Breaking Day

by Leilani Harvey

  “I’m not letting you step foot anywhere without me.”

  She placed a hand to her hip and stared up at him for a long moment before replying.

  “Do I need to call security?”

  “You wouldn’t.” He arched a dark eyebrow even further.

  She lifted the corner of her dark cranberry colored lips.

  “Try me.”

  The least on his list of goals was to cause a scene in a hospital. Security would no doubt call the police, who would want to ask Ryan questions about his identity and there was no way he could allow that to happen. He would have to disappear and watch Seleina from afar, possibly too far to get to her in time, if one of the members of the Order of the New Rising or their hellish pets came for her again. Besides that, he didn’t know how long he could stand not being near her sweet smell. He shook his head in disbelief. This was the exact reason why he never interacted with his assignments – too many damn complications.

  He threw his hands up in surrender.

  “Smart girl,” he winked, “at least allow me to check out the inside before I take up my station out here in that lonely, cold chair over there.”

  Hoping to play on her sympathies, Ryan pointed to the row of sea green hard plastic visitors’ chairs that lined up toward the end of the hall leading to the patient rooms on this floor.

  “Okay. Make sure you don’t touch anything.”

  Seleina turned and started to unlock the door. Through the long rectangular panel of glass, Ryan spied that the room was encased in darkness. His ears turned toward a muffled sound, like foot scraping across the floor.

  He grabbed her arm before she turned the knob and pushed the door forward.

  “Ryan, what is it?”

  “Why is your office dark? Shouldn’t someone else be working in there?”

  Seleina caught up with his path of thinking and stepped back from the doorway.

  “Yes, Kim said she would come in early and do overtime to cover my shift tonight. If he showed up for work, David should also be in there. Wait, you never told me what happened to him?”

  “He ran away.”

  “He ran away? I saw the dogs attack him just before they jumped on me.”

  Ryan used the length of his burly arm to push Seleina back and stepped in front of her while using his thick boot to force the door inward.

  “That’s what he wanted you to see.”

  Just after his foot hit the door, a figure stepped out of the darkness. It was hard to make his features in the dark, but Seleina was sure she spotted David’s long brown hair and thin angular nose before a burst of white crystalline powder flew through the air and right into Ryan’s face. The white powder went into his eyes and he blinked twice before hitting the floor with a heavy thud.

  Seleina turned to scream for help but a cloth was draped over her nose and mouth, the smell of chloroform made her nostrils flare. In the next moment, all went black.

  ~9~

  The reagent – chloroform powder – was meant to render Ryan unconscious for much longer.

  The offender had blown enough into his face that any normal person would have been in a dead sleep for more than a four hours. It was the rigorous conditioning he had to undertake during his training that saved Ryan from this same fate. The members of the Elite Ops were given various serums, inoculations, and pharmaceutical mixes that rendered their bodies nearly impervious to most biological weaponry, and chloroform, almost a household product, would have little effect on them.

  In less than five minutes, Ryan was back up on his feet and pissed. Not bothering to wait for the security guards calling for him to halt as they scrambled up the hall, having witnessed the scene outside the door on their monitors, Ryan rushed further into the laboratory offices.

  He stepped about five feet further into the pitch darkness and then stumbled over an immobile object on the floor in the center of the room. Kneeling down, he ran his hand along the form and was positive it was a human body, probably one of Seleina’s other co-workers who would have been at their workstation when David had entered to set his trap.

  Ryan had seen his mark the first night they encountered one another in cafeteria. The small five-point star, tattooed on his neck just below his right earlobe was the first hint.

  When the canines attacked Seleina, Ryan was already following close behind. He saw David fall to the ground as though being attacked, an act that had distracted Seleina enough that she did not run for her safety because she was concerned about him. After he had fought the vicious canines off of Seleina, Ryan realized that David had disappeared. Lack of any traces of his blood or shreds of his clothing confirmed that the other man had left the area under his own will and was not harmed or dragged away.

  Though Ryan had been reluctant to bring Seleina here, he knew it was the only way to ensure her safety and his life. If David were a member of the Order, he might lead the EOC team to the elders of the cult. Seleina would be safe and so would so many others. In Ryan’s mind, that should have been more than enough to lighten his obligated sentence to the Corps. Now that he had met Seleina, Ryan had regained a spark of happiness in his existence. If he had to leave her, who knew where the misery of his life as a trained mercenary and indentured assassin would lead him, most likely a premature death.

  He needed her. She gave him a renewed passion for life, a reason to live other than mere self-preservation. He had to find her. If she died, so would he, both in soul and in body.

  A heavy breeze caught his attention. Ryan felt for a pulse on the body on the floor and found a very light flutter. The guards would discover whoever lay beneath him and that person would become their priority, thus giving him time to escape.

  Ryan followed the draft to a bathroom at the rear of the office suite.

  That room was also darkened, but he could make out a window ajar. The wind from outside caused the thin curtain to flutter and catch the light from the outside lamppost.

  Hoisting himself up on the toilet beneath the window, Ryan saw that the exit led out on to a fire escape. They were only three stories up and even if the other man were carrying Seleina’s body weight, it wouldn’t take long to make a getaway up the dark corridor of the alley.

  Pulling himself through the window on to the fire escape, Ryan lifted his nose to the wind. The smell of chloroform was still heavy in the air. The man must have mixed the formula himself while he waited for Seleina to arrive and now the scent was stuck to his clothing.

  Ryan grabbed the cold iron and swung his legs over the railing, his body propelled over the edge and toward the concrete below. When he landed on the hard surface, Ryan made sure to bend his knees upon impact so his body could absorb the shock instead of repelling it and causing his bones to shatter.

  His nose turned him to the left and further up the narrow way. The scent was stronger in that direction and his legs carried him at full speed toward his woman and her captor.

  Making his breaths short and allowing only the minimal amount of friction between his boots and the ground helped Ryan to clear most of the distance in under a minute. He was nearing the other end of the thin walkway leading out to the next street over when he stopped in his tracks.

  This time it was the shrill squeaking of rats that caught Ryan’s sharpened senses. The high pitches noises meant that they were sounding an alarm to one another, there was something or someone in their midst and they wanted the other members of their community to be aware.

  He was standing near a dumpster overflowing with bags of trash, and more bags piled next to it. In the faint light of the overhead alley lamppost, Ryan caught the site of an arm and he thought his heart stopped.

  Seleina!

  He bounded over and tossed bags away from her lifeless form.

  The crackle of glass underfoot and the sharp odor of the chloroform caused Ryan to turn on his heels, the sharp point of hooked knife missed the spot over his heart by only centimeters.

  A quick thrust upward with the
heel of his palm met the hard sternum of a man almost equal his height, though not quite. Ryan followed the move up with two closed fist hits landing simultaneously on both sides of his counterpart’s rib cage.

  There was a snap as the hard bone in David’s upper torso fractured. The man stumbled back against the bricked wall and grabbed at the injured areas.

  “You – asshole,” David wheezed out under labored breaths, “I think – you broke – my – ribs.”

  “I did.”

  Ryan watched the man carefully, his adrenaline still racing, and waited for him to make a move, any move, so he could finish the job he started on the man’s organs. All the other man was able to do was slide further down the soot-covered wall.

  “I – can’t – breathe.”

  “I also punctured your chest wall. You’re bleeding internally and your lungs are filling with fluid.”

  “Help – me.”

  David released the metal sickle and it clanged loudly against the cold ground and echoed down the dark pathway.

  “Not until you tell me why you wanted Seleina. Who do you work for?”

  “Come – on, man. I – had to – do it.”

  His voice was becoming lighter, as his breaths dragged in and out of his chest.

  “Tell me why or I watch you die right here.”

  “The Order – initiation – I needed – a girl to offer.”

  “Why her?”

  “She’s – beautiful – special, spirit – big offering.”

  His head dipped forward as the man lost consciousness.

  Ryan went back to Seleina and pulled her up. He placed two fingers to her jugular and sighed with relief when a heavy pulse thudded against the pads of his fingertips.

  David must have heard him coming and panicked. He hid Seleina and hoped to take out whoever was following them so he could drag her back to wherever the dark rites were being held tonight.

  Not this night. Not my Seleina. Ryan glanced over his shoulder at the other man, whose chest was still showing signs of weak respirations. You can rot, for all I care.

  Pulling Seleina’s limp limb around his neck, he hoisted her from the ground and began to walk toward the bright street light at the end of the aisle.

  Turning back, he had second thoughts. Maybe his plan might work after all and he could use this joker to get a heads up on how to locate the rest of the Order of the New Rising and put an end to their chaotic ways. Maybe this could actually be Ryan’s ticket out of a life he no longer wanted to live, a chance to make a fresh start, with Seleina by his side.

  ***

  Seleina’s eyes fluttered open and she gasped.

  Bright sunshine outside of her window caused her to shut her eyes and adjust her vision to accommodate the bright daylight filling the room. The thought filtered back through her mind. Her window. The last memory Seleina had was of Ryan being overcome by some kind of chemical and then someone placing a covering over her face.

  She sat up in the bed and realized that she was practically nude, except for her matching pink bra and panties. Pulling the sheets further up over her form, panic set in her mind. Turning over to make a grab for any piece of clothing she could find, Seleina saw a small handwritten note standing up against a cup of orange juice and a plate of scrambled eggs – most likely cold by now – on her bedside table.

  Seleina, my love, turn on the news when you awaken. Had to take care of some business. Be back later, sweetheart. R.

  In an instant, flashes of her erotic memories with Ryan came flooding to the forefront of her mind. An easy peace spread over her and she relaxed against the pillow.

  She sipped the juice and tapped the button on her universal remote. The flat screen television on the wall opposite her bed blinked on. She turned to a local news station and waited patiently. Ten minutes later and Seleina heard the announcement that brought a contented smile to her face. The smartly dressed newswoman spoke in a serious tone as she read from the off camera teleprompter:

  “In other news, a Midtown Memorial Hospital worker, David Vida, was arrested today. Vida, who is currently a patient in the same hospital after sustaining life-threatening injuries during his assault of one co-worker and the attempted kidnapping another, is suspected of being part of a ring of ritual killers. Police are trying to track down the rest of his cult as well as the identity of the man who rescued the captive woman and incapacitated Vida. The names of both of the other hospital employees are being withheld at this time as police are still trying to contact one of the women who appears to be in hiding after the incident…”

  ~10~

  Lying between Seleina’s warm brown thighs, Ryan was a happy man – in more ways than one.

  He slid his stiff shaft in her slick channel slowly this time.

  Staring down at her hazel eyes, he was lost in Seleina’s world. While tugging lightly on her bottom lip, Ryan thrust gently, tenderly. Her eyelids drifted closed and her full lips parted further under his loving caresses.

  He stroked her cheek and then nuzzled her nose, laying another wet kiss against her lips.

  “Ryan,” she moaned, “stop teasing me.”

  Seleina wiggled her lower half and enfolded his waist between her legs in a tight lock. She lifted her hips and tried to change the pace, but he held his position until she stopped moving.

  “Now, now, babe, have some patience.”

  Seleina pouted and he placed his brow against hers.

  “I love everything about you.”

  “I’m the one who should be saying that, mister. After all, you saved my life.”

  She giggled when fingertips floated across her delicate sides.

  “No, you saved mine. In more ways than one.”

  “Oh, Ryan.”

  Seleina’s mouth pressed against Ryan’s, and her tongue playfully flicked his. His thrusts increased and his cock thickened even further while it slid against her coated walls.

  “More,” she sighed with pleasure.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he lowered his lids and was sucked deeper inside her hot pussy.

  Seleina giggled again

  Ryan knew the reason why. His eyes had shifted again.

  “How do you that?”

  “Do what? Make you come? Well, first I do this.”

  His fat thumb pushed against her clit and Seleina’s back arched.

  “Then, I do this.”

  He lowered his head and blew lightly on her taut black cherry nipple, then bit down softly.

  Seleina moaned again and her back thrust upward even further away from the bed.

  “Then, I – ”

  He was cut mid-sentence by a mechanical ring, followed by a long buzzing. Ryan looked over and saw his slim cellular was lit up.

  “Don’t answer it,” Seleina pleaded and tightened her limbs around him.

  He pulled the phone off the stand and instantly recognized the code on the caller ID screen.

  “Babe, I have to,” he said and rolled off of her and sat at the edge of the bed.

  If he didn’t answer, the caller on the other end of the vibrating phone would be at the front door trying to knock it down within minutes. Ryan had not repeated in with his superiors in more than two weeks, since he handed over his report containing the information regarding David Vida’s involvement with the Order, and was expecting this call to come sooner or later.

  Ryan turned his back from where Seleina lay. He tapped the screen on the phone and lowered his voice.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good evening, Corps officer.”

  “Same to you, sir.”

  “I gather you are still tying up some loose ends with your latest assignment?”

  Ryan cast a quick look over his shoulder in Seleina’s direction and found that her gaze was already studying him as she sat up on one arm. She looked beautiful with her the bronzed color of her skin and the richness of her hair reflecting off of the lighter shade of the sheets.

  “I suggest you put your focus back
on the conversation at hand, Corps Officer Day.”

  The voice was stern. Wherever his senior officer was at the moment, he was watching them.

  “Yes, sir, Commander Brimm, sir.”

  “That’s better. I will let you get back to your – er – business in a moment. You busted up that kid pretty bad, then you let the police get to him. Lucky for you, we have some contacts at that precinct and were able to smoothly transfer him to our interrogation camp.”