Stormes match, p.5
Storme's Match, page 5
part #1 of Grim Reapers Series
Something large entered her field of vision from the left. Even through her haze, she somehow knew it was Storme. His large body dislodged the Remur off of her, and she drew a deep breath for the first time in what seemed like minutes. Eva tried to move but found the pain moved with her, so she decided to stay still for a moment. Storme’s knife gleamed in the early morning light. It was covered in rust-colored Remur blood. He stabbed the Remur in the back again and again, tirelessly.
The Remur roared, enraged. He brought up his arms, trying to get his claw around Storme to pull him over his head, but the soldier was strong and agile, and the alien’s arms were too short. Suddenly, the alien’s roars changed from enraged to agonizing. Storme had finally found the right spot. The large body spasmed for a few seconds and, finally, fell to the ground. Storme fell with him, the knife still wedged deep in the alien’s back. He was taking no chances. Storme stood up and climbed off of the dead alien’s body.
Eva let out the breath she had been holding.
Their gazes locked, and he smiled a feral smile.
“Thank you,” she croaked.
Storme nodded, breathing hard. “You okay?”
“Gracias, señorita.” The soft voice behind her startled her. She looked up to find the young, dark-haired man leaning heavily on Zander’s arm. She wondered how he was even standing. She knew very little Spanish, but thank you was one of the words she did know. “I owe you,” he continued. His English, lightly accented and musical, made her smile.
Storme leaned over and grabbed her wrist to pull her up, his touch surprisingly gentle.
“Can you stand?” he asked. He was scowling again, and she wondered what she’d done to piss him off.
She nodded and leaned into his hand. The pain was slowly subsiding, and she found she could draw breath again. He pulled her up effortlessly but made no move to let her go.
#
Gabriel
Fuck. It seemed he could not force himself to let go of her wrist. In his mind, he still saw the Remur straddling Eva, the claw seconds away from severing her life. A few moments later, and he would have been too late to save her. He’d seen a lot of people die in the last few years. He did not fully understand why this was any different, but she was beautiful, and brave, and something about her just called out to him.
He looked at her. Eva was pale but looked perfectly capable of standing on her own, so he forced himself to let go and focus on his men.
Sawyer was limping towards them. His blond hair was matted blood, but he was grinning and did not look any worse for wear. Kopf was smiling outright. He’d apparently gotten his hands on a Remur knife to add to his growing collection. Zander held Prado gently by the side. The medic looked worried.
“You okay, J.?” Storme asked.
The younger man winced. “I think so. Shit, that thing was about to crack me open like a fortune cookie.” Zander let him down gently and Prado sat down.
Storme locked eyes with Zander. He’s going to be okay, the medic mouthed. Storme let out a relieved sigh. Their med kits were bulging with great stuff. QuickClot could deal with open wounds, and they had special pressure casts to deal with simple fractures. But there was little they could do for a comrade with a broken back. Were that to happen, the soldier would need a lot more than a med kit. He’d need the kind of hospital that simply did not exist anymore.
“You saved his life,” Zander said, looking at Eva. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Eva nodded, her hand testing her ribs gingerly. She seemed embarrassed by the attention.
“Meir, you okay?” Storme asked.
“Fine,” the ex-Israeli agent answered. He had disposed of his Remur attacker in record time and didn’t even sound out of breath. “But the Grim Reaper isn’t here.”
Fuck, he’d forgotten all about him. “Where did he disappear to?”
“I didn’t see him, Storme, but he didn’t get past us.”
“Let’s go find the women, make sure they’re okay,” Storme said cautiously.
“He’s probably with the young,” she said.
The soldiers all turned to face her. “What young?”
“You saw the dead woman back there. How do you think she died? It happened a couple hours before you came for us. They pulled the young right out of her body.” She made eye contact with Storme.
“Are you sure it was alive?” Storme asked. In their time fighting the Remur, they’d interrupted a lot of experiments, but they hadn’t heard of a live Remur birth.
Eva nodded. Storme exchanged a dark look with his men.
“So human women really can carry an offspring that shares no Earth DNA.”
“Oh my God, it’s really working for them,” Meir said.
This would explain why the Grim Reaper was there. It was great news for the Remur. Very bad news for humanity.
Chapter 5
Gabriel
They moved slower because of Prado’s injury and were four minutes late getting to the rendezvous point. The women were standing next to the vehicles, looking taut as bowstrings, when they should have followed his instructions and been on their way to the embassy by then. Storme was so relieved to find the women safe, he did not have it in him to be angry at them.
The women ran to Eva and hugged her in a tangle of arms and legs. When they broke the huddle, all of them spoke at the same time.
“Eva! Are you okay? What happened?”
Eva nodded, looking uncomfortable with their praise.
He got behind the wheel of the larger vehicle, and Sawyer did the same with the smaller one. Both vehicles were overcrowded, but nobody complained.
He drove as fast as he dared, making an effort to keep the ride smooth, for the sake of Prado and the women. On the seat beside him, Prado leaned back, his eyes clenched tight against the pain. Storme hoped a strong painkiller and some rest when they got back to the Residence were all he would need.
Luckily, they encountered no living thing between them and their objective. They rode into the empty city, through the ruins of the Arc de Triomphe and down the huge, dusty avenues. The dilapidated ruin made him unspeakably sad. He knew that archway had signified something, long before his time, and now it was simply a bunch of rocks waiting to crumple.
The ground here was also covered in that faint clay-like substance that seemed to follow the Remur wherever they went, but here and there small green plants peeked out of the asphalt. “Life will find a way,” some best-selling author wrote once, and he was right. At least when it came to certain life-forms. It’d been months since they’d encountered human life in the streets. The few people remaining, in this part of the world, at least, knew better than to come out when they heard a sound.
The first time they’d heard of the Residence, a group of people led by a person known only as the Maire, Storme had felt a frisson of excitement. Perhaps this was what they had been looking for, a group of people making a stand, readying themselves for the big fight. And what better place to launch the resistance from than that symbolic bastion of freedom, the old California embassy. When they got there, however, the place was silent as a tomb. When they finally met Maire Stockwell, they understood the group was actually living in the tunnels underneath the embassy, right between the embassy and the abandoned Métro.
The survivors, for that is exactly what they were, lived much like moles. Men, women, children, all squinting in the dark. In a few generations, if nothing changed, he could imagine humans evolving towards keener eyesight and hearing to compensate for the darkness they lived in. But no, he could not afford to think this way, not when the fight had not been decided yet.
This time, when he saw the large embassy building appear, the flag still waving—torn but proud—on its mast by the front lawn, he turned right and drove behind the building. A large steel door opened, as if by magic, leading them straight into the tunnels underneath. The car behind him had barely gone through when the door closed silently behind them. He kept driving, through a winding tunnel, until he saw the abandoned train tracks of the Paris Métro. He parked the vehicle besides an old train.
“You made it back,” said a female voice.
The Maire’s lined expression was cautious as she walked out of the old train to meet them, flanked by two large men from her security team.
Storme stepped aside quickly and opened the back door to the vehicle. Zander did the same to the other vehicle.
Women started piling out. Saoirse came out first and held out a hand to Magda and Eva. Magda took it, gratefully, while Eva nodded her thanks but ignored it, jumping easily to the ground and reaching back for Bobbi. Storme wanted to run to her, but the larger man from the Maire’s security team was running towards them, so he forced himself to step aside.
The man looked like he had not slept in a week. In his eyes Storme read some of the despair he imagined he would feel if the woman he loved was taken away from him. He wondered if Eva knew how much she meant to this man. His hands clenched. Why had he ever imagined a beautiful woman like her would be unattached? And why did it matter, when he had nothing to offer her anyway? He was surprised by how much it hurt to watch, though.
The man came up to Eva, but instead of stopping just clapped her softly on the back and kept running towards Magda. When he reached the pregnant woman, he fell down to his knees, placing his cheek on her swollen belly as his arms encircled her body. His own body shook from the strength of his sobs.
“We’re okay, Louis, we’re okay,” Magda cried happily, going down on her own knees to look him in the eye.
“Mon amour, I thought I’d lost you … both.”
Storme looked away from the intimate moment, ashamed of how relieved he was to realize Eva was not with Louis.
Standing a little apart, Eva held on to Saoirse and Bobbi. Rachel and Carrie came and joined them.
The Maire’s expression morphed slowly into one of real happiness.
“You did it,” she smiled, her French accent showing through. She moved fast to touch and exchange soft words with each of the women. When she looked back up at the men, her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “You kept your promise. Thank you.”
Storme nodded.
Suddenly, the Maire noticed the girl, now flanked between Eva and Magda and Louis, who had walked up to them as well. “And who’s this?” she asked.
“This is Bobbi,” Eva replied. “Bobbi, say hello to the Maire. This is her home.”
The Maire laughed a crystalline laugh. For a second, she looked like the diplomat’s wife she’d once been. In a different life.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Eva. This is home for all of us, now. For you too, Bobbi. And you,” she added, her gaze sweeping out to the men. “We simply cannot thank you enough.”
Her expression turned calculating as she surveyed them. “I imagine you and your team are eager to be on your way, but I hope you will stay with us for a few days.”
Then she turned, her low heels clicking gently on the hard floor, her attention fully on the women. “We need to get you all checked out by Dr. Lee,” she said, ushering the women deeper into the tunnel.
Storme sighed. This had happened to them before with different survivor groups. The Maire would ask his team to stay. They would say no. There was only one thing he wanted from the Maire, and that was the stealth vehicle she had promised them. A third vehicle, equipped with proper stealth capabilities, would go a long way as they headed further north. Payment for a job well done.
Hopefully, she wouldn’t try to go back on her word. That would not go down well with the team. He did not think she was that type of person, but it was difficult to know, from her stoic expression, just how that conversation would go. That was a concern for a later time. For now, he needed a shower and a nap.
He picked up his things and caught sight of Eva Carter’s shapely behind as she left the room. Maybe there was one other thing that interested him in the Residence. Too bad he couldn’t do much about it.
#
Eva
She was used to taking lightning-quick showers. It was a habit she’d picked up in the army, and one that was certainly serving her well in the post-alien invasion world, where hot showers were a mere long-ago memory. However, this time Eva stood under the showerhead longer than usual, the lukewarm water soothing her aching muscles.
She used half a bar of soap to clean herself, trying not to think of the way the aliens had touched her, knowing the memory would probably stay with her forever. She decided to shampoo her hair one last time.
Third time lucky.
She and the other women had all been checked by Dr. Lee to make sure they were healthy and, in the case of the women who had fainted during the tests, to make sure they hadn’t been implanted with a Remur fetus. The second part of the check, she knew—and the reason the Maire had been there the entire time—was to make sure they weren’t unwittingly carrying any trackers that could lead the Remur to the Residence. Thankfully, it looked like they were clean.
Eva rinsed her hair for the third time then toweled herself dry. She should be exhausted, but she felt far too restless to sleep.
She thought of Laura and the women who, like her, had endured tests and torture at the hands of the Remur. Now that there was at least one Remur young out there who’d successfully been grown inside a human, the situation was only going to get worse for humans.
Her thoughts turned to Gabriel Storme. She tried not to think of him as a man. He was too big, too raw, his gray eyes saw too much. A man like him would just be a distraction. Instead, she focused on him as a team leader. She thought of the way he and his men had fought the Remur. How they’d be leaving soon to do exactly that again, and again, until they had no breath left or until the Remur were all gone, whichever came first.
She admired them for what they were doing, but it was more than that. She realized with a start that she could not imagine going back to the life she had led before her capture, when she had thought simply protecting the people at the Residence was enough. Now, she knew she needed to be part of the fight against the aliens. There was so much more she could contribute. She just needed to convince Storme and his team to let her join them.
She would miss her friend Saoirse, and the Maire, of course, but the security team was strong now. They would be okay without her.
Making up her mind, she finished dressing quickly, squeezing herself into a clean pair of black trousers and black T-shirt. She twisted her wet hair into a pile on the top of her head and made her way quickly to the second basement, where the soldiers’ quarters were. The Maire had chosen their rooms herself, keeping them separate from the rest of the residents just in case they turned out to be untrustworthy, though they had more than proven their honor and their courage over the last few days.
She looked around, hoping not to bump into anybody. She blushed, wondering what someone would think if they did see her. Knowing she only had seconds before she lost her courage, she knocked on the door briskly and waited.
#
Gabriel
After showering and changing his clothes, Storme felt almost human again. That nap was still on his list of things to do, but he was feeling too restless. He had spoken to Zander, who was with Prado in the infirmary, and was at least no longer worried about his friend. The Residence’s doctor agreed with Zander: Prado needed an anti-inflammatory and a few days’ rest. It could have been so much worse.
According to the doctor, the women and the girl were all in good shape, all things considered. The doctor had asked all the questions he and his men had avoided asking during the rescue operation and determined the Remur had not gotten far in the testing process yet. He did not know who they had to thank for that, but it was excellent news.
Storme could no longer kid himself about why he was feeling restless. He simply could not stop thinking about the soldier. Eva Carter. He even liked the sound of her name. He’d enjoyed watching her fight. Such strength and courage in such a tight, sexy package. He thought back to that last glimpse of her ass as she had disappeared into the corridor, wondering what she would look like out of those pants.
He shook his head to clear the image. Maybe he should have jerked off in the shower after all.
He was pondering the benefits of going to find the Maire rather than waiting for her to reach out to him, when there was a knock on his door. The knocks were not tentative, but they were not the firm, familiar knocks his team would have used either.
Opening the door a crack, Storme placed his body in front of it. He was in no mood to socialize and didn’t like people invading his personal space.
His heart rate sped up when he saw Eva on the other side of the door. As if his mind, or his cock, had conjured her with all that thinking about her. He forced his expression to remain neutral.
“May I come in?” she asked. If he’d thought she was beautiful before, he could not have imagined what she would look like when she cleaned up. She looked fresh out of the shower, hair still damp and piled messily on her head. He itched to run his hands through the golden strands and see them come loose.
He moved out of her way to let her through. Eva looked behind her almost furtively as she closed the door, though there was nobody there. A soft blush spread from her neck all the way up her face.
“You look great,” he said.
Her blush deepened.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked, before realizing he did not actually have anything to offer her. She nodded. He came back with a glass of water from the tap. She took it and smiled back a bit uncertainly.
“I’m glad I found you alone,” she began. He nodded encouragingly. She had a beautiful voice.
She stared straight into his eyes, her pupils huge. “I’ve been thinking …” she continued.
“I’ve been thinking as well,” he drawled, moving closer to her. He brought up his hand very gently and ran it against her cheekbone, grabbing a stray strand of hair and tucking it behind her ear. She leaned lightly into his touch, like a sunflower that’d been starved of light.
