The Lost (20 page)

“The woman was there and absorbed an energy blast. She has to be Shadow. A human would have died from such a blast,” Marcus jumped in, moving closer to his wounded comrade and the duo of Quinchus who continued to circle the kitchen table they had commandeered to more thoroughly examine Lucas.

Their cadre captain strode to Marcus, arms across his massive chest, his face stern as if chiseled from stone. “I commanded you not to engage,” Andres chastised him.

Marcus nodded and then quickly added, “We didn’t, Captain. We were confronted, and when we would have made our escape, the man fired at us.”

“Fired an energy ball?” Eduardo interjected from across the room. He was seated in one of the kitchen chairs, his face pale.

“Silence,” Kellen commanded, sensing how the discussion was worrying his wife. Selina had pinned such high hopes on this man’s being their lost son. He
worried she might shatter if it turned out he was a Shadow, or worse, if he was their son and the Shadows captured him. If their son, Kikin, was responsible for the energy still surging through Lucas, all could be lost not only for their clan, but for all the Light Hunters in the area if he fell to the darkness, such was his power.

“Selina?” he questioned, as his wife stopped at the foot of the table, directly across from him.

She shot him a look, her eyes clouded with worry although her face was shuttered in an attempt to hide her concern. Her voice seemed smaller when she spoke, as if from a great distance. As if some spark of life had left her, and his heart clenched with the thought of losing her. Life without his wife would be interminable.

“We must ground him, Kellen. Act as the conduits to release this force from his body before it totally short-circuits his life energy.”

Kellen didn’t question her judgment. Through the many decades of their marriage he had come to understand that Selina understood the vagaries of their Quinchu power better than any of them. With a nod, he took a position close to the head of the table and raised his hands, mimicking his wife’s actions.

“On three,” she said and began the countdown.

“One. Two. Three.”

They both plunged their hands through Lucas’s splintered aura and grabbed hold of him. At the moment of contact, the energy slammed through Kellen, eclipsing any he had ever gathered and charging him with intense vigor, more forceful than even his current life energy.

As he raised his head, he could see his wife was experiencing it as well. As their gazes locked, they allowed the
power to sweep over them, into them, revitalizing their own flagging vitality.

Beneath their hands, Lucas’s body stilled as the foreign energy left him. His body and face became peaceful. As Kellen and Selina pulled back, releasing him, his aura returned to its normal crimson hue and his eyelids flickered open. Dazed, he struggled to one elbow and peered around the room at the members of his cadre and the two Quinchus. “What happened?”

Kellen and Selina stepped away from the table. Even across the distance, they sensed the power enveloping them. Their bodies thrummed with its spirit.

Selina was the first to speak, and her tone was stronger than before, far surer than it had been for longer than Kellen could remember. “The man is Kikin, and he’s found his focus. His natural affinity is lightning,” she said, and raised her hand toward her husband.

As before, Kellen didn’t doubt as he grasped her hand. A mother, after all, knew her child better than anyone else.

“Such an affinity is rare, but powerful. That would explain what we are experiencing,” he agreed as he sampled the energy buzzing through his body.

“But what about the woman, Quinchu? Could she be one of us?” Marcus asked, directing his gaze at Selina.

Selina sensed no trace of Shadow power within the energy they had just absorbed from their cadre member, but she was still uncertain what abilities, if any, the woman with her son possessed.

“She must have some of the hunting gift, otherwise she’d be dead. But for now, we must focus on bringing Adam back to the fold
peacefully
,” she said, leaving no
doubt from her tone that she would not tolerate another incident like the one that had happened tonight.

The cadre members dipped their heads and saluted before leaving Kellen and Selina alone. Blissfully alone, Selina thought as she slipped her hand into her husband’s, the power within her rousing passion and the need to share her life force.

With a coquette’s half glance, she swung his hand playfully. “The night grows short, my love.”

Kellen smiled and hauled her close, his eyes beginning to glow brightly as he released his power and it surged into her, nearly bringing her to a climax from its strength.

“Then let’s not waste another second,” he said, backing her toward the wall, where he raised the long skirt she wore and eased his hand over her naked sex. With another release of power against that sensitive flesh, he pulled a climax from her that had her shaking in his arms and grabbing hold of his shoulders for support.

He met her gaze, shimmering silvery gray as she laid her hands on his shoulders and exacted sweet revenge. He barely had time to push himself into her before the exquisite female energy of her yanked orgasm after orgasm from the both of them as her stronger power looped through them.

He would willingly die like this, snared in her embrace, he thought before her words echoed in his brain.

“So could I.”

I
t surprised Adam to find his father on his doorstep bright and early the next morning.

It also clearly shocked his father to find Bobbie sitting at the kitchen table, hungrily devouring the bacon, eggs, and waffles they had cooked together just moments earlier.

“I called your office, but they said you were taking the day off,” his father said, shooting a condemning gaze from Bobbie to Adam.

“Would you like some breakfast, Mr. Bruno?” Bobbie asked, and rose, pulling an extra plate and cutlery from the cabinets as comfortably as if she had lived in Adam’s home all her life.

With a curt slash of his hand in refusal, his father turned to him. “What’s going on, Adam?”

“Why don’t you pull up a chair? Have some coffee.” He walked to the table and dropped a kiss on Bobbie’s cheek before sitting beside her.

His father’s eyebrow shot up at the telling display of
unity, but Adam had never been one to mince words. “Is something wrong, Dad?”

Blustering, his father said, “You’re letting the events of the other day—”

“How about the two men in the Jeep shooting lightning bolts at us last night?” Bobbie said, trumping Adam to the big reveal.

“What? What are you talking about?” his father mumbled, and staggered forward, dropped heavily into a chair by the table, his color a deathly white beneath the Sicilian olive of his skin. Worry drove Adam to his father’s side.

“Are you okay?” He squeezed his father’s shoulder in a supportive gesture.

“Is it true, Adam? What she said? Is it true?” Salvatore pressed, looking not at Adam, but almost through him, as if he were seeing a ghost.

“It’s true, Dad. There was another attack last night.”

“This should not be happening.” His worry was obvious in his tone and in the fretful way he clasped and unclasped his hands like a frail old man. In reality, his father looked as if he had aged a dozen years in the last few seconds, or as if he were Atlas and the weight of the world had suddenly come tumbling down onto his shoulders. It created unease within Adam, and suddenly he was wondering if he really knew the man who had raised him for twenty years.

“Is there something you need to tell me?” Adam asked, and his father snapped out if it, his daze replaced by the kind of sharp-eyed scrutiny Adam recognized well.

“Who else knows? Who else was involved in what happened last night?” His words were sharp, accusing. He cast a caustic eye in Bobbie’s direction.

“The police chief is a friend.”

“The police are involved?” His father jumped out of his chair, sending it skittering across the kitchen floor.

“Easy, Dad. As far as the police know, it was a simple accident,” Adam replied, trying to keep his tone calm. The reaction seemed severe for someone who wasn’t involved.

Unless his father knew more about his attackers than he was admitting.

“What do you know? What is it that you’re not saying?”

His father raked his fingers through his thick hair. Was Adam imagining it, or were there more traces of gray there? Were they from the worry that Adam had sensed over the last few months, which he suddenly guessed had a lot to do with him?

“I’m not at liberty to say,” came the terse reply.

“We were almost killed last night and you’re not at liberty to say?” Bobbie retorted, her body tense beside him. But Adam knew his father too well. Salvatore Bruno would never reveal anything before it was time. If they wanted any information, they were going to have to find it out for themselves.

Laying his hand over Bobbie’s as it rested on the kitchen table, he shot her a half glance. “It’s okay. My father will tell us when the time is right.”

He skewered his father with a stony glare. “Right, Dad?”

Like a quick-change artist’s, his father’s entire persona altered. Salvatore pulled his shoulders back and inclined his head at a determined angle. His smile thinned, becoming a knife-sharp slash.

“I would never risk your life, Adam. I hope you believe that.”

Although his father mouthed the words, Adam wasn’t quite so certain anymore. His silence alone was jeopardizing Adam’s safety. After Adam’s reluctant nod, Salvatore executed a militarily precise about-face and exited the room.

“I guess we’re on our own,” Bobbie said, and twined her fingers with his, her touch more comforting than he could have ever imagined.

Adam turned his attention to her and smiled despite his concern. He didn’t want to worry her, but as he took note of her steadfast features, he realized she wasn’t the kind to fret. She was the kind of woman who took action, the warrior ready to protect her own, much like he was ready to defend her as he had the night before.

He tightened his hold on her hand and dipped his head in the direction of her plate. “Eat up. We’re going to need to be ready for whatever we plan.”

A slow, wicked grin inched across her full mobile lips. “Will that plan include some time in your bed again?”

His gut immediately tightened into a knot of need at the thought of making love to her once more. Bending his head, he licked the edges of her lips, sweet from the maple syrup on the waffles. She responded, opening her mouth and running her tongue along his, deepening the kiss and threading her hand into his hair to hold him close. She met his lips and tongue again and again until they finally broke apart, breathing heavily, desire unleashed and needing fulfillment, until common sense intruded.

“Later,” he promised.

“Sooner,” she replied with a grin.

There was one rule Bobbie had learned as a Marine that she considered paramount: Know your enemy.

The problem was that they understood little about whoever had attacked them. The one person who she suspected could provide that information—Adam’s father—was clearly keeping it close to his vest. Which meant they had to get the information on their own.

The mess that Adam’s little electrical experiment had created two nights before had been cleaned up, and luckily the surge protectors on the various computers, servers, and devices had kicked in with the overload, safeguarding the equipment, for the most part. The monitors that had blown out had been replaced the day before by techs from SolTerra.

Adam motioned to one of the workstations. “I can give you access to the security tapes from the other afternoon. You can refresh your memory while I wait for my security chief. I asked him to come by to see if he could help us.”

She nodded, needing something to keep her busy while her mind processed all the information she had so far.

Focusing her attention on the video, she played it again and again, examining the actions of the two assailants for some hint of who they were and memorizing their features. As she paused on one frame where both of their faces were visible, she mentally compared their faces to those of the men in the Jeep last night.

Negative match, she thought.

Nevertheless, there was something similar between their two afternoon attackers and those who had tried to grab them last night. All had large, powerful builds and moved with the kind of masculine authority found in military men. Considering their MO, it would be too
coincidental that the four men were not somehow associated with one another.

“Find anything?” he asked, his fingers stationary on the keyboard, making her wonder what he was doing.

“Just a hunch. They seem to be ex-soldiers, except for the balls of energy. But where would they get that kind of power?”

“They took it from someone or something else,” he replied, and swiveled in his chair to face her, a shuttered look on his features.

She mulled over his words, almost fearing what would be the most likely explanation. “Are you telling me that you can like suck the energy from other living things? Or machines? Is that why you were going all Computer Whisperer?”