Colliding Worlds Trilogy 03 - Explosion Read online

“A tracer. They’ll send a cleanup team here.”

  She pulled out her shiv. He held out a hand to stop her from approaching it. “No. If the tracer goes off-line, they’ll know we’re alive and send in a team right away. Either way, they’re coming. No need to tip them off any sooner.”

  “Fyet,” she sighed, looking around. But, while the vehicle was clearly out of commission, the blast had been contained. The engine area was gone and the seats were charcoaled, but the back end remained relatively intact. The cleanup crew would quickly notice the lack of bodies. “You don’t happen to have any explosives on hand to obliterate the Jeep and any proof — or lack of proof — so they’ll assume we’re dead?”

  He looked down and held out his arms, like he was saying, does it look like I’m carrying anything?

  “How much time do you think we have?” she asked.

  “A couple hours, maybe more, depending on how things are going at the Etzee. The Ozarks cover a good chunk of land. It will help us evade troops longer. That they’re using drones right now instead of helicopters with troops for tracking runaways is a good sign. I’m betting on the fact that the Etzee is still keeping their hands full.”

  “I hope we’re not the only ones that got away,” she said quietly, the sense of loss all too fresh.

  Jax stood before her. “If there was anyone nearby, I would’ve taken them with us. You know that, right?”

  His expression was intense yet sympathetic at the same time, as though he was looking to her for forgiveness. Everything about that man was a dichotomy. Talla craved to discover the man hidden under the masks. “Yes,” she whispered, a small smile pulling on her face. “I know that.”

  Something in her response or her expression caused him to frown and he stepped away. He always did that. It was as though he couldn’t risk someone seeing inside him, and he’d close himself up tighter in response. “Did Roden say anything about another rendezvous point?”

  Talla gave a quick shake of her head, feeling a pinch of disappointment at Jax’s unerring control of emotion. “The Striga is the rendezvous point. Everyone is supposed to find a way to get to it.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a walk in a park. It’ll be completely surrounded by the time it lands.”

  “True,” she said. “But once we get to it, we’ll be safe. Roden did say that if we can’t get to the Striga, his Earthside base is the backup plan, but that’s over a thousand miles from here, and without my wrist-com I don’t have the exact coordinates. All I know is it’s in the northwest corner of the United States. Do you think you could get us there?”

  Jax grunted. “So the core ship it is. And we’ll have to hoof it from here.” He turned back to the wreckage. “They must have put a tracer on the Jeep.” His fists clenched. “Son of a bitch. I should’ve thought of that.”

  “You’d have no way to know that they’d be tracking their own people,” Talla said. “Good thing it was on the Jeep and not on you, or else we’d be dead right now.”

  The tracer had to be the drone’s target. Its targeting system hadn’t even tried to scan for heat signatures. The first bit of luck they’d had all day.

  Holding a hand out to protect his eyes from the heat, Jax stood by the cargo compartment, reached to unbuckle the ammo boxes, and yanked his hand back. With a muttered curse, he pulled off his shirt, wrapped it around his hand, and this time unstrapped the two metal cases.

  Each case dropped onto the ground with a thud.

  He bent over, flinging his dog tags around his neck to be out of his way. Aside from a burn on his left shoulder that he’d gotten back at the Etzee, his skin was smooth and accentuated acres of tight muscles. His cargo pants were slung low across his hips. For the first time in her life, she looked at a man’s wingless back and found it even sexier than a Draeken back.

  She watched Jax as he poured out the contents of one box and then moved to the other. The contents snagged her attention. Talla came down to her knees to sift through the items. A small first aid kit, a bottle of water, a protein bar, an emergency blanket, and a large Swiss Army tool. “Impressive,” she said.

  “I go off-roading on the weekends. I like to keep a few bare essentials in an overnight kit just in case.” From the other box, he pulled out another knife and a hand gun in a small black holster.

  She gave a low whistle. “That’s quite the overnight kit.”

  He shrugged, then turned and gave her a boyish grin. “I was an Army brat as many years as I’ve been in the Army.” He frowned. “Was in the Army, I mean.” His last words were quiet.

  She watched him for a moment. “Your affiliation doesn’t make you any less heroic. Warning everyone, you did it to save more than my people or the Sephians. You did it to save yours.”

  He stood abruptly and pulled on his shirt. A flash of frustration slipped through Talla. He fastened the holster around his chest and checked the M9. He picked up the knife, also in a sheath, and tossed it to Talla. “This tanto will work a hell of a lot better than the baby shiv you have.”

  “Thanks,” she said as she tied the sheathed blade to her thigh. It was military-issue, with a solid six-inch blade and would be far more useful than the short tape-wrapped metal in her pocket, even though she kept that as well.

  Jax and Talla stuffed their pockets with the remaining gear. “We better get going,” he said. “We should find somewhere to hide before nightfall.”

  Talla would’ve volunteered to fly over the area to scout for caves and holes, but the risk of being seen by any human was too great. They’d have to do this the old-fashioned way. She grabbed a medium-sized branch off the ground. The wood was brittle and light and relatively straight and made a good walking stick. “I’m ready,” she said.

  He gave her the once-over and turned, heading down the embankment and up the other side. Talla kept pace as they moved deeper into the forest. They would have to keep moving to stay ahead of the humans. There would be little time for rest. She had been on the lam before. It was how they ended up on Earth. Running wasn’t fun, but she was confident they could avoid their pursuers if they stayed smart.

  Soon, however, their pursuers wouldn’t be the greatest risk to their survival. There was no way to hide her wings. They couldn’t blend into any populated area. Worse, they only had enough water to get them through one day. How long could they survive in this alien environment?

  Chapter Eight

  The birds chirped and flew around as though it was just another day, as though Jax and Talla weren’t running for their lives. He’d been on the other end of the chase plenty of times. Hell, only a couple years back, he had hunted Sephians through woods much like these. Being on the flip side of the coin wasn’t much fun.

  There were few clouds to block the afternoon heat. The tall trees, with their thin needles, did little to buffer the sun’s harsh rays.

  His stomach growled. They’d finished the protein bar two hours earlier, and there were only a couple drinks of water left in the bottle. They’d have to find a house to restock before nightfall or else risk weakening. They simply didn’t have the luxury of time to hunt or purify water while on the lam. They were quickly becoming getting desperate.

  Talla muttered a curse behind him.

  He turned to find her trying to dislodge the sharp bone spur that tipped her wing from a clump of low branches. Closing the distance, he reached up and pushed the branches away from her scraped wings.

  “The trees here are so much bigger than on Sephia. I swear they’re snagging me on purpose,” she complained as she pulled a burr from a wing.

  “They’re better than the desert,” Jax said.

  “I think the open space would feel good right now.”

  “At least trees offer shade. Try wearing full gear during an Afghan summer.” He’d seen plenty of brutal terrain in his life, but he’d also always had the latest gear and equipment, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Today brought back some not-so-pleasant memories of advanced training camp to become a Ranger. He�
��d been ruthlessly driven to his breaking point — beyond, really — and he’d managed. This felt eerily similar. He kept waiting for his captain to shout out another command.

  “How long have you been a soldier?” Talla asked, coming up to his side.

  How long? He was a soldier before he’d even signed up. He was born to be a soldier. His father had groomed him to be a soldier since he could walk. He’d been a soldier since his eighteenth birthday. Jax bristled, thinking that of all things, he wasn’t a soldier anymore, and never would be again. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re still working to protect the innocent. In the ways of my people, that makes you a soldier. The uniform never matters.”

  He stopped, turned on her. “I’m no soldier. I’m a fugitive.” While Talla watched him with those doe-eyes, he ran a hand through his hair. “In the eyes of my country, I’m a fucking traitor,” he muttered again as he stomped off.

  A second later, Talla’s footsteps crashed through the forest behind him. She grabbed his shoulder and yanked him around. “You know, if being labeled a fugitive and a traitor for defending life and freedom is all you get slapped with, then I’d say you’re getting a pretty fair deal.”

  He glared. “It’s not that simple.”

  “It is, and you’re just making excuses.” She sent a hard, hot glare right back at him. With a flick of her hair, she walked on ahead.

  His mouth opened slightly before clamping it shut. With her brisk pace, it took several steps to fall in behind her. Talla’s long wings, made for flight and not for hiking, swayed with every step, brushing against fallen leaves. Even weighted down with the extra appendages and fatigue, she stood tall and walked proud.

  She was different from Risa. Demure Risa who’d fucked his life up the ass. He’d truly believed he’d never think of another woman again. A lot of good that did. Hell, ever since he was assigned as Talla’s Leash to get his ass back into the game two years ago, he couldn’t get her out of his damn head.

  Then again, there was no one like Talla. She was easy on the eyes, God, she was an Amazon beauty. But her looks had only served as a red flag for Jax to toss up his emotional walls in time. It was her spirit that blew his intentions all to hell. A woman beaten but who refused to be broken, she’d suffered more than many POWs, but still she continued on. Off duty, on duty, it didn’t matter. He inevitably found his way to her every day.

  Everyone figured he was simply taking his duty as her Leash seriously. Hell, he’d even tried to convince himself of that at first. But, while he was a lot of things, he wasn’t a hypocrite. He watched Talla because he had some fucked-up need to protect her, and he couldn’t imagine not being near her.

  Up until today, they’d had a good thing going. He watched. God knows why, but she allowed it. They kept a distance from each other. Then she had to go fuck things up and kiss him this morning. What the hell had that been all about? He couldn’t keep a single thought going in his head since. And now, with her curves sashaying through the woods in front of him, any remaining thoughts were quickly dropping to a lower and harder part of his anatomy.

  Scowling, he quickened his pace and bumped into her on his way around her to retake the lead. An audible hmph behind him stung some chord of guilt inside. “I’m more familiar with this terrain,” he said, the excuse sounding lame even to him. At least he didn’t have to stare at her luscious body mucking up his view anymore.

  They continued on in silence for some time until the trees opened to a gravel road. “Shit,” he cursed as he scanned for traffic. He’d been distracted. They were lucky no one was driving down the road at that particular moment. Talla came up behind him, and he moved them both back into the cover of the woods and walked them in a line parallel to the road.

  “Let me guess. That paper map of yours would come in handy right about now.”

  He faced her to find a twinkle in her eye, and some tension eased. “If we follow this, we’re bound to come across a house if we keep moving.” A house meant water and food and potentially a vehicle.

  “Good. I’m thirsty.”

  Jax’s throat was parched. If they didn’t find potable water soon, they’d start losing their edge. The cleaning team should have found the Jeep by now, which meant they knew there were Etzee runaways in these woods. Jax and Talla needed their minds and bodies sharp to survive.

  “Ahh!”

  The sounds of a scuffle tore Jax around. Fear flashed through him, and the M9 was in his hand instantly. Talla was on the ground, shaking her walking stick at a tree. He scanned up the tree to find … he squinted. “That’s … ”

  Her eyes were wide. “I thought it was a fregee.”

  “A squirrel,” he said, holstering his piece. Her attacker was currently standing on a lower branch, angrily flicking its tail, no doubt as antagonized as Talla for having its foraging interrupted. When Talla still looked afraid, he added, “It’s harmless.”

  She rubbed her ankle. “It moved like a fregee. It even has the same adorable look. That’s how they get you, you know. One goes in to distract their prey, and that’s when the entire pack moves in for the kill. They’ve been known to take down entire herds of tion before.”

  He came down on a knee and checked her ankle for injuries. “Well, I’m not sure what a freh-ghee or a tee-on is, but I assure you there’s little to worry about around here.”

  She pursed her lips.

  “Okay, there’s rattle snakes to watch out for, but there’s not many this far north. Cougars and bears, but they tend to avoid attention. Rednecks are probably the biggest risk around these parts, and they’re more territorial than anything.”

  She watched him for a moment before lowering her eyes. He followed her gaze and realized he was still rubbing her ankle. He yanked back and stood. Feeling guilty for acting like a jackass, he held out a hand. “Can you walk?” he asked gruffly.

  She frowned a bit, but accepted his hand. The distant rumble of thunder had them both looking to the sunny sky. Jax turned just as the sun was blotted out by a giant metallic shard. It was moving slow, still ten or twenty thousand feet in the air but descending. The ground vibrated under the deep thrum. He stared up as the massive ship crossed the sky. He stood in awe, still holding Talla’s hand. Once the sun peeked out as it continued its path to the north, he came back to his senses. If he had to take a guess, it was on a direct approach to the Etzee.

  He pulled Talla brusquely to her feet.

  “The Striga’s arrived,” she said, the pleasure in her voice unmistakable.

  Jax’s body thrummed with tension. Even though he knew the Striga was Talla’s best chance at protection, he dreaded returning to the eye of the storm. To reach the core ship, that eye would be a cluster fuck instead of calm. He didn’t let go of her hand. “We don’t have to go back,” he blurted out.

  “If we don’t, then we’ll always be on the run.”

  “We can hide.”

  “Then we’ll always be hiding.”

  Damn it. He grabbed her shoulder. “You know how many troops stand between us and the ship? We could die if we try.”

  Sadness filled her eyes. “We all die,” she said softly, then met his gaze. “This way, if we can get to the Striga, we at least have a chance to make a difference in others’ lives.”

  She raised a hand to his face, and he found himself rubbing his cheek against her calloused yet soft palm. Then he shook his head and pulled away. “Let’s find a way back,” he said, angrily turning and setting a quick pace.

  The cleanup crew wouldn’t be far behind them and countless more troops awaited where they intended to go. He’d exaggerated earlier. When he said they could die, he’d meant to say they would die.

  Chapter Nine

  Nearly three years had passed since Talla had seen the Striga. The core ship was the pride of the Draeken fleet, the newest and grandest of all core ships. Its cold metallic beauty breathed hope into her lungs for the first time in far too long. She watched it pass over until the
trees cut it off from her view, and she had to leave it behind. Still, she continued to gaze up to the sky reminiscently as they walked, a smile now in her heart.

  The core ships had saved what was left of her people from certain death. While each massive military ship could house tens of thousands, only a couple thousand Draeken survived to make it to each of the four ships the night of their evacuation from Sephia. There’d been twelve core ships ready to depart that night. Four escaped. Only nine thousand six hundred fifty-one Draeken remained of the once superior race. That was three years ago. How many remained to carry on their proud blood today?

  Sucking in a breath of tepid woodsy air, Talla watched the man several feet ahead of her, who was busy keeping them at a hard pace. While Talla stayed in good shape, the heat and dehydration wore her down. Her muscles felt weak. Low-slung branches snagged her wings and fought against her for every inch gained.

  Jax, on the other hand, didn’t show the slightest sign of weakness. Well, other than the sweat glistening across his skin. His dark T-shirt clung to his muscles. A bead of sweat trailed down the back of his neck.

  She’d fallen into a hypnotic rhythm of watching his smooth stride, and she’d nearly failed to notice that he’d slowed ahead of her. Jax then came to a stop behind a large tree, and held up a fisted hand. While she didn’t know the action’s meaning, she’d been in the military long enough to know that if he was still and silent, she’d better follow suit. She came to a stop against the same tree, propping a hand against the trunk to rest.

  “There’s a cabin about two hundred feet ahead,” he whispered.

  She thought back their imminent pursuers. If she were hunting prey, the first thing she’d take control of was any shelter in the area. “Is it safe?”

  “We need water.” He handed her his handgun. “I don’t see any movement, so I’m going in to check it out. Stay out of sight until I give a signal.”

  She gave him a curt nod, and he moved off low, going from tree to tree, until he disappeared. With slow steps, she followed his path until she had a full view of the cabin. Crouching behind a shrub, she rested her wings on the ground to get in a more comfortable position. From this vantage point, she could see the cabin and a cream-colored SUV parked in front.