The Dragon Stirs (12 page)

Oops. Better scratch that. She actually knew a rock with emotion.

“Lexi, you must stay away from him.”

“Hey, I didn’t invite him. He just showed up.” She wrinkled her nose. “What’s the big deal?”

“You don’t know him. He’s dangerous.”

Lexi placed on hand on her hip and tapped her right foot. “So? I didn’t know you, but that didn’t stop you from interfering.”

Mikos’s eyes narrowed. “That is different.”

“Feels the same to me.” She paused. “Besides, all he’s done is show me another life.”

A life she’d always wanted. Sounded so simple. So easy. So confusing.

“For a price.”

Lexi shrugged again. “Everything comes with a price tag.” And everyone could be bought. The only variance was the dollar amount.

“What did he want from you?” Mikos continued.

“To give him some kind of book. A book I’m sure I don’t have.”

Mikos face turned to stone. No, not the Rocky-type stone, but hard, cold granite. “If you had the book, would you take Beliel’s offer?”

“I don’t know.”

She truly didn’t. As tempting as it was to realize she could have a family of her own, it bothered her that Beliel offered her a ready-made family. After all, if she really wanted a family, she’d have found herself a nice guy and made babies. Sure, and it was just that easy wasn’t it? Except, she wanted…

Something else.

Something special.

Something just for her.

So, she didn’t know what that something was. And while she wouldn’t admit it to Mikos, she wasn’t sure she’d want to pay the cost for whatever Beliel offered. She sensed it would be high.

Despite the set expression on his face, Mikos’s tone had a controlled lightness as he said, “Lexi, you are the only one who can do this. God expects this of you, and your race needs you. Do not make the mistake of thinking only of yourself. Too much is at stake.”

The critical and patronizing tone in Mikos’s voice punched like a sledgehammer at her chest. How dare he try to make her feel selfish? He had no idea of the life she’d led or things from her past. Damn right she was selfish. She had to be.

Growing up in the system and then on the streets had taught her if she didn’t look after herself no one else would. A hard lesson to learn at the age of twelve but she had, and no man, no matter how attractive he was, was going to stand there and make her feel bad about her choices.

Lexi shoved Mikos’s chest. “Where the hell was your God when I lost my parents? Where was your God when I was shuffled from home to home?”

She paused and took a deep breath. For the first time in as far back as she could remember, tears welled.

“And where were you and your God when my supposed father in the last foster home put his hands on me like no father ever should?”

She was tired, angry and mentally exhausted with the events of the last day. Otherwise, what the hell else could explain her opening her mouth and sharing such an intimate thing with a relative stranger?

Lexi barely suppressed a shudder at the memory. Her last foster father, Tom, hadn’t seemed to fit any profile of a child abuser. With no previous history of abuse in his own childhood, a gentle manner, no issues with drug or alcohol abuse, clean cut, a pristinely maintained yard and home, he appeared to be anything but a vile abuser.

It was only later did Lexi find out just how much of an abuser he was. Certainly, she would have found out if she had stayed around long enough for him to finish what he’d begun.

She still remembered the stark terror of being pushed against the wall of her bedroom while Tom groped and grabbed at her clothing. The smell of fresh paint from her foster mom’s remodel of the kitchen, the feel of the stucco on her backside.

Slightly damp, cold hands that left behind an unclean feeling, one she’d never be free of.

Lexi felt fortunate in that she had been strong and independent even at the age of twelve. One unfatherly touch from Tom, and she bolted from the house.

Looking up at Mikos, she realized that in her anger, she’d come within inches of his body. Major personal zone violation. Silver painted eyes looked down at her awash with an emotion she didn’t want or need.

She shoved him again. “Don’t you dare pity me. And don’t you dare tell me what God expects. I stopped caring about those expectations a long time ago.”

Maybe the thought of shoving him a third time had crossed her mind and shined in her eyes because Mikos moved. His hands come up to grab her wrists, jerking her forward and locking her arms against her sides. For the second time, her
sanjiegun
fell to the floor with another sharp clatter. Damn it, she was going to get a strap on that thing.

She pulled her knee up then thrust downward. Because of Mikos’s tight meld to her body, she couldn’t get enough momentum to do anything more than tap his foot. A hard tap, yet still not enough to break free.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

This close, his whisper danced across her neck. She sucked in a whistling breath as unfamiliar sensations rocketed through her body. When was the last time she’d felt any, even the most microscopic, attraction to a man? Each time she was around this man her libido went supernova.

Mikos’s body seemed to fit hers like a comfortable chair, one she wanted to sink back into then lose herself in the firm cushions. She inhaled, the warm, musky scent of masculine perspiration filling her nose. Did his skin taste salty? She eyed the pulse beating in his neck.

An inward yelp echoed through her mind. What the hell was wrong with her?

She let her shoulders relax as if she’d given up. He stilled. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to concede. Good. His stillness should have let her focus on breaking free.

It didn’t.

One woman with a job to do.  One gorgeous hacker with a plan.  One apocalypse.  Any questions?

Brighid’s Cross

© 2011 Cate Morgan

Aika Lareto is a descendent of St. Brighid in her incarnation of all things fire and warfare in a time when heroes were revered as gods.  In 2025, this means Aika is hunted by all things demon and government.  All she wants is to get on with her work as guardian of the dregs scraping out a fringe existence in London’s blitzed underground—the lost, forgotten and the just plain ignored.

Declan Pryce is the hacker who finds her first.  Quite a feat, considering current ruling government conglomerate Dreamtech has issued a bounty on Aika’s head for her ability to bypass their security systems. 

When she escapes Dreamtech’s net, the vote is unanimous—Aika is a liability in need of immediate resolution—dead or alive is entirely her choice.

No choice, really.  She’ll take death over disloyalty every time.  Declan has a plan that doesn’t include falling for an impossible woman in an impossible situation. She has plans of her own that don’t leave room for a love life.

If they’re incredibly lucky, it just might work.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Brighid’s Cross: 

Declan Pryce had not gotten a full day’s sleep since a bomb exploded his parents out of existence in the Seven-Year War. So it came as no surprise when nightmares plagued his sleep once again, entangling him in scratchy army blankets and discarded him, spent, onto the shabby rug. He stared into the lowering dark of early evening, sweat plastering hair into his eyes.

When his breathing slowed sufficiently for feeling to return to his limbs, he disentangled himself from the twisted bedding and heaved himself onto the edge of the narrow bed. His shaking hand knocked a water bottle from the bedside table as he reached for it, issuing a muted thud on the area rug. He retrieved it with a murmured curse, experiencing instant relief when the lukewarm liquid settled his stomach.

Knowing sleep would not return, he slouched across his small illegal loft to the bank of computers humming like a beehive in the mellow quiet. A folding table against the wall offered a makeshift kitchenette in the form of an expensive coffee maker and cheap microwave.

“Hello, darlings.” He slid into his worn chair that shrieked like a banshee if he leaned too far back and flipped on the coffee maker. Despite the audible protests of the seat’s bearings, it fit him like a comfortable pair of jeans. 

His three monitors awakened at the sound of his voice, the machines activating their program sequences. He decided to run through CCTV clips captured by his patch into its outmoded system first. A few he saved for later examination—most he discarded. His coffee maker dispensed fresh, strong brew into a plain black ceramic cup as a new string of grainy images began its run. Halfway through he stopped the video stream and restarted it, not certain of what he’d seen. It took three repeated viewings, at slower speeds and narrowly focused pixilation, to confirm with his eyes what his brain did not believe. He replayed it again, coffee cooling with fragrant accusation.

A figure in dark clothes strode down a street in what was not quite the vice district, flickering in the vivid dancing lights of enticements. His or her gait was one of purpose, belied by a hint of absentmindedness only the truly unconcerned could manage.
She,
he could see now—walked against the crowd, skirting revelers and the human race as a whole. He leaned closer.

She passed an alley and was obviously spooked by what she sensed there, because she inexplicably disappeared.

Quickly, without conscious volition, he re-engaged the link to this particular feed and searched nearby cameras for video from different angles. He was annoyed to find facial-recognition programs could not gather sufficient info to identify the walker.

Finally he found her again, beneath the overhang on a far corner. For a fleeting instant she looked nearly full on into the camera, a sardonic smile twitching the corners of her mouth. He took a snapshot and followed her progress, camera to camera, until she disappeared into the Burnout Zone, where no satellite feed would ever reach again. He exhaled, printed the shot and stuffed his coffee into the microwave. While he waited for it to reheat, he cleared a space on his corkboard and hung the photo among the wild detritus of false hopes and starts. When the microwave dinged he retrieved his coffee and sat back to consider the odd light in her eyes while his mind raced with possibilities.

Had he actually found one? One of the angels or demons who had begun walking the earth during the war? Or was she one of the others, still human, yet more? Demi-human, he called them, for lack of a better term. Part human, part…something else, biding their time until the Horsemen rode. Signs of the approaching apocalypse had been lining up for years, but hardly anyone was paying attention.

He was inclined to believe the latter. There was something ancient in her eyes, a weary but determined set to her closed-off face. He wore the same expression whenever he looked in a mirror.

The Burnout Zone. No one ever went there that didn’t have to. The old bridge was little more than a heap of rubble, its tunnels shelter for a black market of shady business dealings and their dealers, a fringe society of the hopeless and not-entirely-there. He’d gone there once or twice, but it was not an experience he cared to repeat. He frequented his own brand of underground establishments with their unique collection of conspiracy theorists, where the food was better and hygiene more of a priority. Nor had the contents of his pockets ever wandered off in pursuit of their own adventures.

One of his other monitors flashed a black-and-red warning at him, buzzing a computer version of a genteel cough to attract his attention. He spun his chair and tapped a few keys to access the new information.

This one wasn’t from one of his regular channels, rather a back channel he’d rarely seen triggered. It was, in fact, a new bounty activated by someone handled as The Agent.

One guess who the target was.

Once again his coffee was left to cool, abandoned, as his chair spun gently in place.

Declan was perfectly accustomed to being ignored. It tended to be a point of pride in his business. The organizations from which he skimmed information didn’t even know they should be looking for him, this anonymous cortex phantom who plucked innocuous facts and tidbits from their stores the way the tooth fairy plucked teeth from beneath pillows without the owner ever waking up.

Now, however, it proved to be something of a problem.

“Excuse me? Sir? Do you know where I can find this woman?” A rack of metal necklaces with homespun pendants swayed as yet another dreg skirted his outstretched arm. “I mean, ma’am. Miss? Sorry.”

“They think you’re private security.”

Declan turned eagerly at this fresh evidence of his own existence. He was beginning to wonder.  “I’m not. Do you know who she is?” He proffered his hand comp hopefully, the grainy image flickering in the orange light of an overhead oil lantern.

The man behind the counter didn’t bother to look up from the chrome headlamp shell he was industriously wiping clean as he shook his thinning blonde head. If anything, he increased his efforts. “Sorry.”

Anger seeped into Declan’s voice, after a long struggle with his patience. “You didn’t even look.”

“Don’t have to. Doesn’t matter.”

“Why the hell not?” And immediately regretted language and tone when he saw the white collar paired with the black shirt. 

The priest set the part down with extraordinary long-fingered hands and infinite care. “Look around you. What do you see?”

Declan shrugged. “I don’t know. Dregs, I suppose.”

The smile on the other man’s face was bittersweet. “These people you call dregs have been run to ground, given up on by nearly everyone. The Burnout Zone is the only haven they have left.”

“Point being?”

“Point being, no one here gives up anyone else. It may be the only rule we’ve got, but it’s ours.”

“Stop messing about with the Obi Wan Kenobi act, will you?” Declan ground out in deliberate tones meant for the slow of thinking. “It’s important I find her before someone else does.”

The priest nodded and went back to his polishing. “I shouldn’t worry about it. She’ll see them coming.”