The Valkyrie's Guardian (27 page)

“Hey! Bugger off.” He cocked his head toward the audience peering from the windows. “What I do is for my clan, not because some fancy-arse bitch says so.”

Jack growled and charged, but Cassie was ready for it. She caught him with both hands sprawled on his chest. He snarled and pushed, but she held him back, digging her heels into the ground.
Jack, think. Do you really want to be seen as a troublemaker? Is it worth all the bad blood?

Let me at him.

He wasn't reasonable yet.

Cassie narrowed her eyes and shot Ben her executioner's stare. “You accepted Kyros' commission for stewardship over the academy. That includes hosting his agents. That would be us. Be civil or keep your mouth shut. Or next time I will take you down myself.”

Ben sneered and turned his back.

She gripped Jack's hand and tugged him back toward the hall.
Go clean up. You'd frighten the children if you took inventory at the academy now.

He let her lead him back, his mind still a haze of churning red and black fury. Everyone they passed stopped to gape. Jack was disheveled and bloody, his muscles sweaty and engorged, straining the seams of his clothes. Pretty much a PR nightmare, as far as the academy was concerned. She understood from their thoughts they had seen the aftermath of a berserker rage dozens of times, but Jack's extreme physique was shocking.

Cassie locked the door and followed Jack into the washroom. She helped him strip off his clothes since he was too sore to lift his arms and bend. She battled the urge to leave his injuries as punishment, but healed him anyway. His knee was worse, swollen and burning with raw pain that meant ligament damage.

“Way to go, genius.”
She winced, feeling sympathetic vibrations of the pain as his adrenaline high wore off.

“Forgot how much I loathe him.”

“What's the deal with that?”

“I've told you before. Everything that goes wrong here is my fault.”

“Says who?”

“Ben. Hugh. Hugh's wife. All my uncles. Mostly Ben.”
The water in the shower finally heated. He stepped inside a rusted copper bathtub, and she closed the curtain around it. “I warned you I wasn't popular here. Let's finish what we came for and get the hell out.”

She helped him wash, trying to make him keep weight off his knee. Afterward he collapsed on the bed wearing a towel around his waist. It barely fit, with a wide gap over his tanned thigh like a cheerleader skirt. She did what she could for his knee, but it was still a mess.

“Consider giving me another try with surgery. I couldn't possibly make it any worse.”

“Knock me out first, and you can do whatever you want.”

She smiled and changed her clothes. Blood had smeared and spattered down her front. Gross. “I'll say this once and never bring it up again. I would kill to have a brother. You should try harder to make it right with yours. There's something fundamentally wrong about the hatred between you.”

“If you knew the history behind it, you wouldn't say that.”

“Listening ear, coming right up.”

“I'd rather not, thanks.”

“Have it your way.”

“You are my family, Cass. I chose you years ago. Let me deal with the consequences.”

“If you're going to regret this in the morning,

we can sleep until the afternoon.”

—Jack MacGunn, King of the Bad Pick-Up Line

Jack sat in back of the modified classroom, trying to focus on the stack of security reports. It made his brain hurt. The academy needed a dozen modifications to make it defensible, but it might as well have been a thousand, because if their location had been compromised, in a matter of hours it could be too late. He'd set his plans in motion anyway, though it felt like a duct-tape-and-a-prayer operation.

He didn't tell Cassie, but a Network agent had been abducted from Mexico yesterday, interrogated by a mindbreaker and left for dead. Kyros was busy discovering how the enemy had identified the agent posing as a cantina chef. Lyssa — a mindbreaker herself — was hard at work trying to repair the damage to the man's mind as well as discover what intel the enemy had scored.

Worst case scenario? An attack on Kinmylies like the one at Torrey Pines, but on a larger scale without the help of a SEAL Team — a massacre. Which was why he needed those fortifications done yesterday. Jack glanced around the room filled with extra-sentient children and felt helpless. And damned stupid. Why had he come home?

He watched Henry win a jigsaw puzzle race — 1,500 pieces assembled in three minutes twenty seconds. He'd found himself a fellow poetry geek. They conversed at each other simultaneously, one responding while the other moved on. It sounded like a radio with crossed signals, but they were happy.

The gravity twins, Cameron and Cody, were supposed to be building a double helix with foam balls and toothpicks. If they didn't study harder, they would have to make a living doing magic shows. One twin altered positive G's, the other negative, and together they produced what Kyros called “selective gravitation.” To the human eye it looked like levitation, a party trick. Jack sympathized as a fellow extra-sentient whose prowess fell more in the physical realm and less in the academic.

Jack remembered rescuing Magnus, dubbed Konflagration Kid. To the group of little nerds here, that was hilarious. During their first encounter, Jack had startled Magnus, and the kid's affinity for combustion blew up a toilet. It was actually very dangerous, with chips of porcelain blasting as shrapnel, but to tell the story it just sounded queer.

It seemed Magnus had been practicing on Playdough, judging by his scowl as he scraped multi-colored globs off the wall. A teacher stood nearby, arms crossed over his chest, his clothes spattered.

Magnus caught sight of Jack, and his expression brightened.
Hey, Jack. Didn't know you were back.

How's it goin', Magnus? Get into trouble again?

He cocked his head at the angry Playdough-covered teacher.
It was worth it. Bring any duds with you?

Sometimes Jack smuggled UXO, unexploded ordnance — grenades and mortar shells — from the naval base for Magnus to blow up. The kid could make fireworks out of anything. As a force of nature, boys got into mischief; Jack merely provided adult supervision.

Sorry, Magnus, not this time. Cassie would have noticed it in the luggage.

You brought Cassiopeia? She's so hot.
Funny, coming from a twelve-year-old boy.

No kidding. I married her.

Magnus turned to the wall before the teacher noticed his distraction.
Lucky bastard.

I know. Hey, I'll come back later, okay? I'll find some aerosol cans, or something.

Brilliant. And get lighter fluid.

Only if you show me straight-As on your report card.

Magnus groaned but conceded,
Yes, sir.

Don't ‘sir' me, you little shit. I just don't want you to grow up to be a meathead, okay?

Magnus covertly flipped him the bird, but it was a joke. Maybe he would take Jack's advice and pay attention to the academic side of his education. Jack wished he had.

Kyros kept the most gifted, the most dangerous students here: Network-One. They needed to be taught responsibility and fealty, or they would end up like Krav, a tool and a weapon for an evil extra-sentient. A kid like Harvey, the five-simultaneous-games-of-chess champion, who could impose his will on any human or extra-sentient without a mindshield, would never fit in the normal world.

Like Jack, the students here needed Kyros' resources. He funded all operations and provided what they called “opportunities.” A polite way of referring to Kyros' influence in organizations from the CIA to NASA to the Italian mafia. He was the mighty, anonymous
they
who ran the world. Kyros connected gifted extra-sentients with agencies that had use for their talents and kept all kinds of secrets.

Jack hadn't landed a spot on SEAL Team Three with his good looks. Someone had to fake his U.S. citizenship, tweak his lab results, and forge his personnel file. Someone in Naval Command had to censor reports and make sure everyone looked the other way when Jack did something superhuman, like throwing a burning Humvee at an enemy tank.

The lucky ones became Kyros' agents in his Network. Jack held the coveted position of second in command. He preferred
sidekick.
A day didn't pass without Jack being aware of his debt to his oldest friend. He'd never let Kyros down until last week, and Jack never did anything half-assed. Knocking up Kyros' granddaughter with a baby who would mangle her innards and split her wide open was a fine way to repay the favor.

Watching the room full of students —
male
extra-sentients — drove the point home. The scientific explanation why females had become so rare was beyond him. Taking Cassie from Kyros felt like whipping an already flayed back. When Jack wasn't high on the afterglow from being with her, guilt took its place. Awful, sinking, clawing guilt. He needed no fuel for his imagination. MacGunn women had been martyred for hundreds of years, and they all knew tales of berserker births more grisly than any which came from the battlefield.

He could blame the impairing effects of the medication all he wanted, but the truth was Jack had been playing with fire long before he got burned, and in that do-or-die moment, he had taken what he wanted. Nothing else had mattered.

No. That wasn't true. Jack clearly remembered Cassie, her lips parted on a sigh, her hooded eyes burning with a contradictory mix of arousal and affection. He couldn't tell her no. She wanted him, and he gave himself to her, because she asked. Because he would do anything for her, even if it was wrong.

Wrong didn't come any more McWrong than that.

Tell that to Cassie, who had never glowed like this. She was high on the thrill of realized potential, an ecstasy he understood and didn't want to deflate.

Tell that to himself, who couldn't contain his proud heart. It skipped double time at the thought of her bearing him a son. He halted the vision there. It was enough. He didn't panic, because the part of him that wanted to believe in magic hoped there was a way to save her and the baby. A smiling, strong family of three.

Too bad he didn't believe in magic.

• • •

Cassie sat next to Jack in the academy library, enjoying the pleasant chaos. Levitating books, scorched papers, magnetized paperclips, and probably academic progress somewhere among the pranks.

Jack was miles away. His mind sealed shut, his gaze a thousand-yard stare. He obviously needed to be alone at a time when he couldn't, so she tried not to disturb him. It was just as well, because if he noticed the waves of contractions that made her tense and hold her breath, he would freak out. She had no medical explanation for the cramping low in her womb, but it probably wasn't a good sign. She knew it would stop soon, because the pain had come and gone over the past few days. No use starting to complain now, when she still had ten months to go.

She stretched her fingers and tilted her hand, playing with the light to catch the fire in her gorgeous diamond. She had Googled it out of curiosity. Anywhere from forty to seventy grand. Hopefully Jack hadn't sold a kidney or robbed a bank for it. She joked like that to herself, because when she thought of the sacrifice it meant for him, her eyes watered. Money was a touchy subject for Jack, on a list titled,
Don't Go There.
For a recent marriage, it was a long list.

Jack seemed to keep an eye on Magnus, the boy who ignited fires. He supercharged particles to combustion by altering sub-atomic attraction with his mind. A remarkable, yet dangerous talent. She hoped the boy liked physics, because he'd have to study for years to understand the nature of his ability and control it. The boys here were as young as three and as old as eighteen. The professors were former students, grown and graduated. Being here felt like watching the reality T.V. version of
X-Men.

The combined resources in the room could devastate any major metropolis within minutes, if used for ill. One extra-sentient boy exploited by Krav had nearly cost the lives of an entire SEAL team, not to mention whatever havoc wreaked by the landslides. The damage to Henry's mind might never be undone, and that was just as unforgivable.

What nobody understood yet was what exactly their so-called
Mr. X
wanted. The trouble with malevolent extra-sentients was their insanity. The bizarre attacks on the naval base were a prime example. Why ransack an office? Tease with sniper fire, brainwash cadets? And the whole landslide business? Weird. Illogical.

Unfortunately Cassie was too sane to mastermind this one out. How could they guard against a general threat? If they provided
general
, basic security, they'd all be dead by the end of the week.

• • •

“Maggie would've liked ye, lass.”

Cassie jumped back from the framed photo and pressed a hand to her heart, trying to calm it. “Grandda, you startled me.”

“Margaret MacGunn. Lady to the twenty-sixth laird of Kinmylies.” Grandda stepped close to the black and white portrait hanging on the wall and bowed his head.

“Jack said she died giving birth to him.”

“Aye. A dark day. Me daughter, ye know.”

“I'm very sorry.”

“Maggie did her duty, and well. 'Tis the other half of life, death.”

“A tragedy when it comes too soon.”

“Only if it comes with dishonor.”

“Forgive me, but what sort of death brings honor, then?”

His eyes crinkled at the corners, a dull flash of green betraying his excitement. “Death in battle. Death in defense of hearth and home. Death in the name of God. Death in giving life. All a sure path to Valhalla.”