No, it’s heartening. Trevyn rejoiced in the depths of his soul. He only hoped Gabriel could maintain his defenses in the face of such an onslaught.
“Still, I’ve begun to sniff a weakness,” the captain was saying. “The last time I made a run at him, there was something new, something”—he paused, almost tasting the air—“soft. I don’t know what it is yet. But I will find it, Trevyn. As I am Kylan Dar’s son, I will find it. And I will use it to rip Gabriel’s mind into a thousand bloody pieces.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The teacher turned to him, a glint in his gray eyes. “I say we owe the galaxy a civilized Thrane to make up for the butcher that is his father. What is your name, boy?”
“Gabriel Cruz, sir. And I am human, not Thrane.”
Lana sat bolt upright in the unmoving vehicle, her eyes seeking light, her lungs gasping for breath in the airless void of night. The child that Gabriel had been had stood up for the part of him that was human, but Lana saw what the others that day had seen—part of him was not of this Earth. His father was Thrane, his brothers were Thrane, and his memories in her mind showed her everything that meant—the cruelty, the conquests, the centuries of war. The bloodlines, the psi talents, the laws that held them in check.
Then, more proof, if any had been necessary: the image she had first seen when she’d touched his scars, of the fight on the dark side of Azreeni VI. Just one of so many fights on so many exotic planets, the creature dying beneath him just one of so many other unimaginable, inhuman creatures he had seen in his lifetime. Image after image, place after place, memory after memory flooded her consciousness until she was shaking and weak. Jesus Christ! Was she crazy or was he? Aliens? Other planets?
And . . . holy mother of God, she had . . .
She clawed open the car door and stumbled out of the vehicle. It was all she could do to keep her feet—and the contents of her stomach—as she gulped in huge breaths of cold desert air. They were pulled just off a secondary road onto a flat stretch of hardpan, and she was alone. Stars wheeled overhead. God, it was quiet! Her heart was like thunder in her chest.
A flashlight winked a few paces away and began to bob in her direction. “Lana?”
Oh, Jesus! She wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She wanted to do anything but talk to Gabriel Cruz. Who wasn’t human.
“Lana,” he said, as he got within speaking range. “I found the vehicle.”
“Don’t come any closer.” Damn it, why didn’t I go for my Glock?
“What?” He kept walking. “What’s wrong?”
She backed up until her butt hit the car’s hood. “I mean it. Stay where you are. Thrane.”
He froze for an instant. Then he was on her, pinning both hands behind her as he loomed over her. Her training was useless against his size, his experience and the raging hurt she could see in his black eyes.
“Never call me that. Never!”
“Why not? It’s what you are, isn’t it? Something . . . alien. Just like the ones who are chasing Asia and Jack!”
His grip tightened on her wrists, and his hips slammed into her pelvis. His words came out in a feral growl.
“I’m nothing like them. I’ve fought all my life to be something more than a butcher or a coward, to escape my father’s bloody legacy. And now when I look in your eyes I see it all staring back at me.”
Lana’s breath came in short, raspy gasps; her heart thrashed against her ribcage, unable to settle into a steady beat. He was too close, his lips inches from hers, his chest crushing hers, his hard length stabbing into her hip. Fear and anger warred with desire in her rebellious body. Her blood heated in her veins; molten fire pooled in her belly. She wanted to hate him; she wanted to fuck him. Christ almighty, she had no idea what the hell she wanted.
“Get the fuck away from me!” She pushed at him, if only to save the last shred of her self-respect. He didn’t move. “Let me go!”
“I will never let you go, Alana.” His breath was hot against her lips. “I can’t let you go. We’re connected, you and I, body and soul, joined in a way even I don’t understand. And it’s no more within my control than the rotation of this Earth.”
His eyes held hers, and in that gaze was more heat, more longing, more certainty of loss, than Lana had ever seen. If she had doubted his humanity, he could have given her no more proof of it than that last, lingering look before he released her and turned away.
Shame—and desire—sent a hot wash of blood to her face, but pride refused to let her acknowledge it. She fought for control of her voice.
“Wait, Gabriel.” She needed to understand all the ramifications. “What exactly does it mean for Asia and Jack that the . . . men . . . hunting them are Thrane?”
He turned back, cold rage icing his features. “It means we need to stop fighting like stupid children and find that woman and her child. Or my alien brother will turn her mind inside out, flay the flesh from her bones and take the boy beyond our help.”
“The boy,” she repeated in a whisper. Knowledge that had been Gabriel’s forced its way to the forefront of her consciousness. “Jesus God!”
Gabriel drew a hand through his hair and blew out an exasperated breath. “Dios, woman, can we please just have this out now? Dig deep. Let yourself see what I know. And let’s move on, for God’s sake.”
Searing anger swept through her. She pushed off the warm metal of the car to lunge at him. “Did it ever occur to you that what you ‘know’ might appear slightly insane to someone like me? Little gray aliens abducting humans for slave labor? Mindsucking warriors from another planet hunting an innocent human boy who just may have some kind of secret powers? No, wait—a whole galaxy full of other beings!”
She stood inches from him, staring up into the hard planes of his face. “Yes. I built walls high and wide around what you forced into my head, Gabriel Cruz. And no wonder.”
He held her gaze a moment longer, his eyes as black and cold as the desert sky. “It will do you no good, Lana. The walls will crumble eventually. The truth is the truth, and it will come to you, sooner or later. Sooner would be better for Asia and Jack.”
He turned and stalked into the darkness, his shoulders rigid. Lana watched him go, struggling to wrestle command of her body back from her emotions. When she could trust her legs to carry her, she went around the back of the vehicle to retrieve her shoulder holster. She pulled the pistol from her bag, checked the chamber and slammed home a magazine, then slid it into the holster under her arm. She wasn’t going to be without it from now on. What she had with Cruz was no longer a partnership; it was a truce at best, and a tenuous one at that.
Sighing, she grabbed a flashlight from her bag and went to join him at the SUV parked at the end of a line of tracks leading into the desert. The headlights from their Jeep back at the road threw angled shadows against the sand, obscuring more than they illuminated.
She forced a businesslike tone into her voice. “What do you see?”
He shook his head, frowning. “Nothing. No bodies, no blood. They were here, I can sense them.”
“Then what?” She filled in the shadows with her flashlight, seeing signs of a scuffle, foot traffic leading away toward a draw off in the near distance, then returning. More footprints led toward the road, but there was only the one set of vehicle tracks. “Could have been just a breakdown. Maybe they got a ride out on the road?”
“No. There’s something else.”
She looked at him, waiting.
“Power. Lots of it. The air is still charged with it, like the sky before a storm. Can you feel it?”
Lana stopped, opening herself to the night. Yes. A hum like walking beneath a high voltage tower.
“What the hell happened?”
But Gabriel wasn’t listening. He had straightened, his attention on the road.
“We’re out of time.”
Headlights were approaching, too fast to make it back to their vehicle before the newcomers cut them off. “Shit.” Lana scanned their surroundi
ngs. “Too late to make it to the draw. We’ll have to make a stand here. Maybe they’ll want to talk first.”
Gabriel grunted, as if that was unlikely. She agreed with him. She pulled the Glock and stood with it out of sight behind the door of the abandoned vehicle while a big Cadillac SUV roared up and jerked to a stop in a cloud of dust.
Gabriel positioned himself between Lana and the men piling out of the Caddy, though he was armed only with his souped-up TASER. Lana counted four opposing them, all but one with automatic weapons. No insignia that she could see. She eased the safety off the gun and relaxed her forearm.
Lights flashed on, blinding her.
“Hands in the air!”
Holy Christ! That voice . . .
“What the hell . . . Lana?”
She started to move forward. NO, Lana! Gabriel’s warning echoed in her head. He’s not what you think he is!
She put aside her shock at sharing her consciousness with him. There was no time to argue, and at the moment the ability was damn useful.
Back off. I’ve got this.
“Jesus Christ! Mark!” She made it sound as if he’d just thrown her a life raft in a raging sea. At the same time she waved her empty left hand and used her right to stash the gun, barrel down, in the inside door handle of the truck. She came around the outside of the door, swinging it halfway shut, and raised both hands fast enough to satisfy the trigger-happy crew surrounding FBI agent Mark Jamisky. Again she scanned them for any sign that they were Bureau agents and found none.
Jamisky nodded to his men. “Relax, fellas, I know this girl.” He glanced once at Gabriel before returning his attention to Lana. Two of the three with him shifted in Gabriel’s direction.
Lana’s throat went dry. “So Ballard took my lead seriously after all.”
“Yeah.” A crooked grin lifted Jamisky’s mouth. His tell, as familiar to Lana as his voice in the dark had been. He was lying. “We’ve been a few hours behind these guys since Little Rock. But what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be off the case.”
Weapons had been lowered on the other side, but Mark was several steps closer, and her adrenaline was pumping like he was a stranger rather than her former lover. She lingered around the door to the truck and didn’t dare look at Gabriel.
“I’m officially on vacation.” She shrugged and gave him her most charming smile. “But you know me, baby. I couldn’t let it go.” She raised an arm and draped it on the frame of the truck door, letting her shirt fall open to reveal both the empty holster and her breasts beneath the thin tank top she wore. As she’d anticipated, the attention of all four agents centered on her chest, if only for a second.
Gabriel moved silently into a better position behind the gunmen. Dangerous, targita, very dangerous.
If I take him, do you have them? Because he’s coming in, I can feel it.
Leave them to me. His confidence came through the link like a shot of adrenaline.
Mark stepped closer, his grin fixed, his gaze hungry. His big body loomed over her.
“No, sweetheart, you never did know when to let it go.” His left arm snaked around her waist and hauled her in tight; his head dipped to take her mouth in a bruising kiss. She went limp in his arms, letting his tongue plunge inside her mouth. The action that had once been so familiar, even welcome, was such a violation now that Lana couldn’t control a shudder. She covered it by clutching his shoulder in pretended passion with her left hand. Her right hand dropped inside the truck door to grasp the Glock.
He ground his hard-on against her and chuckled deep in his throat. “I really am going to miss this. You should have left it alone, baby.” Lana felt his right arm begin to move.
But she was faster. She brought the gun around, stuck it in his ribs and squeezed off two shots before he could bring his own weapon from the back of his waistband. She stepped back and let him drop, the shocked expression on his face oddly pleasing to her.
Gunfire boomed through the roar her own shots had created in her ears, answered by the high-pitched sizzle of Gabriel’s custom weapon. As she tore her gaze from Mark’s fallen body, Gabriel was kicking over the third of the thugs who had been with Jamisky, making sure he was dead. She had been too focused on Mark to see what Gabriel had done, but the bodies were evidence enough. Numb and unable to move, she watched him check his handiwork with stark efficiency.
He leaned over Jamisky to take the gun from the dead man’s hand. Then he looked back up at her. She was shaking, cold with shock, but he didn’t approach her.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, not yet willing to trust her voice.
“He was your partner.”
“He was more than that once.” She took a wobbly step.
Before she could fall Gabriel caught her and pulled her in. Damn it. She wanted to resist him, but she was freezing to death in the cold of the desert, shivering in the cold of her righteous anger. She needed his warmth.
His voice rumbled in his chest. “You had no choice.”
“I know.” She straightened and pushed away from Gabriel. “And I’ll never forgive him for it.”
Navajo Nation Indian Reservation, Arizona, Earth, Sector Three
Asia awoke alone, and for a long moment her mind would not supply a location for her body. She was no longer a captive, living at the mercy of killers in the back of a truck. She wasn’t at home, either, with Ethan in the bed beside her. She sat up in a mild panic.
Jack?
A mid-morning sun lit the room despite the rough-woven curtains covering the one open window. She listened. From outside came the familiar, comforting sounds of rural life—chickens murmuring and protesting in the farmyard, a sheep bleating nearby, horses whinnying somewhere at a distance. Then she heard the old woman, talking in low tones as she went about her chores, asking a question now and again, though Asia didn’t hear Jack answer.
At last things began to make sense. She’d slept late in the tiny second bedroom of Geneva Twohawks’s modest doublewide. Jack was already up and gone. Asia felt more than a little guilty for abusing the woman’s hospitality. Geneva had been so generous to offer her home, her help, even—she had insisted—her clothes. Asia had spent the night in a faded green tee shirt advertising the 2005 Apache County Rodeo. At the end of the bed a pair of clean, elastic-waist dungarees was neatly laid out in place of her own filthy jeans. Both the tee shirt and the dungarees were at least three sizes too large. Asia shook her head and got up to get washed and dressed. Beggars could hardly be choosers, and she was lucky to be alive this morning. She was smiling as she went out to the porch to greet her rescuer.
The desert heat was already thick in the air outside. Asia had to shield her eyes against the sun to watch the old woman and her young charge cross the farmyard. It was obvious Geneva Twohawks had been forced to go about her usual business all morning with a small, curious, strangely silent shadow following a few steps behind.
“Morning,” Asia said as they approached. “Sorry I was so late getting out of bed.”
“You needed to rest.” Geneva looked up at her and erupted into cackles. “Better not try to run, pants thief! Those pants will fall right off your skinny butt!”
Asia’s mouth fell open in shock, and she stood for a moment frozen in embarrassment. She hadn’t stolen anything! The pants had been at the end of her bed!
Then she caught the twinkle of sly amusement in Geneva’s dark eyes. She’d had an elderly great aunt back in Tennessee who’d made her childhood miserable with the same continual teasing until she’d learned to respond in kind.
“What pants?” She tugged on the fabric at her thighs. “When I woke up this morning my jeans were gone, and all I found was this tent with legs.”
“Ha!” Geneva laughed. The brown eyes sparkled. “Your clothes had so much dirt I used them to plant my garden.”
Asia nodded. “Good idea. Much less work than washing them.”
Still cackling, Geneva climbed the porch steps behi
nd Jack, and the two came even with Asia. With solemn pride, Jack showed his mom the basket he was carrying. She captured her son and gave him a hug.
“Did you gather those eggs, buddy?” The boy nodded.
The old woman patted his shoulder in approval. “He’s a good worker. Come. I’ll cook breakfast.”
Geneva pulled out a skillet and scrambled up the eggs with some onion and tomatillo from the garden. “You like frybread?”
“Anything is good.” Asia wanted to be polite, but she had no idea what frybread was. “Thank you.”
“Frybread is Dineh—Navajo—food,” Geneva explained, apparently reading her expression. “I have coffee, too. And dry milk for the boy.”
When it was ready they ate in silence, paying serious attention to the food. Asia hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she looked up from her empty plate.
The old woman smiled. “You both eat like hungry coyotes!”
Asia blushed. “This was very good. We’re grateful for all your help.”
“The Holy People sent you to me,” Geneva explained. “I could not turn you away.”
“Not everyone would have been so kind.”
Geneva shook her head. “Not kindness. It’s my duty to protect the people. The evil that stalks you threatens everyone.”
Asia’s heart began a slow thudding in her chest. Why would she think anything was stalking them? And “evil”? As bad as the Men in Black were, she would have a hard time calling them “evil.” “Ruthless,” “cold,” “misguided,” maybe. Even the psychiatrist who had kidnapped her on their behalf two years ago had had his own warped motivations. The Grays, now, maybe you could call them evil.
“Miz Twohawks, I’m not sure what you mean.”
The old woman held up a hand. “I know you didn’t have a breakdown on the road, Timewalker. You escaped the spider, but the snake lies in wait. The boy is trying to hide from this evil in the Spirit World, but it will find him even there. And though he is powerful, he doesn't know how to fight it. I can help you. That’s why the Holy People sent you to me.”
Trouble In Mind (Interstellar Rescue Series Book 2) Page 23
