Manipulating Mikey (First Wave Book 8) (19 page)

“Then maybe we should see what they
know,” Mikey said as he pulled his own gun and gently pushed Lauren towards the
kitchen. “Stay here while we make sure it’s OK.”

Lauren nodded, not wanting to
distract the men as she heard car doors slam outside.

“You fucking witch! You get the
fuck out of there and don’t make me come get you!”

The angry, shouted words left no
doubt in their minds that this had something to do with Emily. Mikey looked to
Indrid to see what he thought, and he cursed when the man disappeared. Disc
must have seen it because he ran to the door.

“The fool went outside,” he said as
he ran.

Mikey knew Indrid wasn’t armed, and
he flew out of the door behind Disc hoping to keep the man from getting hurt.
He slid to a stop beside Disc and stared at the scene before them.

Indrid held a large, older man by
the throat and had him lifted several inches off the ground while his other
hand was held palm up, somehow keeping the three other men immobile where they
stood.

“Tell me who you are and why you
are looking for her! Now!” Indrid yelled in the man’s face as he shook him
violently like a ragdoll.

“Indrid!” Disc yelled, trying to
get his attention before he killed the guy.

Indrid turned his angry gaze toward
them.

“Do not interfere!” he said before
he turned back to the helpless human. “If you do not tell me, you will die!”

“She killed his son! And took his
granddaughter!” one of the other humans cried out in fear.

“They’re lying, he’s fully human,”
Lauren said, contradicting the scared man.

“No! No! I swear! His son raped the
witch’s mother in town one day! Months later, the girl came back to town for a
doctor ‘cause her momma was dying during the birth. When his boy went there a
few days later to get his kid, the witch attacked him. I swear we watched the
boy get torn apart by her!” the man screamed through his tears as he fought to
move his arms and legs.

Indrid turned to look at Lauren,
and she shook her head. If Emily was a hybrid, then her mother was also a
hybrid—or gifted at the very least. Either way, she knew they didn’t breed with
a human.

“You intend to keep hunting her?”
Indrid asked the man he held.

“The bitch killed my boy! I want
what’s mine!” he growled through gritted teeth.

“It appears the child is no kin to
you. I suggest you give up your quest,” Indrid warned the man.

“Fuck you, freak! I’m going to kill
that witch and take the kid anyway!” he growled out stupidly.

“I cannot allow you to do that,”
Indrid calmly said.

“Oh hell,” Disc muttered as he
sprinted to stop Indrid, but he was too late.

Indrid’s hand at the man’s neck
began to glow and he closed his eyes as he began to chant something in his own
language. The human began to shake like he was having a seizure before he went
completely limp in Indrid’s hand.

Indrid looked at the man with
disgust before he flung him to the ground. Lauren ran forward to see if the
human was dead and was shocked to see he was not only alive, but appeared to be
unharmed.

“What did you do?” Mikey demanded
as he rounded on Indrid.

“I did not harm him, only made sure
that his memories were corrected,” Indrid said as he began to walk towards the
other three.

“Whoa! Wait, you need to explain,”
Mikey said, moving to block Indrid from the other humans.

“Lauren said it was impossible that
they were correct about the child,” Indrid explained. “I am merely making sure
they have no memories of Emily or the child.”

“But if they’re wrong, who does the
child belong to?” Mikey asked.

Indrid shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter as long as he
stops following them,” he argued.

Mikey couldn’t really argue with
that, and he ignored the frightened screams of the other three men as Indrid
grabbed each by the head, then threw them to the ground when he was done.
Lauren ran to each of the humans to make sure they were only passed out and not
harmed. When she was done, she nodded at Mikey and Disc.

“Can you see the child’s energy?”
Indrid asked Mikey.

Mikey looked around the area again,
this time looking for something that might stand out from Emily’s energy, and
he shook his head.

“I don’t see anything, only
Emily’s. Do we even know if there really is a child?” he asked.

Indrid didn’t say a word; he simply
disappeared then reappeared back on the home’s porch and stepped inside. With a
sigh, Mikey followed him back into the still illuminated house. He was moving
through the debris in the living room when he heard Indrid call out.

“In here.”

He helped Lauren through the debris
in the hallway with Disc taking up the rear until they reached an open door.

“Oh hell,” Mikey said as he looked
around the room.

“It’s a girl,” Lauren added as she
took in the pink walls of the room and the small portable crib in the corner
that was covered in pink blankets and stuffed toys.

Unlike the other rooms, this one
had been left unmarred by the violence shown elsewhere in the home and looked
like an eerie shrine to the missing girl.

“How likely is it that the mother
gave birth and not Emily?” Disc asked as he picked up a picture from the floor
and held it up.

In the picture, the Emily that
Mikey remembered stared back at him as she held a tiny infant in her arms.

“It doesn’t matter; we must find
them soon. First we must destroy this place so there will be nothing left to
trigger a memory of Emily or the child in the men outside when they awaken,”
Indrid warned as he stared at the small, but obviously well-loved teddy bear in
his hands.

It was something they all agreed on,
and they headed outside to do just that. Mikey, Disc, and Indrid moved the
unconscious men back into their trucks to protect them from the destruction
they were going to wreak and met Lauren back inside the ship.

“Fire at will,” Disc said.

Seconds later, Crator fired a
single shot from the ship, and the home exploded into small bits of debris that
were flung far enough to cover the trucks still holding the men below, but they
weren’t harmed by the targeted blast.

“Where to now?” Crator called out.

Mikey looked beneath the ship and
saw a clearer trail than he did before, leading him to believe they were
getting a lot closer than he expected them to this quickly.

“West!” Mikey called back.

“West!” Crator repeated before the
ship began to move again.

“Do you think that’s Emily’s baby?”
Lauren asked Indrid as he continued to stare at the teddy bear he’d brought
with him from the house.

“I do not know. I know that the
child does have a familial bond with Emily, but it could be her sister or her
daughter,” Indrid admitted.

“She left in a hurry, probably to
get away from those assholes back there,” Disc added.

“I can’t say I blame her,” Mikey
agreed, sympathetic to the poor girl. Then he turned to Lauren. “Anything on
that property?”

“No, I did a quick check, and it
was classified as abandoned. It was bank owned,” Lauren said, wishing they had
something more to go on.

Mikey ran a hand over his head in
frustration when Indrid put a hand on his shoulder.

“Patience. Trust in your gift,” he
said as he pointed towards the ground where Mikey was tracking Emily’s energy
path.

Mikey nodded and looked back at the
ground. He’d completely forgotten about watching the vid for Grai as they got
closer to finding Emily.

Chapter
Nineteen

It had been a week, and they’d
encountered half a dozen more abandoned properties that Emily and the child had
stayed at for brief periods of time. Each location took them farther and
farther west until they all sat eating breakfast one morning and Crator had to
speak of his concerns.

“I know I’m not the only one who
realizes just how close we’re getting to where the military has the folly
locked down,” Crator said quietly.

Silence hung heavily in the room
because no one really wanted to discuss it, even though they all knew it had to
be addressed.

“We can’t ignore it,” Disc agreed,
throwing his napkin down on the table in frustration at the situation.

“We can’t leave her out there with
a child when she could still be hunted by the Relians! Hell, she could even go
right up to those military idiots without a clue she’s the kind of thing
they’re looking for,” Lauren argued, unwilling to give up on trying to find
them.

Mikey squeezed Lauren’s hand in
support and cleared his throat.

“I’m definitely not excited about
being anywhere near the place, but I don’t think we can stop now. We’re too
close,” he said.

Crator sighed, hating the thought
that he had to be the devil’s advocate here.

“But we don’t really know that
we’re close. We thought we were close a week ago. I’m not saying give up, I’m
saying we need to draw the line somewhere, or Grai’s going to looking for more
than just his brother,” he argued.

“Mikey is right,” Indrid said, his
eerie white gaze holding Crator’s. “We are close; I can feel it. I can also
feel the military you speak of and will make sure that we do not venture too
far in their direction.”

“Good enough for me,” Crator said
as he stood to head into the cockpit and get the ship moving again.

Everyone broke up to take care of
personal matters before they all ended up at the floor of the ship while Mikey
called out directional changes to Crator when necessary.

“Oh my gosh! The Christmas play is
getting ready to start. I hope Traze or someone is recording it,” Lauren said,
wishing they could back in Dillon to see the children perform.

Disc roared with laughter.

“Traze? Hell, ask any of the
parents or grandparents, and they’ll all have it recorded perfectly from
multiple angles. I have a feeling we’ll all be watching it for the next month,”
he only half-joked.

Lauren grinned broadly as she
realized he was exactly right and was getting ready to reply when Mikey called
out.

“Stop! Now!”

Lauren, Disc, and Indrid looked
beneath them and didn’t see anything that would have caused Mikey to call for a
stop.

“What is it?” Lauren asked.

“Give me a minute,” Mikey said as
he grabbed his comm and began projecting the vid on the wall of the ship.

“We don’t have time for this,”
Indrid said as he looked at Mikey like he’d lost his mind.

“Just wait!” Mikey barked at Indrid
before turning his attention to the vid.

Crator left the ship on hover and
came out of the cockpit to see what was going on. He looked to the others
curiously when he saw Mikey fast forwarding the vid of Koda’s crash.

“Oh my God,” Mikey whispered as he
stepped back from the wall, the vid paused.

“What?” Disc asked.

“We’re above the area that I think
Koda’s pod went,” Mikey whispered.

“Are you freaking serious?” Crator
asked as everyone started looking between the paused vid on the wall and the
ground below them.

“I’m not kidding; this is the
direction his pod went. I can see her energy path clearly intersecting with the
faint trail I’ve seen in the vids. Get moving, I think we’re closer than we realize,”
Mikey said, his excitement and concern clear in his tone.

*****

Everyone was gathered in the large
training room in one of the lower levels of the headquarters building in
Dillon, Texas. All of the equipment had been pushed to the sides of the room,
and a small stage had been built in the center with chairs lined up in front of
it.

Jess, Jax, Cari, Tricia and half a
dozen other hybrids were running around behind the curtain of the stage trying
desperately to corral the children running around screaming, practicing their
lines, or eating the decorations on the stage.

Megan ran in front of the curtain
and stood in front of the patient audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Thank you so
much for coming to the children’s first hybrid Christmas play!” she said with a
smile then heard a crash behind the curtain and ran behind it.

Most of the audience laughed at the
antics they could see going on in shadows behind the white stage curtain.
Balduen bounced his baby son, Lucan, on his knee.

“You know he’ll be in this play
next year,” Dare teased. “There’s just no way around it.”

Amun sat beside them with a smile
on his face waiting to see his beautiful daughter, Lily, who was performing
with Tessa and Amia.

Reven sat with Melina and his baby
daughter waiting to see Bayla in her first play. He and Jax had tried to get
Melina to participate, but she’d steadfastly refused to be embarrassed like
that at her age—not that they could blame her.

Grai, Blade, David, and Traze ran
into the room and grabbed seats next to Ivint and Randor just as the curtain
opened on Tessa, Amia, Bayla, and Lily dressed as elves and singing about a
reindeer with a bright colored nose.

“Awws” were heard around the room
at the cuteness of the little girls singing completely off key, huge grins in
place as they bounced around the stage making the bells on their clothes jingle
erratically.

The room erupted in laughter as a
seriously pissed off looking Ranger stomped across the stage with a harness of
bells strapped around his body, a red foam nose, and one mangled antler hanging
from his furry forehead. Behind him, he pulled a red wagon with Tristan in it,
dressed as Santa.

“Did he lose a bet?” someone in the
crowd yelled out.

It only took a second for chaos to
erupt as Ranger tried to lunge into the crowd at the person who’d teased him,
and the wagon flipped over, dumping Tristan to the floor.

“Bad kitty!” Bayla screamed with
glee as she ran after the cat while Tessa, Amia, and Lily tried to continue the
song through their giggles.

Ranger’s harness and bells got
caught on the corner of the stage, and he hung helplessly half on and half off
the stage while his paws scrambled against the wood in an effort to right
himself or gain traction.

Tristan, who’d been dumped out of
the sled and onto the floor, stood with his left hand moving quickly through
the air as the adults stormed the stage to save the cat and try to get things
under control.

As if nothing had ever happened,
the rest of the hybrid children appeared on the stage singing a song to wish everyone
a merry Christmas as Ranger yowled in anger. The little girls rolled on the
floor in laughter, and Bayla began eating a Christmas ornament from the fallen
Christmas tree.

Finally getting traction, Ranger
pulled himself up onto the stage, but he hadn’t realized the Christmas tree had
been knocked over and promptly got caught in the strands of blinking lights.

Bark, needles, and ornaments flew
around the room like projectiles as the angry, embarrassed cat tried
desperately to detach himself from the tangle of lights he’d caught himself in.

The children were evacuated from
the stage, some still trying to finish their songs, and the adults made sure
the cat had a wide berth as his claws and teeth flashed in his frustration to
break free.

It took several minutes, but
finally the exhausted cat stopped fighting, and he looked at Jax through the
blinking, colorful lights wrapped around his head and body. Someone noticed
that a red light was blinking against the red foam nose that had somehow
remained attached to Ranger’s, and most everyone tried to stifle their laughter
as Traze took a picture.

Jax ran to the stage and tried to
keep the cat calm while Grai and Reven attempted to untangle him from the
lights he’d hogtied himself with during his struggle. The moment he was free,
the cat took off out of the room.

The adults looked around at the
wrecked stage and decorations while Tristan patted his pillow covered stomach.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he said belatedly as
the adults laughed, and the kids started singing their finale about Santa
coming.

*****

Avid trophy hunter Ron Harrington
looked out at his expansive backyard from his den. He had specifically spent a
lot of money to get a piece of prime property that butted up against the
national forest because of the easy opportunity it presented him to try out his
rifle skills before his next foray to Africa.

Nothing could have prepared him for
the sight that met his eyes and he dropped his coffee cup. He ignored the
shattered pieces of pottery on the floor as he ran to the cabinet to get his
rifle. At the rate the animal was moving, he knew he didn’t have much time or
it’d be gone.

Rifle in hand, he was out of his
back door in time to see the large cat heading into deeper snow-covered foliage,
and he raised the rifle and fired. He whooped with joy when he saw the small,
black panther flip in the air and hit the ground from the impact of the large
caliber bullet.

Gibly lay on the ground for a
moment, trying to pant away the burning sharp pain in his shoulder. He heard
the stupid human running towards him and knew that if he didn’t do something,
he’d never make it close enough to send a message to Ranger about where Koda
was.

He stood and hobbled to the nearest
tree, unable to put any weight on his left foreleg. The bullet had torn through
the muscle in his shoulder. Gibly was hoping he could get to a tree and hide
from the human, but the man’s next words made the cat shiver.

“Come here, little guy. Let me put
you out of your misery so I can get you stuffed before the party next month.
Darryl will never believe I bagged your ass here,” Ron said with a grin as he
followed the trail of blood through the snow.

Gibly grimaced in pain as he jumped
to a low hanging tree branch and his front leg collapsed beneath him. He
stifled a hiss of pain as he saw the human male come into view, and he saw the
rifle in his hands.

Angry that the human was giving him
no choice, Gibly climbed a little higher before moving around the tree as the
hunter approached. The man began looking around the tree when Gibly jumped down
and sliced his throat open. He clung to the hunter’s chest with three paws as
the man hit the ground, then jumped off, saving himself the long drop.

He looked angrily at the human
while the man clutched his throat and the blood poured onto the snow around
him.

“Stupid man! I didn’t want to hurt
you,” Gibly said.

The man’s eyes bulged out when
Gibly spoke to him, and he reached out to the talking cat moments before his
body succumbed to the blood loss and trauma. His last thought had been about
how rich he’d be if he could catch the talking cat.

Gibly growled in rage. There was no
way he could get close enough to contact Ranger now. He’d be lucky to survive
the night with his injury. The smell of the blood alone would bring every
predator in the forest after him, and he was in no condition to fend off or
flee the dangerous creatures that roamed this forest.

When Gibly realized no one was
coming to look for the hunter, he crouched low and kept to the shrubs and trees
as he made his way towards where the hunter had come from. He looked at the
open back door of the house and wondered if he should chance it and what he’d
do if he got inside.

With no other options left, Gibly
moved slowly around the edges of the yard until he could use some bushes for
cover as he hobbled slowly towards the open back door. His ears were alert to
any sound that may come from inside.

When he’d finally gotten to the
door, he listened intently for any sound. When he heard nothing, he cautiously
limped inside. Gibly looked around and kept close to the walls as he
concentrated on listening for sounds of other humans.

Gibly stumbled, and his chin hit
the bear skin rug when he walked into the hunter’s den and saw all the stuffed
animals posed around the large room. He stood back up and moved off of the
offending rug on the floor with a look of disgust and horror on his face.

Jax had warned him about humans
like this. People who killed for the sake of killing and not to survive. Among the
sibiox, they didn’t believe in hunting for sport. Even considering it was so
dishonorable it was abhorrent to them. It was one thing to kill to eat and to
survive, but killing for nothing was entirely different.

This man had obviously been one
sick and disgusting human to have done this to so many creatures and the pity
Gibly had initially felt for killing the man evaporated quickly.