Sorceress Hunting (A Gargoyle and Sorceress Tale Book 3) (10 page)

He dropped the nightgown in a pile next to them and
turned his attention back to her. Finding herself growing shy under his gaze,
she ducked her head and her hair swung forward to shield her breasts.

Gregory seemed unconcerned by the development and
began kneading her hips with his strong fingers.

“Mmm,” Lillian arched her back, shyness retreating
before the heat rising within her. She pressed against him and simply allowed
him to move her how he liked. The undeniable evidence of his arousal trapped
between her thighs gave her pause and at the same time did something to fire
the heat in her blood to new levels.

After a few more moments, he released his grip on her
hips and glided his fingers up her sides and then cupped the heavy weight of
her breasts. He cupped her gently before leaning down to taste first one than
the other.

“Tonight was supposed to be about you,” she said as
she clung to his shoulders, needing something to hold on to. While he was
lavishing attention on her breasts, his one hand had been trailing south.

Smug male laughter wrapped around her. “We are one
being.”

She gasped out a surprised moan at his touch and
simply let him have his way. After a few more minutes of his skillful
attentions, intense waves of pleasure had her eyes drifting closed. He
continued to guide her movements and she sighed out another sound of pleasure.
The building waves rolled over her before she’d expected it and Lillian called
out his name as she came apart cocooned in his wings.

Gregory kissed her down from the peak, and she slumped
against him, all her bones suddenly mush. Slowly, reason returned but she
wasn’t displeased by the events that had happened.

A voice tinted with male pride brushed against her
senses. “I take it I did that well?”

“Gloriously,” she replied, though she also knew he
hadn’t reached the same end yet himself. “Would you like me to return the favor?”

“Anything you decide will give me pleasure, my
beautiful dryad.”

She smiled and then returned to kissing him while she
in turn allowed her hands to roam lower. The wood had burned to embers in the
fireplace by the time they drifted to sleep much, much later.

Major Resnick led his team through the woods with an
outwardly calm exterior, pretending there was nothing unusual about hunting
invisible monsters. Inwardly, his mind was awhirl with all he’d seen in the
last twenty-four, no make that thirty-six hours. Now the damn days were
blurring together.

When he’d first been assigned to the mission, he’d
thought alpha site was some kind of hoax—although, even he couldn’t hazard a
guess as to what force had snapped trees like they were toothpicks in a one kilometer
radius around the site but had otherwise left no evidence behind.

Things got stranger when the results from the samples
taken at the crater came back. Everything in the immediate area was dead. It
wasn’t just the trees and the animals either. Every blade of grass and patch of
moss, they were all dead. Everything. Even the microbes. Nothing survived.

Some of the men had renamed Alpha site to Armageddon
site.

He wasn’t superstitious or an overly religious man,
but somehow he couldn’t blame them. After a brief hesitation, he’d started
calling it Armageddon site in the privacy of his own mind.

That event had happened three months back, heralded by
a towering pillar of light. Some of the locals had snapped pictures of the
event and then came the media frenzy. What the general public didn’t know was
that it had even been seen in space.

The government spin doctors made it out to be a
particularly strong solar storm and the northern lights. Yeah, the locals
didn’t buy into that story either, but the rest of the world did.

Resnick’s own world was far from peaceful but he’d
stuck to his personal mantra: do his job and let the scientists figure out what
happened at the bloody Armageddon site.

But then a local farmer found a mutated body near the
town, and brass ordered the search farther afield for more clues. The
scientists couldn’t link the two sites together beyond the presence of
unexplainable anomalies. They had no idea how it had gotten there or what had
killed it.

Clearly the specimen had looked like it had been in a
battle and then crawled away to die. Nothing had touched its remains, not even
insects according to the report. They’d had a dry spring and summer so far, cooler
than average but not damp, and the body was mostly mummified.

Then just two days ago they’d found a live one, and
two other…as yet undiscovered species.

Still, his mind had trouble accepting the truth—that
humans were not the only intelligent predator on the planet.

All such information was need to know. Secretly, he
wished his mission hadn’t required him to need to know to do his job.

Ignorance truly was bliss. At least it helped one
sleep peacefully at night.

He hadn’t slept since the town-wide masquerade, which
was likely a blessing. He didn’t know what kind of nightmares would haunt his
dreams now.

But what had happened was no dream. It was a very real
battle. Many of the patrols out that night hadn’t returned at all, but anyone
with ears had heard the firefight that ensued.

At the time, Resnick and all his units were passed out
in the center of town like most everyone else. By the time they came to and
reached the location of the battle, the fighting was over. There were signs of
struggle, but no bodies. The survivors remembered nothing, just like all the
town’s folk.

But search dogs were able to run three different
specimens to ground.

One—a mad beast of pale skin and sharp fangs—Resnick
had wanted to put down on the spot. Brass had ordered it brought in for study.

The other two specimens were actually caught because
they were trying to kill the vampire-like creature. The tall elfish one had
managed to put two arrows in the vampire. In turn, Resnick’s men and the two
other teams nailed the big guy with three tranquilizer darts.

Their new target had escaped back into the forest.
They were tracking him when they found a tiny four-foot tall
female…something…trying to hide her unconscious friend from the search dogs.

Weird shit happened.

Resnick just wished it would stop happening on his
watch.

And just last night he’d returned to base to find an
intruder impersonating one of his men. Clearly, this one was an infiltrator of
some kind and had planted himself with Resnick’s convoy to get inside the base.

His superiors claimed the decoy Corporal Jenkins was
there to execute the vampire-like specimen, but had been discovered before he
was able to complete his mission, and the one in the suit of armor had been
sent to finish the job.

Something didn’t sit right with Resnick.

Why would the one in full armor kill the vampire-like
specimen but not free the other two prisoners? He’d had plenty of time to free
the other two while he’d been down on the rink, but he hadn’t bothered. It
didn’t add up. Could the imposter Corporal Jenkins and Armor Suit represent two
different warring factions?

When he’d brought his concerns to his superior, he’d
been assigned patrol detail.

As if it was his team’s fault the newcomer had
vanished before all their eyes. None of it made sense.

“Major, I found something that might prove
interesting.”

Resnick made his way over to Lieutenant Landry, still
scanning the area for nasty surprises. “Interesting is a forbidden word. The
science geeks have killed it for me. Permitted words are ‘dangerous’ or
‘what-the-fuck-is-this.’ Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant eyed him dubiously.
“They’re the cameras Corporal Mackenzie set up last week, before she went MIA.”

Anger and guilt warred within Resnick before he could
push it back.

Mackenzie wasn’t much more than a kid. She was what,
twenty-two? Bright, brave, foolhardy, third generation military. How the hell
was he going to face her father? Brigadier General Samuel Mackenzie had been
Resnick’s CO during his first tour. Despite a decade difference in their ages,
they had maintained a close friendship for the last twenty years.

In part, that’s why Corporal Mackenzie had landed in
Resnick’s unit. The day of the masquerade, he and his team had been out on
patrol when the ridge they’d been exploring gave way. Mackenzie, Griffith, and
Jones had all gotten a rough ride to the base of the ridge. He’d ordered them
all back to get checked out.

By the time all hell had broken loose later that
night, his three injured team members had been released from medical. He’d only
learned after he’d come stumbling back to HQ that they had gone back out to
help once they’d heard gunfire. No one had seen or heard from them since.

“Sir?”

“Just call them cameras next time.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you have something to view the data on?”

“No, but Ruthven does,” Lieutenant Landry said and
jerked his chin in Master Corporal Ruthven’s direction where he was already
shouldering off his pack. He passed a tablet to Landry.

“Good. Let me know if you see something more dangerous
than deer.” To the others he motioned for them to fan out and do another quick
scout of the area. Enemies that could pop in and out without leaving a trace
made even him paranoid.

When they couldn’t find so much as a leaf out of
place, he ordered a short rest.

Resnick took a drag on his water as he looked at the
trees around him, and then up into the thick canopy overhead.

“You know,” he said more to the trees above than any
one of his men in particular. “I think I know how our Robin Hood and the pixie
Marion managed to avoid detection for so long.”

He remembered how the tall elfish fellow with the long
bow had dropped down practically on top of Resnick’s team in his attempt to
take out their fanged acquisition. The combination of the tree canopy, thick
underbrush, and placement of Resnick’s team must have fouled up the elf lord’s
shot.

Was it desperation, or just blind hate, which had
driven him to expose himself to their team? Resnick didn’t have an answer. No
one had been able to make tall, blond, and elfish talk.

But Resnick still had a feeling the elf might have
been protecting everyone by trying to take out the fanged monstrosity.

“Trees,” Resnick said as he glanced over at Ruthven.

“Sir?”

“The damned trees. Robin Hood and our tiny Marion, I’d
bet a week’s rations they use the trees to travel. Otherwise, we would have
found some signs of them long ago.”

“Sir,” Landry spoke up over the others. “Not sure
about trees, but I think I just found another mode of travel. You’ve got to see
this. It’s way past interesting, straight into wtf territory.”

Resnick took the offered tablet. The feed had been
paused and enlarged to take up the screen’s entire surface.

His eyes darted over the screen, and he sucked in a
deep breath. “We move out now. Back to base, double time. Ruthven, put that
thing back in your pack and protect it with your life.”

Private Jacobs walked up and tried to glance at the
screen as Ruthven stowed the tablet in his pack. “What’s on it?”

“I’m not sure, exactly.”

Resnick gestured them to move out. “What’s on that
device is so highly classified they haven’t created a designation for it yet.
We are going to endure hours and hours of debriefings. That’s what’s on that
damn device.”

Resnick kept his voice emotionless and controlled, but
inside he was shaking.

He was sure what he’d mentally labelled elf, pixie and
vampire were something science could explain—some kind of mutation, or highly
illegal genetic experimentation. Something that had started out human.

What he’d seen on the tablet was not human, not even
close. Never had been.

Lillian sat with the rest of the family around the
kitchen table. A cooling cup of coffee rested in her hand. She’d been nursing
it for twenty minutes, but couldn’t get it down.

Coffee had been hit and miss with her ever since she’d
emerged from her hamadryad healing three weeks ago.

Had it only been weeks? The siren Tethys, the Riven,
the human military. It all felt much longer than three short weeks.

Sipping her coffee, she grimaced. The rest of the
family was equally as quiet. It had been another long night with only a few
hours sleep. Well, not that she and Gregory had spent the whole time sleeping,
either.

She glanced around at her family. Her uncle was
polishing off a bowl of porridge with more determination than joy by the look
of it. Gran sat staring at her porridge—too tired to eat it, by all
appearances, which had Lillian worried.

“We need to plan for what comes next. Any ideas?” she
asked the table at large.

Gregory cocked an ear in her direction, but continued
to finish his second bowl of porridge before he answered. “We rest and see what
the humans do this day. Tonight, protected by darkness, we stage a rescue. We
both scented our allies within that main building just before we fled.”

“Yes, but how will we manage it? They were planning to
move them to a more secure location yesterday, just before we were discovered.
Surely they have already moved them.

Gregory shook his head. “Darkness says Whitethorn and
Goswin are still inside.” He sounded a touch displeased. “He took it upon
himself to scout the area we did not have time to search. He found them drugged
and trapped in clear-walled cages. He couldn’t escape with them both, not
unconscious and during full daylight.”

Ah, the real source of his annoyance. Darkness had
gone scouting without notifying Gregory first. He did so like knowing
everything.

Lillian rubbed the bridge of her nose to hide her
smile, and then turned serious again. “Then we still have a chance to rescue
them before they get spirited off to god knows where. I’m glad our debacle
didn’t spook the military into moving them early.”

“If anything, the debacle caused them to dig in and
call for more reinforcements,” Gran said into her cup. “Our spies are keeping
track of things and will inform us if they move our friends.”

“Spies?” Lillian asked, feeling like she’d missed
something, again.

Gran made a fluttering gesture with her hand. “Like
the messenger spells, but these ones watch and report back their news. If the
soldiers notice a few more songbirds, squirrels and chipmunks than normal?” She
smiled. “They will think nothing of it.”

Gran’s exhaustion now made sense. She’d been doing
spell work all night. “We could have helped.”

“It was better you slept. There is still lots that
needs doing before tonight.” Gran gestured at the small television in the
corner of the kitchen. “My spies have already overheard many interesting
things. We are still persons of interest—though not as much as before now they
have something else to hunt. In the meantime, they plan to give the town a
clean bill of health and lift the lockdown. They have an ulterior motive, of
course. Once they turn the townsfolk loose to gather and gossip, they are going
to tail those of interest and see if they can learn something.”

“So every time we turn around we’re going to run into
our new best friends.” Lillian stated with a snort of amusement. “That’s going
to make things more complicated.”

“We’re not going to do anything of interest,” Gran
said. “In fact we’re going to bore them to death. Lillian, you and Gregory are
going to go grocery shopping and run errands. Make sure you hit the coffee shop
and the diner for lunch. Jason and Alan will go to the hardware store and get
the wood for the new gazebo. I’ll go meet with the card ladies. Business as
usual.”

“You’re going to turn me loose on the town?” Gregory
actually looked pretty excited at the thought, so Lillian introduced the other
part of the equation.

“Yep, lots of places to go in the car.”

Gregory’s expression fell.