Terran Realm Vol 1-6
Page 108
Then all the more reason to take care of business so we can report in, wouldn’t you say? He followed his words with an even deeper thrust, touching her heated core. Her resulting scream preceded yet another orgasm, the strongest one yet. The quake hesitated and attempted to overtake their combined strength.
You’re right, she said, gasping for air. This is our duty. It’s working. Let’s … ooohhh … finish this. Her words were followed by a shuddering feminine groan that was all pleasure and definitely not duty.
The sexual energy exchanged between them was nuclear in its strength. The only thing that kept their essences from being ripped apart was the joining of their bodies on the alternate plane. It’s more than duty, my Talisman, but that discussion can wait for another time. Then he propelled her to another peak and held her as she fell into orgasm once more. We’ll do this until the quake stops—or both of us die. I’ll never leave you.
That’s what I’m afraid of. I’ve never felt like this before—for Gaia’s sake, you’re a total stranger.
I’m not a stranger. I’m the prophesied one. I’m your Protector. Say it, little one. He shook her slightly as he plunged deeply into her warmth once more, throwing her into another climax.
Gasping, moaning, she managed to say, You … are the Protector. Thank you for helping me save the Midwest. I couldn’t have managed this on my own.
That wasn’t what he wanted her to admit, but it was close enough. His little Talisman wanted to avoid the truth of their existence—the truth of the prophecies of the Book. It’s been my pleasure, he whispered against her hair, taking her up and over one more time into a shattering climax, followed by his own massive orgasm. Shutting down the quake once and for all.
* * * *
Monday, 7:45 a.m. (PST), Southern California coast.
“Carr, Carr!” Ike’s voice came to him as if in a dream. The slap to his face was all too real. “Come back—now!”
Ike shook him. Carr shoved him away. “Stop it. I hurt enough without you beating on me.” He stood, leaning against the counter. On shaky legs, he stumbled to a chair. “Crap, I need a drink.” He glanced at the clock above the stove. He’d only been gone for ten minutes. It had seemed like hours.
Ike shoved the bottle of Scotch at him. “You look like shit. Have a drink and get some color back in your face.”
Carr took the bottle and swallowed a healthy amount, coughing as the warming liquid slid down his throat. “Water. A lot of it.” Ike pulled a couple of bottles of water from the fridge. Carr drank down a bottle in one long swallow. The second one he gulped in two. Traveling across half the continental United States, then making intense astral love to a woman while they fought to stop a massive, destructive earthquake was exhausting and thirsty work.
“What the fuck happened?” Ike sat across from him. “You had a hard-on the size of California and Baja combined. And you were moaning and grunting to beat the band—then you came—and came—and came some more. Old Faithful in Yellowstone doesn’t shoot that much.”
“Knock it off with the jokes.” Carr resisted the urge to snarl. “It was bad—a real cluster fuck. The quake was one of the strongest I’d ever felt. The Talisman was doing a damn good job when I got there, but she was almost spent. Our astral bodies and essences joined, giving her a small surge. Then I remembered the Terran birds-and-bees lecture—”
“You astrally fucked the Talisman in the middle of a catastrophe?” Ike grinned and offered a fist bump. “You da man!”
Carr shot his friend a withering glare. “This is not a joking matter. When, or if, you meet my Talisman, you’d better never let on I told you this. I won’t have her embarrassed. She just saved the fucking middle of the United States.”
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Ike replied, a sober expression pasted on his face. “But why sex?”
Carr sighed. “Procreation is the purest form of energy joining in the Terran Realm.”
Comprehension dawned on Ike’s face. “Okay, gotcha. That’s why my old man wants me to marry a female Earth Keeper or Protector. To keep the elemental powers pure. Although, he married an Air Keeper, so I think he already screwed with the family DNA.”
“Well, I’ve had sex with Earth Keepers in the past and there was a resulting energy surge—but it was nothing like what happened when I joined with my Talisman.”
“Your Talisman?”
“Yeah. Mine.” He glared at his friend.
Ike shrugged. “No skin off my nose, old friend. Whatever you two did, it worked. CNN said the geologists are going nuts, trying to figure out how in hell a 9+ magnitude quake shifted downward into a 5+ and then just stopped.” Ike eyed him closely. “Stopped right about the time you shot your wad. Coincidence?”
“What do you think?” Carr sighed and eyed the television images, the sound muted. “There’ll still be major death and destruction, but not as much as it could have been. Hell, it took most of her energy—and multiple orgasms for her—and one huge one for me to do that much.”
Ike laughed. Carr arched a brow. “Something funny?”
“No, unh-unh. Just proud of you.”
“After the last orgasm—mine—I was here. She’s out there, alone and exhausted. Drained. I can barely sense her.” Carr rubbed his aching head before slamming the table top. “Damn, I need to find her! Once the Destroyers figure out the Earth Talisman has arrived, she’ll be in mortal danger.”
Ike sat up, his eyes slitted, black sparks shooting from them. “Destroyers? Were they there?”
“No. But my Talisman said the quake was induced—so who else could have done it? Not human terrorists, that’s for sure. Unless they were someone like Nikolai Tesla with his doomsday machine, but he’s been dead for decades. The gods know humans can’t affect dormant fault lines ten kilometers below the Earth’s surface.”
Carr shoved away from the table and paced the kitchen. All tiredness gone, replaced by the need for action. The need to find and protect his woman. “Even the Destroyers must have set off some sort of activating device. And they had to do it remotely—I sensed no presence of any other Terrans.” He paused, recalling his thoughts at the time that no one existed in the whole world but the two of them. “My Talisman was all alone. I’m sure they counted on no Earth Keepers in that part of the country. All unstable quake areas have high concentrations of Earth Keepers and their Protectors living nearby. This was an area that should never have had a quake, let alone one of this magnitude.”
“What are you gonna do?” Ike demanded. “We’re due to set out tonight for Japan. The humans in our unit need us.”
“No, they need you. We can substitute Gavin from the other Recon team for me. Good thing our colonel is Terran, or I would have to go AWOL.”
“We’d better get on the phone to the colonel now—and to KOTE—you might need backup,” Ike suggested. “By the way, just where in the hell are you going?”
“Didn’t CNN have the quake situated somewhere in southwestern Indiana, near Vincennes?” Ike nodded. “That’s where I’ll start. I just hope I get there before someone bad does.”
“How will you know her?”
“How can I not? She is part of me now. I carry the mark of her essence in me.”
“Oh, man. The consort part. I forgot all about it.”
Carr shot his friend an amused glance. “I hadn’t. The astral joining has partially cemented our relationship. She carries my mark now, albeit just mentally and spiritually.” A physical joining would seal the deal. And he looked forward to seeing if she smelled and tasted as good in the real world as she did in the astral. He frowned. “Remember Darcy Miller?”
“That thug? He washed out of Special Forces. Not a team player. All around fucking bad news. Why?”
“He attacked my woman last night, attempted to rape her, but she defended herself before he could succeed. She was skittish, scared, but managed to be brave while I made love to her astral body. I’m not sure she’ll accept me so easily in the flesh.”
“Find her. Help her save the world. Woo her. Protect her with my life,” he paused, a grim smile twisting his lips, “and kill that fucker who dared touch what was fated to be mine.”
* * * *
Monday, 11:00 a.m. (EST), Southwestern Indiana, post-quake.
Lily groaned and attempted to test her body parts. She could barely move. Everything was sore and bruised. Nothing broken, though, but she had zero energy reserves. She was lucky to be alive.
The sun beat down on her. The winds driven wild by the huge energy release from the earth had died down to a gentle cooling breeze. The quake was over, but the world around her had changed. The wall she’d been uncovering now towered over her, fully exposed. The ancient workmanship had somehow survived the tossing by the earth, possibly because of its location along powerful ley lines.
Below her position, the ground fell away to a raging river. She gasped. By the grace of Gaia, the Ohio River, once ten miles south of the ancient mound, was now right below it. To her right, what had formerly been an underground spring had become a waterfall feeding the mighty river.
Struggling to sit up, she scooted away from the edge of the newly created cliff, then sank to the loamy soil when her back touched the base of the ancient stockade. She was wasted. She couldn’t get up, and even if she could, was there any place left to go?
Closing her eyes, she recalled the fiercely dominant essence of the Protector who’d saved her life, and the lives of many others, by sharing his strength. His methods had been crude, but effective. Weird, but they’d worked.
Well, okay, he had sound Terran reasoning behind his methods. The Book’s prophecies and Terran physiology dictated the sexual joining—and it had worked. Thank the blessed Gaia, it had been astral sex and not the real thing. She wasn’t sure if she could ever be so physically intimate with a man. The thought of any man actually touching her was repugnant. And even the astral sex had been so at first, but she’d quickly realized it was that—or death.
She’d choose life any day.
Unfortunately, she didn’t think the disasters would stop any time soon. If she recalled the prophecies correctly, this was just the beginning. All the elements would be attacked. The world would be thrown out of balance. Chaos would reign. And it had begun here—and she was stuck on a cliff in the middle of nowhere, unable to warn KOTE. Unable to help stop the destruction of the Earth she loved.
She hadn’t asked to be the Talisman for the Earth Elementals, but she was. She guessed she had to live with the job. She fingered the amulet glowing warmly on her chest, and a trickle of power surged into her fingers then died as if the stone needed to rest, recharge. She knew how it felt—she needed lots of food and a nice long sleep before her powers would be back up to normal. And, Gaia knew, she’d need all her strength—and her Protector—to survive the calamities to come.
Now what else did that damn prophecy say? Something about a Protector being her Consort. And something about a Destroyer. And the Power of Three.
She could do nothing about the Destroyer right now. Had no idea who he or she could be. And no concept of why any Terran, Destroyer or not, would want to end the existence of all life on Earth.
The Power of Three? The trinity of mind, body and spirit made sense, but something niggled at the back of her brain about the concept. She shook her head; she was too tired to try and figure it out. She’d face whatever it meant when she had to—she had no choice. Fate and Mother Gaia had dealt her this hand and she had to play it out. Her grandmother had always told her never to fight Fate. Tempting it was always a bad move.
A streak of pain radiated up her spine, residual energy from the earth, grounding itself in her weakened body. She bit her lip, holding back a gasp of pain. Tears streaked down her face as she fell back to the ground, curling into a fetal position to deal with the bone-jarring agony wreaking havoc with her body.
Damn it! Where in the hell was her so-called Protector? His essence and astral body had left her after they had climaxed together the final time. She moaned at the memory of the pleasure pouring through their combined astral bodies. Damn him, he’d fucked her and left her. He’d promised he would always be there to protect her. So … where in the hell was he? She needed protection—now. She was as helpless as a baby. And she hurt.
No, she wasn’t being fair. He had saved her life and had been considerate and gentle despite the circumstances. She would not place Darcy Miller’s crimes on the Protector’s account. She had a bad feeling her Protector’s real body was far, far away—and that she couldn’t go anywhere until he came to find her.
It was that Fate thing again—there was nothing she could do about it—so live with it.
Calling to the earth to replenish her, she managed to drag herself under what she hoped was a secure overhang so she wouldn’t burn to a crisp while awaiting her rescue.
She snuggled into the rich, dark soil, gripping the amulet, and slipped slowly into a deep, healing sleep. Her last conscious thought was that she hoped she wouldn’t die of starvation before he got here.
I’m coming, my Talisman. Hang on.
Chapter Three
Monday, 7:45 a.m.(PST), KOTE Headquarters, San Francisco.
In the basement of the KOTE building, Claire Galliardi pored over the treasured Book of Sorhineth. As she read, the Book rewrote itself, emitting a light show rivaling fireworks on the Fourth of July.
She’d hoped all the indicators had been wrong. She’d hoped the rumors of a Destroyer’s possession of a machine which could affect the core energies of Earth had been permanently put to rest. Maybe they’d been too quick to dismiss the possibility of such a machine after the first report by Justin Foster and his mate Elyse Greenwood demonstrated that such a machine had been a hoax perpetrated by Raymond Brody.
She rubbed her forehead where an incipient headache made itself viciously known. The gods knew she didn’t want to sound the alarm unless she was one hundred percent positive whether the earthquake that had just hit southwestern Indiana was just a freak of nature—or a Destroyer-created portent of worse things yet to come.
Unfortunately for them all—Terrans and humans alike—she feared it was the latter.
Beginning about twenty minutes ago, dozens of Earth Keepers assigned to the New Madrid Fault area had called in to report unusually strong activity along the Wabash Valley Fault. The echoes of that disturbance had reached the Mississippi River in mere seconds. They all predicted, to every last man and woman, that the quake could be as large as 9.0 or even more.
Because of the facts that, one, it hadn’t continued on to the 9.0 + magnitude and, two, the abrupt way in which it had ended, they feared it meant the dual prophecies of the coming of the four Talisman and the potential for the end of the world were now reality. In particular, the successful quelling of the monster quake meant the Earth Talisman had arrived. Even now the Book detailed the tale of the brave Earth Keeper Lily Redfern and her Protector Carr Madoc using an astral connection to quell the quake and save the Midwest from splitting into two.
She had to awaken Donovan and Brenna.
The Council of Elders must be convened to discuss the war for Earth’s survival, a conflagration the Book confirmed a Destroyer would initiate and that Gaia would finish without the timely intervention by the Talisman. And then they needed to locate both the Earth Talisman and her Protector and bring them under KOTE’s protection.
The quake in Indiana was only the beginning.
KOTE needed to plan, not just react. And they needed to send out a worldwide alert warning that more disasters were expected and asking all loyal Terrans and their preternatural allies to be vigilant.
Claire pushed her reading glasses back up her nose. Why a Destroyer would want to kill the very planet he also lived upon, she had never been able to figure out. He must have some goal just short of Apocalypse, the name the human’s various religions
had given to the end of the world; thus, the Destroyer had to have a way to stop what he’d started. Or at least she hoped so—Destroyers were not famous for their sanity. The sooner the Elders put their prodigious heads together and figured out what and how, the better.
“Babe?”
Claire shivered at the sound of her human lover’s voice. Mark Winbolt had been with her ever since Donovan Callahan had found his dual roles as Spirit Talisman and the destined leader of the Terrans. Donovan’s fight for KOTE had been the first prophecy fulfilled back in 1989. His human wife, Brenna, had been the Keeper of the Book of Sorhineth, and it was their meeting that had allowed Donovan to rid KOTE’s inner council of Destroyers and set the course of the Keepers and Protectors back on track.
Pasting a smile on her face, she turned. “Hey, sweetie.”
Claire admired her mate’s muscled body and the supple way he moved. He had aged well; being mated to a Terran had a way of slowing a human’s aging process. While many years younger than she, they looked the same age and would live out their natural lives aging physically at the same rate. No one would guess that she wasn’t human.
She reached up and smoothed hair from his forehead, his hair mussed from their bed and from what they had done in that bed a few hours before. She flushed with remembered excitement at his inventive and prolonged lovemaking. She could never look at him and not think “hot sex.” The man was a perfect male animal—and she truly wished the calls that had taken her from their bed had never been so she could be making love with him right this minute.
“What’s wrong?” Mark swept a thumb over her cheek, wiping away tears she hadn’t known she’d shed.
She shook her head. She could never fool him. He knew all her moods intimately. “It’s started.” She opened the Book to a page. A kaleidoscope of colored lights sparked from it. She traced a sentence with her finger. “The Book is writing the tale as it happens. I need to get Donovan and Brenna up and the Council of Elders here.”