by S. E. Smith
Instead, Mak had allowed the female to continue on her dangerous assignment. His mind drifted, replaying the night once again as if it were just happening. He knew that Tansy was trying to protect her own leader, President Askew Thomas, from being assassinated by his Vice-President. Unfortunately, something had gone wrong during the mission.
*.*.*
Four months earlier:
“You shouldn’t allow the females of your world to take such risks,” Merrick muttered as he stared at all the equipment glowing in the van. “Mak should have tied Tansy up and taken her back to our world.”
Cosmos glanced over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. “You saw Tansy. Do you really think she would have just stood by while Mak tried to tie her up? Hell, he would have been the one needing help. Tansy, Helene, and Natasha are not the kind of women you tie up unless they let you,” Cosmos replied with a twisted grin. “Shit, any one of them could take my ass out in a heartbeat before I even knew it and I’m no slouch when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.”
Merrick scowled. “Why do the women of your world take such risks? Why do the males allow it?” He demanded, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned against the inside wall of the van.
“Dude, didn’t you just hear what I said?” Cosmos asked in exasperation. “It’s not like this in every country, though we are working on it, but women have a right to make their own decisions and choices about their lives. Tansy, Natasha, and Helene chose to protect those that can’t protect themselves. They fight beside men and women around the world who are trying to make this a better place to live. Hell, I’m just glad we have the Tansy’s of the world. We sure the hell need more like her.”
Merrick frowned as he listened to Cosmos explain that Tansy’s work had brought down some of the major drug and slavery rings around the world. Helene, and her sister, Natasha, did the same type of work in Russia. Without them, many of the Organized Crime Gangs would have been impossible to infiltrate.
“If I found my bond mate, I would keep her safe,” Merrick muttered under his breath as he watched one of Cosmos’ men adjust a camera showing Tansy talking to a male. “I would never allow her to do something that was so dangerous.”
Cosmos glanced over his shoulder again and shook his head. “Why don’t you stretch your legs outside for a few minutes? You can scan the area for us as well to make sure it is clear. Just looking at you folded up in here is making my legs hurt.”
“Good idea,” Merrick grunted with a relieved nod as he reached for the handle of the door before he paused to look back at Cosmos. “I don’t know why you don’t just kill the men you are after. You know that they are trying to harm your leader. Wouldn’t that make more sense than endangering the women?”
“Yeah, it makes more sense. Unfortunately, our laws are a little different than yours,” Cosmos replied, before he turned back to look at Tansy smiling seductively at her target. “Not that Tansy gives a rat’s ass about that if she is given half a chance to take out the bad guys.”
“You live in a strange world, human,” Merrick muttered, shaking his head as he opened the back door of the van and stepped out.
He had barely closed it when two black vehicles suddenly appeared at the far end of the narrow alley. Men poured from the vehicles and began moving toward the van. He knew immediately that something had gone wrong.
“Cosmos!” Merrick growled in a low voice, jerking the door open again. “Men are coming down the alley.”
“Shit! We’ve been compromised! All units, take cover, we have been compromised,” Cosmos warned into the headset he was wearing before he jerked it off his head and nodded to the other three men in the van with them. “Keep Tansy, Helene, and Natasha in your sight,” he instructed one of the men. “How many?”
Merrick glanced around the side of the van. “Ten,” he replied. “I’ll take out the ones on the right. Can I kill them?”
“Leave one alive, if you can,” Cosmos responded, checking his gun as he climbed out of the van. “We need to know how they knew we were here.”
“I will try,” Merrick said before giving Cosmos a short nod of warning. “Now,” he muttered, turning and running toward the five men on the right side of the alley.
Gunfire had lit the night. He had taken three bullets, one in the arm, one to his upper thigh, and one had grazed his left side. While they hurt, none of them had been life threatening.
He cursed the primitive weapons Cosmos insisted that he carry. They were clumsy and unfamiliar in his hands. He had finally abandoned them. Chasing the lone man down the alley, he had rounded the corner only to find he had run into a trap.
He had fought, leaving more dead than alive as another group of men surrounded him. His eyes flickered open as he remembered the image of one man who stepped out of the darkness as he collapsed. The man had been shorter than him, but was thickly built. He carried a long gun that shot darts, instead of the pieces of metal the others used.
The darts contained an agent in them that paralyzed his muscles. The man, Markham, was the first man he wanted to kill. The ugly, but satisfied, smile on the male’s face burned through his mind.
“I heard the reports of an unusual man in Russia who had helped my target escape,” Markham had commented as he knelt beside him on the hard ground. “My employer wanted to know who could kill like that. It would appear the elusive Ms. Bell has more than her family and Cosmos Raines up her sleeve. I think my employer will be very interested in keeping you alive… for a short time, at least.”
*.*.*
Merrick remembered reaching out in a fit of rage to kill the man. The last thing he remembered of that night was Markham striking him with the butt of the gun in his hands. Since then, he had seen the man on three other occasions. Markham’s gloating gaze built his resolve to kill the man before he returned to his world or die trying.
He leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling as exhaustion pulled at him, making him want to give into the need for sleep. Another shudder wracked his body as the after effects of the shocks he had been hit with ran through him. He desperately needed to escape.
His thoughts turned to his home world of Baade. Sadness coursed through him at the devastation that had been wrought by the declining birth rate of Prime females. Most of the eligible women on Baade were spoken for as soon as they came of age.
He and the other males were matched to their mates through a mating rite’s ceremony held twice a year. The ceremony was a gathering of all the unmatched males and females. They were presented to each other in small groups, rotating until the markings appeared, proving they were destined to be together. If in cases such as his, no match was made, the warrior was left with one of two choices; continue to attend the ceremonies in the hope he would find his bond mate or resign himself to a solitary existence.
The chemical change that occurred when a Prime male came in contact with a female genetically ideal to them, could not be fraudulently recreated. The powerful chemical caused a physical and emotional reaction in the male, that bonded him to a female. The males become overwhelmed with feelings of possessiveness, protectiveness, and sexual desire.
In addition a mating mark, a series of intricate circles denoting the unbreakable bond between mates, appeared on the palm of the male and the matching female when they came into contact with each other. Each mark was as individual as the bonded pair. It would not appear until the male and female reached the age of mating.
Procreation was impossible without such a connection. Their scientists discovered the chemical reaction was an evolution of their genetic makeup. As far as he knew, they had not found a solution to the problem. If a resolution wasn’t found soon, the Prime species was destined for extinction.
A reluctant smile curved Merrick’s lips as he thought of the unusual answer that suddenly appeared before his species in the form of a tiny human female. Jasmine ‘Tinker’ Bell had unexpectedly appeared on J’Kar‘Tag Krell Manok’s warship through a Gateway conne
cting their two worlds. The Gateway, created by Cosmos Raines, had given his world and the men living on it hope for a future.
Merrick looked at his palms. Nothing showed on them and probably never would. It didn’t matter. He had not come to this world for himself, but for the men under his command. As the leader of the Eastern Mountain clan, it was his duty to guide them and do whatever he could to ensure their survival.
He and his cousin, Core, had journeyed to the capital of Prime after they captured a human male. The male had lied to them. It was the first taste of deceit from the humans that Merrick had experienced. His fingers rose to touch his ear as he thought of J’kar’s tiny mate. A small chuckle escaped him. She had been the first taste he had of a human female’s ferocious ability to protect those that she loved.
Tink had attacked him when he struck out at her mate. She had jumped on his back, covered his eyes, and bitten his ear with her smooth teeth. Her mother had kicked him in his groin while her sister had knocked him out with a planter. He shook his head as the memories flooded him.
No, not all humans are traitorous. Including the males, he reluctantly admitted as he thought of Cosmos and those working with him. There are those that can be trusted here just as there are on my world, and those that cannot.
His eyes flickered up as the door opened and Weston and three other men stepped into the room. Weston eyed him with a combination of consternation and hatred. Merrick returned the human’s stare.
“Knock him out,” Weston ordered. “Doctor Rockman wants another sample.”
Merrick surged up to his feet at the name of the female doctor. The roar he emitted loudly echoed in the room as Weston raised the syringe in his hand. It took three men pulling on the chains to get him close enough to the bars for Weston to inject him. It would have been impossible if he wasn’t still weak from his earlier fight.
Merrick slid down his hands and knees on the floor as the drug rushed through him. His arms trembled violently as he fought against it, but it was impossible. He slowly collapsed down to the cold floor again. For a moment, his heart stuttered and paused as the excessive amount of the drug they used flowed through his bloodstream.
Perhaps this will be the last time, he thought as darkness descended around him.
Chapter 3
Addie waved her badge at Ted and smiled. He smiled and waved back before pressing the button to lift the security gate. She lifted her foot off the brake and let her small dark blue Kia Sonata roll over the speed bump before depressing the accelerator. Turning right into the parking lot, she headed for the employee entrance.
She grimaced as she glanced at the clock on the dash. She was running a few minutes late. A silent chuckle escaped her and she rolled her eyes.
Who would give a rat’s ass that I’m not there to mop the floor or empty a trash can on time? She thought with a grin at the deserted parking lot.
It was almost ten o’clock on a Friday night. Everyone who worked at Keiser Research was gone for the weekend except the poor suckers like her, Ted and a few other security guards. A sigh escaped Addie as she pulled into a parking space up close to the back entrance and turned the engine off.
Grabbing her thick, long blonde hair in one hand, she wound a hair band around it and pulled it into a ponytail to keep it out of her way. She glanced around to make sure she had her badge to get in the building. She had only been working there a few days.
Opening the driver’s door, she checked that she had her car keys and small, leather wallet before locking it. Her eyes ran over the outside of the building. She hadn’t worked in this section yet. The email she received today instructed her to come to this building instead of the main office complex on the south side of the parking lot.
Swiping her badge in the security lock, she waited as the light turned green before she pulled the door open. At least this one had a light! The main complex didn’t and since she couldn’t hear the sound of the lock disengaging, she had to try to time when it would unlock. If she tried too soon, it didn’t work. If she tried too late, it didn’t work.
Addie sighed as the door closed behind her. She reached into her back pocket and pulled out the map of the building. She would need to check in with the guard in the front lobby first. Ted was supposed to have talked to the guy for her and explained that she was deaf.
Walking down the main corridor, she thought of Ted and Pam. It was hard to believe that Miss High and Mighty, ‘he-is-going-to-ruin-your-reputation Pam’, had fallen in love with Ted during the last half of their senior year! Ted was one of the few kids that had remained in contact with her after she moved to St. Augustine to attend the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind. After she graduated, she moved back to Portland and began taking classes while working a wide variety of jobs.
When she had casually ‘mentioned’ a couple of weeks ago that she needed to get a second job to help cover the cost of her last class, he had helped her get the position on the housekeeping staff at Keiser where he worked nights as the gate security guard. Addie was trying everything she could to remain independent from her parents.
It had taken her the last two years to earn enough to move out into her own place while she attended college. A shudder went through her as she thought of her mom’s insistence that she remain at home where they could take care of her. While her parents had been the driving force of her going to St. Augustine to finish her schooling, they had been adamant about her returning home as soon as she graduated.
It had taken the combined forces of her five older siblings to get her parents to agree to her attending college. She had agreed to live at home for the first two years. What she hadn’t told her parents was that she had spent a lot of that time working several part-time jobs to save up enough money to move out. She loved her parents to death, but their over-protectiveness, especially her mom’s need to know everything she was doing, was driving her crazy!
No, if it meant mopping floors to help supplement my income while I finish the last class I am taking to get my certification as a licensed massage therapist, then, I’ll mop a hundred of them, she thought as she stepped up to the guard station.
Addie had one more test the following afternoon before she finished her degree. Once she got her license, she could quit working here and work as a Masseuse while she continued to work on her Master’s degree in Physical Therapy. Each step was leading to her dream of opening her own clinic one day. With a degree in both Massage and Physical Therapy, she knew she could make it without ever having to depend on anyone else ever again!
Addie drew in a deep breath and gave a brief, polite smile to the guard sitting in the chair with his feet propped up on the desk. A shiver of distaste washed through her when he ran his gaze over her. Ignoring the appreciative look in his eyes, she waited for the guard closest to her to respond to her presence. He seemed to have difficulty pulling his eyes from one of the monitors. Holding up her badge, she handed it to him so he could scan it when he finally looked at her.
“She’s a hot one,” the guard sitting behind the one scanning her badge said with a smooth smile. “Maybe she would be interested in a little nighttime organization of the supply closet.”
“Shut up, Josh,” Bradley muttered.
“Why? Ted said she’s deaf. She can’t hear what the fuck I’m saying,” Josh chuckled. “You can’t hear me saying I want to bend you over and fuck that sweet ass of yours, can you, sweetheart?”
Addie composed her face to have that ‘I’m blonde and clueless’ look on it. She had met too many assholes over the years to let him get to her. The one good thing about being deaf was that she had learned really quick who to avoid. One of the first things she had learned was to read lips and expressions.
Being aware of what was going on had actually saved her life on two previous occasions. Both times, she had read the intention of the guys. The first time had been when she had gone to the beach on a date during high school. The guy had slipped a drug into her can of soda. She would
have drank it if he hadn’t bragged about it to his friend as he was handing it to her.
The second time was as she was leaving the bar shortly after her twenty-first birthday. There had been a guy in the bar watching her all night long. It wasn’t so much what he said, but the way he was looking at her that sent a shaft of warning through her. She had made sure that she was never alone. Three days later, she saw the guy on the news. He had attacked another girl after following her from the same nightclub.
“Just shut up,” Bradley muttered in annoyance. “Clean these areas.”
Addie looked down at the map the guard had printed out for her. He circled several sections and wrote the word ‘Clean thoroughly’ up at the top of the paper before handing it to her. Addie nodded her head and took the map.
“Hey, don’t go down to the third level,” Bradley called out to her as the phone rang.
“Asshole, she can’t hear you,” Josh chuckled as he watched Addie’s ass as she walked down the hallway. “Damn, I wouldn’t mind having a piece of that.”
*.*.*
Merrick jerked awake and rolled. He barely made it to the toilet before the contents of his stomach emptied. He didn’t know what they had pumped into him this time, but he could feel his body rejecting it. Heaving, he gripped the bars until the nausea passed.
Several minutes later, he slowly straightened. With a softly muttered curse, he released the bars and stepped over to the sink. He twisted the knob for the cold water. Bending, he washed his mouth out before washing his face. It took several minutes before he felt slightly better.
Standing back straight, he rolled his shoulders. The chains around his wrists rattled as he pushed his hair back from his face. The faint memories of hands on his body sent a ripple of distaste and rage through him. His stomach churned again, but this time for a different reason. He turned back to the bed and stripped the thin cover off of the mattress. Tearing a strip from it, he dampened it and quickly wiped his body down to get rid of the feel of Dr. Rockman’s hands on it.