Retrieval (30 page)

“Good morning to you too. Did you have a rough night or something?” She tried to tease him, she really did, but it fell far short of what she’d intended.

“What’s wrong, Sky? And don’t try to bullshit your way out of this. Your sisters are downstairs rubbing their temples in pain, and damn if my head isn’t hurting too. What’s going on with you?”

He crowded her back against the vanity, and she had to crane her neck back to look up at him.

“Oh stop that shit,” she burst out pushing against his massive chest before she slid to the side and out of his reach.

“Don’t tell me to stop. I want to know what’s wrong with you. You were bleeding over, but I couldn’t decipher your thoughts, there was just this enormous amount of pain and desolation. Now tell me what’s going on, or I swear I’ll—”

“You’ll what, Sebastian? Beat me? Fuck me into submission? What?” she demanded turning on him in a sudden fury that was born of the pain slicing through her at the thought of leaving him.

“You know I’d never hit you. As for the fucking you into submission, we both know that probably won’t work either. You give as good as you get, baby. Now tell me what the hell is going on with you, Skylar.”

She had to make her move now, throw him off with anger and get some breathing room, so that she could do what she had to do with no interference.

“You know what? You don’t have the right to know what’s going on with me.” She got in his face, and while she wasn’t shouting she was pretty damn close.

His eyes flared blue black, and his cheeks went ruddy. “I don’t have the right?” he asked silkily.

“Did I stutter?” she barked out.

“If what happened in that bed last night doesn’t afford me the right to know what’s causing you pain, then nothing will. My bad. Hey, I didn’t mean to intrude where I’m not wanted. You want me to leave you alone, you fucking got it,” he said, and his face was etched in stone.

There was no fury, no hurt, nothing to indicate his feelings other than his icy-cold voice, which sent shivers through her being.

He turned and methodically made his way around where she stood in the bathroom doorway. He didn’t brush against her at all as he left the room, shutting the door behind him quietly.

Wow. He was pissed. And while it shot arrows of white-hot pain through her heart, it was what he needed to be so she could get this done and get out of here before they realized her intentions.

* * * *

“Motherfucker,” Sebastian said as he threw an empty coffee cup into the sink and took a minute to calm down before he exploded.

Damn woman had mood swings like a crazy person, but something was way off. He’d caught onto her game last night. She evaded like a champion boxer, but he knew it for what it was now. There was no question that something was causing her pain. When he’d stormed back down the stairs, neither her sisters nor his men had dared look at him.

Anger bled off him and considering where he’d just come from they didn’t even have to guess who’d caused it.

“Sebastian?” Raina called softly from the doorway.

“Yeah?” he asked turning around.

“She’s going to try to do this on her own, you know that right?”

“She fucking better well not,” he practically roared.

“You haven’t been with her long enough to know that she’s stubborn to a fault, and when it comes to those she loves, she will do whatever she feels is necessary to protect them,” Raina responded stoically in the face of his fury.

He had nothing to say to that. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the woman upstairs, the woman he’d spent the entire night buried inside of, was someone of such pure love and selflessness that she’d give her own life for anyone she called hers.

“And she loves you. You are hers; do not doubt it, Sebastian.”

Raina had read his mind, and as her words soaked into him he couldn’t even care that yet another person seemed to have unfettered access to his thoughts.

“How do we stop her?” he asked as he gave in to the inevitable.

“Skylar is a creature of pure energy. She’s power personified, and she’s operating at full strength right now. I don’t think we can stop her.” Raina’s voice was sad.

“Yes we can. We’ve got this,” Piper said, and her voice rang with surety.

She walked into the kitchen holding a black device that Sebastian recognized as similar to the one Smythe-Ward had given him a while back.

“Yeah? That didn’t work so well the first time I tried it. She ended knocking me on my ass shortly after, so what makes you think it’ll disable her long enough to work now?”

“We’ve known for a while about her susceptibility to UV light so I tinkered and made one of my own, and if anyone knows our biology it would be one of us. You’ve got to know the tools of the enemy to defeat them. She doesn’t know I’ve done it, but damn if I won’t use this bitch to keep my crazy ass sister in check,” Piper returned hotly.

“You think you’ll all leave together don’t you? You women are nucking futz to try to take him on by yourselves. You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. The best thing for you all to do is let us go along with you. We are all at your back, you damn well need us there with you.” Sebastian stated the fact, having guessed a few days ago that the women would try to do this on their own.

“Damn right. We’re going or you don’t,” Morrissey stated from the porch entrance.

“No,” Kinsey said emphatically, shaking her head negatively.

“Yes.” This from Bleak, who stared at Raina as if he were trying to figure out the origins of the world.

“What’re we arguin’ ’bout?” Rover asked as he too joined the fray.

“Tell me, Piper: do we do this together, or do you make me bring out the big guns?” Sebastian asked, and his stance was all business.

Piper threw a look at her each of her sisters, and Sebastian knew they were mind speaking with one another. That was fine. As long as they came to the right conclusion, it was all good.

“Tell us what you have, and we’ll consider it.”

“No,” a new voice, full of anger and hot as hell, entered the fray, “there will be no considering it.”

Skylar walked into the room, and Sebastian was stunned to see her outfitted in all black with her hair pulled into a severe twist.

She took a place beside the screened door that led to the porch and stood with her feet shoulder-width apart, and her arms hanging loosely at her sides. She looked ready for battle. The only thing missing were guns and ammo.

“Waste of time really. I’ve got weapons much more deadly than guns,” she said aloud to Sebastian’s unspoken observation.

“Don’t do this, Skylar. Let me help you.” Was it a demand? A plea?

Sebastian didn’t even know at this point. What he was sure of was that things were spiraling out of his control too fast, and he needed to get a hand on this situation. Dray Bonner had contacted him just moments before he’d been knocked for a loop by Sky’s pain. Smythe-Ward was on his way, and General Post was leading the charge. Both Bonners, as well as their teams, were heading here for what was probably going to be a showdown of massive proportions. He relished an opportunity to deal death to Dolan Smythe-Ward.

Sebastian didn’t have time to dwell on what may or may not be his former commander’s betrayal. He was too damn busy trying to save the life of the woman who’d come to mean more to him than anybody ever had.

He didn’t notice until Skylar raised her eyebrow that her sisters had all gathered together and were holding hands. Kinsey had tears streaming down her face. Raina’s eyes were that startling whiskey brown, and Piper’s face was set in stone. She held Kinsey’s hand with her right one and the device she had just shown to Sebastian in the left.

“You cannot stop me, Pipe, don’t make me hurt any of you. Please.”

The last was a near whimper, and for just a second the wave of pain that Skylar felt translated down her link with him. It took all his strength not to fall down screaming at the intensity of it.

“I will use this, Skylar; don’t think I won’t. Now stop drawing energy,” Piper demanded.

“Skylar, please don’t do this. Let’s let Sebastian and his men help us. Let us help you, don’t go after him alone,” Raina implored.

“Kinsey, stop funneling. Raina stop throwing. You guys need to shield as best you can. This shit might knock us all out,” Piper said as she raised the device she had manufactured when it had become clear that Skylar was going to go rogue superwoman on them.

“Don’t hurt her, Piper.” The warning was clear in Sebastian’s voice.

This was going to end poorly, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it.

“To save her life, I’d bring her as close to death as I was allowed,” Piper said.

There wasn’t a doubt in Sebastian’s mind that she meant it.

“Drop it, Piper. Sebastian? Stay where you are. All of you stay where you are. I’m sorry, but I will not let any of you go through this. He’s mine to destroy, and the farther you are away from me the less any of you will hurt. Sebastian, I love you. I hope that you never doubt that. Piper, find Sasha and bring her into the fold. I love you guys, and if you’ve ever doubted it, let it be known that you’ve been the reason I survived.”

The kitchen was in shambles. Plates flew out of the banging cabinet doors while food fell out of the slamming refrigerator. Windows blew out and the door to the porch was hanging off its hinges.

The floors and walls buckled and retreated like something alive resided within them and was anxious to get out. The air was superheated, and then just as suddenly a cold arctic wind blew in and everything went startlingly quiet.

Sky’s hair had come loose from its pins and now wreathed her abnormally pale face with fiery strands. The contrast caused Sebastian’s heart to tighten and stutter.

“You better fucking hold on,” Bleak warned them all just seconds before Piper aimed her device at her sister, and a light so bright it was blinding flew from it.

Skylar screamed in agony and went to one knee but valiantly fought her way back to her feet. Holding her hands out in front of herself she made a pushing motion, and everyone, Sebastian included, went flying through the air to land heavily against the wall. Each of them hit hard enough to hurt, and the device in Piper’s hand went flying as well and landed about a foot from where she did.

“Grab it, Sebastian!” she yelled over the once again raging, howling winds.

“Leave it, Sebastian. Don’t make me do this. Just let me go,” Skylar pleaded with him.

“I can’t, I lo—” His words were torn from him as Sky lifted her hands high, and the winds screamed through his house.

He watched in horror and awe as the woman he loved seemed to dissolve and spin in a tight circle becoming a tornado of energy that flew up and out of his destroyed roof.

Then silence reigned and with the exception of bits of his house falling down around him, the only thing that was real was the sensation of his heart breaking into a million pieces.

* * * *

One hour and four hundred miles away from Sebastian’s cabin in Idaho, Skylar re-formed with a whoosh as her consciousness slammed back into her re-formed body. She’d deliberately placed herself in the middle of the roadway, because thanks to the unknown voice in her head, the one from her dreams, she now knew that Smythe-Ward was much closer than she’d thought. It was stunningly hot in this arid dessert land outside of Las Vegas, and the road before her blurred with the heat as it wound snake-like through the distant hills. Yeah, it was hot, but the voice in her head gave her the chills.

There was no other explanation that could account for the information that streamed into her brain from the outside source, and as long as she protected herself, she would keep the line of communication open until, or if the voice proved to be foe rather than friend.

She could make out the shimmering shapes of vehicles following one another in a convoy that would have done the military proud, and she felt the muted stirrings of rage at the man who had created her. He was coming for her and the ones she loved, but he wouldn’t make it any farther toward them than right here at mile marker two twenty-seven of this Nevada highway.

She was going to offer him something he couldn’t refuse, and then she was going to be the insidious disease that destroyed Dolan Smythe-Ward and GenTech.

She blocked the images from just an hour ago. Piper had tried valiantly to stop her from leaving, and in return Sky had sent everyone in that room careening into a wall. That she’d destroyed Sebastian’s house wasn’t something to dwell on. That she’d destroyed her chances with him was blindingly painful, but in the face of her worst nightmare she had to shake it off and concentrate on the task at hand.

She’d also devastated the bond between herself and her sisters. As she spiraled out of the hole in Sebastian’s roof she’d destroyed their surface bond with her. They would no longer be able to read her, though she would always have a link with them. It had hurt more than leaving, even though she knew that their genetic makeup allowed for a bond so deep that to sever it would be death for them all. Only she had that ability, and it wasn’t something she would ever do. She’d give her own life, but she’d never risk theirs. She didn’t know what condition her sisters were in, but she knew they were alive, and for the time being, safe from Smythe-Ward.

The SUVs drew closer, and Sky made a great show of whipping up the sand storm of the century, so that they would at least have some glimpse of what they were about to encounter. She couldn’t kill him here. She was still too close to her sister’s location, and the bleed over from her own death as she took him out would destroy them. No, Sky was going to play a dangerous game: she was going to give Smythe-Ward the impression that she’d willingly go with him if he left her sisters alone, and then she was going to pounce on both him and GenTech like a lion on a gazelle.

It would be no contest. She had such enormous reserves and such a deeply vast knowledge of her own makeup that even if he and his cronies somehow managed to subdue her it would only be a matter of time before she fought her way free.

She was hoping against hope that she could manipulate his thoughts to believe that she was willing. She had an ace in the hole and had contacted that ace to ensure that Sebastian, his men and her sisters headed for a location as far away from Bluffton, South Carolina as they could get. She could never trust Smythe-Ward’s word not to go after them, and as long as they ran, Smythe-Ward would be too occupied with trying to figure of what the hell Skylar
was
to give them too much time and effort.