Ordering herself not to let her brother’s anxiety become hers—one of them needed to think clearly—Gina touched her bracelets together and activated a small force field around her body for self-protection. Once that was accomplished, she removed a device from the pocket of the jacket she’d worn for the trip. It had been tailored to allow her to stash many useful things within reach.
“What’s that supposed to do?” Axel demanded.
Gina didn’t look up from her task. She was tired of dealing with her brother’s crankiness. Sugar’s departure shouldn’t have inspired such panic in him. Didn’t a woman deserve to get away once in a while?
When Axel ceased huffing, Gina finally glanced up. “This is a device I created that utilizes both radio waves and thermal imaging. I haven’t named it yet.”
Axel glared. “I don’t care about its name. What is its purpose?”
“To see through stone,” Gina said as she turned it on.
A light green beam lit the wall and a hum emitted from the device. She moved it along the wall surface and over the many doorways until the hum turned to a long solid tone. She walked forward and ran a hand over the solid rock surface.
“I find no obvious entry point, but I believe there is a space beyond this particular rock wall. It could just be another part of the cave formation or...”
“Or it could be a hidden room where she is hiding,” Axel finished sharply, walking to the wall himself. “Do you think there’s a trigger mechanism that forms an opening? Or should we make our own?”
Gina stared in dismay at the innocent wall of the Inca temple her brother wanted to destroy. “My mind does not make the violent leaps yours does, brother. As I said, it could just be more cave behind this surface.”
Axel growled at the stone. “I want to see what is on the other side. Give me a plan that doesn’t involve total destruction because that’s all I can see doing to this place in my current emotional state.”
Both their heads spun at the soft drone of multiple helicopters in the distance.
Axel had shifter hearing and growled at the approaching threat.
Gina couldn’t make out anything specific, but she had great survival instincts. “Axel… everything in me is suddenly saying to run before it’s too late to escape.”
“What is there to escape?”
Axel stomped to the opening and swore at what he saw in the distance. Despite not having feline Lyran abilities, his human sister was as right as she typically was.
“Helicopters are coming—lots of them.”
Gina sighed and walked to the cave opening herself. Even from so far away, she soon recognized the engine sounds, and by that, she knew who flew them. It was a branch of the military that tracked down paranormal occurrences.
“How did they know we were here?” Gina asked as she wondered aloud.
“I don’t think they know about us,” Axel said before swearing again. He glanced back at the rock wall. “They’re probably here because of Sugar. Someone must have seen her and informed them. She’s far too friendly and it makes her difficult to hide. That’s why I brought her to the palace. Father should have known better than to bring her to such a public place.”
“Do you think Father is with her?”
“Yes,” Axel answered firmly, hoping Gina wouldn’t ask why he was so sure.
Gina nodded in relief. “Good. We can assume then that Sugar and Father are likely hiding somewhere together. Would you like me to blast a hole through the rock face so you can continue searching?” She tilted her head and calculated the time until the helicopters arrived. “Timing will be close, but we could bore a small hole and at least peer through to the other side.”
Axel blew out a breath. He had no idea if Sugar had found a hidden room, gone through the damn wall, or left the site right after she and his father saw nothing was here.
Whatever the case, he couldn’t risk Gina’s life on a hunch he was following. His intelligent sister would be a valuable hostage if those in the helicopters were lucky enough to capture her. He couldn’t let her be turned into an experiment. Sugar had the artifact and could at least take care of herself. Gina didn’t even know how to fire a gun.
Axel looked at his sister. “The risk is too high. I’ll come back later, after the helicopters have left.
“And if they don’t leave?” Gina asked.
“That’s a question you’re better off not knowing the answer to,” Axel said softly.
Sober now to the danger, Gina nodded and kept silent as they headed back to Axel’s airship.
“Are we cloaked still?” Axel asked.
“Yes. It functions better than before. The shielding no longer wavers periodically,” Gina acknowledged.
“Good. Let’s remain here until I’m sure those in the helicopters are not going to use explosives on the cave walls.”
“As you wish,” Gina replied while her gaze watched the human flying machines land.
Twenty helicopters descended and each emptied out a large number of camouflaged soldiers and white-coated scientists. Each person carried a personal weapon and some sort of scanning equipment. With their large numbers, they would be able to scan every inch of the citadel within a couple of hours and finish before dark descended.
“They are not real scientists. They are military,” Gina observed. She pointed to a particular group. “And those look like the leaders. They really are searching for Sugar, aren’t they?”
“Unfortunately,” Axel ground out, his panther teeth elongating in his mouth. And maybe they searched for their father as well, but he couldn’t tell Gina that—no matter how angry he was at him.
His cat came close to the surface as they watched the soldiers and that made him dangerous. If his beast broke free without him keeping control, they wouldn’t stop mauling until every last person on the plateau was dead.
He turned a hot, angry gaze in his sister’s direction when Gina put a hand on his arm.
“Marta and I thoroughly checked Sugar for tracking devices. The only one we found was the one you put in her. Even the strange breastplate she has fused into her body does not show up on any radar I possess.”
Fused breastplate? Axel smirked at Gina’s description of the sentient nemesis embedded in the woman sharing his bed. That was no doubt his mother’s trite way of explaining the presence of the blade to both his curious sisters. Apparently, neither had seen their Father’s or they would be far more suspicious.
Axel grunted in irritation. “Perhaps I should capture and torture some of them to find the answers we seek.”
Gina groaned as she pulled her hand away from her blood-thirsty brother. “Stop. I do not wish to hear such things.”
“You must conquer your distaste of violence, Gina. Fear could cost you your life.”
Gina shook her head at her brother’s chastisement. Her mother had often said the same. “I can fight when I need to fight. I just see no need most of the time.”
“That belief holds only at the palace, and I have known times that it didn’t hold there.”
Gina ignored his comment and focused on finding solutions. “Perhaps they’re following Sugar’s heat signature. The fused breastplate creates a unique infrared signature for her.”
Gina snapped her fingers. “Or perhaps they are following a sound frequency she emits unknowingly? Some of the weapons you’ve described Sugar having access to must be utilizing sonic vibration. It never occurred to me that Sugar might be functioning as her own nuclear power generator. If that’s the case every radar in the world could easily discover her whereabouts.”
“Sugar producing her own nuclear power has occurred to me,” Axel said as he watched the military investigators enter the Temple Of The Moon. They stayed about as long in the pseudo-cave as he and Gina had. When the investigators exited, they walked to the next nearest structure and began inspecting it.
He breathed a sigh of relief that they hadn’t found any traces of her so far.
Beside
him, Gina snorted and re-captured his attention. Axel turned and saw an angry expression on his ordinarily calm sibling’s face. It was quite fascinating to learn his stoic sister had such a depth of emotion.
Gina studied the men with a frown. “They should have brought real scientists. Those in the military can be taught to use a weapon, but they rarely understand how to use any tool for something other than making war.”
Axel nodded. That was a profound truth. They would use Sugar as a weapon of war if they got the slightest chance. Or like all the groups that had been after her when he met her, they’d try to carve the blade from her body.
“I’ve seen all I need to see,” Axel said, not wanting to get any angrier, especially when it was becoming clear that those who searched were finding nothing more than he and Gina had. “Let’s fly back down into the valley and wait until these people leave.”
“As you wish,” Gina said in agreement. She punched a series of commands into the airship, programming it until the quiet, humming rotation of the anti-gravity wheels allowed lift off.”
“The airship is quieter than it used to be,” Axel observed.
“You seem involved in a good many stealth activities,” Gina said as she nodded. “I lowered the sound intentionally.”
On the ground, she watched multiple heads lift and swivel. She knew they didn’t hear much noise from the craft, but they would feel the pull of the rotating wind as the airship flew over their heads.
She was relieved once they’d dropped over the side of the mountain and put the rogue military out of sight.
“It’s been almost seven hours,” Sugar reported, checking her watch. She technically didn’t need a watch for time keeping because the artifact inside her was as accurate as any atomic clock. Wearing a watch was just a comfortable habit she wasn’t willing to give up yet.
Axel’s tech-brilliant sister, Gina, had made her a watch that was shielded from whatever electrical interference the artifact seemed to organically create in the atmosphere around her.
“Not to be bossy or anything,” Sugar continued, “but according to my watch, we should be safe to leave. One of us can carry Junior while the other watches out. It should be dark outside again. I’m thinking we can make our way down the mountain without running into people.”
Rodu grunted at her suggestion and nodded. “Plausible. I am certainly ready to go home. I have asked my blade to store these coordinates.”
“Think my blade’s already stored them,” Sugar joked, pointing at her head. “So are you watching our backs… or carrying Junior?”
“He’s tall. I should probably carry him. Plus, you were the one chosen as a Protector. My blade’s specialty is in obliterating everything in sight.”
“Not sure mine’s less restrained when it comes to taking out bad guys, but let’s go with your reasoning,” Sugar offered, chuckling at the closest thing to teasing that Rodu had ever done.
She tucked Lake Wright’s wallet into her jacket pocket and turned toward the path leading back to the travel portal.
Enemies wait. Delay emergence. Protection mode required.
“Great. That’s just great,” Sugar said flatly, looking up to see if Rodu had heard the warning. He nodded that he had. “It must have been the explosion that drew them here. I bet it’s those military bastards again.”
“You seem very sure,” Rodu commented.
Sugar nodded. “Because they always find me. The force of the new blade exploding must have been like sending up a flare. They got some of my DNA off the shredded clothing I left behind in the cave where I found the blade. After they tracked me down to where I lived and discovered the artifact buried in my chest, it made them even more determined to capture me.”
“Are you saying your country’s military once captured you?” Rodu asked in surprise, rising from Lake’s side to walk to her.
Sugar shrugged as she frowned. “More like I willingly went with them at first because I thought they were trying to help me. I don’t remember much of my capture after they drugged my food. Just before I left, I woke up on the floor of some metal bunker-type facility surrounded by four dead medical doctors.”
“By the ancients, Sugar… what did they do to you?”
“I don’t know. My chest was covered in surgical wounds where I think they were trying to separate me from the blade. I woke and saw the dead doctors then promptly passed back out. Next time I woke up, it was in a little girl’s treehouse about a block from my apartment. Luckily, the little girl and her family were away on vacation. I snuck back into my apartment, packed some clothing in a duffel, and took off. I never had another fixed place to live after that.”
Rodu shook his head as he thought about it. “No military has never taken me. Perhaps I owe Nyomi more than I realized. Whenever I was captured by anyone, she came to release me—or sent her elites to help me escape.”
Sugar sighed and ran a trembling hand over her short hair. “Axel told me I was an easy target because I was naïve and didn’t know how to fight. All that was true, but nothing in my life in any way prepared me to live on the run. The military was only one of the groups who captured me. Others treated me far worse. Luckily, I don’t recall all the gory details about those episodes either.”
“Because the blade intervened and saved you every time?”
Sugar nodded and met Rodu’s concerned gaze.
“Yes, it saved me and made sure I didn’t recall the trauma, but killing others to escape was a bad trade, Rodu. I’m under no illusions. The blade used my body without my permission to take those people’s lives. I want to live as much as the next person, but all those gruesome dead bodies have caused me lots of survivor guilt. In a way, the blade has turned me into someone just as bad as those who captured me.”
Rodu sighed over the emotional burden the blades foisted on their hosts. They also didn’t give them choices when it came to their own survival. He’d once felt the same concerns as Sugar. Too much death takes a mental toll on the human mind.
“I’m sorry for your suffering, Sugar. I’m glad my son brought you to the palace. There is peace there.”
“Yes, there is been peace there,” Sugar agreed, thinking of the uneventful life she’d had for months. Was that peace about to end? “I swear I’m finding the Creator blade before this shit happens to its host. I’ve narrowed its location to being on one of two continents. I’ll show you when we get back.”
Rodu reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps we should both go back through the travel portal together and take care of the threat before attempting to move Lake.”
Sugar glanced at the new protector. “Now that he’s on the mend, Junior should be okay in here for a while alone. Okay, let’s do it.”
She watched Rodu grimace as he touched the area of his shirt just over the trident prong in the center of his chest. His face crumpled in agony which obviously meant he had spoken the truth about the process always hurting.
Sighing in resignation about her own upcoming torment, Sugar touched the center trident prong on her chest as well. Pain stole her breath as her consciousness expanded. The artifact came to the forefront of her mind and her body was once more covered in golden body armor. She was still herself—had very painfully learned to remain so—but she was also very aware that she was more.
It had taken months of negotiation, but she and her blade had come to a new arrangement about sharing sentience.
Protector mode engaged. Weapons ready. Prepare defenses.
Sugar didn’t take time to respond to the blade’s warning.
Rodu held out a hand toward the rock surface. The travel portal grew and grew until it turned into a shimmering black oval large enough for them to step through.
Her mouth twisted as she wondered how in the world Rodu could do that. Her pondering ended as they stepped through the stone.
9
“Some of the helicopters haven’t left. I’m going to go see why.”
“If you mus
t,” Gina said wearily. She’d been ready to go home hours ago. “I’ll leave the outside speakers on. Roar if you get into trouble and I’ll fly up and help you. Try not to kill anyone, Axel. Dead bodies tend to draw a lot of attention from live humans.”
“I make no promises, sister,” Axel said as the ramp lowered.
He bounded outside the airship and shifted to his Panther form once his feet hit solid ground.
His trip running up the mountain took much longer than he’d anticipated, even at the incredible speed he traveled on four legs. His panther was a tired, unhappy feline once he’d reached the plateau but that didn’t stop Axel from moving forward.
He padded softly through the dark noting that about half the helicopters were gone which meant there would be fewer men to maul—a fact which didn't make him all that happy. Neither did the effect the high altitude had on his panther lungs which had him slowing to allow his cat to catch its breath.
In the glowing light of several campfires, he saw some sort of camp had been pitched just outside the Temple Of The Moon. A low growl of displeasure rumbled through his chest, but he refused to roar. He didn’t want his prey running off until he’d had a chance to discover their plans.
Axel crouched low and blinked his green cat eyes in the dark. There was barely any moon tonight. That was good for stealth but bad for seeing with clarity. Any attack he made would require being very strategic.
Five armed guards faced the rock wall Gina thought might be hiding a hidden room. In the guards’ hands were five giant guns—and not the kind that fired bullets. They looked more like plasma blasters or sonic weapons of some sort.
He knew the size of weapon was not always an indicator of the amount of force it utilized, but it probably was in this case. This military faction was part of the same one who attacked them at his lair and those had carried similar guns.
He watched silently as five alternate guards traded places with the current guards. Whatever they waited for, they were all certainly on high alert.
Mad Panther (Alien Guardians of Earth Book 2) Page 5