The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (17 page)

“You think I’m
so easy?” she taunted, drawing her legs up with a giggle, following
with a flailing barrage of elbows and knees.

“So you want
to play hard to get?” He laughed. “Well, I have a few tricks of my
own.” His face slid down her body, its tongue leaving a trail of
hot moisture ever downward, between her breasts, past her ribs to
her navel, then below. When he brushed her pubic mound with a
stiff, wet tongue, the playful squirming stopped. Pressing his face
to her femininity, she gasped and held him fast. On one level, she
didn’t care if he suffocated in her grip. The total focus of her
being obsessed over his ability to address the wet, yearning little
bud up high between her legs, a task he performed with skill.

After her
convulsive climax, he pulled away. “On your hands and knees,” he
commanded with a throaty voice.

Presenting
twin alabaster globes, she complied. They appeared hard as steel,
but were warm and pliant. Between them nestled her aroused core,
glowing pink, glistening with nectarous secretions, masked by a
sheer wisp of light brown hair.

“Yes!” she
cried out when he joined with her. Afterward, in the middle of
drifting off, she tried to remember whether she’d renewed her
annual her birth control patch.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he
re were five
in the car. Ed sat in the back with Lorna and Karla. Ethan drove.
Beside him was Cynthia. Wives, children, along with the bodyguards
under Thomas’ direction, followed in two more
automobiles.

In early
April, they travelled to Rocket City, the corporation’s space
exploration center. For Lorna, the month had burst upon Central
Florida like a young lycan experiencing
emergence
. Youngsters—drab, featureless bodies, slack skin,
unresponsive expressions, awkward movements, and
feeblemindedness—almost overnight blossomed into adults, with
beautiful, sensual, mature bodies to which nothing seemed
impossible. In the same way, April flashed from winter’s bleakness
to fresh verdancy and tropical color. Even the drab plains of scrub
pine mixed with palmetto displayed a richer sleek texture, gorged
with moisture sucked from the rain-saturated ground. The deep
green-and-violet of water hyacinths choked the ponds to
overflowing. Soon, though, the rains would slow. The mild, diffused
sunlight, heats up to flow down like invisible lava. Everything
wilts under the relentless outpouring. Many of the ponds dry up to
puddles or nothing. Late in summer, before the hurricanes bring
rain, brush fires sweep large areas, turning them into a smoldering
black ruin, like old fireplace ash. However, on that April day,
everything glowed with moist lushness in the mild
daylight.

“Today you
finally get to meet Ed’s other sons and family,” Karla said to
Lorna. Toby, a vampire like Ethan and Ed, had ridden the shuttle
coming from the Moonbase, the last leg in the trip from Mars. He
hadn’t seen his family in six months. Robert, Ed’s youngest, a
hybrid and unmarried, ran the General Electronics Liaison Office.
Everyone called him Bobby, a youngster’s name, that Lorna soon
learned fit well. Both sons lived in Rocket City.

“He’s my
trouble shooter.” That was how Ed characterized Toby. “On the other
hand, Bobby’s all public relations. The boy can convince Eskimos to
buy ice.” Privately, he admitted to Lorna each was too
strong-willed to subordinate to his brother. “My greatest failing
is I could never get them to work together. Each thinks he should
be in charge. The best I can do is to assign them individual,
non-competing projects.”

“Do you think
we can get everybody together back on the island?” Cynthia turned
the rear view mirror her way, and adjusted a part of the
complicated ribbon arrangement woven through her hair.

Ethan didn’t
seem to mind the confiscation of the mirror. “I’m up for a good
old-fashioned reunion. As a child, they were some of my fondest
memories. Also, I’m sure Wendy and the kids will be, too.” He
followed with a dissertation about a school project one of his sons
worked on, the reason why his family missed the homecoming.

While he
spoke, the limo raced upon on a moped in its lane. Farther ahead on
the inner lane, a tractor-drawn wagon full of baled hay lumbered
along.

Without
missing a syllable in his narrative, Ethan eased the car into the
lane with the oncoming hay wagon and floored it. The acceleration
pressed Lorna back into the seat. In a blur, the moped flew by the
window. Then, with a casual turn of the steering wheel the other
way, the car returned to the passing lane about ten yards ahead of
the wagon, a little close for Lorna but everyone else took it in
stride.

“Bobby’s
always up for a get-together.” Cynthia completed the repair to her
hairdo and returned the mirror to Ethan’s use.

Ed’s deep
murmur, like distant sea noise, filled the compartment. “True, but
I think Toby will be more interested in spending alone time with
Jamie and the girls.”

“I guess I
can’t blame him,” Cynthia said. “Anyway, I hope Bobby brings one of
his cameras so we can get some good pictures. He’s the best
photographer in the family.”

“Yes, none of
that cell phone photography for him,” Ethan added.

Ed stared
straight ahead. After a while he spoke with reflection, and if
Lorna read him right, a hint of regret. “Yes, getting together on
the island would have been nice.”

No matter what
Ed told Lorna about how much he believed in hybrid acceptance and
making the best of their time together, his eyes showed the sad
flicker of guilt every parent of the community had for bringing
hybrids into the world; guilt that the professional counseling and
Twelve-Step programs ameliorated, but would never eradicate. From
the way his voice trailed off, he must have relived a memory of his
sons when they were children, in particular regarding the one who’d
live and die before his father and brothers were middle-aged.

“Sixty years
ago, when rising tides undermined most of the structures at the
NASA space complex, it was abandoned. The company rebuilt here,
several miles inland,” Ed explained for Lorna’s benefit.

Lorna glimpsed
the sun brightened southern face of the vehicle assembly building
when they humped over a bridge crossing the St. John’s River, to be
lost behind a wall of trees upon descent. Brush growing to the edge
of the road slab, hurtled by in a green blur. A few curves later,
the road broke into a cleared area. A barbed wire fence glinted
ahead in the sunlight. Beyond, the vehicle assembly building
towered above the rest of the landscape, a white-sided box dwarfing
every other structure, including the tallest of the pine trees.

“Slow down,
Ethan,” Karla said from her corner of the backseat. “The sentry
post is just up the way.”

“I see it,
Aunt Karla,” Ethan answered in the tone of strained patience the
young express toward a beloved but tedious elder.

The guard
recognized Ed and Ethan by sight, and waved them in. The other cars
were detained for identification. As Ethan gusted away from the
checkpoint, the cars left behind shrunk to black toys trimmed in
chrome. The road stretched out straight ahead, a white ribbon of
concrete. On either side, files and rows of wind turbines faced the
oncoming sea breeze. Each was a sixty-foot-tall, white steel pole
supporting a three-bladed windmill.

“Six more
miles to go,” Ethan announced.

Ed shifted
position, presenting the generators with a wide sweep of his arm,
releasing the powerful, virile scent of an Alpha into the car
interior. His scent was beyond Karla’s olfactory range, but Lorna
alerted, followed by Cynthia. “Those were one of Father’s best
ideas,” Ed explained. “Today we’re a net exporter of power to the
grid.”

They crossed a
bridge spanning a lake. Homes with lawns sloping to the shoreline
amid a collection of piers and boathouses filled the perimeter. A
dozen boats, both powered and sail, lolled on the black surface
under the bright but mild sun. In the distance spread the fresh
green of a golf course. On a small ridge, a clubhouse peeked above
a surrounding nest of Queen Palms.

“There’s
Toby’s house,” Cynthia said, pointing to a large rectangular
block-and-stucco structure with a pyramidal roof, larger than most
of the others sitting on the lakefront.

“Nice,” Lorna
answered. There weren’t many of such quality in Orlando
anymore.

They crossed a
second checkpoint and soon passed rows of bungalows. The walls and
the roofs appeared bright and new, not like the dinginess
infiltrating the edges of in-town complexes. “All five thousand
employees live on the compound,” Ethan said.

“It’s a city
of eleven thousand,” Ed added with a touch of pride. “All of it
lies within the second checkpoint. Only top management lives
outside.”

They passed
clusters of shops interspersed among town squares. Three traffic
lights later, the town fell behind. Then Lorna saw the landing
strip. Upon topping a rise, the runway stretched ahead, white
against the greenery, for over two miles. Along one side, a small
crowd gathered around an open grandstand. Twenty or so cars and
mopeds parked behind the structure. Farther along, a control tower
appeared from behind a grove of the tallest pines she’d ever
seen.

Spotting
Lorna’s interest in the trees, Ethan said, “Those are a project
into genetically engineering for rapid growth.”

“That’s a lot
of printer paper.”

“They mature
in half the time. Our Brazilian lab is designing genotypes to
replenish the rain forests.”

“Aren’t those
the trees Gen-El claims can grow out of control?” Lorna asked.

Ed weighed in.
“The same. And they have just enough dimwitted legislators
convinced to keep the project stalled.”

“Well, can
they?”

Ed grimaced.
“Of course not. Their sole function is to create a renewable
resource.”

“Then you need
to get out there and tell the world your side of the story.”

While Ethan
smirked in support, Ed considered the suggestion.

Ahead was the
control tower, a tan metal cylinder supporting a bulb shaped
structure, like a bubble of blown glass at the end of a pipe. Ethan
skirted the parked vehicles and grandstand, turning onto a gravel
road leading to the tower. The rocks crunched under the tires, or
splattered against the fenders.

“We’re here,”
Ed announced. The car stopped with a last squeal of brake band.
Jumping out ahead of Ethan, he opened the door for Lorna.

The control
tower bulb had three stories. The top level contained the actual
air traffic control personnel, along with their equipment. An
observation deck, where everyone gathered, filled the next floor
down. The lowest level contained a restaurant.

Upon arrival,
Lorna put her slim hips into a dainty little chair that just fit,
and which commanded a view of the complete runway. Beside her, Ed
reserved another chair for Toby’s wife Jamie while he stood behind,
placing a hand on Lorna’s shoulder. The others deployed around
them. Presently, Thomas led the rest of the party in.

“Look,” Ethan
exclaimed after a few minutes. “There it is!”

A large,
freckled tanned index finger pointed to a flawless blue section of
the sky revealing nothing Lorna could see, but the monitors around
the room tracked the inbound shuttle, confirming Ethan’s sighting.
Soon, a silver triangle floating on the air like a kite came in
sight, leveling out then touching down with a large trailing
display of multicolored parachutes. The shuttle stopped a couple of
hundred feet from the tower. A fussy little yellow vehicle
sputtered up to the nose, attached a hitch, and towed the
silver-and-white craft to a gate cut into the low chain link fence
separating the runway from the tower. When the machine stopped,
Jamie let out a squeal somewhere between joy and relief. She was a
hybrid, about forty years old.

“Where’s
Bobby?” asked Ed of no one in particular while the first of the
shuttle crew stepped into the daylight.

“Right here,
Dad,” said a voice from the rear.

Lorna turned
to see six feet of hard, articulated muscle with black hair cut off
at the nape. Buried in the slits for eye sockets, quick brown eyes
peered out. Two meaty lips planted in the long, rectangular face
twisted into a fetching half-smile. Bobby was the youngest, but at
thirty-six, he appeared about the same age as his father and older
than Ethan. At the sight of his youngest son, Ed rushed over,
embracing him. “I didn’t know if you were coming. You didn’t
say.”

“Things get so
busy. Sometimes I lose track.”

Ed accepted
the excuse. “Well, no matter. You’re here now. Come, I want you to
meet someone.” Contrasting with Ed’s enthusiasm, Lorna spotted a
degree of reserve from Thomas. The cop in her filed away the
dynamic.

She stood up,
shoulders back and chest forward as she’d learned in Police
Academy, extending a hand. “You must be Father’s new friend.” He
bypassed the offered hand and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. In
the process, he brushed a breast. “I’ve so looked forward to
meeting you.” At his closest point of approach, Lorna sensed his
attraction to her. He wasn’t so bad, either.

“Here,” Ed
gushed, proud of Lorna, and happy she hit it off with Bobby. He
pulled up another chair. “Sit here by us.”

Lorna
rearranged her position to accommodate Bobby. In doing so, her
glance fell on Thomas and Karla. Body language implied disagreement
with the preferential treatment Ed showed to his youngest son.
Jamie White, standing beside two lissome pre-teen hybrid daughters,
observed with unabashed bewilderment; after all, wasn’t this
supposed to be her husband’s moment?