No Limits (3 page)

“I don’t know what her license plate
number was,” Chace exclaimed. “Look. We’re out in the middle of nowhere. The only place she can possibly hide is in the Metro area. That’s like 90 minutes away. If you get out there and block the road you’re bound to run into her. Hell, if she’s already slipped away, I guarantee someone has noticed a chick in a silver Mercedes with an unconscious girl in it. You just need to get moving and start asking questions!”

“Calm down, kid,” the
Harken town sheriff said. “Don’t worry, we’re calling in the Metro police and the FBI is already here.” He nodded to several men in black suits milling around the crime scene. “These disappearances have gotten everyone worried. With all these feet on the ground looking for your sister we’re bound to find her.”

Chace opened his mouth to deliver another tongue lashing but someone put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do here,” a voice said. “Come on. I’ll take you back to your parents.”

Chace looked around and saw a young man in a black suit. The man flashed an identification card with the letters “FBI” on it. “I’m not going anywhere until my sister is found,” Chace retorted.

“Yes you are,” the sheriff said. “I’ve got your statement. The only thing you can do now is interfere in my investigation and if you do that I’ll have to throw you in jail.” He looked at the FBI agent. “Thanks for the help, special agent,” he said. “I’m sure glad you boys got here as quickly as you did.
Very impressive.”

“Happy to help,” the FBI agent said. “We’ve got a field office in the Janesville metro area and like you said, we’re all in this together.” The man turned his attention back to Chace. “If you want I’ve got a book of Metro
mugshots in my SUV,” he said sympathetically. “You could look through them to see if you recognize any faces.”

Chace bit his lip in frustration but the FBI agent was right. At least he might be able to help by looking through photos. There was nothing else he could do here at the crime scene. Chace nodded. The agent put his arm around
Chace’s shoulders and guided him away.

As they walked Chace glanced over at the agent.
Strange. He had thought that FBI agents had to be relatively old but this guy looked no more than 20. Maybe younger. He looked at bit like that werewolf in the vampire movies his sister watched. What was the actor’s name? Taylor Lanter or Laffer or Lautner? Something along those lines.

They walked towards sleek black SUV that was unidentified except for a government-issue license plate. Three men in dark suits were standing around it. Once again, Tyler was surprised by how young they all looked. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this and as an athlete he had learned to trust his gut.

“Hey man, I actually think I might stay a while at the crime scene,” Chace said. He stopped walking. “See if I can pick up any clues, you know?”

The agent’s smile wavered for a moment but then it quickly returned. “You heard the sheriff,” the man said. “He doesn’t want you hanging around here.”

“Yeah, the thing about that is I don’t really give a damn what he thinks,” Chace said. “My sister is missing and she is the only real family I’ve got left. I’m not going to let you or the two-bit country bumpkin cop tell me what to do.”

That was a bit harsh, perhaps, but Chace was feeling punchy. He turned to go.

The FBI agent’s hand turned into a blur as he whipped out a pair of handcuffs. Before Chace could react, the man snapped the handcuffs on Chace’s left wrist.

“That’s not happening,” the man said. His smile was gone now. “You’re coming with us.”

Chace did the first thing that came into his head. He lifted his back foot and kicked the agent in the nuts. The man’s eyes went wide and he dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Chace turned again to start running but suddenly the other three agents were on him. They tackled him to the ground and stuffed a gag in his mouth before he could even scream for help.

The men dragged Chace to his feet. Then they turned their attention to their fallen comrade. More accurately, they started laughing at him. “Way to go newbie,” one of them said. “Nutted by a Gargarean kid on his 18th brithday. Very embarrassing.”

“You know what this means, right?” another one of them said. “You’re going to be
sent all the way back to first-day training.”

The third man nodded. “The king won’t put up with incompetence, even from a new trainee,” he said.

The fallen agent scowled as he got back up to his feet. He dusted himself off and walked up to Chace. “Bad move,” he spat in Chace's face. “I’m going to take you down, kid. I’m going to own you for that.”

The other three men laughed as they dragged Chace to the SUV. There was no one around to see as they threw him into a cage hidden in the trunk.

Kyle rubbed his tender balls. The damn kid had been remarkably accurate. As angry as Kyle was, though, the truth was that he should not have been caught unawares. He had been trained better than that. The realization only made him more frustrated, however, and the only obvious outlet was the kid.

They had taken Chace Morgan to the Gargarean base – an opulent old gated mansion in the center of the city – and left him with the guards in the basement prison. Kyle didn’t have any opportunity to rough the kid up, though, because, as his brothers and fellow fake FBI agents had predicted, he as immediately summoned to the king’s office.

As Kyle walked through the hallways past his brothers he tried to formulate his excuse. He would tell the king that his brothers had distracted him. No, that was no good, he couldn’t blame them. Perhaps he could argue that kid was just super talented. Nah, no 18-year old birthday boy had full control over his powers yet.
Perhaps… Kyle gave up. It was no good. He was going to get a lecture and be sent back to the first day of training and that was it.

When Kyle walked into the king’s office the first person he saw was the king’s ancient assistant sitting behind a desk in the antechamber. “Gordy,” he said. “Is the king here?”

Gordy – whose actual name was Gordias – looked up slowly. The man appeared so old that if Kyle didn’t know better he would have expected the man to drop dead at any moment. It was the man’s immense Gargarean power that had kept him alive for thousands of years but eventually that would fail. Even Gordy did not have the immortal power of King Telemachus.

“No,” Gordy said in lightly-accented English. “The king was just summoned to a meeting with the Amazons. Something to do with the boy you brought in, I believe.”

Kyle’s spirits lifted. “No problem,” he said. “I’ll come back later.”

“Hold,” Gordy said. “I was instructed by the king to tell you that you will
rejoining the recruits in the morning. Your performance today was shameful. Even a Gargarean with ten months of training such as yourself should have been able to handle the boy. Perhaps being in a training class with him will give you the incentive you need to work harder.”

Kyle hung his head. “I understand,” he said. Inside, however, his anger was raging.

Gordy dismissed him and Kyle shuffled down the hall sullenly. As he passed an open door in the hallway he looked in and saw Paul, one of his more senior Gargarean brothers, taking some shiny silver garments out of a chest with an opened lock hanging from it. As if sensing Kyle’s presence, Paul looked around. He looked from Kyle to the garments in his hands and then back again. “Oh hell,” he said. “I knew I should have closed the door.”

“What are you doing?” Kyle asked quizzically. “What are those things?”

Paul sighed. “Get in here and shut the door,” he said. Kyle did as he was told. “Look,” Paul said. “Not a word about this to anyone, alright? You weren’t supposed to know about these yet. You’re going to find out about them eventually, though, so I might as well tell you now.”

Kyle leaned back against the door and stared at Paul attentively.

“Okay,” Paul said. “You remember what you were told about the war between the Amazons and the Gargareans thousands of years ago?”

Kyle shrugged. “Of course,” he said. “The Amazons used to mate with the Gargareans. The male children would be given to the Gargareans and the female children were given to the Amazons. Then they went to war with each other. The Amazons won and after that they refused to mate with the Gargareans. Now they capture human males to mate with. They keep their female offspring and give their males to us.”

“There’s a little more to it than that,” Paul said. “The offspring of a Amazon and a Gargarean is more powerful than that of a Amazon and a human. Although the Amazons didn’t want to mate with the Gargareans anymore, they recognized that there might come a time when they had to do so to produce a more superior race.”

Kyle frowned. “Why would they need to do that?” he asked.

“That’s another long story and I’m only telling one tonight,” Paul said. “Suffice it to say that it might happen. Now, the Amazons aren’t dumb. They realized if they wiped the old Gargarean organizational structure away, young male offspring would not be trained or controlled. The youngsters would wreak havoc on the world when they turned 18 and got their powers. They also didn’t want the Gargareans to pose a threat in another war, however. The compromise was these.” Paul held up one of the garments.

“It sort of looks like, uh…” Kyle started to say. He trailed off.

“Yeah, a nut cup,” Paul said. “It’s made of strands of silver, though. Do you remember what silver does to us?”

“It takes away our powers,” Kyle said.

“Exactly,” Paul replied. “The Amazons had these modified by the goddess Circe, however. Now they don’t take away a Gargarean’s powers. They just can’t be removed or broken. They actually mold to your body. Look, they’re holes in the bottom of the cup so urine can drain out. The ions in silver fight bacteria so the cups stay clean. You can’t even take them off to go to the bathroom.”

“I don’t get it,” Kyle said. Then his eyes widened as realization dawned on him. “Wait, you’re saying that if a Gargarean puts that on he can’t take it off again. Like, ever?”

“Sort of,” Paul said. “It can be removed by a Gargarean’s lieutenant with the permission of the king and the Council of Elders. In practice that never happens, though. Once the cup is on it stays on. That’s the way the old Gargareans want it. The condition posed by the Amazons was that two-thirds of the Gargareans would have to wear this. That keeps our numbers down and ensures that we don’t pose a threat to the Amazons. So, the old Gargareans feel that only the best genes should be passed along, and those belong to the victors of our various competitions. The losers are required to put these on.”

Kyle’s eyes widened even further. “You’re saying that everyone who is not a lieutenant right now is wearing that?”

“Yep,” Paul said. “Once you’ve been here for a year you get thrown into a competition. If you lose, you get this.” He held up one of the cups. “If you win, of course, you become a lieutenant and take control over the Gargareans you have defeated. You become their master. Once you’ve been made a lieutenant, you can never get the cup. I happened to hear, though, that you were being tossed back into the first day of training. Given that, there’s no way you’ll be ready for the competition. Which means you’ll almost certainly lose. If and when you do, you better not tell anyone I gave you a heads up about these.” Suddenly, Paul turned into a blur. He grabbed Kyle by the neck and lifted him up into the air. “Do you hear me?”

“Yes, yes, I hear you,” Kyle said, willing himself not to fight back. The Gargareans were a militant order and attacking a senior Gargarean was a major offense.

Paul grunted and set Kyle down. “Good,” he said. “Now get out of here.”

Kyle rubbed his raw throat. When he looked down he noticed a silver cup that Paul had dropped by his feet while strangling him. A thought flashed through his head. Perhaps it offered a way to solve two problems at once. He stealthily snatched up the cup and walked out of the room.

Riley was taken by two young women to a long hallway filled with doors on either side. A strange silver bracelet was placed on her wrist by a third woman and she was pushed into one of the rooms. She heard a door lock behind her. She waited for someone to come in but nobody did. She gradually slipped into a fitful slumber.

When she woke up the next morning there was a tray with food waiting by the door. Riley felt a chill go through her body. Someone had come in without her knowing and left the food. She wouldn’t touch it. It might be poisoned.

About an hour later the door opened
and another young women walked inside. She was very pretty. She was petite and had beautiful brown hair and eyes. Realization came crashing down on Riley. The woman was the same one who had drugged her.

“You!”
Riley cried. “What do you want with me?”

“
Shhh, relax,” the woman said. “I’m just here to start your training. I helped you, remember? I saved you from those men who were attacking you.”

“Yeah, and then you abducted me,” Riley said.

“I had to,” the woman replied. “More men would have come looking for you. They’re Gargareans, you know. Our sworn enemies.

“What do you mean ‘our’?” Riley asked.

“You and I are both Amazons,” the woman said with a smile.

Riley looked at her blankly. “I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I was born in America.”

The woman laughed. “An Amazon can be born anywhere,” she said. “We are descended from the god Ares and the warrior queen Otrera. We have lived for many centuries as a secret order all around the globe.”

The woman was crazy. There was no other explanation.

“I see the look in your eyes and no, I am not insane and I am not lying,” the woman said. “Amazonian women capture and mate with human men. We place the daughters up for adoption so that they are raised in human homes and learn firsthand how to blend in with humans. When they turn 18 these girls’ power begins to manifest itself so we bring them home to train them. Superior speed and agility. Strength. You must have felt the transition. You have those powers now.”

Riley didn’t know what she had felt. “I have no powers,” she said stubbornly. “If I did I would have knocked down that door and escaped.”

“You don’t have any power while you are wearing that,” the woman said, pointing to the bracelet on Riley’s wrist. “Don’t bother trying to take it off, by the way. Only the guard can do that. Silver saps our powers. We usually wear them in these pens so that we can be on equal footing with the men we mate. It is an ancient Amazonian rule that we never use our strength to force a man to mate with us. We believe that any Amazon who does so is cursed by Ares, who disdains men and women who have to use force in such unions.”

“This is too much,” Riley said.

“That is why we take it slowly on the first day,” the woman said. “Think about what I have told you for the rest of the day and get yourself ready. For goodness sakes, eat your food.” She looked Riley square in the face. “My name is Aria and I have been given the responsibility to train you by the Amazonian queen Hippolyta. You are my first trainee and your performance will reflect greatly on me so you must listen to, and do, everything that I tell you.”

“What about my brother?” Riley cried. If they thought she had some sort of special powers, they must have thought the same of him. What had they done with him? Aria did not answer the question as she left the room, however, and Riley was left alone with her thoughts. She prayed that wherever her brother was, he was alright.