Selena blinked when she looked back at Maximus. His expression softened, as if less concerned now that whatever creature it was had moved closer. She didn’t understand. He was the one on the ground.
“W-what is it?” she asked.
“A feral boar, I think,” Maximus said without looking up at her. “Of all the things people have introduced to the islands, that’s not so bad. They can be tasty at a luau. I was worried about something far more dangerous and far less tasty.”
“Like what? A polar bear?” Selena gasped. “And why are you acting like this isn’t a big deal? You can’t fight some wild boar with your bare hands. Get up here. I’m sure if we’re both in the tree, it’ll go away. This was a stupid idea, and I should have never brought you here. If you end up hurt, I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
Maximus crept to the side, ignoring obvious makeshift weapons like fallen branches and rocks. The boar emerged from the brush, a long beast at around five feet. Selena wasn’t an expert, but the animal must have weighed hundreds of pounds. The size was less of a concern than the prominent tusks, ready to puncture the man standing there without fear. This would be another problem if they were hauling equipment through the forest.
“Please,” Selena begged. “If this is about impressing me, then mission accomplished. You’re a tough guy, but I don’t want to see that thing rip new holes in you. Get up here.”
“It’s okay,” Maximus said, his voice low and growly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to stare down something that’s angry and has sharp teeth. This future bacon doesn’t get it.”
“Doesn’t get what?”
“That it’s not the one hunting.”
The boar grunted but didn’t move. He bowed his head, letting out a quiet growl. That couldn’t be good.
Maximus chuckled. “I’ve got no reason to mess with you. All you have to do is walk away.”
“You can’t reason with angry bacon!” shouted Selena. “Not stop being so stupid!”
The boar pawed the ground before growling. He lowered his head and charged. Selena screamed.
Maximus spun, dodging the boar like a trained matador. He only needed the tight pants and a cape. The thought of the man in tight pants almost made Selena forget the dangerous situation.
His opponent might be an animal, but it was an angry animal that wasn’t ready to run away. The boar changed direction, not losing much momentum before it launched another charge at the human who dared defy its territory. Maximus’s lightning-fast reflexes allowed another quick dodge, this one a side-step, sparing his thighs and stomach from the sharp tusks of the boar.
It was amazing, but it had to be luck. There was no way he could keep this up. No normal man could given the rough terrain.
Selena looked around, hoping she could find something, anything in the thick branches to help Maximus. Security in her high perch meant nothing other than leaves. Not a surprise, but it was a disappointment. She reached into her backpack.
“I’ve got a Taser,” she shouted. “And some pepper spray.”
“Save it,” Maximus yelled back. “This is almost over.”
“You’re kidding me!”
Selena didn’t see how it was almost over. If Maximus had some secret weapon, he’d not pulled it out yet. Using a Taser or pepper spray might not be that effective on a huge wild animal, but they were both better than nothing.
The boar ran several yards away before turning around with another series of grunts and growls. It didn’t immediately charge, instead watching Maximus. The last thing they needed was a careful but violent wild animal.
“I was hoping the big guy here would figure out it’s futile,” Maximus said, keeping his attention on the boar. “But I think I’m going to have to show him who the real beast is.”
“Get up here while you have a chance,” Selena said. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not impressed by what I’ve just seen, but your luck is bound to fail. Or at least take my Taser or spray.”
“It’s not luck when you know what you’re doing. It’s up to him. All he needs to do is figure out he’s outmatched.”
Maximus almost looked like he was enjoying himself. He must have been a danger junkie, not that surprising given his line of work.
Growling, the boar charged again. This time, Maximus rushed forward and burst into a sprint. Selena’s eyes widened at the sight of an unarmed man heading straight toward an attacking wild animal. Maximus might be huge, but the boar had at least a hundred pounds on him.
She almost didn’t believe what she saw next. Maximus whipped up his hands and gripped the tusks, digging into the ground with his boot heels and letting out a loud grunt of exertion. Dirt flew, and the boar squealed, shaking from the sudden stop. Maximus growled, louder and more menacingly than the beast he was fighting. The boar continued squealing and growling, trying to shake off the man holding him before Maximus roared.
Selena shivered. Something about the sound scared and excited her at the same time. While no animals were brave enough to be near the confrontation of the human and the boar, birds ripped from trees in the distance, intimidated by Maximus’s challenge.
He continued roaring as he yanked the boar off the ground and twisted his body for a throw. He released his hold and the massive animal flew through the air before crashing onto the ground with an ear-splitting squeal. The boar staggered back onto its feet, swaying.
Maximus bellowed again, loud, bestial, and threatening. The boar hesitated before fleeing into the undergrowth.
Selena stared at Maximus. Some sweat trickled down the side of his face, and there was dirt on his hands, but he didn’t have a wound on him. The man tossed a fully grown feral boar around like it was nothing and scared it off by yelling at it. That didn’t seem possible. Was she losing her mind?
“You can come down now,” Maximus said, his back to her as he wiped the sweat off his face. “It’s not going to come back here anytime soon. Pigs shouldn’t screw with a big, bad wolf.”
Selena carefully made her way down the branches, half-convinced she was asleep and dreaming. What she had seen wasn’t impossible, but it was unlikely. She dropped the last yard to the ground, watching the man carefully.
Maximus turned around and smiled. “I don’t think I could have pulled that move off on a polar bear. I would have needed a headlock. Grizzly in a submission hold?”
Selena stared at him. His eyes had been brown before, but now one was brown and the other amber. Understanding struck her like a lightning bolt.
She slapped a hand to her forehead. “I’m so stupid.”
Maximus shook his head. “You did the right thing. You stayed out of the way. I wouldn’t have been able to pull off what I did if you hadn’t.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She pointed at his face. “I think one of your contacts fell out during the fight with Mr. Future Bacon.”
His smile faded and he reached toward his eye. “Damn it.”
Selena laughed, the relief of understanding flooding her. “All this time I’ve been trying to figure you out. So many things didn’t make sense, but now it’s so obvious. You’re not a hot mobster. You’re a hot hybrid.” She slapped her hands over her mouth and let the silence tick along before lowering them. “You’re a hot hybrid from Luna Lodge.”
Maximus sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. He reached to his face and removed the other contact and stared at Selena with his beautiful amber eyes.
“Yes, I’m a hybrid, but I’m not from Luna Lodge. They helped my brothers, but you can think of us as a different branch of the family.”
Selena strolled toward him, drawn in by the eyes. She’d been so sure his eye color was wrong before, but now she didn’t. The amber was perfect.
“There are other hybrids besides the ones from Luna Lodge?” Selena asked. “Nobody ever talks about that.”
“There’s a lot most people don’t know about my kind.” Maximus shrugged.
“Why ar
e you here? I’m assuming you were lying about that security job.”
“What? Hybrids can’t be security contractors?”
Selena scoffed. “The opposite. I think if there was a company filled with hybrids, you’d be running ads all over the place yelling about it. Everybody would want a hybrid guard. You could charge whatever you wanted.”
Maximus stared at her for a moment, uncertainty playing across his face. She hoped she hadn’t offended him, but the last thing she expected when looking into everything was to run into a hybrid. He might be able to help her with whatever was going on.
“No, I’m not a security contractor,” he said quietly. “I’m here because I’m investigating some dangerous people that have targeted my hybrid brothers in the past.”
“I don’t understand. Shouldn’t you get the government involved? If this is about the Horatius Group, isn’t everyone out to get them? You could get the FBI and police to help, right?”
Maximus smiled wearily. “We hybrids learned a long time ago the only people we can rely on are ourselves. There’s still a lot we don’t know about the different groups involved in creating hybrids, and if we want to make sure we don’t end up prisoners again, we need to mostly look into it using our own resources. Sometimes the authorities still want to blame hybrids when trouble happens.”
“Okay. Fine. Let’s go check it out.” Selena gestured to the forest. “We can skip the waterfall and check out those blank spots, and they’re closer anyway. If these are bad guys like you’re saying, I doubt they’ll be at the waterfall.”
Maximus frowned. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
Selena stuck her hands on her hips. “If this is about dangerous people hunting hybrids, you’ll want another witness in case the cops or the Feds become involved. I can be a neutral third party.”
“This isn’t a game, Selena.”
“I didn’t say it was, and these people may have all but cost me my job.” Selena returned his pleading look with a steely stare. “Besides, you want me to walk back to my car so I can get attacked by these guys? Ruthless people who wouldn’t think twice about killing me? If not them, then what about that boar looking for revenge? Nothing’s changed from before except I know the truth.”
“I was planning to find a convenient excuse to send you back to the car and have you hand over the more detailed version of the map.” Maximus shrugged.
“Not going to happen.”
Maximus groaned. “Fine. But you do what I say. There might not be anything at all, or it could be a whole army of hidden monsters, things that are barely human anymore.”
“I heard about those on the news. Glycons, right?”
“Yes.” Maximus let out a low growl.
Selena nodded slowly. There was something in his eyes and his voice, something that told her he was still holding back. Pressing him for more information was pointless. He’d already admitted to being a hybrid and investigating dangerous people, and it wasn’t like he had any reason to trust her with more.
She’d spent all this time thinking he might be a hot mobster, but he might have thought she was some sort of evil anti-hybrid spy. A lot of how he behaved now made perfect sense.
Selena took a deep breath and slapped her cheeks. “Let’s go investigate our map mystery!”
Chapter Thirteen
Selena was brave. Maximus had to give her that. She didn’t even seem that rattled by the boar attack, but bravery didn’t mean she wasn’t being an idiot coming with him and that he wasn’t being one by letting her. He knew how dangerous the Corps could be.
What he didn’t understand is why she’d first agreed to come with him. She was already convinced something shady was going on and also suspicious he might be a criminal. Hiking into the deep forest with a huge man she believed might be a working for organized crime wasn’t high on the list of recommended activities. It could take weeks if not months for someone to discover a body in this part of the forest.
Maximus wrote it off as her being stubborn and worried about her job. With few options, she took the only one available, despite it being dangerous. She wasn’t completely unarmed as proven by her offer of a Taser and pepper spray.
That might explain her, but it didn’t explain him completely, even if all his earlier rationalizations still applied. She provided a convenient excuse and cover if he ran into someone. They couldn’t be certain they would even encounter Quinen or the Corps. If this whole scouting mission turned out to have nothing to do with hybrids, he was far more likely to be able to escape with some well-placed lies. Brutal murders of tourists weren’t the kind of thing local criminals liked. They drew too much attention.
Maximus eschewed a weapon to eliminate any suspicion, but three other hybrids with hidden pistols trailed them. They were far enough away to avoid anyone, especially Selena, from noticing, but not so far that a dead sprint wouldn’t get them into engagement range pretty damned quickly. Sometimes even the hybrids’ enemies underestimated how fast they could be when needed.
His concern over potential Phoenix Corps traps was a little offset by a palpable sense of relief. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected when he admitted he was a hybrid. Just because the public and media weren’t passing around false stories of evil hybrid kidnappings anymore didn’t mean that every human suddenly trusted them.
Maximus couldn’t even convince himself that it would be wrong of her to be afraid of him for a more fundamental reason. She’d given nothing but the truth from their first meeting whereas he’d lied repeatedly about who he was and why he was interested in the area. Women didn’t like liars.
Selena shot him a playful grin. “I keep wondering if more wild boars will show up. Now I almost feel sorry for the poor pig. I mean think about his bad luck. The one person he runs into in this forest is a hybrid.”
“Hey, I didn’t kill him.” Maximus shrugged. “I just showed him who was boss.”
“He picked the wrong fight.”
“That he did.”
Selena laughed, the sound light and merry. There was no hint she was worried about traveling through the forest with a lying hybrid. The ease of her step, near perpetual smile, and wide-eyed interest in the trees and birds around her made it come off like a tourist trip and not an investigation into a ruthless organization. It was as if she could sense the lies before and was more on guard because of them, but now that the truth was out, she could relax.
Light beads of perspiration dotted her forehead, and a slight brush of red covered her cheeks, signs of her effort on their hike, but her breathing was easy and regular, her pace confident but casual. Another few miles wouldn’t hurt.
A comfortable lull in the conversation arose. The call of birds and scurry of small animals denied true silence, but left it easy for Maximus to listen for anything unusual, but not so effortless for him to keep out stray thoughts that didn’t have anything to do with the mission. He would have almost welcomed another wild animal attack.
The mission was supposed to lead them to Doctor Quinen. The scientist might have answers about what had happened to the twelve members of Alpha Squad. If anyone knew, he did. The specificity of the affliction bothered Maximus. Why hadn’t all the hybrids from his group been affected?
Rachel claimed it wasn’t a disease or contagious. The fact it was only the twelve supported that, but it might simply take longer with the others to manifest.
A second possibility was more disturbing. Something special might have been done to the twelve hybrids, something that set them even farther apart from the rest of their kind. There might be something to that. The fact that the top elites from his group were the ones with this particular issue had crossed his mind more than one. The lack of ability to smell their Vestals might be a side-effect with something far more terrible coming for them.
Maximus had fought Glycons before. They vaguely resembled men, but most of them lacked intelligence and lived for nothing but death. Did becoming a mindless beast await the twel
ve hybrids in the future?
He didn’t fear death. He’d faced it many times since before and after he’d earned his freedom. The only thing he feared was dying before he had the chance to take down the bastards who had stripped the hybrids’ freedom away for decades. The bastards who thought they could treat living men like they were nothing more than equipment.
“Can I ask you something?” Selena asked, kicking a small rock out of her way.
“Sure.” Maximus took a moment to survey the area. He didn’t find anything more suspicious than a small lizard. “No guarantees that I’ll answer, though.”
Selena coughed into her hand, her cheeks far redder than before. “I’m curious about something. I know it’s kind of private, but I can’t help myself. I’ve wondered about it since I first heard about it.”
Maximus didn’t like where this line of questioning was going, but he couldn’t object to her question if he didn’t know what it was.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Like I said no guarantees.”
“Well, you see…” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Vestals.”
The word startled Maximus so much he almost tripped over a fallen log. He righted himself and resumed his normal stride, his jaw tight. It was like the damned woman had been reading his mind during their earlier meetings.
“What about them?” he asked gruffly.
“Is it true?” Selena asked.
“You’ll have to be more specific than that.” Maximus tried to keep his tone casual and unconcerned, despite his heart kicking up.
“From what they said on TV…” Selena laughed. “It’s silly. It can’t be true.”
“And what did they say on TV?” Maximus asked. “More stories about how we hypnotize women and drag them off?”
Selena’s smile faded. She slowed. “They used to say things like that, and it’s not like everyone has stopped, but I don’t think most people believe that, especially since some of that stuff makes more sense if everything I’ve heard about Vestals are true.”
Maximus: #1 (Luna Lodge: Alpha Squad) Page 10
