Chapter Two
I shouldn’t have pushed her so hard. Isaac watched Saige leave the classroom, and then he rubbed his face tiredly. Even though he was good at it, he hated teaching. Dealing with so many students grated on his empathic abilities, and keeping his mental gifts locked down for hours on end tended to make him cranky. Not to mention that Saige saw through all of his attempts to hide who he truly was. He’d fucked up that conversation royally. He shook his head and stood up.
“Maybe I should have told her more,” he said to himself as he gathered his things. “Idiot.” He’d have to try again, that is, if he could convince her to listen to him. Saige’s emotions pierced through all of his walls, and teaching a classroom full of students while she was angry with him gave him a splitting headache. If only he wasn’t convinced that she was the reason he’d felt so compelled to settle down for a while…
Tomorrow. I’ll talk to her again tomorrow, he decided as he left the classroom. He only taught two classes at Northern Arizona University, and he was done for the day. As he headed outside, he slowly let down his mental walls. Not completely, because he was still in the middle of campus, but enough to help with the headache. He hated locking his empathic gifts down so tightly, but he had no choice. He couldn’t function in a crowd otherwise. He headed for the parking lot, ignoring the weight of the minds around him pressing into his senses. He unlocked the car, and let his thoughts drift. Inevitably, they settled on Saige with her sharp intelligence and combative attitude. There was something about her that intrigued him. Something compelling. Her anger was just a screen for a deeper hurt, he knew that much, but then, she’d as much as admitted that today. The knowledge didn’t help.
He shook his head again and drove out of the city. His stronghold lay up in the San Francisco Peaks, right in the midst of the ponderosa pine zone, and he couldn’t wait to bask in the solitude of his simple stone cabin. He’d built it over a hundred and fifty years ago, when he and his brothers were separated by a lack of technology and the need for space after their parents’ deaths. Being a Sentry had its perks—he enjoyed the ability to manipulate energy fields and fly starships, but the loneliness sometimes hit him hard. Living nearly forever wasn’t at all the gift most people thought it was, especially when you didn’t have anyone except annoying siblings to share it with.
“And speak of the devil,” he muttered as his cell phone rang. He tapped the screen on his car’s dashboard to answer. “Bruno, what a surprise. Not. You’re right on schedule. When are you going to stop calling me every day?”
His brother’s annoyance came through loud and clear over the car’s speakers. “When the hell are you going to stop playing teacher and finish deploying the sensors?” he retorted. “That swarm of Spiders out near Alpha Centauri isn’t going to send us a memo if they move on our solar system, you know. We need to be ready. They might not have brains, but they’re aliens that want to eat us, and we can’t afford any mistakes.”
Isaac scowled. “Hello to you, too, brother. How are you? I’m fine, thank you for asking. It’s a beautiful day here in Arizona.”
“For fuck’s sake, Isaac, now is not the time for pleasantries,” Bruno replied testily.
“You’re always so cranky.” Isaac rolled his eyes. “I think living in Manhattan is making you lose perspective, Bruno. I already set up all the sensors we have. Remember? I told you that yesterday.” He exited one-eighty north and headed up into the mountains. “I even double checked the data stream. Everything is functioning perfectly.”
“What about the sentient Spiders? We never got to the bottom of that,” Bruno said, clearly not a bit mollified. “The planetary camouflage shield we repaired a few months ago only hides us from them. It can’t repel anything.”
“I can’t find any evidence that the Spiders acted with an organized intelligence. I know it looked that way, but after I dissected a bunch of them, the data didn’t support the theory. The crystalline structure had no changes to its matrix, and the few I tested as a mini swarm performed as expected. Solomon corroborated my results with the same tests when he ran them, independently from my experiments. You know this.” He sighed. “They’re not sentient aliens, Bruno. They’re just crystalline bugs intent on eating whatever they can get their claws into. The threat hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. We will protect Earth just as our father did. Just as the Sentries on the other continents do.”
“Ever since Greyson paired with Eva, and Solomon with Lucy, all hell has broken loose. People know about the Spiders, Isaac. The Stronghold net was hacked, somehow, and we still don’t know how or why.”
Isaac sighed. “Bruno, Solomon and Lucy rebuilt the firewall. It won’t get hacked again. In fact, it’s stronger than it has ever been, thanks to the addition of Lucy and Eva’s energy. You’ve got to calm down before you have a freaking stroke.”
“I’m getting calls from the goddamn President every other day. We need answers,” was Bruno’s response.
“That’s your job, brother,” Isaac reminded him. “You agreed to be the primary liaison between us Sentries and the humans.”
“Don’t remind me,” Bruno muttered.
Isaac smiled tightly. His brother was too far away from him to sense his emotions, but he could tell things weren’t going well on his end. “Why did you really call me? Again? You haven’t asked me anything new, Bruno. And you’re clearly on edge.”
“Why are you holed up teaching history to a bunch of kids, Isaac? It’s not like you to tie yourself down like that,” Bruno finally said after a long pause. “I’m worried about you.”
“You’re worried about me?” Isaac burst out laughing. “You’re the one tearing your hair out with stress, Bruno.” He slowed as he neared the intersection to the gravel road that wound through the forest. Home beckoned. His very soft, very comfortable bed awaited him. The soothing view from the back deck summoned him. He wanted nothing more than to shed his disguise and relax, except … he frowned. He worried about Saige. Something about her had all of his instincts set to high alert. Why?
“Yeah, I’m worried about you. You never hole up in one place for long, and you’ve been there for, what? Three months? Four? It’s unnatural. We’re all concerned about you,” Bruno said, interrupting his train of thought.
“Four,” Isaac said shortly. Had it really been that long? “I have my stronghold here, as you well know. Is it weird that I just want to stay home for a bit?”
“Yes,” Bruno said bluntly. “You never do that. You get restless, and the next thing we know, you’re off in a starship visiting a nebula. Or Paris.”
Isaac snorted. “I’ve never visited a nebula. That doesn’t even make any sense. And I don’t recall ever going to Paris by starship. It’s much easier to fly commercial. No worries about hiding advanced tech that way,” he joked, hoping that his light tone would distract Bruno from his interrogation. Isaac didn’t want to talk about his strange urge to hole up in the woods. He didn’t understand it himself.
“Nevertheless. You’re still in Arizona. Why?” Bruno’s tone told him he wasn’t going to be put off any longer. “And this time, I’m not hanging up until you tell me, Isaac. You can’t use the excuse of a failing cell signal. Solomon fixed that for us a year ago when he hooked our phones into the Stronghold net.”
Isaac carefully steered his car onto the dirt path leading to his house. Did he dare confide in his brother? Bruno might seem impatient, but Isaac knew his gruff exterior concealed a deep compassion for the people he loved. He sighed. “Honestly? I’m not sure,” he finally offered. He steered his car to the parking space in front of his stone house and turned off the engine, but didn’t bother to get out of the car. He grabbed his phone and switched from hands free to normal mode. “I feel like something important is going to happen here.” He ran a hand over his head, dislodging his loose beanie. He threw it onto the passenger seat and ran his fingers through his hair. “And there’s this girl, one of my students…”
“Oh, no, please don’t tell me you’ve met someone,” Bruno said, his tone edging from concern to disbelief.
Isaac smiled, immediately recognizing his brother’s frustration with his indirect explanation. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
“Who is she?” Bruno asked bluntly.
“A student. She’s twenty-one. Her name is Saige Ellis, and she hates me.” He didn’t elaborate.
“She hates you? That’s … weird.” Bruno’s tone had taken on the inflection of a man only half paying attention to the conversation.
“Are you looking her up?” Isaac demanded, suddenly angry. “If so, knock it off. I already researched her. Nothing out of the ordinary pops up. She has no connection to Eva’s evil stepfather, a hacking ring, or anything else.”
“Her mother and sister were killed in a car crash when her father lost control of the car,” Bruno said.
I know that, asshole. Isaac didn’t reply aloud. He knew Bruno hated it when people didn’t listen to him. He gritted his teeth and told himself that if he hung up, Bruno would just call him back. He’d done it before.
After a moment, Bruno continued. “Jesus, Isaac. Her father’s a drug dealer. And she’s practically an infant.”
“Everyone is young compared to us, Bruno. Twenty-one years is full grown,” Isaac immediately replied, annoyed. Unexpectedly, the way Saige’s smooth, short hair slid across her cheek when she tossed her head filled his thoughts. She had spirit. She wasn’t afraid to confront him, and that wasn’t the norm. People rarely argued with him, except for his brothers, of course. But Saige didn’t react the way he expected, and that attracted him.
Attract is too simple a word for what I feel, he mused. Hell, he wanted to run his hands through her hair. He wanted to press his lips to her pale cheek and inhale until he memorized her scent. She looked so delicate, but her personality was strong and stubborn. He liked the contradiction. He rubbed his eyes. His attraction to her wasn’t the point, here. “Look, there’s something about her that pings my radar, okay? I’m investigating.”
“Investigating?” Bruno laughed, suddenly sounding much less upset. “Okay. Have fun investigating your way right into a pairing, brother.”
“I’m investigating her, not asking her out on a date.” Isaac got out of the car and slammed the door irritably. “She hates me because she knows I’m hiding something. Nothing is going to happen between us.”
“Uh huh. You keep telling yourself that, Isaac.”
“She’s my student. It’s unethical to get involved with her.” Isaac unlocked his front door and headed inside. He tossed his keys into the ceramic bowl he’d put on the sideboard next to the door.
“Tell that to Greyson. He met Eva when she was still in high school, remember?”
Isaac frowned. He’d forgotten about that. “Even so. I’m not Greyson.” He kicked off his shoes and headed for the deck out back, avoiding the oddly smooth pillar set right into the middle of the stone cabin. It served as both communication device and structural support, but he had no desire to speak to Bruno via the viewer technology. The last thing he wanted to do was see his brother’s amusement. It was bad enough talking to him on the phone. Isaac slid open the glass doors and inhaled as the scent of afternoon warmed pine hit his nose. He’d built his home into the side of the mountain, and then years later he’d added the deck. The view never failed to settle his nerves. Countless acres of ponderosa pine, white pine, and fir trees stretched out and down, as far as the eye could see.
“Perhaps you should charge a shield ring for her. It would keep her safe if we have another infestation,” Bruno said unexpectedly.
“Are you insane?” Isaac growled, shoulders tensing up. He’d considered it, especially when he’d seen that Saige had no car and walked everywhere. He had no idea when her safety had started to mean something to him, but he couldn’t deny that he worried. I worry about everyone, not just her, he told himself, even as he knew it was a lie. He worried about her more. “I’ve never given anyone a shield ring. You know that.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” Bruno laughed again. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, brother.”
Before Isaac could respond, the line went dead. “Fuck.” He slid the phone into his pocket and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. It didn’t help. He turned his back on the view as he tried to calm down, then gave up and went back inside. He strode over to the cabinet near the fireplace and opened the top drawer. Nestled inside an old handkerchief was the silver ring his brother Greyson had created for him a hundred years ago. It was one of four. Greyson and Solomon had given theirs to their paired mates, Eva and Lucy. He had no idea what Bruno had done with his. Isaac turned the silver ring around, satisfied when he saw that the etching of a pine tree that he’d carved on the surface looked as crisp today as it had when he’d first done it.
“What the hell am I thinking?” He rubbed at the silver with his thumbs. It wasn’t traditional sterling, so it hadn’t tarnished over the years. It was composed of a complex matrix of nanotechnology that the Others had taught his father before they’d gone extinct. “Benign aliens, unlike the ravenous Spiders,” he murmured, not quite believing it. He’d never met one of the strange Others, but his father had, and he’d told him that they were not human. Not even close. So what if they’d given them the tools to fight the Spiders? They were gone now, and here he was left with the result of their tinkering. He was a Sentry. He had no idea how long he would live. His DNA had been fundamentally altered, and so was his view of the world.
“Enough,” he told himself, forcing his mind away from the puzzle of the aliens who’d taught them how to protect their planet. He concentrated, gathering the energy only he and his brothers could harness and infused it into the ring. When it was fully charged, he slipped it into his pocket. Maybe he’d give it to Saige tomorrow. Maybe next week. Either way, he’d protect her, whether she wanted him to or not. And hopefully I’ll figure out why I’m so attracted to a woman who would rather spit on me than have a conversation.