Chasing the Storm

by Aliyah Burke

  She licked her lips and rocked back on her heels. “Is there a type of weapon most don’t use but you think would be a good one for me?”

  Dracen crossed her arms and strolled around her. Taylor could feel the assessing gaze, but she didn’t move, just allowed Dracen to continue with her study. She felt like a small kid next to Dracen, who just seemed to have her shit together.

  “Honestly, I would equip you with an ASP.”

  She shook her head. “What’s that?”

  “I think a pair of them with clips so they could be hidden on your body. Collapsible ones.”

  She turned with her this time. “Which means?”

  “Probably both sixteen to twenty-one inches.” She placed her hands on her hips and nodded. “Yes. That’s what I’d suggest.”

  “I’m still not understanding. What are you talking about?”

  She waited for Dracen to fill her in on what all that jibber meant. The woman didn’t say another word. Taylor cleared her throat when Dracen walked away to a closed floor-to-ceiling cabinet. Standing as she was behind the woman, Taylor watched the impressive weapons display appear, only to disappear seconds later.

  “Follow.” Dracen strode off.

  Mentally snapping a one fingered salute, she scrambled to keep up with the order. Dragon warrior. They went down to another level in the same room, a part she’d not been to before. Been to? Hell, I didn’t even know it existed. The entrance was behind a thin bamboo wall. Beeping filled the air as Dracen typed in a code on a wall panel. There was a soft and faint shink before the wall beside the taller woman dropped back and slid to the left, vanishing.

  Holy crap!

  If she’d been under the impression that the amount of weapons in the cabinet upstairs was a lot, that had been a foolhardy mistake on her part. Up there, could be equated to an end cap at a weaponry store. This was like nothing she’d ever seen before.

  Dracen led her towards the back from where a clanging sound emanated. The farther into the room they proceeded, the more her awe increased. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many weapons in one place before. Hell, I don’t think I know the names for some of them. Okay, a lot of them. Most of them.

  She increased her pace so as not to be left behind by the fast-striding dragon warrior. Where is she taking me? Her answer was received moments later when they passed through a large archway and entered a huge workspace. A forge in the middle gave out excessive heat and she immediately wiped the sweat from her head.

  A tall figure stepped from a shadow and she had to hide her squeal of terror. The man was a behemoth. Jeans, boots and leather apron comprised his attire, while he had a huge sword in his hand. The gleaming blade reflected the flames and rested against his left shoulder. His arms were massive and she knew he’d be able to snap her in half without exerting any significant amount of energy.

  Dracen didn’t move and it was only with amazing fortitude that she didn’t either. The man’s face had a wicked scar, which ran diagonally across it, and he was missing part of his right ear. Her legs shook so bad she expected to fall into a pile on the floor.

  “Dracen.” His voice was deep and full of bass.

  “Inaki.” Her own was filled with affection.

  Taylor breathed a bit easier when they embraced. Although it was more like Dracen was picked up like a rag doll and engulfed by a giant. But the woman didn’t strike her as fearing for her life. When Dracen had her feet back on the ground, the large man looked at Taylor. She swallowed again and struggled not to show fear. His scar bisected one eye so it was nothing but a socket. His other was vivid green.

  “Who’s this?” he boomed, shifting the sword back and forth in his hand.

  “Taylor.”

  She forced her legs to work and walked up to him, hand outstretched. “Hello, it’s nice to meet you.”

  He looked a bit taken aback by her forwardness, however he recovered quickly and took her hand in his mammoth paw. It totally covered hers and she refused to panic. That will be done later and in the privacy of my own room.

  “Inaki.”

  “A pleasure, Inaki.”

  He released her and instantly put his attention back on Dracen. “Why is she here?”

  “She needs two ASPs, Inaki. Ones only you can make.”

  “She is mate to a Guardian?” Wonderment laced his tone.

  “Cale.”

  Taylor stood still as his green eye snapped back over to stare at her. This time he paid a bit more attention. To what, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she didn’t move. After his intense perusal, he grunted.

  What the hell did that mean?

  “Come.” He pointed to the floor before him.

  She obeyed and looked up at the man who was clearly over seven feet tall. Probably closer to eight, but if she thought about it much more, she might faint. He gestured with his hands and she got the meaning. Lifting her arms out, she waited. He never physically touched her, just walked around her, but if she tried lowering her arms, he would grunt in a most disapproving way until she had them back where he wanted them.

  He faced Dracen. “Give me seven days. Arms down,” he added.

  Taylor lowered them and put her hands together in front of her.

  “Okay, we’ll be back then.” Dracen reached out and squeezed his hand. “Thanks.” She jerked her head to the door when they had eye contact. “Let’s go.”

  Taylor followed and didn’t say a word until they walked out and the door closed behind them. “Who is that?” she asked.

  “Inaki.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I got that. I mean, what’s he doing down there and why is he locked in?”

  “He’s not locked in, that’s where he works. Inaki is our weapons master. He makes all of what we use.”

  “He’s made all of these?”

  “Every last one.” She smiled. “Amazing, isn’t it?” She took the steps quickly.

  “And he’s going to make me an ASP?” Taylor tried not to breathe hard because, damn it, she wasn’t that out of shape.

  “Basically. Inaki takes ideas of weapons and fixes them with his own spin on them. Until he has them ready for you, we’ll work with ones the cops use.” They made their way back to the first cabinet and Dracen opened it.

  “What are they?”

  “This.”

  She caught the black cylinder tossed at her and stared at it. “What do I do with it?”

  “Snap it open.”

  Taylor knew what it was now as the thinner part exploded out. A flexible baton. “This? You want me to fight with this?”

  “Two of them.” Another flew in her direction. “You can hide them on your person and they’ll take down a man twice your size, if you use them correctly.” Her grin was near feral. “Which you will.”

  At those three words, Taylor looked up and witnessed Dracen approaching her and she knew one thing for certain. This was going to hurt.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cale stared down at the woman who slumbered on the bed before him. He’d just touched her shoulder when his phone beeped. Fuck! Checking the message, he saw it was from Edmond.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Edmond needs to see me.”

  “About?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Want some company on the way?”

  “Aww, babe, I didn’t mean to wake you like this. I mean”—he grinned—“I wanted to wake you but in a much more pleasurable way.”

  She sat and kissed him before climbing off the bed and drawing on a pair of workout pants over the cute little boy shorts that had teased him. Taylor pulled on a cut-off shirt and ran a hand through her short hair.

  “Let’s go.”

  He smiled as he saw her footwear. A pair of soulful hound dogs stared up at him, their ears dragging on the floor.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she said, opening the door to her room and walking out.

  “Adorable, babe. Utterly adorable.”

 
; She snorted and remained silent as they traversed the halls. His hand rested upon the small of her back when they walked in the room. Edmond sat at his usual place and he noticed that the rest of the room sat in general darkness.

  “You called, my man?”

  Edmond waved them over without looking away from the screen. “Sit.”

  Cale held a chair for her and caressed the back of her neck before taking the seat next to her. “How are you, Edmond?”

  “Fine. Sorry to bother you. But I thought you’d like to see what I discovered.”

  The sound of his fingers tapping over the keys was the only noise in the room, other than the machines. He called up an image and Cale stared at it, immediately recognising it.

  “That’s the pendant from her necklace.”

  “Right.”

  Beside him, Taylor straightened up a bit and he knew her attention had been snagged.

  “What about it, Edmond?”

  “So we have been so set on the symbols on the back here and the chain as well, I missed one.”

  “What did we miss?” Cale wouldn’t put the blame solely on Edmond—it was on all of them.

  “The maze. Labyrinth. Whatever you want to call it.” He slapped the image up.

  Cale stared between it and Taylor, who watched the picture on the screen. He reverted his gaze back to the enlarged snapshot of the pendant.

  “Okay, so what about it?” He shifted on the chair. “What’s it a symbol for?”

  “Earth.” Edmond pulled up documentation. “Mother Earth, to some cultures. But it’s been in Crete dating back to three hundred BC, and other places as well. In fact, this is the symbol they believed was used to indicate—perhaps represent would be a better word—the labyrinth with Theseus. You know, the one built by Daedalus and his son Icarus on order from King Minos.”

  He gave a tempered smile, aware that the man tended to get lost in his research and dealing or working with his gadgets. “I know the story, Edmond. Does it hit anything else when you put all the words together?”

  “A lot of phrases pop up, but honestly, I don’t see how any of them affect us in terms of what is on the horizon. I’m not giving up, but it’s slow going—there are a lot of different ways to use these words. I’ve linked it to the prophecy as well to see if it has any ideas that may hit off that as well.”

  “What’s that one?” Taylor asked. “The one on the far left.”

  Cale looked as Edmond answered, “That’s the symbol for The New Order.”

  “Does theirs have a meaning?”

  Cale scowled at the three vertical lines, which were connected with a horizontal line. Flush across the top, however, the middle line hung down farther and had an empty circle at the end of it. “Yes,” he said. “That’s a symbol for Uranus, which has come to be seen as the destruction of the established order.”

  “Which is what they want to do.”

  “That and more, babe. That and more.”

  She fell silent again and he watched her for more signs of distress. Taylor was holding herself together remarkably well, considering. She rose from her seat and he shared a look with Edmond while she made her way to the special safe they’d had their weapons master build. Edmond had taken care of the alarm for it.

  Her pants rode low on her hips and he had to catch himself a few times so he wouldn’t be too distracted watching her walk. She had natural seduction down to an art form.

  Taylor paused by the first case and reached out to touch the glass.

  “Shut off the alarms, Edmond,” he whispered, wanting to see what happened.

  He gave a nod once it had been done. If Taylor knew what they were doing, she never spared them a single glance. She opened the see-through door, which wasn’t glass but a tempered substance created to withstand not only bullets, but also what the demons could spit at them—their poison was a saliva that tended to act more like acid.

  “Cale,” Edmond whispered.

  Tearing his gaze from Taylor, he looked at his friend and on to the screen he was pointing at. The man had put up the image from inside the container. The pendant had more sparks going than he’d seen and the gold was shimmering with a lustre that made him think it was outside in the sunlight instead of inside under a box with a soft light.

  “Has it done this before?”

  Edmond shook his head. “Nope. It did that thing I called you down for and occasionally would start it up again, but nothing to this extent.”

  “Keep videoing.” He rolled back his chair and walked to Taylor’s side.

  He slipped a hand along her back and kissed the top of her head.

  “I never imagined it would look like this,” she said.

  “You wore it.”

  “I did. But it wasn’t ever this bright or vibrant.”

  The sparks flared a bit further and became more active. Cale didn’t understand what it was doing.

  “Look at them,” she murmured. “It’s like they’re looking for someone.” A pause. “Or something. At first it looks chaotic, but the movements, once you stare at them, it’s like they’re methodically checking for something, that they need to complete whatever their purpose is.”

  He’d not thought about it that way. If she was right and those sparks were looking for the other artefacts…then this thing was about to blow up much sooner than they’d been thinking it would. It also meant Taylor was in more danger now.

  “We need to talk.” He sent the call to all then added, “Come on, Taylor.”

  He could sense her reluctance to move away from there, but she did. “What are we going to do?”

  “I have to talk to the others, why don’t you go to bed and I’ll be in later?”

  “Gotta do your X-Men thing, I suppose.” She watched him for a bit, amusement in her gaze, then with a wave for Edmond, left the room.

  “I like her, Cale.”

  “Me too, Edmond. Me too.” It was actually more than that. So much more. He’d gone and fallen in love with her.

  When the doors opened again, the others strolled in. Tiarnán walked in last, his face set in an impassive line. Staring at him, he wondered when he would see him smile more than once in a blue moon.

  “What’s up?” Roz posed the query.

  He sat in his seat and waited for the others to do so before he started talking to them.

  * * * *

  Taylor walked around the lake. It was Sunday and the workers had the day off, so the vineyard was quiet. The children were doing their own thing and she’d slipped away for some time to herself. She needed to think. To reflect.

  Snagging a place beneath some trees, she wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin atop her knees. With a yawn, she stared out across the smooth lake.

  Cale.

  As was typical, he was first and foremost in her thoughts. He had changed—he was still laid back, but not as much. Ever since that night in the ops room when she’d touched the pendant with all its sparks, he’d got even more serious.

  “God, I’m pathetic,” she muttered to the air.

  During the day when he was off doing things, she would get her ass kicked by Dracen. It continued to hurt, but she knew she was improving. She had gone back to Inaki and picked up her weapons. The man still scared the ever-living bejesus out of her, but she hadn’t shaken as much this time.

  And he’d made two kickass batons for her. They were lightweight, but when she’d tried them out, she’d found they could shatter bone easily. Dracen hadn’t given her any time to admire them though, immediately putting her back to work with them.

  She wore them now. With Dracen’s assistance, she’d tried out different places to have them on her body until she’d discovered the one that she preferred the most out of them all—against her pelvis, one on each side, angled so it never interfered with her daily activities. It was something she’d still not told Cale. Confused, she’d asked Dracen if she should. The woman had merely shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

&n
bsp; A snap from behind her had her turning. Nothing. Facing forward, she cast a glance up to the leaves to see if they were blowing. Nope. A calm, still morning.

  All her instincts were screaming for her to get moving and get as far from there as she could. She rose to her feet and put her hands in her pockets.

  “I don’t think so,” a man said as the barrel of an automatic rifle slid over her shoulder and pressed into her neck.

  Fear slithered through her. She held still and waited for his next instruction.

  “Sit back on the ground.”

  She nodded and slowly did so. The cold barrel against her flesh was so unnerving she wanted to puke. All it would take was for him to be jumpy or have an itchy trigger finger and she’d never see Cale again.

  That thought angered her. It pulsed through her veins with every beat of her heart. Who was this fucker to take that decision from her?

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  The barrel remained focused on her, but the man moved in front of her. A black bandanna around his head and his close cropped beard and moustache highlighted the harsh lines of his face. The black and green on it didn’t help soften his appearance. His camouflage fit him well.

  “New Order,” she said.

  “You’ve heard of us?” He showed her a perfect smile.

  “Unfortunately.”

  His gaze narrowed. “No lip out of you. I’d hate to have to kill you before I get to enjoy your body.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “We need the artefacts.”

  She shook her head. “What?”

  “You’re not one of the Guardians. That much is obvious, but who are you? Too old to be one of the kids he’s taken in.”

  She thought fast. “I’m a teacher.”

  “So how do you know about The New Order?”

  “Overheard some of them talking about it as I was closing up for the day.”

  He readjusted his hold on the rifle. “So what are you doing out here?”

  “It’s Sunday. No class.” She gave him a reproachful look.

  “You should have gotten a teaching job somewhere else, Teach.”

  “You could let me go.”