Lora Leigh - Primal

When Silas returned the second time, she was still bandaging wounds. As she helped people, more arrived. He had another load of food and water. Two men attempted to intercept him to take what they wanted, but he stilled them with a single look. Yeah, she was incredibly glad to see him. The mood could easily turn in situations like this, and as people became more desperate, they’d do things they would never otherwise consider.

Her knee felt better, thanks to a couple of ibuprofen and some water. He, on the other hand, looked exhausted. But he didn’t speak, merely went to work beside her, wrapping wounds with a competence that made her think he had experience.

To her vast relief, the Red Cross arrived by nightfall. They had their own supplies to add to what had been gathered, trained personnel, and emergency lanterns. Those gave the shell of the medical center an almost festive air, if you could overlook the weariness and worry.

The brunette woman smiled and spoke in accented English. “You did a great job. Gave us a fantastic start. You’d be surprised how often we arrive and there’s nothing done at all.”

“Thanks. We tried.”

Silas didn’t acknowledge his part in the endeavor. He merely continued what he was doing: wrapping a bandage around a little girl’s head. She’d wanted to help, but God, she was so done. It was such a relief to have professionals on scene now. If things went badly from this point, she could be absolved of responsibility.

In exhaustion, she propped herself against the wall and considered what came next. Clearly her time in Ecuador was done. Everyone she knew had been in that building. Huh. Maybe it had been better when she didn’t have time to think. Despite her best efforts at self-control, tears slid down her cheeks. So much loss.

Silas settled beside her. He smelled of sweat and dust, subtly underscored with hints of blood. It should have been alarming, just like his size, but it wasn’t.

“They’ll start digging first thing in the morning.” She guessed he knew she was thinking about the school from her expression. His voice came low and soothing. “Sometimes they recover people alive up to eleven days after a quake, maybe more in some cases, under ideal circumstances. Try not to give up hope.”

Exactly what I needed to hear. Juneau let out a slow breath, gradually regaining her composure. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do all this, you know. You’re a lot kinder than I deserve.”

“You make it easy.”

“Do I?”

Odd, she’d never heard that before. In general, men complained about her odd fashion sense, her wanderlust, and the fact that she often dumped them after sex. A few times, she’d been accused of using them for their bodies. She seldom took things seriously, so when a guy took offense to her breaking up with him after they slept together, she always imagined him clutching a sheet to his bare chest in maidenly modesty. But the fact was, she always wondered if something better waited just over the next horizon.

Sure, she could settle down, but . . . why? Which was why she was now thirty-three and completely unattached. She’d never owned a home or a pet. Never formed any lasting ties, apart from her family, and even they had a hard time understanding her. In fact, her brother had made a website for her called JUNEAU IS NOT IN ALASKA, which she updated sporadically with pictures of her travels.

He nodded, his gaze gone far away. She had never seen eyes that color before. Generally they were lit by some other hue, or ringed in a softer shade, but his were all shadow, apart from the whites. In the half-light, she couldn’t tell the difference between pupil and iris; they were just black, fringed in sooty lashes. At least two days of beard bristled from his jaw, giving him a wild look. Combined with the untamed fall of his dark hair, he radiated savage, certain strength, and it was a relief to have him beside her, though she didn’t make a habit of leaning on men.

“Most people fear me,” he said, low.

“Because of the tatts?”

“Because of . . . so many things.”

“You’ll always be a hero in my eyes,” she told him.

Silas laughed softly, but the sound lacked all amusement. “You’re alone in that. To most, I’m a monster.”

He probably thought she’d pry. Well, that wasn’t her style. She respected other people’s privacy. If he wanted to talk, she was here. Sometimes it was good to unburden yourself to a person you’d never see again—and sometimes that made you the woman at the bus stop everyone wanted to get away from.

“Plan on destroying Tokyo, do you?”

He cut her an appreciative look. “It’s next on my agenda, now that I’m done with Ecuador.”

“Long way between the two. How do you plan to get there?”

“I don’t plan anything,” he said. “Easier that way.”

That startled her. “Me either. And you wouldn’t believe how much shit I get over it. My great-aunt keeps telling me I’ll never snag a man if I don’t settle down. Then I ask why I’d want to catch him, if he doesn’t want to be caught.”

“You’re not lonely?” he asked.

Juneau leaned her head back and considered. “There’s a difference between being alone and lonely, a hair’s breadth, granted, but most often, I’m the former, not the latter. I make friends pretty easily, but I’m not so much with the lifelong bonds.”

“Well,” he said. “I’m sorry about the circumstances, but glad I met you.”

Mockingbird spun in his desk chair, shoved off with both feet, and sailed across the room to check the status of an operative in Guatemala. His operations center would make anyone think he was nuts, based on the sheer number of computers and the far wall totally covered in reports of bizarre incidents all over the world. The map with red circles and multicolored tacks added a nice touch, too, but he was in far too deep for doubts. When he’d discovered the truth about himself, he’d gone looking for those like him. Freaks. Weirdos. It took years of sifting through the dregs, separating the real from the psychotic, although sometimes in his world, the two weren’t mutually exclusive.

Then he learned these abilities weren’t just popping up randomly. It wasn’t natural selection, not a shift due to evolution. No, the blame lay squarely with the Foundation. He’d dug deeper into their records than anyone before. Anyone still living, that was, and the shit went all the way back to the forties.

The first experiments had, in fact, taken place in Nuremberg. The Foundation trail led from there to Poland, until the fifties, when it bled onward to Russia, and then in the sixties, it made the leap to the United States. And no doubt there were countless tangents he hadn’t been able to track because all records had been destroyed—and everyone involved, killed. When they blew up his parents’ house in retaliation for his digging, he realized it wasn’t merely an adversarial relationship. It was war.

For a while, he’d formed an extremely satisfying partnership with Shrike. They’d wreaked a lot of havoc. When Shrike went after somebody, he did it scorched-earth style. But Shrike had handed in his resignation, something about settling down. Man, he’d never thought that guy would get tired of the life. He’d secretly suspected they’d run out of bodies before the other man lost his taste for vengeance. But what the hell—love did crazy things to a dude. He’d married an accountant for Christ’s sake, not that she was crunching numbers anymore. They’d set up some kind of agency, offering redress and justice for those whose problems fell outside the jurisdiction of local law enforcement.

But now the Foundation hunted people like them. Aggressively. Before the destruction of the Virginia facility, it had been quiet. Folks dropped off the grid all the time, usually the homeless or transient population. For a while, the Foundation had been culling their old test subjects, the crazy ones who failed to control their ability and couldn’t function in society anyway. Therefore, nobody cared. But now, they were taking people out of their homes: goon squads in black masks, hauling middle-class citizens off in their black SUVs, shit right out of The X-Files . The cops were asking questions, particularly in DC.