Phantom Warriors: Talon (2 page)

Lynn woke to the sound of splashing coming from the nearby river. She poked her head out of her tent and spotted three rafts going by filed to the brim with sunburned tourists. The people waved and raised their beers in salute. She glanced at her watch. It was barely past six thirty in the morning. Talk about a ‘Breakfast of Champions’. Lynn gave them a half smile, then slipping back inside her tent. She needed coffee…bad.

It didn’t take her long to dress. Lynn hurried into her shorts and slipped on her windbreaker. The sun hadn’t touched the bottom of the canyon yet, so the air stil held a faint chil. Okay, more than faint. It was downright nippy. She primed her smal cook stove, then poured some water from her canteen into a pan to boil.

The smel of fresh brewed coffee filed the air a few minutes later.

While she sipped at her first cup, Lynn scanned the sky for her condor pair, but didn’t immediately spot them. They were probably out hunting for breakfast. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she needed something to eat, too. She dug into her backpack and puled out a couple of energy bars. They would do until lunch.

Lynn devoured them while she savored the hot smoky taste of coffee. She watched the sun’s long red fingers slowly creep along the rock. If she were going to make it to the condor-nesting site, she’d have to start now. She sighed, not looking forward to packing up camp and the hike ahead.

* * * * *

Talon watched the woman from the canyon’s rim. She looked tiny from this distance, but he could tel that she was preparing to leave. Fear spiked through him. It was quickly folowed by determination. She would not get away so easily. At least not until he’d gotten the answer to the question he’d come al this way for.

The warm air caressed his face, sending his dark hair into his eyes. Talon reached inside a pouch for a tie to secure it, then glanced around to ensure he was alone. Reptilian creatures scurried nearby. A few hawks circled lazily overhead. He caught the soft footfals and musky scent of a large predator cat, but no sign of any other humans.

Satisfied, Talon took off running and leapt into the air, shifting as he did so. It was time to hunt his prey.

* * * * *

Lynn had been hiking for over three hours and didn’t seem to be any closer to the bonded pair. They had looked so much closer yesterday when she’d first spotted them. She’d set up camp at her favorite spot. Her tent looked like a smal red speck next to the glistening aqua blue water from this distance.

She stared up at the canyon wal calculating how much further she had to go before her hike turned into a ful on climb. Lynn had brought the right harnesses and enough rope, but despite her love of al things winged, she wasn’t much for heights.

In fact, being up high without more than a safety harness scared her sily. But Lynn had learned to conquer her fears. Okay, maybe not conquer, but she’d certainly gotten to the point where she no longer froze and that was saying a lot given where she’d started. Soon it wouldn’t matter. Fieldwork would be a thing of the past.

The next generation of researcher preferred to track the birds by computer program. It alowed them to folow their progress without disturbing the birds’ nesting sites. At the ripe old age of thirty-two, Lynn, with her boots on the ground approach, was as close as she cared to get to being deemed obsolete.

A dark shadow passed overhead, puling her out of her maudlin thoughts. Lynn shaded her eyes and saw one of the condors soar by not even twenty feet away. The bird circled back, riding the thermals to check to see if she was a predator. She’d needed proof before, but this confirmed her suspicions. The birds were definitely roosting together. Now al she needed to know was had they mated and managed to lay any eggs yet?

Lynn looked at the cliff face. There was only one way to find out. She puled out her climbing shoes and helmet, then stepped into her safety harness. She slipped the strap holding her spring-loaded cams, nuts, and quickdraws over her head before grabbing her dynamic and static ropes, then started the long climb.

It took four hours to reach the nesting site. Drenched in sweat and exhausted, Lynn took off her sunglasses and peered into the large nest and spotted one lone egg. It wasn’t much, but at least it was a start. Would’ve been better if it were two, but success was success, especialy when it came to bringing a creature back from the verge of extinction.

Lynn made sure not to touch anything on or around the nest as she took out her smartphone to document the find. She had just taken her last picture when a dark shadow blotted out the sun.

She twisted around in her harness in time to see a large bird streak across the sky. Scratch large. Make that humongous bird.

She’d assumed by the cast of its shadow it had flown right over her head, but it had been at least thirty feet above her. Lynn squinted, trying to get a better look at the massive raptor, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She’d never seen a
bird
fly so fast.

Lynn glanced back at the smal—by comparison—egg. Her stomach twisted. She didn’t like the idea of another predator so close to her mated pair. Especialy since she hadn’t been able to identify the species yet. She scanned the sky, searching for the large bird, but it was as if it had disappeared in mid-air. Which of course was impossible.

She knew better than anyone that there weren’t raptors
bigger
than the ones she’d released in the Canyon—at least not in the area. And she was darn sure that a Wandering Albatross hadn’t gotten lost this far inland. She pinched the bridge of her nose, then put her sunglasses back on. Maybe she’d been in the sun too long.

It had probably just been the mama condor checking to make sure that her nest was undisturbed.

Yeah, that had to be it.

Lynn made a few more notes before beginning her descent. It would be almost dark by the time she hiked back to camp. She knew she’d have to be extra careful if she didn’t want to end up as another statistic.

* * * * *

Talon’s heart sweled as he soared out of sight and faded into the clear sky. The woman was even more beautiful in person than she’d appeared in the viewer. He knew it wasn’t smart to get so close, but he’d been unable to resist the temptation of her clinging to the cliff face.

Though he stil didn’t understand why she’d been perched so high up, dangling by a thread. As far as he could tel, humans didn’t have wings. One sharp tug and she could have plunged to her death. The thought chiled him. He wouldn’t have alowed that.

Couldn’t have. Even if it meant exposing what he was before it was time.

He recaled her upturned face and warmth blossomed inside him. Her dark lashes had accentuated her wide green eyes and fuly kissable lips. She’d tied her long hair back, but Talon had been able to detect its shine despite her attempts to conceal it beneath a helmet. He wondered if her hair would be as soft as Zaronian silk when it flowed over his chest. He shivered in anticipation of fisting the long locks in his hands as he rode her lush body.

The woman wasn’t smal like Queen Rachel of Zaron, but then again, Talon never cared for tiny women. He wanted a woman he could hold onto, one who cradled him against her rounded body.

One who was sturdy enough to care for their young, yet soft to the touch. He wanted a woman whose breasts spiled out of his hands, whose nipples were the size of flower blossoms.

Talon’s mouth watered at the thought and he licked his lips in anticipation. He could almost taste her sweetness and he hadn’t even touched her yet. He sighed. It had been next to impossible to find one such as she on Zaron, where the women tended to be overly tal and built like warriors.

He had nothing against warrior women. He respected their strength and had lain with his fair share, but that didn’t change the fact that he just wanted to come back to his dweling and be embraced by a soft plushness that only came from someone with ample curves. He glanced down at the ridges of muscle packing his frame. His body would be hard enough for them both.

Talon was smart enough to never confuse softness with weakness. Any mate of his would never be weak. Could never be weak. His demands were too great. He was not a selfish lover. Far from it. But he was aggressive. Aggressive enough to know that he wanted a partnership, not a simpering female who could not care for herself.

That said, Talon knew he wouldn’t mind having someone to care for. He wanted someone to cal his own. Someone to want him as much as he yearned for them.

From what he’d seen of the woman, she was more than capable of taking care of herself. After al, she’d come into this wilderness without an escort and had managed to climb halfway up the cliff face on her own.

As far as he could tel, the only thing missing were her wings. If things went as he planned, she wouldn’t be missing those for long.

Talon grinned and began to formulate how to meet his destiny.

* * * * *

Lynn was shivering by the time her tent came into view. She couldn’t believe how low the temperature had dropped since the sun disappeared. Most people made the mistake of thinking that only the heat could kil you, but exposure to the cold would do just as good a job.

She glanced up ahead at the lone tent pitched by the placid pool of water. Al she wanted to do was climb inside and burrow into her sleeping bag, but Lynn knew she needed to hydrate and get something to eat or she’d end up cramping during the night.

Despite strict camping rules forbidding fires below the rim, Lynn dug a hole and built a smal blaze using driftwood. Warmth exploded in her limbs relaxing her tired muscles for the first time that day. She heated some water, then tucked into a package of instant chicken and rice. Reconstituted food had never tasted so good.

It took thirty minutes for her fingers to stop aching from the climb. She flexed them, then picked up her notepad. She wanted to make sure she had everything down while it was stil fresh in her mind. She switched into scientific mode and began to write.

Lynn prided herself on her meticulousness and observations skils, when it came to charting the condors’ progress. She’d spent thirty minutes replaying the moment the unidentified raptor soared over her head, but no matter how many times she envisioned it, Lynn couldn’t recal the white spot that should’ve been there had it been one of her tagged birds.

So if the raptor wasn’t a condor, then what was it?

She ran through her mental Rolodex of al the large birds on the planet, but none seemed to fit. “Maybe if I draw it,” she murmured.

Lynn made a quick sketch of the bird on the paper, then examined her work. If she had to guess, she would say the wingspan had been at least fifteen feet across and the body over six feet long, but how was that possible?

She shook her head. It wasn’t.

Her mind circled back to her original thought. Maybe she
had
been suffering from heat exhaustion. She’d kept hydrated during the climb, but she’d stil been dripping by the time she’d reached the nest. Being overheated was known to cause halucinations.

Lynn was pretty sure she hadn’t imagined the bird. As a scientist, she’d never had that good of an imagination. But she conceded that she might have
imagined
its size. After al, the only creature known to have that kind of wingspan was extinct.

Hey Everyone, I saw a dinosaur today. It flew over my
head.
There was no way she was putting that into any report. As one of the few female ornithologists, it was hard enough to get respect from her peers. She wasn’t about to give them a reason to discount her further.

Lynn polished off her dinner and made a couple more notes, before caling it a night. Tomorrow she’d take another look to see if she could spot the bird and photograph it. She didn’t have a lot of time to look, since she’d only prepped for staying a week and it would take at least two days to hike back out of the canyon. If she hoped to succeed, then she’d need to get an early start.

* * * * *

Talon stared down at the soft glow of the woman’s fire. He dared not get closer for fear his mating instincts would take over.

The last thing he wanted to do was shift accidentaly and scare her senseless.

He inhaled and looked up at the stars. Somewhere up there, the Phantom Warrior ship circled, cloaked against the primitive radar systems Earth employed. Talon thought about his felow warriors, waiting for their chance to find their mates.

Many would succeed and many more would fail. He would not be among the failures. His future lay on the canyon floor tucked inside the primitive dweling. Like those waiting warriors, his days were limited.

He slowly dragged his gaze away. She would be his. There was no other option. Tomorrow Talon would make his move.

Talon woke to the screech of a hawk as it swooped down to catch a field mouse. He watched life play out before his eyes, reveling in the raptor’s speed and agility. He stood, stretching his muscles from a night spent on the hard earth. It was a very good thing he could regulate his body temperature or he’d have froze to death last night.

He roled his stiff shoulders and glanced up at the sky once more. He so wanted to take to the thermals and glide over the canyon, but Talon resisted the temptation. Today was the day he’d finaly get to meet the woman. Unfortunately, that meant approaching her in his
human
form.

Talon reached into his smal sack that contained his meager supplies. He hadn’t intended to stay in the canyon for long. Just long enough to meet the woman and mate. He took out the rations.

Despite their smal size, they carried enough nutrients to satisfy his hunger. He popped them in his mouth and grimaced. Too bad they tasted like dirt. He brought out a flask of water to wash the vile food down, then slid it back into his pouch.

It would take at least thirty minutes to reach the woman walking. Less if he flew. But Talon wouldn’t. He couldn’t risk the chance of her spotting him again in bird form. Not yet anyway.

He’d scouted the area. Knew the route he needed to take. With any luck he’d reach her campsite before she rose.

Talon tossed the pouch over his shoulder and began his hike.

Anticipation rode him hard, making him pick up the pace, despite his determination to approach cautiously. He inhaled as he neared the tempting pool of water, catching the scent of
his
woman for the first time.

His eyes flashed red as need savaged him. He stepped carefuly around the water’s edge. He didn’t want to send rocks into the liquid and give his position away. It was important that she didn’t know he was here until just the right moment.

Talon wasn’t altogether sure what that moment would be, but he had no doubt he’d recognize it when it arrived.

The skin on his back began to itch as the beast fought to get out. Talon forced it back in and crouched near the ground, waiting.

It wouldn’t be long now. The sun was racing toward the canyon floor. The animals had already started to make their presence known.

The woman’s scent grew stronger as he made his way to a smal outcropping of brush. It wasn’t thick enough to conceal him, but then again, he didn’t need such things to hide in plain sight. He was a Phantom Warrior after al, a being capable of bending light to disappear and shifting his molecules until he could pass through solid objects.

He heard shuffling inside the structure and knew it wouldn’t be long now. Talon quickly stripped out of his flight suit and slipped into the lipid pool. The cool water rippled around him as he sank low, leaving only his eyes and nose peeking out.

The woman stepped out of her tent and slowly stretched. She stared longingly at the water, unable to see his faded form. She bit her lip and looked around, then slowly began to strip her clothing off.

Talon couldn’t seem to catch his breath as second after second revealed more pale skin. He had no idea how she’d react once she realized he was in her territory. If she were a warrior, it would be easy to determine. But she wasn’t. She was a luscious gift that the Goddess herself had delivered into his hands and he wasn’t about to refuse her.

It seemed to take an eternity for the woman to finish stripping.

By the time she had, Talon’s body bore more resemblance to the canyon wal than it did a man. He closed his eyes and prayed to the Goddess for strength.

The woman dipped her toe into the water, then whipped it back out and sucked in an audible breath. For a moment, Talon feared she’d change her mind, but then suddenly she grinned and raced into pool.

He waited until she broke the surface and pushed her hair out of her face, then he slowly rose like a leviathan from the watery depths.