Predator's Salvation (11 page)

“I tried to stop him.” Nahemah’s chagrined and long-suffering aide-de-camp leaned 52

Predator’s Salvation

against the doorjamb behind Alex, arms folded across her breasts as she gave him a censuring look.

“It is quite all right, Irkalla. I will speak with him.” She turned to Tenebrion and smiled.

“You do not mind, do you?”

“Not at all. This is more important. What we were…discussing can wait.”

“Thank you.” Nahemah caressed his cheek.

Tenebrion took her hand, turned it and planted a gentle kiss in her palm.

Damn, their hankering was thick in the air!

They made Alex wonder how he and Genesis seemed to other unmated Inanna. He knew he and his wife could get pretty hot and heavy in some public places. Some of Emsharra’s guards had recently caught them going at it down by the Hubur river in Uruk, and he was sure the news had gotten back to his great-grandmother from the way she’d smiled at him his entire last visit.

“I will speak with you at a later date,
shimsa.
” Tenebrion kissed Nahemah’s hand once more then turned to go. “Alex.” He bowed his head and continued out the door past Irkalla.

“Irkalla, you may leave us now.”

“Yes, Highest.” Irkalla backed out of Nahemah’s office and closed the door behind her.

“Gee-Gee, I need you to authorize an intervention and rescue for—”

“I know what has happened, Alex.”

“Then how can you—?”

“Engage in amorous endeavors while the fate of your friend is uncertain?”

“He’s not just a friend. He was,
is
, a recruit.”

“Had you approached him? Had the program been explained to him?”

“You know it hadn’t, Nahemah. I was about to make a proposal to him last night when he was snatched.” Alex paced the cream pile carpet of his great-grandmother’s office before coming back to stand before her. “We have to go after him, Gee-Gee.”

“The Emsharran assembly has no jurisdiction in the matter. Mateo is not one of ours.”

“She’ll kill him given enough time, and you know it.”

Nahemah winced, but her voice was no less calm than usual when she spoke. “That is an unfortunate consequence, but not our concern.”

“How can it not be our concern when the entire agenda of my mother’s program promotes the conservation of human life?”

“Alex…” She put a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed.

“We have to get him back before she depletes him.”

“What is it that makes this child more special than any of the other recruits?”

How could Alex explain what he had learned about Mateo’s family, his past? How could he explain that he didn’t want the kid to suffer at LaMia’s hands anymore than he already had, 53

Gracie C. McKeever

that he didn’t want life’s vagaries to totally claim Mateo? Or did Nahemah already know all this?

She’d known about
his
existence and the assassination attempts that had been made on him and done nothing. He didn’t blame her, and he well understood the assembly’s position of non-interference in the human world unless it directly affected the well-being of Emsharra or its people.

Observing while the exiled Genesis protected him and remaining confident that Genesis could keep him out of harm’s way and get him to Emsharra safely had been as far as Nahemah and the assembly had been able to go.

But once Alex and Genesis had entered the portal between worlds and crossed the boundary onto Emsharra’s soil, they had become the responsibility of Emsharra sovereignty.

The fact that Genesis had successfully completed her mission to get him to his great-grandmother at no small sacrifice to her person was beside the point, as far as Alex was concerned. Because had Nahemah and the assembly interceded sooner, it would have saved him and Genesis so much pain and trouble.

“Alex, you are still learning the ways of the Inanna. I know some things we do or allow may seem harsh or even capricious, but it is our way. We are changing, but change takes time. It has only been a year, after all.”

And twenty-eight years before that when the assembly had—

“Let your mother die.”

Alex grimaced at hearing her confess her and the assembly’s failing to him out loud.

He thought often about what had happened to his mother, and Genesis’ friend, and always found the entire episode that had led up to Kalika Enlil’s death so totally useless and avoidable.

He empathized with Nahemah, but not nearly as much as he empathized with Genesis and his dead mother. “You didn’t let her die. That sounds like she was sick and allowed to just fade away. My mother was executed.”

“It was the law and our duty at that time, Alex. I do not expect you to understand or sympathize, and I will not ask for your forgiveness. I leave the granting of that to my Goddess.”

Alex lowered his eyes, feeling like the recalcitrant great-grandson that he was, feeling as if he had just been spanked. “You’re right, Great-Grandmother. I spoke out of turn.”

“Not out of turn. You are entitled to your feelings. Just know that sentimentality and feelings rarely have a place in the decisions of the assembly.”

“Point taken.”

“Come.” She led him to a plush plum settee adjacent her large cherry desk where they both sat. “Now, tell me what is bothering you.”

“I can’t just sit idly by while Mateo languishes at LaMia’s mercy.”

“Perhaps you will not have to.”

He hated when she played I’ve-got-a-secret with him but had learned over the last year that playing cards close to the vest was, in addition to their calm, cool logic, an Inanna trait. He’d 54

Predator’s Salvation

learned a lot from his wife, one of the coolest and most logical females he had ever met, but he still had a long way to go before he could claim anything close to Mr. Spock-like impassivity.

“We have been receiving flashes from her beacon, but not nearly enough to identify an exact location. She is an exile, after all, and not prone to broadcast where she is or what she is up to.”

“So you are tracking her?”

“Not actively tracking as much as keeping surveillance.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One means we are interfering and one means we are just observing.”

“What good is observing if you’re not going to do anything with the information you’re gathering?”

“I did not say we were not going to act. It is not the right time yet.”

“When will be the right time, Gee-Gee? When LaMia decides to turn herself in?”

Nahemah glared at him and Alex reminded himself that LaMia, as evil and cruel as he thought her, was his cousin and still Nahemah’s grandchild. Whether she grew to be four- or five-hundred years old—which with Inanna anatomy and barring gross injury was not outside the realm of possibility—LaMia would always be Nahemah’s child.

He thought about the strides that were being made daily to ensure that humans might live half as long as Nahemah and her wayward only grandchild. There were strides to ensure successful, long-lasting bond mating between humans—even humans without spirit-boost—and Inanna or Sebitu.

The Longevity Project was as near and dear to his heart as the Harvesting Program was to Kalika’s and Genesis’s, and for obvious reasons. Any project that gave him an extra hour, an extra day, an extra week with Genesis, was well-worth his passion and research. Not to mention, he’d like to have kids with her one day and watch them grow to be at least a ripe young two-hundred.

Extremely healthy as a rule, Alex was already seeing the effects of his and Genesis’s first encounter when she had bitten him. The chemicals in her saliva had bonded with and accelerated the natural regenerative properties of his own spirit-boost, increasing his life-span threefold according to all the Inanna scientists who enjoyed poking and prodding the
cambion
guinea pig.

“You are not a guinea pig, Alex. You are a unique human being who may turn out to be the savior of both our races.”

Alex felt his face heat with a blush as Nahemah giggled at his reaction.

“But I know you are not here to listen to me eulogize you. You want to find your friend and punish LaMia for what she did to you and Genesis.”

“We survived and that’s what’s important.”

“But both of you very nearly did not.”

55

Gracie C. McKeever

She didn’t have to remind him, and he had never felt secure in the knowledge that LaMia still lived and breathed, able to reverse all that they were daily trying to accomplish as she freely hunted and fed in the human world.

“I know how you feel about Mia, Alex. It is natural for you to harbor ill-will after her actions at the portal.”

“Genesis almost died.”

“But she did not.”

Sentimentality and emotions may not have had a place in the decisions the assembly made, but where a grandmother’s loyalty to her only grandchild were concerned, the rules of the assembly all became null and void. “You haven’t given up on her yet, have you?”

Nahemah peered at him, cupped his cheek as she had earlier cupped Tenebrion’s. “She is my blood, Alex,” she murmured. “I will never give up on her.”

“Nahemah…”

“You worry for Mateo Diaz, who is not your blood. How can I do anything less?”

He nodded, silently assenting.

What could he say after what his own mother had sacrificed for him before he had even drawn a breath, before she had even laid eyes on him?

After a long moment of choking down his emotions in silence, Alex finally cleared his throat and turned to face his great-grandmother full. “Nahemah, Genesis and I need your permission to go after LaMia and bring Mateo back.”

“Child, you do not need my permission to do what you want to and intend to do regardless of what I say. But you do have my blessing.”

“And six sentries?”

“One.”

Alex frowned.
“One?”

“I will send Xevera with you. She is the oldest of my guard and well-skilled at using the Inanna tracking practice. Together she and Genesis should be able to locate LaMia with better-than-average accuracy.”

“Good enough.” Alex nodded and grinned. Ever since Xevera had greeted his naked, exhausted figure carrying a seriously injured Genesis through the portal between Emsharra and the human world, he had liked her, even if she barely cracked a smile at any of his jokes.

Now
she
was one of the most Spock-like of Inanna he had ever met.

“I do not think I will ever understand these Trekkies you told me about, or their and your infatuation with that show.”

“You have to watch it one day, Gee-Gee. You’d like it, and would really be able to relate to the Vulcans. They’re your kind of people.”

Nahemah chuckled and shook her head. She put her hand on his shoulder and stood to indicate that their meeting had come to an end. She led him to the door, suddenly stopped, caught 56

Predator’s Salvation

him around the biceps of both arms, and turned him to face her.

Alex looked into the nearly-unlined, pecan-brown face that he admired so much and asked, “Yes Nahemah?”

“Have a care, Alex. LaMia is a master at concealment and she has had much time to practice her craft in the human world. Do not get your hopes up.”

“I won’t.”

“And Alex…”

“Yes?” He stared at her, had never seen his great grandmother hesitant before. The alien behavior was enough to make his heartbeat speed his with doubt. “Gee-Gee, what is it?”

“Do not kill her. Bring her back to me in one piece.”

“What if that’s not possible? What if she attacks us? What if she’s killed Mateo? What if—?”

She shook him lightly. “You and Genesis must make it possible, Alex. Do you understand me? It is not for you to deal with LaMia. I created the problem, I will deal with her.”

“Okay,” he murmured.

“Neither LaMia or Mateo fall within the jurisdiction of Emsharra,” she reminded him,

“and what you are about to engage in is an unsanctioned rescue. However, I ask that you bring her to me alive to deal with the situation in an appropriate manner.”

Alex nodded, did not care about the politics of the assembly or Nahemah’s blood bond.

He only wanted to get Mateo back before LaMia damaged him irreparably. “We’ll bring her back alive.”
And please God, let Mateo still be alive.

57

Gracie C. McKeever

Mateo jerked up his head and glanced at the door when the temperature in the loft suddenly spiked right before an emerald green swirl of energy appeared near the door several yards away from him.

He squeezed his eyes tight against the painful throb of his cock, erection twitching and bobbing in front of him like a dog doing tricks and begging for attention from its master.

How much more wild would his little friend act once she appeared? Would he even be able to keep himself from coming at the mere sight of her, or would he embarrass himself as soon as he got a whiff of her spicy-sweet cinnamon scent and shoot his load before she even reached him?

Damn it, he didn’t even have the option—a pale substitute though it would have been—to take off some of the edge and get himself off!

Mateo was exhausted even though he had stopped struggling as soon as LaMia had zapped out of the loft and left him alone. It was no difficult feat to drop his chin back down to his chest, relax his body and sag against his restraints.

It was a stupid ploy that had never worked when he used to misbehave and then fake sleep to get out of a beating from his father, so he was sure it wouldn’t work with Ms. Nubian Queen, especially not when his partner was standing at attention ready for action.

But it was worth a try, anything was worth a try to knock LaMia ‘You-Must-Be-Punished’ Enlil back down to earth where mortals breathed and dwelled. Anything to get her to see him as the independent man he was and not some nameless, insignificant pet or slave.

God, how he wanted to see her face when she finally materialized and noticed him.

* * * *