Stolen, page 8
“That's the public-minded spirit I'm looking for,” I said. “Besides, if we do this right, we might just spring one of your former employers, one who's put a lot of money in your pocket over the years.”
“Lovely,” Bonner said acidly. But she was, at least, in.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Earl of Hampwick's estate was about what you'd expect from old nobles: expansive fields, pleasant woods, and the occasional brook running through. Of course, I came as dusk had already settled in, and flew over the fields when they were shrouded by moonlight, but that didn't diminish their beauty much. The estate wasn't quite Blenheim, but it definitely had a bit of that old Roman feel to it, with columns, and stone, and all the elegance of design the Brits could muster at the height of their empire.
When I got close, I tapped a very specific power that I seldom used – telepathy. There were only three people about, and one of them was my guy, the Earl of Hampwick himself. I kept the power at arms' length, barely using it, just enough to get a fuzzy impression of people in the area but not enough to dive into any wildly busy, chaotic minds, because doing that was usually enough to drop me to my knees, screaming in pain.
Shutting that power down now that I had my answer, I realized my earlier determination not to violate the sovereignty of the earl's home was not going to hold in the face of this new information. The other people in the house were on the main floor, the earl was upstairs; ergo, I needed to enter the house upstairs for best results.
So I did. It was easy; a little magnetism applied to a window latch, and I slid it open, taking care to deaden the security system lead attached to the sill so as not to set off the alarms. It was a pre-metahuman system, and security hadn't quite caught up to us yet. I had a feeling it was going to take another quantum leap forward to keep people safe once they realized that multiple-power metas were going to become the new standard. That'd cause some headaches for people in the industry, but hey, not my problem – at least not today.
Slipping into the window, I found myself in a lushly appointed sitting room with no lights on. Sliding the window closed and latching it, I reached out with my telepathy again, because I had sensed some other minds when I'd been probing, but not human ones...
Doggos.
Very familiar doggos, by the name of Cali and Jack. And slinking around at the edge of the room, atop a bookshelf, was a cat named Emma.
I'd wondered what had happened to my pets after I'd blown up Langley. Whoever had gotten them, they'd done it quickly. I'd assumed it was the Chinese, but I'd gotten no word, no ransom threats, nothing of the sort, but I had plans to ask some very hard questions of the next upper-level Chinese agent I got hold of.
Well, now I had my explanation. Who was quicker than a teleporter?
Entering the earl's room silently while gently instructing my pets not to notice me was an easy thing to do for a woman with telepathy and animal-speaking abilities, and I floated into an armchair as silently as I could.
Cali and Jack were at the Earl of Hampwick's feet, and he was writing at a desk in the corner of the room. Neither of them got up; Cali was chewing on a nearly-destroyed shoe that looked like it might once have been expensive while Jack just lazed, drifting in and out of sleep. Emma, on the other hand, was ignoring my commands to not notice me and was descending the bookshelves. When she reached the ground she slinked over, swirling between my legs and brushing my calves, her tail in the air as she circled and rubbed.
“It's polite to announce yourself, you know,” the Earl of Hampwick said, not missing a jot. “I did do you that courtesy when I invaded your home, as you recall.” His accent was so damned proper, or – as the Brits would say – posh.
“Sorry, you know Americans and our manners – or lack thereof,” I said, picking up Emma. I removed the block on Cali and Jack's notice, and they both awakened to my presence; Cali spat out her shoe so fast it clocked Jack, but he ignored it, already flying as fast as his little legs could carry him over to me, Cali at his heels.
The next five minutes I spent at the center of a constellation of fur, getting so much love from my pets who I had missed. When I was finally able to separate my face from the dog kisses, and Emma had draped herself on the back of my neck, the boys on my lap, I found Charles Barron, the Earl of Hampwick, looking at me with great amusement. “Thank you for getting them. I had intended to pick them up, but my teleporter was busy getting people–”
“It was no trouble at all,” Barron said.
“Not even the shoe?” I asked, motioning toward Cali's casualty at his feet.
He glanced down at it. “It was a gift from Mother, but I was never a fan.” Looking back up, he asked, “How did you know they were here?”
“Didn't.” I gave Cali another series of scratches behind the ears. “I came to talk to you; this was just a pleasant surprise.”
“Ah,” he said, and leaned back in his chair. “I am pleased to see you. I've been seeking you out for some time, both to tell you that your fur family was safe as well as in hopes of collaborating on some items of mutual interest.”
“Good news, then,” I said, barely able to conceal a smile, “I've already got our first collaboration in mind...”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Then
“I don't know how the hell you talked me into this,” I said, cold beer sweating on the table in front of me, Jeremy James Wade, USN sitting across from me in a shit dive bar in Silver City, New Mexico...
...And my prisoner, Stanley Croftsburg, unconscious, fettered, chained, and light webbed in the chair between us.
The place stank of cheap piss-beer, old cigarettes, and sweaty bikers. The bar was scarred with a thousand burns and nicks, the bartender didn't look much better, and honestly, if I were to drop trou and relieve myself on the floor in front of all and sundry, it didn't seem like it would draw more than a curious eye – or that it would be the first time that had happened.
“What do you think about getting the fried mushrooms and some chicken wings?” Wade asked, studying the menu, his broad forehead furrowed in concentration.
“I think if they contain actual chicken it'll be a pleasant surprise,” I said, keeping my eyes firmly on him and, occasionally, my beer. I tipped it up and took down half of it in one good gulp. “This place has more of a 'cats and dogs' vibe.”
“I've eaten worse, in worse places,” Wade said without looking up. “Shit. I'm getting 'em both. You want in on this?”
“Do I look like the type of girl to turn down a chicken wing thrown my way? Or a 'chicken wing?'” I made scare quotes.
He chuckled, and I found myself annoyed at how much I liked his smile. My pulse quickened. Then he said, “You look like the kind of girl who looks damned good eating chicken wings – just like she does doing everything else.” He did not even glance up from the menu to see how I took his compliment.
“Oh,” I said, slightly acidly. “You're one of those.”
That made him look up. “What? Handsome fellow? Vet? Snappy dresser?”
“You're a succubus groupie,” I said, steeling myself for the coming, inevitable disappointment. “It's okay, you're not the first. I get those from time to time, guys who think that sucking a soul is somehow way sexier than it actually is–”
He made a face. “I don't really have any illusions about how unpleasant the soul-ripping process is, having experienced it more than a few times.”
I froze. “Experienced it how?”
Wade put down the menu, smiling enigmatically, and leaned on his elbows, causing the uneven table to rock slightly. “Aren't you the least bit curious why your man Stanley hasn't woken up yet?”
I blinked; I didn't remember saying his name around Wade, though maybe he'd heard it during the hour we'd spent talking to Silver City PD. I glanced at my prisoner; he was still snoring up a storm, head chin to chest, not stirring. “I thought you choked him out?”
“No,” Wade said, almost smirking now, and yet, somehow, still handsome in the process, “I stole his last two nights of sleep along with his memory of who you are and why he hates you. It left him desperately tired and no longer worried about his life being at risk.”
I groaned. “You're an incubus. That's even worse than a groupie.”
Wade's eyebrows rose, jaw dropping slightly. “That's worse? How?”
My nose wrinkled in disgust. “Because now I know what you want from me.”
“I asked you out,” Wade said, barely controlling a smirk, “what were you expecting? Some sort of chaste, friend-zone-y thing with a gelded barely-man? Because that ain't me, and you don't strike me as the sort to be interested in that–”
“I'm not,” I said. “But I like a little mystery, okay? When it comes to a man's intentions toward me. And every incubus I've ever met is like ten thousand miles an hour straight toward my pants, or else starts talking in grandiose terms about wedding me, and how we're destined for each other–”
“Hold onto your souls; I'm not even sure I want to commit to an order of chicken wings with you at this point.”
I stared at him through slitted eyes. “But you do want to get in my pants.”
He chuckled. “Have you ever been on a date where the man didn't at least have a little shadow of that in mind, even if it was a ways off? Because I feel like that'd be a sad date.” Staring at me across the table, I felt a zap when I looked him in the eyes. “Seriously...would you even want to spend time with a man on a date when there was so little sexual chemistry that you didn't even have the thinnest interest in getting laid, and neither did he?”
I opened my mouth to respond to that...and my answer was grudging. “I suppose not.”
“Great,” he said, and looked back at the menu. “I'm getting the chicken wings and fried mushrooms. Draining a soul, even as little as I took from Croftsburg, is just exhausting. You know?”
I felt a great squeeze within as part of me – the more spinster-ly part – struggled not to answer. It failed. “Yeah, it takes it out of you. Have you ever, ah...finished anybody off that way?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, but his eyes found mine, and I recognized a familiar hunger in them. “I've always stopped myself. But I had to use mine for interrogations over there, and killing prisoners? Not a good look for the SEAL Teams.”
“Look at you, Mr. Big Deal SEAL,” I said, feeling oddly sucked in. Something about this guy, in spite of my best efforts, made me want to like him.
“Hey, we can't all be world-saving heroes,” he said. “Some of us have to do the little jobs, the behind-the-scenes things to keep the world from spinning off its axis. Or at least to keep truck bombs from going off in front of our barracks and such.”
“Well, thank you for your service,” I said, only a little mockingly. He took in the spirit in which it was intended, and a ghostly smirk appeared on those lips. “So, incubus...”
“Yes, succubus?”
“When did you manifest?” I asked, taking the opportunity to drain the rest of my beer.
“Can we get two more over here?” Wade called out to the bartender. “And a plate of chicken wings and an order of fried mushrooms?” He turned back to me. “About two years ago.”
“You look like you're on the young side.”
“It's true, I'm the better part of a year younger than you...ma'am.”
I threw a wadded-up napkin at him. “You take that shit back right now.”
He laughed and caught it, rolling it playfully back across the table at me. It felt way more natural and relaxed than things had ever been with Sovereign, or that tool James Fries. Wade felt...normal?
“Seriously,” I said, leaning in as a fresh beer came in hot at my elbow, “what are you doing here?”
“I'm on leave,” he said, picking up his fresh beer and doing a quick number on it; I respected a man who could hold his ale like that. “Well, not 'leave,' exactly. Kind of a...mandatory cooling-off period following slight impropriety–”
“Please tell me it did not involve a goat.”
“It did not.”
“Or goats.”
“Just one animal was involved,” Wade said, and a stony look came over his face. “A tribal chieftain who engaged in a practice known as bacha bazi. That's–”
“Oh, yuck,” I said, almost gagging, “I know what it is. I hope you gave him a beating such as he had never known.”
“No,” he said quickly, “I didn't do anything to him – officially.” Wade drew his beer up so it covered his mouth. “Somehow he developed these horrendous waking nightmares that compelled him to amputate his genitals with a rusty spoon, though, and somehow the Navy got it in their heads that this was not a natural psychological disorder.” After a sip, he added, “But they can't prove it, so they put me on leave and I got an offer from a, uh...government agency to maybe come work for them. But it's not written in stone yet, so I was just taking advantage of my leave to bum around the Southwest.”
I stared at him over my beer with narrowed eyes. “To stalk the only succubus you know of?”
“Look,” he said, “I haven't had these powers as long as you have, but here's my experience so far.” He drew a deep breath. “I have not touched or been touched by a fellow human being for more than thirty seconds in the last two years. Maybe that's no big deal for you, but that's not how I lived up until then. I don't know how you do it. I'm not even talking sex at this point. I mean...not being able to hug others except over clothing, no kissing, really...I was a good kisser.” He shook his head. “How do you live like this?”
“Well,” I said, grasping my mug and draining the entire contents before answering, “drinking a lot helps.” I cleared my throat. “It's not easy, even for me.” I met his eyes. “I don't know what you're dealing with, because I'm not much of a hugger, but...yeah, it gets to even me sometimes, being isolated. I've never been with anyone without towels and cloth and layers of latex covering all the contact points. But don't think that means I'm ready to–”
“I'm not,” he said, pushing his finger through a slight spill of beer on the table, moving the bubbles around as they fizzed away. “I mean – yeah, okay, I kinda hoped maybe you felt the same way I did, but...I get it. Not the first time I've been a 'yes' when my date's been a 'no.' I just wanted to talk to you about it, because...I know no one else who's got this problem.”
“You know a lot of metas?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“A few,” he said. “Not as many as you. And none with a power like mine.”
“Congrats on being special,” I said, finishing my beer.
“I could stand to be a little less special, honestly.”
I shrugged broadly. “Just a bad piece of genetic luck, really. You can absorb the powers of other metas and use them if you take their souls,” and here I looked at the perspiration coursing down the side of the empty mug, “but the tradeoff is you'll never be a normal person. You'll always be disconnected from others.” I cocked my head. “You'll always be alone.”
“Okay, Debbie Downer, thanks for the pep talk,” he said. “If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check into a motel and have a long cry in the shower, then buy a body pillow to cuddle with.”
“Then you're gonna hump the body pillow, right?”
He laughed. “Maybe.” After taking another swig, he looked up at me. “With a sense of humor that dark, and such a propensity for roasting others, you'd fit in well with the infantry, anyone ever tell you that?”
“Tons of guys. Usually while they're trying to get in my pants, and just after they've told me about their succubus fetish.” I looked at my phone, which was buzzing. “This is Nealon,” I said, answering it. “Got it.” I stood, pocketed my phone, and seized hold of Croftsburg by the arm. “That was dispatch. The plane just landed at the Whiskey Creek Airport in Silver City. This guy's got a date with a gel-packed cell in the Cube, I'm afraid.”
“Shouldn't he be the one that's afraid?” Wade asked, finishing his beer and chucking bills on the table coolly, casually.
“Why? Didn't you take all his memories of me?” When Wade nodded, I added, “Then what does he have to be afraid of? When he wakes up, I'm telling him I'm his girlfriend and we're getting kinky. Then I'm gonna punch him again.”
“Speaking as the recipient of one of your punches, I hope he enjoys it as much as I did.”
I hesitated, holding Croftsburg up on wobbly legs. “Usually when I punch people, they tend to...fall down.” I tried not to stare at him; I failed. “But you just kind of rubbed your jaw and keep going. How's that?”
His lips pressed into a tight line. “Sometime I'll tell you about a couple of the metas I ran across in Afghanistan, including one who'd been there since the days of Alexander the Great. Seriously, he went there in the war party.” He stared past me. “That...was not a good day.”
“I'd like to hear about that,” I said, keeping my grip on the insensate Croftsburg. “Sometime when I'm not transporting one of the more dangerous metas I've ever dealt with.”
“I'm about to pick up an assignment somewhere, I'm told,” he said, eyes flashing regret. “Not sure when, not sure where. I don't think it's going to be stateside. I suspect my new employer is yearning to use my talents somewhere that they're, y'know...allowed to.”
“Foreign enemies only? That'll last,” I said, so jaded – and so right. “Well, see, Mr. Wade, there's this thing we can do, you and I, it's called a dreamwalk. If you think about me as you drift off to sleep, you'll appear in my dreams.”
He got this big smile on his face. “You were so worried about me being a succubus fetishist and a stalker not that long ago, and now you're giving me the means to dream stalk you?”
I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. “It's not difficult for me to make people want to get the hell away from me. Why, it's practically the easiest thing in the world.” I felt a great lump in my throat just then, definitely for no particular reason.
