TEMPTATION - A Bad Boy Romance (69 page)

The creek, which ran near the mall, had never been very large. It fed into the local river, which wound its way down to the larger Ohio River, to the Mississippi River and from there into the sea. It was underground in a metal culvert most of the time and flowed under the highway. However, it still ran open next to the parking lot at the mall. The local water control board insisted it be maintained to control run-off and not flood the streets when the mall was constructed. It was hidden by a strategically planted grove of trees, which boarded the parking lot. It still provided plenty of water when it rained. After the recent spring showers, the creek water reached up to the banks.

It provided a nice home for the water elementals, which was all Dion needed.

Dion closed his eyes and felt them swimming in the water, invisible to most people, but now so easy for him to see and control with his new powers. Still, he needed to persuade them to come and help. They didn’t care much for the men who’d dumped sand and gravel in their creek. Dion only needed to make a few promises to get their help.

The sound came from the edge of the parking lot and caused Karanzen and his men to turn their heads in its direction. They couldn’t see what caused it because it came from the other side of the tree line. It was a bubbling noise, similar to a sink overflowing. The sound increased in pitch and the tow truck driver shut the engine down to hear it better. Now they could see what the cause was.

Water overflowed from the creek banks. They could see it rising as it flowed across from the tree line and in their direction across the field. The water bubbled up and poured at them as it pushed loose dirt and soil toward in front of it. The security guards stopped what they were doing with the van and walked to Karanzen with a look of fear in their eyes.

Now the water flowed into the parking lot and across the asphalt. It came as a stream, which had changed directions. Although the parking lot had drains to take care of sudden downpours, it was impossible for them to manage this intense lake which had materialized in the outer edge of the lot. The security guards looked down and saw the water cover their boots. This was no longer something they could sit back and survey. The shoppers who entered and left the mall stood and watched the pool form in the midst where their cars were parked.

And it was even worse because there was not a cloud in the sky. Dion had sent the few away to make it clear to Karanzen and his men why the water flowed into the parking lot.

“You can stop the lot and mall from flooding,” Dion told him. “All you have to do is unhook your tow truck from my van and get away from it.”

Before Karanzen could issue a command, the security guards scampered over the van to detach the truck from it. The driver of the tow truck jumped into it and dropped the wench slowly so there would be no damage to the van. Once the front wheels of the van rested on the ground, he waded through the water and helped two more guards unlatch the hook from the front bumper of the van. Still up to their ankles in water, they reattached the spare tire compartment in back, which, in their zeal, they’d taken off as a trophy.

Finally, the tow truck driver gunned the engine and drove it as far away from the van as he could get. Water sprayed into the air as the wheels of the truck sent it into the sky.

Dion closed his eyes again and had a brief conversation with the elementals that lived in the creek. They were disappointed over what he wanted them to do right now, but they’d had their fun for the day.

The water began to flow back to the creek. It reversed its direction and swept back across the lot. In a few minutes, the lake, which was in formation in the parking lot, was gone. The look of relief on the faces at the windows of the mall was evident.

Karanzen glared at Dion. “You still need one more power,” he snarled at him. “Just try and get in here tomorrow.” He stomped off through the parking lot, his wet boots making noise as they slapped on the damp parking lot.

Dion looked at the entrance of the mall and watched his friends emerge. Lilly was right out in front, followed by Sean and Emily. Behind them came Dennis and the chess club, with the Naiad sisters. Captain Gabriel and Salacia were still inside looking out from the windows.

I suppose you will try to keep me out tomorrow
, Dion thought.
I need to master the fire element before I can tackle the fifth one. We’ll see what happens then
.

THOU SHALT KILL

A Military Bad Boy Romance

By Gabi Moore

Chapter 1 - Tyler

The human body can descend from five stories into the water in just under one second. I worked the math out well after the fall had taken place, in an effort to reconstruct exactly what had happened.

When you go through your basic training, there is a lot that you don't think about.

You don’t think about what it’s actually going to feel like when you’re stranded from the other members of your team. You don't think about whether or not what you are doing will have long-term ethical consequences beyond the security of the nation. You don’t even imagine what it might be like to have a family, or a person that you would commit yourself to, beyond the desire to become a soldier.

For the most part, being a soldier means that you tend to be on one of a few different varieties of ego trips.

Either you think you know what is righteous and good, and therefore, you should be free to go about and become an enforcing member of society. Or, you believe that you know what a man is, and therefore must take action to become that man. Or perhaps still, you think you know what it is to seize power — independent of ethical constructs or gender identity, and as a result, you move toward the most powerful group of fighters in the free world.

I couldn’t tell you which one of the three I was when all of this started, but now that I look back, I can tell you that I saw a little bit of each one inside of myself, and still do.

The difference between training and being on a mission is that the premise of your work being a drill no longer has the total absence of emotional content that is built up during months of training.

When you kill someone, regardless of whether or not they deserved it, you now take the responsibility for that life with you throughout the remainder of your own. As for the defensive component of all of this, the lives that you fail to protect will haunt you as well. The latter happens to be one of the strongest forces in perpetuating either side of a given conflict. When you’re in the heofit, politicians and morality tend to go out the window for most people. All you really want to do is get yourself, and your friends, home safely — though that doesn’t always work out as planned.

No amount of brotherhood mentality can offer the protection necessary to fail-safe a doomed mission.

We trained to be aware of eventualities and to prepare the foundational skills necessary to engage the unknown. As Navy SEALs, we were called to do things that most will only watch in the movies.

While all the world passively watched Hollywood’s fiction, it was our job to live the ugly truth, so the civilians could remain blissfully ignorant.

In the movies, you can’t feel the terror, or isolation. You don’t reach that edge of existence where you aren’t sure if you will ever return to ‘normalcy’. Most of my life I took that for granted. The ability to live life on the edge like that is what makes a good soldier, and an anxiety-ridden civilian.

In the moment, we are taught to keep calm in difficult situations. We are taught to anticipate, adapt and achieve. When the lull after the action comes in, and there is enough time for reflection, that’s when things get hard.

I didn’t have any time to think until after the fall, so that’s probably the best place to start our story.

The human body can descend from five stories into the water in just under one second. Problem was that my fall wasn’t graceful, and it wasn’t without molestation. I was snagged in the back of the head by a round on my way down to the water. I was lucky as hell, as the bullet only gave me a concussion, but head trauma is no way to start a five-story dive.

When you’re facing an absence of consciousness, you are spared the terror of impact, as well as the shock of the cold water. These things do not disappear completely. Instead, they tend to take form as echoes, or impressions more than concrete facts.

When semi-automatic weapons are firing overhead, and you’re outgunned, it’s a good idea to take the plunge regardless if you can see the water.

The positive thing about not being able to see the water at night is that anyone who shot after me wasn’t able to see very well either. They also clipped me in the shoulder, though I only remember that shot because of the scar.

I’m positive that if they had been able to see me, I would be a dead man.

When my body hit the water, the impact and the cold brought me back to my senses. The fact that I had just been hit didn’t mean much. My SEAL training provided an automatic baseline survival set.

Truthfully, there was little else going on, cognitively.

Can you move your limbs?
was an automatic question I heard within myself.

Some folks have out of body experiences. They get to watch themselves go through traumatic events and hope that they make it out on the other side.

There is an element of detachment and unreality in these scenarios. People often report a lack of immediate awareness of the fact that they are in fact dead. They think they might wake up soon, and they think about noticing things that are happening around them.

I’m no psychic, but I can tell you that if you have trained something into your mind for long enough, that information is there in the sub-conscious state, just waiting to be utilized. Sub-conscious internalization of procedure is the mecca for recruitment officers and cult leaders alike.

I had retained enough of my motor skills to swim, though I didn’t have anywhere to go. The longer I swam, the more confused I became. My movements were like I was operating my body from within the confines of a dream. The connection between my physical body and the mind which commanded the muscles was at a hopeless gap. I totally lost my sense of direction, as well as my environmental context. Keeping up the movements was exhausting, and eventually, my will failed to be enough to save myself. Sooner than later, my ability to move slowed, and eventually stopped altogether.

Your best bet in that sort of situation is called the ‘Dead Man’s Float’. A bit ironic, that name, though completely understandable.

Had I been in that position for any longer, I’m not sure I would have made it. The water was cold, dark, and I should have died. In fact, I’m certain that the only reason I’m alive is because of my training, sheer stubbornness, and probably more than a few neglectful moments from whatever fallen angels should have come up to claim my life.

While I was floating, I had lost consciousness. When I woke up, I didn’t have any memory of the night before, and I didn’t know where I was.

All around me were the simple accommodations of a house by the sea. We’re not talking one of those fancy playboy mansions. I mean an honest to goodness, wooden shack. I knew I was at the sea, because when I woke up, I could smell the saltwater in the air. I could hear the wave lapping up against some type of structure just outside of the building. The smell of the sea was the only familiar element in my entire worldview. Thank God that one ocean is just as good as another.

For someone who made it their life’s mission to work around the water, the similarities make it less difficult to get homesick.

There was nobody around the shack when I first woke up. As a consequence, I had a bit of time to investigate the surroundings. Looking out the window in the room, I was able to see that the buildings were built close together. They were small, which meant that I wasn’t in a wealthy area.

My clothes were simple, layered, and from the looks of it, second hand. I was dressed in thermals that were gray and off-white. There were a few holes in the clothes, but because I was wearing layers, the holes only showed other fabric.

I reached my hands up to feel my face, and my fingertips brushed against a thin scrub of facial hair.

How long have I been out?
I thought, reflexively moving my fingers and toes to make sure I retained a full range of motion.

I had shaved every day of my life since I was fourteen years old. I strained my head to figure out why I was there, but I couldn’t put all of the pieces together. I was alive, but so much of the other information was either scrambled or simply absent when my mind attempted access.

I was fortunate that I had ten uninterrupted minutes to take in my surroundings.

I stood up out of bed, and immediately felt weak. My shoulder had a severely limited range of motion. Upon closer inspection, I realized that not only had I been shot, but there was a scar on the outside of the entrance point of the wound which indicated that someone had performed surgery.

Damn, I was gone
, I thought, realizing that I had no idea where the wound had come from.

When I touched the scar, flashbacks from the evening came to me in my mind. I saw myself from a third person perspective, getting shot at while my body dove headfirst into the blackness of the water below.

The experience jolted me, and my heart started to beat heavily. Anxiety overwhelmed me, as I struggled to put together exactly why I had been shot, and who had done the shooting.

Was I thrown into the water? Or was that my decision?

Adrenaline coursed through my body, and I began to grow dizzy. I had to leave to find safety, but for some reason I paused.

Whoever brought you here could have killed you by now
, I reasoned.

I took a deep breath and resolved to stay put until someone showed up.

Helping myself to my feet once more, I wandered throughout the house. The home was little more than a fisherman’s shack. There were two bedrooms, though each of them were more like cubbies within the shack. The room that I woke up in had a faded photograph tacked on the wall, of a young woman with dark brown hair. She was smiling and standing next to an older man.