Tempt Me Eternally (2 page)

“Seven. Six.”

Oh, God. What if she did, in fact, die out here? What if she lost everything she'd worked so hard to gain? Her gun hand shook.
You have to stay calm, damn it
.

With bouts of extreme emotion, she shifted from one identity to another without any control.

“Four. Remember, guns set to stun and only stun.”

Her pyre-gun was already dialed to the proper
setting, so she curled her index finger around the trigger and swallowed the hard lump in her throat.
Breathe in, breathe out. You do know how to fire a weapon, at least
. A skill she'd learned from her only true friend, Bride McKells. A vampire, and her champion. They'd been separated more than a decade ago, chased apart by cops who'd caught them breaking into homes for food, and Aleaha hadn't been able to find her since. She'd never stop looking, though.

“One.”

All the air in Aleaha's lungs escaped on a sudden rush, hot and blistering, burning her throat and mouth. She tensed, waiting. Waiting. And then it happened. Overhead, the gloomy darkness gave way to sparkling orange-pink flickers. The wind picked up, swirling leaves and beating limbs against each other. Snow danced in every direction.

Then . . . nothing. It was almost disappointing. Almost.

The flickers died, leaving only the haze of stars. The wind quieted, leaving only the rasp of human breathing. Gradually, she relaxed. Maybe the Schön had decided to stay home. Maybe there'd be a party tonight rather than a war, and she wouldn't have to worry about—

“Commander?” someone asked.

“Hold,” Mia replied. “Hold steady. We'll stay here all night if we have to.”

Easy for her to say. She was nestled inside that warm van.

Several minutes ticked by in silence. Shudders
of cold began rocking through Aleaha, causing her teeth to chatter. This sucked. Much longer, and her gloved fingers would be frozen to her gun. If that happened, growing a penis would be easier than shooting. 'Cause, yeah, she could even become a man. And had, on several occasions. Hadn't been as fun as she'd assumed. Penises were weird. They were also—

One second the circular clearing was empty, the next it was bursting with hulking, black-clad warriors. And there were far more than the expected ten.

“What the hell?” someone barked.

Aleaha jolted in surprise, sizing the visitors up in one panicked flash: living weapons. They were tall, well-muscled and radiated absolute power and authority. In the traitorous moonlight and snow, she could see that their features were humanoid—if you didn't count their glowing, golden eyes, like twin suns crashing through daybreak.

“Fuck!” another of her teammates shouted. “They aren't Schön, they're Rakans! What do we do?”

Rakans? The peace-lovers? Couldn't be. There was no damn way these ready-for-combat warriors would be waving a white flag.

“Do not kill,” Mia commanded. “I repeat, do not kill them. Continue with stun. I want to know why they're here. Now go, go, go.”

Just as she was about to squeeze her gun's trigger, a honey-scented breeze wafted through the air, taunting, beckoning her to lassitude and . . . How odd. Her nipples were beading, but not from the cold. Moisture was dampening her panties, her skin
tightening over her bones, and drugging heat pouring into her veins.

Surely not. Surely the scent was
not
arousing her. Yet . . .

Why shoot them when she could kiss them? Kiss them . . . yes . . . Naughty images saturated her mind. Images of naked, writhing bodies—one of them golden. Seeking, hungry mouths—one of them golden. Wandering, teasing hands—again, a pair was golden. Satisfaction was only a heartbeat away, the anticipation of pleasure a consuming ache. All she had to do was drop her weapon, stand, and strip.

Strip? Seriously? What the hell was wrong with her? Was she the only one feeling this way? Like her, no one else had moved.

“Beautiful,” an agent said.

“Want,” another moaned.

Apparently not.

The warriors remained unmoving, silent, as if they were disoriented and needed to sober.

“Why are you just lying there, lusting after them? Did you not hear me? I said stun them, damn it,” the commander growled.

Forcing her mind to blank, one of the toughest things Aleaha had ever done, she hammered at the trigger with her index finger. Other agents followed suit, and multiple blue stun-beams erupted in the night, blending with hers and charting a direct course to the aliens.

Hit
.
Hit
.
Hit
.

As the beams made contact, the Rakans were
rendered immobile, aware of their surroundings but now unable to move. But most remained untouched, their comrades having acted as their shields.

As though realizing what was happening, those men quickly gained their bearings and charged forward, successfully dodging the next round of rays.

Aleaha blinked in shock. Never in all her twenty-six years had she seen anyone move so swiftly. They moved so swiftly, in fact, that they left some kind of ethereal, ghostly outline of themselves behind. Their spirits? Those outlines then had to play catch-up with the tangible bodies, which created a dizzying blur of movement, light, and shadow.

“I'm down! I'm down!” someone cried. “Had the shit knocked out of me.”

“I can't fucking freeze them,” Devyn said. Odd. He had refused to bring a gun to this fight, the cocky bastard, so he wouldn't have been able to freeze them anyway.

After that, absolute chaos erupted. There were screams of pain, frantic footfalls, and humans collapsing. Aleaha pinched off a few more rounds. And, goddamn it, she missed every time.

She never missed. People who lived on the streets often depended on their aim for survival. She'd taught herself to hit whatever she aimed at—no matter what she was doing or what was going on around her. This was unacceptable.

Calm
.
Focus
. She concentrated on the blurs as best she could, narrowing her eyes until she saw—

Squeeze.

This time, she hit a target dead-center. No, she realized a baffled moment later. She'd hit his spirit, that ghostly animation or whatever it was. Damn it! Unaffected, his body continued moving, darting from one place to another, felling one agent after another. And then, before her horrified gaze, the Rakans scattered in precise, measured increments. They weren't running away, but were encircling the entire AIR team and lethally closing in.

Caged,
she thought.
We're being caged
. Despite the direness of their circumstances, the agents continued to fight, and Aleaha was utterly proud of them. Blue stun-beams glowed throughout the enclosure, lighting up the snowy night with majestic fury.

“Shit,” someone said. “What the hell should we do? I can't see them anymore. I can't fucking see them!”

An agent ran over her, mowing right over her legs. No longer quite so proud, she popped to her feet, abandoning her cover in favor of protecting her limbs. Her knees knocked, but she managed to remain upright.

“Keep firing,” Devyn commanded one and all. “Stay together, and for God's sake, stay calm.”

He sounded so close that she turned her head—and found him standing right beside her.

“You okay, Lolli? You staying calm like I said?”

If her emotions wouldn't listen to her, perhaps they'd listen to him and calm. “Yeah.” At the moment, she wasn't capable of saying more. Okay, so no. Her emotions wouldn't be listening to him, either. Fear still held her in a tight clasp, growing as another agent
fell just in front of her. Much more, and she might lose her hold on Macy's image.

Jaxon sidled up to her other side, firing two guns at once, each pointed in a different direction. His green eyes were eerie in the darkness. Eerie but calming. Just being near him was like finding shelter in the midst of a raging storm. Finally, blessedly.

“Aim just ahead of the bodies,” he instructed. “Or rather, ahead of the lights. It's the best way to lock on them.”

Grunts, groans and screams filled her ears, louder by the second, distracting her. She pivoted and fired, pivoted and fired, trying to direct her beams in front of the blurs, just as Jaxon had said.

To her consternation, she only managed to nail one of the warriors. How many were out there, damn it? They seemed to be multiplying like flies.

“Help me!” an agent sobbed. “Please, help me.”

Automatically, her gaze searched the night, the frenzied crowd. Before she found the beseeching male, one of the Rakans bypassed Aleaha's protective wall of testosterone and slammed into her, shoving her to the ground. She landed flat on her back, suddenly breathless and experiencing a moment of terror and anger, helplessness and courage.

As she raised her weapon to defend herself, she could feel her face and body beginning to change, the bones adjusting to accommodate a new form. No. No, no, no. When she changed involuntarily, she never knew who she would end up looking like.

The alien with glowing golden eyes leaned down,
not to strike her but to . . . kiss her? She struggled against him, and, yep, he opened his mouth to fit it over hers.

“Woman,” he said, voice slightly slurred. “Mine.” Just before contact, an azure shower of sparks exploded around him, framing his large body and freezing him in place. Panting, instantly comforted, Aleaha crawled backward, forcing her image to conform once again to Macy's.

Jaxon held out a hand to help her up, and Aleaha prayed he hadn't seen her mini-transformation.

“Thanks,” she rasped, somehow finding her balance. She ripped off her headset and tossed it on the ground. No more distractions.

“These guys are Rakan,” he said. “Don't worry if you were dripped on.”

Until that moment, she'd forgotten about possible contamination. Shit. Rakan or Schön, she was going to be more careful. The few times she'd been sick, she'd unknowingly transformed into an ailing identity. Each experience had taught her that it's more fun to be stabbed than ill.

“On my signal,” Jaxon told her, shooting around her, “I want you to run and lock yourself in one of the vans.”

The vans, hidden as they were, would offer a reprieve from danger, injury and death.

“No,” she said, surprising herself. She'd stay and she'd fight, even though the prospect terrified her. How could she live with herself if these men died and she'd done nothing to help? “I'm staying.”

“Don't argue,” Devyn snapped. “Women are always prettier when they agree.”

Pig. “I need to stay.” She wouldn't defile everything Macy had built with her own cowardice. “I
have
to sta— Ohmygod!” One of the aliens had just stepped into an agent.
Stepped into
. Like a demon intent on possession, the otherworlder's body had entered the human's, fusing them until only the human was visible.

There was a tormented scream. The agent spasmed, shaking and quaking as he raised his own gun to his temple and fired. Brain tissue sprayed, obscene against the snow, and Aleaha gaped in horror.

“Fuck,” snarled Dallas Gutierrez, Mia's second in command, as he joined them. “They're motherfucking soul jumpers.”

Soul jumpers. She didn't know what that meant exactly, and she didn't want to find out. Her hands shook as she increased the speed of her shots.

“I've controlled the energy of a Rakan before,” Devyn said, his voice strained. “But I can't grasp on to a single energy molecule to control these guys.”

“Unlike Eden, they weren't raised on Earth. Maybe that's the problem. But it doesn't matter. Surely they'll tire soon,” Jaxon replied. “That kind of speed has to drain them.”

Aleaha lost the thread of the conversation. Energy molecule? Eden? All she knew was that a few more minutes passed and the aliens
didn't
slow. Their unparalleled swiftness only seemed to increase, so much so that she had trouble fixing another target in her sights.

“Shit.” Devyn slid a knife from his boot. “You were wrong, my friend, and we're out of time. They're coming for us next.” He slapped the hilt of the knife into Aleaha's free hand, the silver tip gleaming in the moonlight. “Be ready, Lolli. Go for the jugular.”

She gulped. The blade weighed less than her gun, but somehow felt all the more menacing. “O-okay.”

Jaxon turned those eerie green eyes on her. “There's still time to run.”

Sixteen Rakans remained standing and they continued to close their circle, hopping over fallen agents. There might as well have been a thousand. Not long before she, Devyn, Dallas, and Jaxon—who held the center of that circle—would be reached. But Jaxon was right. There was still time to escape. Not much, but enough.

“No.” Determined, she shook her head. “I'm staying. We can win this.” If not, if AIR fell, she'd fall, too.
For Macy
. Aleaha owed the woman that much.

She kept firing with one hand while gripping the hilt of the serrated knife with the other, trying to prepare herself for what she might have to do. She'd never used a knife on anyone but herself, and the thought of slicing into someone else's flesh . . .
You can do it
. A cornered animal did anything necessary to ensure survival.

Another agent placed a gun to his own temple and fired.

Yeah, she could do it.

“For all that's holy, Lolli,” Devyn snapped. His
hard tone of voice made her blink. Especially since he'd used it twice in one night and that was twice more than ever before. Where was his dry sense of humor? Where were his dirty jokes? “The knife was supposed to scare you, not empower you. Hit the vans so we don't have to worry about you!”

“Stop worrying and do your job!”

“Go.” This from Dallas. “Run.”

“No!” Even as she spoke, strong fingers of compulsion and agreement stabbed their way into her mind.
Do what he says. Don't argue with him. Run.