Ultimate Warriors (15 page)

     
Angel
gasped, her eyes going wide. Strands of disbelief and confusion wound around
her, almost but not completely masking a single strand of sadness and anger
entwined.

     
"Very
interesting, don’t you think?" he asked.

     
She
nodded. "You must hate us," she whispered.

     
Julien
stroked her breast again. He should hate them, but with Angel in his arms, her
consciousness touching his, hate was the last thing on his mind. "I want
you," he admitted.

     
Angel
eased down his body. "Trust me as I trusted you."

     
He
barely had time to question what she meant when Angel’s mouth closed around his
cock and slid deep around him. His hands fisted against the door, fisted on a
condom that Julien vaguely realized he should put on. There was no fear of
infection or pregnancy. Rather, without a physical body encasing him, Julien
would come into the air, a mess he would have to eradicate later.

     
He
watched her taking him into the heat of her mouth, encasing him in a slice of
paradise. This had always been his favorite way to come. Julien bit his lip.
The condom
be
damned! He’d scrub at the stain before
he’d make her stop what she was doing.

     
Julien
panted, as she became more insistent. The suction of her mouth increased,
inviting him to forget his careful control. Long red, ringlets of her hair
teased his inner thigh, and one of her breasts brushed the skin above his knee.
Angel’s fingers traced the taut muscles of his legs, cupping the swollen sac
beneath his cock. Her fingernails scraped lightly as she forced him deep
inside.

     
His
lungs ceased to function for a moment, and bright colors swam before his eyes.
The instant of release crashed over him. Julien allowed a shuddering groan to
pass his lips as he gave in to the need to surrender control to her. Her mouth
continued to move, forcing his body past the peak and toward another.

     
Julien
sank to his knees, and Angel went with him. He wound his hands in her hair,
watching her take him ruthlessly. "Please," he begged.
Anything.
Almost anything, he corrected himself.

     
The
second climax came faster. There was a vague sensation of heat — a realization
of fluid on his hands. Julien’s mind argued that she wasn’t real, but that
thought was washed away as aftershocks shook him. Angel was real. She was more
real than any person Julien had met since he started his training. There were
no masks, no fake names, no fake emotions or lack of them.

     
She
released his length and pushed up his body, her breasts pressing to the wall of
his chest and her breath hot on his mouth. Angel teased at his lips, sucking in
first the top and then the bottom slowly. That simply, he wanted her again.

     
Her hand
feathered over his cheek. "You are completely unguarded, at your weakest
physically and emotionally," she reminded him. "I want nothing but
your trust." Angel kissed him passionately, stroking at his body.
"Trust me, Soulchaser."

     
"What
must I do to prove that I trust you?" Almost anything…

     
"You
know how a Calante shows trust. Prove you trust me, and you will have
everything you desire most."

     
"What
do I desire most?" he asked weakly.

     
/"Family.
Freedom.
The truth."
She brushed her curls over his half-grown
cock. "And me."

     
Julien
nodded. She knew everything he wanted most, but he had a duty. Julien had taken
vows.
But, not of my own choice.
If I didn’t serve, I
would have been hunted down. "I—" I want to.
Gods,
how I want to.

     
Angel
nodded. "Come to me again."

     
He
groaned. Julien wanted her desperately, but having her meant breaking the most
sacred of laws, trusting a Grellan and telling her his true name. "I
shouldn’t," he replied miserably.

     
"You
will," she replied confidently. "Even if you don’t desire me that
much, you want the other things I’ve offered. You want the truth."

     
Julien
gathered her close to his body. "I want you," he assured her.

     
Angel
faded from his arms then from his mind.
"When you trust
me."
She was gone, the last of her strands disappearing with her.

     
He
growled in frustration. Julien knelt in a dim room, his come on his hands and
the carpet. He wanted her desperately. What kind of a damned fool was he that
he wanted her this much?

     
Julien
retrieved a cloth from the bathroom and started cleaning the evidence of his
treason. He shouldn’t go to her again, but he would. Angel represented
everything Julien wanted, but taking it would make him Grellan like she was.

* * * *

     
Angel
launched off of the bed, pulling on her robe. They damn well should have told
me, she fumed. She stormed into the main room, taking in the hazy sunshine
filtering through the vines over the windows in annoyance.

     
Debra
looked at her in concern. "What is it?"

     
"They
told him we killed his father," Angel exploded. "How am I supposed to
get him to trust me this way?"

     
Paul
sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between two callused fingers.
"What did you expect them to tell him?
The truth?"

     
"Soulchaser—"
Angel blushed. She wasn’t talking to him now. "Sorry. I have to think of
him as Soulchaser. If I don’t, I may say something stupid."

     
Debra
nodded. "He has to offer his name willingly. The shock of hearing it from
you without that step could be catastrophic to him. Julien has not heard his
name spoken aloud since the night Jake died."

     
"He
is so fragile," Angel whispered.

     
Paul
nodded. "It is what the Calante do to their kind, what the Academies and
their service do."

     
Debra
sighed. "We made a promise to Jake —
The
adults
did, but you are not bound by it. If you would rather not do this—"

     
"No,"
Angel gasped. "No. I owe Jake that much. I — owe Jake everything."
She retreated to her room, pressing a shaking hand to her stomach, glad that
Anthony was off somewhere with Sylvia and not here to feel her reliving that
horrible moment. Even if Angel didn’t want Julien, she owed it to Jake to save
his son. The moment Jake placed himself between her and death, Angel vowed as
much.

     
Julien
smiled as Jennifer collapsed in a giggling fit. He motioned to the book in her
hand. "It’s true. There was a time on Earth when there were no powers.
People depended solely on human police and weapons to keep themselves safe.
There were wars and violence in the streets — not like we have now. I mean that
there were murders every week in any large city you visited. It was a truly
frightening way to live."

     
"Is
that why our people came to Suraden?" she asked solemnly.

     
He
nodded. "Earth had torn itself apart before the age of the powers. When
Dr. Suraden discovered this world, those with the means to make the trip came
here for a new life."

     
"But
there were no powers among them?" she asked curiously.

     
"No.
There were not. According to the early histories of our world, the powers
stayed on Earth to protect those who needed
them
most."

     
"Then
how did the powers get here? Did they settle the upheavals on Earth and come to
help us?"

     
Julien
sighed. He’d always thought that even pure humans should be taught the tales.
As it was, the only cadets who came to the Academy with a firm grasp of history
were those who were raised by parents who were both operatives, those few who
chose to live inside the main complex.

     
"Every
human has within them the potential to mutate to a power — to a higher form of
being with the ability to protect. It only took a few dozen generations for the
mutants to begin appearing among us, the blessed first few who formed the first
Academy."

     
Jennifer
nodded, taking up the stories she’d only recently learned. "Anicore, who
was once known as Calan, Sky Father, who was once known as Thomas, and Mind
Mother, who was once known as Grelda."

     
He
nodded his approval. "Go on."

     
"They
disagreed. Anicore believed that the Academy should adopt the ideals set forth
by the ancients on Earth. Mind Mother wanted to start fresh, to create a new
system for a new world. In the end, they battled. Sky Father and the others who
supported Anicore gathered in the inner cities and called themselves the
Calante. Those who supported Mind Mother mobilized in the outer ring cities and
called themselves the Grellan.

     
"The
tales don’t say why they disagreed. Why would Mind Mother reject a system that
had worked so well on Earth? The massive wars before the time of the powers all
but destroyed Earth, but humans were gaining peace and prosperity under the powers’
protection."

     
"On
a broken world that would take centuries to fix, if it could be fixed at
all," Julien reminded her. "I don’t know why Mind Mother balked at
the system."

     
Then why
am I questioning it so much lately? It was treason to question the laws that
guided the Calante, but the more Julien looked at his existence — at the world
he and those like him inhabited, the more seemingly unnecessary hardships he
noticed. Was this what the Mind Mother foresaw? Perhaps the Academies on Earth
hadn’t been in
place
long enough to gauge long-term
psychological effects.

     
Julien
shook off that thought. No matter what her reasons, Mind Mother led a civil
uprising against the Academy. The battles of the first few generations were
bloody and brutal. What possible defense could there be for causing such unrest
on a peaceful world?

     
"I
don’t know her reasons," he repeated. "The histories don’t say why,
but she started a war over it, the only war on Suraden."

     
The
victors write the histories. His father told Julien that not long before he
died. Empathen — Jake, his mind supplied his father’s name, the name that it
was illegal for him to say aloud — believed in that saying enough to teach
Julien that it was true, but had Jake been wrong? After all, the Grellan killed
Empathen. Were the old tales wrong? Or was Jake the one who had been wrong?

* * * *

     
Julien
nodded to the old man grimly as he took his seat across the desk.

     
Adrien steepled his hands, a sure sign that he wasn’t sure what to
do with Julien.
It was a pose that he had seen often since the old man
lost the ability to read his mind eleven years earlier. "I wanted to speak
to you about the last time you went to a scene."

     
He
nodded, forcing down a mixture of panic and embarrassment behind a careful mask
of indifference. It had been three days. Julien had felt he was safe from any
backlash after two. He should have known not to allow himself to become
complacent. "I’ve debriefed that account for you," he noted calmly.

     
"Everything?"
he asked pointedly.

     
"Anything of use to us."
That was a safe enough
answer. "You always trained us to disregard extraneous knowledge."

     
"Then
tell me everything."

     
Julien
furrowed his brow, as if in confusion. "Why don’t you tell me what has you
confused," he countered, a bold challenge of the old man’s authority. Why
am I doing this? He can crush me. Only if he believes I am guilty of something.
Yes. This tack might work.

     
Adrien
darkened in fury. Strands of it escaped the old man’s tactician control.
"You masturbated there. Explain that, Soulchaser."

     
Julien
smiled, shaking his head while he fervently searched for a lie that would save
him from that synth-cloth-padded room. "Night Warrior and Moon Current
are
a couple, a married couple. They — engaged in some
rather interesting sexual antics, and I encountered the strands. I have a man’s
needs. Play a memory of sex complete with wisps of sensation, and I respond.
But, their antics were hardly important to the report."