Forbidden Call (New Breed Novels, Book 1) (11 page)

Ana.

Jesus Christ.
He couldn’t even think about her without his pulse racing and his cock standing at attention. But it was more than that, and he knew it. He was starting to find himself wondering where she might be or what or even who she might be doing. He rubbed his forehead and tried to focus.

“It just so happens,” Xavier was saying, “we have a data base of Mayan vocabulary. It’ll take a while to run it through, though, and there are no guarantees.”

“Okay. I’ll walk down and make some coffee.”
Translation: I’ll go down to the kitchen and see if I can get rid of the giant hard-on I’m sporting before you notice it.
Not to mention the fucking headache ten thousand Advil couldn’t cure. No, there was only one cure for both. The kicker was, even though she was his, he couldn’t have her.

In the kitchen, SE went to the sink, turned on the tap, and threw cold water on his face. That helped for about ten seconds. The pain was getting worse, and he knew that his body was going to keep playing the discomfort card until it won. And then what? He hunted Ana down and jumped her again? Jesus. He never should have taken the female like that. It was totally disrespectful. At the very least, he needed to find her and apologize. End things right. But that was just another excuse to see her and he knew it. No—he wouldn’t see her again. That was the best thing for her. Even if his whole goddamn body went up in flames.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Evelyn O’Donnell arrived at the teen center in Dorchester, her VW bug protesting as she down–shifted into the parking lot. Man, she was tired. Between classes at the community college and working here at the center, she was beyond exhausted. She slammed the car door, hurried across the lot, and headed into the building, where she pulled her coat off as she walked into the new technology lab. God, she loved watching the kids on the new computers. And the tech lab was really hooked up. It had everything now—video equipment, tablets, laser printers. It was obvious the anonymous donor had spared no expense.

“Ah, Derek,” she said to one of the teens, “would you go down the hall and see if Chris can come and help with the overhead monitor? It’s not hooked up yet and the little guys will need it later.”

“Sure, Ms. O’Donnell.”

“Thanks.”

“Ohmygod, Evy, you’re here!”

Evy grinned at her friend, Liz, who always seemed to have enough energy for both of them. “Yep,” she said. “It’s three o’clock, and here I am. Poof! Like magic.”

“Hilarious. Listen. You are never gonna believe!”

“You never know. I might.”

“I finally solved the mystery,” Liz said, looking proud.

“What mystery?”

“The anonymous donor of the tech lab money.”

“You’re kidding, who?” Evy asked, suddenly interested.

Liz lowered her voice. “It was Troy Thomsen.”

“Troy Thomsen?” Evy’s mind wrapped around the name, but couldn’t quite…

“From school,” Liz added.

“
That
Troy Thomsen? Are you sure it’s the same one?”

“Well, I wasn’t at first. I had to do some digging. There wasn’t much of a paper trail. It turns out he donated the money
in cash
.”

“What? Are you kidding me? I mean, this would have to cost—”

Liz nodded. “Yeah. Fifty thousand.”

“Fifty grand?” Evy was pretty sure her eyes had just left her head. Cash? That was weird. What was he, a dealer donating some cash to assuage a guilty conscience? “Are you sure?”

“Yep.”

“Huh.”
Troy Thomsen.
It wasn’t that Evy begrudged him any good fortune. It just seemed so, well, so unlikely. Troy had graduated a year above them. She’d known him since junior high and had even had a crush on him at one point in high school. But he wasn’t any wealthier than anyone else at their school.

“Chris said he’d be down in like, ten minutes,” Derek said, startling Evy out of her thoughts.

“Oh, perfect. Thanks, Derek.” She smiled at the teen. “Let’s see if we can figure this thing out.”

“Yahtzee!”

SE didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until X nearly scared the shit out of him. “Wait, you found it?”

“I got something,” X said. “It doesn’t make that much sense to me, but take a look.”

SE leaned toward the monitor and read the entry.
aj k’o’ol (n.) One who works to defeat enemies by attacking the spirit companion.

He swallowed hard and read it again.
Holy fuck!
He began looking through his pockets for the little piece of paper about his conversation with Ana. He pulled out the crumpled little note and reread it. There was no doubt about it. Toltec wasn’t just after shifters’
k’ul
anymore. They were after their souls. The vial he’d ganked off that shifter had to somehow be related.

And as for the
aj k’o’ol?
He’d bet his left nut it was Victrixa.
Son of a
—well, the profile certainly fit, didn’t it. She’d started out as a rebel on their side, then turned, got pregnant, trained her own daughter as a spy, gave the kid up for adoption when she was ten, and then used her to fucking infiltrate them
again
. Somehow it seemed so fucking perfect that the bitch gave birth to the female that was torturing his souls.

Ana materialized inside Toltec’s main headquarters, just outside the door to The Initiative’s nerve center. She took a quick look around. She was always very careful never to let anyone see her gleam. If being raised as a spy by her psychotic bitch of a mother had taught her anything, it was that you needed to keep a shitload of secrets. From all sides. And that’s exactly what she was looking for. The mother lode of secrets. If the plan was to take out a fuckload of mutants before she disappeared, then she needed to know what Mommie Dearest was up to.

She cast out her shifter senses, making sure the main hallway was empty, then gleamed to the other side of the door. Anyone else who wanted to enter had to go through a series of ID checks; everything from eye scans to fingerprint screening. Ana had no idea how her mother managed to get that one approved. She pulled her pistol from its holster and moved stealthily down the hallway. Just outside the door to Victrixa’s office, she cast out her senses again and then moved inside.

Hmm
. Victrixa wasn’t big on safes or computers.
No, if she has anything worth hiding, she’d be clever about it.
She quickly began to sweep her mother’s desk, checking the drawers and tapping around for hollow spots. She was rewarded so quickly that for a minute, she thought her mother was losing her touch. She was feeling under the center drawer when she realized it had a false bottom. She popped it and pulled out a file.

The minute Ana opened it, her faith in her mother’s devious ways was instantly restored. Everything in the folder was written in Yucatec Mayan. Now wasn’t that just the perfect
up yours
to pretty much everyone on the planet who wasn’t Maya. Except Ana. Clearly, her mother hadn’t counted on being double–crossed by her own daughter.
What a shame.
Ana took out her spy-cam and started photographing the pages. She wouldn’t understand it all, but she’d be able to read enough. She finished with the pictures, replaced the documents, and disappeared.

“Hold him, goddamnit!” SE yelled.

Pax was thrashing around and trying to break free as X and Diesel tried to subdue him in the gym. They were holding on to him for dear life, but Pax was still breaking free in short spurts. Finally, when he went still for a moment, SE got as near to him as he could and closed his eyes. There was a surge of heat and he felt his
nagual
leave his body. He opened his eyes and watched until he saw the expression on Pax’s face ease.

“Now, Richard,” he whispered.

Richard walked up to Pax and placed his hands on the sides of the brother’s face. He closed his eyes and everyone went silent. But within seconds, Pax was starting to pull away again. Richard quickly stepped back.

X growled. “We better decide what we’re gonna do here. This dude is strong.”

Frustrated, SE cursed and pulled back his
nagual
. “Keep holding him.” Picking up on a presence behind him, he turned around to see Troy standing just inside the door of the gym, staring at Pax with intense focus, his right hand extended.

Instantly, Pax’s face softened again.

“Now, Richard,” Troy said in a quiet voice. “Try it now.”

Richard cautiously approached Pax again, laying his hands on the brother’s face. Everyone waited quietly as he tried to focus Pax’s mind. A few minutes went by before Richard exhaled and stepped away. “You can let him go.”

As Diesel and Xavier dropped their hold, stretching out their stiff bodies, SE watched in awe as Pax’s form smoothly changed into a man he’d never seen before.

“Who is that?”

“His father,” Richard answered. “I accessed one of his early memories.”

“I don’t believe it,” Pax said. “It didn’t hurt at all. It was so natural.” He smiled his father’s smile.

“Are you holding onto it okay?” Diesel asked.

Pax looked down at himself. “I seem to be. It’s taking almost no effort.”

X grinned. “You are so the shit, man.”

SE turned around to thank Troy, but he was gone. “Did you all know Troy could do that?”

Everyone shook their heads.

Diesel laughed. “And here I thought his special ability was being a pain in the ass.”

SE thought back to the night he had touched Adriana and Richard had attacked him and then somehow managed to calm down so quickly. Too quickly. Troy had been standing in the doorway then too.

The phone on the wall rang, and X walked over picked up. He spoke briefly and hung up. “That was Reyn. He’s got an anonymous tip on the location of the main mutant den. Looks like it’s time to party.”

An hour later, Soaring Eagle stood with the rest of the Order in the drawing room, listening to Reyn.

“We’ve had an anonymous tip that the main den is an abandoned warehouse by the seaport. It’s not an obvious area and I’m sure that’s why it was chosen. I want us to move on this before nightfall. That way we have a shot at taking out the entire den. Diesel, I’ll let you explain.”

The male stepped forward. “Okay, we’re going to bring the building down. We’ll use

C-4. That way we can ignite it using detonators once we’re safely out. We won’t need much. Gravity would take this thing down if we could wait another month. Pax, X, and Troy have been trained, so I’ll be using them to lay out the charges. Dimitri and SE, you’ll hang back in case we run into trouble.”

“Which we’re hoping you won’t,” Richard said. “The mutants should be in a state of very low activity in the early evening. The idea is to get in and out before they’ve even noticed your presence.”

Reyn nodded. “It’s almost 3:30. That gives you an hour to suit up, get the equipment together and be at the warehouse. So let’s move.”

There was a series of high fives, fist bumps, and back claps among the brothers as they walked out the door. But as SE headed for the main staircase, a feeling of uneasiness he couldn’t place suddenly took up residence in his gut.

Ana gleamed quickly through the warehouse to avoid detection. She had no idea if the Order would even take her anonymous tip seriously. Wouldn’t you know, Mommie Dearest’s file had been chock full of goodies. But this was pay dirt, and if the Order showed, they would have the means to take out a den this size. She had to admit, everything seemed quiet. Maybe too quiet.
Fuck
. Were they blowing it off?

She gleamed up to the second floor, where she found a shitload of sleeping
hellions
sprawled out at one end. Oh, joy.
Hmm.
The Order would know better than to try anything at night. She supposed it was possible they planned on hitting the place the next day. Maybe they needed prep time?
Damn
. She’d wait a few more minutes, then get the hell outta Dodge before the mutants woke up.

Whoa.
She suddenly picked up on a fuckload of
k’ul
. There was a New Breed somewhere downstairs. Part of her wanted to find out if it was SE, but that didn’t matter. She knew she couldn’t be seen with him. Then something else tickled her senses, interrupting her thoughts. An electrical pulse? Using her shifter sight to scan the room, she immediately picked up on the green wrapped bundles tied together along the walls.

Oh. She’d been so very wrong.

They weren’t blowing it off. They were blowing it up.

When the explosion hit, the force of the blast hurtled her through the air as the discharge expanded at 26,000 feet per second. Her body burned, her lungs seared. And then there was nothing.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SE, Dimitri, Richard and Reyn waited in the drawing room for news from the rest of the brothers. SE’s senses were going all haywire. His second soul was holding court in his gut, making his stomach tie itself into knots. Something was very wrong.

Richard rubbed his eyes. “Damn, SE, I wish you’d stop pacing.”

“And I wish you’d shut up,” SE growled, “but we don’t always get what we want.” His goddamn nerves were like frazzled wiring.
Where the hell are they?

Minutes later the males started to materialize.

“Booyah!” X’s jubilant baritone was the first thing they heard.

Diesel was right behind him. “Yee-haw! Did you see that motherfucker go up? We could’ve used those douche bags as marshmallows!”

“Damn straight,” Pax added, as the three of them slapped a high fifteen.

“Who else was in there?” SE’s question cut through the noise and the laughter stopped.

“What?” Diesel asked.

“You heard me. Was there anyone else in there?”

Diesel walked up to Soaring Eagle until they were standing almost chest to chest. “What the fuck’s your problem, man?”

With a growl, SE grabbed Diesel by the neck and shoved against the wall.

“SE!” Richard yelled.

“Now, Diesel!”

“What the fuck difference does it make? We torched the place. They’re toast, man!”

“Shifters! Were there any shifters with them?”