The Valkyrie's Guardian (3 page)

She could tell Jack had about five seconds of good humor left. Four … three …

Both boats rocked as Jack leaned over and grabbed Barney by the collar, then the deputy with the roaming eyeballs. Barney went into overdrive, blinking and wincing in tandem. She decided Jack's method of persuasion was as effective as the mindwipe if less subtle. For the second time that morning, Jack's opponents could only wet their pants in response. Absurd, the dark spots on the front of their geeky khaki shorts. She didn't get it. Jack was fearsome, sure, but was he really
that
frightening?

Jack shook the men loose and they stumbled back on the deck. Jack turned to face her, his eyes a hyper shade of neon green that practically shot sparks, and at once, she got
it. He'd never made
that
face at her, but seeing the leftovers made her spine tingle and hair stand on end. His nostrils flared, veins in his forehead bulged, and his eyebrows lowered in an expression that contorted his handsome features into a warlike mask. With the muscles in his neck and shoulders bunched, he exuded menace, volatile like a charging bull. It was a death wish to mess with him.

Jack started the engine and sped away before the rangers recovered themselves, and Cassie burned with curiosity. Something important had just happened, but he still shielded his thoughts from her. All she could read from him was a blank wall with a stark red CLASSIFIED stamped across. Damned military training again.

She hated being in the dark. Cassie rose and walked back to sit in the seat across from the captain's chair. She studied Jack, trying to figure him out. She could feel it — something was off, something beyond the hassle of being stopped by the rangers, and the weird incident with the boaters couldn't be a coincidence.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Jack leaned into the aisle, grasped the side of her neck with one tense, heated hand, and kissed her hard on the mouth. Then once more, gently, teasing her with a wicked but tender roll of his lips. Ever so lightly he traced across her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue, and a dozen alarms went off all over her body. His kaleidoscope hazel eyes flashed with that iridescent glow-in-the-dark energy she'd noticed earlier when his anger flared. Without a word he leaned back and continued driving, watching the channel for traffic.

The shock wore off, but her heart still kicked in a frenzied rhythm. She could swear there was a magnetic heat wave in the forty-four inches of space between their seats. Jack seemed oblivious to the flash of heat, but it consumed her, burning hottest at the top of her head, her fingertips, and a few places she didn't dare scrutinize. Cassie couldn't resist the urge to press a finger to her lips — on fire! — and her pulse throbbed there. For a weak moment, she wondered if she would pass out, over one brief kiss. She'd never live it down.

A few minutes later she dared to ask,
Care to explain that one, Jack?

No.

She stared at the stubborn line of his jaw, the tingling massaged sensation still fresh on her skin from the scrape of his whiskers. She would never look at his morning scruff again without conjuring the memory.

He took his phone from the glove box and punched a key, speed dial two for Kyros Vassalos, Jack's boss. Cassie had grown up at Network-One, Kyros' most elite academy for extra-sentient children; being Kyros' ninth-great-granddaughter had qualified her when her talent fell short. He would be none too pleased she and Jack hadn't managed to stay out of trouble for the three days he'd planned to spend with his wife, Lyssa, for their anniversary.

Jack's conversation was brief and laced with military lingo she didn't understand, like “SITREP” and “SNAFU” and “MO” and strings of numbers she assumed were coordinates.

Jack hung up and cursed, dragging a hand through his already wild hair.

“What gives?”

His nostrils flared again. “Our vacation just came to an end, darlin'.”

“Wha — Why? Jack, that's — ”

“I just saw a ghost, Cass.”

That stumped her. She waited for him to explain. He didn't.

“A ghost, as in … someone you thought was dead, but isn't after all?”

“Smart lass.”

“Okay … Not Merodach, right? I mean, we're all sure he's — ”

“Merodach is oh-so-dead.”

Cassie sighed in relief. It was one thing for their vacation to turn into a Network operation, but facing Kyros' arch-nemesis with one berserker and a half-rate healer? Suicide.

Jack swerved around a mile-marker buoy, missing it by inches. “Besides, if that was Merodach, you would've felt his presence a mile away. It usually made me retch.”

“And did you feel nauseated just now?”

“Only colossally pissed. You felt it too.”

“Tell me, Jack.”

“No. I have to run some patrols, and then we're going home.”

“It has something to do with those crazy boaters, right? What was wrong with them? You can tr — ”

“No, Cassie.” He said it as a stern parent would, or the owner of a naughty dog.

Irritation reared like an itch, magnifying years' worth of frustration in Jack's refusal — a reminder that the Network's inner circle would always keep her on the outskirts. “I'm not asking for classified information, I'd just — ”

“No!”
His vehemence startled her. Tension knotted the muscles in his arms and his gaze darted across the horizon, restless.
Weird. She didn't like seeing Jack spooked.

“Which one is it, Barney or Eyeballs?”

“Eyeballs.”

“He was a creep.”

“You have no idea.”

Minutes later she added, “You'll probably get a raise, Jack, for uncovering the latest evil plot. Or at least a real vacation?”
She knew the situation was serious, because he didn't even crack a smile.

“Excuse me? Uh — sorry.

You're just so gorgeous you made me forget my pick-up line.”

—Jack MacGunn, King of the Bad Pick-Up Line

Jack quit fiddling with the stereo knobs and scanned the twilit highway. He wasn't going to fidget. He would not wag his knee back and forth or drum on the steering wheel. Flexing his glutes didn't count, because without a distraction the top of his head would blow off.

What was he supposed to do, with Cassie's head cradled in his lap and her hands twined around his thigh? Did she think he was her personal teddy bear? He tried not to think about her pouty lips resting over what was
not
a pillow …

What he hadn't told Kyros over the phone: he was losing control. And the cause of his insanity: Cassiopeia Noyon. That boat driver trying to wreck into her — bad enough. But a gun aimed at her head? Three decades of careful discipline had come undone in one panicked moment. He'd nearly gone berserk — lucky he'd ripped apart beer cans instead of spinal cords. It had been close, had hung in the balance, until her voice cut through the red haze in his fevered brain.

It railed against every instinct to turn tail and run away when a resurrected psychopathic terrorist patrolled Lake Powell disguised as a park ranger. And what about the brainwashed drunken boaters and their half-assed assassination attempts? What was the point? With Kyros as the mastermind and Jack only the sidekick, when ordered to stand down, he did. True, the prime objective was guard duty. Check. He had to quit worrying about it or go out of his mind.

A wooden Utah-shaped sign announced he had left Arizona. Jack glanced in the rearview mirror and bid farewell to his weekend at the lake — towering sandstone hills painted crimson in the sunset offset by the stark cerulean of the water. The duo-chromatic desert landscape was a boon for his eyes; he saw only primary colors and gradations of light.

Stuck on the sparse desert highway, seven hours to go, with oblivious Cassie hammering away at his self-control. No place to put his right arm but to drape it along her side. His fingers toyed with a tattered belt loop on her cutoff shorts. Without permission his fingers traveled to graze the soft skin of her thigh as his arm rested along her flank. The contact made her body temperature rise to match his, and the spicy perfume of pheromones clouded the air from the glands inside her thighs near her groin …

Still sound asleep.

Jack cursed and gripped the steering wheel. He counted the yellow lines on the road. He shouldn't have kissed her today, a foolish impulse, because now he knew what she tasted like, and he wanted more. Kyros trusted him with Cassie, one of only two known extra-sentient females in existence.

The adorable little tyrant had stolen his heart fifteen years ago, but he quit feeling like a big brother when her looks changed from coltish to
woman
. He'd quit wrestling her on the floor and carrying her on his shoulders, for one thing. Now she had the looks of a goddess and a medical degree, and he was still Jack the berserker — a mouth-breathing gorilla, in her estimation. She considered herself slumming, here with him.

At age twenty-one she wasn't jailbait anymore, but he did have seventeen years on her. Of course, Kyros was almost three centuries older than his wife. They both looked no more than twenty-five. No doubt Jack was also an immortal extra-sentient, frozen in his twenty-something body. Too early to tell for Cassie. He would take her either way. But she didn't seem to want him in the first place, so it didn't matter.

Not to mention the issue of her being the ninth-great-granddaughter of the bloody freaking most powerful extra-sentient in the world, Kyros Vassalos. The three-centuries-old Greek warrior-slash-physicist was the founder of the Network, essentially a sanctuary for superheroes — or freaks. X-Men for nerds, without the vinyl uniforms.

Kyros could alter electromagnetism, but he played second fiddle to his wife Lyssa, whose powers were colossal but unstable
.
She'd killed the thousand-year-old supervillain, Merodach, by stealing Kyros' incendiary power and detonating a
molecular electromagnetic anti-matter bomb operated solely by her mind. Word had it, all that remained of the evil extra-sentient was a film of pink goo … which is why Jack would be downright
stupid
to mess with Cassie when she had the King and Queen of Freaky Magic as guard dogs.

Yet all Jack could think about was Cassie, a tribute to the male fantasy, lounging in what she didn't know looked like a post-coital pose. That white retro one-piece swimsuit she wore was supposedly in protest of … whatever. It didn't work if she meant to be less provocative. It turned translucent when wet, for starters. The memory of her bending over to find his ski vest danced in his vision, replaying over and over in slow motion. She was like a naughty fifties pinup girl.

And he had a thing for those long, looong legs. Oh yes, Jack was a leg-man. He dared a glance — one leg stretched and the other propped on the leather upholstery, a liberty he would allow no one else in his truck. And since she was five foot ten, he had a long way to look. Up and down … Slender, shapely, toned. Perfection.

Jack shook his head, trying to clear the anise-honey-almond-scented haze from his head. She'd been eating black licorice again, and the honey almond scent came from her hair. He rolled down the window for fresh air before he did something unforgivable, such as licking her. He would drag the tip of his tongue along the rim of her cute little ear, and if she liked that, he would tease her neck with —

Get a grip, MacGunn.
He counted the damn yellow lines again, but he only made it to 128 before he caught his fingers stroking Cassie's skin. Her sleeping mind made a sound like purring, and her lips pulled into a smile as she nuzzled his leg. A blue-black lock of hair draped over her face and the rest fanned across his lap, making him swallow hard. Lucky Greek genes for perfect hair, long and glossy with punky blue highlighted streaks — Cassie's attempt at rebellion. He liked her this way: sweet, cuddly, and silent. As soon as she woke, she would berate him in her posh British-French-hybrid accent, reminding him she hated his guts.

At first Jack smiled when she shifted on the bench and sighed like a little girl, still fast asleep. Then she rolled onto her back and parted her knees with a moan that could only mean one thing. He shouted, “Whoa!” and Cassie dug her nails into his thigh as she shot awake.

He swerved from the edge of the left lane all the way into the gravel off the shoulder. The trailer fishtailed behind the truck and tilted onto two wheels as he corrected right, and for a few tense moments, Jack thought he would be lifting a boat, trailer, and a Ford F350 back onto the road. That was his idea of fun but difficult to explain to onlookers.

The truck stopped in a cloud of dust, then Cassie freaked out. “
Jack!
What on
earth
is going on? You could have
killed
us both! And then how would I put you back together?” His heart pounded, his head vibrated and his fists threatened to yank out the steering column.

All he heard next from her was, “Blah, blah,
bad driver,
blah, blah
wreck!
”
and “Blah, Blah,
touch me,
blah, blah, blah,
How dare you?
” He may have heard her promise to sic Kyros on him as well as castrate Jack herself. “What were you thinking?” she railed.

He knew he was being a jerk when he answered in thick brogue, “Darlin', I'm still feelin' lucky we didna wreck my boat. Custom paint job, an' all.” Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head, and he thought she would rip his throat out.

She snarled and tackled him, and proved him right about his throat. She had wicked claws too. And she was strong. But he had sparred with Cassie so often that he knew all her moves, since he had essentially taught her to fight in the first place. In the confines of the cab there wasn't much either could do except bump their elbows and knees on the dash.