberation, she started walking to him. Each step was sure and steady, and he watched her curiously, as if he had no idea who she was.
When she saw him tense, she stopped, holding her hands loose at her sides. She was almost six feet away from him, and though she wished that she had gotten closer, she supposed it would have to do.
“It's time to come home,” she said softly. “You've done what you needed to do, and now it's time to come home.”
He looked at her as if he didn't understand the words that she was saying, and she shook her head.
“It's not good for you to be out here by yourself,” she said sorrowfully. “You don't deserve it, my love. Lynxonna—”
At the mention of his fallen comrade's name, Lynxar threw back his head and howled like a mad man. The grief in it shook Rachel to her bones, but she forged ahead.
“Lynxonna is gone, and now we must honor her memory. You will not do it by sitting here in the forest, surely you must understand it.”
He turned his face away and she took the risk of coming closer.
“It was not what she wished for you to come here and be alone,” Rachel insisted. “You must understand this. She cared for you, for all of us, and... and oh, Lynxar, it was not your fault that she died!''
He turned his eyes to her, and they were so full of grief and despair that she fell to her knees beside him. Heedless of the danger, of the very real threat that a maddened Lynxar could pose, she threw her arms around him tight. All she could do was to try to leach the pain from him, to remind him that where one comrade had fallen, there were many others still standing. She stroked his hair, she held him as tightly as she could, and slowly, ever so slowly, she felt him relax into her.
“My darling,” she whispered, and the growl that he uttered next to her throat was anything but aggressive.
Silently, she opened herself to him, lay back on the forest floor and allowed him to come over her. There was something primal to his actions now, a return to the person he was, and oh, how she welcomed him.
“I have missed you so, my love,” she whispered, and with fumbling hands, she helped him remove her shirt and skim down her jeans. In a matter
of heartbeats, she lay bare before him, and though a modest part of her shrieked at being so revealed in an open space like the forest, another part of her reveled in it, of having nothing to protect her from the wild but her lover.
She thought he would drive into her as soon as she was naked, but he surprised her again. He leaned down to kiss her slowly and lingeringly, and then his skilled mouth moved to the aching peaks of her breasts, suckling first one nipple and then the other one erect. She sighed as his tongue traveled down the curve of her belly to the thatch of dark hair on her mons, and then he was spreading her with his fingers and laving her most delicate flesh with his tongue.
Her fingers found their way to his hair, and she held him there firmly, rocking her hips up to meet his skillful mouth. Her demanding motions made him groan, and he lapped at her clit even more eagerly, plunging first one and then two fingers into her warm aching depths.
She whimpered as he brought her closer and closer to a climax, making her body arch and heave. She wanted him so much, she completed him, and he completed her in a way that was essential to who she was as a person.
Rachel's body was as tense as a bowstring, and she was on the verge of falling over the edge when he stopped. Her cry of dismay was muffled as he came over her, settling his weight gently on top of her and keeping the bulk off her by resting on his forearms.
“My love,” he whispered, and the relief she felt upon hearing his voice, quiet and sane and so beloved made her sob with relief.
“Yes,” she murmured, “forever, for always, oh god, please never leave me again.”
He buried his face in her neck, and he swore even as his hard cock entered her with one hard thrust. She keened to be so fully reunited with him, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, welcoming him to her body fully.
She was so close to the edge that she began climaxing almost immediately, but his body's hard thrusts kept the orgasm going, sending waves of pleasure rolling over her over and over again.
Lynxar Series: Boxed Set (Books 14-19) (Superhero Romance - Werewolf Romance) Page 13
