Solar Dare (5 page)

She blinked at the closed door and walked to the dressing room. Solar found a leather suit in a red so dark it was almost black and tugged it on over her freshly dried skin. There were bonuses to being able to heat one’s skin to dry off.

Solar joined Denhar for breakfast and enjoyed waking up with the comfort of food prepared for her by a cheerful attendant instead of the surly folk at the lab. There was a difference in flavour when someone didn’t resent producing a meal.

“What is on the agenda for today?” She focussed and managed to have some hot cereal and cold fruit. Everything was different when the food was not cooked as she swallowed.

“Defense practice. Today, I am going on the attack and you will defend yourself.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You will defend yourself. You can and do have the ability to use your energy as a shield. Yesterday, we projected your power. Today, you hold it out at a steady distance.” His smile held a certain amount of anticipation.

She shrugged. “You are the instructor. I will do as you say.”

He frowned. “Aren’t you a little more enthusiastic about it today?”

Solar smiled. “I am. I was practicing self-control.”

Hiding emotions was not something that they had ever bothered with. Their set was away from the humans and alone with only themselves for company for the most part, and the humans they did see were wrapped in protective gear.

Emotions were felt but rarely displayed and control of their talents was not necessary when no one knew that they could be controlled.

He snorted. “Don’t scare me like that. You were just beginning to relax yesterday, and I believe that you were acknowledging that your talent could be controlled and you could enjoy it.” She cocked her head. “I believe that I was. Shall we test it on the defense matter?” He got to his feet and held out his hand.

“Please. Let’s continue your lesson plan.” They left Denhar’s home and walked into the front courtyard.

“Normally, this is done at a training centre and there are safeguards around, but I will try to take it easy on you.” He flexed his arms, and she admired the shift of his pectorals under the tight expanse of the leather vest that he was wearing today over snug trousers.

Solar rolled her shoulders and flexed her muscles in preparation. “I am warned. How do we start?”

He walked around and put his hands on her shoulders. “Can you feel the heat of my hands?” She concentrated at the peculiar sensation of physical contact. She had been touched more in the last two days than in all the years of her life.

Denhar’s hands were humming with heat, and her body was feeling it in more places than her shoulders. “Yes, I can feel it.”

“Now, gather your energy and slowly push me away.”

Pushing him away was the last thing she wanted, but she tried. She gathered her power and felt it build inside her, but she couldn’t push his hands away. “It isn’t working.”

“Then, we will have to use the training method that we all learn with.” He stepped away from her and walked across the courtyard. When he was fifty yards away, he turned and nodded briskly as if steeling himself for what he was about to do.

He held his palms together at a right angle and a ball of energy formed. Solar’s eyes widened as she realized what he was going to do, and when the ball came toward her, her reflexes kicked in.

Solar raised her hands to catch the ball, and when she did, the shock sent her tumbling backward to skid to a halt ten feet back.

“Ow.” Grunting, she got to her feet, and she was no sooner facing Denhar than he fired again.

This time, her hands covered themselves in power a moment before the orb struck. She stumbled, and when he fired again, she was ready for him. This time, the orb skittered across her energy shield and ploughed into the ground next to her.

Her power built around her, and when the next six orbs struck her, they shattered on impact.

Haringk appeared at Denhar’s side and handed him a crossbow.

Solar gasped in shock when he calmly aimed at her and pulled the trigger. Time slowed as the bolt came toward her and struck the shield a foot from her body. Her energy field crackled and swirled around her, visible to her for the first time in her life.

Haringk gave Denhar another object, and this time, a bullet came at her, aimed at her thigh. With a reflex entirely new to her, power wrapped around and held the bullet away from her. When she was sure it wasn’t moving, it dropped to the ground. She sat down suddenly with shock zipping through every vein in her body.

“I didn’t know I could do that.” Denhar lowered the gun, returning it to Haringk before walking toward her. “How do you feel?”

She crafted a light orb and shot it at him, striking him in the knee. “You could have warned me.”

He winced and continued to limp toward her.

“Attackers don’t warn you.”

She nodded. “Fair enough. Help me up?” He extended his hand and helped her to her feet. She stood under her own power and slammed into him. He grunted and grabbed her around her hips. “What happened?” She clutched at his shoulders. “I wanted to see if my field would retract when I touched you. Oddly enough, it did.”

His body flared with heat, and some fascinating reactions were occurring in those darkly snug trousers. He cleared his throat and gripped her shoulders, pushing her back. “Are you willing to field test your new skills?”

She blinked as cool air rushed between them.

Something had started to spark between them, and it left her confused when it was stopped before it could get any momentum.

“Of course. My skills are useless if they don’t get a workout. It has been a few days since I chased a human through a portal.” She smiled brightly, but her mind was focussed on the feel of his hands on her hips and his body against hers.

S
he stood next to him as he opened a portal.

“You know where we are going?”

“Oh yes. The queen’s Guards are in charge of monitoring the fabric of space. We noticed the dimensional rifts immediately but were under the assumption that they would close naturally. They did not, and the humans kept coming, so we kept watch.”

“So, we are going in on foot?”

“You can’t fly, and I am rather obvious when I do, so yes, we are going in on foot until we know what we are dealing with.” He looked at her and frowned. “You should wear the armour.”

“What? The portal is open, why should we waste it?”

He snapped the portal shut. “Because we need to take your safety into account. You might not need the armour, but I want you to wear it. Your reflexes might not catch up to the situation in time.”

She grudgingly agreed and stomped back into Denhar’s home. Her leathers were scorched in a few places but generally intact. She folded them neatly and set them aside before slipping into the two-paneled skirt and strapping the armour into place with the buckles on the sides. The collar made wearing her hair loose awkward, so she pinned it up with loose ringlets tumbling in an orderly manner.

Solar turned from side to side, admiring her reflection and the dark glyphs on her skin that signified her lineage. With the knee-high boots and the glow of her own skin, she was perfectly comfortable.

She joined Denhar, and he had changed into his own armour. It wasn’t as striking as hers was, but it made him look dangerous, deadly and devastatingly attractive.

“Before we leave, I want your promise that until I announce you are fully trained, you will remain with me at all times. No punching through rifts and disappearing. I won’t be happy when I find you.” He crossed his arms and scowled at her while he waited for her promise.

She crossed her arms and scowled back. “You will tell me when I am fully trained?”

“I will.”

“Then, yes, I promise not to punch a rift and make a run for it.” She gave him the bright smile that she and her sisters had practiced until it was perfect.

“Good enough.” He waved his arm and opened a rift, taking her hand and leading her through to another world.

The world they stepped into was dark. Night insects were singing in rhythmic harmonies and a glow of light in the shadows pinpointed the human settlement.

“There are over ninety humans here. If we can wake them, shock them, we may be able to make them run.” Denhar began to move slowly through the cover of the scrub and trees.

Solar followed and worked the logistics in her mind. “That will have to be one big rift.”

“It will be. I will reopen their existing hole in the dimensional fabric and hold it wide as we shove them through.”

She chuckled. “It sounds like a plan. Let’s just find out where they are and what the situation is before we do anything to start a stampede.” They crept forward, taking in the arrangement of the tents, the forming houses and the members of the colony on watch. That was definitely a new twist and something she had not run into in the D.A.R.E Project. The men looked military in origin and had peculiar insignias on their suits. They were also more alert than the average colonist, Solar grabbed Denhar’s arm and whispered to him, “This isn’t right.”

“Right or not, they need to go.” He got to his feet, extended his hands and started a fire at their edge of the colony. At the same time, he opened a rift at the other end.

Solar took the hint and used her own growing talent to start the wood on fire, furthest from the exit. With the blaze under their control, they herded the humans into the rift. Two-thirds of the people grabbed their families and ran. Ten men tried to fight the blaze, and in their fight, Solar was able to grab them one by one and carry them bodily to the rift in the cover of billowing smoke.

The military men were on the lookout for the attackers and occasionally fired a little too close for comfort.

Solar kept control of her radiation as she snuck up on one male after another, held their heads back and shoved them into the rift back to Earth.

The military men were still looking for their attackers, but the moment that Denhar shifted into his dragon form, they had a target.

Bullets, blasts of light and balls of fire lit the night.

Solar took a safe vantage point and used weak power orbs to knock the men through the open rift. When less than a handful remained and most of the ammunition had been used up, she stepped forward with her shield up and kept firing the power orbs.

Keep back, Solar. They are dangerous.

I know that better than you do. I lived with them—

She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. A scream broke from her throat as she was pierced by a bolt. She looked down in shock, and a chain was attached to the glowing metal protruding from her arm. The man on the other end of the chain gave her a harsh yank, and she stumbled forward with another scream.

By this method, she was pulled through the rift along with the retreating military men. Her pain was pushed aside by her shock when she didn’t recognize the place she had been hauled to.

The platform she was on was the centre of a buzzing, gathering of lab workers, more men in uniform and several scowling administrators in addition to the shocked colonists.

“General, we have one of the Project clones.”

“Blow the rift.” A man with dark eyes and a darker expression looked down at her. “My, my. I have heard of your kind but never seen one. Mr. Winthrop will enjoy seeing you.” Solar made a show of trying to stand, but she remained slouched on the floor. Two men lifted her with no consideration for her shoulder and carried her to a holding room where her hands were cuffed to the table. She could break the cuffs, heck, she could melt the cuffs, but first, she wanted to meet this Mr. Winthrop.

She wasn’t kept waiting long.

“Well, well. One of the Project clones. I never thought to see one of you in person, but here you are. Now, why are you here?” Mr. Winthrop was a tall, thin man, but his suit fit him perfectly. In human society, his aspect said he had money and power.

“Your men shot me and dragged me through the rift.” She jerked her head toward the bolt still in her shoulder.

“But why were you at our little colony? There is no file for you to chase, no coordinates for you to follow, and I heard that one of you actually blew up the underground lab where they had been keeping you. That wasn’t nice.” He made a tsking noise with his mouth.

She didn’t speak.

“Answer me. You will answer or you will learn how it feels to have that bolt removed millimeter by millimeter.”

“The Dimensional Arrest Retrieval and Extraction assignment did not disappear when the lab did. It was what we are and what we must do.”

“Well, you don’t work for me. We don’t care if the world shatters into bits, we just want to get to safety, and my clients are willing to pay for the privilege. I am running a business here, clone, and you and yours are not going to get in the way.”

“We will do what we must do to save Earth and the connected dimensions. When one fails, the rest will soon follow.”

He smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. “I don’t care. I will be moving to a pleasant little island dimension soon, and when I do, I will live out my life before the cascade catches up to it. Once I am dead, why would I care what happens to the rest of the universe?”