Secret Worlds (469 page)

He tightened his hand around the side of her head, gentle pressure, and his lips moved on hers. The soft kiss disappeared.

She’d waited for this hard, electric kiss, the one that took her breath away. Heat curled within her, pouring down from their joined mouths and pooling deep inside like the thick maple syrup she loved so much. She exhaled softly through her nose, and her breath fanned back to her from his cheek.

As if the movement of air across his skin was a signal, Jackson moved his lips on hers, parting them both. He darted his tongue out to taste her.

She moved with him, matching his slow pace. Their lips spread a little more as he turned into the kiss, one hand sliding across to the back of her neck, and the tips of their tongues touched.

Power zinged through her. She felt his body jolt as the wave rolled through him as well. Without thinking, almost without any awareness of it at all, she reached out to him the way she did when she healed. He became Dust swirling, blood surging, heartbeat increasing heat. She could feel his answer as he did the same. Dust moved low within her, curling and gathering in her belly and back.

He tugged his hand free from where she’d captured it and slid it around to her back, pulling her closer. He pressed his hand to her lower back, and her Dust darted to him in a cloud of energy, then flashed out, spreading rapidly through her to flare and pop everywhere they were in contact, at groin, and chest, and mouth. She shuddered again.

It was delicious. It was dangerous. She wanted this more than she’d wanted anything. But even as she leaned into the kiss, he pulled his mouth from hers, leaning back to put space between them.

“Lena,” he said, his voice rough, “if we keep doing this, we won’t stop.”

Her head nodded, tiny movements signaling her agreement. “Okay,” she said aloud, dazed. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and she leaned in again, wrapping her legs around him so he couldn’t keep pulling away.

“We can’t. Someone’s going to walk in.”

“So go close the door.” She blinked at his expression. “What? Are you scared of being caught with me?”

He looked away and gave a pained laugh before nodding several times. “Absolutely.”

She frowned. He was serious. “I’m trying to imagine sober, sensible Jackson Lee scared of anyone.”

“Huh. Doesn’t take much trying. I’m scared of you.”

“I’m scary?”

“You are terrifying.”

“Really?” She leaned in, grinning wide, determined to cajole him into going and closing the damn door. She nipped at his lip as she purred, “How so?”

“Hmmm,” a familiar husky voice interjected from the other end of the room, “I don’t think there’s enough time left in the morning for Jackson to complete that list.”

Jackson leaped back as if she’d scalded him. He didn’t turn, and his hands had come up to frame his forehead.

She sat back. Reyes stood in the doorway, long and lean, with his hands in his pockets and his chin down.

She hadn’t seen him in more than six weeks. She wasn’t prepared for the jolt as her Dust recognized him. Already excited by what she’d been doing with Jackson, the Dust raged through her, battering her inside. She swallowed and sent angry demands that it stop.

I don’t even like that man!

The Dust ignored the lie. Lena clenched her teeth and squeezed her legs together, tightening her back against the onslaught. She would
not
respond.

“Reyes.” It was all the greeting he’d get. Her perfect maple syrup and make-out mood had soured. She could feel her face sliding into cold, unhappy lines. Damn her body anyway for responding to him more strongly than it had to Jackson. What the hell was that about?

“Well,” he said, “if that isn’t the damnedest transformation ever.” His dark, displeased face turned to Jackson, who slowly moved to face the older agent. They remained on the younger man, steady and evaluating. “I thought Thomas spoke to you about this?”

“Spoke about what?” She looked from Reyes to Jackson.

“He did, sir. I apologize. Just—” Jackson shook his head. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Take care of what?”

Jackson looked away, shaking his head.

Reyes gave a strangled, disparaging laugh and shrugged. “Nothing, Lena.” He cocked his finger at them. “C’mon. We’re gonna be late. It’s my day off, and I don’t want to waste the whole day here.” He turned and stalked down the hall, his back stiff.

Jackson started after Reyes then paused to wait for her. He still wouldn’t meet her eyes. As soon as she hopped down from the desk, Jackson followed Reyes out. She trailed along behind him. What had just happened?

She wasn’t in any hurry to catch up. She didn’t know what was going on with Jackson, and she had no desire to engage Reyes any more than necessary. Lena had spent enough time examining her feelings to understand the source of her attraction, as well as her resentment. Reyes had been there. He had worked hard to keep her safe from the bad acts and intentions of the Council of Nine. When his plan had gone bad, he hadn’t given up or walked away, he’d remained at her side, witnessing it all, and waiting for the opportunity to free her. He had kept his word to her. And after he had, he’d had no way to know he was taking her to the one place guaranteed to awaken all of her childhood fears. Intellectually, she understood.

But emotionally…every time she saw him, her teeth set and her shoulders tightened. She had trusted him. Doing so had cost her mother her life. As if that loss wasn’t enough, Reyes had brought her to the school her father had told her wasn’t safe, to the people he had insisted could never be trusted. Then he’d abandoned her. Mission accomplished. Outcome produced. He was done factoring that particular equation.

And that equation included her. Whatever connection she felt? Whatever lame response her Dust tortured her with? It was one-sided.

Jackson looked back over his shoulder. He flashed a sickly half-smile and indicated with a gesture that he was going to hurry up the long corridor to talk to Reyes. She waved her fingers at him, telling him to go.

The two men walked together ahead of her, Reyes dangerous and controlled and Jackson eagerly matching his pace. The men slowed, and Reyes turned to Jackson, finally engaged in whatever he was saying. She hung back.

She could see Reyes’s nature now in the easy smile he flashed at Jackson. His dark eyes still calculated and ran through scenarios. Was his mind ever still? A memory rose, of Reyes reciting poetry as he remembered his father to her. She pushed it away.

Whatever he’d offered Jackson had lit up the younger man’s face with relief. Her heart squeezed. Hope shone out of his smile like a beacon. Other than those wide, heavy shoulders, Jackson’s smile was the best of many good features. It was broad and excited now as he nodded and shook Reyes’s hand in agreement.

She returned her scrutiny to Reyes. He relinquished Jackson’s hand and turned to flash her a satisfied smile before moving away down the hallway, his confident stride graceful and smooth.

Jackson stood in front of her, then, and she forced herself to look away from Reyes’s back. “What was that all about? Did you make up?”

“Make up?” He gave her a puzzled look.

“Yeah. You said you were worried about someone catching us together. Obviously from your reaction, you were worried about what
Reyes
would think.” She was pissed at Reyes. She shouldn’t take it out on Jackson.

“I wasn’t—Lena, I was worried, period.”

She glared at him. “Why?”

“Why?” He stopped walking. “Really?”

“Yes, why really,” Lena snapped. “You’re twenty-four years old. What do you care if someone catches you kissing some girl?”

“I’m a Ward,” he said, as if that explained everything. It didn’t make it any clearer to her. “And you’re not just ‘some girl.’ I’ve been trying not to jeopardize my graduation.”

“Why would kissing me jeopardize your becoming an agent?”

He shook his head, closing his eyes. “Because of who you are. It just does.”

Oh, so this is
my
fault?
She couldn’t help a sullen mutter. “It didn’t look jeopardized to me.”

“No. No, he understands. And he’s not going to say anything to the Councilor.” He looked away down the hall. “I hope you understand. I know you don’t like him, but he’s being very generous. He’s even offered to mentor me when this assignment is over.”

She couldn’t keep the hurt from flaring. “This assignment? Is that what his comment back there was about?”

His face fell. “I—no. They don’t want—I don’t have permission to—”

“Permission?” Her voice wasn’t sullen anymore, it was angry and loud. She didn’t care. “You’re waiting for permission to be intimate with your assignment?”

He shook his head, lips compressed and face unhappy. “I didn’t mean you’re an assignment. I meant—”

“I know what you meant.” She lifted her chin. “Where’s Erwin’s office? I’d like to get this over with. And the sooner you drop me off,” she added with brittle precision, “the sooner you can go report on the status of your assignment. Or maybe you were planning to ask for permission? If that’s the case, don’t bother.”

He sighed, a whisper of sound that became her name.

Lena turned away, rapid footsteps carrying her to the elevators. She’d rather sit in an office with a Guardian than listen to whatever Jackson had to say.

***

Except for his luxurious lion’s mane of golden brown hair threaded with washed out grey, Guardian Erwin was a middling man—middle-aged, mid-height, and of middling weight. Even his eyes were washed out, a watery hazel mix somewhere between brown and green. When Jackson ushered her in, Erwin distractedly told her to have a seat at a cluttered table shoved into the far corner of his office. In the same breath, he ordered Jackson out. Lena didn’t turn back when he left.

With a long-suffering sigh, Erwin settled himself into the seat beside her. “How much did your—” his voice took on a note of distaste “—zone educators teach you about the history of the Great Disaster?”

She shook her head, willing herself to focus. She felt herself shrinking back into her chair and reversed course, straightening her spine. She refused to be cowed by any of them. “I didn’t go to school.”

Erwin blinked at her. “So…what do you know, if anything, about the beginning of the Second Dark Age, which many call the Great Disaster?”

She followed his lead, taking a long, calming breath to focus and remember what she’d been taught. “I know it was terrorists who released something over old Texas that was supposed to burn fuel and die, but something went wrong. The factories exploded, and the Dust went up into the sky and spread over the whole world. It burned all the fuel, everything, and when it went out, it took everything with it. Energy didn’t work anymore. The first Sparks were special soldiers, and they tried to control the Dust, but they couldn’t.

“People who lived in the huge cities suffered the most and the fastest. They couldn’t get food. And the water stopped flowing. Most of them died.” She swallowed. “And everything went dark for a long time. Almost fifty years later, Mark Peller went out and collected Sparks and formed the First Council.”

Erwin held up a finger, indicating she should stop her recitation. He pulled a tube closer to himself and unrolled it, revealing a map. He moved the edge of it closer to her as he spoke. “That is a very basic, and incomplete, understanding of what happened—take that side there and pull it toward you—but at least it’s not terribly tainted by Council propaganda.” He gave a loud, indelicate sniff.

With the map spread before her, she could see the nine Zone divisions. Entire swaths of the green and brown of the land were covered with neatly inked, tiny black x’s—most of the west coast of the country and a huge area sweeping up from the curving shoreline of the south. The ugly slashes crept away from the fat body of the inked areas in long, sinuous arms stretching across the country in every direction. Those tentacles represented the refinery-rich and pipelined Hell Cities and the lands surrounding them that had burned to slag. No one survived.

Erwin set a heavy ball of glass on one corner and a large and jagged black rock on the other. His hand ran across the map, gesturing like a magician about to make something appear from nothing. “This is the world as it was, two hundred and twelve years ago. Or at least our side of it.” He pointed at the top and moved down. “Canada. The United States. Mexico. Central and South America further down.” He stared down at the map and blinked several times. “The combined population of these three countries was 560 million people. Ten years after the attack, 300 million were gone. Ten years later, another fifty million. And on and on, the dying went. Starvation. Hard winters. Bad water. Illness. The influenza that struck the East Coast relocation centers devastated the population—and to this day, we on the Western fringes are stronger.

“By the time Peller and his cronies gathered together those few tens of thousands left alive in each of the relocation centers—if you can call what they were doing living—they were grateful for any chance. They would have agreed to anything. And the first Sparks did exactly that.”

Erwin leaned back in his chair and the wood creaked and moaned, as if as disturbed at the loss of life as Erwin seemed to be. He shook his head. “That is what happened. But what
caused
all of this devastation?” He raised his brows at her.

Lena shook her head. She’d answered him already, hadn’t she?

He smiled faintly. His chair creaked again as he shifted his weight. “The terrorists released nano-robots. Tiny, tiny metal machines too small for the human eye to see. In this case, programmed to destroy fossil fuels. They were specifically designed to work around safeguards, to be self-sufficient, self-replicating. Instead of a kill switch, they had an adaptation switch. The terrorists who made them did everything everyone in science had agreed to never, ever do. We have no idea why.”

Her eyes narrowed. Tiny robots? Little machines?

“They might have only affected our fuels, if not for the government’s response. You see, once they figured out what was happening, they decided to try to use their experimental nano-response team—”