CHAPTER ONE
Three years later…
Kel materialized through an open window from inside a strand of wind, and stood in the center of a small Vegas warehouse not far from the strip. While the location wasn’t his final destination and traveling inside the wind was a common skill that the GTECH Super Soldiers created in an Area 51 experiment possessed, it wasn’t exactly something the public needed to know about. The last thing Kel and his team, the Renegades, needed was a bunch of Van Helsing wannabe hunters calling them monsters, and trying to kill them all off. Especially when the Renegades were all that stood between man and the Zodius, the GTECH rebels, who really were worthy of the title ‘monsters’.
Damion Browne, one of his fellow Renegades, appeared by his side.
“Took you long enough, Mr. America,” Kel jibed, using the nickname they’d all given Damion, because he was all about morality and restoring the honor of the army and his country. Kel, well, he didn’t have a lot of faith in that happening, not after their special forces unit had been told they were getting immunizations, when they were really given experimental DNA. But hell, as long as he didn’t have to don any red, white, and blue leotard, he was willing to play superhero, and see where it landed them. Kel glanced at his watch. “You’re a full ten seconds behind on the landing. Getting slow in your old age. Oh, right. We don’t age anymore, so you’re just slow.”
“I wasn’t aware it was a race,” Damion commented dryly.
“Confucius say ‘Life’s always a race,” Kel said, “then you die’.” They started walking toward an elevator.
Damion flipped him an incredulous look. “Confucius did not say that.”
“No,” Kel agreed, “but my fortune cookie last night did.”
They stepped into the elevator that would lead them to a tunnel beneath the building next door, a huge entertainment complex that drew many a Vegas tourist. They were dressed to blend with the crowd, both in jeans, t-shirt and boots, his with an Aerosmith logo, Damion’s a basic black. Kel pulled off the civilian routine pretty darn well with his long brown hair, and his arms and a good portion of his body well inked with tats. Damion, not so much. He was army through and through, from his short military cut to the stern expression that might as well be tattooed on his face. But they weren’t there for fun and cotton candy. Roasted peanuts might be on the menu later, after they finished up one of those superhero missions they called their life these days.
“Any idea what this is about?” Kel asked as they stepped off the car and entered the underground tunnel.
“Only that Sterling needed you involved,” Damion said. “So I assume they need someone’s memory wiped.”
A handful of the GTECHs involved in the Area 51 experiments had developed unique abilities. Kel’s was one that he carried with some weight on his shoulders. The decision to wipe away someone’s memory wasn’t something to be taken lightly, but there were times when it saved lives.
It didn’t take long before they were inside the facility, standing in a small room with rows of monitors across the front wall. Sterling Jeter, the head of the Renegade’s inner-city operation, was facing a master panel when they walked in. His spiky blonde hair was in disarray, as if he’d been running his hands through it in frustration.
Sterling rolled his chair around to face them, his eyes, black as coal like all the GTECHs, fixed on Kel and Kel alone. Tension rolled off the other GTECH and Kel didn’t miss the fact that Sterling’s normal wise-cracking sense of humor was no more present than his lifebond and wife, Becca—who had some pretty amazing powers of her own—and who was usually by his side. “I have something you need to see,” Sterling said.
A ridiculous sense of foreboding had every muscle in Kel’s body tensing with a feeling that someone close to him was in danger. There was no one close to him. His father had been killed during a terrorist attack overseas while on active duty, when Kel was still a small child. His mother had died five years before that from cancer. His friends were these men, his fellow GTECHs. But there was someone else, someone he tried not to think about because it hurt too much.
Kel leaned against the wall, trying to calm himself when he’d never had that problem in the past. Never. “I’m all eyes and ears,” he said with a remarkably steady voice.
“It seems that the Zodius are bound and determined to find a way around the GTECHs inability to reproduce without an exact perfect female match, now rather than later,” Sterling continued. “They seem to be stepping up their fertility testing on human women. Five women disappeared this month from this city alone. Turns out that someone called the police station and told them about one of the abductions before it happened. I got tipped off by my inside guy. The call was made from a public line and hung up about ten seconds before it could be traced. It originated from a pay phone downtown and I managed to hack into the camera feed to get a picture of her.”
He rolled his chair around and punched a button, bringing an image up on one monitor. Kel forgot to breathe as he focused on the gorgeous female he knew all too well, and yet, never well enough. Sonia. The woman who should have been his wife. Both Sterling and Damion knew that. They also knew why it hadn’t happened.
“Holy crap, Kel,” Damion said. “How did Sonia know about the abduction?”
Kel wasn’t wasting time explaining Sonia seeing premonitions in her dreams when she was mixed up in something far too dangerous. He’d thought the damn things had stopped but apparently, they hadn’t. He pushed off the wall. “Who else knows about this?”
“Too many people,” Sterling said. “She’s in danger. There’s buzz on the streets. Adam is after her.”
Adam referred to Adam Rain, the leader of the Zodius movement, and the twin brother of the Renegade’s leader, Caleb. Adam wouldn’t just kill her. He’d use her for his damnable fertility testing, and try to mate her with every GTECH in Zodius Nation.
“Where is she?” he asked, knowing that Sterling wouldn’t have brought him here unless he knew exactly where she was.
“Waitressing at the Coyote Ugly bar,” he said. “All five of the women who’ve disappeared were waitresses at various bars. None from this one. I’m guessing she thinks that’s about to change.”
From a safe job as a research assistant at a law office to working at the Coyote Ugly bar. Kel was not happy with this turn of events. He was already opening the door, heading for the exit.
“I’m going with you,” Damion said.
“I need to do this on my own.”
“Like I said,” Damion repeated. “I’m going with you. You worry about your woman. I’ll worry about the Zodius.”
Only Sonia wasn’t his woman. Not anymore. She thought he was dead.