by Sarah Noffke
“About like London, I’d guess,” Adelaide said.
“Do you know what Portland’s motto is?” Connor asked, offering his arm to Adelaide. She took it, strolling down the street, a large theater on their right. The lit sign read Baghdad. They were in the Hawthorne district, an area infested with hipsters.
“Tell me,” she said, allowing him to lead her down the street.
“Keep Portland Weird,” Connor said.
“How disgraceful. Londoners would never pride themselves on such a thing. Seems about right that you’re from this place,” Adelaide said.
Connor smiled, pulling her in tighter. She could hear his thoughts but they just seemed like normal conversation in her head.
“So what will you do now?” she asked, the nervous hum in her chest stronger than it was when she’d landed in this location.
“I applied with the Institute to work with the maintenance crew,” Connor said, pausing and coming around to stand in front of Adelaide.
“Good call. That’s right in line with your interests. Cleaning toilets and serving Dream Travelers mashed potatoes,” Adelaide said.
“Yes, but not without washing my hands between jobs,” Connor said, his grin speaking of the excitement he was hiding.
“I commend you on being a dog but not always acting like one,” she said.
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t get the job,” he said.
“Oh, well, I guess you’d be better off donating yourself for science. Is this your way of telling me you’re going in for a lobotomy?”
“This is my way of telling you that I’m starting agent training,” Connor said, unfurling the smile he’d been hiding. “Trent thinks Kaleb and I would make a good team.”
“Trent has horrible judgment. He assigned Rox as my partner,” Adelaide said. Her father hadn’t assigned agents partners, thinking that working solo was better. It just showed that her father didn’t know everything. Having someone to rely on was a good idea. It made people stronger, utilizing the different talents of each person for the best strategy. Trent might not fuck up everything after all, as Ren had feared.
“Will you mind having me at the Institute full time?” Connor asked, and there it was. The fear. The fear of rejection. The fear that she’d say yes. That she’d push him away. The old Adelaide would have. She would have stormed away right then and told him that he was worthless and he was undeserving of such an honorable position. But that wouldn’t be true. That would have been Adelaide being afraid that she didn’t deserve Connor. She wasn’t that person anymore, and she did want him and she felt they deserved each other.
Cupping his face, feeling his reddish stubble in her hands, Adelaide encouraged Connor lower. “I don’t mind. As long as you don’t get on my fucking nerves,” she said, with an unabashed smile.
“Promise,” he said, and sunk his mouth down on hers. She heard the question in his thoughts as he kissed her, his lips gently caressing hers. The question presented itself over and over again. Do you really want me? Do you? Do you?
Adelaide slipped back an inch. “I do,” she said, her mouth caressing his as she spoke.
Chapter Forty-Five
“To change locations, wake up, use your power of mind control, or manifest a bloody cup of tea, you use your intention. Haven’t you figured that out by now? Everything in this world is centered around intention.”
- Dream Traveler Codex
Rox’s sundress rippled in the wind. She knelt down and plucked a sprig of mint from the earth. She inhaled the scent, rising to a standing position. The Santa Monica Mountains were her backyard and just down the road, the Topanga Canyon watershed guarded her house. She spun around to face the home that wasn’t big and it wasn’t small. It was an A-frame painted in a series of pastels and shaded by three large oak trees.
Zephyr stood on the porch. She’d offered him the house to live in when he had jobs in the area. He’d jumped at the opportunity at once. He, like her, loved being close to nature. Rox would spend most of her time at the Lucidite Institute and out in the field. But on her off-hours, she had a home. A place to belong. A place to feel free. She had her perfect job and her perfect palace. It appeared that the abduction of twelve men really did have a happy ending for most, even those who hadn’t been abducted.
“The garden is coming along,” Zephyr said, strolling in her direction. He stopped a few feet past the area enclosed by chicken wire which prevented the birds and squirrels from stealing her harvest.
“Yes, it should be full next year,” she said, kneeling down, tugging her sundress up from the earth as she ran her fingers over the soil.
“Never much took you as a gardener type when we met,” Zephyr said.
“Just goes to prove we had a lot of getting to know each other to do,” she said, eyeing the figure in the distance. “Looks like they are ready for you.” Rox pointed to Connor standing by the tree line, his bare chest too white in the waning sunlight. That boy could use a tan.
“Yes, right on schedule,” Zephyr said, waving to her as he strode for the trees.
Zephyr tossed his shirt, belt, and shoes by a nearby tree. He then slipped off his jeans, which just made the whole thing easier not to worry about them. Then he pulled his head up to spy the arch of men who stood before him. Connor was under the canopy, to his right. Beside him making a half circle were Kaleb, Rio, Cole, Clay, and Derek. All the men were bare-chested, wearing a look of hunger that only they understood.
“Ready to play?” Zephyr asked the pack.
“Hell yeah,” Rio said, slamming his fist into his palm.
“Okay, let’s go meet the night,” Zephyr said, throwing a punch into Connor’s shoulder. “You’re it!” He yelled the two words as he set off at a sprint, shifting from man into werewolf and finally into the wolf form. The silver and black wolf leapt over roots and tree stumps, the other seven wolves on his heels. The pack ran far into the Santa Monica Mountains, enjoying the freedom they’d never truly known. None of the men had experienced real freedom until they’d met the wolf. And now they couldn’t imagine their life any other way.
The new moon slipped over the mountain range as the seven wolves halted in a clearing, their snouts angled toward the starry sky. There they sang their song one howl at a time.
Epilogue
The Lucidites had evacuated Olento Research. They’d searched it. Found things that needed to be quarantined indefinitely, but not the alien. And they’d made the decision to bomb the site. The Lucidites probably thought that by destroying the building they’d protect humanity. They were right. There were things in that facility that could only be killed by fire. The operation was done cleanly, with every consideration taken for preserving the area around Olento Research.
Adelaide and Rox supervised the task, ensuring that no one was nearby when the bomb detonated. The warehouse had been disassembled so what rose into the air was the rubble of Olento Research. Mika Lenna’s lifework sprinkled into the air in a series of spiraling ashes. It fell back to the earth as he had, a failure. The team Adelaide sent in checked for any peculiarities, but nothing was found. That was because that which they didn’t find when searching Olento Research for evacuation purposes, wouldn’t be found afterward. When something doesn’t want to be found, it has a way of hiding itself.
When the sun set in Los Angeles, and the Lucidites had loaded up, something started to stir under the rubble that would be cleared the next day, once it had cooled. A brick pushed to the side, rolling down a pile of debris. Then a rock rolled away, having been moved by something breaking free, under the surface.
Alexander Drake, who stood in the alleyway across the street, gasped when the hand shot through the rubble and straight into the air, like being born from the wreckage. He covered his mouth, both because the joy was too much and from the disbelief likely to make him cry with excitement. This had always been a possibility, but now it was his reality.
The hand pushed until its arm was visible and then the subject from Project Vampyyri rose from the ashes of Olento Research. The man who was not a man anymore stood staring at the sight around him, before his hunger took him away from the place where he’d been reborn from the Arcturian race.
The End