Hey guys! Hope that you're still enjoying the story, and that it hasn't gotten too confusing. To clear things up, the cut scene at the end of the last chapter were Elizabeth, the daughter's, last moments before her kidnapping. I will say that the beginning to this next chapter is not gratuitous fluff, I honestly swear on my author's pen that it has a deeply intrinsic purpose to the story which some of you, most likely MM who seems to be always three steps ahead of me, will figure out. Let's just say if everything goes as planned the ending to this installment of the never ending story will be EVILLLLL. *Insert evil laugh here*.
Now for the edification of Glitterina one of my favoritest readers and reviewers, and also anyone else who has become confused (I admit it I ramble): 1. Max and Alec are working for the senator because she is helping to pass a number of acts through congress that will protect the rights of transgenics, let's say she's bribing them to be guns for hire. 2. They will make it back to Seattle very soon, at least Max will and you will soon have a reunion with many of the characters which you are missing, because frankly I miss them too. 3. And now for no reason whatsoever other than making me laugh: Harker Hayes is the daughter of Felicia Banks and Rutherford Hayes, no relation to Rutherford B. Hayes, who donates heavily from the fortune he made from inventing air projectile weapons to the cause of legalizing marijuana. As previously stated he and his wife are aging Californian hippies who enjoy sexy forms of yoga, enough said. To add to the injustice of actually naming the poor girl Harker (hippies…too much acid), the parents are very wrapped up in themselves and while they give their daughter everything material that she could want I'd say that Harker suffers from a lack of parental love and affection in her life. The Hayes are very large supporters to the campaign fund of none other than Senator Burnhart. This is in part because the senator is willing to back a number of crazy left wing pieces of legislation such as the legalization of marijuana and the freedom of the transgenics. Senator Burnhart is a workaholic since the death of her dear husband and neglects her only daughter Elizabeth, she also, like all mothers, reads those god awful self help books that tell you how to raise your children to be better people (personal experience????). Senator Burnhart decides that her daughter Elizabeth is turning into an antisocial computer hacker, which if Elizabeth is honest with herself she really is. Senator Burnhart therefore has her secretary call the Hayes' secretary and arrange a sleepover for Harker and Elizabeth. Todd, boyfriend to Harker, was not harmed during the writing of this story. In a fit of kindness, the gang tied him up and left him in Harker's front lawn. Perhaps they figured that being Harker's boyfriend was torture enough. And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Read on and please enjoy.
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Something had felt off since we rescued the little mousy senator. It started with a song running through my head insistently all day and then shifted to a niggling feeling at the back of my stomach. I'd felt an odd prickling on my back as I talked to Burnhart on the phone and by the time I'd gone to tell Alec that I was going back to Seattle to look for clues in the kidnapping it had progressed to an all over itch that nearly had me tearing at my skin. Alec wasn't in our room, he'd left a note saying that he was running down to the dingy bar across the street to see if he could knock more information out of the patrons. When I stopped in the doorway to scratch my back against the doorjamb a slow warmth started to spread over my cheeks and forehead and down my arms.
Sweat covered my arms in small rivulets by the time I got to the bar, but something happened so that I no longer cared. My enhanced senses picked up his scent the minute I entered the dim, noisy room and overwhelmed the rest of my thoughts. My mate finds me. His head tilts down and he captures my lips with his, powerfully and consumingly. The little bit of rational thought left between us prompts him to scoop me up into his arms and sprint back to the small hotel room. I think the door is half knocked off its hinges when he slams it shut, but honestly who cares.
Have you ever been delirious with fever, and had that feeling that you didn't know which way was up? This is more intense, fills you from the inside out and erases your sense of self leaving one person made of the two of you. It is blood and sweat and the deepest kind of lust there is. And when it is over there is something new there, something new inside of me.
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"That was different." Her voice is throatier than usual and the base tones reverberate down my spine.
"Is that different as in, boy that plate of sardines on chocolate cake was different, or mind blowing, amazing, x-rated, pornography worthy different?"
"If you give me an encore I might just say the last option." She's glowing in a happy kind of way as she lies curled up in the crook of my shoulder. I know, or think I know the reason for her all encompassing happiness. It's a hundred to one odds that she's never gone into heat around her own kind before. Her next statement confirms my guess. "I've never had the urges just end after I've done it, well you know. Is it something with the DNA?" She looks at me with a small hopeful expression, and I feel the compulsion for one of the first times in my life to tell the utter and honest truth.
"It is different when you are with your own kind. With a human, I guess the other person doesn't experience the same feelings as we do, they can't understand what it's like." Her smile wavers a bit and I kiss her eyelids and nose. "But even with another transgenic I've never felt this before. You are in every way perfect, special, and the only one in all the world that I will want until the day I die." I'm not good with words and neither is she, and so she replies with a simple kiss.
When the insistent beeping of the tracking monitor disturbs us a few minutes later, I simply kiss her one last time and throw on some clothes before heading out the door. My car is packed and ready to go, and if indeed I do come back to the hotel tonight I know that she'll already be gone. I can't say goodbye though and neither can she, we'll see each other soon enough and that's all that matters.
I follow the sinister looking black jeep at a discrete distance until it finally parks at a shabby looking airfield. Halting a few hundred yards away in the cover of woods, I leave the car and stalk the rest of the way to the field on foot. Around a dozen planes of various sizes stand parked in neat rows. The jeep stops near an old Cessna that looks like it's been through a few world wars and lived to tell about it. One of the cult members, the tallest one by my reckoning, hops out of the drivers seat and walks into the controllers office.
In the meantime, my enhanced hearing pricks at the sound of two more jeeps driving up the remote road and I duck further into the woods. Silently I marvel at the lack of overall creativity shown by the gang, black Armani suits, black sunglasses, and now three black jeeps, now if Bruce Willis came jumping out of the woods toting a machine gun the image would be complete.
A contingent of fifteen heavily armed gang members comes pouring out giving the scary black vehicles an aura of clown car. Maybe they resorted to sitting on each others' laps when things got too crowded. Now comes what I can only assume are the hostages with black sacks over their heads; one extremely tall man that has to be Senator Bradley, a slightly shorter man in evening wear that is my dear friend Logan, and a very petite girl in pajamas who has to be my own Senator Burnhart's daughter.
I don't honestly care that much about Bradley or even Logan, but I can tell from the baby fat on the girl's half shaped curves that she is quite young and for some reason her youth bothers me deeply in this situation. Unfortunately, I can't do anything about rescuing her or any of the others at the moment. There are too many well-armed men in too open a space. I might be a prodigal son of Manticore, but I still paid attention in my classes and I know it won't do the hostages any good if I get my ass shot in some futile rescue attempt. No, my only option is to try to follow the plane somehow and then make my move when the odds look better.
A half an hour later the tall man walks back out of the office and his men give him the thumbs up for the pre-flight checks. I've managed to stick another tracking device to the plane through the use of the handy Small Projectile Object Air Launching Device that Dix had cooked up for me. The SPOALD is small enough to fit in my pocket and ran on air compression, and Dix will only be mildly apoplectically pissed at me when he finds out that I stuck chewing gum in his new toy. I had to make the damn receptor stick somehow.
I watch the plane taxi down the dirt runway and then disappear into the blue sky while simultaneously watching it bleep and ping on the tracking receiver. Soon I'll have a location, now all I need is some damned transportation to get me there. If god has a sense of humor I would grow wings right about now.