She chuckled softly and began undressing. "Don"t mind me, I"m just talking trash. I"m so tired that I just want you to be sure I don"t drown while we take a bath."
"Ditto," he replied with a deep yawn.
They"d slept like the dead .. . well, not quiet dead, but close to it, Sasha thought as she stirred awake. Sir Rodney had the best beds on the planet, sprinkled with a little Faery dust for a relaxing sleep no matter what the circ.u.mstances.
Opening her eyes slowly, Sasha glanced around the room. Sumptuous Old World luxury surrounded them, and it was going to be hard to go back to battling in the bayou. But dawn brought reality and she knew they had to get up.
Sunshine warmed her face as she stretched and pushed back deeper into the spoon of Hunter"s embrace. Cool, soft cotton sheets that covered sensual goose down felt like a drug as she struggled to fully wake up. Add to that Hunter"s steady breathing, the rhythm of his heartbeat against her spine, and his warmth coating her entire back and backside, it was enough to keep her in the mild coma she"d been in all night. Once they"d lain down, neither of them had moved. The possessive hold he had over her waist felt like a huge tree limb had captured her, pinning her to the bed.
But she had to move; they had to get up. There was much to accomplish ... but d.a.m.n, the man felt so good.
"Good morning, baby," she said, beginning the difficult task of untwining their bodies.
"Not yet," he said, releasing a deep rumble inside his chest.
She felt it through her back and felt his grip tighten. "C"mon, don"t start."
His answer was simple and definitive and nonverbally male. He just flopped a heavy leg over her legs, holding her in place.
"Not fair ... I don"t have the energy to lift your leg. man." She relaxed back against him and kept her eyes closed as his hand stroked a lazy hypnotic pattern against her belly.
"Not trying to be fair."
She wanted to laugh, but only a groggy chuckle came out. "We have to get up."
"Why?"
He kissed the back of her head and slid his hand up to capture her left breast. His body was definitely awake and pressing against her backside, even though he was only semiconscious. Warmth radiated through her body and lingered between her legs as he gently kneaded a taut nipple until she moistened.
"I"m trying to remember," she said through a quiet moan. "Aw, c"mon, Hunter, don"t do thisa"we"ve gotta get going."
"True," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her shoulder. "We"ve definitely gotta get going before we leave this room."
"Colonel Madison," the MP said, as soon as the call connected. "We have a civilian at the guard entrance checkpoint trying to enter the base to see you, sir. He has some sort of videoa"the same video that is breaking on the news. Should we detain him, sir, or bring him to your office?"
"What video breaking on the news?" Colonel Madison said, looking at the clock.
It was zero-six-hundred. He"d already been up since zero-five-hundred, unable to sleep.
"The news breaking on the local channels, sir," the MP exclaimed, clearly unable to keep the panic out of his voice.
"Bring the civilian to my office," Colonel Madison said, grabbing the remote and turning on the television.
Only three minutes pa.s.sed and his direct line from the Pentagon rang.
"Good morning," Sasha said, greeting the small team a.s.sembled in Sir Rodney"s war room.
Crow Shadow and Shogun grunted a reply as they ate, and she was glad that his arm had healed.
Sir Rodney lifted his coffee cup in salute. "Top of the morning to you. Breakfast?"
Rupert scurried over to pull out Sasha"s chair as the men at the table stood.
"I"m good," Hunter said with a broad smile. "Already ate."
Sasha refused to look at him as she sat, and Sir Rodney gave him a wink.
"Coffee then?" Rupert said, trying unsuccessfully to swallow a smile.
"Thank you," she replied and gave Hunter a sidelong scowl before turning her attention to the group. "What time is it? My clock gets all messed up in the sidhe."
"This is a timeless place, that"s why," Sir Rodney said with a gallant bow from where he sat. "But in human time, it is six a.m."
"Okay, thena"thank you for the hospitality, but can we get that coffee to go?" Sasha looked around the group as everyone stopped eating. "The base starts reveille at zero-five-hundred. There are bodies in the woods, so even if Russell Conway couldn"t get anyone out there in the dark, at daybreak he might get some action. I can"t get a cell phone signal in here, and you don"t have a TV."
"Whew . .. somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Sis, you are seriously stressing," Crow Shadow said, slurping his coffee.
"I thought I"d rectified that," Hunter said under his breath, accepting a cup of coffee from Rupert.
Shogun chuckled into his cup. Sasha shot out of her chair as though a bee had stung her.
"Look," she said, now talking with her hands, "a feeling just came over me. I know you guys don"t approve, but for better or worse I"m half human and I know how humans think . . . I"m connected to their energy, and when big stuff goes down the hair stands up on my necka"the same way it does when I get a wolf feeling. I respect both; I act on both . . . plus I have the advantage of a little feminine instinct that you guys in the magic kingdom still haven"t been able to quantify."
She blew out a long breath and paced to the window and back when all they did was stare at her, chewing slowly and sipping their coffee slowly. "You guys have gut to get up on the new technology and come into the human twenty-first century. Their technology makes them almost as formidable as youa"it"s their brand of magic, their brand of telepathy, all right? So stop looking at me like I"ve grown two heads. This is serious. I need to check ina"so can you just take me to the outside wall and drop the drawbridge so I can at least get cell phone reception?"
It was worse than she"d thought. Her cell phone was blowing up. Every member of her team had called twice, and Colonel Madison beat Doc"s three calls by mere seconds. Starting at the top of the food chain, she called Colonel Madison, then Doc, checked in with Winters and told him to get back to Clarissa and company, all while half listening to the phone conversation that Hunter and Crow were having with Silver Hawk and Bear.
"Respect restored, la.s.sie. I need to create a human communications room in the sidhe somehow," Sir Rodney said, looking at Rupert. "Who knew?"
"Definitely," Sasha said, terminating the last call and shoving her phone in her pocket. "Okay, here"s the deala"I have to go to the base alone." She glanced at Hunter, and he nodded. "Whatever any of you do, please do not rush in there and freak people out. Things are badly tense right now."
"You have my word," Hunter said. "I must go through the shadow lands taking Crow with me. Silver Hawk has seen much in new visions that could help our cause."
"With a little glamour," Shogun said, nodding to Sir Rodney, "I can work with Fae forces to try to track down where Lady Jung Suk is resting by day. After all her night hunting, she must be fatigued . .. and cats sleep by day, anyway. If she"s embedded in the Asian community, my language skills there will help."
Sir Rodney nodded. "Summon my captain of the Fae guards, Rupert. I want an all-points bulletin out on this Lady Leopard, now that we have her image." He tapped his cell phone and tossed it to Rupert. "Make sure my men know what she looks like. We follow Shogun"s lead, but we"ll have to glamour him since his face was on that video the civilian took."
"We"ll all meet back up at sundown at The Fair Lady," Sasha said. "But don"t anybody get jumpya" call, use a cell, send a missive, whatever, but no crazy, sudden moves."
CHAPTER 17.
The entire base was in a frenzy by the time she stepped out of the shadows. The only thing that kept her from getting shot was that she"d forewarned Madison and had simply shown up in his office.
"Why didn"t you call as soon as you saw the bodies?" he said, not bothering with formalities after she"d given him a start.
"These don"t work in the shadow lands or the sidhe, sir," she said, showing him her cell phone. "We were unarmed, save our ability to do hand-to-hand combat, sir. You saw how that predator moves and what it can do. Our first priority was survival and evasive tactics. We took a fallback position in the sidhe. One of our men was injured and we had to get him out of there. He"s not a shadow-jumper, couldn"t get out of harm"s way other than to get him to the fortress."
Colonel Madison nodded. "Been there. That is what I will report to the Joint Chiefs."
Sasha relaxed even while remaining at attention.
"Course of action, Captain?"
For a moment, she just stared at him. Was he actually asking for her opinion? Wow ...
"I need to get back to the scene of the crime before the scent trail gets too weak or is destroyed by human boots on the ground."
"We already have a team en route that will seal off the area and will not even touch the bodies until you and your trackers can make an a.s.sessment."
"Thank you, sir . . . thank you for not believing what you saw on that video."
Colonel Madison nodded. "It was jarring, initially, Captain. You looked dirty, clothes torn, looked like you"d been in a sc.r.a.pe. But based upon the amount of blood that was let. .." He shook his head. "You all would have been splattered from head to toe, no matter how fast you were moving."
Again, she just stared at him for a moment, allowing new respect to dawn between them.
"I"d like to interview the civilian, sir, and then I want to take some samples from the bodies and have them sent to Doc in the lab. He"s familiar with demon-infected Were saliva. If he could also have a sample from the remains of your men, sir," she added more gently. "We have to be sure that it was actually a Were and not a Vampire. They have different saliva tracers. We learned that when investigating the late General Donald Wilkerson"s death."
"Consider it done."
"And we"re definitely going to need ammo, sir. My weapons were stripped from me when I was detained at NORAD . . . buta""
"Say no more. You"re locked and loaded, Captaina" and you just tell me how many men you need to hunt this beast down."
"Thank you, sir. But before I put human lives in harm"s way ... let me a.s.sess the predator, find out where its lair or den is, then I promise you I"ll come knocking."
Colonel Madison gave her a slow, respectful salute. "I know we don"t generally do this indoors, but I owed you this."
"Thank you, sir."
He shook his head. "No, Captain. Thank you." His gaze locked with hers as he lifted his chin a little higher. "Never in my life have I seen anything like what this beast is or what it can do.. . and you were out there with it alone with a team of unarmed men . . . and you are ready to head right back into h.e.l.l, going where angels fear to tread. As a fellow warriora"you have my utmost respect. Hoo-rah?
"Hoo-rah, sir."
No one could have prepared her for the way Colonel Madison responded to her. That was the glorious and also unsettling thing about humansa"you could never predict how they"d process any given situation.
Sasha"s nervous system felt like it was on fire as she walked down the long corridor to a conference room, where two MPs stepped aside to let her and Colonel Madison enter.
Russell Conway looked up from his Styrofoam cup of coffee, his hazel eyes holding a slightly insane quality as sunlight shimmered in them. He was unshaven, his clothes rumpled and his hair mussed, like a man who"d slept on a park bench all night.
"They finally believe me. The world finally hears what I"ve been trying to tell them for decades."
Sasha listened to the unstable wobble in Russell Conway"s voice and gave Colonel Madison a sidelong glance.
"Are you hungry, Mister Conway? Can we bring you some doughnuts or something?" Again, Sasha glimpsed the colonel, who nodded to an MP.
"No ... no. I cannot eat food now. The ecstasy of discovery is far greater than you can know. They believed me!"
Sasha slowly moved to the table and sat down. An MP slid a yellow legal pad and a pen over to her as the colonel took a position in the back of the room.
"Mister Conway, can you go back to that night and tell us again in your own words what happened?"
He took a deep slurp of his coffee and then began toying with his cup. "My story won"t change, you know. It"s all on the videos. Those guards you called took me back to the hotel I was staying at, and it was loaded with journalists. I woke everybody up and showed them my camera. They ran with the feedsa"let me give them copies and upload it everywhere. It"s worldwide nowa" breaking news. I"m famous. They"ve tested it and they know it wasn"t digitally altered or a hoax."
"We believe you," Sasha said carefully and slowly. "I was there, remember. We came up and got to you just in time, just before the predator got you."
"Yes, yes, you see, Colonel! One of your people saw it, too!"
The colonel just nodded. Sasha leaned forward and clasped Mr. Conway"s hands, but then quickly drew back. The surge of insane energy made the hair stand up on her arms, and suddenly she felt nauseous.
"I"m sorry," she said, "I didn"t mean to invade your personal s.p.a.cea"you just seemed upset and it was reflex. I was out of line," she added, trying to recover.
"It"s all right." He smiled and leaned close to her. "I now know you believe me and I also know what you are." He laughed insanely and shook his head. "You"re one of them and they probably don"t even know it."
"Sir, I"d like you to focus on last night. Let"s go back to when you were walking in the woods to investigate the Bayou House with Ghost Finders, Inc. Did you hear any growls, any specific sounds . . . can you remember any smells?"
Russell Conway sat back in his chair with a smug expression and then stared at the wall. "I want a lawyer, if you"re going to detain me ... and I have an interview at ten a.m. on CNN. Can I go?"
"There"s no reason to hold this man," Sasha said, still trying to shake off the w.i.l.l.i.e.s Conway had given her.
The colonel called the MP over. "Process him for release from the base and give him an escort back to his hotel." He turned to Russell Conway and offered him a slight nod. "Thank you for making us aware of the situation."
Russell Conway just laughed the shrill, high-pitched laugh of the insane.
Sasha stood and waited until the man had been escorted out of the room before speaking to the colonel. "You might want to put a detail on him. He"s thoroughly unstable. Something happened to him out there in the woods . . . might be a psychotic break, might be worse. But I"m concerned, sir."
"He knew you were a wolf. You could see that in his eyes. Maybe he saw what we saw out there when you and your guide came out of the shadows."
"Yeah ..." Sasha said, sounding distracted as she rubbed the nape of her neck. They"d come out of the shadows with eyes gleaming and canines presented, but hadn"t shown Conway a full transformation. Still, he was into supernatural research; that might have been enough.
"You said "might be worse," Captain . . . what could be worse?" The colonel"s eyes held quiet fear as he stared at Sasha. "I was out there under the same conditionsa"a sole survivor. Is the Werewolf virus airborne, catching?"