The Claimed (18 page)

“I cannot leave you alone to face them. You will die if they open fire,” he said, anxiously glancing between the Shadows and the two of them up on the higher patch of grass.

“Draw them in toward the quicksand I created. Maybe we can contain them so no one gets hurt,” Victoria said beneath her breath.

With an abrupt nod, Mike faced the Shadows and called out, “Come closer. We want to see who wants Adam before we agree to anything.”

There was hesitation, but then one of the Shadows, a female on the left of the two men, motioned for them to
proceed just as a fourth Shadow came running up to join the group. The low murmur of voices, seemingly in argument, drifted up to where Mike and she stood. After some shoving and pushing, the group proceeded toward them, but moments later two of the men started shouting and warning the others as they hit the edge of the quicksand.

Victoria watched the two men slip in and begin to struggle as the watery slurry threatened to pull them under. The third man who had just arrived went to assist them and with that delay, Victoria urged Mike to action.

“Find Rafael and get the rest of the cadres,” she whispered.

“I’m not leaving you alone,” Mike insisted as the Shadows continued to fight to escape her watery trap.

Their female leader hung back, still ready to battle even though two of her men were mired in the quicksand while the third attempted to pull them out.

How long they could stand there in this standoff Victoria didn’t know. But then a shout came from far up the grass near the house. Adam was racing down the lawn with some of the other members of the combined cadres to protect the Quinchus. At least half a dozen energy-charged Light Hunters. They burst from the house with super speed, the trails they left like bolts of lightning in the dark.

Before they reached Victoria, one of the Shadows managed to escape the quicksand. With two of them now on dry sand, they were about to pull the last man out, but Victoria couldn’t allow one more Shadow to be able to fire upon them.

Raising her hands, she called up the waters again, more forcefully than before and the sand beneath the feet
of the four Shadows began to wave and then splattered upward, almost as if boiling.

The woman shouted something at the two Shadows who had freed themselves and then, to Victoria’s surprise, they stepped away and allowed their companion to sink into the bubbling vat of quicksand.

“What the hell?” Mike muttered, distracted for an instant by their actions, but then he was suddenly throwing himself in front of her.

A blast of energy slammed into him and sent them both stumbling backward from the strength of the blow.

“Mike,” she called out as he slowly slumped to the ground, immobilized by the shot of energy.

A second blast followed quickly, but fell short of reaching her. The three Shadows were running down the beach to escape the Light Ones streaming down to the beachfront, and the distance was too great for their rounds of energy to reach where she was.

In the slurry of sand she had created, all that remained of the fourth Shadow Hunter was part of an arm, grotesquely sticking out of the ground where he had been sucked down by the mix of water and sand.

She knelt by Mike, whose sightless eyes stared at the night sky. Tiny filaments of energy skittered over his almost nonexistent aura. The blast had short-circuited his weakened energy gateways. What little life force remained in his system was bouncing around ineffectively, keeping it from sustaining his vital functions.

Victoria couldn’t allow Mike to die. Laying her hands on his chest, she focused on pushing out the ribbons of Shadow power that were racing through his body while pulling Mike’s energy back to his center. If she could stabilize
him, she might be able to get his energy traveling back over the right paths in his body, restoring his life forces.

As she experienced the slight shift of power beneath her hands, obeying her will, she added her own vitality, forcing it down into him.

The first hesitant beat of his heart came against the palm of her hand, but then stuttered.

A second later, Adam knelt beside her and laying his hands over hers joined her in trying to jump-start their fallen comrade. Adam’s power passed through her and she jerked from the force of it. So clean and strong. Powerful.

She focused that potential downward, but with no luck. A Hunter body was so different from the human body. Flesh wounds and broken bones could heal quickly, but sadly, a Hunter’s essence could not be repaired so simply. Unlike a human heart which could be kicked back to life with a blast of energy, a Hunter’s core hid far deeper beneath the physical surface of flesh and bone. It was an almost inexplicable vessel that held the seat of vitality. More like an organic battery of sorts that wove through every fiber in a Hunter’s body.

A battery that seemed to finally absorb the energy she and Adam were pumping into it, starting up Mike’s heart again. In his eyes came the neon light of life, but then it faded swiftly, his gaze dimming. His heart stilling beneath her hands.

“Again, Victoria,” Adam said, and once more an immense current of energy came from him and she joined hers with it, reigniting precious life, but for only seconds. Over and over they repeated the process until Victoria
grew lightheaded and a sharp buzz began at the back of her skull. At her core, intense heat made her feel as if she was burning up from the inside out.

Her own life force was overheating because she was expending too much of her energy in too short a time on her warrior.

“I cannot continue,” she said to Adam, and eased her hands from beneath his, needing to restore herself in the hope of stabilizing her power.

She staggered away from the Hunters who had gathered around their fallen comrade, nearly blinded by the alternating rush and drain of energy. Struggling against the forces warring within her, she somehow avoided the pitfall of the quicksand at the end of the lawn where that damning hand still rose up. Racing to the water’s edge, she sloshed in until she was knee deep and then dove beneath the surface, enveloping herself in the eddies of the life forces in the ocean.

She stayed below until her lungs almost felt like bursting and then sped to the surface in a weakly formed vortex. Sucking in deep breaths of air, she then dove down again, extending her arms to take in even more energy and restore balance. All along her extremities, tiny pinpricks of light emerged and joined, forming a net of energy-gathering vessels that were feeding power back to the network woven through her body.

An inquisitive dolphin approached, enticed by the display of myriad colors, and she stroked her hand along its side, absorbing some of its energy. Using its unique signature to shift, her legs and arms melded to form the sleek black trunk of the dolphin.

Racing through the waters, she fed from its vitality
until the drone in her head had dissipated and her core cooled as equilibrium was restored. She summoned the waters around her and propelled herself toward the shore as a swift-moving dolphin, transforming back to human form as she neared the water’s edge.

When her knees brushed sand, she rose and, pulling the shoulder-length strands of her hair off her face, slogged through the surf back to the lawn where now only the Quinchus remained with Adam and Bobbie. Adam, his mother, and her mother were working on Mike, but as she neared, she watched them rise.

Mike remained on the ground, his body still. Despite all their efforts, he was gone.

She stood there, dripping wet, anger threatening to overwhelm her, but then she schooled her emotions. Losing control would not help.

“Is there any energy left to share with the others,” she asked, since every drop of power was precious. If any remained within Mike, it should be disbursed to other Hunters like him, who could not gather it on their own.

“None, Victoria. You know he has been weak for some time,” her mother replied, and laid a consoling hand on Victoria’s shoulder.

“I know. I will go tell his wife.”

“
We
will go together, daughter,” her father said, and faced Adam, Bobbie, and Adam’s parents.

“You should clear out of this compound. It is no longer safe if the Shadows know you are here,” he warned.

“How did they know? We’ve been careful to stay to ourselves and guard our powers,” said Adam’s mom, Selina.

“Except for last night,” Victoria said, thinking about
Christopher and his people. They’d had no problem identifying Adam last night and also knew where she could be found. It sickened her to think that she had maybe led them here.

“Victoria?” Adam asked, but she shook her head, unable to voice her suspicions.

“You should go to a more secure spot. I’ll speak to my cadre captain in the morning about investigating this breach.”

Which made her think about where Rafael might be. She surveyed those gathered around, nervous about why he had not responded when needed. He could not have failed to know of the danger. She had sensed his presence nearby and now she worried about whether he, too, had been harmed during the conflict.

Raising her face, she sought out any traces of Rafael’s energy, and suddenly picked up a stronger signal. She glanced in the direction of the scent of power and noticed a streak of blue-white racing along the sand. A second later, Rafael materialized along the beachfront before the compound and strode her way.

Strange
, she thought. Rafael was supposed to have been guarding the perimeter of the compound. She hoped he had a good explanation for being away from his post.

“What about the Shadow?” Bobbie asked, motioning to the remains that were still visible at the edge of lawn.

Victoria peered at the fallen warrior and was about to unleash yet more of her power when her mother stepped forward. “Let me,” she said, since they shared the same affinity. Hands outstretched, her mother directed her energy toward that spot. As had happened before, water
and sand became almost liquid and the last remnants of the Shadow slipped below the surface.

A sickening feeling filled her gut at the loss of life, both Light and Dark, making her want to vomit.

As Rafael continued up toward their position on the lawn, he paused a moment to examine the spot where the sands had swallowed up the Shadow warrior. Even in the moonlight she could discern the disgust on his face, but there was something else. Something that niggled at the edges of her consciousness, giving her pause.

When her captain finally arrived before her, he dipped his head and raised his hand in a salute. When he did so, he finally caught sight of Mike’s lifeless body stretched out on the finely manicured grass.

“No,” he shouted in disbelief, and approached his fallen right-hand man, dropping to his knees beside Mike.

There was no doubting the real emotions there this time. Pain and also guilt.

The former made sense to Victoria, but the latter not so much. She approached her cadre captain and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Where were you tonight?”

He stiffened at her question, although she had done her best to keep her tone neutral. In all honesty, if there was guilt to assign, she bore the greater chunk of it. She was the one who insisted on trying to be more human and go without the presence of her cadre of warriors. Maybe if more of them had been present, Mike would still be alive.

Rafael rose and faced her, his features stoic, but all around him quivering tendrils of silver and blue swam as the sapphire blue of his aura became visible. Emotion was threatening to best his control. When he finally spoke, his tone was as dead as his fallen comrade.

“The Shadows attacked north of here last time. I thought it wise to patrol that section of beachfront personally, but I left a line of energy to warn me of any threat in this area,” he explained in his defense.

Victoria recalled sensing that energy, but for only a short time. “Your warning line did not last long.”

Raphael immediately barked back, “And whose fault is that?”

Stunned gasps erupted from those around her at the challenge to her authority. Her father, always quick-tempered, raised his hand toward her captain. An energy ball gathered there, readying to punish Rafael for his insolence, but Victoria laid her hand on her father’s arm.

“No, Father. He is right. If I had adhered to our ways more closely, this might not have happened.”

Victoria applied gentle pressure until her father disarmed and lowered his hand.

She strode directly in front of Rafael and tilted her face up to his much greater height. In a low whisper, she said, “You are my friend, but never forget again that I am your future Quinchu.”

Rafael stared straight ahead, never meeting her gaze. Long seconds passed before he dipped his head and brought his right hand to his chest to salute her. “Forgive me, Quinchu.”

His actions did little to alleviate her concern that something was not right with him. However, now was not the time for further discussion.

“Assemble the rest of the cadre. We must return Mike to his wife.”

Once she had given the news to Mike’s wife, she needed to prepare for yet another challenge.

She had to call Christopher and arrange to meet him. When he arrived, she’d determine if he’d had a hand in the attack, and if he had…