Wanderers 4: A Tough Act to Follow (The Wanderers)

by Richard Bamberg

  I gave her a little salute and she smiled at me.

  Turning to Tess, I said, “Drop your shield; I’ll cover both of us.”

  Without questioning my statement, her shield winked out. I already had mine covering us and the foam didn’t touch her. I stepped close and wrapped one arm around her slim torso. She realized what I was planning and put one of her hands around my shoulders as I triggered my levitation tat.

  I pulled her tight against me as we rose toward the high ceiling. I could have levitated both of us without any contact, but it was hard to resist any opportunity to hold her against me. What can I say? I’m a guy.

  We reached the ceiling in a few seconds and I looked for a spot to breech without doing too much damage to their facility.

  “Ah, Rafe,” Tess said.

  “Yes?”

  “The flyboys seem to be having trouble.”

  I turned my head and looked down at the six Airmen. The foam was nearly over their heads and they were still a long way from the safety of the hangar’s door.

  I groaned. “Damn, who has a fire suppression system that’s dangerous?”

  “A lot of people, haven’t you ever heard of halon?”

  “That’s not really dangerous, is it?”

  I felt Tess shrug against my chest.

  “Well, we can’t have them suffocating,” I said.

  Triggering my wind tat, I held it until the air inside the hangar was moving down the front of the massive doors and across the floor where the six men struggled. It was a little tricky not to knock them from their feet and back into the foam, but with a little skill (I’ve practiced with this spell a lot and I’m getting better all the time) the foam was pushed back from them and within a minute they had all reached the exit. As I cancelled my tat’s energy, I saw the witch give me a thumbs up. I nodded in acknowledgement and turned back toward the ceiling.

  Picking a spot between the rafters, I triggered an energy blast that blew a three-foot wide hole through the insulation and the exterior metal skin of the hangar. We floated through the opening, barely touching the edges of the hole as we did.

  As soon as we reached the roof, Maia and Beast lit to either side of us.

  I set us down and cancelled the levitation tat. Easing my grip on Tess, I expected her to pull away and mount her familiar. Instead, her fingers gripped the back of my head and pulled my lips down to hers.

  She kissed me with passion.

  “Ahem,” Beast growled. “Can’t you two save that for later?”

  I felt Tess’s lips move against mine as she mumbled something into my mouth that I was sure Beast wouldn’t have appreciated if he’d heard her.

  Tess released her grip on my head and stepped toward Maia who was already kneeling.

  “You’re a wet blanket, Beast,” Tess said as she swung a leg over Maia’s neck.

  I chuckled and levitated myself onto Beast’s shoulders as he growled an unintelligible response in his own language.

  “Well, we’ve had a productive night. Now let’s go home.” Home? I don’t know where that came from. Since I became a Wanderer, a long time ago, after my first death, I’d not had a home. I think I once stayed in one place for all of two weeks. Half of that had been waiting for a job that Verðandi had summoned me to and the other half was relaxing on a nearby beach on the Pacific coast of Panama. What was happening to me? Wanderers don’t have homes. Granted, operating out of Joe Leatherneck’s cabin, God rest his soul, was convenient while rounding up the escapees from our final battle with Rowle, but any day now Verðandi was bound to send another summons and we’d be on the road again.

  I caught Tess studying me and realized we were still meshed. She was picking up my stray thoughts. I couldn’t imagine what she must be thinking. I shook my head and mentally kicked myself for even considering Joe’s cabin a home. Wanderers do not have homes.

  “Okay, let’s get going before any more flyboys show up.” I dropped our meshing as Beast leapt into the night sky. Maia and Tess took to the air right behind us.

  As we gained altitude, I concentrated on my remembrance of Joe’s cabin and activated my portal tattoo. Energy flared from my tattoo and a rift appeared in the night sky just ahead of us. A strong wind blew toward the portal. The pressure differential between our sea level site and Joe’s cabin at more than seven thousand feet created gale force winds.

  Beast flew toward the portal and I turned to make sure Tess was right behind me. She was, but she was casting a spell and watching the ground behind us. What was my apprentice up to?

  We popped through the portal into the cold thin air above Colorado Springs. Maia and Tess came through seconds later and I closed the portal, killing the gale of warmer air that had followed us from Florida.

  Joe’s cabin was a couple hundred yards below the glow of the Will Rogers memorial on the side of Cheyenne Mountain. It made spotting Joe’s cabin from anywhere in the area a snap. Without direction, Beast dropped toward the front of the cabin.

  We set down in the short driveway and I dismounted. When Tess slid from Maia’s shoulders, I gave our familiars the rest of the night off. It was shortly after midnight, if I’d judged our travel time correctly and our familiars would have plenty of time to find food in the local forest.

  A blast of air swirled Tess’s lengthening hair as they took flight. It still looked unbalanced because her burns had removed all of the hair on the left side of her head, but even on that side, her red hair was nearly two inches long.

  She turned, catching me studying her.

  “What?” she asked.

  I grinned. “It’s nothing.”

  “Nothing? Then why were you staring at me? Do I have something on my face?”

  “No, I was just wondering how long you’d let your hair grow out,” I confessed.

  She smiled. I still had my enhanced senses tat active and I could see the smile spread across her face. Moving up to me, close enough to put her hands on my hips, she said, “How long would you like it?”

  I cleared my throat. “Ah, it doesn’t really matter. I just–”

  She silenced me with a kiss.

  By the time she’d broken it off, I’d forgotten her question.

  We stood outside in the cold December night, standing in a foot of fresh snow, and stared at each other. Our breaths fogged the space between us.

  “You know I’d be happy to wear it however you’d prefer,” Tess said.

  “Wear what? Did you sneak off and buy something special?” I asked, still a little distracted by that kiss.

  She chuckled softly. “No, silly. You men are so quick to forget everything when a woman gets your blood racing.”

  “Guilty as charged,” I said and kissed her lightly on the lips. I moved my mouth down and kissed the side of her neck. She shivered, but not from the cold.

  “I’m saying I’ll wear my hair however you’d prefer it.”

  I kissed the vein that pulsed in time with her heart at the point where her neck met her torso.

  She shivered again and her fingers gripped my ears and pulled me back to her mouth. We still held the kiss when I levitated her off the ground and into my arms. Without stopping for breath, I carried her up the steps to the cabin.

  The door was unlocked, as always, and I opened it with one hand while supporting Tess with my other. Stepping across the threshold, I felt the cabin’s wards ping against my own, assuring me that nothing had happened in our absence. I kicked the door shut and carried Tess to the table where I set her down and began unzipping her jacket. Her fingers copied my actions until I pushed her jacket back over her shoulders, pinning her arms at her side. Her blouse was open to the top of her breasts and I kissed my way down to those luscious curves while she gripped my hair in her fingers and held me close.

  I started on the buttons of her blouse as she shrugged out of her jacket.

  “Ugh, hold on a second. I forgot something,” Tess said.

  I raised my face to hers and tried to control
myself. It wasn’t easy after a long session of being meshed. My pulse was pounding in my temples and points lower.

  “Wait? Why? What’d you forget?”

  In response, Tess held up a half frozen lump of red meat. I blinked, trying to get my thoughts back to where that thing had come from. A large drop of blood dripped to the warm space between her breasts that my lips had been worshiping a moment earlier.

  A flash of memory overwhelmed my lust, briefly. I took the hunk of dragon’s heart from her and carried it to the refrigerator. On the way, I grabbed a plate out of the cupboard, and then stored the meat in the fridge.

  Turning, I smiled in what I hoped was a wickedly lustful way. Tess had dropped her jacket to the table and was waiting for me, leaning back, her weight on her hands. Her face was tilted back and her back arched, making her breasts stand out even more than usual.

  I shucked out of my own jacket as I returned to her. I stepped between her spread legs and she wrapped them around me, overlapping her feet at the small of my back. She arched farther and pressed her groin into mine. I moaned my lust and she tilted her head toward me. Our lips met again in an open mouth kiss as we tried to devour each other.

  Slipping my hands beneath the soft curve of her leather-clad cheeks, I lifted her from the table and carried her to our bed.

  Chapter 4

  THerese

  My phone was chirping insistently. I opened one eye and stared at the nasty little instrument on the nightstand, two feet from my head. The single bedroom window was dark, but the irritating glow of the phone’s screen lit the room. I wanted to go back to sleep, but since only three people outside of this room had my number, I couldn’t very well ignore the call.

  I lifted Rafe’s hand away from my left breast–how was it that his hand always settled there when we fell asleep after sex?–and leaned toward the phone.

  The slim damn thing didn’t want to come to me, but after a few tries, I got my short fingernails under it and brought it to my face. The display told me that Emily was calling.

  I swiped right and held the phone to my ear. “Aunt Emily, is something wrong?”

  “Good morning, Tess. I’m not sure if something’s wrong or not. There’s someone here who wants to talk to Rafe.”

  I sat up. No one had ever tried to reach us through my Aunts before this. “What did you tell them?”

  “I haven’t told them anything, but this woman’s pretty insistent that I can get Rafe on the phone. She claims she knows him and has important information for him.”

  Rafe rolled onto his back, his head in my lap, and stared up at me. “Does she have a name?”

  I ruffled his short dark hair with my free hand and spoke into the phone, “Does–”

  “I heard him. She says her name is Special Agent Angelica Biers of the F. B. I.”

  Rafe’s eyebrows wrinkled.

  “You know her?” I asked.

  “Depends on if that’s really her. Emily, can you describe her?”

  Emily’s reply was immediate. “She’s in her mid-thirties, and tall, about six feet, with brown hair. She’s actually quite lovely. Flawless caramel skin with no visible makeup.”

  “Yeah, I know her.”

  “Another of your ex-lovers?” I asked pursing my lips.

  In response, my “mentor” pinched my left nipple.

  “Owe!” I said and then massaged the offended nipple as though it really hurt.

  Rafe gave me a half grin. “Put it on speaker and give the phone to Biers.”

  “She’s in the living room. Give me a second,” Emily said.

  I put my phone on speaker and set it on the nightstand. Bending, I grabbed a fist full of Rafe’s hair and pulled his lips to mine.

  We were still kissing when a new voice came over the phone. “Is this Rafe?”

  I pulled back and let Rafe breathe.

  “Yes, Agent Biers, this is a surprise. What brings you to Colorado?”

  “I think that’s obvious. Your spectacle last month was pretty damn hard to miss. I thought your work in Huntsville was pretty fucking awesome, except for all the damage you did to the town, and I figured that was going to be one tough act to follow, but then you topped it by a mile. Quite impressive.”

  “Ah…thanks?” I said, unsure if that was a compliment or a statement on my ability to destroy things. I hadn’t destroyed the Garden of the Gods, just moved a few monoliths, and uprooted a few hundred trees. Diverting a river isn’t without consequences.

  “Anyway, I’d have been here sooner, but you not only upset the apple cart, you poked a hornets’ nest.”

  “Really? What nest is that?”

  “DHS, the FBI, the CIA, hell, even DoD. The appearance of invaders in the middle of the country concerns the hell out of everyone in the government. The fact that the invaders were creatures that don’t exist on our planet blew the lid off of everything.”

  “Sorry about that, it really couldn’t be helped,” Rafe said, with no sign of concern in his tone.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know you would have stopped it if you could. It’s just unfortunate that it had to happen near a major city. If it had happened in the sticks, it might have gone unnoticed.”

  “So, what’s your involvement in this?” Rafe asked.

  “You remember what I’d been doing when we met?”

  “Sure, you were investigating strange events, including murders that couldn’t be easily explained.”

  “Well, after your show in Huntsville, I started getting more attention from a Deputy Director. He wanted briefings on just what was happening on my cases. I tried to keep you out of it, but there were too many reports that had your description in them. Then they got a good look at you and that woman with you. I had to admit that you were the same person I’d tracked to Huntsville.”

  “Yes, that news’ helicopter sure screwed things up for us,” Rafe agreed.

  “That’s an understatement. I’ve spent the last month since explaining your role in the Huntsville affair and the local invasion. I think I’ve convinced them that you’re one of the good guys, but you know how government bureaucracies are. They don’t like vigilantes.”

  “Yeah? Well, the feeling is mutual, but as long as they stay out of my way we can maintain a peaceful coexistence.”

  Biers chuckled. “I figured that would be your attitude.”

  “And you told them that?” Rafe asked.

  “Not in so many words, I couldn’t admit how much I knew about you, even if I don’t know very much. I’d have been in hot water if they’d found out just how much I’d tried to help you in Huntsville.”

  “So, what’s their game plan? Are they going to try and arrest me?”

  I grinned at him. I thought he was being cocky, like always, but I knew there was little they could do to Rafe.

  “No, not arrest,” Biers hesitated, but then continued. “They want to control you.”

  “Say what now?”

  “They’ve created a task force to seek you out and attempt to bring you under government control.”

  “And you’re on this task force?”

  “No, the Deputy Director thinks I’m closer than anyone else to tracking you down. He has me reporting directly to him on anything I can learn about you. I’ve been given carte blanche to investigate any sightings of supernatural or mythological happenings and to try to get a dialogue going between you and the government.”

  Rafe rolled his eyes and I had to slap a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing.

  “You know I already have a boss. I don’t need another one,” Rafe said.

  “I know, but I couldn’t exactly tell my Deputy Director that. Maybe after we’ve talked, officially not like this, I can tell him what I know, but for now I have to act like I know next to nothing about you.”

  “That sounds wise,” Rafe said. “Give me a minute, stay on the phone. I have to do something, but I’ll be back.”

  “Sure,” Biers said.

  I hit the mute on the ph
one and raised an eyebrow toward Rafe. “What?”

  “I just need a minute to think,” Rafe said. “I wasn’t expecting anything like this.”

  “Are you considering working with her?” Rafe had told me a little about Biers involvement in his first fight with Rowle at Huntsville in the weeks before he took me from the military hospital in San Antonio. They’d apparently parted on good terms.

  “Not really, but I don’t want to just flat out turn her down, or at least I don’t want her telling the government that. As long as they think I may play along, they won’t be as quick to try to interfere.”

  “How did she know she could reach you through my Aunts?”

  “That’s a good question for her. I could guess, but you should ask her. Keep her talking; I’m going to make coffee.” Rafe sat up and got off the bed.

  “What should I say? She doesn’t know me.”

  “You’re an Apprentice Wanderer, think of something,” Rafe said. He stopped at the bedroom’s door and turned to face me with a smile on his face.

  My eyes couldn’t help roving over his nude body, but then I stuck my tongue out at him and cancelled my phone’s mute.

  He was chuckling as he padded into the kitchen.

  “Agent Biers, this is Tess. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions until Rafe gets back to the phone?”

  “Tess Sylvan? No, go right ahead,” Biers responded.

  “How did you know you could reach Rafe through my aunts?”

  “Oh, it wasn’t hard. I heard of your disappearance from Wilford Hall and your face was pretty clear on the news footage. I’m surprised the Otherworldly Task Force hasn’t contacted your aunts already.”

  “Otherworldly Task Force?” I queried while suppressing a laugh.

  Biers chuckled again. “That’s what they’re calling themselves. They didn’t ask my opinion on the name.”

  “And this OTF knows that I’m the person who was with Rafe at the Garden of the Gods?”